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How to Start an Ebay
Business
First off, you need to get set up to sell and take
payments online. To register with ebay, go to
their home page at ebay.com and follow the links.
You will need to give a credit card to open an account
with which to sell. Use any one handy, we can
change this later. Along with this, you need to be
able to accept online payments. About 90% of my
sales are paid for through Paypal. Open an account
at paypal.com. You will need to verify your
account with a bank account. You may want to open
a bank account just for this in order to keep your
business expenses all together. I did, and it
makes things much easier. Paypal is nice because
it is the way most transactions are paid for on Ebay,
and it is easy to withdraw your funds through your
linked bank account.
Once you are registered with Paypal, immediately look
into getting a debit card from them. You can
register this card with Ebay, that way your ebay fees
will come out of your Paypal funds. You can also
use it to purchase supplies and mail items at the post
office or through UPS if you choose, making record
keeping a bit easier.
Now your are all set up and ready to begin your
selling on Ebay, but you should also think about getting
a sellers permit. Laws vary from state to state,
but it’s not difficult to get, nor is it expensive.
If you start selling a lot of stuff, you really should
have one, and collect the sales tax as you should.
You normally only need to collect sales tax if you are
shipping to the same state, or have business operations
in the same state that you are shipping to, be sure to
look into your local laws for yourself, don't take my
word for it. Another advantage to getting a
sellers permit is that some drop-shippers and
wholesalers require you to have one on file with them
before they will do business with you. If you are
going to start a business, start it right.
Finally you can begin thinking about what to sell.
You can sell anything, but you only want to sell the
most profitable items. This is where some of the time
consuming hard work comes in. You need to sift
through the wholesalers and drop-shippers, item by item,
and see what you can make a profit on. You can’t
look for items with only a 5 or 10%profit in them,
either. Between Ebay, Paypal and shipping fees,
you may end up losing money, unless you are selling high
dollar items. Make 50% or more on your items.
You can find them; you just have to work a little
harder. For a low start up cost idea,
click here.
For our example of a product, and why you may choose
that product, we are going to look at selling clothing.
There is so much clothing that you can always find
something profitable. Also, it is easy to ship.
Large bulky items that you have to buy shipping boxes
for turn me off, unless you can make a decent profit on
them. I would rather have something smaller that
fits in an 8 x 10-bubble mailer, or a USPS flat rate
envelope. This helps to save time because you can
order many of the same mailers and streamline a shipping
process. Shipping can end up being very time
consuming. Without a system, it can
overwhelm you.
Some of the best clothing to sell is the name brand
clothing. It always sells, and it is easier to
predict what it will sell for time after time. A
good way to find out what something will sell for is to
go look. Type in your item, search and see what is
selling. Be sure you are comparing the exact same
item. Now search under “completed items”.
You will be able to see what your item sold for
recently. Look at the discrepancies here.
Some of the same items sell for different prices.
Check how much shipping was charged. Check the
keywords in the title. Check the pictures used,
where they were positioned, what was said about the
item, the design of the ad and when the auction ended.
You will find that all of these items factor into what
the final price will be. Check out this great
resource to help you find the hottest selling items with
the most demand, click
here.
To get top dollar for your item you will need to
experiment. Sometimes you can start an auction at
.99 and let the bidding run its course. Other
times you will need to start your auction at the dollar
amount you need to get, as some types of items don’t get
bid up. A good tool to use, also, is the “buy it
now” feature. You’ll be surprised how many people
will buy something at your “buy it now” price, even if
you set it a little high. If you are truly just
getting started, you may have to wait to use this
feature until you build some feedback.
Another piece of the puzzle is the picture.
Every listing should have one. It should be clear
and look professional. A good idea is to get a
large piece of cloth. Black, white, whatever, but
solid colors look best. Use this as the backdrop
and the floor, and set your item up like the
photographer does to you when you go to a professional
photo studio. High-end items warrant more than one
picture, maybe a picture of the tag, the name brand,
etc. With new items, I like to be sure that the
tags are showing, and sometimes even leave the item in
its package to show that it is brand new in the
package.
Putting your picture in the gallery sometimes helps,
sometimes it doesn’t. Experiment. Sometimes,
when an item is not selling, you can add a gallery
picture and it will sell all of a sudden. Gallery is a
very good idea higher priced items that always sell with
it.
Another key element is your title. This is how
people will find your item, so even if your ad is the
greatest add with the greatest picture of the greatest
item, no one will ever see it if your title is terrible.
By the same token, if you have a great title, taking
full advantage of search words, many more people will
see it. If I am looking for a Ralph Lauren polo
shirt, and type in “Ralph Lauren polo”, I will not see
your auction if it says “Ralph Lauren Collared Shirt,
New!” Additionally, I will not search again,
omitting the “polo” thus seeing your item, because there
will be many shirts in front of me that meet my wants.
Notice what the title items have in common when looking
at the completed items. Also notice what the
titles are missing in the auctions that aren’t selling.
You don’t have to find your best title through trial and
error, use other people’s trials and errors so you can
make the most money more efficiently.
You can also do this to see what to include in your
description. The better your description, the
easier your life will be down the line. It will
cut down on returns and on questions, both of which take
time, and the latter, money. Include things like
the size and color, suggested retail price, and if it is
new with tags, new without tags, new in package, etc.
If you get more descriptive, you will cut down on many
questions. Also, if you get the same question over
and over, you should add the answer into your
description
Go to Part 2
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