Showing posts with label how to. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how to. Show all posts

Saturday, April 17

Inspiration Week - eBay entrepreneur shares her story

Image representing eBay as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase
This week I have decided to post some inspiring success stories I have seen lately. I need some extra inspiration to keep me going sometimes. These videos are also filled with some great tips and advice about how to become successful selling on eBay. Hope you enjoy!
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Friday, April 16

Inspiration Week - My Bathroom Buddy - An Ebay Success Story!

Image representing eBay as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase
This week I have decided to post some inspiring success stories I have seen lately. I need some extra inspiration to keep me going sometimes. These videos are also filled with some great tips and advice about how to become successful selling on eBay. Hope you enjoy!
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Thursday, April 15

Inspiration Week- Benjamin Lang's Ebay business Young Entrepreneur

Image representing eBay as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase

This week I have decided to post some inspiring success stories I have seen lately. I need some extra inspiration to keep me going sometimes. These videos are also filled with some great tips and advice about how to become successful selling on eBay. Hope you enjoy!
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Wednesday, April 14

Selling Used Kids Clothing On eBay

If you have kids and they wear name brand clothes you should be selling their used clothes on eBay. There is a small fortune to made on eBay if you list correctly. Certain brands like Gymboree, Nike, and boutique brands sell for almost new prices. I sold my daughters clothes after she outgrew them on eBay for over a year and was making back almost all of what I paid for the clothes so I was practically dressing her for free. I have learned some techniques that helped me make money selling my kids used clothes:
  1. Start by searching closed eBay auctions for the type of clothing and sizes you have to sell. This gives you and idea of the price these items are selling for. Also you can see if a certain day or time is showing more profit. I found that auctions that closed on Thursday evenings were the most profitable for me to sell my daughters clothes on. I guess more moms with baby daughters shopped at that time. Not sure what human psychology is behind it, but it does mak a difference. Here is how to search for the closed auctions: 
    1. On any page of ebay you will now find a search input at the top right corner of the page. Just below this you will find "Advanced Search". Click this link. 
    2. Now, in order to get a listing of completed items you will first need to search the current open items. Fill in your search parameters and click the "Search" Button.
    3. Once the list comes up, scroll down the LEFT hand edge of the page and you will see more search categories and "SEARCH OPTIONS". In this area you will find a check box next to "Completed Listings". Click this box and an check mark appears in it. 
    4. Scroll down a bit further and click the "Show Items' Button. You will now get a listing of CLOSED items which are still on the system. Keep in mind that this search option only goes back 30 days. You will not see any auction older than 30 days.
  2. Once you figured out about how much to expect to make off your items, decide how you want to sell them. I suggest selling clothing in bulk or lots which is just selling groups of items together instead of one piece of clothing per auction. Unless you have a very high value item it is always better to sell your items in a lot in my opinion. The reason I say this is because of how expensive shipping is. A buyer doesn't want to pay $6 in shipping for a $10 shirt. By selling a large lot of clothing you are giving the buyer a better shipping value. They will pay the $14 shipping for 10 shirts more readily. This will increase your bids as well. I would offer priority shipping and size my lots by the amount of clothes I can fit in the flat rate priority box. There are three sizes so you can sell different amounts based on what shipping box you are using. 
  3. When selling in a lot, have a theme. Sell clothes that are the same size, gender, and style. Sell clothes that are for the same season. Don't mix winter clothes and summer clothes together. Also if you can put clothes into outfits and sell them, the buyers seem to bid more. Its less work for busy moms to buy complete outfits than have to bid on auctions for all the separate pieces of clothing. On the other hand if you have a bunch of the same type of clothing like shorts an auction of multiple pairs of the same type of item does well also as long as you aren't selling duplicate items. 
  4. Organization is key so give yourself a room to spread out and group the clothes you are going to sell. Once you have decided what clothing you are going to sell together, you move to inspection. Look over each piece of clothing in very good (natural preferred) light. 
To be continued...
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    SELLING ON EBAY: Secrets To Success.

    I found this advice site and thought I would pass it along. It says a lot of the same things I have already said but says it different. Sometimes it takes hearing things in several different ways before it sinks in for me personally. Also, the more I hear something, the more likely I will be to try it. So here it is:

    SELLING ON EBAY: Secrets To Success.
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    Inspiration Week - ebay success story from $800 to 3.3 Million in 3 years

    eBay Inc.Image via Wikipedia
    This week I have decided to post some inspiring success stories I have seen lately. I need some extra inspiration to keep me going sometimes. These videos are also filled with some great tips and advice about how to become successful selling on eBay. Hope you enjoy!
    YouTube - ebay success story from $800 to 3.3 Million in 3 years: ""
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    Monday, March 29

    Are eBay Stores Really Worth the Money?

    So my boyfriend who is my sidekick in setting up my online store has been super busy with his own online projects for the past few months. Needless to say, I am still store-less and still considering my options. I decided to go and check out the eBay Store situation. I used to have an eBay store back in 2007 and it didn't seem to bring the traffic or sales I was looking for. They claim they have improved the exposure given to those selling in an eBay store. I almost fainted when I calculated how much it would cost for me to open a store up. I have been looking at the free shopping cart software programs before now because I don't need a host. My boyfriend has plenty of space on his server for my little site.

    So here is the cost of an eBay Store:

    Subscription fees
    Store level
    Fee
    Basic
    $15.95 / month
    Premium
    $49.95 / month 
    Anchor
    $299.95 / month
    This is to just have the store. Here is what you get for each one:

    http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/Subscriptions.html

    But then...

    Insertion fees
    Price
    30-day duration
    Good 'Til Cancelled*
    $1.00 - $24.99**
    $0.03
    $0.03 / 30 days
    $25.00 - $199.99
    $0.05
    $0.05 / 30 days
    $200.00 and above
    $0.10
    $0.10 / 30 days
    You pay for each item every month. Yes it may not be much but what if you have a thousand items! Oh but that is not all. When you sell your product you then pay:

    Final value fees
    Price
    Final value fee
    Item not sold
    No fee
    $1.00 - $25.00
    12.00% of the closing price
    $25.01 - $100.00
    12.00% of the initial $25.00 ($3.00), plus 8.00% of the remaining closing value balance
    $100.01 - $1,000.00
    12.00% of the initial $25.00 ($3.00), plus 8.00% of the initial $25.01 – $100.00 ($6.00), plus 4.00% of the remaining closing value balance $100.01 – $1,000.00
    Over $1,000.01
    12.00% of the initial $25.00 ($3.00), plus 8.00% of the initial $25.01 – $100.00 ($6.00), plus 4.00% of the initial $100.01 – $1,000.00 ($36.00), plus 2.00% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01-closing value)
    In conclusion, I feel that an eBay Store is kinda a rip-off unless you have an already established customer base and guaranteed sales or have a few items you sell and they have a large profit margin.

    If you don't you would be better off paying for a shopping cart software like 3-D Cart and getting automatic exposure all over the internet for your products.
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    Friday, January 15

    Prestashop Update

    FrustrationImage by music2work2 via Flickr
    Well I have both some good news and some bad news to report about Prestashop. I unfortunately will not be using Prestashop. We got the whole storefront set up, I had all my pages complete. Uploaded all my products and categories using csv files. It looked good, I mean really good. Prestashop has a nice looking store template. Really professional and easy to set up. Some of the set up is not very intuitive but it takes a quick search on Google to find an answer to any how to questions.

    So we have the site setup and ready to go. One last step till launch, shipping. That is where prestashop takes a nosedive for U.S. users. It is absolutely not UPS compatible and I have heard it is slightly USPS compatible but I didn't install that module. I tried installing a module that someone had created that was supposed to add UPS shipping to the shopping cart but it didn't work. My boyfriend is a computer programmer and he couldn't get it to work, so it really was a failure. I ship items that vary in weight greatly and I ship all over the world so I could not possibly make an accurate shipping chart myself. It would take me forever and everytime  prices changed I would have to redo the entire thing, no way.

    With that being said I will be saying fairwell to my Prestashop store and trying another shopping cart software. Zen Cart is also a free software but unlike Prestashop it caters to users in the United States and has UPS and USPS shipping modules that are supposed to be functional. I will keep you updated on my findings.

    I think I will try and do some eBay auctions in the near future just to make some money. I keep focusing on the longterm goal of having my own store but nothing can beat eBay for making some quick profits. I just wish the items I sold where more niche and then it could be quick and large profits. If you have a niche product, eBay is the best place to start developing your business. After you start getting a customer base and some regular profits, then branch out to a store, Amazon, or other auction sites.

    Here are some of the books I found about this subject for further reading if you are interested. In fact I think I may need to purchase one of these this time around.
    You can't beat a good euphonious

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    Sunday, January 3

    OnlineAuction.com

    eBid Ltd.Image via Wikipedia
    I was doing a little research on alternative auction sites tonight and came across a site started right here in Southern Oregon. OnlineAuction.com is a modestly popular auction site. It certainly doesn't have the business that eBay enjoys but, it is only one of many auction sites popping up on the internet trying to win a piece of the frustrated eBay sellers who are looking for a better alternative. Some other auction sites are:

    I don't receive anything for advertising these sites. Its just for your information. You should check out the other auction sites because you may find they offer more for the money and may fit your goals better than eBay can.

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    Wednesday, December 30

    eBay Promotion LIST FOR 5¢ IN BOOKS, MUSIC, MOVIES & DVDS AND VIDEO GAMES—OFFER EXTENDED THROUGH MARCH 30, 2010

    VHS LogoImage via Wikipedia
    Do you have books, cds, and dvds sitting around your house you want to sell? Or maybe you even have some old VHS movies or records that have been gathering dust in your garage. If this sounds like you, you have until March to list on eBay for dirt cheap. Sell all your books, music, movies, and dvds for only 5¢. That is a good deal, and my advice for today.
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    Sunday, December 13

    PrestaShop

    Without moneyImage by Toban Black via Flickr
    So I still haven't opened my store yet. It seems to be one thing after another. The storefront I was going to go with has so many bugs. The main site is down a lot and getting the csv feed to work has been a joke. I am now considering scraping the old store and starting my store using PrestaShop. PrestaShop is free Open-Source e-Commerce Software. So you have to provide the server and a domain. While that is a drawback, you get full control over how your store works and looks. I don't have to rely on someone else to fix a problem I am having with their product. If it is broken, I fix it. It does take some know how. Probably more for the moderately advanced user. Some html knowledge is probably helpful.

    You should definitely check it out. If I decide to use it, I will let you know how it goes.
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    Monday, November 30

    Using CSV Feeds

    Last time I did the online sales thing I loaded each and every item I sold one by one. It was very time consuming and not very efficient. This time I have learned about using CSV feeds. I actually had no clue that my wholesale distributor provided a feed that had every item listed on it with all the information I needed to list it on my store. I am lucky enough to have a boyfriend who knows how to write script but I think with a little research, even a novice could learn how to convert these feeds into a useful tool for their website. With the use of script to transform the data provided by the wholesaler to the data required by my web host, I am able to upload my csv file and add 500+ products in less than 30 minutes.

    Before it was taking me about 30 minutes to load one item!  More information can be found about CSV files at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values. More information can be found about scripts at: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/scripts.html. You can even use CSV files with eBay. They have a page with details of how to upload CSV data. This page can be found here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/import-csv.html.

    Well this is my knowledge sharing for today. I know some of the more experienced sellers will already know what I am saying but if you are as inexperienced as I was, I hope this comes as a helping hand to you. Good luck, tis the season for sales.
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    Friday, February 8

    Still Kickin

    It has been awhile since I have written anything. I still have my eBay store but I have cut out most of my products for the time because I started having some problems around Christmas. Since I am primarily a drop-shipper I was having many orders that were back-ordered or even discontinued when I went to order them. I changed my strategy quite a bit. I have cut my suppliers down to two who I know are better at keeping items in stock and communication. They are also super quick shippers. I will be auctioning off all of my remaining stock that I have at my house in a couple of weeks. I will start all of these auctions for .99.

    With the market slowing right now I am really trying to attract international orders as much as I can and PayPal just made it much easier to take international payments without putting yourself in danger of losing money. I will be posting more in the future but wanted anyone who follows my blog to know that I am still in business and while it has been tough the last couple of months, I am not planning on giving up, but instead I am rethinking my strategy.

    Till next time...
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