Archive for the ‘Sell More On eBay’ category

Are Your eBay Sales Down?

When there is a brand new shiny object in the lime light, people tend to make incorrect assumptions. They follow the big new shiny object and pretend whatever they were making money from before is suddenly going to disappear. Yes, you guessed it right, that brand new shiny object right now is Facebook. Facebook has been around for some time however more internet marketers are using Facebook as a platform for making money.

But that doesn’t just make eBay ‘dead’! Are you kidding me? I made a ton of cash for my business with eBay last month and have been doing so since 2004. Yes eBay might change the game slightly now and again, and that is evolution. Just because the new shiny objects attract lots of attention, it doesn’t mean eBay sales are down, because they are booming for those who know how to work eBay. eBay won’t just lay down and die – it will evolve with the trends, your job is to be on top of eBay evolution.

I also want to mention the recession. Most people don’t like recessions. The good side of a recession is this..

If you can sustain or even grow a business in a recession whilst others are dropping out of the game all around you, imaging how further up the ladder your business will be once a recession ends. Take a look at this chart showing a recession trend ‘trough’ in global markets.


ebay-sales-are-down

When you start a business in a recession or sustain or even grow a business during the ‘dip’, imagine how your business will be doing during a recovery and prosperity rise. Very well – thats how your business will be doing.

Really, are your eBay sales down? If they are, firstly don’t panic! It can and will be resolved. If they are, you need to consider the following points:

- Are new competitors coming into your market?

- Is your eBay search standing good?

- Is your product still in demand?

Think carefully how you might be able to increase sales. Have you set auctions running as well as buy it now? Have you optimized your listing titles for specific keywords? Have you optimized your eBay store for SEO? Have you tried using sales for a short period of time? Have you expanded your points of sale to all potential avenues.

Now is NOT the time to wait or drop out of the game. It’s NOT the time to sit back and wait. Every body is just waiting.

Now is the time to seize the day and grow your business!

If you want to increase your eBay sales, expand your eBay business or find the best products to sell on eBay,  it’s all covered in my HealthyProfitsClub.

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eBay Best Match: Is Your Product A Needle?

eBay is saturated with products and if your search standing is not up to par your products are literally a needle in a ebay-best-matchhaystack and will never be found by anyone.

How do you know if your product is a hot eBay product if potential buyers can’t even see your eBay listing?

People who buy from eBay generally search eBay in 2 ways.

They will type in a search term into the browser and hit the search button. eBay automatically shows best match items first but then they will chose the ‘show products with lowest price and shipping first’. Basically they are searching for the lowest priced product. It’s not a good thing to try and succeed by only listing the lowest cost products because someone else will inevitably be willing to work for less than you and eventually they will undercut your prices and you will be working for peanuts!

The second way people search eBay is with best match. To be found in eBay best match you need good feedback, good dsr ratings, an optimized eBay title and a product that sells when clicked on. Free shipping also helps.

But how the heck can you get sales in the first place to get a good search standing?

My eBay Best Match Boost Tutorial shows you a way to get around a low search standing but another simple way is to use the lowest price search on one or two of your lowest priced products to get traffic into your store.

If you sell a lot of a lower priced product you probably wont make much profit from those sales however, your search standing will increase for all your products. That includes any new products you list.

If your new higher priced products do sell well, your new listings will stay near the top of eBay best match search results and usually on the first page in a smaller niche category.

If your product continues to sell well, it might even appear on the first page of the search results in the ‘next level up’ category (the parent category), and that’s when you’ll get lots more sales.

Is the eBay category your selling in flooded with competition? Tell me by posting a message below..

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The Real Reason Your eBay Buyers Are Important

The real reason buyers are important is not because you made a little bit of profit when they first purchased from you. Buyers are much more important than that.

Buyers are important because they are people who have proven to you that they are prepared to open their wallets and spend money with you.

There is a difference.

Once you differentiate the buyers from the tire-kickers you can talk to those buyers more often and offer more specific products targeted to those buyers, not just once when a buyer makes a first purchase from your eBay store but over and over again.

You can only do this if you are building a list of qualified buyers. There are several ways to do this but more important is the list itself. Buyers are more important than just a first sale.

I agree that not all buyers will buy again but a percentage of them will. And those sales can be for products with much bigger profit margins because some buyers will want to spend much more money on more expensive products. This can count to the majority of your profits.

This is how it can work out..

If you sell 10 products and you make 100usd, you have 100usd and 10 proven buyers. If only 1 of those proven buyers buy a much higher value product from you and you make 150usd, then you have profited a total of 160usd from just one buyer and that customer is more valuable than the other 9 customers who only spent a small amount.

In total you would have made 250usd as apposed to only 100usd. That’s 150% more profit than if you only made one offer to your buyers.

It’s more important to build a list of proven buyers than it is to make your first sale. That’s the real reason buyers are important.

Do you ask your buyers if they want to buy again? Leave your comment below..

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eBay Adcommerce PPC Program Replaces Featured First

For those of you who list on eBay using the featured first upgrade, eBay have yet again changed the game and as of June 29 2010 eBay will be discontinuing this feature and you will no longer be able to simply buy your first place position in eBay’s best match search.

Instead, eBay have proposed that sellers use eBay’s pay per click program adcommerce. If you sign upto add commerce your adcommerce ads will be displayed above or below the main search display area. I have noticed eBay are currently testing this and move ads around a bit to supposedly test the best area for the new adcommerce ads.

You’ll find by using adcommerce you will be charged every time a browser clicks on your adcommerce ad. Will this really replace the benefits of featured first for sellers or is it another ploy to drip more money from your bank account into eBay’s? Only time will tell and eventually I predict adcommerce will have been extensively tested enough to replace featured first but that could take time..

All the more reason to join my healthy profits club and discover how to boost your listings in eBay’s best match search.

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eBay Best Match, Questioning eBay’s Head Office How It Works

Recently I was invited to attend a telephone conference and put a few questions to some of the heads of the eBay Best Match European Team and I asked a couple of awkward questions about eBay best match tips and ebay-best-match-algorythmeBay best match optimization. Some of the main points I will mention here.

How does the eBay best match work?

If you are ‘tech savvy’ you will know that search engines operate based on a mathematical formula namely an algorithm and eBay’s best match search is no different.

Key factors that influence eBay Best Match Optimization

.

  • Free shipping helps. Buyers like to see free shipping and eBay’s again rewards listings with free shipping. Yes if you include your shipping costs in your selling price you will pay a percentage to eBay in fees. eBay say “The amount of extra sales you generate by using free shipping will offset the small increase in the amount of fees you pay”
  • It was confirmed that Feedback percentage is not as important as Dsr’s when it comes to determining search standing in eBay best match. High dsr ratings and seller status will affects search standing more than your feedback percentage.
  • Keywords are important. Do not include any keywords in the title which are irrelevant to the product. If your listing obtains more search impressions and the buyer is not looking for that particular product this will have a negative effect on search standing.
  • DO, include as many laser targeted relevant keywords in the title as possible. Basically anything that a buyer would type in to buy the exact product you are selling. For example people looking for Ipods are not looking for ipod skins so you would not include the word skins in your listing title and vise versa.

Some of the main points which came directly from the horses mouth (Tom Wagstaffe from eBay’s European best match team) are summarized here;

  • Sales history is important, listings with more recent sales get more best match points
  • The number of search impressions divided by the number of sales a listing receives is important. The eBay best match algorithm calculates a conversion rate for every buy it now listing. When a potential buyer types in a relevant keyword into the eBay search bar, every time a listing is displayed on the search page it gets an impression count. If the buyer clicks through and buys the product then that counts as a sale. Suppose your listing had 50 search impressions and generated 2 sales from those impressions, the conversion rate would be calculated like this;

(Number of Sales) ÷ (Search Impressions) x 100 = (conversion rate percentage)

2 Sales ÷ 50 Search Impressions x 100 = conversion rate of  4%

Listings with higher conversion percentages receive more eBay best match brownie points and the eBay Best Match Boost listing strategy shows you exactly how to make your buy it now listing conversion rates soar.

Anyone who grabs a copy of the eBay Best Match Boost listing strategy will also get to download the complete 50 minute conference call on MP3, where I get to ask a couple of questions confirming these key points with eBay’s top dogs. On this MP3, Tom Wagstaffe from eBay’s head office also reveals insider information on how to make sure you’re an eBay best match maverick!

eBay Best Match and related eBay articles:
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How Much Is Your Time Really Worth To You?

ebay_product_fulfilmentI can remember it well. Waking up early in the morning to download all my eBay sales, print the labels, pick the items sold from my stock inventory and spend a good couple of hours packing all those items before taking them to the post office before it closed just to make sure my customers would receive the product as quickly as possible. Phew!!

I can’t think how I would be able to cope with that now simply due to the large number of items I actually sell on eBay each day. Ever since I started to use a fulfillment company to do all that low value 10dollar per hour work for me I have been able to grow my business by spending that time instead to direct, manage and grow my business.

The work I now do is worth much more than 10usd per hour. The work I do now is mostly 100usd/hour work and occasionally 1000usd/hour work. Are you still packaging and posting your own items and if so how long is that taking you each day and how much is your time really worth?

Even if you are selling a few items per day those items still need to be picked, packed and posted and that time is low dollar work. The options are;

  • Continue packing your own items and spend your time doing low dollar work
  • Hire a helping hand to do your packing and posting for you
  • Ship all of your stock to a fulfillment center and devote your precious time doing the high value work which really makes your business grow

Fulfillment centers are growing in popularity and those who are already using them to fulfill eBay orders have a distinct advantage due to the extra time available to grow the business properly. And the added benefit is of course your stock no longer clutters that spare room.

I have used a company called Shipwire who are very reasonably priced starting at just 29.99usd / month and that includes shipping which makes it good value when you consider how much you currently spend on shipping and packaging materials, not to mention your time spent doing the work yourself.

All of my eBay orders are automatically transferred to Shipwire and the orders are then professionally picked, packed and shipped to my end customers. I don’t even have to think about any of that stuff. I simply replenish my stock held at Shipwire when my inventory is almost sold out.

Shipwire also have warehouses across the United States and in the United Kingdom which makes selling internationally extremely attractive. You can even ship your stock to both the UK and USA and sell internationally with quick local shipping and your customers can receive their orders faster which means you increase your eBay sales and receive great feedback and DSR’s for shipping.

So how much is your time really worth to you? Are you spending too much time doing the low value work or are you doing what you really should be doing as a business owner and that is concentrating on selling and introducing new products, to grow your business and free up your time to make even more money.

My own company has teamed up with Shipwire to bring you a free trial. The packages are tiered depending on the amount of product you are selling each month.

Do a quick calculation to see how much money you are currently spending on postage plus packaging materials and the actual hourly rate you cost your own time at and compare that to the low cost fulfillment plans available at Shipwire.

You can check it out and sign up for the no obligation free trial here (it might turn out to be one of the best things you do to grow your eBay business), here’s the link to the free trial..

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> www.Shipwire.com/FreeTrial

~~~

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Are You Taking Advantage Of Free Google Traffic To Increase Your eBay Store Sales?

Are you taking advantage of free Google traffic to increase your eBay store sales?

eBay isn’t the only place you can get traffic to your eBay listings. If you take a look at some Powerseller’s ebay stores you will see that the categories on the left hand side navigation are keyword rich and designed to be search engine friendly.

You can easily implement a simple strategy for obtaining more free traffic to your eBay store by optimizing your eBay store categories in a certain way so that your eBay store pages are included in all the big search engines search results.

Here’s how eBay store pages look in Google’s search results.

ebay-store-categories

In the above example I typed in ‘fishing tackle daiwa reel’ into Google and you can see how an eBay store with matching keywords has been included in the first page results.

Read a simillar article about ebay category SEO by Jenn Cangelosi here

To optimize your eBay store categories you need to make your categories and sub-categories keyword rich.  In the example above,  and if you were selling Daiwa fishing reels you would name your eBay store category Fishing Tackle and then name your sub category ‘Daiawa reels’. It only takes a few minutes to set up and can make a massive difference in the amount of traffic that is funneled to your eBay store and listings. More traffic means more sales, so take a few moments now and make your eBay store categories search engine friendly to increase your eBay store traffic.

Learn how to increase your eBay sales even more using the eBay Best Match Boost Listing Strategy

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Posted in Sell More On eBay, The Best Products To Sell On eBay

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How To Make More Sales With eBay’s Mark Down Manager Tool

I want to ask you a question;  Do you use markdown manager in eBay stores to create promotional discounts and sell more items?

SALE! SALE! SALE!

Have you ever walked into a shop and seen something that you might be interested in buying thats on sale? Don’t kid yourself. Those words are not there because the vendor wants to do you a favour, they are there to make you think you are getting a bargain. I’m sure you will have seen this being used in the high street shops and in TV advertising. It’s a marketing tactic.. And it works!
Even if you are wise to this pricing trick (and most aren’t), the fact that the brain has already initiated a thought process about it, the potential buyer is still affected by the offer of a discount and the thought that they might be getting a real bargain. Ultimately it gives the vendor or seller the advantage to sell the product.

I did a test..

In one of my eBay accounts I used eBay’s markdown manager within eBay stores to create a 20% discount sale that lasted one week for selected products . The following week I created another sale with a 15% discount and another sale again the following week with a 10% discount.
Here are the results of how many sales were made on those discounted items and the overall profit made on the accumulated sales for each week..
(These items were priced between 10-20usd each and the market is competitive on price.  I also used 40% as an average to calculate the profit value)

Week 1 – 20% discount sale - Items sold 60 revenue  $827.30  Profit $330.92

Week 2 – 15% discount sale – Items sold 55 revenue $659.28   Profit $263.71

Week 3 – 10% discount sale – Items sold 30 revenue $540.63   Profit $216.25

Week 4 -         (No sale)          – Items sold 27 revenue  $512.29  Profit $204.91

As you can see, even though the items sold during the discount sales generated less revenue individually, overall many more sales were made during the discount sales. Now, this may work better in a highly competitive eBay category where many sellers are selling the exact same item and the difference in price attracts more buyers. If you are selleing products on eBay in a highly competitive market and can afford to reduce the price slightly for a short period of time, this marketing tactic is certainly worth trying.
Another benefit is higher search standing after the sale has ended. Because the eBay listing made more sales during the discount sale week, the sales history will be much higher for the following weeks best match search standing. Your listing will have been moved higher up the search results, even though the sale has ended and your listing has reverted back to a full price. To get you’re listing even higher up the eBay best match search rankings and without discounting your items (in fact you can charge even more) take a look at my eBay Best Match Boost Listing Strategy tutorials

Here’s how to create a mark down discount sale in 5 simple steps..

1. Goto Manage My Store in eBay and click the ‘Mark Down Manager’ link

ebay-marketing-tools

2.In Mark Down Manager click ‘Create Sale’

ebay-sell-more

3. Give the sale a title, chose the start and finish date and the type of sale you want to run, for example a 20% discount

increase-ebay-sales

4. Select the eBay listing you want to apply the sale to. At this point, you can also chose to email your ebay list subscribers to alert them to the sale. Then click ‘create your sale’.

sell-more-on-ebay

5. And thats how to create your eBay sale with Mark Down Manager, easy!

make-more-ebay-sales

This is how an eBay listing looks to the buyer. Notice the sale icon over the product photo showing the amount of discount and the original price has a strikethrough, with the new discounted price underneath.

mark-down-manager

Depending on the type of products you are selling, I would certainly experiment with this simple marketing strategy tool that has worked in all types of marketing for centuries, and it can work for your eBay listing too.

ebay markdown manager

What do you think?  Have you had similar experiences with Mark Down Manager?  Have you had the time to try?  Please let me know in your comments below, I’m really curious.

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