eBay Seller's News, March 2006, Volume 6, No. 3

Success is not for the chosen few, but rather
for the few who choose it.

Musings ////

After my article on eBay Stores last month I received several emails from readers pointing out that I had missed eBay's new policy announcement. eBay no longer offers store listings for 60, 90 or 120 days. From now on you can choose 30 days or "Good til cancelled". Other readers wrote complaining about the high final value fees at eBay stores.

The current final value fee schedule is 8% of the first $25 + 5% of the value between $25.01 and $1,000. We currently sell our outdoor fire pits from our eBay store for $249.00 so our fee works out to $13.20. If we sold that same item in the auction format, our final value fees would be $7.03 --a difference of $6.17. However in the eBay store our listing fee is only 2-cents versus $3.60 for the auction format. So my total selling cost at auction is actually $10.63 versus $13.22 in the store. Basically it costs me $2.59 or about 1.1% more to sell from a store.

There is one additional factor. Remember --not all auctions close successfully. If 70% of your auctions result in a sale, that means that 30% of the money you spent on listing fees must be added to your total fee costs. In the case of the fire pit described above, 30% of the $3.60 listing fee is $1.08. If I subtract that from my auction/store differential, it only costs me $1.51 in additional fees to sell in the store format. that is difference of .6% which is a negligible amount. If my sell-through rate was only 60%, it would break even. Less than 60% and its actually cheaper to sell from an eBay Store.

There are other good reasons to use the store format. We have six different models of the fire pit. I can put one or two models up for auction and let people know that we have different models in our store which they can buy now for immediate shipment.

When I am running an auction for one of the fire pits, I usually get about 2 or 3 orders a week from the store. If I run three or four auctions this will jump to 5 or 6 (even more during the spring and summer).

Another major value of an eBay store is that it gives you a way to increase your inventory turnover. Profit is directly tied to inventory turnover. The more times you can turn your inventory over in a given period the higher your profit for that period will be. This will also improve your cash flow.

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In last month's issue I told you about Dave's Cool little Web Site. Several of you signed up for what is turning out to be a very nice little money-making opportunity. Realistically this is not something that is going to make you wealthy, but I believe almost anyone can generate income in the $100 to $500 per month range, for just doing a few hours work. It only takes about 1 hour to set up the web site, then you wait a day or so for it to propagate to the web.

In addition to being a source of extra income, this site can actually help drive traffic to your eBay auctions.

I got a lot of questions from people who bought a site and those who were thinking about it. I don't want to clutter up the newsletter answering those questions so I created a FAQ Page. If you opened one of the sites, or you are thinking about getting one, please take about five minutes to read the Dave's Cool Little Web Site FAQs before proceeding.

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I have several readers from the UK and throughout Europe. On average I don't sell that many of my books overseas --probably less than 10 per month. The shipping cost is very high and mail can take up to four weeks. So I have decided to produce a UK version of The Complete eBay Marketing System. It is being edited by my very British daughter-in-law Lissa, who is also an author and accomplished eBay seller.

The book will be produced in and shipped from Oxfordshire, England. It will sell for £67.00 plus shipping. I will be offering it on a special page on my web site and will also be selling it on eBay.co.uk.

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I hate to keep referring to last month's issue, but another item I promoted was a FREE eBook called "12 Little-Known, Niche eBay Markets You Can Profit from Now!" Over 900 people signed up for this and I received tons of emails saying how great it was.

This is an awesome little book. It literally describes 12 niche eBay businesses that anyone can set up. A few of them are suitable for children, so this is something you can do to get your teenage kids involved in eBay. If you missed this last month, you can download your FREE copy HERE.

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I keep getting emails asking about a company called Zibus. Apparently they are doing some aggressive online marketing and telemarketing. In my considered opinion this is a total scam. Don't waste your time and don't spend $20 on their web site. All it gets you is a phone call designed to get you to spend $5000 on a drop ship program.

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In This Issue:

1. eBay Express Ready To Launch
2. Focus To Build Your eBay Business
3. Blogging for Profits
4. Cross Promote Your Auctions To Increase Bids
5. Increase Bids With White Space and Bold Face
6. The Ultimate eBay Seminar
7. New Trends in Marketing Will Drive Your eBay Sales
8. New Wholesale Sources for March 2006

Let's get started...

1. eBay Express Ready To Launch

Rumored and talked about for several months, eBay Express will launch later this month or in early April. eBay Express is a totally new selling venue on eBay. It will even have its own URL: express.ebay.com. eBay express could be a boon for eBay Store operators and those who use fixed price auctions as eBay is promising to promote it heavily as a place to buy on eBay at fixed prices. Early promotion will be on search engine and pay-per-click with radio, TV and print advertising to roll out later in the year.

eBay Express will allow a buyer to purchase several items from one or multiple sellers, place the items in a shopping cart and make one payment using either PayPal or a credit card.

Although millions of people use eBay, there are still millions who don't --many of them for two reasons: They don't like or understand the auction format and they are afraid of fraud. eBay Express addresses both of those issues.

The fixed price format makes it simple and quick to buy something. eBay has set higher requirements for feedback. To have your items listed on eBay express you will need a feedback of at least 100 and a positive score of 98% or better. As most fraud is committed by sellers with low feedback numbers, this requirement should reduce the incidence of fraud on eBay Express. I am hoping that eBay will stress this in their advertising.

This is another good reason to have an eBay store. If you place several fixed-price auction listings for a seven or ten day period, you will burn through a lot of listing fees to gain exposure on eBay express for a month.

It's very easy to get listed on eBay express. Here are the requirements from eBay:

• "Maintain a feedback score of 100 or more, 98% positive or better (consistent with PowerSeller requirements) Maintain a public feedback profile (e.g., no private feedback)  Support your listings with a PayPal Premier or PayPal Business account Set your PayPal account to ship to unconfirmed addresses or make sale-by-sale decisions
  
• Be a US-registered seller
  
• List in fixed price format or Stores Inventory format Fill in the item condition field (i.e. New, Used, Refurbished) in Item Specifics Include shipping costs - flat, calculated or free
  
• Provide a picture or gallery

• Use eBay checkout or the new checkout integration API (for 3rd party order processing) "

Feedback from eBay.com will carry over to eBay Express and vice versa. Any feedback you earn on eBay Express will carry over to eBay. This is the one worrisome feature for me. eBay Express is designed to attract buyers new to eBay. Many of these folks will not understand the feedback concept and could leave negative feedback for very minor reasons that an experienced eBayer would not do.

2. Focus To Build Your eBay Business

You have all heard the statement about what it takes to be successful in Real Estate: Location, location, location. So what does it take to be successful on eBay? Focus, focus, focus.

I get a lot of email from readers asking me about this or that opportunity or some deal they heard about to shortcut their way to success. I am a big believer that all eBay sellers should have a web site and explore other online marketing channels, but you need to master your eBay business first. I view my eBay sales channel as the foundation of all my other online businesses.

I see too many sellers trying to learn --and do, too many things at once. In my opinion, I think eBay offers the lowest barrier of entry to online marketing if you follow the steps to success. Here is a suggested order for building a sustainable and profitable eBay business that I recommend in The Complete eBay Marketing System:

1. Master the auction selling format
2. Learn how to use Buy-it-now and the fixed-price auction formats
3. Learn how to cross promote your auctions
4. Set up an eBay Store
5. Learn how to drive traffic from featured auctions to your store and how to cross promote between all of your auction and store listings.
6. Learn how to capture customer names and bring them back for repeat sales using the eBay email marketing system.
7. Learn how to drive qualified traffic from off of eBay to your store listings (This saves you 75% of the final value fee and you can also earn commissions from the eBay affiliate program)

Once you have mastered these steps, then it's time to set up a web site and expand into other areas such as affiliate marketing. I know that I often recommend products related to web site marketing such as the next article about blogging. But, I have a wide range of readers from raw beginners to experienced power sellers.

If you are just starting out on eBay, you should focus your energy on mastering the above steps. Those other business opportunities will always be there and you can always come back to the archives of this newsletter to read about them and access them later.

No rule is absolute and these are only suggestions after all. I know there are lots of people who are good at multi-tasking, but if you are not, you will be well served by focusing on your eBay business first before moving on to other online venues.

3. Blogging for Profits

Disclaimer: Given the reasons I outlined above, you should be at step number five, before using this method to drive traffic to your ebay store and step seven if you have a web site.

If I told you that ten minutes after reading this newsletter you could have a web site up and running that can promote your eBay and web site business, boost your traffic and help you make more sales......would you believe me?

How about if I added that you can do all of this for FREE? I imagine you would be skeptical. I'm sure you've heard about one of the biggest things to hit the Web in the last few years -- blogging. Who hasn't..?

A "blog" (derived from the term "web log") is basically just a web site -- with two key differences:

First, it's extremely easy to add information to it. A blog is like an online journal, so you just log in, type what happened today, post it, and you're done!

Second, you can add a simple little feature that automatically tells a whole bunch of other web sites that you've made an update to your blog -- every time you make a change!

I was attending a seminar at the Internet Marketing Center a few months ago. They offered a special evening session on blogging. Despite being pretty tired from a long day, I decided to attend.

When the session ended at 10:00 PM, I was so stoked that I went to my room, booted up my laptop and launched my blog. It took about five minutes to create an account at www.blogger.com and another five minutes or so to create my first post. I also followed what I had learned about creating links to my web site and RSS feeds. (That took another ten minutes). Sure enough, the next day when I checked my web site stats, I had almost a 10% boost in traffic during the first 24 hours of my posting.

You can read my blog at: http://skipmcgrath.blogspot.com/

The best part about blogs is how accessible they are to everyone. Blogs are either free or very inexpensive to set up using services like Google's Free Blogger at www.blogger.com or TypePad at www.typepad.com.

Typepad has a few more bells & whistles than Blogger and costs either $4.95 or $8.95 a month depending on which options and features you want.

Blogs are easy to promote with all the new tools and resources that have been created specifically for blogs -- like Google's blog-only search engine, Google Blog Search
(http://blogsearch.google.com).

... Plus, they are PROVEN successful promotional tools for both online businesses and offline businesses. In fact, every business person should have a blog -- and I suspect that soon enough, everyone will.

You can use your blog to drive traffic to your eBay store. In fact, you can even put an eBay search engine box right into your blog at no cost. When people search from there and buy you will save 75% of eBay store FV fees and you can earn income through the eBay affiliate program.

If you already have a web site, a blog can give your traffic levels a real boost. For starters, your blog will attract new visitors that you can then redirect to your main sales web site through links and special offers.

But an even more effective technique is to use strategic keywords and links to specific sales pages to dramatically improve the search engine rankings of both your blog and your web site.

You can also place Google Adsense ads and affiliate earning banners and text links in your blog to earn income. Some popular blogs earn thousands of dollars a month this way.

Starting a blog is the easy part. Turning your blog into a strategic tool that drives traffic and sales to your online business is a completely different matter.

If you'd like to learn how to drive traffic to your blog, web site, or eBay Store using a free blog, including strategies like...

>> How to rank #1 in Google, Yahoo, and MSN -- for the
keywords most searched by your target audience!

>> How the IMC team pushed a web page to a #2 ranking in Google
for a highly competitive key phrase -- with less than 60
minutes' effort! (And why they saw traffic and sales
results in less than 14 days!)

>> How to use blogs to dramatically increase your web
site traffic, drive visits to your eBay Store and add 1,000s of
EXTRA dollars to your bottom line!

>> Which 3 critical steps you must follow to catapult your
web site to the TOP of the search engine rankings -- for
any keyword you choose!

>> How to attract 400% more repeat traffic than your static
web page! Since blogs take just seconds to update (from
anywhere in the world), it's easy to draw visitors back
again and again with fresh news and postings!

The Internet Marketing Center has put the seminar I attended onto a 90 minute DVD and created a companion workbook. You also get a free 90 minute live teleseminar so you can see it in action and ask questions of Scott Patton the Blogging for Profits guru. Like everything I recommend it comes with a no-questions-asked, money back guarantee.

4. Cross Promote Your Auctions for Profit

Cross promoting between all of your auctions and store listings is one of the best ways to increase your eBay sales. When a buyer clicks on one of your auctions, how would you like them to see a moving slide show right at the bottom of your auctions, that presents the gallery photo and title of each item –scrolling across their screen. Best of all, this is a free tool.

Slide Player from Slide, Inc., is a new type of web browser for watching live feeds from the web that are constantly up-to-date. As a certified eBay Compatible Application provider, Slide makes live feeds of eBay Auction and Stores listings available to anyone on the web.

Slide Player is a great sales tool for eBay Sellers – it’s a free and effective way to cross-promote all your auction listings. Plus, for Sellers who have loyal repeat buyers, Slide Player offers a revolutionary new way to promote your item listings right on buyers’ computer desktops.

eBay Sellers can easily create Slide feeds that showcase all their Auction and Stores items with just one click by visiting Slide and entering your eBay Seller ID. When you do so, Slide automatically finds all of your items and puts the main image from each listing into a scrolling Slide feed that can be watched using Slide Player on any computer desktop or embedded into any web page, including eBay Auction and Stores Listings. Slide Player shows critical information about each item including current bid and time remaining. Clicking on any image in a Slide Player takes the viewer to the eBay item listing that the image came from.

Slide Player enables eBay Sellers, for the first time, to promote their merchandise in a compelling, visual way right on their customers’ desktops. Slide Player is a free downloadable application for Mac and Windows computers, so there’s no cost to either Seller or Buyer for this service.

Any eBay Seller can offer their buyers a freely downloadable Slide Player that comes pre-loaded with the Seller’s feed of active Auction and Stores listings. Any Buyers who download and watch the Seller’s feed will be automatically kept up-to-date when new items from that Seller are listed and will also be able to keep watch over the current status of all items for sale by that Seller – even when they are not browsing the eBay website!

Slide also offers easy instructions for Sellers to copy-and-paste Slide Players into any auction or Stores listing. Slide Players are compatible with any auction listing management tool and/or the eBay Sell-Your-Item (SYI) form for entering listings. When you put a Slide Player in your auction listings, prospective buyers can see all your items for sale, so you can cross-promote accessories and similar/related items in every auction listing.

Visit Slide today to experience it for yourself.

5. Increase Bids With White Space, Bold Face and Bullets

How many times have you opened an auction to see lines and lines of description typed one after the other without a break. And to make it worse these people always seem to choose the smallest font size they can find.

There have been tons of studies by online marketing companies to better understand how people read and react to web pages. They actually sit subjects in front of a computer and track their eye movements with a camera and computers.

All of these studies have concluded that people like to scan pages looking for words and images that attract their attention. It is much easier to spot the information they are looking for if you use a series of short paragraphs such as the three you just read.

The idea is to create lots of white space around your text.

Bold facing important words has been shown to be slightly better than using all caps, but both techniques work if used sparingly. As an example, if you look at the list in the article above, I used bold face in some of the items and ALL CAPS in others. Look at the list and see what works best for you.

The other important factor is bullets. Studies show that lists of features, benefits or specifications set off with bullets or similar symbols, dramatically increases the readership.

Lastly, watch your type size. Ten-point type is the absolute smallest you should use and twelve is preferable. (This page is in twelve-point type). Use no more than fourteen or sixteen-point for headlines. Overly large type turns people off as much as type that is too small. Here are some examples:

10 pt. This is ok, but a little small for some people

12 pt. This is perfect for most people

14 pt. This is good for headlines. It would also be ok to use this font size if your auction description was very short

16 pt. is probably the max I would use in an auction listing and then only for headings.

18 pt. This is way too big for most people

The other thing I noticed from the studies I read is that people prefer their images to be on the left or right, rather than top and bottom or centered in the text.

6. The Ultimate eBay Seminar

As many of my regular readers know I did my first Seminar last September in Las Vegas. I am still planning to do more seminars, but the time constraints of writing my new books and just running what has become a very busy business has caused me to rethink my plans. I don't really want to do seminars that often, so I decided to reach out to the community for help.

Watch this space. I have approached some of the top eBay gurus and trainers in the country and we are in the planning stages of what we are going to call The Ultimate eBay Seminar. With others to share the work load it will be easier to plan and implement a great seminar and you will have the benefit of hearing from not just me, but some of the best minds in this business.

If all goes well, I will be announcing the details next month --or in May at the very latest. We are currently looking at the early Fall for the first seminar and will do one on each coast and perhaps a third in the Midwest.

7. New Trends in Marketing Will Drive Your eBay Sales

Speaking of blogs, I have been surveying some of the leading marketing and consumer advertising blogs looking for new trends.

Here are what some of the marketing and advertising gurus are saying:

• Small dogs are out --mid-size dogs (labs, retrievers, standard poodles) are back "in."
  
• Dresses are back - worn with a jacket at work that can be taken off for when you go to happy-hour after work. Most popular hemline is just above the knee. The South Beach club-clothing look will be the hottest fashion trend with women this year.
  
• Men are buying clothing again. Men's stores enjoyed some of the strongest sales of any retail category during the Christmas season. As the male boomers age, they want clothing that makes them look younger. And, it's not just clothing --men are shopping more for everything.
  
• The biggest trend of course is the baby boom generation turning 60. They have plenty of money, the children are gone and they want to shop, travel and party. It is these folks now between 50 and 60 who are driving the retro trend in clothing, cars, appliances and music.
  
• Christian is in. People no longer feel they have to hide their Christian faith and they are buying more Christian products. Christian book stores, and Christian Rock are seeing phenomenal growth. Christian music is the third largest category of music downloaded on iTunes after pop and country.
  
• Speaking of iTunes, anything iPod related is hot and will stay that way for awhile. Movies and TV shows you missed will be available soon.
  
• Specialty foods, high-quality expensive gourmet items, cooking at home while entertaining are in and organic has gone mainstream. Kitchen gadgets, high quality specialty packaged foods could all be big sellers on eBay and the web this year.
  
• Individuality is in. People want more individual hand made or hand tailored items. Monogramming is coming back. Hand-made craft jewelry is hot and sales of almost all artisan-made items are strong. Most of all people want choice.
  
• Glitz and bling will move from the items of clothing to accessories. Costume jewelry is fast being replaced by mid-priced silver and semi-precious stones and expensive designer jewelry is hot. Tiffany's stock is up 33% this year.
  
• Designer Tees with cute, clever or ironic sayings are hot and no longer just for teens --they are being snapped up by middle aged women too. One of the hottest tees right now says: "Ride em Cowgirl." Regular boxy tees are out. Women are looking for tighter fitted tees, halter tops and more stylish looks.
  
• The Hold-em poker craze is still on, but slowing down.
  
• Women are reading more and buying more books. The next time you are looking at the best seller section at your local bookstore, notice that more than half of the top titles are by, for or about women.
  
• Getting pregnant is "in." The same stars (Brooke, Gwyneth & Angelina) that are making dresses fashionable again are also making pregnancy in. Women are having babies again, but this time they are looking for fashionable maternity wear.
  

8. New Wholesale Sources for March 2006

Before going in search of new sources there are two good places to start right here on the site. The first one is my branded Wholesale Search Engine and the other is My Top Twenty Wholesale Sources. This is a product I give away for $2.99 to introduce people to the content we offer.

If you are game to try importing, Alibaba is a wholesale search engine with thousands of products from all over the world.

One of the sources listed in my top twenty --and one of my favorite sources is LiquidXs. They sell only first-quality unsold closeout merchandise --no returns or seconds. Best of all they sell in quantities small enough for new eBay sellers to handle.

I got an email from a gentleman named Steve at Wholesale Castle in Toronto. I checked the site out and found it had some really great pricing on well-know fashion brands. I am always suspicious when I see great pricing on famous name designers because there are so many fakes out there so I emailed him back and asked if the goods were authentic. He assured me that they try very hard to only purchase authentic goods, but they buy from so many overseas sources that he can't guarantee it. So check the site out, but Caveat Emptor. If you sell counterfeit goods on eBay you could get your auctions shut down and even get suspended.

In the story on marketing trends above I mentioned how hot designer Tees with slogans were. Here is a complete business idea from my friend James Jackson at FindHotNiches. I have added all of the sources you need to get started.

Think up a clever slogan that you think people might buy on a t-shirt. Create an image of the slogan and save it to your disk. Now go to Cafe Press. This is a site where you can create custom made t-shirts, hats and other items.

Make a t-shirt and put it on eBay to see if it sells. Cafe Press' prices are retail, so you won't make any money but you should break even. What you are trying to do is see if there is a market for your shirt. If you find a winner, then find a source of wholesale t-shirts (see below for a few sources) and a local company that can imprint them in bulk.

If you hit on a hot design, you can sell them for as much as $40 each. When you buy your shirts, pay a little more for a better shirt and stay away from the really cheap ones. Besides t-shirts you can also make tank tops, sweat shirts and almost anything.

You will probably want to specialize in something such as politics, humor, sports, pets and so on. If you don't have someone to model the shirt, you might want to get a mannequin to photograph it on. You can get mannequins at www.intertradecorp.com.

Here are some wholesale suppliers of t-shirts and related merchandise.

UST's Inc.

Tees House wholesales t-shirts, spaghetti tank tops and baby dolls.

Madison Avenue Closeouts has a current offer of $50 off your first purchase of $500 or more. Use coupon code: CVNM50. Good through March.

Barber & Company can supply you with custom printed heat transfers for as little as 50-cents each. they also wholesale pre-printed t-shirts.

ShirtSupplier carries a large line of t-shirts and related merchandise. Minimum order $200.

Screenprint Plus will do everything for you. They supply the shirts and do the printing. They work in quantities as small a a dozen.

You can also find plenty of suppliers at Alibaba.

If you live near or can travel to Vegas, you can meet hundreds of wholesale clothing and fashion suppliers at the Off Price Apparel Trade Show at the Mandalay Bay from May 8-10th or the regular Apparel show at the Sands from August 26-30.

Cash in on the bling market. Teeda always has the latest styles and supplies dozens of top eBay power sellers.

Wholesale Fashion is a large supplier to eBay sellers. They carry a large line of dresses, tops, shoes and boots.

All the focus may be on baby boomers, but teens are still buyers too. Puka Creations sells a large line of teen jewelry and fad fashion products.

Political items are always hot. Newsmax has a wholesale division that sells patches, t-shirts, coffee mugs and more. their theme is republican/conservative. I looked for a wholesaler of similar liberal/democratic items but couldn't find one.

The Galen Company sells a wide range of licensed goods that can tap into the baby boomers retro & nostalgia trend, including Lucy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Betty Boop and more.

That's all for this month...

Skip McGrath