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Profitable mistakes
publication date: Jun 20, 2007
***
- Editorial
- eBay eTail Solution Explained by Ken Trueman
- Beyond AdSense: Make Money with eBay by
Adding Niche Stores to Sites by Eric Giguere
***
Hello,
It's been four years since I started selling on eBay yet I
learn something new every day, sometimes I'm shocked
to discover an easy way I've previously overlooked
which might increase my profits many times over. Often
a completely new idea emerges that makes my job
easier, more productive, more profitable. But it's usually
mistakes and difficulties that eventually make my life
more enjoyable and which ultimately prove immensely
profitable!
Such as the following things that happened in the past
few weeks which will influence the way I do business on
eBay:
***
Check that spelling!
***
A subscriber, (I have permission to tell his tale to benefit
fellow readers), wrote asking why three tobacco pipes he
had listed on eBay fetched pitifully low prices, while
other people selling the exact same style of pipe were
making double figures sums, sometimes triple figure
prices on eBay.
I checked his listings, all three, and could find no reason
why his offers attracted low prices. His descriptions
were very well written, the pictures were great, his
feedback is good, everything pointed to him making
really good money from those three listings. The answer
came when I checked his completed auction listings
which allowed me to compare all three listings together.
That's when I discovered he had used three different
spellings for a type of pipe called 'Meerschaum' and all
those spellings were wrong. At least they were wrong
compared to my entire library of collectibles guides,
wrong according to eBay's version of the word. eBay
and my books all use 'Meerschaum', while my friend
used various different versions, I don't have the exact
details right now, but I recall the 'c' was missing in all
three cases.
So his listings did not show up when someone keyed
into eBay's search engines for pipes such as he was
selling. And that's why they sold so low to people
looking for products going cheap due to mistakes in
other people's listings which will almost certainly be
relisted on eBay, correctly this time, and make high
profits.
But wait, why would anyone make the same mistake
three times over, surely that person is asking for trouble?
Exactly so but, in fact, my friend tells me he used the
exact wording on the packages in which those pipes
were originally sold! I believe him, I've made the same
assumption myself many times. His mistake is all down
to not realising that words and terminology sometimes
change over the decades and what once was the correct
spelling is not longer appropriate today.
It's a difficult word anyway, 'Meerschaum', and even an
expert pipe seller would check his spelling before listing
this make of pipe on eBay. The moral is, simply, check
all your titles for spelling mistakes, or simply changes to
spelling and terminology over the decades. The best
place to look is on eBay where you should key your
version of the word into eBay's search engine. If your
spelling is correct you'll find similar correctly listed items,
if it's wrong eBay will ask 'did you mean *****' and
provide the correct version for you.
Had I checked more carefully this week I'd have made
more from my silk postcard featuring a 'Butterly' had I
included the 'f', and I feel sure my hand coloured print
featuring a 'Rottweiler' might have gone better listed as a
'Rotweiller' - or should that be the other way round? Or
maybe they're both wrong, I don't really know, I haven't
checked!
***
Don't give up too easily...
***
I know for certain now that you should always list a
previously non-selling item several times before
declaring it a dud. That's because, in about seven hours
time, I'll have three bidders fighting over each of a pile of
autographs and a book of historical prints I've listed on
eBay three and four times respectively.
The autographs, of historical figures from the 17th and
18th centuries, failed to fetch much individually, so I
bundled the remainder and waited for fat profits seven
days hence. Only they didn't sell. Nor did the book of
photographic prints of Lever Brothers' plants in Port
Sunlight and other worldwide locations.
Last Wednesday I decided to try once again and then
remove the listings and call it a day. Today both are
selling way above my earliest expectations! They are
not alone - I've often made good profits on something
I'd almost given up on.
But there's a major problem here because it's very easy
to spend more listing your products over several weeks
than you'll ever realistically claw back, so you need to
safeguard yourself against heavy losses. The way to do
this is to decide how much money you want to make on
every item and ensure that listing costs never exceed
this amount.
It's easy with potentially high profit items and well worth
the time and effort expended, but not so easy on low
profit items! For low profit items, like postcards and
cigarette cards that haven't sold over several weeks, I
bundle the whole lot together, list at the price I wanted
for those items cumulatively, and I'm often surprised to
make much more than that if a bidding war starts
between just two people wanting one or a few items from
my bundle.
Give it a try, I promise it works!
Happy eBaying!
Avril
***
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***
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***
eBay eTail Solution Explained by Ken Trueman
***
For an explanation of eBay eTail solution we must first
find out where the term eBay eTail solution came from.
The basic explanation is that eBay eTail solution is a
search term which is used by people who are selling on
eBay. They are looking for items to sell on eBay, hence
the search term 'eTail', (as opposed to the High Street
shopping term 'retail'). This in turn would offer them a
'solution' to the problem of what to sell, which is why
they were looking in the first place.
I know you think it fairly unbelievable that a substantial
number of people all started searching on Google for the
term 'eBay eTail solution'. What happens here is that
maybe a few hundred eBay sellers used the term initially
(remember there are millions of sellers out there), and
this brought the term eBay eTail solution into the ranks
of minor keyword research tools. These are Software
tools that are used by webmasters to research keyword
terms for their sites. I don't want to get off the subject
here but to explain fully I must give a short explanation
about keyword research for you to fully understand how
this search term came about. Web masters use Software
tools to find attractive keywords for their sites. Keywords
are the search terms or phrases that people use when
they are searching for something on the Internet. The
software that webmasters use also provides other data
for them, notably:
1 The number of searches per day for any given phrase.
2 The number of competing web site pages for that
phrase.
So we have a reason here why the search term 'eBay
eTail solution' started picking up in popularity. Maybe a
couple of dozen Guys and Gals selling on eBay wanted
to find something they could buy and resell. They enter
the term 'eBay eTail solution' into their browser search
window and find nothing. (because there are no pages
with this search term in them). Keyword Software used
by webmasters picks up the search term they used
'eBay eTail solution' and the fact that there are no
competing pages for that term. The webmasters
immediately write the term into their pages (or a page)
and together with a few theme words and something
they think will appeal to the eBay sellers. Publish the
page(s) and the very next day they will be making sales
to people who use that search term. It really is that
simple. Why? Because the following day the eBay
sellers who use the term 'eBay eTail solution' will be
presented with those webmasters' page(s) to click on
and investigate. The webmasters will make sales. The
search term 'eBay eTail solution' has now started and
will grow and grow until the number of competing pages
increases substantially and it no longer looks like an
attractive proposition for webmasters.
But hey, by that time we will have another search term to
optimise.
For a complete set of webmaster tools at a positive price
and more site based articles on everything from
Software to eBooks visit our site.
***
Beyond AdSense: Make Money with eBay by Adding
Niche Stores to Your Sites and Blogs by Eric Giguere
***
We all know that Google's AdSense program is a simple
and effective way to monetize content-rich websites and
blogs, especially those that focus on a specific, narrow
niche that a lot of advertisers target. But even high-
earning AdSense sites can benefit from fresh, relevant
content, and one of the easiest ways to do so is by
adding eBay mini-stores to the sites to make money with
eBay's affiliate program. An automatically updated niche
eBay store gives your visitors, including the search
engines, another reason to revisit your site on a regular
basis. And by basing those stores on eBay's huge list of
product categories you're assured that only listings that
fit with your niche ever get shown on your site.
Grabbing eBay Data
Now, if you're a programmer you could use eBay web
services to add a mini-store to your site, but that requires
a lot of work. An easier way to do it is via eBay's RSS
feed generator, which lets you create custom searches
whose results are returned as an RSS feed, which you
can then transform into HTML for inclusion on your site.
That's pretty powerful stuff, but not everyone's a
programmer. And even programmers don't necessarily
want to spend their time wrestling with feeds in order to
get the right eBay data into the right format and onto the
right pages of their site. That's what makes 'Build A
Niche Store' so exciting.
Automatic eBay Listings
'Build A Niche Store' is a script you install on your web
server. Don't worry, installation is dead easy and you
don't need to know anything about PHP (the
programming language used to develop the script) to
use it on your site. (You don't even need to know
anything about eBay to use it.) Most websites and blogs
today support PHP, including the popular WordPress
blogging software, so 'Build A Niche Store' - BANS - will
work almost anywhere. (Complete installation
instructions are provided in the manual that comes with
the script.)
After you install BANS, you activate your niche eBay
store by loading the setup page into your web browser
and filling in a few simple details, including the name of
your store and the number of the eBay category you
want your listings to come from. For example, if you
wanted to feature electric guitar listings on your site you
would set the store name to something like 'Cool
Guitars' and category number 33034. Plug in your eBay
affiliate ID and a few other details and you're done.
Once activated, the script continually grabs the latest
listings for that category from eBay and formats them for
display on the page as a niche store. Visitors can click
the listings in your mini-store to see the full details on
eBay's site. Meanwhile, you have a page whose content
changes frequently and is always extremely relevant to
the niche you've chosen.
'Build A Niche Store' is very customizable. You can
modify the look and feel of your store by changing the
predefined store template. This makes it easy to
integrate the niche store right into your existing site or
blog. You can even link to custom keyword-driven listing
pages from the other parts of your site, so if you had an
article that mentioned a Fender electric guitar you could
easily insert a link in the article that displayed all the
Fender guitars currently available on eBay.
Oh, and you can have more than one store on the same
site. And you can use 'Build A Niche Store' across all
your sites without paying anything extra.
Money, Money, Money
But the eBay listings aren't just there for search engine
optimization purposes, or to create content that draws
visitors back to your site -- although those are great
benefits in and of themselves. They're also there to earn
you money, just like the AdSense ads.
You see, by directing traffic to eBay's site, eBay will pay
you part of the money they get from any winning bid you
referred to them via your eBay store. And they'll pay you
for referring new customers, too. It can be quite
lucrative, especially in hot and high-priced product
categories.
Even better, you can even integrate AdSense ads
directly into the eBay product listings. Those ads will be
super-targeted because of all the relevant content that
surrounds them, giving you yet another way to make
money from your eBay store. The positions and formats
of the AdSense ads are completely customizable, of
course.
Think Narrow, But Think Big
It's hard to compete against the big companies that
dominate the Web, but you don't need a large site to
make money with eBay and AdSense. All you need is
super-focused content that attracts very targeted traffic,
and a way to monetize that traffic. 'Build A Niche Store'
and AdSense are both great (and complementary) ways
to do this.
Eric Giguere is the AdSense expert and you can read
more of his articles at
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