The Top-5 Mistakes New eBay Sellers Make

The Online Seller's News, September 8, 2010, Volume 10, No. 15

Tips, Tools, News and Resources for eBay, Amazon and independent Online Sellers
by: Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings from eBay and beyond

1. The Top-5 Mistakes New eBay Sellers Make
2. eBay Fall Changes Go Live in September
3. Niche of The Month - Collectible Christmas Ornaments
4. Vendor Review – EBay Sellers Save Time & Money with Vendio
5. Can You Make Money Online With An Offline Biz?
6. New Wholesale Sources for eBay, Amazon & Online Sellers

"Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." ~ Mark Twain

I usually open my newsletters with a motivational quote, but my wife came across this one from Mark Twain, and given our current economic situation I couldn’t resist.

Musings from eBay and beyond

Stamps.com has extended the special offer they made to my readers again. If you use this link you can save $100. New customers will get:

• $45.00 in Free Postage
• A $50.00 Postage Scale
• $5.00 in free supplies

I like Stamps.com mostly because it saves me time, but it also saves me money. Get postage discounts on Priority Mail & Express Mail. You can import orders from eBay and Amazon. You can save up to 10% on package insurance and you can hide the postage amount on your shipping labels. Besides normal domestic First Class and Priority service, Stamps.com allows you to ship worldwide with USPS First Class International.

I am still working on my Amazon training course, but in the meantime, Steve Lindhorst also has a great book called Amazon – The Quick and Dirty Guide. If you want to learn how to sell on Amazon, either –or both of those books would be excellent investments.

Are you getting my blog? This newsletter comes out twice monthly, but I tend to update my blog about three times a week. Did you know you could subscribe to a blog feed so you never miss one? If you look in the upper-left-hand corner of the blog you will see a subscribe link that looks like this:

Clicking on that will give you a list of home pages. You just click on whichever home page or service you use and you will get a blog feed right on your home page.

Third party checkout on eBay is going away. If you use an auction management service such as Vendio or Auctiva, eBay’s Todd Lutwak announced last week that third-party checkout services will be phased out by next June 2011. Here is the text of the announcement:

To give eBay buyers a consistent, speedy checkout experience and to ensure support for fast-growing sales via mobile platforms, eBay announced today that third-party checkout solutions will no longer be supported on eBay after June 30, 2011.

Today less than 10% of all sales on eBay.com are processed via third-party checkout solutions and the vast majority of sellers will not be affected by this coming transition.

For those sellers who do use third-party solutions, eBay checkout is being enhanced with key functionality including advanced tax reporting, more credit card integration, and advanced shipping solutions.

We are also working closely with each service provider to ensure a smooth transition to eBay checkout. You can expect to hear from your provider with more information in the coming weeks.

I don’t think this is any great loss. I have been using Vendio for 7 years and never bothered with the 3^rd Party checkout.

Internet Retailer is still offering their free subscription deal for a little longer. This is a great magazine for anyone who sells online. It has lots of helpful and how-to articles and advertisements from wholesale sources which want to sell to you. Here is the link to the special offer.

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1. The Top-5 Mistakes New eBay Sellers Make

We all make mistakes. I have been doing this for ten years now –and yet I still screw up every once in a while. Just a couple of months ago, I totally forgot about the July 4^th holiday and launched about 60 listings that ended over the holiday when almost no one was online. I usually close about 55% of my auction listings, but that weekend I only sold 2 items out of 60.

Having said that, newer and smaller eBay sellers tend to make similar mistakes. I learn about these from email from my readers who write and ask me a question or what they can do about X, Y or Z. So here is my list of the 5 most common mistakes made by new and smaller eBay sellers.

1. Product selection – This is the biggie. More new sellers think they can make their fortune on eBay selling famous name designer goods (Tiffany, Coach, Gucci, Tommy Bahama, etc.) or hot consumer products such as iPads, Rolex watches, Nikon cameras, cell phones and so on. Yes, these items are sold on eBay, but they are sold mostly by very large sellers, who can purchase in large quantities that you cannot compete with. The secret to small sellers succeeding on eBay is to focus on small niche or specialty products that you can source in small quantities; Or, to sell used and vintage goods.

2. Losing Dollars by Saving Pennies – I get email from new sellers wondering about subjects like picture hosting, templates and so on and they wonder about using services like Vendio, Auctiva and Pagemage because these services cost money. When I worked as a sales manager years ago I used to see this all the time. My sales guys would earn over $50 an hour when they were actually selling, but they wouldn’t spend $10 an hour to pay someone to make appointments for them. The few who did this out-earned the others by a factor or double or more, but the frugal salespeople just couldn’t bring themselves to make the investment.

Spending $10 or $20 a month for an automated auction service saves you photo hosting fees, scheduling fees and template fees –but most of all it saves you time –and yes even on eBay, time is money.

3. Depending on Virtual Dropshippers – There are two types of drop shipping companies: Virtual dropshippers and stocking or manufacturing drop shippers. Virtual dropshippers are companies that are essentially middlemen. (I can’t name them as some of them like to sue people who bash them, but I think you know the companies I mean.)

There are about a dozen of these virtual dropshippers operating on the web. Typically they charge a monthly fee and/or dropshipping fees that are added to the product cost. They also offer many of the hard to find brand name products. The problem is in the pricing. Since they are not stocking distributors, they pay much higher prices than someone who buys in quantity. So you find an item, list it on eBay only to find that there are a dozen or so other eBay sellers who are selling the product for less than you can buy it for.

The way to drop ship profitably is to find importers or small manufacturers who actually make or stock the product and will work with you directly. Karen and I do about ½ of our business with three such manufacturers and it can be very profitable –but you have to do the work to find these companies.

4. Short titles – eBay gives you 55 characters including spaces for your auction or listing title. People search by key words or key word phrases. For example, one of the popular items I sell are outdoor firepits. Here is a title I use on one of the firepits:

TEXAS COWBOY OUTDOOR PATIO FIREPIT GRILL Fire pit New

I could just write "Outdoor Steel Firepit", but that is very limited. Using my title, I get hits when someone searches Texas, Cowboy, Outdoor grill, firepit, fire pit, new firepit and so on.

5. Incomplete Descriptions – If you look at my auction listings you will notice that my descriptions are quite long. I am often told that I should make them shorter, but believe me, I have tested this and the longer descriptions provide almost a 25% higher sell through rate (conversion rate).

I like to start my description by clearly stating exactly what I am selling. Click on the link above to the eBay listing if you would like to see what I mean by a long description (You will see that I also use audio in that auction. I get my audio service from Sellers Voice. It increased my sell through rate by almost 15%. Some people tell me they don’t like the voice-over. Karen tells me she can hit the off button before the second bong. But she likes my voice, so she doesn’t mind it, too much.)

Make sure you mention everything about the product you are selling including all the important information such as size, color, weight, manufacturer, if it’s new or used, any specifications and so on. But once you do this, the most important thing you can do is romance the product and the benefits. Basically I keep writing about the benefits of a product until I run out of benefits to write about. And then you also want to “romance” the item if it lends itself to that. Here again you can see how I do that in the listing.

Lastly remember that people reading on a computer screen cannot deal well with long paragraphs. Write a series of short paragraphs with white space between them much like the previous five paragraphs you have just read.

Those are my top 5 mistakes that new or inexperienced sellers make. Yes there are more, but this is a newsletter –not a book. You can learn more of these and learn how I sell on eBay in The Complete eBay Marketing System.

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2. eBay Fall Changes Go Live in September

It’s that time again. A couple of years ago eBay announced that they would only do major changes to the platform and the policies twice a year in the Fall and the Spring. eBay announced the changes earlier this summer that will go into effect starting in September. Here is the rundown on the new changes:

Industry-standard shipping terms—Economy, Standard, Expedited, and One-day—are coming the week of September 20th. These shipping options will be displayed prominently along with estimated delivery time on the item page and in checkout. Listings will be automatically updated with the new terms. If you currently use “Standard Flat Rate Shipping”, “Expedited Flat Rate Shipping” or “Other (see description)” you may want to update your listings with one or more of the new options.

eBay Catalog for popular products like iPod & MP3 Players, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), DVDs and HD DVD Blu-ray discs goes live September 20^th. After that date, if you sell these products you must list through the eBay Catalog. And, from September 20 until December 31, you can list or relist these products free —you pay no Insertion Fees–when you list with the catalog.

Updates Available now:

• Customize your Automated Answers (Smart FAQ) to handle questions buyers ask you most often. Automated Answers is now enabled for all sellers.

• Purchase low-cost insurance with ShipCover when you pay for shipping and print labels right on eBay.

• Use Unpaid Item Assistant to relist items automatically when an unpaid item case closes and the buyer still hasn’t paid.

• “Ask a question” link now appears further down the item page for 50% of buyers. If it continues to be successful in reducing questions and setting the right buyer expectations upfront without negative impact on purchases, it will be launched for all buyers by the end of 2010.

Updates Available week of September 7:

• Use the eBay Listing Analytics application to track the performance of your listings. It’s free!

• Pass on your shipping discounts to your buyers with the Shipping Calculator.

• Take advantage of more shipping options for special domestic areas including Alaska and Hawaii.

• Use enhanced My Messages to manage your buyer emails.

Updates Available week of September 13:

• Bulk edits more fields, revise up to 500 listings at once.

eBay has created a handy 2010 Seller Checklist to stay on top of important changes.

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3. Niche of The Month - Collectible Christmas Ornaments

This article is by Suzanne Wells, one of the professional eBay coaches in our coaching program. Click here if you would like some information about our personal eBay coaching program and how it can help you.

Christmas ornaments may seem like a seasonal item, but collectors seek them all year long. If you do a search on eBay for “vintage Christmas ornament,” you will see around 3,500 results. And this is the beginning of September – still almost 4 months from Christmas. Just yesterday I was talking to another seller who was heading out to an estate sale that advertised several hundred Hallmark Christmas ornaments. Here are some tips for the types of collectible and vintage Christmas ornaments to sell on eBay.

Hallmark ornaments are the most obvious type to look for. You can often find these at thrift stores, garage sales, and estate sales. You will get the most for Wizard of Oz, Star Trek, Star Wars, Barbie, and anything that says “Limited Edition” on the box. As with any collectible, Hallmark ornaments will resell for the highest prices with the boxes. Some specialty Hallmark ornaments can sell for over $300 on eBay.

Christopher Radko is another collectible brand that sells well. In 1986, Christopher Radko began his collectible ornament company with 65 ornaments. Radko ornaments are gorgeous glass ornaments, sparkling, glittery, and brilliantly colored. Ornament themes are usually related to Christmas and include bells, snowmen, Santa’s, sleighs, angels, and wreaths. Radko ornaments have sold for over $200 each on eBay.

Vintage blown glass ornaments are also great sellers. These sell best in lots unless the ornament is something very unique such as a flamingo, a particular automobile, or cartoon characters. Indented, hand painted, and figural ornaments are also good sellers. Even some vintage plastic ornaments are good sellers if they are unique.

Sterling silver ornaments hold their value on eBay. Specifically, Gorham sterling silver is an excellent seller. Expect to receive between $25 and $50 for these ornaments. One listing for a Gorham sterling silver “Three Wise Men” ornament recently sold for $89.

Keep your eyes out for these types of ornaments when you are shopping thrift stores or visiting estate and yard sales. Christmas ornaments are often overlooked because other shoppers don’t understand their value as a collectible year round, or aren’t interested in buying Christmas items during the off-season. But, collectors will buy these items all year long on eBay. ~ Suzanne Wells

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4. Vendor Review – EBay Sellers Save Time & Money with Vendio

Vendio is one of about a dozen companies that provide listing management service for eBay and Amazon sellers. Although all of the various listing management companies do the same or similar tasks, I am rather partial to Vendio as I have been with them for over 7 years now. This year they added a free online store –which is a complete ecommerce enabled website where you can also sell your products.

The thing I love most about Vendio is the ability to create and manage my inventory all in one place. I can create a listing and sell it on eBay, my eBay store (incl. eBay motors), on Amazon or from my Vendio store. When I sell an item in any one of these venues, Vendio immediately deducts it from my inventory so I am always up to date on my products.

Vendio also saves you money. When you list on eBay you pay ten cents for each additional photo over the first free one. Since I usually use 4 photos this saves me 45 cents on each listing. Then I save an additional 10 cents on the scheduler and another 10 cents on the listing template (what eBay calls Listing Designer). So that is a total of 65 cents on each listing. Since I routinely list over 170 items per month, which is a total savings of $110.50 per month, which is a lot more than Vendio charges me.

I like that Vendio lets me reach buyers where they are shopping (eBay, Amazon, Website), without forcing you to learn a different interface for each online channel. Here are some of the benefits Vendio provides:

• Set-up the ecommerce solution you need in minutes, without development effort or anything to install

• Create your items once and sell through multiple marketplaces without complication

• Sell products from your own free online store and pay no hosting fees, listing fees, or final value fees!

• Manage every step of the online sales cycle — inventory management, marketing, fulfillment, customer communications and more

• Manage your entire online business from one easy to use unified ecommerce platform

• Maximize your profits with Vendio Applications like the scrolling gallery

• Lower fees

Vendio has also added a Facebook application:

Their Facebook Application allows you to easily take the contents of your Vendio Store and sell it from an integrated tab on your Facebook profile or fan page.

• Easy to Set-up ~ No code or technical skills required. A few clicks and you're ready to sell.
  

• Add to Facebook Profile or Fan Page (or both) ~ Eye-catching "Shop" tab can be added to any user Profile or Fan page
  

• Create Secure Shopping Experience ~ Your Store is fully integrated with Facebook which creates a safe and secure shopping environment. This in turn helps to turn shoppers into paying customers.
  

• Viral Promotion ~ Thanks to Facebook's built-in features that enable social sharing and commenting, shoppers can easily share items they like, driving traffic to your Store.
  

• Create and Share a Wishlist ~ Shoppers can add items to their wishlist and easily share it as an email or profile update (This is great for Holiday shopping).
  

• Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment ~ Vendio uses the latest technology to create a synched shopping cart that reduces abandonment and increase sales.

You can check out Vendio here.

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5. Can You Make Money Online With An Offline Biz?

Last year my friend Jim Cockrum launched a really innovative new business venture called Online Marketing for Offline Businesses. I was chatting with Jim over the holiday weekend and he told me the program has been incredibly successful and is now over 7000 members strong and still growing. And despite that their members haven’t even begun to tap the potential. It’s a fact: 90% of traditional businesses are clueless when it comes to online marketing –but they all know they want and need to do it.

I am fairly well known in my town as a successful online marketer. I can’t tell you how many times I get requests from business owners to help them sell their stuff, or set up a blog or website, or how to start an email newsletter. I am so busy with my three businesses I just have no time to help them. But Jim has found a way to solve that problem and make money doing it.

Best of all you can try Online Marketing for Offline Businesses for free. You see Jim has two levels of membership: Free and a Gold member paid membership. Now obviously you get more with the paid membership, but the free membership is pretty cool too as it lets you try his system without investing any money.

Jim shows you how to find customers and how to get them seeking you out. He shows you how you can build websites and other online services for them even if you don’t know how to do it. The secret? Outsourcing !!! That’s right, Jim shows you how and where to find people to do the work for you, so all you do is supervise and sell the plan. Best of all, some of the work you can do will generate not only instant income, but he has tons of members who are now earning residual monthly income as well.

Seven thousand members who keep coming back can’t be wrong and you can try it for free for as long as you want. So check out Online Marketing for Offline Businesses. Jim Cockrum is one of the most trusted online marketers on the web. He has an A+ rating from Internet Marketing Report Card, so anything you get from him you don’t have to worry about.

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6. New Wholesale Sources for eBay, Amazon & Online Sellers

America seems to be going through a period of re-discovery of faith. Despite the recession (or maybe because of it), sales of Christian books and products are outpacing the sales of most other retail and are forecasted to grow at a 12% rate this year. Here are a few suppliers of religious and Christian products that you can sell online.

The MacBeth Corporation wholesales a nice line of religious products including books. They have a $50 minimum order size.

Noah's Ark provides a wide variety of items at discount pricing to stores, online sellers, distributors, & churches. Products include Christian movies and family

movies on DVD, Christian books, gifts, T-shirts, ties, caps, Christian music CDs, Spanish products & more.

The Henry Brandt & Co. has been serving the discount marketplace for over 30 years with top quality Christian closeouts, Christian greeting cards, Christian gifts, magnets, novelties, collectibles, books, Christian jewelry, & much more! Wholesale Only. $100.00 minimum order.

Now on to some other products:

The Sugar Bear is a really interesting product. I have seen them online in a few places but this could be an interesting product for anyone in a food-related or kitchen related niche. It’s a bear that you use to keep foods like brown sugar moist.

Unique jewelry by Fay is a wholesaler of earring charms, pins, slides, pendants, fashion jewelry, chains, earrings, cell phone charms, charms, necklaces, bracelets, Christmas jewelry, Halloween jewelry, thanksgiving jewelry, holiday jewelry, angel pins, religious jewelry and more.

Teepee Trading is an electronics wholesaler with solutions for car, home, mobile & marine. They also carry As Seen on TV, Self-Defense Products and DJ Gear. And they will drop ship many of their products. Note: The website is retail, but once you register you can access the wholesale pricing and drop shipping.

CAVA TV Products carries a large line of As Seen on TV products. CAVA has been in business for more than 15 years, and deals with tons of online sellers.

Buy 4 Less Electronics Inc. sells name-brand consumer electronics, Computer Products, and Photo products. New and Refurbished Cameras, DVD Players/Recorders, Audio, MP3/MP4 Players, Camcorders...Kodak, Sony, Fuji, Olympus, Philips, Samsung, Panasonic, Nikon, Toshiba, Canon...Worldwide Shipping...stocklist updated daily.

Christmas season will be here soon. ESCO Toys sells a large line of less-expensive toys and games.

That’s it for now. See you again in a couple of weeks.

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.

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