Inspiration Week- Benjamin Lang's Ebay business Young Entrepreneur

Image 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!

YouTube - Benjamin Lang's Ebay business Young Entrepreneur:

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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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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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Prestashop Update

Image 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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eBay vs Craigslist and what is Kijiji

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Just when you think that eBay has learned its lesson and has stopped trying to dominate every aspect of e commerce, they go and launch their new classifieds site Kijiji. So I guess if you are a Craigslist seller like me and millions of others, you can now also list your products on Kijiji. We will see how successful this site ends up being but eBay seems to be having more success these days with their e commerce pet projects like Stub Hub than eBay itself. Maybe if they lowered their selling fees and lifted some of the restrictions they have placed on selling items, they would see business return. 

eBay is still a great place to sell your products, don't get me wrong. I just wish eBay was the same as when I started selling in 2000. All business changes though, that is the nature of the beast. Check out Kijiji and let me know what you think. Should Craigslist be scared? I guess we will have to wait and see.

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OnlineAuction.com

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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:

eBid

Swoopo 

Overstock.com Auction 

uBid 

Shopgoodwill.com 

Bid4Assets 

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

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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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EBay Translates the Auction Experience to Cellphones

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Looking forward to being able to shop on eBay from my phone. This will be great for eBay business as well. May give them a leg up on the competition. Read the New York Times article here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/ebay-translates-the-auction-experience-to-cellphones/

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PrestaShop

Image 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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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.

International Shipping Hassles

This week has been one of those weeks when nothing seems to be going right. I am sick with a major infection. I am behind in school from being sick and I have had three eBay sales go the way of the creek. Two are international orders that are two big to ship USPS and UPS wants over $300 dollars to ship them!!! There needs to be some compromise between the two services. I might be able to find another shipper myself but I am working with a drop shipper so my options are only what they offer.

The other order gone bad was an order that was made and when I went to make the order from the drop shipper they had conveniently discontinued the item. The big problem was that the customer sent me a money order before I found out that the item was no longer available. Soooo I had to wait and get the money order, cash it and send a refund through my bank. Like I said, it has been one of those weeks. Advice...

• Join Ebates if you still have not. I have earned over $140 in rebates from just going to their site before I shop at the online stores I was already planning on going to. I use it a lot for Gap, Ink Cartridges, and drugstore.com. The link to use is http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?id=32696671. If you sign up you get $5 just for joining.
• In the past 10 months I have learned quite a bit. The biggest realization I have come to is do not limit your possibilities. My business has not formed the way I would have imagined it. I am not selling the items I initially wanted to sell. You have to be open to opportunities that come knocking and realize when other ideas need to be put away. The item you want to sell won't always be a money maker or the wholesalers you find that sell the item may not be people you want to have a business relationship with. I always invest in small amounts of new items I am buying wholesale to make sure it is going to sell. I also give my drop shipment items about six months and if they are not selling I end the listings and move on to something new. In short, be flexible!

Until next time...(Hopefully next month!)