Time Of Opportunity

We are living in possibly the best time in history to become an entrepreneur. New technology has made the world smaller and made it possible for anyone to start a business from his or her own home for minimum cost.

You don’t need to have any kind of licence; you don’t need lots of money. You don’t need to have any qualifications, your age is irrelevant, your race is irrelevant, and your past is irrelevant. All you need is the self-belief, the will and an idea and you are good to go. The only thing that can hold you back is yourself. You can be creating a small income online within a day.

You can begin building your own wealth now, all you need to do is take action. Everybody and anybody can start a small business and begin creating wealth. I was listening to a conversation recently where a man was complaining to one of his friends that he was only getting £60.00 a month from his company pension.

He looked fit and strong yet he was limiting his lifestyle to £60.00 a month. Do you know how easy it is to earn that money on the internet? With a little effort, he could be earning hundreds of pounds a month.

So what puts people off starting their own wealth-building plan? It’s laziness. Most people are not prepared to put in the effort required to start their own part-time enterprise.

Make no mistake it does require some effort, especially at the beginning. You will need to learn a new skill set, which will require you putting in some study time.

You will need to step out of your comfort zone and move into new areas. One of the biggest reasons I heat from people who want to start a business but keep putting it off is that they don’t have the time.

This is just an excuse. We can all find 15 hours a week. Just turn off the TV, stop idly surfing the internet, don’t buy anymore computer games, and the time you will free up will be enough to put into a wealth-building plan.

It really is a great time to become an entrepreneur; there are no restrictions. All you need is a plan and the determination to implement it.

If you’ve been thinking about starting your own business, then get working on the plan and take advantage of the opportunities available to you today.

Pricing Your Products On Ebay

Competing on price on EBay is a sure way to disaster. Sellers who employ this strategy will find themselves at best working for nothing and at worse losing money. The eBay market place is full of different types of sellers who are all employing different strategies to achieve their specific goals. There is, for example the big players. These are guys who own large businesses and will use eBay to dump stock on. They may not be bothered about making a profit they just want rid of their stock so they’ll sell it at a low price.
You also have the big players who use eBay to attract customers to their websites. They will sell products below the market value knowing that once they hook a buyer they will then up sell other products to make a profit.
You also have people selling personal items that they no longer want, or unwanted gifts so they will sell these for a low price and of course you will have people selling products illegally, copies etc. For a new seller to enter this market place and try to compete on price is business suicide.
I write from experience as well as thorough reviews and experiments. In my early days of trading, I did try to compete on price and I paid the price for that folly. I run an online arts store www.artscraftsandhobbies.co.uk and I have my own eBay store Arts, crafts & Hobbies. A part of my inventory consists of painting instruction DVDs. When I first started trading, I started on eBay and I priced the DVDs low at £10.00 each. Now art instruction DVDs are quiet expensive, they retail for between £18.00 up to £60.00. I had a supplier who provided me them at a good price.
As I said, I originally priced them at £10.00, which didn’t leave me much of a margin but I was naïve,and as you know we all have to pay to learn. After engaging in quiet a lot of studying and experimenting, I saw that price increases didn’t affect my sales at all. So, I took the decision to raise my prices substantially. For example, I increased the price of my DVDs from £10.00 to £14.99.
Now this is a substantial increase but in reality, it’s around what I should have charged originally. My reasoning was simple I would have to take a huge hit on sales to actually lose revenue, I worked out it would have to be something around a 35% drop. If sales did drop by that amount then I would be still earning the same income level from less work. Sounded like a good deal to me.
Now here’s the strange thing. My sales in the first month of the price increase went up. I sold more DVDs that month than any previous month since I had started trading. And they have remained steady. I also sell plenty of products in my store that other sellers sell cheaper.
I do not try to compete on price. When I add a new product to my store I don’t even look at what others may be selling it for, I’m not interested. I price the product using my own system, which takes into account eBay and PayPal fees and gives me my profit margin. I’m not doing this to make eBay rich or to give things away. I’m doing this to build up an income for me and my family. I want rewarding for the work I put into my business otherwise it’s pointless.
So if you’re thinking about entering the eBay marketplace don’t get fixated on the prices others are charging for their products. Take your cost price and add eBay and PayPal fees then add your profit margin and that’s your selling price. Be professional and focused. People don’t just buy on price and you probably don’t want to do business with those who do. Other factors come into play like how well you have listed your item, feedback and trust. Experiment a little and see what happens.
Keep Trading

Paul

Using Keywords To Get Your Products Noticed

Any market is only as good as the as the amount of customers it brings to the venue. The job of a market manager is to bring customers through the doors, that’s what sellers pay for, once the customers are in, then the market has done its job, it’s then down to the sellers to sell their products. EBay has done its job.  Millions of customers come to the site daily, as sellers it’s now up to us to get our products in the sights of potential customers.  It’s no good listing hundreds of products if no one can find them. So how can we increase our chance of getting our products noticed?

One of the simplest yet overlooked ways to make our listings more visible is the use of keywords. Keywords in the title of our listing will help to get our products under the noses of potential customers. So what exactly are keywords? Website owners and those familiar with search engine optimization seek to maximize their use of keywords because they know it’s an effective way of getting their products noticed. For the uninitiated, keywords are basically the words people type into searches to find a product.

When you list an item on eBay the first thing you fill in is the title. This is important. What you put into the title will determine how visible your product becomes and how easy it will be to find for potential customers.  Writing your title is a skill and you need to take your time over it. You have 55 characters and you need to use them all effectively to enhance the chance of your listing being seen. Let’s say for example, I’m selling an in car DVD player.  I’ve seen one where the seller had just put “DVD player” as the title. This is not the way to sell an item.

Remember you have 55 characters to get your listing noticed; you’ve paid for them so make them work for you. Back to my DVD player. If I was selling one I would list the full model:

Philips 7in twin screen in car DVD

Now I’ve listed exactly what it is I’m selling. If someone is looking for a Philips in car DVD player, my listing will show up in their search results. I have also though used keywords to spread my net wider. What if someone just types in “in car DVD player”? I’m still covered in my title. If someone types in “DVD player”, I’m still covered and my listing should show up. I haven’t put “player” on the end because I don’t want to waste my remaining characters which I can use for other keywords. Now think, what other words could people use to search for an in car DVD player? Maybe “in car entertainment” I can add this to the title:

Philips 7in twin screen in car DVD in car entertainment

Now you’re probably going to say, it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t matter; you can make it nice and neat in your description. Your title is to get your listing coming up in the searches. Use every character if possible. Think out of the box. Once you’ve written what your product is, model, name, tech details etc, use the remaining characters to add other descriptions that people may refer to your product as.

Don’t waste your title by describing your product as “new” or “great” etc. These are all things that you can explain in the description; with only 55 characters you can’t afford to waste them. Notice I used the number 7 and didn’t spell it out. By doing so I saved four characters. The objective of utilising keywords in your title is to get your listing hit by hungry buyers not to win a grammar test.

Here’s a few essentials when using your title:

• You don’t need to use plurals. EBay’s search engine will find the item whether singular or plural
• Write numbers rather than spell them out
• Don’t waste characters by using adjectives like “great2 2good” etc. You can mention this in your descriptions.
• Check your spelling. Some people search eBay for misspelled titles, looking to get things cheap. If you’ve got an auction running and you’ve mis-spelled the word few people will find it. Those who do may get it cheaper than you wanted to sell it for.
• Can’t think of alternative descriptions. Look at the titles of other eBay sellers, especially the successful ones. Copy them
• Think outside of the box, use your imagination.

More Focus Pays Off

I’ve been allowing myself to get overwhelmed recently with too many projects. I’m working on rebranding my eBay shop, this involves relisting every item, between 250 and 300 products.

I’m using a standard template for all my products so they will look more attractive and contain all the information about the product and terms clearly stated. It also requires me taking new pictures.

This is all a part of my rebranding strategy. I’m also doing some work on my website, keeping my blog going and I’m working on some internet marketing which involves me learning new things about building sites. It’s all so time consuming.

Over the last week, I’ve become a little frustrated because I was trying to do a bit of everything but felt like I was achieving nothing. So, on Friday, I decided to take some decisive action. From now on, I’m only going to concentrate on one project at a time.

I’m going to focus on it totally until it is completed. I will of course, still have to do day to day things, like keep my blog up to date and deal with eBay, but as far as projects go, I’m going to pin them down until they are done, finished, before I move onto another one.

I’ve implemented this new system this weekend and I’m pleased with the results. The hours that I’ve been working I’ve focused totally on one project, forgetting everything else. The project in question involves me building a little site, which has meant I’ve had to do some learning as I’ve been going along. I’ve now reached the position where I’ve almost completed the site. I’m amazed! I’ve done this by focusing for small amounts of time on one thing only. I broke my time down into forty minutes of total focus on the job I was doing. After forty minutes, I took a break then started again.

I now actually feel like I’m accomplishing things. I feel like I’ve achieved a lot this weekend without impinging on my family time. I also took some time out to do some housekeeping on my computer.

I had accumulated over a hundred EBooks on various subjects; I decided to throw them all off along with everything else that was sucking time from me. I’ve unsubscribed from all but a handful of my favourite business and life interest blogs.

So, it’s been a good weekend, I’m writing this post with my feet on the desk after just returning from an hour and half cycle ride. I can feel the sweat running down my neck and my body is encased in a warm glow, one of my dogs is staring at me, wanting to go out, and my wife and son are arguing downstairs.

Life! Love It! Live It! Well better take the dog out then.

Multiple EBay Accounts

Having a number of different eBay accounts is a good idea and allows you more flexibility in selling. Many of the top eBay sellers operate multiple accounts. The idea behind it is simple, it allows you to use one account to specialize in a certain niche where your shop can become recognized as selling to that niche and repeat customers will come to you.

You can then use another account to sell general items that would dilute your brand name if you put them through your niche shop. For example, if I sold dinky toy cars from my niche shop. Toy car collectors would visit to check my items. I could brand myself as an authority in this niche.

After a while, people would start to trust me and come to my shop for their cars. If I then started to add unrelated items, like camping equipment, MP3s and other products. I would lose my branding as a toy car specialist; I would become more of a general seller. Toy car enthusiasts would desert my shop because I would have diluted my brand. They would no longer see me as an authority.

The way round this is to have separate accounts. If I did sell toy cars, I would have a shop specifically for that product and stick with it. Looking to build up credibility as an authority on this subject. Once you gain that credibility, you are guaranteed repeat custom to your shop.

I also want to keep my options open however, and have the flexibility to sell general items. If I see a local auction that’s selling items I think I can sell on eBay to build up some cash, I want to be able to do that. Without damaging my toy car shop. The way is to just open another account on eBay. Use this account for general selling and the other account for niche selling. You get the best of both worlds.

Once you’ve got yourself some experience on eBay then opening another account is a good idea to give you more selling flexibility and build that pension money quicker.

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