Don’t Let Your Margins Slip Away

Don’t let your margins slip away.

I was just reading a post in a forum about an eBay trader who was bemoaning the fact that she’d been selling some items at a loss without realising it. I have to confess that in my early days of trading I also made the same mistake on one or two items. Believe it or not it’s an easy mistake to make. In my case I was so busy uploading products as I increased my stock from about twenty items to around two hundred and fifty items that I didn’t apply enough attention when listing the products.

As soon as I realised what I’d done I went through each product and ensured it was priced correctly. The woman in the forum had made the mistake of equating turnover with profit. It’s an easy mistake to make; you are busy so you must be making money right? Wrong. You need to ensure you have your profit margins just right. This is easy if you are selling through your own website because you have no fees to pay apart from PayPal. The rest is free.

It can be a little bit trickier on eBay though because of the fees eBay charges. If you’re not careful the only people who are making a profit are eBay, they get their fees no matter what. So what’s the best way to set the right price for your product? There’s a number of strategies that you can employ to ensure you receive maximum value for your time.

To begin with don’t view eBay as a hobby. It’s a market place and you should enter it like you would any other marketplace, that’s professionally. Your eBay shop may not be bricks and mortar but it still performs the same function. Your objective is to make a profit. You need paying for your time and you need wealth to grow your business and achieve your plans.

You must be aware of all the costs eBay imposes on you to sell your products. These costs have risen over the last year and it’s easy to fail to take some things into consideration. For example if an item doesn’t sell and you relist it you have incurred another listing cost, this has reduced your profit margin.

A good way to ensure you keep on top of your product listings, and this does get complicated if you have a few hundred listings, is to make a spreadsheet. On the spreadsheet list your product, how much you paid for it, your eBay costs and your profit. If eBay costs rise then you have to decide whether to absorb them yourself or pass them on. Personally I pass them on to maintain my margins.

My own pricing strategy is simple, it’s;

Cost price + profit margin + 8% (eBay final value fee for bronze power seller) + listing fee + PayPal fee = Selling Price.

Of course when I sell through my website the only fee I have to pay is the PayPal fee. Make sure you’re aware of all the eBay fees you will incur and ensure you take them into account when listing your items. When you start increasing the number of products you have listed it’s even more essential that you stay on top of your pricing otherwise you’ll find yourself like the woman on the forum. Kicking yourself because you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to give an item away.

How To Become More Productive

We all know the feeling. It’s the end of the day and we are overcome with feelings of frustration because we didn’t accomplish what we set out to do. The day started well, full of the best intentions, we had a “to do” list and we intended to do them. But we spent an hour or two on mindlessly surfing the internet, we were diverted by other things. We engaged in unproductive activity, which meant we finished the day without accomplishing the goals we had set. This leaves us feeling annoyed and frustrated. Ok, stop beating yourself up, it happens to us all.

Over the last year, I have discovered how to increase personal productivity without working any harder. To begin with, let’s dispel the myth that productivity means working fourteen hours a day until we feel like dropping. It doesn’t. It can actually mean working fewer hours. What’s important is that we use the time we have to the maximum.

We do this by focused attention. Yes, that’s right focused attention. What do I mean? It’s simple. Think about when you are doing something, how focused are you really? Is part of your mind somewhere else? Are you thinking about what you’re going to do when you finish the task in hand? Are you thinking about tomorrow, or the weekend? If you are, you are diluting your focus and consequently your ability to do the task in hand.

It’s better to spend twenty minutes totally focused on a task than two hours half focused. Believe me you will accomplish more. In order to make your business successful you need to use the time you have available to maximum effect. The success of your business will depend on how well you are able to focus your time on it.

Learn to focus totally on a task. Start by doing it in thirty-minute bursts to begin with. Once you start a task focus totally on that task. Nothing else should come into your mind, if it does ignore it and continue with the task. I have at the moment, a number of things to do in my own business. I need to upgrade parts of my website, I need to engage in some SEO to promote my blog, I need to get some packages ready for posting and answer some emails. I know I have to do these things and more but now I am focused totally on writing this blog post.

Once the post is finished, I will edit it and check it for errors. When I am happy with it, I will upload it. Until I have accomplished this task, I will not do anything else. Forget about multi tasking. Doing two things at the same time. This results in neither of them been done right, and will eventually waste more time as you will have to rectify the problems caused by your lack of focus.

You need to adopt the Buddhist practice of present moment awareness. Give all your attention to the present moment. Whatever you are doing, do it with one hundred percent focus. Where ever you are be there one hundred percent. If you are making a cup of tea then make it with a hundred percent focus. When you are working on your business then do it with one hundred percent focus. This is not only the way to push your business forward and achieve your dreams; it’s also the way to inner peace. So the next time you sit down at your computer to answer some emails, do it with total focused attention and you’ll be amazed at how your productivity increases. Until next time….

Give Your Ebay Listings That Little Extra

Image goes a long way to enhancing your EBay listings and making them more attractive to sellers. The right presentation of your products on EBay can give you the edge over your competitors. The big retailers know this that’s why they employ people to design their shop window displays. It catches people’s eye and they are more likely to go into the shop and buy something.

There’s ways to improve your EBay presentation without increasing your listing fees. EBay allows you to have one free picture then you have to pay if you want more. I’m going to show you how you can get three pictures on your listing for no extra cost and how to use a template to make your listings more attractive.

Have a look at this listing of mine on EBay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Charles-Reids-Watercolour-Secrets_W0QQitemZ250332622815QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Crafts_DrawingSupplies_EH?hash=item250332622815&_trksid=p4634.c0.m14 Notice that as well as the standard EBay picture at the top, I also have three additional pictures down the centre, giving potential buyers glimpses of what’s contained on the DVD.

The way it’s done is simple. I use an image hosting service called “photobucket” for hosting the pictures on their server and link to them from eBay. This is a great way to get extra pictures on EBay free. And the great thing is Photobucket is a free service so go over their site after you have read this post and sign up.

The yellow border on my listing is created using another free program called “Template-O-matic, find it here: http://www.template-o-matic.com/index.php .

So how do you bring it all together? It’s simple, just follow these steps and you’re away with improved listings.

Sign up with Photobucket, this is free and simple. Once you have created your account, take three good pictures of the product you are listing. Make the pictures good, you can take photos from different angles, under different light etc. Edit the photos in Photoshop or some other editor. Once you are happy with them up load them to photobucket.

When you have uploaded the photos, you will see that each image you have uploaded has a name and a web address of the image. Now once the photos are uploaded move over to template-o-Matic and write your listing details in the template. Give as much information as you can in a friendly way about your product.

You will see in template-)-matic that there are three sections to include photos, each with a box to tick. Tick on the first box to input your first photo. Go back to Photobucket and copy the web address of the image you want to display. In Template-o-Matic copy this web address in the first picture address bar.

You now have the picture in the template. Do the same or the other two pictures. Once you have all pictures inserted and you have finished writing your listing click on the “view template” button to see you listing. If you are happy with it scroll down a little and you will see a box with HTML code inside. Copy this code.

Go to EBay and copy this code into the HTML window and you have your listing with three extra pictures and no additional listing fees.

Your listings will now have that little extra attractiveness about them. Much better than a boring “this is a …..” listing. In a crowded market place you need to get any edge that you can and attractive listings will give you that little bit of magic. Potential buyers will stay on your page a little longer to view the extra photos, and if you choose nice calm colours for your template, they will be more relaxed inducing them to be more inclined to buy. That’s it for now. Keep trading and building up your income. Remember the best fund manager is yourself. The best investment you can make is in yourself. You could of course invest your money in those trusted institutions called banks. Yeah right

How To Research Whether A Product Will Sell On Ebay

EBay has some fantastic built in tools, which if used correctly are excellent market research for the product you are thinking of selling. Before deciding to invest in a product to resell on EBay it’s common sense to check a number of things about that product. For example, is the market already saturated? How much can I hope to get for this product? You need to find out what buyers are prepared to pay for the product you are selling. If you’re hoping to sell an item for £100.00 but they are selling on eBay for £80.00 then you need to rethink your strategy.

So, how do we find out what a specific product is selling for? It’s really simple; we use the eBay search function. Let’s say I want to sell a Blackberry Pearl 8120 mobile phone. I’ve found a place where I can purchase them for a reasonable price and I need to know what I could expect to sell them for on EBay. How do I find out?

Just follow me here: first go to the eBay search function and click on “advanced search”. This will open up the advanced search page. The first thing you will notice is that it has so many more choices than the standard search page.

I will enter my product description. Be specific here. I am looking for a Blackberry Pearl 8120 so that is exactly what I will type. In the “in this category” field on the drop down menu, I will put mobile and home phones.

Further, down you will see a field titled “search including” Under this is a box labelled “completed listings” tick this box. The completed listings box will show me all the finished listings for my item, this is the information I want to know. This is where I will discover what people are paying for this particular phone.

As you can see, there are many other options on this page to narrow the search down. For this demonstration, however I will leave it as it is and click search. And Hey Presto! I get the first of many pages showing me how much the phone is selling for and the dates when they were sold. Included in this page are accessories as well as the phone. I don’t want to know about these so I will click “mobile phones” on the side of the page. This removes everything except the phones and I have instant factual research right in front of my eyes.

I can see how many phones have been sold. These are shown in green, and I can see what failed to sell, displayed in red. This is crucial information. I can now spend an hour going through the selling prices of the phones. I would use a spreadsheet to input this in. from that I can establish an average selling price.

I can see the highest selling price. I can also compare the way each seller has listed his or her item and what success it has brought. Again, this is crucial information. I can look at the phones that did not sell and ask myself why? Did the seller over price the phone? Was it because of poor presentation? Questions I need to answer.

After a few hours of research, I will have collected valuable information about this product. Crucial information, which will have answered some essential questions like:

How much can I expect to sell this product for?

What’s the average selling price?

How should I present this product?

What’s the best format to list it under?

What price is too high?

Is the market saturated?

Can I hope to make a profit?

This simple piece of research will answer all these questions for you. From here, I can make an informed decision about whether I should venture into this market or not.

Being successful on eBay is not simply about picking something up and putting it up for sale. If you want to make money, you need to be professional. You need to research your market. This will save you money in the end and you will avoid costly mistakes. If you put an item on EBay for sale and no one buys it, you will have to pay relisting fees. Constant relisting can soon run up fees. By some good research, you can avoid this situation.

Retirement Plans Going Bad For Many People

The economic depression is not only destroyin jobs by the day it has wiped out many people’s dreams of retiring with some decent savings. Final salary pension’s schemes have nearly become extinct thanks to the meddling of politicians and the corrupt mismanagement of our financial masters. The result is the retirement plans of thousands of people have been destroyed because of the reduced pensions they can now expect to get. Those who have already retired have found their incomes cut drastically because of the drop in interest rates.

After a lifetime of hard work and paying taxes people who were looking, forwards to some happy years in retirement have found themselves victims of a corrupt financial system and the mismanagement of the economy by successive governments. As usual, it’s the people who have paid all the taxes, who have done everything they were advised to do, who are suffering.

It’s workers in the private sector who are shouldering the burden. A decade ago, their pensions were good, many of them being final salary schemes. When Gordon Brown decided to raid the private pension, schemes to fund more social engineering the pensions hit the rocks and have never recovered. Nice work from a guy who’s own pension will be paid by the rest of us.

Many people in the private sector who were planning to retire have now had to change their plans and continue to work. These are the lucky ones. Those who have already retired find themselves struggling on their private pension just to make ends meet. It’s the vast majority of decent honest people who are made to pay for government mismanagement and financial corruption.

Nearly 10% of respondents aged between 50 and 69 to a survey about retirement said they would not be retiring. Over 60% said they would have to work past the retirement age to be able to afford to retire. The problem is that 64% agree that it is almost impossible to find a job after the age of 55, as employers are reluctant to employ older members of the work force even though they may have a good skill set.

Amazingly over 40% of those surveyed over 50 have yet to start seriously planning for their retirement. One in four believes they will not have sufficient income to retire on and will have to supplement it by trying to bring in more income.

So after a lifetime of working and paying into the system most people are heading towards a retirement of poverty and hard times. Their pensions reduced by greed, mismanagement and corruption and their savings being wiped out in the credit crunch. No doubt, the people who have destroyed the pension funds, financial managers and politicians of all colours will have ensured they themselves will be well cared for in retirement.

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