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Teach your Granny to suck eggs
publication date: Aug 9, 2006
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- Editorial
- How to Establish Trustworthiness as an
eBay Seller by BobBastian
- 7 Ways To Outsell Other eBook
Resellers On eBay by PhilipRitchie
- Ebay Strategy #1 -- Know How Much
Your Auctions Are Really Making
by StephanieMcIntyre
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Editorial
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I've given up thinking you can't teach your
Granny to suck eggs (colloquialism for trying
to teach experts their job) because the other
day I saw something that went against
everything I've ever believed about 'experts'.
It concerned a television programme about
selling antiques and featured a woman who'd
just cast a statue of some sort out of plaster.
Thankfully the event didn't make it into the
programme but some eagle-eyed visitor was
keen to report it to the newspapers. This
woman was attempting to show how even the
experts get it wrong sometimes and boy did
she accomplish her aim.
Handling the one week old statue the expert
praised its beauty and wonderful condition
for something so old. He wondered how
anything could survive the centuries like this
magnificent piece and still look almost like
new!
Yes! Enough said, or perhaps not enough
said, because that little tale, though true, was
actually a lead to more important stuff I want
to pass on to you now, which is:
ONE OF THE BEST WAYS TO LOSE
MONEY is to get 'experts' to value your
items, especially 'experts' at boot sales and
flea markets. For ninety per cent of 'experts'
at boot sales and flea markets, I reckon you
can substitute the words 'totally oblivious to
value except for kiddies' castoffs and jumble
sale finds' because the majority of 'experts'
at boot sales and flea markets are ordinary
people, like you and me, looking for items to
buy cheap and sell at massive mark-ups. So
they'll value your items at £310, offer you
£320, then later sell them at £3200 or more. It
isn't dishonest, it's business, or at least that's
the usual excuse.
Sarcasm aside, these people are rarely
experts, certainly not in all things antique and
collectible. There's just too much to know
about too many things for anyone to be an
expert in every item presented to them to
value.
Thankfully, there are ways to obtain a
completely independent valuation of your
products, including:
* Take it to big auction company valuation
days. Companies like Christie's, Bonhams,
Sotheby's, hold independent valuation days
across the country. They have specialist
experts, not Jack of All Trades, but experts in
one or two tight market niches and their
advice can normally be trusted. (Unless they
value plaster items for television viewers).
* Real value is what someone else is
prepared to pay for an item, so where better
to look than on eBay, via its Advanced
Search option into similar items that sold
recently on eBay?
I'm going to cover safe valuation of your
finds in the next issue of the newsletter but
for now take this anecdote as a warning and
do not sell your products to anyone who
offers you what seems a decent price at the
time.
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How To Establish Trustworthiness As An
eBay Seller by BobBastian
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The World Wide Web is made up of
anonymous channels. We do not get to see
the voice or hear the voice of the people we
deal with. More so, we will not be able to
verify for certain the truth of their claims nor
the credibility of their reputation.
This does have some negative effects for
online businessmen. Consumer confidence is
expected to be low, especially with people
whom you would be transacting with for the
first time. The challenge presented to many
online entrepreneurs is how to build trust
between them and their customers. How
could they ensure their prospects that their
words are sincere and their offers are real?
Here are some specific steps you could take
to garner a great position to win your
consumer's trust.
1. Verify your PayPal account. By verifying
your PayPal account, you'd be attaching a
real identity to the same. People will have
more confidence in dealing with you,
knowing that they'll be dealing with a real
person, with a real name and a real address,
and with real resources to back him up in
possible ramifications concerning any
transaction.
2. Encourage past customers to leave a
feedback in your account. Your future
customers will make it a point to check out
your feedback score to see how credible and
reputable a seller you are based on how you
have dealt with other people in the past.
3. Sign up with the Better Business Bureau at
http://www.bbbonline.com . The Better Business
Bureau is a repository of positive feedbacks,
negative complaints, and dispute resolution
steps that businesses undertake in their
dealings with their customers. By joining this
service, you'd be making your business
practices transparent for the entire world to
see. People will have more faith in your
business once they get the impression that
you have nothing to hide.
4. Create a mother website under your own
domain name. Be truthful in filling up the
personal details that will be asked during
your registration. Advertise this URL in your
auctions. Some people will want to verify the
authenticity of your identity by conducting a
'Who Is' check on the domain you have
registered.
5. Provide your business details. Include your
business' actual address as well as your
contact number. This will encourage your
customers to give you a call and make
personal inquiries whenever they are having
some reservations in trusting your enterprise.
6. Treat your prospects well. Some of your
potential buyers will as a lot of questions. Do
not, under any circumstances, ignore them.
Answer their queries to the best of your
abilities, and try to give in to their demands if
possible. Some of your prospects, for
example, especially those situated overseas,
may ask you to declare their orders as gifts to
avoid tariff impositions. If you're amenable
with the idea, give your assent with a smile.
This will help you build relationships with
your customers, and will ensure for your
business some repeat orders.
7. Make things convenient for your
customers. Enumerate all the terms of your
offer upfront. Include everything that the
customer has to know about what he is
planning to buy. By being transparent from
the get go, you'd be able to better reassure
your prospect about the sincerity of your
offer and the veracity of your claims.
Remember, to win consumer confidence, you
have to be confident about what you have to
offer, first and foremost.
72.6% of auctions fail to generate some bids
because they fail to establish consumer
confidence. Do not add to a sad statistic.
Take the necessary steps to ensure that you'll
have the full trust of your customers, and
watch your sales rate soar.
BobBastian is a successful Internet
entrepreneur and owner of Wealth-O-
Matic.com. Read more about his work at:
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7 Ways To Outsell Other Ebook Resellers
On eBay by PhilipRitchie
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How would you like to have your car
payment or mortgage paid for? Or perhaps
you would like to quit your job and work part
time from the comfort of your home?
Whatever your dreams are, selling eBooks
and software with resell or master resell
rights can help make them a reality! But what
if you are not a savvy Internet marketer?
Well, eBay is an easy and great place to start.
It is also a great source of supplemental
income even for seasoned resell rights
marketers.
But, with increased competition on eBay
among eBook resellers, an effective strategy
is a must have to continue to grow your
eBook business effectively. Don't ever let the
seemingly low prices and the thought of
resell rights saturation discourage you from
reaping large financial rewards. I have been
selling eBooks and software on eBay for 3
years now and have developed and refined 7
tried and true tactics that will allow you to
resale eBooks for up to 10 times the price of
your competition.
The secret is in the listing title! Below are 7
ways to maximize your traffic, conversion
and profit using smart listing strategies.
1. Keyword RichListing Title
This tip is not unknown but is still rarely
used. Most people who sell eBooks with
resell rights simply list their item on eBay
using the "actual name" of the product for the
listing title.
For example, "JamesJackson's Giveaway
Gold" is listed by many sellers by its title. In
reality this is an eBook on how to build your
email list. If you were looking for a guide on
how to build your mailing list would you type
in 'JamesJackson's Giveaway Gold?' Not if
you have never heard of such an eBook! It
should be listed as 'Build Create Make Your
Mailing Email List'. This would be a wise
use of relevant keywords and phrases which
will bring in the greatest amount of traffic to
that listing. You can find these targeted
keywords with a free keyword search tool.
2. Understand What You Are Selling
If you don't know what you are selling how
can you give it a proper listing title? Be sure
to read the sales page that it comes with.
Often times you can find useful keywords
and phrases in the sales page that will help
you list it correctly.
3. Check Out Your Competitor's Listing
Titles
Do this before you pick your listing title. As
you start writing down possible keywords
and phrases to use in your title, cross check
them on eBay to see if any other of the same
products pull up. Be sure to choose the
keywords and phrases that give you the
fewest competitors.
4. Use Misspellings To Your Advantage
People's inability to spell means money for
you. For example, a product that has to do
with 'GoogleAdsense' can also be written as
'Google Ad Sense', or even 'Goggle
Adsense'.
5. Cross Positioning
A great example of this would be having an
eBook on coin collecting but listing it as coin
collecting with metal detector. There may be
nothing in your eBook on metal detectors but
no doubt anyone who pulls up metal detectors
will see your eBook on coins and bingo, you
just created a niche listing with no
competitors.
6. Name Recognition Tie In
This is a great way to pull in brand name
recognition traffic even though you aren't
selling the product with the name. An
example of this would be if you were selling
an eBook on how to create a pay per click
search engine. You could list the title as
something like 'Make A Pay Per Click
Search Engine Like GoogleAdwords'.
Another benefit to using all 6 of these
techniques is that oftentimes the resellers
won't find you very easily. Resellers will be
looking at other resellers and trying to copy
their titles while undercutting their listing
price. Because most of them are looking for
the actual name of the product, you will be
virtually invisible to them.
7. Put Your Ebook On CD
Now that you have positioned yourself on
eBay away from the rest, burn your ebooks to
CD. Why on a CD? You can increase the
price as well as charge shipping and
handling. You can easily charge $4.99 for
shipping when in fact it costs less than half
that to pay for the CD and shipping materials.
There you have it. Now you can be the eBook
reseller you have always wanted to be and
start pulling in easy cash, the smart way!
PhilipRitchie has been creating and selling
eBooks for over 3 years. For exclusive access
to his unique niche resell rights collection
***
Ebay Strategy #1 -- Know How Much
Your Auctions Are Really Making
by StephanieMcIntyre
***
There are many sellers who are working full
time at selling on eBay. In fact, it is their
primary source of income and yet they have
no idea how much they are making, I mean
really clearing from the whole endeavor.
It's easy to get carried away when you first
start listing on eBay by the sheer volume of
work. I remember working well past
midnight running on pure adrenalin and
excited by the fact that there was money
coming into my PayPal account daily from
the items I was selling.
But like the great basketball coach John
Wooden says, 'Never confuse activity with
actual achievement'. Just because you are
moving like a whirling dervish doesn't mean
that you are necessarily meeting your
financial objectives.
So how do you know how much you are
really making on eBay? It is possible to
figure it out but you have to start with real
numbers. The traditional profit calculation:
Revenue - Expenses =3D Profit
can be somewhat helpful but only if you plug
in the accurate numbers. The guy who bought
something for $1.00 sold it on eBay for $5.00
and thinks he made a $4.00 profit is way
wrong. He has actually lost money on the
sale.
But to understand how he lost money we
need to look at the right way to calculate your
eBay earnings. If you have set $30,000 a year
as your financial objective then you need to
actually clear about $82 per day on eBay.
If you are looking to sell an item that costs
you $10.00 and generally closes at auction
for about $20.00 with a 70% sell-through
rate, then you need to list 12 of these actions
a day, everyday, in order to clear your $82.00
per day.
This translates to 70 auctions a week for your
item and it must continue to produce for you.
If your weekly auctions go much over this 70
auctions per week you will surely have to
hire help thereby adding to your expenses and
wreaking havoc on your financial
calculations as outlined above.
This scenario is not meant to scare you but to
make you aware of the real dollars and cents
of selling on eBay. So what is the solution to
this? The answer is to find and sell items that
you can sell over and over again, thereby
reducing the amount of labor involved and
being sure that you buy low and sell high.
You have to continually evaluate what your
time is worth and factor that into the items
you sell and the time that it takes to list them.
All auctions are not created equally. Some
items are decidedly more difficult and/or
labor intensive to list than others; with
clothing being one of the most time-
consuming.
Photographing your items for auction is one
of the most labor-intensive tasks you will
have to do for your auction. So having an
item that you can just sell over and over again
makes the process of listing and relisting a lot
easier. If you are selling unique, one of a kind
items, then it becomes important to factor
additional time for photographing items, into
your calculations of the hourly rate you pay
yourself.
Just like in any business, keeping track of the
numbers will let you know if you are on the
right financial track with your eBay business.
StephanieMcIntyre became a Platinum eBay
Powerseller (making $10,000 a month or
more) after her first 6 months. She now
works with business owners offering training,
which you can learn more about at
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