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How to Make Big Money on eBay
The guy who literally wrote the book on eBay power selling -- Jim ''Griff'' Griffith, author of The Official eBay Bible -- shares nine insider tips for aspiring online retailers.
Posted 3/ 23 11 at 2:30 PM | Business Trends, Advertising & Marketing, Sales, Leadership, Starting a Business, Home-based Business, International Business, Online Business, Consumer Products & Services, Retail
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While you might dream about sowing the seeds of a prosperous new business by selling all the junk in your attic on eBay, you might want to first take some advice from the guy who literally wrote the book about how to sell on the popular auction site.Jim "Griff" Griffith joined eBay in 1996 as the company's first customer support representative. In the years since, he has helped hire and train new customer support representatives and employees while also authoring the The Official eBay Bible. Now, as dean of eBay Education, Griffith spends his days as a roving ambassador, spokesman and seller advocate, with a goal of teaching others how to use eBay effectively, safely and profitably.
Griffith, who encourages any eBay user to e-mail him at griff@ebay.com, offers the following tips on how to get your new eBay-based company off on the right track:
1. The first thing I would advise any seller is to start off slowly. Write a business plan with the idea that you're not going to jump into things all at once. There is always a learning curve when it comes to selling on eBay, even if you already have an established business.
2. I'm surprised by the number of sellers that haven't used the site much as a buyer. That means they don't understand the transaction model from the buyer's perspective. You can learn a lot about what your customers might be looking for by finding and initiating your own transactions. For example, every eBay business needs supplies, like bubble wrap or paper. Why not buy some of that as a way to research what the eBay buying experience is like?
3. The worst mistake I see existing businesses make is putting up a ton of listings all at once. While that strategy can work, you can have hundreds or even thousands of listings go online without any of them optimized for visibility by your customers. It usually results in confusing your customers, because you haven't examined what the current supplies and pricing is like out in the market.
4. New sellers are also prone to inadvertently making errors or violating policies -- problems that can be exacerbated when you post too many listings upfront. For example, you might not know that you can't link to your company website in the description of an item. Or, you might not have the keywords in your description related directly to the item you're trying to sell, or you're trying to sell an item that is prohibited. If you made this mistake on every listing you put up, though, and you put a lot of them up, it's going to be that much more painful. That's why it's important to start slowly with small volumes and to make sure you review the pages we have online that detail the seller policies.
5. Make your listing look professional -- it will instill a lot of confidence in your buyers, especially if you are a new seller. If you are new, you won't yet have a reputation score. But that doesn't mean people won't buy from you. The onus is on you to instill that sense of trust in the way you present your item and in how you deliver customer service. You should plan on bending over backward for your first customers, to ensure you begin building a positive reputation among buyers.
6. When I say professional, choosing a fancy format can be well and good. But what you say is more important than how you say it. There are third-party templates that are available, but they can sometimes be too busy and distract buyers from the item itself. A bad design doesn't serve you well. After doing this for 14 years, I've found that less is more. I'd advise you to focus less on formatting and more on using as much text as possible to describe the item and the service you're offering.
7. It's critical to nail down the description and title on your listings. You should especially be selective in the words you choose for your title. It should contain all the relevant keywords related to your item as well as any common terms people would use in a keyword search. Since you have only 55 characters, though, you should avoid using words like "rare" and "wonderful," because they are a waste of space. We have done studies and show that using words like those do not impress buyers because no one searches on them. But people still make the mistake. If you do a search on eBay for items containing the keyword "wow," you get 129,741 items. You get 107,000 items using the term "l@@k." You're just wasting premium space when you do this, and those three or four characters could be the difference between a buyer finding your item or not.
8. The closer you get to offering free shipping, the better chance you'll have of grabbing buyers. There has been a shift in expectations where buyers don't want to pay for shipping anymore. That's why eBay promotes the idea of free shipping, but we don't require it. If you do have to charge for shipping, make sure it's never more than the actual cost. Don't think about shipping and handling as an extra revenue stream. My advice is to find other ways to cover those costs. The psychology shows that buyers would rather buy an item that has free shipping, even if they know the cost of shipping has been built into the price.
9. If you face a lot of competition in what you sell, a key differentiator can be attaining top-rated seller status. As you develop a history and a volume of transactions over time, and if your customer ratings are consistently high, you can achieve this status -- which brings rewards like a 20 percent discount on fees and a boost in rankings on search results. That's how we promote our best-performing sellers and help make sure that the purpose of their business is more than just selling something. In the end, the key to selling on eBay is to make the commitment early on that your business is focused entirely on your customers and nothing less.
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Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Why the "dean" fail to mention bring lot's of cash?
New sellers will find their new accounts are subject to holds being placed on their initial transactions. This means the seller will not see the proceeds from their sales until eBay sees feedback has been left.
One would think this would be another important point to bring to new buyers attention, unless of course eBay simply wants to hide that morsel of information until the seller finds out for themselves.
This blog is ABOUT EBAY not your personel Bulsht.
Surely, another load of disingenuous nonsense regurgitated directly from the eBay Dept of Spin.
And, why is it that Deutsche Bank’s Jeetil Patel is still the only market analyst (or journalist) that has consistently had this criminal fraud facilitating organization’s card correctly marked? Where are all the other analysts getting their eBay analyses from? Directly from the eBay Dept of Spin? Regardless, relative to e-commerce in general and the “big river” in particular, sales activity on the eBay Marketplace is continuing its journey down the toilet—and that really is a shame—for everyone concerned.
Enron / eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.
I have been a seller on Ebay for years. I had a unhappy customer who wanted a refund and refused to return the item. She threatened me, harassed me, and would not leave me alone. Ebay GAVE HER my personal info....I had to file a police report. Ebay will not even block the CRAZY woman's emails. I have closed my store and pulled my merchandise. CHECK OUT ETSY....they treat you like a human being.
EBAY IS A HIDING PLACE FOR TERRORISTS!!!
There is no more money to be made on ebay unless you are a huge mass merchandiser. Corporate has pushed all the sellers that built ebay out.
I am so fed up with eBay's crap and the way they treating sellers. I am shifting many of my listings to Marketplace on Facebook, and to eOpen.com . at least i get some respect for selling.
EBAY BLOWS!!!!! they treat sellers like crap and buyers like they are the king of everything!! STAY AWAY FROM EBAY!!! buyers on ebay are not required to pay for anything if they dont want to!!
Griff neglected to list the number one way to achieve online sales success:
Stay off Ebay.
Griff is an Ebay EMPLOYEE. Why not find a more objective person to interview for this article? Shoddy journalism.
Yes, ebay is very good platform. We use ebay,we are custom manufacturer, of stamping parts,plastic parts, metal parts, injection molding parts, forging parts, machining parts, casting parts and welding, assembly, and mechanical components. Quatechgroup metal and palstic parts hardware factory ,metalplasticpart@aol.com.
When you start a Pay Pal account you have to watch it close or people in China will start stealing from it. That made me quit EBay now I only Buy and Sell on Free Craigslist.........Why pay to sell something when you can advertise it and sell it without someone else making a profit off your sell.
I don't use ebay anymore. I have been using the free sites like www.bunnyslist.org or craigslist.org
Every time I have looked at prices of things EBAY is always WAY higher then if you just buy it from the store.I was pricing them light up disney blankets on ebay 90.00 at k-mart 39.99.The toddler bed was 200.00 on ebay 129.00 at walmart! Its like are you people for real!
i was on ebay for years and doing just fine, all of a sudden they shut me down...Have no clue why, i call them and they said LITERALLY....you have made too much money in a weeks period of time....Can you believe it?? If i make money, they make money.... Plus they give money back to people who say they havent re'c the product before they even investigate it.... I wont be doing business with them again any time soon
how many refunds have you had to give back to dissatisfied buyers?
First of all one thing they will not let you know is that eBay owns PayPal. eBay purchased PayPal from another company because its system was functioning so well. When eBay took over, everything started being controlled by it. I have also been victimized by both eBay together with PayPal when I tried to sell products. This information about people making millions on eBay is nothing but fabrications. Yes, they have the money to pay people to make such claims. Buyers and Seller (especially new ones on the block) need to be very careful with these two companies. They know people have lost their jobs and are desperate to earn a living so "making millions on eBay" will always sound tempting to them. Those stupid media always broadcasting unnecessary issues need to investigate eBay and PayPal.
Ebay and PayPal are terrible !!!!!!! One of the worst business's around !!
If you do business with them be aware as a seller they not back you up.
And they have the capacity to "freeze" any money you have for 180 days!!
BEWARE OF EBAY --PAYPAL They support the "buyer ripoff artist" everytime
What a boatload of crap, the party is over on ebay.
The smart sellers will be dropping like flies, now that ebay has announced it will start charging a commission on shipping as well as the item value. A new flock of sheep to shear will be needed on the farm now. Griff mentions nothing about the fees involved in selling. Ebay is the only one making a ton of money. BTW, in dollars? How much does a ton of $ amount to. How much does a ton of pennies amount to weigh? Would you charge shipping on that?
I have read your comments which all are negative...I understand where all of you are coming from as sellers and buyers, which I happen to be both of for some deal of time...I really think that it depends on what you are looking to purchase/fine or what you sell...I really find that ebay is a great place to sell and or find collectables...I am a collector and also seel collectables and new stuff/items that I obtain at a great price in order to sell at a great price...if you are a detail oreintated seller ebay will does and has backed me up on the few occassions that I had a buyer issue...You are have to do your research as a buyer and a seller before you purchase and or sell on ebay...I know many of you will disagree with my posting however I have never had an issue with ebay or paypal as a matter of fact and I am a fan of both...
First of all you get someone to edit your writers, AOL. Read the headline on your home page. "of ton of money"? Yeah, that's real perfesshunnall.