Vintage Apple Computer Fetches Huge Sum
Why 'Budding' Entrepreneurs Are Forced Into The Shadows
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
Text Size:
A A A
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.
Getty Images
- 'Marriage Penalty' Could Make Costly Return - CNNMoney
- Oil Rises on Optimism for Cliff Deal - FOXBusiness
- Dow 2012: The Studs and Duds - InvestorPlace
- Turning the Corner: Why 2012 Wasn't as Bad as You Think - The Motley Fool
- World’s Longest High-Speed Rail Line Unveiled In China - IBTimes
- FORGET THE DEFICIT: Here's The Real Reason Liberals Want To Hike Taxes On The Rich - Business Insider
- CEOs to Fire in 2013 - 24/7 Wall St.
- DailyFinance Market Minute - DailyFinance
Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Griff Is A Paid For Idiot:
Griff is employed by Ebay and every CEO at Ebay loves him to death.
His nose is one of the brownest in the place. He's like most CEO's there, they answer only the questions they want to answer and if you want an answer to a hard question he always jumps around it.
Griff, if he worked for the government would probably be in jail for selling secrets to Wikileaks. He has absolutely no integrity whatsoever.
You notice they mention nothing of fee's to sell on the site and how they adamantly push add-on's that never help but cost even more money.
Take a $5.00 media item, $.25 to list, another $.10 to schedule to end in a prime time of $.35 total, now if it sells ( which use to be about 60% sell thru but with their new smart search about 15% actually sell because your item may never even be viewed by a potential buyer ). But say it sells for $5.00 they take another $.65 and now they are also going to take 13% of the shipping costs also so say it costs $4.00 to ship now they will take another $.52; Then they pay for the item thru Paypal and there is roughly another $.63;
You say it is all just pennies but those pennies that you took the time to list and sell for $5.00 has cost you $2.15 ( That's over 40% of your selling price going to Ebay ) and does not include your initial cost of the item, the cost of shipping supplies and tape, the time it took to list, your computer, your printer, gas to take it to the post office, ect., ect.
The only one making money is Ebay and now they say that say you sell 3 items to the same person and that person does not wait to receive a combined shipping invoice or Ebay's wonderful shipping calculator does not work which happens often and pays for each item individually. Say the shipping for each item is $4.00 for a total of $12.00 ($1.56 fee) and combined shipping is $5.00 ($.65 fee) so you refund the purchaser $7.00; Ebay charges a fee for the $12.00, not the $5.00 that the purchaser actually paid. Ebay has already stated that if you refund for shipping Ebay will not refund the fee they charged to you.
This is a company demanding to be regulated. They are basically just as crooked as the the mortgage companies and banks are in the U.S. and all Griff is is a yes man with his nose so brown from only seeing ass cheeks all day.
Ebay treats their sellers like CRAP and is always trying to find ways to take more money out of their pockets. All the while, they're in bed with plants like this Darren Dahl guy.
Ebay is run by a retarded scum bag named Donahoe who has run the company into the ground. The only people making money on Feebay are selling stolen merchandise.
The only ones making money on FeeBay are selling stolen merchandise. They are run by the scum of the Earth who try to squeeze every last penny out of the small sellers who are the ones that made them.
I have never sold on ebay. But there are many other established sites to sell on like Etsy and Ruby Lane if you have items that fit that market. Many ebayers have moved to Bonanza as well. Why doesn't Mr. Dahl write about other sites beside ebay? Are you personally affiliated with Ebay? And if so, then you need to post a disclosure in your article(s) stating that fact.
It is not at all what you say. It is how you say it. It isn't what you do, it is the way that you do it. I'm sure I've made a lot more mistakes than, Jim "Griff" Griffith and have a better education. Still working towards his material achievements but I'll bet I know me better than he knows he. You can't put a price on that. He's got people chasing the carrot. This isn't supposed to be a race and we're , most of us, not children anymore. Thank God for life. He is undoubtly do a lot of good also.
This is about job security for the Griff and Ebay. That is the main design of his company and his business plan. He is a dichotomy advocate . Get lost in the dichotomy and you're lost in life.
Griff still blows.
YOU HAVE TO BE A COMPLETE IDIOT TO SELL ON EBAY....ESPECIALLY NEW SELLERS WHOM THIS NONSENSE IS DIRECTED.."Poor little old lady decides she's going to sell her mothers diamond ring because she desperately need money...She trust's evil EBAY by believing the nonsense in these articles..I use one of my 8 buyer ID's and buy her ring through what she believes is a safe transaction through ebay..I receive her ring leave her a negative feedback,substitute her ring for a dimestore fake and send it back with delivery confirmation after filing an EBAY dispute. SHE LOSES HER MONEY,I KEEP THE RING AND SHE GETS SUSPENDED FROM SELLING WITHIN THE WEEK.....BEWARE!!!!!
ebay is sucking more and more.. kissing the buyers ass and licking the seller to the curb.. we sellers now basicly have to kiss the ebay gods ass to be able to sell.. it used to be awesome.. now t is just..sucking
What is first thing for a new seller to do? Forget eBay and Google AUCTIONS and find other sites; sites that will treat you better than 'feebay' and that are growing bigger every day. Some sites have no listing or final value fee. They are not as large as eBay but if we support them they might be as big some day. Anyone who has been an eBay seller for awhile, and I've been there over 10 years, has seen the screws on the seller get tighter and tighter. I don't care if I never list there again.
I sell on ebay and sometime I buy from ebay too. I had a bad experience - when I sold an item to China and the buyer disputed through paypal after receiving his purchase from me. Paypal gave money back to the buyer, although my first class mail shows the package left via Chicago airport.
Gross or Net? Why don't they say?