How To make $9.95 Extra Income on Almost Every eBay Auction That Closes Successfully

By: Skip McGrath

I used the word "Almost" in the title because this technique can work most of the time as long as you are selling one or two categories of items. You may have to use your imagination to come up with ideas, but if this works for you, it will generate a steady stream of income that will increase your profit on almost every auction you close successfully.

The concept has been around a long time and has been written about by several eBay gurus -- but very few people take advantage of it.

The key to making this work is to be selling in a niche market. It won't work if you are selling different categories of products each week.

What is the technique?

Ok -- What if you are selling bird feeders? The auction closes and you send an email to the customer with payment and shipping information. The last paragraph of the email says, "Would you be interested in my book, How To Attract Songbirds To Your Yard? You can read about it by Clicking Here." (The "clicking here" would be a hyperlink to your web page or eBay store where you display sales copy about the book)

The book is nothing more than a 15 to 25 page PDF file (e-book) of techniques to attract songbirds to your yard. If you don't know how to attract songbirds to you yard, just go to the library and read up on it. Now, don't plagiarize someone's copyrighted material, you just want to learn the techniques and then write about them in your own words and style.

If you really don't have any writing ability, hire a English-major college student to do this for you. You can get a simple project like this done for about $100. You only have to sell eleven books, to come out ahead.

You can also sell the books to people who view your auctions, but don't bid or win.

Every seller can create an About Me Page on eBay. This is the one place where eBay allows you to provide a link to a non-eBay web page. That web page could contain the sales copy for your e-book. In your ebay item description, simply place a paragraph that says: "Please visit my About Me Page to learn how to attract songbirds to your yard." (The words "About Me Page" would be the actual hyperlink <a href= to your page.)

If you don't have a web site, you can also create an eBay store item that you use to sell your book. In fact, you can also sell your book via eBay auctions. In this example, you would create an auction describing the book and use eBay's list in two categories feature. The main category would be non-fiction books, and the second category would be birdhouses under the home and garden category.

It doesn't matter what kind of product you sell, there is always a market for information about that product or product category. Just use your imagination to think up a connection that would interest someone looking at your category of product. If you sell pet-related items you can write a book about dog training tricks or pet health.

Good luck and good writing.