If you have any sales experience, you are probably familiar with the concept of up-selling.  Up-selling is a process where you encourage a customer to purchase one or more products in addition to the product they are buying.  This is one of the best ways to increase your sales volume and profit margins.  In a sense each sale you make can be considered to cost you a dollar amount: a portion of whatever you spent in setting up your website or eBay store, the marketing to bring your visitor in (pay-per-click advertising, banner ads, etc.), the monetary value of the time you spend processing the order, etc.  Because each of these factors counteracts the profit you make on a sale, it is in your best interest that each sale be as high-volume and profitable as possible.  It is cheaper for you to attract one customer and process and ship their order than to do the same for three customers.  Thus if you can get one customer to purchase three items, it’s better than having three customers purchase one item each.

Up-selling is pretty straightforward on a website: you can set up pop-up boxes so any time a customer adds an item to their cart, a complimentary item is suggested.  You can also up-sell by presenting offers like “free shipping on orders over $50″ or “buy one item get the second 25% off”.  Obviously, these kinds of promotions are not as easy to do on eBay, particularly if you don’t have an eBay store and are selling from individual listings.  However, up-selling on eBay is still possible.

There are two basic ways to up-sell on eBay:

1. Send an additional offer along with the invoice or response for the first sale.

For example, when a buyer wins the auction for your camcorder, you can send them an email asking if they would like the camera bag included for one low price of $212, or you could send a coupon offer in their packing materials.

2. Offer products in packages or sets in a single listing.

For instance, you could post the camcorder and camera bag together as one item with one price, even though they really are two separate items.  Not only does this help you to sell two items instead of one, but it  obscures the prices of the individual items so your prices can’t be compared as easily.  Packages like this are convenient for people who don’t have the time or expertise to buy each item individually (ie people purchasing gifts, people who are getting started in a hobby, etc.).  You could make a whole filmographer starter kit with batteries, a tripod, camcorder, bag, and instructional book.  This would not only allow you to up-sell, but would create a unique product to help you stand out from the competition.

eBay