eBay auctions

The perfect home based business

 

eBay income is easy to generate and virtually risk free. eBay auctions have created the opportunity for the ideal home based business. Whether you need a small boost to your income, or you are looking to create a real online presence with your own store and a full time ebay income, the opportunities are endless. There are other online auction sites - QXL - is perhaps the best known - but the simple fact is, eBay is HUGE. Millions of people looking to buy, which means opportunities like never before.............

eBay provides detailed instructions for getting started, there are structured learning sections, they even have their own communities and discussion boards etc., I am not going to attempt to repeat what is already there. Instead, I will just talk you through some of the less obvious basics so your eBay income earning experience gets off to a profitable start.

Obviously, you first need to open an account with eBay and also with PayPal - not absolutely essential but highly recommended since it means you can accept payment from customer's with credit cards. Then, just like in every other business, you need to do some basic research. "Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted" just as true in civilian life as on any battlefield.

eBay scores you on the number of trades you have completed. Your customers can see how much trade you have done and how pleased people were after dealing with you. This is done by customer 'Feedback' and the score is public! For this reason I recommend that you start off by buying a few small items. Buying to make money? don't be too horrified - you can always sell the things again on eBay (sometimes even at a profit!).

More importantly, it will give you a feel for how things are done, how the system works in 'real time' and it will help your own 'Feedback' score because you will get 100% postive feedback if you pay promptly. Look at how people 'present' the goods, how they charge for postage (note that some traders try and make up their profits on low value items by charging over the odds for post and packing). Bad news and something which you should never do because experienced buyers will simply go elsewhere.

Look through the various sections on the eBay site - this can take hours as you find more and more 'interesting' sections - but look at the income opportunities they present and study the opening prices and the prices things actually sell for. You should see very quickly that some things are high value and some things are just hard work!

Sometimes you will see many of the same type of new item on sale by a number of different traders - often 'Buy Now' offers - eBay allows you to auction and/or sell at a fixed price ahead of the auction ending time - with very closely matched prices. These are probably 'Drop Shipping' sales - more later.

See how the people you deal with use custom invoicing and labeling (all available through eBay) to save time. Anything which reduces your work load is good because as you get busy you will come under pressure but you still have to stay on top of your order dispatching. Otherwise, unhappy customers and negative feedback. Something to be avoided at all costs.

Within eBay you will find even traders who just specialise in supplying other eBay traders! Not only with stock for re-sale, but also with all the packaging and presentational items needed.

Once the research is done it's time to start selling......... You will have seen what is moving in other auctions but despite that I suggest you start off with a few things you already have around the house or garage. Describe things honestly but with imagination! A diamond ring which is 'Bursting with Fire' or a garden bench which 'Will bring tranquility to a corner of your garden' just sounds attractive! I recommend that you don't try to sell books or clothing at first. Books generally don't raise good prices and they cost a lot to post out. Likewise, clothing is quite a specialised market and one which can be dissapointing at first.

Photographs are essential - your eBay income will depend on them! Plenty of good, sharp pictures will help build confidence in your buyer. They will also help prevent misunderstandings. If you don't alread have one, get a digital camera. Fortunately, they are inexpensive now but more importantly, they are quick and easy to use. If a potential buyer asks you for a close-up of the base of that Ming dynasty vase you are offering, you can e-mail it back to him within minutes. That's customer service! Note however that eBay do charge extra listing prices for pictures but generally they only represent a very small percentage of what you hope to sell the item for.

Ask yourself what sort of person you expect to buy your items. Are they likely to be of interest to a Mum with young children? If so, arrange the auction ending time for an hour when she is likely to be at home - mid morning on a Monday could be perfect! Equally, selling to a businessman and Monday could be your worst possible choice because he is sure to be busy then. Later in the week is going to work much better. Teenager? class time isn't going to be very good but early evening might be. It's something you will get a feel for and sometimes you need to experiment. Just like any other business you will make a sound income from eBay by providing what your customers want, when they want it.

Right, once you have made a few sales and got into the swing of things, where do you go to develop your eBay income? You are going to need stock and I suggest that you look to car boot sales and jumble sales for maximum profit. Often you can buy for a pound and sell for ten - or more! One rule here though, and it's a hard one. 'If you are collecting for your own pleasure, buy what pleases you. If you are buying for re-sale then buy only what you are confident will sell'. It may have been cheap and you may think it's lovely but if it doesn't sell it was a bad buy.

Dealing small like this can provide some interesting times and be an income booster but if you want to go big, you have to source serious stock and you have to be confident that you can move it on. Once again, eBay can come to your rescue because as I said before, there are traders there just supplying traders! They need to move large quantities of goods and they don't want to spend time on small individual sales. So, you can pick up new goods by the pallet load, even by the 20 or 40 foot container load, at remarkable prices.

Where does all this stuff come from? Often it's from catalogue traders and chain stores who have 'returns'. More trouble for them to re-pack than to sell off at cost or less. Often, orders from the Far East have been placed weeks or months before the ship arrives and the traders have themselves gone bust or changed their marketing plans. Good stuff - brand new and ready to go, but lots of it, so quite a challenge to sell it all. Get it right and your eBay income can be very substatial.

Be careful. Fashions styles change so rapidly that even the big stores sometimes get it wrong and overstock. Can you sell what they can't - and the answer is 'probably, but only if it's cheap enough'.........................

One very attractive option is 'drop shipping'. Here, you don't own or even see the items you offer for sale. What happens is that you do the selling and your 'drop shipper' packages and dispatches the goods directly to your customer. The beauty of it is that you don't have stock in your house and all the problems associated with getting things wrapped and down to the Post Office. Efectively,your eBay income is all generated at arms length, you never need to bring it into the house.

The downside is that you are totally dependent on the honesty and reliability of your shipper - certainly a case where you need to check things out before getting seriously involved. The other possible downside is that a number of different eBayers like yourself will probably be using the same supplier so prices are likely to be very keen and very similar. That isn't too important though, provided always that you sell in sufficiently high quantities and you make a profit on every sale!

Not everything in the garden is Rosy! Given the sheer size of eBay there are bound to be a few bent traders and there are various scams around. Like dealing anywhere, be aware that if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.............. Be aware also that most scams - just like confidence tricks - only work on the greedy and the dishonest.

 

The most obvious tricks are foreign traders offering you exta cash if you will 'help' them by dispatching as soon as you receive their cheque (which may be cleared by your bank, but may then be rejected weeks later when the bank discovers there were no funds to support it). Or people 'selling' the same car to several different people, often a car which they don't own but which they will offer to sell before the auction ends 'for a quick cash sale'. Or offering a car after the auction has ended "the buyer didn't have the money so you can have it for your last offer - just send me a deposit so I know you are serious". And never, ever, pay for anything with companies like Western Union. Once the seller has drawn the money out, he and it are gone forever.

Don't be put off by the risks. If you stay aware you will never be caught out and eBay income will keep rolling in. ,Try to cut corners, there are some sharp people out there!

 

Internet auctions really do offer tremendous marketing opportunities with the profits only limited by your own imagination and the effort you are prepared put into the system. A few pounds a week or a few thousand? The choice is yours.................

 

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