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December 2006 - Ten Little Known eBay Niche Businesses Anyone Can DoThe eBay Seller's News, December 2006, Volume 6, No. 12 Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The
Newsletter for Professional
The holiday season is in full swing on eBay. Our eBay sales in November were up 30% over October and 22% greater than the same period last year. Now is the time to maximize your listings. As you get closer to Christmas always include a Buy-It-Now price and offer expedited shipping as an option. Our free article index was growing too long to allow readers to find an article easily so we have recently redesigned the Free Articles page to group articles by subject as follows:
You may want to bookmark that page as we frequently post new articles. I have just posted one this week that deals with Fraud on eBay. It contains strategies to prevent fraud by both buyers and sellers. If you purchased my book, How To Start and Run an eBay Consignment Business, you know that I mentioned a few companies that provide auction management services for trading assistants or consignment sellers. One of them was Mpire which many of you signed up with. Unfortunately Mpire could not make their systems work and they have decided to leave the business. A couple of months ago I introduced you to a new company called EZ Lister. EZ Lister is an excellent auction management service and they have a very sophisticated consignment tracking function.
Did you know that a loophole in the law allows the major credit reporting agencies to sell your personal information to companies that sell insurance, home mortgages or other credit offers. That's right --the big three credit agencies have found a way to make a lot of money selling your personal information to any and all lenders. Fortunately there is a way to stop this from happening. Just go to www.optoutprescreen.com and follow the instructions to stop the credit agencies from giving out your name and personal information. You have probably seen the news stories of people sleeping outside of Wal-Marts waiting to get one of the new Playstation 3 or Nintendo Wii sets. eBay learned their lesson when the last XBox sets were released. There were sellers running all sorts of scams including selling boxes they didn't have and selling just the box --not the Xbox, but the empty box it came in. So this year eBay put some really tough restrictions in place for sellers wanting to sell these items:
Number 3 is a little tricky. What this means is that you have to write your username on a piece of paper and show it in the photograph of the item. We usually have some news from eBay in each issue of this newsletter but there isn't much this time of year as eBay has bowed to seller complaints and promised not to release new features during the busy holiday season. eBay has done this is past years and received howls from sellers who were forced to make changes to their listings during their busiest season. But get ready for January. eBay will certainly be releasing changes and increases to the fee schedule as well as a host of new platform enhancements and features during the first quarter of the year. One of the new features is an entirely new search engine that is now being beta tested in great secrecy by about 5000 users. eBay is also hard at work on a major revision to the eBay feedback system. There have been minor tweaks over the years, but rumors are flying that the new system will include dramatic changes. Bill Cobb noted that the new system will allow buyers to review seller's shipping and handling policies during the November 30th town hall meeting but information is starting to leak out of San Jose about other changes as well. You can listen to the town hall meeting, or get a written transcript, at the Town Hall Archives Page. Overstock.com auctions did not follow eBay's lead and instead introduced several changes to their platform right in the middle of the holiday season that has their auction sellers upset. Overstock's business model is in trouble and it's starting to look like they are de emphasizing the auction format over their traditional selling format. In last month's issue I wrote about the struggles at eBay's Skype. Since then eBay has replaced a lot of the original Skype employees with eBay employees and moved the headquarters of Skype to London. You can read the full story at AuctionBytes. I often get questions about my eBay store design and/or how to get a store designed. I am not a designer so this is something I contract out. My store was designed by Anthony McMurray at Proimpulse Design. He is not cheap but he is very good, fast and his fees are reasonable. He can also design auction templates, About Me pages and complete web sites.
Let's get started with this month's issue. [top] A Unique Selling Style Can Also Be an eBay Niche Market This month's Niche of the Month does not actually cover a product niche. This month my daughter-in-law Lissa talks about a style niche using Best Offer. Initially eBay allowed buyers only one offer per listing, but that restriction has been lifted and negotiations are now possible. Earlier this month I discovered Shannon Hersey's (a.k.a. Likestodrum) eBay store. I was going to use Buy It Now (for $6.99) for an item I wanted, but then I read the description fully. It said "Being from Maine, I love to price negotiate (we call it “dickering”) so make an offer and we could go back and forth a few times and settle on a great price for you!" I figured why not. Her counter offers were quick and we went back and forth a couple of times before settling at $4.85. Not exactly the biggest difference, but it wasn't about that. It was fun! This is the first time in a long while I have really felt like I had fun buying on eBay. It turns out Shannon is a shop-a-holic turned eBay-a-holic. She realized that listing and selling items was as much fun as buying them in the first place and this is helping her fund her University studies. The hardest part for her was setting the Buy It Now price. "Here in Maine, even if an item is on a store shelf, we try to dicker (and expect it and have fun with it) and negotiate. So setting a firm price felt a little uncomfortable for me. When I saw that I could give the option of Buy Now or Make an Offer I knew that was how I would like to sell my inventory." She found that most buyers, not used to this, would just use Buy It Now. So she started putting big headlines at the top of her store page and in her listings to encourage people to negotiate. Every time she received a question, she would remind them to negotiate when she sent her answer. When she would get the first offer she would send an encouraging message to get them to keep negotiating, and that put most buyers at ease and they got into it and had some fun. It's not just about Shannon having fun negotiating though. Because the buyer has fun, they let other buyers know about her. "I know one buyer enjoyed the negotiation process, and emailed her friend in another state, who joined in, and emailed my store link to her friend, and on and on." This word of mouth has increased Shannon's store traffic quite considerably. This is the first time trying this technique for most of her first-time buyers (it was for me and I've been buying on eBay for six years). She gets great feedback about communication, ease to work with, etc. And most become repeat buyers. I added Likestodrum to my favorite sellers immediately after I won the item, and that is the first time in six years that I have done that. "I also have customers who are repeats and I almost know them as a conventional store owner would know their regulars, so when I know I will be listing items they like, I will let them know to keep their eye out for it." Shannon is a non-traditional student (in her 30s) so she can keep eBay up in the background on her computer all day. "If a negotiation starts, I grab a cup of coffee and take a homework break." I think this is one of the keys to her technique. If I had waited a day for a counter from her I would have got bored. But the entire process was over in about 2 hours. Good thing too because I needed the item quickly. At the moment Shannon has 750 items in her store, mainly clothing and accessories. "Truly, I loved to shop!!! Now I am an eBay-a-holic, and that is far more rewarding!" So how exactly does she do it, well I'll let her explain it in her own words: "My first move is to go in and read their feedback, to get a feel for what sort of individual the person is and how they have dealt with others in the past. I can tell from that what they are looking for and how to approach the negotiation. The really fun negotiations take the longest. I had one GREAT negotiator and we went back and forth about $0.50 at a time for perhaps a half hour, and finally I gave in because I loved their persistence, and had more than my money's worth of entertainment - a thought that I shared with them. It is nice to thank a purchaser and really mean it, not just for the item purchase itself, but for the fun on both sides of dickering. "Encouragement has been the key to building confidence in my buyers with the negotiation process." I agree - I was a little wary of negotiating, and I know many sellers are not interested in the time it takes to do this. "Making it fun, using humor, gratitude, and admiring a good negotiation are all effective encouragement, and it doesn't cost me a cent. The reward is that I feel good at the end of the transaction, and hope they do too." As a buyer, I certainly did, and I know I will buy from her again. Check out Likestodrum listings or store to see exactly how Shannon does it, or to start dickering and find a bargain for yourself! [top] New Skip McGrath Affiliate Program is Finally Ready As most of my old readers know I used to have a great affiliate program that was run by Assotrak. Unfortunately when Assotrak upgraded to a new release my program crashed and I was never able to get it fully functional again. It has been a long time coming but I finally settled on Kowabunga MyAP to run my affiliate program. The program is now up and running and you can find information about the program, our commission schedule and sign up for the program from our Affiliate Program Page. The new program is much better than the old program. We now pay 40% commission on your direct sales and a 10% commission on sales by affiliates you refer. If you were a member of my previous program you will have to sign up for the new program to get your updated affiliate links and tracking code. ebay Sellers can easily earn money promoting the affiliate program from their eBay About Me page and in end of auction emails to your buyers. One of the best ways to earn money is to give away access to the Free 99 Tips for eBay Buyers and Sellers. Our website statistics show that this page has a 25% conversion rate. That is --25% of people who link to the 99 Tips page end up buying a product from the Auction Seller's Web Site. Please note, however, you cannot link from your auction description through an affiliate link direct to our web site. Instead you have to invite people to visit your About Me Page. Once you sign up for the affiliate program, I have a banner you can place in your auction description that clicks through to your About Me Page. Then there is an identical-looking banner that you then place on the About Me page itself. When someone clicks on this banner it takes them to the 99 Tips page and embeds your affiliate cookie in their computer browser. If you want to see how I do this, just take a look at one of my auctions at this link. [top] Ten Niche eBay Businesses Anyone Can Do I have just released my latest business manual, Ten Little Known eBay Niche Businesses Anyone Can Do. If you are one of my regular readers you know I am a big believer in Niche Marketing. Readers often email me asking the question: "What niche should I work in?" That is not an easy question to answer because everyone has different interests, talents, money to invest and skills. It is something every individual seller needs to research and learn for themselves. The question did give me an idea, however. I decided to research ten eBay niche markets that anyone could do. The idea is not to give you pre made ready niche markets you can make a full-time living from, but to give you some markets where you can work and make some money while you figure out your own niche. Although that was the original goal, it turns out that a few of the niches I came up with actually could be developed into a full-time business Unlike my printed books, I decided to make Ten eBay Niche Businesses Anyone Can Do a digital product. So Ten Niche eBay Businesses Anyone Can Do is sold via a protected PDF file. You can (and should) print it out to read and use next to your computer while working. Each of the businesses I researched has four themes in common:
Best of all these are all real businesses, selling real products that people already want. You don't have to create a market. Click here to read more about Ten Little Known eBay Niche Businesses Anyone Can Do. [top] New Version of The eBay Wholesale Buying System Released We have just released a completely new and updated version of The eBay Wholesale Buying System (WBS). Released initially in 2002, the WBS has been the best-selling book about sourcing wholesale products for eBay. Before this revision went to print in mid-November, we had sold over 7,000 copies on eBay and our web site. I usually update the book once a year, but this year I decided to do a complete overhaul. Each section was updated, all of the wholesale sources were scrubbed for relevance and most up-to-date URLs and several new sourcing techniques were added. If you are not familiar with The Wholesale Buying System it is a complete course in buying wholesale for eBay and small website sellers. The product comes in three parts:
Read more about the Wholesale Buying System and see if it can help grow your eBay or website business. Please note: If you purchased my Complete eBay Marketing System then you already have The Wholesale Buying System as it is included in that. My next project is updating the wholesale sources on the members-only web site that comes with your purchase. This will be going on over the next few weeks. I regularly update the sources on the member's site, but this next update will be a major revision and we will be adding hundreds of new sources. [top] Researching Your Competition on eBay Can Put Money In Your Pocket I love competitors --I just don't love them a lot. Some competition is good. It keeps you on your toes, it's good for the consumer because it keep prices low and service levels high. But I also hate competitors. They keep prices low, I have to stay on my toes and I have to keep my service level high to compete with them. One of the rules I try and follow to make money on eBay is to find markets with either no, or very little, competition --or categories where the competition is weak. This is one of the keys to making real money on eBay. Whenever I look at a new eBay product the first thing I do is research the competition. Here are some of the things I look for:
Whenever I sell one of my Wholesale Buying Systems or The Top Twenty Wholesale Sources, I always get emails from people saying something like: "I was looking for the wholesale source for iPods, or Sony Plasma TVs or the new Playstation3." This is usually followed by a comment that they were disappointed that I didn't have a magic source for these products. It's not that I don't have a source (For example, Ingram Micro is the national distributor for Apple), it is actually easy to find sources for these products. The problem is that unless you can get approved for a $100,000 line of credit and/or purchase the goods $100,000 at a time, you can't make any money in those markets. The reason is too much competition. And, the competition is not some guy or gal working out of their home, it is a large well-financed Titanium PowerSeller. If you pick virtually any hot or even mildly popular consumer product and perform a search on eBay you will see that you will have to compete with dozens or even hundreds of sellers. Here are some examples:
When you click on the listings that come up you will see that most of them are large sellers, usually a shooting star who is also a Platinum or Titanium PowerSeller. When I do find a product I want to sell that doesn't have thousands of competitors, the next thing I do is study the competitors I will have. For this I turn to closed auctions and look first for the ones that closed successfully (I like to sort by Price highest first). I look at their descriptions, titles, photos, how they are selling, are they bundling the product with others, are they cross selling or upselling accessories or larger quantities, do they offer free shipping, etc. I am trying to determine two things: What are the successful sellers doing that I can copy and do other sellers have any weaknesses that I can exploit? Whether you are selling an existing product on eBay or if you are looking to move into a new product area, a hour or two spent studying your competitors will put money in your pocket and help you prevent expensive mistakes that could cost you money. [top] New Wholesale Sources for December 2006 X-Music Pro is a national distributor of musical instruments. Once you reach the web site contact them and ask for wholesale distribution information. African Art is a huge selling product on eBay. African Art imports art directly from Africa and represents thousands of individual African artists. Their standard wholesale discount is only 20%, but there selling prices are quite good compared to other sources so this is actually a good price and you can easily markup the prices you pay by more than 20% to sell on eBay. The Body Bolster is a new back exercise product from Australia that is now being distributed in the US. Contact the company through the web site for wholesale bulk and drop ship pricing. Southern Textiles Resale (STR) is a strange name for a company that sells computers and other consumer items, but they do. STR has a wide range of brand name products available for purchase. Their selection includes computers, computer components, home office products, consumer electronics, digital cameras and video equipment, house wares, sports, hobbies, jewelry, gifts, accessories, apparel, shoes, furniture, domestics, home improvement, collectibles, and many more at wholesale prices. We discovered we needed candles this year when we had a couple of power outages. A Burning Desire sells scented candles and aroma products. They offer 40+ standard scents and 30 seasonal lines. their minimum order is only $200. Not a candle but a really unique sleek-looking lighter comes from Ambien In The Home. The lighters sell for between $12.95 to $19.95 and your cost is $5.00 each. GJ Designs sells a beautiful line of fine pottery dinnerware. Hand painted dinnerware, vases, decorative tiles, masks plates, mugs, florals, nature. The minimum order is only $200. Silvestri, Inc. offers memory-making giftware, specialty collectibles, unique accessories and home décor. They partner with nationally known artists to create captivating collections with universal appeal. The Collectible Diecast Company is a wholesale distributor of both collectible model cars and some of the hot remote control cars on the market.
That's is for this month. Once again I wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a wonderful and prosperous New Year. Skip McGrath
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