7 Reasons Why You Should open An Ebay Shop

No serious business can exist without a shop to display its goods. Ebay is the same. If you want to become a serious ebay seller with a recurring income then opening a basic store is a must. Here’s seven reasons why opening an ebay store is essential to grow your business..

1. Gives you instant credibility by having a regular web presence.

2. Allows you to list hundreds of products for customers to browse.

3. allows you to automate the repetitive tasks associated with online selling. This will save you lots of time to devote to more productive areas of your business.

4. Allows you to market more effectively

5. allows you to build relationships with your customers and guarntee repeat sales.

6. Get free reports about your sales. This is crucial to see what’s happening in your business. You need to get access to what’s happening so you can make informed decisions and formulate stratergies to grow your business.As your business grows and your inventory and activity increases, you need all the help you can get.

7.Gives you more exposure. Ebay reports that people who open a store receive a 25% increase in sales within 3 months. You are guarnteed more exposure by having your products permanently online for potential customers to view any time of the day.

A shop will prove you are serious about starting a business. It will be a committment to yourself that you are not just an occasional ebay seller but a professional trader. If you haven’t already done so, take the next step and open a shop.

Finding A Genuine Wholesaler

If you’re serious about starting an online business then Ebay is your fastest route to achieving this. This is most online businesses first step into the world of online trading. And for good reason. You can get up on running on ebay within an hour. What you need to distinguish though is between selling the odd item on ebay and selling a range of products constantly on a daily basis.

The difference is one is a hobby and the other is a business. A lot of people buy some stock from an auction or other supplier, place it on ebay, sell it then come to a dead stop. Wondering what to sell next. They then spend a few months soucing something else to sell. This is a nice way to earn a little extra cash but it’s not a business. If you want to create a serious business on ebay you need to establish your supply line so you can restock as soon as you see you stock selling. You need a supplier who will be able to resupply you within days.This step comes after you have done all your research and decided what you are selling.

Once you’ve decided what to sell your next goal is to find a supplier who sells the products at a price that enables you to make a profit. Ideally you want to buy direct from the manufacturer as this will guarntee that you get the product at the cheapest prices. Realistically though, as a small trader buying from the manufacturer is not practical. Manufacturers want you to buy in large bulk quantities and will not sell small quantities of items.

As a small trader you need to find a genuine wholesaler. I say genuine because there are a lot of people out there claiming to be wholesalers who are retailers: Type in a search for the products you are interested in in google putting “supplies” or “wholesalers” after the products and see what comes up.

You will get pages of companies claiming to be wholesalers. The question is are they genuine wholesalers or companies buying from the wholesalers and selling the products on at just under retail prices? Your research, if you have done it right, will have come up with the average selling price of the products you want to sell. If the prices from the sites claiming to be wholesalers are too close to the selling prices your research has uncovered then you can safely conclude that they are retailers and not wholesalers.

Most of the companies advertising themselves as wholesalers on the net are really retailers. You need to make sure you get to the genuine wholesaler so you can get the products you want at the cheapest prices possible. The less people between you and the manufacturer the cheaper you will get the products for.

Most genuine wholesalers usually only have a small presence on the web. They don’t usually have online catalogues, some do but many don’t. They usually have hard copy paper catalogues that they send you when you sign up with them. So what’s the best way to ensure you get a genuine wholesaler for your products?

It took me a while to discover the best way to locate genuine wholesalers. Once I did discover the best way it was so simple I can’t believe I didn’t think of it straight away. All you need to do is look at the packaging the product you want to sell is in and get the manufacturer’s name off it. Search for the manufacturer on the net. The manufacturer’s website will have a customer service section or sales department. Simply send them an email explaining you would like to stock their products and can they supply you with details of the wholesalers who stock their products.

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This works every time. The manufacturer will send you a list of the wholesalers who stock their products. You can be assured that these are genuine wholesalers. All you need to do then is contact the wholesaler and apply for an account. Once you are accepted they will send you one of their catalogues. The catalogue will contain lots of other products which you can add to your inventory./p>

Establishing a good secure supply line is one of the major building blocks you need to put in place before launching your business. Spend some time doing this. Ensure you can get the products you want at the price you want. make sure you can get resupplied fast. This is crucial for a genuine business. Without a supply line you can never be a genuine professional business.,/p>

Getting Traffic To Your Ebay Shop

When summer comes, things can start to slow down a bit with online sales. People prefer to be outside in the sun,enjoying themselves rather than sat on their computers. Who can blame them I do too. What it means to online traders is the traffic may start to fall to your website or eBay store. The sales trend line usually dips for a few months for many online traders. Instead of sitting back and accepting this, you can engage in some proactive marketing to pull the traffic in.

What never fails for me is putting auctions up on EBay to get people into my shop. During the winter months, I don’t bother with auctions, preferring to sell everything from my shop using BIN. I get plenty of traffic and plenty of sales with little effort. As summer approaches, and things start t slow down, my strategy is to put some auctions up. I see this as advertising. I’ll choose a few items and put them up for auction. I stagger the items and always put them up for 10 days. My objective is not to sell the item fast for a high price, if I get a good price for the item that’s great, but it’s not important.

The purpose of the auction is to get exposure for my shop. Auctions on eBay are highly visible. EBay is, after all, an online auction house. Auctions are its mainstay and EBay gives them plenty of exposure. With an auction running, people will come to visit it. When they see your auction, they will then be tempted to visit your shop listings and buy something.

This always works for me. Things had started to slow down a little so I put my first summer auction up three days ago. The result is sales have picked up again over the last few days due to the exposure the auction is bringing me. I look at auctions purely as advertising. Businesses are happy to pay for a classified in a newspaper with no guarantee of success and usually at great expense. I use auctions the same way on EBay. They’re my ads. The bonus is they’re cheap and they work.

I always start the auction cheap to attract interest. As I’ve already mentioned selling the item is a bonus. Many times auctions I’ve put up have been won for a price lower than I would normally sell the item for. I’m still happy because the sales I make in my shop on the back of the auction make it all worthwhile. You’d be surprised at how effective auctions can be at increasing the traffic to your shop.

Over the summer, I’ll be staggering auctions every month to keep the traffic flowing into my shop. Don’t just sit back and accept low traffic to your shop, get out there and do some aggressive marketing. Auctions are so easy to do and yet so effective. Try it and see.

Keep Your Ebay Costs Down

If you are starting your online trading adventure on Ebay, which is the fastest and easiest way to start, then you need to get on top of the costs straight away. Keeping a tight control on costs is essential to creating any successful business whether online or off and it’s equally essential with Ebay. The costs of selling on Ebay have risen sharply over the last year so if you don’t keep an eye on your costs they will eat into your profit base and you could end up working for nothing. In which case you are more a charity than a business. Here’s a few tips to keeping your costs down.

Host Your Pictures Outside Of Ebay

Good pictures are crucial to the success of your sales. At the moment Ebay allows you one picture free. The rest you have to pay for. In my experience I sell more on Ebay if I use at least three pictures of the product I have for sale. Pictures taken from different angles have a powerful effect to your listing. You want to keep your ebay fees down though so avoid buying extra pictures from ebay. Instead use an independant picture hosting service. I use Photobucket to add other pictures to my listings. It’s a free service and it allows me to put as many pictures as I like into the listing. I usually do three.

Don’t just relist items automatically

Avoid just relisting items without examining them first. I list products for 30 days. If I have not sold any of a particular product over that time scale. I examine the listing. How many visitors has it had? If it’s had quiet a few but not made a sale I will look closely at the description. Can I improve on it. The same with the pictures. I personally will not drop the price once I set it. I set the price to achieve my desired mark-up while covering the costs of selling on Ebay. I see no point in selling on Ebay if you are not earning more than Ebay on each sale. If you have an item that isn’t selling ensure the description is good and the pictures are done well. Relist the item for a further 30 days and see what happens. If after four relistings it hasn’t sold then you should consider dropping the item from your stock list. Every time you relist an item it costs you in Ebay fees. If you have a number of items to relist these costs can soon mount up. I personally remove slow selling items from my Ebay listings and leave them on my website where they don’t cost me anything to sell.

Don’t Compete On Price

This is a recipe for disaster. You’re not Tescos and unless you’re buying items by the thousands you can’t compete on price. There will always be someone selling cheaper than you. Let them. Make sure you achieve your desired margin on each sale you make. You’re working for yourself not Ebay.

It’s not just the costs you pay financially to Ebay there’s also the cost in time you devote to your business. Make sure you factor all this into your prices. Take postage for example. This isn’t just the actual cost of sending the package. There’s also the packaging and more importantly the time it takes you to wrap the product. If it’s a large item and requires me to go into the post office with it I factor that charge into the postage costs. The buyer can see the postage before he agrees to buy the item, by buying the item he accepts it. Your time comes at a cost. Make sure you charge for it.

Track Every Item You Have For Sale

This just comes down to being professional in your business. Keep a track of every item you are selling. You will soon build up information about your products this way. I use a simple excel file. I input my products into it and record each sale, each time I’ve listed it etc. After a few months you will have gathered some important data that you can use to make informed and logical business decisions.If you’ve had an item listed for six months and it hasn’t sold then it’s time to dump it, and stop ordering it. By keeping a close check on your products you will soon discover what products to invest your money in and what to avoid.

Keeping a close check on every item you are selling can reduce your ebay costs. Avoid relisting items haphazardly without any thought. By treating your business professionally you can use Ebay to sell and promote your products rather than Ebay using you as a cash cow.

Sales Slowing On Ebay

Sales on Ebay seem to be slowing down a little. I’ve noticed people are complaing in the forums about slow sales. I’ve also noticed a slight drop in my own sales. The question is is this because of the recession? Is because of Ebay pulling their adds to save money and please their stock holders? Or is it just the time of year? It’s probably something to do wth all three reasons.

There’s no doubt that Ebay’s decison last year to pull some advertising has affected the amount of traffic it is attracting. As its stock plummets. The changes it made last year, many of which were unpopular with sellers, have forced many sellers away. The huge cost of selling on ebay has also stopped people who might have just sold a few items from their home from listing them. If Ebay is the only one going to make a profit from it then why bother. This means unique sellers selling a wide variety of items are disappearing taking with them one of Ebay’s early selling points; that you could find anything on Ebay. The problem is, when sellers pack up and leave, buyers soon learn that the marketplace is not as full and the chances of a bargain diminishing so they don’t bother turning up. The end result is a market with few buyers and sellers won’t stand that for long. They can’t afford to.

It’s easy to check if your slow ebay sales is down to ebay. If you have a shop check your traffic stats using overture. If your traffic is down significantly then ebay is not pulling in the buyers. It doesn’t matter what you do you will not sell products if you don’t have any buyers turning up. If your traffic is down contact ebay and ask why. You have a right to know. You are paying them a lot of money on the basis of their traffic pulling capabilities. If they are failing in this then they are not fulfilling their part of the agreement.

What about the weather? There’s no doubt that when the sun comes out people like to get outside rather than sit on their computers. Who can blame them, I love to get outside too. I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting on a computer on a hot sunny day. Days end however and the night draws in and the compouter screens flicker back to life. So realistically sales may drop off slightly in summer for most items, (they’ll probably increase for summer items like sun glasses) the weather shouldn’t effect sales too much. I notice my own sales dropping off in summer before leveling out and then rising towards the back of summer. my best month last year was September. So we can expect some drop in sales online during the summer but not a significant one.

We also have the recession to deal with. How this effects your sales depends on what products you are selling. To be fair we don’t really know to what extent the recession is going to hit us yet. Are we going to see empty ebay shops with brush weed blowing round the virtual counters that were once bursting with products? I doubt it. Even in a recession most people stay in work and their buying power increases. I don’t think we can blame the recession entirely for the sales slump some people are experiencing on bay. If you have a website compare how this is performing. If sales on the website are constant and sales on ebay are falling then the problem is ebay.

Selling online is all about traffic, same as selling in a real market. I used to go to a computer market, it started to go down, slowly but the trend was obvious. Less and less people were attending and consequently we were all making less and less sales. We persevered, hoping that next week things would be better. The promoter assured us it would be and he blamed everything he could think of for the fall in people. You can’t go on throwing money away not to mention the effort required to sell items so sooner or later you have to leave. We did and saved a lot of money.

If your ebay sales are slow you need to find out why. First check that you are getting traffic to your shop. If you are not ask ebay why. Draw their attention to it. Even if you only have a few items ask them what’s happening, you’ve a right to know. you’re a paying customer. If you are getting traffic but no sales then the problem is with you and your stock. Are you over priced? Have you listed it correctly? Is there a competitor much cheaper than you? Look into all these things to try to pin point the reason.

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