eBay Auction Secrets

Compared to a normal, offline business, the start up (and operating ) costs are extremely low.

Setting up your own eCommerce online shop will cost a lot more than selling on eBay.

It's only a few dollars to list, and sell an item on eBay (depending on how much your item sells for).

And the other huge advantage is that you can use eBay for testing, again for a very small cost. If your product goes well, attracts a lot of bids and watchers, you know you're on a winner. (If it doesn't, check out the keywords in your auction title, change them, and try again).

The eBay sites themselves have a lot of information to help you, and there are many other resources listed below.

To make a LOT OF MONEY selling on eBay, it is worth while investing in some programs and software. All the Powersellers do, to get an edge on their competition. Even these won't break the bank. They will help with research, with finding items to sell on eBay, to manage and streamline your auctions, to save you time and effort.

Your initial investment will be mostly in time.

Once everything is set up, there should be very little maintenance on your part, depending of course, on what you're selling.

Following are the Steps to Make Money Selling on eBay.
Following the steps are the links to the Resources mentioned, and more information.

Open an eBay account in whatever country you live in.

Go to eBay Australia

Go to eBay USA

Other countries can be found at the bottom of eBay's home page.

The site is huge, however, don't let that put you off. Have a look at the site map to see it overall.

In the Site Map, click on A-Z near bottom right hand side of the page, and will see a lot of information and plicies, alphabetically. Do read the Policies before you start, to ensure you don't sell anything against eBay rules. Selling alcohol, for example, is a no-no unless you hve a licence. Selling an empty alcohol container (like a vintage whisky bottle) is OK.

Sell a few unwanted items lying around the house. If you have an old CD you don't want, for example, have a look through the auction listings to see if there is another one for sale. Note the price and description. List yours whether there is another one or not.

Buy a couple of things as well, to see the process from a buyer's perspective.

After you've sold and bought a few items, you'll have a much better feel for how eBay operates.

eBay runs on feedback. Every transaction gets either a positive, neutral or negative feedback from both parties. You only want positive feedbacks.

Feedbacks are the method eBay uses to keep its members honest. Your feedbacks are publicly displayed so even one negative may lose you a bid from any potential buyers.

So give excellent service to your buyers, taking extra care with them. For your own purchases, pay promptly.

As with any new business, the more you know about it, and the industry you're in, the more chances you have of success.

The How To Sell on eBay program is highly recommended. It has lots of information and resources to help eBay sellers, including training and mentoring.

This is where you can start making some serious money. The aim is to find a niche/speciality, that is either new, or can be done better than people already supplying it.

Start off making a list of what interests you. What is your passion? What are your skills? What do you already know something about?

Choose one to start.

Spend some time going through the listings for this topic, see what items are being offered, what prices. Do you think you do better?

Now for some serious research. After trialling all the research tools out there, this one in my opinion is the best one - Terapeak. It is also very popular with the powersellers.

Terapeak will help you to work smarter, not harder.

There are many sources for items, including garage sales, $2 shops, local craftspeople, wholesalers, etc.
Online, there are 2 directories to suppliers :

Salehoo is a membership site that has the best directory of wholesale suppliers, distributors and sources for products at discounted prices for eBay sellers.

One Source - Worldwide Brands is a one-stop directory of suppliers, updated daily.
Dropshippers, light bulk, liquidation sales, volume suppliers and more.. PLUS they give you inbuilt, instant research tools. Incudes advertising, price, demand and competition research.

There are more suppliers listed at Items To Sell, plus Articles on Sourcing Supplies.

Have no idea what to sell?
Go to : How To Find Products in High Demand

When you have a few items listed in eBay auctions at the same time, or multiples of 1, it can be confusing keeping track of them. Add to that the feedbacks received and given, postage, payments etc, and its easy to get lost in it all.

The answer is to systemize the entire process by automating it.

To make life easier (and give you more free time), you can use auction management systems, to handle and automate a lot of these tasks.

The ones I recommend are :
Auction Hawk
Auction Genie(for Mac OS X users only)

Having these resources available to hep run your business is just fantastic. One of the many reasons to have an eBay business!

If you want to learn how to sell on eBay right the first time, then you can join a special membership site that not only teaches you, it also supports you and your eBay business. It's specially for eBay sellers.

The site is run by Lisa Suttora and her staff. The advantages of joining are that you will learn the process very quickly, and with powerful results. So you can make a lot more money, much faster.

More information at How To Sell on eBay