I
want to share what I’ve learned on the road to becoming an eBay Power
Seller and give you some information about a couple of
business-changing resources that I found on the way. . .
You won’t find “20 instant recipes for eBay
success”, or “100 sources for stuff to sell”, but if you get just one idea that saves you time
or increases your eBay Power Seller profits, then I’ve achieved my goal
with this article. . .
I’m going to be honest with you . . . becoming an eBay Power Seller was not one of
my main goals when I started my net auction business. I was just happy
to be “in the game” called eBay. This is truly an example of “serve the
customer and good things will happen”.
For several years, I toyed with the idea of having an online business.
I won't go into the failures that I've had offline, but just suffice it
to say that there has been more than one "not so successful" venture.
I learned from reading Robert Kiyosaki's "Cashflow Quadrant" that successful
busines owners create or become a part of a business SYSTEM to create
streams of income.
I
had been registered on eBay for a couple of years and bought a couple
of things here and there. It was immediately obvious to me that eBay
had a business SYSTEM in place that was
undeniably genius. They host the site where millions of people come to
trade their wares. There's no where else on the net where you can get
that much traffic for so little upfront risk.
So,
I decided to try selling . . .
My
eBay Power Seller story starts out like a lot of other eBay Power
Seller stories. I started by cleaning out my closets and selling
various things that had either been outgrown or no longer needed.
Before I knew it, I had raised over $300! I LOVE waking
up in the morning, checking my email and finding “you’ve got cash”
emails from buyers. It became addictive. :-)
There was one other item in my closet that I had not sold yet. I had
bought a Bell open face helmet several years ago and it hadn't been
worn a dozen times. I shot a couple of pics and posted the ad to see
what would happen. Well, that helmet brought a higher bid than I
expected and a light went on in my head! I knew that being an ebay power seller was in my future.
Since
I was a dealer for a major motorcycle accessories distributor, I
thought: “why not try some NEW helmets on eBay?” After a couple of
weeks and a dozen or so auctions, I could tell that this was going to
be fun! I decided to make a go of the eBay Power Seller
BUSINESS.
Businesses
need a plan and eBay power seller businesses are no exception. So, as is my habit, I
started doing research. I wanted to find out how other successful
eBayers did it.
It's
not difficult to find people trying to sell you a get rich quick
'system' for selling on eBay. They're everywhere. It was very difficult
to sift through all the advice that was available.
I
came across a FREE email course on net auction selling. Since the price
was in my budget, :-) I decided to take the course.
With
the Net Auction Masters Course, I
discovered several mistakes that I was making. I wasn’t building a
proper customer database. I wasn’t following up with my customers like
I should have. I didn’t have an “About Me” page. My titles and
descriptions were weak.
The
Net Auction Masters Course
introduced me to a book by Sydney Johnston called "Make Your Net
Auction Sell!". I purchased a copy . . .
.
. .and my road to becoming an eBay Power Seller became a FOUR LANE
HIGHWAY!
As
I dug further into the Make Your Net Auction Sell!,
I found strategies for selling AND buying to maximize profits and
minimize winning bids for items I was buying. I learned about dutch
auctions, fixed pricing and more.
With
Make Your Net Auction Sell! I
also discovered a couple of major benefits of being an eBay Power
Seller that are potentially worth WAY MORE than the profit I was making
from selling my items. . .
- First
is the Feedback SYSTEM on eBay. How many websites have you visited that
were trying to sell you something and you wondered if you could really
trust them? The feedback system on eBay is potentially worth many times
more than any profit you’ll make. Assuming
that you have POSITIVE feedback, you get a readily accessible
trustworthy REPUTATION, certified by a major online presence called
eBay.
- Second
is the eBay 'About Me' page. It's your own personal webpage on a high
traffic site. You can use it for several different strategies including
displaying your auction ads and driving traffic to your website if you
have one. If you're selling on eBay, DON'T pass up this great benefit.
Build your about me page today!
I
won't go into the rest of what Make Your Net Auction
Sell! taught me here. There's just too much information.
Besides . . .
.
. . you can now get
your own copy FREE! I'll give you
the download link a little bit later.
As
in any business, you have to take care of your customers. If you
deliver for them, they’ll keep coming back. If you OVER deliver by
answering emails quickly, shipping quickly and basically following up
and doing what you say you will do your feedback will quickly build
along with your sales.
I
give credit to my great customers for my success so far. I developed an
Access database to store my customer's information, the details of each
auction, the information about the accessories and other products that
I sell, and shipping information including tracking numbers. Then I
built reports so that I can print invoices at the click of a button. I
can even generate shipping notifications with one click. In short, I
continually improved my SYSTEM of delivering product to my customer.
Turbo
Lister has also been a big help. My auction ads are stored on my local
computer so I can re-list with a couple of clicks. That's a real time
saver! I haven't tried eBay’s other tools like Selling Manager Pro.
Perhaps if you have used those tools you can contact me
and let me know how you like them.
Anyway,
within six months, I received my invitation into the eBay Power Seller
program (bronze level). I felt like it was an accomplishment that was
just a natural outcome of offering great customer service. By the way,
I believe customer service is my best product. I stand behind the
motorcycle accessories that I make available, but I know good service
is what wins great customers. . .
.
. . like YOU! :-).
From
the beginning, I wanted to have my own website, so I started
Motorcycle-Accessories-Wiseguy.com. It's a great compliment to the eBay
business and eBay is a great compliment to my website. I get traffic
back and forth.
The
eBay editor’s kit on my
auctions page also gets my auctions in front
of my website traffic sooner than the eBay search system picks them up.
Last week I had a “question from seller” within an hour of listing an
auction and probably an hour BEFORE the eBay search system even found
the item.
I
really don't know much about HTML, CGI, etc., but luckily I found
another great product that helps me build a BUSINESS
SYSTEM without worriying about all that stuff. But
that’s a whole other story. If you ever wanted your own web business, I
would suggest clicking here
to find out more about SBI.
So
now you know how I became an eBay Power Seller!
Update:
As you will notice if you've read my ebay motorcycle accessories page,
I have dropped my power seller status since first writing this article.
I am still active on eBay, just not at the activity level
that it takes to be a power seller. I still use the tools I
learned in the MYNAS course (below), just on a smaller scale.
That's the beauty of eBay. You can scale it to
whatever fits you. It pays to do it right though.
Now
here’s the download link and instructions to get the Make
Your Net Auction Sell! Master’s Course that I promised
earlier:
"Make
Your Net Auction Sell!, The Masters Course"
is your one-stop complete guide to building a
successful Net Auction business. The approach is unique and powerful --
you will not read this in any other auction book, at any price,
anywhere on or off the Net.
(SiteSell sold the first version of this book at $30 for
years. Now, they allow me to give
it to you for one very good reason... While you will
know enough to follow all the ideas and strategies on your own, they
hope that once you see the power and quality of this process, that you
will use their flagship product to execute the strategies... but that
is purely up to you. No matter what, you will acquire invaluable,
useful information. So you can't lose.)
Click
here to download the free
"Make Your Net Auction
Sell!, The Masters Course" e-book.
1.7MB - Windows and MacOs
You are about to download a zipped file ("mynas-masters.zip"). Save it
to your desktop. After you have downloaded, unzip it.
This will unzip a folder called "MYNAS! Masters
Course" on your desktop (if you do not change the default location).
The folder contains two files...
1) ReadMeFirst.txt
Its name says it all -- start with this file.
2) MYNAS!Masters.pdf
"Make Your Net
Auction Sell!, The Masters Course" provides
nuts-and-bolts strategies and ideas to build a successful Net Auction
business, from the ground up... the right way!
There's
an e-biz in your closet. Are you ready to open the
door? Check out this quality, free, resource e-book
today.
Click
here to download
"MYNAS!, The Masters Course" e-book.
For
further reading on building an eBay Power Seller business or any
business, I also recommend the following books:
The
Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay
by Jim Cockrum
Cashflow Quadrant by Robert
Kiyosaki
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