Monday, July 28, 2008

Add eBay To Your Marketing Plans

You can add income to your business by extending your marketing plan to include eBay. We have a little eBay business and have brought in close to a quarter of a million dollars in the last four years. Here is a link to our eBay store: Del's Outlet along with a similar store on eBay's half.com: Del's Books. Primarily we sell used books, music and video, but we have sold many different things as well, including musical instruments, collectibles, and others.

If you think of eBay as a separate business as Delsoutlet.com is, it can be a good deal of work with small items, but if you think of it as an additional income stream for your existing business, it can be fun and very profitable. Who doesn't want another income stream?

An eBay store is a great way to get started and it is very inexpensive to start. From that store, you can list items as buy it now or best offer. It is recommended that you put a number of things on auction and keep working a few at a time in the auction venue while maintaining the store. It really is simple to do. I won't say that it is not work, because it does require effort, but anyone can learn to do it quickly. We can also help you with that if you like or there are quite a number of books available to give you advice. If you would like us to help you, we will come in an help you get online and functioning in very short order and use our experience on eBay to get you up to speed and making income quickly. You could be selling things today.

Do you have some things in your store that have been sitting for a long time that you wish would go away? Then the eBay store and auctions is a perfect venue to move that old merchandise. Do you have some unique items that could use some attention? Then eBay is a perfect place to show them off. Matter of fact, the more unique it is, the better it works.

Here's one of the best things that getting on eBay does for your business: You will become a worldwide business. We have shipped items to over 70 different countries all over the world. The world is our marketplace. Matter of fact, I get higher prices for items overseas than in the US market! That works for me. You will have to set up shipping, but we can help with that as well. It is very easy to do. We use Stamps.com as shown on the left bar of this blog and I highly recommend them. We print out shipping labels and the Post Office takes care of the rest. You can also do UPS or FedEx if you prefer. The US Postal Service does an awesome job for me and it is generally much less expensive.

If you haven't already, you will need to become familiar with PayPal with your eBay business. Over 200 million people have a PayPal account worldwide, so it is ever more popular as a payment method. If you have a store and a merchant account, you can take credit cards through your offline business. You will find PayPal to be very effective and easy for customers throughout the world and their rates are very reasonable.

The competition is fierce on eBay and that stops a lot of people from getting involved. Frankly, I just ignore it pretty much. I don't try to compete for the lowest price. There's no profit in that strategy. Better photographs, better descriptions, and patience will be your edge. I frequently sell items that are easily found for $1 and I sell them for $10. It is how you go about it that makes that difference. Then there are many on eBay who limit themselves by stating that they only ship to the contiguous 48 states, don't take PayPal, don't this, don't that and on and on. Each one of those items is limiting your sales. Take them all away and you are wide open to much opportunity! Remember, I make more on overseas sales in general mainly because I have no problem shipping there. I've shipped items as expensive as $1500 with no problems. Don't create unnecessary limits on your business. Be bold and unafraid. Two great questions to ask: 1. What am I really afraid of? and, 2. What's the worst thing that could happen? I have lots of customers in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain and many other countries.

Want to get started on your own? Click the icon on the left bar to start an eBay store. It costs about $9.95 per month for a basic store. Download Turbo Lister so you can list your items and keep a database as well. It's free. Get some information. eBay has loads of information and guides on their site. There are a number of books available as well and the most popular is called the The Official eBay Bible. With this method, you have a good learning curve. The other alternative is to hire us or someone else you may know who has a good deal of experience on eBay to guide you through and help you get up to speed quickly and save all the trial and error that we have already been through. This method will have superior results, but for a fee. You choose. Either way, adding eBay to your marketing plans can not only give you another income stream, but may turn out to be a very large one!

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