Most people can sell one or two items on eBay, but what do you need to do to take your sales volume to the next level?  The following are five easy tips for boosting your sales:

1. Improve your Profile

If you haven’t already filled out all the information on your About Me page, including a photograph that makes you look like Aunt Jemima rather than the Unibomber, this should be your first step.  Your About Me page can be a very effective promotional tool, and can include much more than a biography.  Take Ken Potter’s About Me page: http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=koinpro. Ken’s page includes a detailed curriculum vitae and offers a list of his educational articles.  It includes a bar of his favorite links, and an offer to sign up for his free newsletter, (which I’m sure he uses to gather email addresses to promote his business via direct marketing).  Ken has used his page to build a solid impression of reliability and knowledgability.

2. Offer a Money-Back Guarantee

You may be afraid to offer a money-back guarantee because you think every second item will be sent back for some arbitrary reason, but in fact most people don’t want to go to the time and hassle to return products, even if there is an issue.  The fact that you offer a guarantee will make people much more likely to buy from you, and you will probably take very few losses, especially if you’re honest and accurate in your listings.  If you prefer, you can offer a modified guarantee, such as “Returns within 30 days”, or “Full refund if item is not as described”.  Honoring your guarantee will help keep your all-important customer rating high.

3. Boost your Customer Satisfaction Rating

Despite your impeccable fulfillment of 10 or 20 sales, you may find that your customers aren’t actually rating you.  One of the best ways to ensure that customers post a positive rating is to give them a positive buyer rating yourself.  It’s also not out of line to send a polite message asking for a review.  If you are having a difficult time getting any ratings or any sales at all, try selling a few small, cheap items at cost purely for the experience and the rating boost.

4. Lessen your Auction Durations

This tip may seem counter-intuitive: after all, won’t your listings garner more views the longer they’re up for?  The answer is no.  Your listing will get the most attention in the Best Match and Time Ending Soonest results if your auction duration is shorter.  The majority of bids come in the last 24 hours, in part because a lot of people are like me: they treat eBay more like a garage sale than a silent auction.  Since I want to make immediate purchases, auctions that are closing in the next few hours and Buy It Now listings are the ones that I’m most likely to pay attention to.

5. Don’t Overcharge For Shipping

EBay buyers aren’t stupid – they know what shipping on a particular item should cost.  Your profit margin should not be padded by a mark-up on shipping costs.  At most, you should add an extra dollar to shipping for the time and materials required to package the item.  Don’t think you can get away with averaging out the item and shipping cost either – eBay will ban you if they catch you boosting your shipping prices to avoid paying fees on your final sale value.  And remember, even if you do fool somebody into paying ludicrous shipping fees, they’ll just torch your customer satisfaction rating later.

Once your eBay sales have increased, there are many more tools and applications you can use to take your sales from profitable to earth-shaking.  However, these tips should help you boost yourself from part-time dabbler to eBay professional.

eBay

Audio is one of the great secrets of eBay, an under-used tool that has been shown to boost overall sales volume and also bid prices on individual items.  Adding audio to your eBay listing personalizes your post – it makes your post more memorable and trustworthy for the buyer.  It also allows you to include more information about the product and point out important selling features.

What will audio do for my listings?

The results of adding audio to your eBay listing are incontrovertible.  To give an example, in his article 77 Tips and Tools for Selling on the New EBay, Skip McGrath relates how he saw an immediate increase in sales when he began using audio in his online auctions.  He was selling fire pit barbeques in the $200 range, averaging about one BBQ sold per week.  After he added audio, he began to sell one a day.  To fully test his theory, his sold a number of Starbucks collectibles in identical auctions, half with and half without audio.  The audio auctions received more bidders and sold for as much as 22% more than the control group.

How can you add audio to your eBay auction?

You can add audio in a number of ways.  One of the easiest is to use a tool like Seller’s Voice to record audio via the phone or your computer’s microphone and upload it to your eBay post.  The benefit of using this kind of tool is that it runs using flash and is compatible with most buyer’s computers.  The downside is, of course, that they charge a monthly fee of around$29, though you can try it out for $1.

Whichever method of adding audio you choose, make sure you obey the eBay rules – they are selective about which kinds of audio they allow in posts.  Also, tools like Seller’s Voice give you the option of having the audio play automatically, or only when a button is pushed by the buyer: personally, I don’t like unexpected noise while I’m online, but you might increase the number of customers who hear your audio by having it play automatically.  You’ll have to decide whether you want to run the risk of annoying people.

eBay

According to a recent survey by Netcraft, there are more than 182 million websites on the world wide web.  Of that 182 million, how many are retail sites?  A LOT.  So how can you make your online business stand out from those thousands, even millions of other websites?

Develop a strong “point of difference” for your online business

“Point of difference” is a term for the outcome of product differentiation.  Business economists see product differentiation as an important strategy for businesses everywhere.  The modern man (or woman) is innundated with countless advertisements and product choices every day: products that stand out due to a strong point of difference are better noticed by consumers.  Furthermore, a clear and distinct brand image helps foster customer loyalty.

Your point of difference could be something quirky, catchy, or trendy, but I believe differentiation is most successful if it fills a need in the market that is not already being met.

How can you find market needs that are not being met?

1. Study the online community

By participating in message board discussions and reading blog posts, you can determine whether emo guys are interested in a “man makeup” website, or what products your average scrapbooker is hankering for.

2. Examine your own needs

Countless successful buisnesses have been formed by people who were trying to solve a need in their own lives – like the mompreneurs who create the perfect maternity pants or the hot new toddler toy.  Take your basic business model, say “online sheet music store”, and ask yourself, what do I wish the average music store would offer that it doesn’t?  What would make me visit a particular sheet music store over another?

Remember, when formulating your business model don’t say “It’s going to be just like Zazzle” or “It’ll be like CoffeeGeek”.  If your site is just like a bigger, better established website then you won’t be able to compete.  Use your point of difference to stand out from the crowd.

internet marketing, online business

Wholesale Match has recently added six new videos to our education section.  The instructional videos walk you step by step through researching products on eBay, calculating the profit margins of potential products, ordering from dropshippers, and more.

The new e-commerce education videos are titled as follows:

Research Products on eBay

The Retailer’s Site

The Profit Calculator

Completing an Order

Sales and Coupons

and

Saving Images and Descriptions

All Wholesale Match members have full access to our educational materials including the videos, articles, blog posts, and Daily Deals products.  If you are not currently a Wholesale Match member but would like to try our services free for one week, simply sign up for a free 7 day trial on the homepage.  In addition to the educational resources, you will have access to our extensive database of dropshippers and wholesalers so you can find a supplier for your online business.

If you have any questions, or if you have any difficulty in signing up for the trial or viewing the videos, please email the customer service team at support@wholesalematch.com or call 801-938-4718.

Education, finding suppliers

From now until the end of February, Wholesale Match is offering a 33% discount off our regular annual membership price.  This is a discount we usually only offer to customers from select affiliated coaching companies.  So if you need dropshippers and wholesalers to supply products for your online business, now is the time to find them!  Remember, Wholesale Match’s annual membership is 100% guaranteed – if you don’t make at least the cost of your membership back within one year, we will refund you in full (as long as you livechat, email, phone us, or submit a Research Request at least once a month).  Email support@wholesalematch.com or call our customer service team at 801-938-4718 for more details.

news

When choosing which product to sell online, you’re going to consider a number of factors including:

1. Is there a reliable dropshipper or wholesaler available for this product?

2. Is the market saturated?

3. Is there a demand for this product?

4. Do I have enough knowledge or can I learn enough about this product to write valuable product-related content for my website?

You might end up having four or five potential products that meet all these criteria.  How will you choose which one to sell?  Profitability may be your deciding factor.

How can you calculate the profitability of potential products?

A spreadsheet is generally the most efficient and effective way.  Remember, as will any spreadsheet your results are only as accurate as the data that you enter.

Below is an example spreadsheet for calculating the profitability of three potential products: jeweled sandals, corporate gift baskets, and fishing poles.  I’m assuming that all three products are being supplied by dropshippers and the only variable costs are the purchase price of the product and the dropship fees.

As you can see, the most expensive item is not always the most profitable.  In this case the medium-priced item, the corporate gift basket, is actually the most profitable.  Assuming you can sell an equal amount of each product, the corporate gift basket is the one you should sell.  Maybe you would have preferred to sell sandals because they’re more fun, but remember, you’re starting an online business to make money.  If selling toilet seats will pay for your BMW, then that’s what you should sell.

pricing and profits, product research, selling products online

Facebook recently introduced a “share” button which allows Facebook users to share articles and comments, much like Twitter’s “retweet”.  This means that content posted on business pages is more likely to be shared around the social network (which is larger than Twitter’s).  If you haven’t yet built a Facebook page for your online business, now would be a good time to do so – Facebook is aware of the social media marketing possibilites of their site, and has included other services for business owners such as a new and improved “impression count” which allows you to monitor views of your posts as well as views of ads.

news

You probably already know that Wholesale Match can find you dropshippers and/or wholesalers for virtually any product.  But once you have a list of potential suppliers, what’s the next step?

Once our Research Team provides you with a list of potential suppliers, you need to decide which one(s) you want to work with.  The best way to do this is to visit each supplier’s website.  This will give you an idea of the products they carry, and often you can view their prices as well.  Once you’ve chosen one or two dropshippers or wholesalers, you need to contact the supplier via email or over the phone to set up an account.

Before committing to work with a particular supplier, you will want to ask a few questions to ensure that the supplier is really what you’re looking for.  The following is a list of questions you should ask potential dropshippers and wholesalers.  You may want to have this list handy when you call your prospective dropshipper or wholesaler so you don’t forget anything.

Questions to ask your dropshipper or wholesaler:

1. Are you currently accepting new retailers?

2. Do you require a Reseller’s License and/or Tax ID Number?

3. Are all of your products available for dropship/wholesale?

4. Do the prices listed on your website reflect the retail price or the dropship/wholesale price?

5. Do you provide a pdf file or catalog with your product images and descriptions?

6. Do you have a minimum order amount?

7. What are your dropship/shipping fees?

8. Do you ship internationally?

9. Do you provide blind dropshipping (meaning, will the dropshipper’s company name be visible on the package or in the packing materials)?

10. Do you notify retailers by email when a product runs out of stock?

11. How are returns handled?

This is just a basic list of questions – some of these questions may not be important to you (like blind dropshipping), or you may have other questions that are important for your specific online business.  You’ll have to brainstorm to determine what the absolutely essential services your dropshipper or wholesaler must provide are.  Keep in mind while you do this, no supplier is perfect, so you may have to accept a lack of international shipping or a small dropshipping fee in order to get a great supplier for the product you want to sell.

dropshippers

With eBooks growing in popularity, you may wonder if there’s some way you can make money off an eBook.  In fact, there are two simple ways you can capitalize on eBooks.

1. Sell An EBook To Hobbyists

If you’re operating a website dropshipping jewelry-making supplies, fishing rods, chess sets, cake baking supplies, snorkling masks, anything hobby-related, you could write and sell a how-to manual: “How To Decorate Birthday Cakes”, or “5 Easy Steps To Becoming A Chess Champion”, for instance.  Selling your eBook on your website accomplishes two things: first, it brings in additional income, and second, it can attract traffic to your site.  Even if your product isn’t really hobby-related, say a website of motivational products, you can still write an eBook, like “10 Days To A Happier You”.  If you’re creative, you can write an eBook related to almost any kind of website.

2. Give An EBook Away For Free

An eBook can also be beneficial to your website even if you’re giving it away for free.  One of the biggest problems websites have is conversion: turning traffic into customers.  Not everybody who visits your website is going to buy anything.  The more people you can get to buy, or at least come back a second time, the more profitable your Pay-Per-Click Ads and other promotions become.

One way to secure repeat visits is to gather email addresses.  If you offer a free eBook on a popular topic, you can obtain your visitor’s email address in order to send it to them.  Then later you can email them a coupon or notification of a sale on your website to encourage them to return (obviously you don’t want to be obnoxious or spammy about this).  In this way, you can create a connection with your visitors so they don’t stop at your site once and never return.  If the person is impressed with your free eBook, they will almost definitely come back to your webiste, particularly if you have other educational articles and valuable content to attract them.

internet marketing, online business

Often, one of the biggest frustrations for people located outside the United States who are trying to start an online business is the fact that they’re not American.  You would think that e-commerce is global, but in fact many suppliers only want to work with Americans and many online businesses located in the States don’t want to ship outside their own country.  However, if you’re not American, all is not lost – you can still dropship-retail.

First, some background on dropshipping:

Dropshipping is a well-established supply-chain management system in the United States, but it is not quite as common in other countries yet.  In the good old US of A, state laws help facilitate this kind of trade, but in places like Canada, the various provinces have tax strictures which make things a little more difficult.  The good news is that dropshipping is becoming increasingly prevalent in countries outside the US.  If you’re located in Canada, Australia, or the UK, rejoice because more and more suppliers are offering dropshipping in your respective countries.

What are your options if you want to dropship products but you don’t live in the US?

1.Use local suppliers

Using local suppliers will allow you to bypass customs issues and avoid problems like American suppliers who demand an American Reseller’s Permit and Tax ID Number.  The downside to using only local suppliers is that your selection of suppliers and potential products will be more limited.  If you can’t find a supplier for your desired product, you might consider isolating the manufacturers you would like to work with, and ask if they would be willing to set up a dropshipping, wholesale, or affiliate program with you.  Many companies are interested in the concept of dropshipping and might be willing to jump on the bandwagon if you demonstrate how it would be beneficial to their business.

2.Use American dropshippers

Some American dropshippers and wholesalers have no problem shipping outside the country, and will accept foreign documentation such as a Canadian business number in lieu of an American tax ID number.  Canadians are particularly able to take advantage of American suppliers because the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allows many products to be shipped duty-free if they are for customer’s personal use (they usually have to be manufactured in either Canada or the US, however).  It is certainly worthwhile to look at the available American suppliers in addition to the ones located in your own country.

3.Sell to Americans

If you are having a difficult time getting products shipped to customers in your own country, this may be a solution.  Selling only to Americans allows you to use US dropshippers who won’t ship outside the country, and you don’t have to worry about cross-border hang-ups or local tax laws.  You will still have to pay taxes on your income to your own government, but you won’t have to worry about currency exchange or any of the other issues attendant with international sales.  You may still encounter issues providing suppliers with documentation or setting up merchants accounts to receive your payments.

4. Use Asian Suppliers

As a person located outside the US, you may find that you can use cheap suppliers from countries that are not as accessible to Americans.  For instance, if your country is close to China, you can use a wealth of inexpensive Asian suppliers that are more prickly for Americans to use due to the time and expensive of shipping something all the way from China to the US.

5. Switch Products

All would-be online entrepreneurs may have to switch their product idea if they can’t find a good supplier.  This is even more true when your supplier pool is limited.  Remember, the important thing is to sell a product you can make a profit on; it’s not as important that you absolutely love hostess aprons or chess sets or whatever it is you can find an excellent supplier for.

Other Tips:

Don’t Overlook Local Products

If you’re located in some exotic foreign locale, you should see that as a strength, not a weakness.  I strongly recommend that you examine your local products when searching for something to sell online.  Australian skim boards, Indian henna kits, Moroccan sandals, Balinese jewelry, these may seem like common products with a saturated market in your area, but that doesn’t mean they’re saturated online.  I frequently receive requests from Americans who want to sell Australian skim boards, but the Australian suppliers won’t dropship to them.  This means that if you’re Australian, you’re actually in luck.  Now, obviously shipping is a factor when selling to international customers (bulky, heavy products may not be profitable to ship to overseas), but there are many local products that you can sell on eBay or from a personal website to great effect.

I’m not going to lie and say that dropshipping is equally easy from any country, but I do believe that if you’re flexible you can be successful.  You may not be able to sell the product that you first had your heart set on, or use the supplier you first wanted, but there are doubtless other products and suppliers who will work just as well once you find them.  At Wholesale Match we can help you find suppliers no matter what country you live in.

dropshipping, finding suppliers