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.

Why eBay Shops Are a Better Alternative to Selling on the High Street

eBay Shops have much in common with retail outlets operating on high streets in villages, towns and cities all over the country, all over the world, the most obvious difference being that high street sellers typically work face-to-face with customers, while on eBay all the buying and selling is done online.

But in reality there's a world of difference between how eBay's virtual shops operate compared to their high street counterparts.  And for most retailers, the difference is significant and eBay is almost always the best option.

For example:

* On eBay you’ll be paying a tiny fraction of most offline sellers’ running costs, allowing you to undercut their prices considerably.  And no one will ever guess you are a one man or one woman operation or that you work entirely from home.

* eBay's heavy insistence on fair play for customers and sellers and urgency to remove rogue traders and troublesome buyers, represents credibility that's rarely found elsewhere, even in the biggest of high street companies.  That allows you to generate customer confidence much faster than most high street sellers.

* On the high street, customers expect to pay for and pick up goods the same day and most would leave a shop empty handed than wait for replacement stock or choose an alternative product.  And that’s why most offline retailers have to stock multiple units of numerous different products which is not only expensive but requires a major investment in storage space.  Not forgetting that stock may not sell and will have to be disposed of at a loss.   On eBay, although you must only list items you already possess or can quickly obtain, you can order stock after orders arrive or have dropshippers fulfil direct to your buyers.  So you never have to stock items until an order is placed.

* Because you don't have to stock duplicate products of all shapes and sizes, you'll rarely have valuable space eaten up by outdated, old-fashioned and damaged goods.

On eBay you can sell worldwide from a corner of your living room, take time off when you want to, you can even ban undesirable people from bidding or buying in your eBay Shop and you can earn money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Compare that to being always available in a high street shop and working 9 to 5 even when it's pouring down and the high street's empty, as well as having to tackle difficult customers, and you’ll see why so many first time and veteran retailers are choosing that best of all trading models ... eBay!

Don't Sell on eBay Until You Do This

Far too many people rush to open an eBay account, fall over themselves to make their first sale, and in all the panic and confusion they suddenly realise they're losing money fast!  So they give up selling on eBay and return to working for someone else!

Very sad, especially when just a few simple steps are all that stand between failing on eBay and growing an income limited only by time and effort put into the business.

So why fail, why not succeed beyond your wildest dreams, why not follow a few simple steps to guarantee your success on eBay?

* Decide What to Sell

You must have some definite product or service in mind, or you'll be running round in circles, forever chasing new ideas and getting nowhere fast.

Counter this common problem as soon as you sign up at eBay by spending at least two or three days looking at what other people are selling, especially sellers with hundreds of monthly feedback points and high profit margins.

* Grow a Tough Second Skin

It's sad to say the customer is not always right on eBay and although most customers are very genuine, there's a tiny minority who exist purely to upset other people.  These people leave negative feedback for any reason or no reason at all, and they can be extremely hurtful to first time entrepreneurs.

Like many people, I think eBay's one-sided feedback system is seriously flawed and I can't quite work out why sellers can only leave positive feedback or no feedback at all for buyers, including those who insist they haven't received your product even though you have their signature on the delivery form.

This sort of thing happens because the Internet is largely anonymous and people who'd never create a scene in a high street shop can be extremely obnoxious in eBay messages and feedback comments.

So you must learn to accept this unfair situation and report every unpleasant experience to eBay.

* Be Upfront and Professional Right From Day One

The most successful sellers are those who take their responsibilities very seriously, towards other sellers, towards customers, and especially towards government authorities.

In particular, way too many people take chances when it comes to handling matters like income tax and trading standards, these being the two most likely areas to land you in a whole heap of trouble and send your eBay business plummeting.

In short, you MUST determine your legal and financial obligations as soon as you begin selling on eBay, and you must take steps to ensure you never fall foul of local, national and international trading rules and regulations.

That does not mean you need an accountant right from day one but you do have to tell the income tax authorities you are running a business and provide specific information for each trading year.  Read all about it at: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk

You should also study eBay's help pages to determine eBay's own seller rules as well as local, national and international rules and regulations concerning sales made on eBay.

Last, but not least, contact your local town hall for advice about local and non-local trading laws.

A Simple, Cost-Free Way to Drive Traffic to Your eBay Listings

Here’s a great way to eliminate rivalry on eBay, an incredible way to make sure hundreds of people open your listings and buy from you without ever studying similar products listed at the site.

Imagine this: you’re selling Product A, as are hundreds of other people on eBay, and for those other sellers it’s a question of trying to make their listings stand out from the crowd when a potential buyer keys ‘Product A’ into eBay’s search box.  Just how do those sellers get buyers to choose their listings over all the others?

One way is to make their listings different, by offering lower prices and bonus gifts, for example, and that can work well for someone with hours to spare and who doesn’t mind fighting price wars for the lifetime of their products on eBay.

All you have to do, however, is make sure your listing is the only one people see when they search for ‘Product A’!  But in this case, it’s not people searching on eBay you want to capture, it’s millions more people using Google and other mainstream search engines.

The trick is to drive traffic to your listings from outside of eBay in a way that ensures only your listing appears to countless potential buyers.  The way to do that is to get your eBay product link, and only your link, to as many people as possible.

This is the sort of traffic you’re looking for:

i)  People searching for information about a specific subject but not necessarily looking for something to buy.  So they might want to know what causes acne, for example, and how to cure the condition using such as home remedies, camouflaging techniques, and more besides.  They have no particular product in mind right now.  But if they see a product along the way they’re very likely to buy it.

ii)  People on the lookout for a product to treat acne, either a specific product they know about already or something they see recommended by other sufferers, preferably people who’ve already found a cure … or know someone who has. 

Now let’s look at just one way to redirect all that traffic to your product listings, in this case for an imaginary product called ‘Acne Away’.

The way to do it is called ‘guest posting’ and simply means submitting content to someone else’s blog, preferably a high profile blog related to your product type.  The more people who visit the blog, the greater the number of people likely to read your post and the more visits will be made to your Acne Away listing. 

Guest posting is a little different to the usual way of posting on other people’s blogs where visitors typically write a short post to compliment whatever someone else has written.  Those short posts, usually at the end of the main feature can prove very profitable and drive traffic, but remember you’ll be sharing that traffic with sometimes hundreds of end-of-page blog posts. 

But most visitors encountering page end posts read the first ten or so and then move away from the blog, so you have to be quick to get your post noticed.

One way to do that is to make a list of blogs relating to your product and visit those sites daily, looking for new content and being one of the first to respond.

Now on to guest posting which demands a little more work and is potentially much more profitable.  It happens where your contribution is the main feature of the page, not just an add-on comment at the end.  Your feature might be read by thousands of daily visitors to your chosen blog.  Provide quality information and a high number of visitors are likely to click on an active link to your own website or product listing.

‘Guest’ is the operative word here, indicating you normally have to be invited to write the main blog post.  And because this form of marketing can attract massive traffic for the writer it’s also among the most difficult to achieve.  But well worth trying.  The process is typically to write to blog owners, telling them about yourself and giving ideas for a post you will write just for them.

You can increase your chance of being invited to guest blog by providing a killer review of your intended post.  I found a great article revealing fifty-two ways to do just that at:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/09/03/52-types-of-blog-posts-that-are-proven-to-work/

Tip:  Look for blogs with hefty membership levels as well as ranking high in search returns and generating regular new visitors and members.  That way just one good guest post can keep you in traffic for years to come. 

Search for high profile blogs on your subject by keying ‘blog + subject’ into Google’s search box.  The biggest blogs should rank top of search returns and sometimes lead to lists of high profile blogs. 

Also key something like this into Google’s search box:

subject (e.g. acne) +  blogs + that + accept + guest + posts

My search for that term today returned three pages of workable listings.

Footnote: This idea for promoting an acne treatment works just as well for countless different product types.  Just change ‘acne’ to your own product type - such as steps for disabled dogs, pacifiers for crying babies, cream for ageing skin - and expect thousands of visitors and hundreds of buyers to your eBay listings.

Should You Clear Cheques Before Posting Goods?

I wish I had a pound for every time someone has asked me that question and that way I'd probably make more money than I've ever lost by posting goods before cheques clear - or don't clear as the case might be!

Bounced cheques can be a problem, especially for new eBay sellers who don't want to celebrate their first few sales only to find the cheques bounce for goods that have already been sent to winning bidders.

Another problem for newcomers is fearing negative feedback for not delivering goods immediately after payment arrives, even though cheques take up to seven days to clear (or to bounce!)

Thankfully, there are ways round the problem and I can honestly say I invariably send goods before payment clears and I've only ever been let down twice! For tiny amounts!

My view is that most people are honest, few will bounce cheques and for small amounts (less than £20 in my books) I always send the goods without clearing payment first. The same goes for payments awaiting clearance through PayPal.

My philosophy has always been that it's not worth making the honest majority wait for their goods just because a tiny few payments might be dishonoured. You need to keep your good customers happy and tempt them to buy from you again and nothing works better than fulfilling orders fast and trusting them to honour their side of the bargain.

That said, if a lot of money is involved or the buyer looks 'iffy', I break my own rule and let payment clear first.

With experience these are the rules I apply which you are free to copy in your business:

* Check buyer feedback, look for high feedback scores from other sellers, search for comments indicating payment disputes.

* Risk low amounts to new buyers but not if feedback already indicates a problem customer. For example, I would never send goods without clearing payment for anyone with low feedback and several derogatory comments made by sellers.  Be aware, however, no matter how dishonest the buyer and no matter how disgruntled the seller, the seller always has to leave positive feedback or no feedback at all for customers, both criminal and honest.  But you can sometimes spot warning messages made by sellers along with their forced positive feedback.

* Decide a maximum acceptable sum beyond which you will let all monies clear before sending the goods. I use £20 but I will go much higher for buyers with good feedback who have been registered on eBay for more than a few months and for anyone with whom I have already had a trouble-free transaction.

* Bear in mind banks charge you when payment fails, unlike PayPal where you won't be charged. I recommend PayPal for all your transactions.

* There is one time I don’t clear cheques before sending the goods. It's when someone buys and before the cheque arrives that person begins hassling me about delivery times or, worse still, threatens negative feedback if I don't get the product to them fast. In my experience payment from people like that has always failed.

How to Make a Full Time Living Selling the Same Product As Hundreds of Other People on eBay

Sell the same product as hundreds of other people on eBay?  Have I gone insane?  Isn't that just a little bit like flooding your own market and doesn't it also mean sharing sales and profits with longer-established traders with more money to spend and more experience of selling specific high demand products on eBay?

Well, yes, it could mean that, or not as the case might be, depending on what our seller does next, and how hard he works to differentiate his offer from people selling similar items on eBay.

The following tips explain how someone selling wigs and hair extension might achieve this objective:

* Sell the same product in much the same way as his currently more experienced counterpart.  This can be a good idea, sometimes, because too much variation between listings might mean the new one lacks some essential feature that generated another seller's high profits.

But the new seller should avoid copying other people's listings too closely or he risks being charged with breach of copyright or even finding himself expelled from eBay.  But there's no copyright on ideas, such as what to charge for a product or how many illustrations to use in one listing.  However, using the exact same illustration or more than a few words of similar text from another person's listing, except as provided by manufacturers for resellers, is definitely wrong.

So our seller could adopt much the same ideas but use different illustrations and words to convey a similar message in his own listings.

You never know, he might even improve on other people's listings and could grab a huge chunk of those other sellers' markets for himself.

* Make his presentation different, but not so different that his listing bears no resemblance at all to other people's successful listings for similar products.  The best way to differentiate his own from other's people's listings is to emulate other people's listings, as closely as possible without breaking the law, and to incorporate some reason for people to buy from him in preference to purchasing from those other people. 

There are several ways to do this, such as by:

- offering a free bonus to accompany his wigs and extensions, preferably a unique item with high perceived value, such as a hair ornament made to our seller's own exclusive design, or a pocket mirror decorated with the buyer's initials.

- offering faster delivery than other sellers, some of whom might ship from China and other low cost manufacturing countries, meaning delivery can take several weeks.  So our seller could import products or source them from domestic markets, store them in his attic or spare bedroom, and post within 24 hours of being paid.

- keep a close eye on average number of sales each week, product cost and other overheads, then look for ways to cut costs, such as by purchasing product and packaging materials cheaper in bulk and passing savings to buyers. This ultimately means undercutting rivals and increasing his own customer base.

Now you can see why this whole exercise is actually quite easy and wigs and hair extensions are just two of millions of products you can research and turn into regular, best-selling, high profit products for your eBay business.