Starting an eBay Business: starting business

Showing posts with label starting business. Show all posts

Saturday, April 17

Inspiration Week - eBay entrepreneur shares her story

Image representing eBay as depicted in 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 - eBay entrepreneur shares her story:

Friday, April 16

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

Image via CrunchBase

YouTube - My Bathroom Buddy - An Ebay Success Story!:

Thursday, April 15

Inspiration Week- Benjamin Lang's Ebay business Young Entrepreneur

Image via CrunchBase

YouTube - Benjamin Lang's Ebay business Young Entrepreneur:

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:

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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...

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.

Inspiration Week - ebay success story from $800 to 3.3 Million in 3 years

Image via Wikipedia

Tuesday, March 2

EBAYS LOWEST INSERTION FEES EVER COMING THIS SPRING

eBay announced in January it was going to reduce its fees. Now with March 30th quickly approaching those promises will soon be making it more affordable to sell on eBay. Starting March 30 the upfront cost of selling on eBay will be dramatically reduced for sellers of all sizes with eBays lowest Insertion Fees ever. Whether you’re running a business or selling to earn extra cash, choose from a range of options designed to make your selling easier and more profitable. So all of you procrastinators, me included, get your stuff ready to sell.

eBay may have finally figured out that sellers will just go find another venue if they keep raising prices. There is a ceiling to the profits you can make per seller. For eBay to make more money, they need to bring in more buyers and sellers, not make it more expensive to sell. Good job eBay, keep up the rational thinking.

Friday, January 15

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

Thursday, January 14

eBay vs Craigslist and what is Kijiji

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Sunday, January 3

OnlineAuction.com

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:

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.

Wednesday, December 30

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

Image 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.

Sunday, December 13

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.

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.

Friday, November 27

Back in Business

So after taking a break for awhile I am going to venture back into the world of online sales. I am really debating on how much I am actually going to use eBay this time though. It seems like it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a profit on eBay selling regular products. eBay is so full of sellers, selling the same thing. Homemade and one of a kind items seem to be the ticket. I am opening my own store where I will be selling swords and blades. I will probably use eBay as a way to advertise and get business. I will also be relying on eBay to show myself as a reputable seller since I have a great feedback score there. I changed my eBay ID to Dantotsu (which is the name of my new store). Sounds more like a sword store than Toria's Treasures. I will again start updating this blog. I still believe a lot of good advice can be found in my previous posts if you are new to this blog.

Till next time...

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...

Thursday, November 29

Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Well the verdict is in, if you want your product to arrive on time the shippers are all providing the 17th as the last day you can ship an item using standard delivery and expect it to arrive in time for Christmas. There is a chance that something ordered later than that will arrive but I would not bet on it. So keep that in mind when either shopping or selling online this Christmas season.

For your convenience I have listed the links to the top U.S. shippers' holiday mailing schedules:

USPS

UPS

DHL

FEDEX

Happy Holidays!!!

Cynthia Ford
www.toriastreasure.com

Sunday, November 4

Customer Troubles

I had the worst customer relations issue this week. It is the biggest problem I have had since I began my business. I had a customer buy an expensive item which I purchased through a drop-shipper. The said item did not arrive is satisfactory condition, which happens sometime. To make matters worse a third-party becomes involved through the customer and tells the customer that the item I sold them was in fact a fake! Well the item was not a fake and I had to end up contacting the manufacturer and having them verify that my distributor was an authorized distributor. This customer was about to ring me through the whole eBay, PayPal dispute system. It was a huge headache.

Honesty is such an important quality in business. You will never get far if you have dishonest business practices. Even though this week was stressful, in the end it worked out because I was honest with the customer. I can accept that an item arrived damaged and needs replaced. I am so willing to bend over backwards for customers in that instance. On the other hand, to be accused of selling fraud products hurts me because I am an honest person and the thought to buy cheap crap to resell on eBay has never crossed my mind.

When I decided to start my eBay business I went the legal route and obtained my tax id so I could work with real wholesalers and drop-shippers not those ones who say they are for real but don't require any special info from you. Those people are schemers and to sell the products listed you would have to mark them up way over retail and would be lucky if you made an occasional sale.

I am ranting today but my advice this week is, be honest. No matter what you think you can get if you aren't, it never works out in the end. Dishonesty in business will be the end of your business. If you are delayed in shipping be upfront with your customer. If you make a mistake, admit it. It may not be easy to do all the time but it is the best way to go.

Till next time...

HELPFUL RESOURCES

Helpful Resources

If you can't find products to sell you should check out World Wide Brands. They offer a legitimate list of wholesalers & dropshipers for a one-time membership fee. To check out this great resource, click here.

If you are a Mom like me and are starting an Ebay business, the absolute best site I have found for tips, tools, forums, and overall support is Here Comes the Stork. It is geared towards selling children's clothes but there are members who sell lots of different items. See for yourself, click here.

Before you invest in all that inventory, do some free research using Mpire Researcher. They will tell you what percentage of the items sold, what was the average price, and let you know the best way to list your products. This is great. I always use Mpire before I start an auction.

This is all I have for now but it is a great start.

Wednesday, October 24

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!)

Friday, June 15

Yay Finals are done!!!

Well I am officially out of school for the summer! Now I can focus on my business and hopefully get my sales up. I have really not been doing to well for the past month. It seems that sales have slowed all around but I think with some work I can get my business going strong.

My new find this week that can have a positive effect on traffic for your business is StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a web discovery service which integrates peer-to-peer and social networking principles with one-click blogging. The Toolbar system automates the collection, distribution and review of web content within an intuitive social framework, providing users with a browsing experience which resembles "channel-surfing" the web.

You should check it out for its entertainment value alone. I will be writing much more in July. Be sure to check back in the coming weeks!

Saturday, April 17

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