Power Maxx Blog

I’m sure you’re all well aware by now that I am a Power Seller on Ebay. This makes up a good chunk of my full time income, and I have worked very hard, and learned a lot through the years of selling. Since 2002, I have been learning the ins and outs of how to sell on ebay, and more importantly of how to be successful while doing it.

I was advised by one of my fellow bloggers, that it might be a good idea to write an article series on Ebay, using my experiences to teach others. It sounded like a great idea, so here is the first installment in the how to sell on ebay article series. Through this collection of posts, I will explain to you anything you ever wanted to know about selling on Ebay, including those things that EBAY doesn’t want you to know!!

In all honesty, they are content to just take your money whether you succeed or not!!! I will help you figure out the complexities of Ebay, and how you can survive in the cut throat environment that is the internet’s largest online auction house.
The first installment I want to cover is how to pick a product to sell on Ebay. I’m not going to bother covering how to setup an account, pick a user name, setup a paypal account etc. These are three steps that are fairly easy to do, and you should have done those before even getting this far if you were going to sell anything online. If you haven’t already, do so now, and then continue reading.

Now as I said, picking a product is the hardest part. If nobody is buying, you’re not going to make any money. I’m going to take a few lines now and talk about the most important things to consider when picking a product if you’re going to do this right. Might as well do it right from the get go, and let me teach you how!!

Rule Number 1 - Pick a Unique Product

If you’re not selling something unique, you’re not going to succeed. By all means, you can make up a store of a million common items, and you will make sales based on the fact that you have so many things, but in the end, that is just a huge pain in the ass, and it won’t be worth your while. Ebay fees will eat up any of your profits, and you will have just wasted your time. I will discuss ebay fees in a later chapter.

If you’re thinking of selling something on Ebay, do some simple searches first, and find out who else is selling that same thing. If you’ve got 20 people selling a certain item, you might have an oversaturated market, and thats not good for anyone. Once you find something that is hard to find on Ebay, then you might be onto something!

Rule Number 2 - DROP SHIPPING BLOWS!!!

That’s right, you don’t have to get your eyes checked, I said it. DROP SHIPPING STINKS!!! Avoid drop shipping at all costs!!! I myself have used drop shippers, and I will tell you exactly why you should NOT use them!!

For the reason why you shouldn’t - SEE RULE NUMBER 1!!!

The reason is the simple fact that ever since drop shipping became popular, everyone and his dog is doing drop shipping on Ebay! This means that you will have a market flooded with identical products, with each of these sellers trying to undercut the other, despite the fact that they are all dealing with the same wholesale prices.

This leads to a saturated market, and the only one that is making any money is the drop shipper!! Not only this, but often drop shippers will sell out of a product, and you won’t know until you go to buy it after someone has bought, or they will take their time to ship and this will also tick the customer off. The last thing you need is to tick your customers off, as it will only lead to bad feedback.

Rule Number 3 - Make your Auction Look Pretty

Now if you’ve finally figured out something that you want to sell, you best be sure that you make the auction look appealing. My suggestion is to either learn some basic HTML, or get an HTML editor like Frontpage or Dreamweaver. By making an attractive auction, a buyer will be more informed about what you are selling, and much more willing to buy your product. Would you rather by a drink from a run down bar, or an upscale restaurant?? Presentation is everything people!!

Another thing you should invest in is some webspace. Use this webspace to store additional photos of your products to include in your descriptions. It is much cheaper than paying Ebay whatever they want to charge you for adding extra photos, and you can specify the size and placement within the auction itself. Pictures speak a thousand words after all!!

Rule Number 4 - Describe your Item Accurately

This is quite possibly the most important part of the whole process. After you’ve picked your item, make the listing look pretty, and are thinking of listing it, make sure that the item is described 100% as accurately as humanly possible. This will not only increase the chances that someone will buy it, as they will be confident that your item is legit, but it will decrease the chances for any problems later on.

By problems, I mean poor feedback and chargebacks due to items significantly not as described. Those are the worst, and can be common if the description is poor.

This goes especially for second hand items. If it is less than perfect, be sure to detail every single flaw you could possibly find, otherwise you might come across something like this: “This item has a chip in it that wasn’t described!! I want my money back or I’m giving you a negative feedback!”

Really annoying, and will happen if you don’t take care to describe your items accurately.

So that’s it for my first installment of How to Sell on Ebay!! Hope to see you guys back for round two :).

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