Sample Chapters and How They Send Your eBook Sales Soaring

The idea you’ll read about now represents one of the easiest ways to grow a business, and make regular profits, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re promoting eBooks you’ve written yourself or had someone else write them for you. 

You are going to give a free sample of your product in a way that generates more sales than where people have to pay up front for your product.  

Before we look at how this works, let us consider the way most publishers tend to operate, namely by placing an advertisement for their product, in an ezine, for example, or using Google AdWords, and inviting potential buyers to visit their website.  Advertising this way can be inordinately expensive and not always as cost effective or as profitable as the sample chapter technique we talk about today.

Here’s a clue to what usually happens after those other publishers have placed their advertisements …..

….. most potential buyers will visit the website, scan the marketing message, then close the sales page rather than make an immediate decision to buy.

It’s a fact.

That’s usually because people, especially newcomers to the Internet, are skeptical about placing orders online.  They fear they’ll be scammed, they’re concerned about personal information and credit card details being stolen or passed on for others to use.

New internet users and old hands alike also worry about not liking what they receive, or finding it unsuitable for their needs, and subsequently being refused or unable to claim a refund.

So if you’re selling eBooks, regardless of their subject, there’s a good chance at least some of your target audience, even people desperate for the information your eBook contains, might never purchase your product.   

That’s because:

-  Unless they’ve bought from you already, most people have no reason to trust you or your writing abilities.  They don’t know if you are a liar or a cheat or a very genuine seller.  They don’t know if your eBook is total hogwash or packed with useful advice.

-  They may have read your sales letter, and they think your product could benefit them, but they’re really not sure, and if your eBook fails to live up to its promise, they worry they won’t get their money back.

So what can you do to calm people’s fears; how can you avoid restricting your sales by at least fifty per cent and maybe a great deal more?

One way, and perhaps the most effective way, is by giving a free sample chapter of your product!

Introducing the ‘Sample Chapter’ Technique

A ‘sample chapter’, by definition, is usually one chapter from a publication containing several chapters.  The chapter will probably be provided intact, exactly as it appears in the product from which it came.  It might be the first chapter of the eBook; it may be the last; it could be any chapter in between. 

However, ‘sample chapter’ is sometimes used, erroneously so, as an umbrella term to describe random samples of text and images from the product, or a compilation of the first few hundred words from every chapter.

Sometimes the term ‘sample chapter’ refers, again wrongly so, to a special report bearing no similarity to the main product and merely describing and referring to the product from which it is taken.

The last two paragraphs refer to samples best described as ‘sales letters’.  And that is not what we are talking about today, although our sample chapters will in fact do a much better job of selling the full length product than almost any sales letter ever can.

And that is why I personally think a sample chapter should be an actual chapter - complete and unchanged - taken from the main product. 

Very Important: I always use chapter one and I always make that chapter a kind of sales letter containing lots of cryptic messages that make people curious, sufficiently so to buy my eBook.  Then once the first chapter and identical sample chapter make people curious and get them to purchase the full product, the remainder of the book from the second chapter onwards has to be shaped to match promises made in chapter one.

Alongside making people curious, the sample chapter technique helps overcome initial skepticism about you and your product, as well as getting people to join your mailing list instead of leaving your site empty handed.

Once people join your list to download a free report you can continue marketing to those people for as long as they remain on your list

.   

There is no easier way to make money online!

Confession Time!

I’ve many times created sample chapters and gone on to sell my products with amazing success.  And I’m convinced the reason I have been so successful is that I’ve always created my websites and sample chapters LONG BEFORE I even start work on creating their finished products.

 

The reason is, if people don’t want my sample chapter, they’re unlikely to want the full length version of my product.  So offering a sample chapter is merely a way of testing the market for a new information product in advance of spending time, money and effort creating a product that proves less successful than you hoped.

Obviously, you can’t invite orders for a product that isn’t already in existence, but you can offer the sample chapter with a mention about a potential full length version being available in the near future.  But in this case you don’t ask potential buyers to click on a link inside your sample chapter.  Instead you email them when the finished product is available to buy.  When that time comes, you withdraw the test marketing sample chapter and replace it with another containing links to buy your full length product.

Creating the Perfect Sample Chapter

I usually begin by studying other people’s sales letters for products resembling the one I want to create.  I’m particularly looking for websites for products I know are generating lots of orders, at ClickBank, for example, or Amazon, and generating the most interest from affiliates at the site.  For obvious reasons, I don’t want to research sales pages for products that don’t sell particularly well and for which affiliates are also thin on the ground.

What I want is proof my proposed new eBook could make lots of money for me, before I even start writing it, and what better way to do that than by studying eBooks on similar subjects which are already proven bestsellers? 

When I find those eBooks, and their sales letters, usually from studying ‘popularity’ and ‘gravity’ figures at ClickBank (my preferred selling site), each of which indicates the product’s success rate with readers and affiliates, respectively, I study their sales pages in very fine detail. 

I’m also looking for order pulling words and phrases, attention-grabbing symbols and images, fear defeating promises and guarantees, and whatever other techniques are used to make people curious and desperate to purchase the full length eBook. 

This element of creating excitement and curiosity from a website, while preserving some mystery about the eBook’s contents, is one of the most powerful ways to generate orders.  It’s sometimes called ‘blind selling’ and it’s a way of getting people to purchase based on curiosity created by the sales message. 

Blind selling is just one of several techniques that turn a sample chapter into a major order-pulling device for you and for me. 

During my research I take written notes and make screenshot copies of the most attractive features of each of my chosen websites for eBooks similar to the one I want to create.  Sometimes I also take ideas from blog postings, articles and email promotions for those proven bestselling eBooks. 

Important: Although we are talking about sample chapters here, this technique of ‘stealing’ ideas from other people selling similar items can also be used to create your own website sales message.  In fact, many writers and publishers, including myself, create a website identical to the sample chapter for their forthcoming eBook.  And many people, again including myself, use that sample chapter as the first chapter of their finished information product.

How is that for killing three birds with one stone?

Very Important Indeed: Whatever content is acquired from other people must be suitably rewritten and use only ideas and concepts belonging to other writers and publishers, not their actual wording and images.  That’s because ideas are not copyright protected, so you can copy ideas as long as no trademark or privacy or other legal rules are broken.  But words and images used to convey those ideas are copyright protected and must not be used by others for gain.

When I’m happy with whatever ideas I’ve gained from other people’s websites and promotional materials, and sometimes by purchasing currently successful titles on subjects similar to my own, I begin writing my sales letter which also forms my sample chapter and first chapter of my book.   By converting all those other people’s ideas - one by one - into my own words and images I’m never likely to copy another person’s ideas too closely.  

Ultimately, my eBook’s sample chapter, and website, and the first chapter of my finished product, will be as enticing and thought provoking as the sites from which they came, and will include all the mystery elements from other people’s incredibly successful promotional materials. 

But unlike most of those other websites, mine will offer a sample of the product to lift sales of my eBook above competing products. 

In short, my eBook should ultimately become more successful than those from which my early ideas derived.

Buy at Police Auctions and Resell on eBay

View Avril's Kindle eBook Titles Here

Police auctions are a prolific source of goods that have been lost or more commonly stolen and have not been subsequently reclaimed. 

Most goods sold by the police are auctioned in local high street salerooms and promoted in the local press approximately seven to ten days before the sale.  Some amazing bargains are possible with many lots fetching around ten per cent of their possible resale value.  Goods are usually auctioned without reserve and sold to the highest bidder. 

The fact they are poorly advertised explains why few people know about police auctions and why some lots sell at a pittance and generate high profit margins on eBay.

However, you won’t find rare antiques and high class jewellery selling at most police auctions or stored in a dirty garage waiting to be reclaimed.  Expensive items are usually stored in bank vaults or in high security lock ups and displayed on police websites until their owners are found.  Valuable items are never sold off cheap!

Because many goods have been confiscated from criminals, you won’t be surprised to see police auction lots matching items commonly targeted by thieves, such as computers and jewellery, garden furniture and spare parts from cars.  Lost items are typically the kind of things people leave on buses and trains, or in parks and nightclubs, for example, and include the likes of umbrellas and purses (without money inside them), costume jewellery and toys. 

So you’re likely to find mainly low value items selling at police auctions, with market value ranging from a fiver or so to a few hundred pounds. 

Low value they might be, but for many resellers police auctions represent the bulk of their sales, including on eBay.

Now you know how they work, let us talk about turning police auctions into a profitable source of goods for your eBay business. 

These tips will help:

1.  Learn about police auctions in your area.  You’ll find them by contacting high street auctioneers listed in local telephone directories and asking if they organise sales on behalf of the police.  Write down phone numbers for auctioneers performing police auctions and telephone every few weeks for information about scheduled sales and others held at short notice.

2.  Ask to be placed on police auctioneers’ mailing lists for information about forthcoming sales.  Give saleroom staff your telephone number, as well as your email and street address.  This is because some auctioneers send details by email or telephone and others send their catalogues by post. 

3.  Make a note in your diary about auction dates and where sales will be held.  Telephone auctioneers a few days before the sale to check for changes to date or location, and to make sure items you want to buy have not been removed from the sale.

4.  Do not bid on items you have not inspected beforehand.  Many times faults and blemishes are hidden behind other auction lots, or camouflaged with lot number stickers, and you could end up buying something that looks good in the catalogue but is badly damaged and unsuitable for reselling later.

5.  Find out when viewing day is and arrive in good time to inspect lots from all angles.  The best time to view is the day before the sale or an hour before the auction begins, preferably both.  Last minute viewing will reveal damage caused to goods part way through the viewing period, as well as highlighting lots withdrawn from the sale but still showing up in the catalogue.

6.  Study the auctioneer’s terms and conditions; you’ll find them in the catalogue and displayed on a wall in the saleroom.  Many salerooms require intending bidders to register before the sale and some charge a small registration fee to deter time-wasters.  The fee is usually refundable against winning bids.

7.  Check what the rules say about paying, namely when payment is due and by what method.  Take plenty of cash because manyI will leave it as it is but there were some unusual things in. Like a silver thimble. I was think about making it £265. xx salerooms lack merchant facilities, and some salerooms refuse to hand over goods until cheques have cleared.   

Big problem: waiting seven to ten days for cheque to clear gives plenty of time for your goods to be damaged in storage, and auction companies are not obliged to compensate you for breakages or loss.

See if any constabularies in your area promote their own sales by keying something like ‘police auction Durham’ into the search box at google.com

Note: Do not pay to join sites offering information about police auctions until you have tried locating that information by yourself.  Many of those sites offer a very reliable service, at low cost, but some services are over-priced and sometimes out-of-date.  Try searching for yourself and making notes about websites listing police auction dates free of charge.   Do a search for ‘police auctions free information’ and you’ll find all the information you’ll ever need to make police auctions you main product buying source.  A similar search today took me to free information and links to sites detailing police auctions. 

How to Avoid Selling Dangerous Electrical Products on eBay

eBay takes great care to protect buyers from goods that might prove harmful, and will ban sellers who consistently promote potentially dangerous items.  This applies equally to sellers who know their goods are substandard, as to traders who innocently buy and sell products that can cause injury and death.  We’re looking now at electrical items like televisions and refrigerators, and specifically second-hand electrical products that look good on the outside but are dangerously defective inside. 

Selling faulty electrical goods can have serious repercussions, such as death from fire or electrocution for buyers, and a prison sentence for sellers.

Faced with losing their eBay accounts, not to mention imprisonment, sellers might choose to steer clear of electrical goods, or learn how to identify and disregard potentially dangerous items. 

It is not illegal in many countries, including the U.K. to sell electrical items without having them inspected by a qualified electrician.

Here are more tips to stay problem free:

1.  Take a time-served electrician on buying expeditions to identify faults and estimate cost of repairs.  Preferably choose someone qualified to repair and refurbish electrical goods to a professional standard at a reasonable price.

2. Buy from commercial sellers with a good reputation they want to maintain, making it unlikely they’ll sell goods they know are dangerous or beyond repair.  Potentially good buying sources include family firms trading from the same address over several generations with few derogatory remarks made against them. 

Possible bad sources are flea markets and car boot sales populated by sellers you may never see again if their goods prove defective.  The exception is traders at itinerant events who are sometimes obliged to display their trading names and street addresses, as well as offering a cooling off period for buyers to inspect and retain goods or return them for refund.

3.  Have electrical goods tested at point of sale and sold with a guarantee they are in safe working condition.

4.  Avoid buying electrical goods from firms lacking experienced electrical staff, where items returned for refund may be resold without adequate checks for damage or faults.

5.  Study legal rules and regulations covering the sale of electrical goods.  Consumer and safety laws vary worldwide, and sellers must abide by laws applicable to all locations where their goods are offered for sale.

The rules are strict and sometimes complicated, but they’re essential to keeping customers safe.  Additionally, keeping those tips in mind when you buy second-hand electrical goods will help you enjoy maximum profits with minimum hassle.

   

FBA and How It Lets You Sell While You Sleep, Take a Holiday, Go Into Semi-Retirement

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View Avril Harper Titles Here

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FBA - Fulfilment by Amazon - is a process whereby Amazon stocks a seller’s goods and lists them for sale at their site, as well as taking payment for orders and delivering goods to buyers.  A major benefit for most sellers using FBA is spending less time dealing with payment and fulfilment, customer after sales service and refunds.  Time saved can be rechannelled into sourcing and testing new products and consigning them to Amazon.  Read More ...

Easy Ways to Double Your eBay Profits in 2017 and Beyond

Most of us accept that just a tiny change to how we run our eBay ventures can have a staggering effect on our profits ….. and always on an upward trend.  The more important little changes you make, the more changes you test for profitability before making them a permanent feature of your business, the more money you’re likely to bank.

That is the power of numbers!

Before the ideas begin flowing let me reveal just two ways I personally use the numbers game to always, get that ‘always’, increase my profits by several hundred pounds every month, and sometimes a good deal more.

#1 - The first half hour of each working day is always spent uploading one or several bundled items that will almost certainly make me £30 easy profit, and sometimes more, such as a bundle of postcards that failed to sell individually but are worth much more than £30 in bulk.  Or I might bundle previously unsold lots of sheet music or paperweights, bus tickets or virtually any other kind of small collectible. 

Readers not quite so passionate about collectibles as I am might combine two or three fairly common or mass produced items, such as several CDs, two or three bars of soap in an attractive basket, ten bottles of nail varnish bought in a massive job lot at a bankruptcy sale.   If each makes ten pounds and you list and sell three such bundles each day, that’s £30 pure profit you should make daily.

You get the picture, I hope. 

#2 - There’s a specific antiquarian book I buy which is packed with engravings of small towns and villages in the late 1800s.  I could buy this book every day at less than a tenner a time and make at least one thousand pounds pure profit per copy.    

How?

Well this particular book, and thousands like it, is perfect for removing illustrations which are subsequently hand coloured and mounted and will sell all day long at £14.99 a throw.  Actually some fetch more, especially at auction where two or more people are keen to become the new owner. 

Incredibly, I can colour and mount ten illustrations in less than three hours and sell at least eight from a seven day auction.  Eight sales at almost £15 a time is £120, leaving about £100 pure profit after overheads.  Just two or three of those prints fetching £100 or more, yes it happens, and I’m guaranteed to make more money in a couple of hours than most people make all day.

With more time on my hands or someone available to help me locate, colour and mount prints from just one title, I’d easily make hundreds or even thousands of pounds weekly on eBay.  That’s the numbers game at play once again.

If you’re unsure about colouring vintage illustrations or you think it’s a job best left to experts, think again, because I learned all I know about colouring prints, which isn’t a great deal, from studying hand coloured prints from 17^th and 18^th century publications. 

You don’t have to buy those books to see how little paint and even less artistic ability went into producing some of those hand coloured prints hundreds of years ago and which frequently fetch fifty or sixty pounds each on eBay today.  Find out for yourself by visiting google.com, then click on ‘Images’ top of the screen, then on the following page key something like this into the search box:

‘hand coloured print 1800s’

‘h/c print’ where ‘h/c’ stand for ‘hand coloured’

There will be thousands of images to choose from and all you have to do is pick one resembling your own print, such as depicting lots of trees or a beach scene, mountains, people, park or playing field, and so on.   Click on the image to increase its size and save it to desktop.  Then use the image as inspiration for colouring your own print.

Footnote: Before someone asks, I am sorry I can’t tell you which books contain my most profitable prints.  That’s because right now I seem to be the sole buyer of these books on eBay, also in local auction salerooms and I don’t want to encourage competition.  But the truth is there are thousands of very early books containing valuable prints just crying out to be removed and sold ‘as is’ or with a few spots of colour added to increase their appearance and prices.

Do I have other ideas for exploding my profits by introducing quick and easy changes to my business?  You bet I do and I will be uploading them to this blog so please call back to read them soon.

Be An Antiques and Collectibles Picker and Sell Direct to the Trade

‘Picker’ is a mainly American term describing people who travel extensively to locate and ‘pick’ antiques and collectibles and other very high value items priced below market value by inexperienced dealers and collectors.  

The majority of pickers resell goods to private buyers, on eBay or other antiques or collectibles portals, often straight from their own shops on or off the Internet. 

So, for example, Picker A might purchase a massive stamp collection and pay £20,000 for items he’d expect to bank more than £40,000 from private buyers through several hundred eBay fixed price or auction listings.  That’s £20,000 gross profit - which might take months or years to collect. 

Such long delays between buying and reselling stock explains why some pickers sell direct to the trade, at lower prices than asked from private buyers, and in effect sharing their potential profits with resellers.  So unlike Picker A, Picker B might sell his £20,000 purchase intact to a specialist stamp dealer for £30,000, making £10,000 profit for Picker B and leaving £10,000 profit on the table for the stamp dealer.

Picker B might make less profit per pick that Picker A, but Picker B will work shorter hours and manage fewer sales transactions, as well as recouping his investment and reinvesting his profits much faster than Picker A.

Important

Haggling is common between trade sellers and that sometimes finds pickers earning lower profits than they might otherwise earn through careful negotiations. 

This is how to get the best deal:    

#1 - You Open Negotiations

i)  Decide how much you would charge a private buyer and reduce that item by ten per cent to a trade buyer.  This ten per cent represents the profit your trade buyer might expect to make later. 

But ten per cent is way too low for many trade buyers, especially those with high overheads, and that’s why you will find some trade contacts requiring discounts of twenty per cent or even more off market value.   Where you suspect ten per cent isn’t going to work, try the following method instead.

ii)  Determine the price below which you will not sell your item to a trade buyer.  When you meet, offer your prospective buyer a ten per cent discount on your retail prices and sometimes your contact will accept.  Otherwise, let the haggling begin and expect sometimes to bank more than your rock bottom best price.  Whatever happens, you should not negotiate below your previously determined minimum asking price.

#2 -Your Potential Buyer Opens Negotiations

Decide how much you’d like to make on your item and contact several trade buyers to determine where your best offer lies.  This is a convenient way to offload goods at antiques fairs and in antiques shopping malls where sometimes one hundred or more dealers are trading in close proximity.  

Move between traders, offering your goods and inviting an offer.  Make a mental or pencilled note of offers and either sell to the first person matching your required price or allow all to offer before selecting a winner.

Finding and Approaching Trade Buyers

Now all you need to know is how and where to find your trade buyers. 

You do it like this:

#1 - Build and Work Your Contacts List

Start today building a contacts list of potential trade buyers for your acquisitions.  When you study top antiques and collectibles dealers on British and American television, you’ll see most consulting their contacts books and telephoning or driving to visit people they feel certain will buy their goods.  Do the same by recording names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses for your potential trade buyers.

Locate those people from antiques dealers listed in telephone directories or advertising in newspapers and antiques magazines. Pick up business cards from stallholders at flea markets and antiques fairs, study specialists selling products similar to your own on eBay.  Wherever you see someone selling antiques and collectibles and you think that person might require the kinds of goods you specialise in you should add that person to your contacts list.

#2 - Sell Through Specialist Auction Salerooms

The idea involves buying quality goods below market value through salerooms located well away from major towns and cities, including some lacking their own websites, and others selling mainly low value goods with the odd really valuable item sometimes getting through the net. 

Then you resell those low price and potentially very high value items through specialist auction companies whose staff do recognise the value of our items as well as having rich clients interested in buying them.  This works like a dream, as you already know if you’ve ever watched television programmes like Flog It!  

To explain, when an item fails to sell in whatever small, out-of-the-way auction saleroom the Flog it! team visit for their programme, you’ll frequently hear presenters saying something like ‘Oh what a pity.  It looks like the right people weren’t here to buy on the day’, sometimes adding: ‘Take it to a specialist auction company and it will fly off the shelves.’  Which leaves me wondering why they didn’t take the item to a specialist saleroom in the first place! 

Cases in point:  Six signed photographs I bought for £40 in an auction in County Durham sold for more than £600 through specialist autograph auction company International Autograph Auctions (IAA Ltd.), trading from:

Foxhall Business Centre

Foxhall Road

Nottingham

NG7 6lH

Website: www.autographauctions.co.uk

Moral: When you have something special, like my photographs signed by King Edward VIII when he was still Prince of Wales, either auction them on eBay or go to google.com and key something like this into the search box:

‘art auction’

‘bronze statue signed auction’

‘auction company sports shirts’

‘auction classic cars’

That sort of thing!

Your search should bring a range of websites to help identify your item and auction companies willing to sell it.  But if all else fails, you can have your item valued by experts at:

Value My Stuff

www.valuemystuff.com

Antique Vault

www.antiquevault.co.uk

….. or send images to the appropriate specialist department of major auction companies like:

Christie’s

www.christies.com

Sotheby’s

www.sothebys.com

Bonhams

www.bonhams.com

Phillips

www.phillips.com

And that is it, just a handful of ways to make a huge profit, fast, on valuable items lurking as low value goods in small salerooms, or flea markets, or collectors’ fairs … not forgetting jumble sales, charity shops ….. and so on. 

How to Make Money on Twitter

Twitter is a community whose members share news and views and take part in discussions about various subjects, including products.  The site has more than a billion registered members, three hundred million of them active and using mobile devices.  Last year, it was reported that almost one quarter of adults using the internet have a Twitter account, around 40% of them using Twitter daily.

So Twitter is definitely something most sellers should consider as a marketing tool, not just on eBay, but also on Amazon, Etsy and other marketing portals.

Here are a few things to get you started using Twitter to grow your profits:

*  Most people using Twitter do so to find solutions to problems, not always to find products.  By providing help and advice, sellers can build a following on Twitter and use Tweets to direct traffic back to their listings on eBay and other ecommerce websites.

So people selling products to help cure acne and other skin complaints, or providing health supplements for people and pets, will find Twitter an effective place to promote their goods.  Answer questions, solve problems, and Twitter users will trust you and your products and buy from you in preference to rival sellers on and outside of eBay. 

*  Twitter can be used by sellers to provide support for buyers and answer questions for people as yet undecided about buying.  

*  The mere fact a seller has an established social networking presence gives the business a professional air and suggests superior after sales and back up service.  

* There are numerous promotional methods on Twitter, some free, others low cost, a few prohibitively expensive for small business owners.  Promotions can be used for sales on or outside of eBay and other high fee-charging marketing platforms and so cut selling overheads at those sites.  

* Twitter provides Buy It Now buttons leading direct to several long-established ecommerce platforms.  Sadly, some direct sale options are currently unavailable outside the United States but if something works across the Pond, you can bet it won’t be long before it arrives in the UK.  So study what’s available to American sellers and be prepared to move fast when our turn comes.  

*  Avoid heavy selling on Twitter, and most other social networking sites, or you are more likely to alienate site members than build a massive entourage of potential buyers for your products.  Be helpful, be approachable, give subtle hints about your products and link to their sales pages on or outside of eBay. 

*  Twitter is a blogging website, much like any other, but where most outside blogs feature posts hundreds or several thousand words long, on Twitter they extend to a maximum 140 characters.  So there’s little space to make your posts stand out from the crowd, explaining why the most effective Tweets, in selling terms, at least, feature eye-catching headlines and otherwise inaccessible information, frequently free and bonus incentives.  Because they are short, most Twitter posts take minutes to write compared to hours and possibly days for longer blog posts.

Who Fancies a Sex Change on eBay?

LEARN MORE ABOUT SELLING STAMPS AND POSTMARKS ON EBAY HERE

A group of Israeli researchers tested buyer attitudes on eBay and discovered that women sellers tend to receive lower prices and fewer sales than men selling the same and similar products. The team tested their result over various different products and age groups and reached roughly the same conclusion.  

There were some minor variations, however, one being that buyers tend to trust women more than men to accurately describe quality and condition of used goods.  But for new goods, male sellers came out tops in most situations where seller gender is known.

The obvious exception is where prospective buyers don’t know and can’t easily determine whether a seller is male or female. 

Like most high level research, the Israelis’ report extended to numerous pages of statistical jargon most of us don’t need to know about anyway. 

But we can all benefit from knowing how to use the research to our advantage.  One way is for female sellers to avoid using predominantly female names in eBay ID and eBay shop names.  So instead of ‘Avril’s Collectibles’, I should fare better calling my eBay shop ‘Collectors’ Emporium’ or ‘Harper’s Shop’ (very rough and hopefully fictitious).  And we girls would probably be better off not mentioning gender or first names in our listings and messages.

You boys have no such problem, although you might like to consider a name change if you’re selling mainly used items.

You may think I’m over-reacting but I personally agree one hundred per cent with the Israeli team, based among other things on something a local flea market stallholder said last weekend when I complained about having encountered two really difficult buyers in just as many days.  He said, and he meant it: “It’s because you’re a woman and they think they can run rings around you.” 

Next day I used my husband’s name to reply to both problem customers, saying Avril was away on business and he was in charge.  Did I just imagine both people becoming more polite and less hostile?   

I don’t think so and that’s why I’ll be letting an imaginary male colleague tackle badly behaved buyers in future.

In Praise of Auction Selling on eBay

I’ve always liked auction selling, more so than listing products fixed price and there are several reasons why. 

For one thing, auction is a great way to determine the value of an item you haven’t sold before and which no one else has offered recently on eBay.  That being the case you can’t do an advanced search for recent listings for similar items to see how much they fetched.  So you run an auction and let bidders say how much your product is worth. 

Another good use of auctions is to generate a bidding frenzy between two or more people placing bids much higher than they originally intended, not merely to win the product but to stop someone else having it.  Yes, it does happen, and no, I don’t know why.

Then there’s a reason that has more to do with fast turnover of goods and never having to pre-test or guess selling prices or dispose of stock at a loss.  This technique works contrary to the way most sellers source and list products on eBay, typically by buying in bulk at wholesale discounts and using a fixed price multiple product eBay listing.  Some sellers do but most sellers don’t test prices by performing several different priced offers before running long-term promotions.  And that sometimes means sellers lose out on potentially higher prices and bigger profit margins for their products.

The better way is to obtain one unit of product, on the high street if necessary, then you run an auction with a starting price matching the lowest profit you need to make after all acquisition and selling costs.  Run a ten day auction to optimise viewer and bidder numbers. 

One of three main things will happen:

(i)  No one bids and the product goes unsold.  You can check your listings for mistakes and oversights which when corrected might generate bids and sales.  If none exist you will probably drop the product and use it yourself or sell it off at a loss.

(ii)  Only one person bids and you make a tiny profit, suggesting the product is unlikely to be a regular seller. You’ll probably do another few test runs just to be sure.

(iii)  Lots of bids ensue, some much higher than your minimum acceptable profit price.  So you send the first product to your winning bidder and you submit Second Chance Offers to some or all unsuccessful bidders whose bid achieves your minimum acceptable profit.  When Second Chance Offers are accepted you obtain sufficient stock to fulfil orders, plus another couple of units to relist the product on eBay.  Use the same starting price as before and see how many bidders emerge and how far prices go.  As before, fulfil your winning bidder’s order and submit Second Chance Offers.  Rinse and repeat one more time.

After the third auction you’ll have a good idea if your product is a likely long-term regular seller, as well as knowing what the majority of people are prepared to pay for it and what level of inventory to carry without overstocking or running out of product and delaying delivery. 

From thereon you can use multiple product fixed price listings based on the optimum price from your combined auction listings, both cutting your eBay listing fees and allowing your listings to develop a sales history to help them rank higher in eBay search returns.

Learn more about Second Chance Offers at:

http://ocsnext.ebay.co.uk/ocs/sc