Profits are increasing just from wholesaler loyalty !

This is really cool and it makes sense, the more you sell the cheaper your wholesale prices get. I received an email from our favorite wholesaler this week and it went like this.

Hi Alison !

Thanks to your ongoing order volume, you've just leveled up
Your new discount level : Level 4 prices!
What's the advantage?
-Better prices on all products, effective immediately!
-After you login you'll see your personal prices for smaller quantities are now lower... for all products, forever.
Sourcing Other Products

As a Level 4 buyer, it's clear you are in a strong position to market your products and shift a substantial volume of sales. We are in a unique position, with bilingual sourcing experts working here on the ground to source the latest cool hi-tech products from the factories of southern Mainland China and Hong Kong.
Why not put these two strengths together?
The chances are, you've seen products that you'd love to sell, and know you could profit from... but they're not available from us.
Just let us know what other products you need!
We will actively follow up any product sourcing requirement you have.

This is great news as it serves many purposes
1) Margins are instantly increased for the obvious reason of cheaper stock outlay.
2) They now offer to source products not offered or easily obtainable to the general public.
3) We can now negotiate better shipping deals as we have some leverage over the supplier, ie they don't want to lose a valuable customer and they all jack up the shipping costs to some degree.
4) You can now get 1 sample item to try out for the same price as if you bought 100 in wholesale.
5) The benefits we now enjoy from this one thing more than cancels out any money eBay and paypal robs from us, as compared to when we first started out.

The downside is we had to spend 50k USD with them to get to this point, but keep in mind this only took 4-5 months of hard selling but it does get easier. I think the best advice I can give is to TAKE ACTION! Stick it out in the beginning, even if profits are low, as it does improve over time, sometimes exponentially. Just get started and learn as you go sometime by trial and error. Ignore all of the negative comments I see around the net about making money on eBay. It's not dead and it can be very lucrative. My next goal is $1000 a day and I have no doubts it can be done, my current record for a day is $450 but honestly it can vary dramatically. Some days are duds, but always seem to manage at least $100 profit on a bad day. I do believe though that a private sales website is a good thing in the long run, I should have mine up soon and will post links.

BTW if any one wants to add their own constructive comments, questions or experiences to this Blog, feel free.

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Minimize costs with a Merchant account

I'm sick and tired of paying paypal fees. I saw my bank manager today to get a Merchant account setup. If you don't already know a merchant account allows you to have you own credit card facilities and checkout. This can be used for getting your money from eBay customers or more importantly your own website store front which I have in development now. The plan is at the beginning to drive my current customers away from eBay and direct them to my own store. When someone buys something from us on eBay you slip a couple of business cards in with the order, also with the 100's or even thousands of happy customers you have with eBay you also have their Email address which you can use to send a newsletters of latest products etc and off course your website details. Search engine optimization for your website including link building, article writing, promotion etc "which is well beyond the scope of this guide" Ideally you will want most of your traffic to come from Google organic search, or I may even tinker with some paid adwords and subscribe to price review sites. The opportunities are endless. However, in saying this I will always have auctions going on eBay for the simple reason of promoting my own business.

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Create a Video Product Review

Its no secret that people love pictures and videos, and statistics will confirm that more and more people will search YouTube and do some research on a particular item before purchasing. So break out your handy cam or borrow someone else’s (try not to use your cell phone as quality is bad) and make a short maybe 2-3 minutes of product review in your own words and "positive" opinions. Go through the features etc and you should come across as an expert on the product, as you should be anyway. Edit the video if need be and convert it to .FLV there’s plenty of free tools out there to do this, and upload to YouTube. While your at it also upload your video to every other video sharing site on the net. Why? because in your video description you are going to include a link to your eBay store or website for anyone else out there that stumbles on your video. If you only have an eBay store, the URL for your store is big and ugly, so go to http://www.tinyurl.com/ and shorten it into your store name or whatever and include the new URL in your videos and the description.  Now you are also going to embed the YouTube video in your eBay auctions so customers can also see your gleaming video review and most likely buy your goods. This is very powerful and not to be underestimated, people are visual and information junkies especially when it come to purchases, so provide this for them and you will rake in the money.

If the whole making a video thing is over your head, I believe http://www.youtube.com/ has exhaustive tutorials.

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Create Links to your other eBay Auctions!

My God I can't believe I've only just found out about this, I feel such an idiot. I don't think this is just a powerseller tool but available to any stores and what I can gather it doesn't cost any extra money. In your eBay store management there is a HTML Builder tab where you can make your own little personalized links to your other items on auction. It inserts a list of little thumbnail links with either a gallery picture or your off eBay hosted pictures you may use and other useful promotional info and titles just above your main item pages. This is awesome I can't believe how many possible sales I could have got, had of I used this method in the beginning, I mean how many people see your item description and say "Nah" that's not for me and click the back button to continue searching, showing your other auctions right there in front of them gives browsing customers somewhere else to click. DUH !!
I'm going to spend an entire day going through all of eBay's options to see if there's any more of these gems that can potentially make me more money.

Oh yeah I also found out a couple of days ago I've upgraded from Silver to a Gold Powerseller!! Happy days.


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Brainstorming New product niches to sell on Ebay

Here I will be generous and give away a killer new niche. Think about new technologies that are emerging and more to the point what accessories is that niche going to need. Take for example 3D Television, in my country this is really starting to take off. So what can you sell ? you can't sell the TV's unless your Mad but you can sell the glases. It ticks all the right boxes for a new Niche, they are readily available in China for cheap, they are light so shipping would be cheap and it is a new technology so competition will be light "At least for a short time" so strike while the irons hot .Think outside the box sometimes and always keep you eyes open to new technologies.

Have fun

Make the Most out of your Auction Visability

Lets say you have 10 Auctions or buy it now going , "I use Buy it now for 95% of eBay listings unless I'm trying to move old stock fast " Anyway, instead of listing 10 items 10 times, list 10 auctions but make sure you say 10 available, that way when someone hits buy it now, your add won't disappear. The items available will just decrement to 9 items available and so on, but the best thing is you only pay for one listing. As long as you can put your money where your mouth is and have that stock available you should have no trouble. Although it doesn't quite work this way you have sort of made 100 potential listings for the price of 10, you can even say you have a 1000 items available of you can back it up that is. Pretty good hey :)   

Ebay Business Model

In an ideal world your eBay business model should be based around what products you would enjoy selling and a great deal of so called "Gurus" will tell you that you should be selling something you have an interest in ! This it totally wrong, your eBay business model should be based around.

1) Product availability ie, Reliable trustworthy wholesale suppliers

2) What generates the biggest profit margin, for a given sales ratio ie sell 5 items a day at $10 profit or sell 50 items a day at $5 profit. Volume sales is the way to go in this example and always will be, vodaphone makes 1% on their phone sales, but sell millions a day.

3) What is popular , You will need to do your eBay keyword research for this or eBay pulse in another great place to look. Or my personal favourite is to first find a wholesale item you would like to sell and do a search on eBay for "completed listing"  see if anyone else in selling it and if they are and are doing well , you steal their eBay business model, take no prisoners!!

Who cares if the stuff you know you can make a good profit from is not exactly in your interest, hobbies or area of expertise, when its making a stack of cash for you nothing else will be more interesting !  

How to Start an eBay Business

The very first thing you should be doing is reading every page on this site and fully understanding the concepts here as this is a serious business and should be treated as such, not some get rich quick scheme, they don't exist. This is a tried and true blueprint for a successful eBay home business model that will not make you millions of dollars in the first month, I cannot promise that and no one can, however this is a process that if you lay the correct foundations to start with and don't give up even if you aren't seeing big profits to start with, it can and will develop into a very profitable business venture. 

The majority of mistakes I see new comers make, time and time again is when they start an eBay business, they will dabble their toes in the water and be a very small fish in a very large ocean. You need to dominate your chosen niche from the word go. It's no good just choosing one wholesale product and making one listing just to see how it goes, as it will go exactly no where. A far better idea to start an eBay business is to buy at least 10 items "you will get a wholesale discount straight up" and make a "buy it now" listing once in the middle of the day and one at night around 8:00 everyday and you make sure you list in each listing that you do indeed have 10 items for sale, that way if a customer buys one of your items, your listing will still stay up with 9 items left to sell. This way your product listing will always be visible and that is the key to the whole concept "Visibility" 

I say make your listings at these specific times of the day, as you have to consider when your demographic is sitting at the computer and shopping, as a lot of eBay shoppers will only look at items ending soon as they are also bidders, and what will they see, the very listings you made a week ago if you do 7 day ending auctions. You have to think, when will a stay at home mum be shopping for stuff on the Internet ? It will be between 12:00am and 3:00pm when the kids are having a nap. Or if your target demographic is selling cell phones to teenagers, they are going to be searching after school time. It just depends what you are selling and you as the eBay entrepreneur have to think like a customer and know when they are most likely to be in the buying mood, its not that hard and is a very, very powerful piece of advice when you are considering how to start an eBay business?

Another trick a lot of power sellers use on eBay is called "self competition" this is where you make some of your listing slightly higher in price to make your other listing for the same item look like a bargain. 

eBay home Business

When setting up your first Ebay home business you will need to keep everything organized in a way to make your work flow as stream lined as possible. Your most important piece of equipment is your PC, It does not have to be the best machine available, however it still should be reliable and well protected from viruses, as it will be the cornerstone tool in your eBay home business. I also recommend having 2 monitors if you have a desktop PC, as this helps when you are designing new auction templates on one screen, and doing your listings via turbo lister and counting money on the the other. If you are not Drop shipping which I don't, you will need a place to store your stock and rolls of bubble wrap found cheaply at any wholesale store, you will also need a heap of prepaid post bags. 

You will only need post bags as its cheap and your brand new wholesale stock will already be nicely boxed up, so all you need to do is put one layer of bubble wrap around the box, tape it and pop it in a post bag for next day delivery, all of this should only cost you around $5 per item and you can charge $9.50 or whatever for Postage and handling. The Key word here is Handling, even though your postage costs are $5 you still have to pay yourself for your work and travelling to the post office etc. In fact that's how a great many Power sellers make their money by jacking up the shipping costs and keeping the product prices low, this does work, however that will be a small part of our EBay business model .

eBay Keyword Research

One of the most powerful techniques you can use to blow your competition away on eBay is keyword research, or in simple terms what is it that your customers are searching for exactly? As eBay has no tools that allow you to accurately gauge what keywords are be searched and how often, the next best thing is Google adwords tool . This will give you a fairly good guess of what popular keywords are being searched for in a particular niche as those who shop on eBay also use google search to find reviews and other info about the product you are marketing, Make sense ?

The best way to use the adwords tool is to have a google account and sign up for an adwords account, this way every time you search for keyword ideas you wont get slowed down by the spam filter. Keep in mind the data that this keyword tool uses is broad match by default, you are much better to tick the exact match on the left hand panel. Also you need to ignore the data that shows competition, this has nothing to do with eBay keyword research and competition, and the only data you need to look at it global and local search terms. if only market in your own country then only use the local keyword data. This is a pretty simple way to get a diverse range of keywords for your eBay listing headings and when you find the keywords to include in you eBay listing that really work! You stick to them .

Interesting Ebay tactic

 I found this article on a Internet Marketing forum and thought it would be beneficial to post here . Some of it I don't agree with like sourcing products from Tradekey , In my opinion they are as bad as Alibaba with lots of scammers but all good advice, I'm not familiar with Terapeak but I hear its a great keyword/niche finding tool.  

This is by far the best forum out there right now, and I appreciate all the methods mods and veterans do to help us along. Im looking into moving in another sector, and rather than leaving the knowledge on the table behind I need to give back. Since making money is a mix of methods, applications, and efforts, Ill break off a straight forward system I used to identify and make $1500 in an hour on ebay. For the sake of this particular product being a banned topic, I will not tell you what is (not even if you pm me - so just save yourself the time). The method is important in this situation, not the product. Teach a man to fish...


(1) Identify hot (profitable ) keywords - Terapeak - $100 /year subscription
(2) Source the product - tradekey.com
(3) Write the ad - Ebay
(4) Ship your product - Local Post Office / UPS
(5) Collect your paycheck - Paypal

-------------------------------------------------------

(1) Identify hot (profitable ) keywords - Terapeak - $100 / year subscription

Whether you realize it or not, your using some way (if not amazing intuition ) to determine what hot keywords or products are a profitable niche (Google Keyword Tool, etc). Terapeak shows you not only what keywords are being searched for, but which ones are hot, and how much each one pays out if youve got a similar product. IT LITERALLY DOES YOUR WORK FOR YOU. Not only does it tell you what to get, it shows you what keyword combinations maximize your money.

For sake of example Ill just use the term 'widgets'

-Your a noob and need to be spoon fed (most of us are)
-You get Terapeak despite wanting to try out a new tool
-You see using the hot keywords that 10 terms are trending well - balls, bats, mits, widgets, fidgets, rams, mats, muts, whats, and whens.
-Youve used widgets before and this since you know something about the product writing an ad that appeals to your audience isnt that difficult and even though it is, wouldnt seem like work
-You search for widgets
-You get a report on widgets for the highest paying in the past few weeks, the range in which most are selling, exactly what hour people are buying widgets, what colors, what sizes, and what are other attributes are paying well ( approx $150 for sale)
- You open up 'Title Builder' and begin breaking down what pays well
- You type in widgets and are shown several options
- At this point its like a freaking game show, just click the words that payout the best
- You have maxed out the number of keywords ebay allows and you have an average price of $150 for "widgets-purple-people-M-sewn-eater"
-You have your product that you need to source - just rearrange the words
- purple people eater widgets - sewn - size medium
-Now go find a source...

(2) Source the product - tradekey.com

This is all about testing and not overspending. There are alot of shady people on here and the language barrier is tough. The trick here is to remain focused, ask alot of questions, always get sent samples (usually 1 or 2), and always test new products even if its a trusted source (website) your buying from. And heres a tip from my own personal experience, DONT BUY ELECTRONICS. Hardware is usually fine, software is always another story. I know the markets are hot for these products, just deal with it and select another area.

Tradekey essentially is your hookup to small markets across the world. China, the middle east, whatever. Theres alot of sites out there that do the same things - Alibaba, DHGate to name a few, but tradekey usually has what Im in the market for

-Open up tradekey.com
-Search for widgets (dont worry about the specifics, just see how the results turn up - if theres more results that you care to go through add more keywords from your final terapeak search in step 1
-find a few vendors that have your product listed in their description
-signup for a free membership and contact them and ask for an email ( NEVER BUY FROM ONE OF THESE SITES WITHOUT ASKING THEM QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR PRODUCT FIRST)
-look at their website and see if the pictures or descriptions begin to match your product your looking for
-begin contacted them through email (this is usually tough because english is their second language, but getting what you want and not blowing your money is worth it)
-look at the price versus your $150. is this going to make sense to purchase and try and source ? margins differ for different people, but if your talking about half here it makes a ton of sense
- lets say we find these specific widgets for $50 after shipping on x website
-begin asking them to make sure they have EXACTLY what your looking and ie ( sewn, size medium, that matched your description)
TIP - go on ebay and find an auction that matches the product your looking to buy. send the link to your potential supplier and ask them what they are selling is different)
- if everything seems to look good at this point - request samples (its ok to pay for them, just buy in small quantities) (most vendors offer shipping breaks at 5 units, honestly just save your money even if its only 10 bucks. if the products are whack you have 2 bad products and 10 dollars, versus no cash and 5 units you get to trash)
- get the units shipped to you and inspect quality
- if its good to go your ready to write ads (if its bogus, dont give up and try a few more vendors before switching to a different product)
- test the ads in ebay and scale if they sell within a short period of time
- by this time your like man i gotta get more! - take your profits and source more - for this example i sourced 15 more after my first 2 units sold in the first day
- Post office will rip you off when you use their packaging, so go on ebay and searcing for packaging enough to protect your product, as well as tape, and packing slip envelopes that will fit (explained in step 4)

(3) Write the ad - Ebay

-Use your keywords verbatim in your title (be sure and mix up so not to look like other ads) (writing a subtitle with your value add here at this point is a great idea)
- Write the ad based on exactly what the product is. (purple people eater widgets - sewn - size medium) - If you get stuck here, look at other ads and figure out what message they are trying to display and put your own spin on it.
- Take your own photos - I got a couple of mannequins for cheap in my area ($20) that made my photos look professional
- If youve posted in a hot enough sector your will be selling like crazy. My version of these widgets i posted at 8 AM on a tuesday (the optimal time for this particular product for whatever odd reason based on terapeak ). by 8:15 im seeing $100 sales go by. By 9 oclock I was sold out and wondering wtf im going at my day job (this will get you hooked on internet marketing for life).
- I sold out all 15 units I bought at $50 apiece at $150 by 9



15 units X $100 per sale = $1500



NOTE: Your results may vary when you do this process, but use your brain and identify opportunities and you will get paid.

(4) Ship your product - Local Post Office / UPS

- I live in the US and get cheaper shipping (though it takes longer) through the post office versus UPS or FedEx
NOTE : Buying small products makes cheaper shipping, and thus increases your product margins (aka $$$)
- If your using Paypal, which most smart ebay users do - paypal will automatically print shipping labels - meaning dont stand in any lines when you cant print postage from your computer - usually works for post office and UPS
- at this point you need to attach the postage printout from your computer to your package in a way that it will survive the life of the journey and still be readable (buy packing slips off ebay prior to this that match the print out size and the size of the package)
- you can even schedule the post office or ups to come to your door to pickup - dont even have to drive to the post office...
NOTE : I personally always offer free shipping and buy it now. Take out all the hidden fees and let the customer think they are getting a great deal (just increase you price to make up the difference)
- Rinse wash repeat...and get paid

(5) Collect your paycheck - Paypal
- watch your profiles roll in and your margins increase the more you ship

Misc notes...
- Buying branded products definitely have increased margins, but will probably get your account flagged if your violating copyright laws - Use you moral compass here and youll be fine - if not im sure youll find a way anyhow
- If you want a great book to find all kinds of products especially if you have a tax id # and a real business - "What to Sell on Ebay and Where to Get It By" by Chris Malta and Lisa Suttora
- DONT PM FOR A COPY OF TERAPEAK I DONT HAVE ONE. Go pay for it, its worth it
- DO PM me for any questions I could help you with other, than the actual product I got paid off of. Like I said before its a banned topic thus the widgets metaphor
- If this replicates another method, great, that means it works, I haven't copied anything from anything other than my experience
- I have 0% affiliation to any website or anyone else listed in this. This is only to get you paid the best way I know how

The Overseas Holiday Ebay Money making Method !

This is one of the best ideas I've ever had, and it happened by accident. I recently took my son to Phuket Thailand to get cheap dental work and have a damn good holiday for 10 days "The dental work is amazing and very cheap BTW" . I'm not much for relaxing and Massages but I'm always thinking of ways to make some quick money so I did some research on what high value items would be manufactured locally and are worth a lot of money back home. I discovered high end carbon fiber Mountain bikes were about half the price in Thailand than at home in Australia at $3999 , I bought one for $1950 overseas spent $200 on DHL shipping it back home and it arrived home before I did. It sold immediately and I made $1050 profit on Ebay , This paid for my airfares with little effort. I also got greedy and shopped around for unique items such as wood carvings, artwork even high powered Lasers, I just packed my suitcase full of cool stuff that you can't get easily at home "free shipping". I have made so far out of this $600 with more stuff yet to be listed on Ebay. This paid for my accommodation and all meals. If you haven't got the cash to do this up front get a credit card and you should be able to pay it all back when you get home. This may not make you a fortune but it will get you a free Holiday to some seriously exotic locations, you can also do up your Ebay auctions while your sitting back and having a drink all you need is a laptop, a camera and decent Internet connection. Of course the place is full of cheap knock offs especially clothing, so its up to you if you want to risk your Ebay account or selling fake goods.

I also met some friends there and one of them has found his niche in selling Zippo lighters, he found a wholesale guy there which is very easy to do, sends them home by the box load and makes a killing flogging them on Ebay, so much so that it's his only job.

Honestly if you really want to get serious with this sort of selling you must go to the countries and meet face to face with the wholesalers, forget Hong Kong and China as the market is already so flooded with there products its hardly worth it.

The best business deal I made over there however is building a website for a mate that lives in Patong and has a Tattoo shop. I am going to use his unique designs and sell them on my website and split the profits along with other ways of monetizing the site. The site is only in very early basic design stages at the moment but you can have a look if you like 90 Nine Tattoo Designs Patong 

This site is being made with Xsitepro 2 and I can't say this too many times , THE BEST WEB DESIGN SOFTWARE EVER MADE . Very powerful and simple to use.

Anyway have fun if you decide to do this, it absolutely will make you money unless someone cuts off the circulation to you brain . Also Phuket is expensive compared to the rest of Thailand, If want some serious bargains go to Bangkok or Chaing Mai, it a bit daunting though if its your first visit.