Marc Sampson’s Blog

I have called this post part 5.1 because it is going to be part one of a mini series within the ‘product sourcing ideas’ series of posts.  There will be at least another 2 posts and videos in this mini series.

This product sourcing idea is going to use eBay to source products to then resell back on to eBay for profit.  This may seem strange and even unlikely that it is possible, but trust me, this is one of the most profitable ways of sourcing products.  Just like the other methods I have written about, I use this method regularly too.

I have three different ways of sourcing products on eBay, and this method actually is my favourite.  It involves finding auction listings that are poorly listed.  A poorly listed item can have one or all of the following factors:

• poor auction title – misspelt words, not using all the characters available in the auction title, not including vital keywords that get searched for to find the item
• bad photograph, or not having one at all
• poor description

The first of the above is the most important, because without having a good auction listing, an item is less likely to show up in search results, or if it does show up at all, it will be nearer to the bottom on eBay’s default search of ‘best match’.  This will result in fewer visitors to the listing, meaning fewer bids, meaning a lower ending price on the completed auction.

Once you have found a badly listed item, you need to know if you are likely to make a profit on it if you were to bid and win the auction.  You can find this out by looking at completed listings.

Once you have found a poorly listed item that you want to bid on, you then want to win it at the lowest price you possible can.  You do this by putting your bid on as late as possible.  For this you use a sniper tool.

I have made two videos showing how to do all of the above.

Video one – finding a poorly listed item, how to find out if you are likely to make a profit from it and how to snipe the auction.

Video two – more examples of poorly listed items, and how to find 100’s more with one click of a mouse.

It is a really good idea to win at least half a dozen items from the same niche and list them all on eBay at the same time.  This way you can attract the visitor to your other auctions as they will be interested in those too.  I will cover more about this in my next post.

That basically covers eBay arbitrage in a nut shell.

I do have two items to list that I acquired by using this very same technique.  In my next post and video, I will show you the items I won, and list them on eBay.  I will then do another video while those auctions are running and then another video after the auction has finished so you can see it live as it happens.  This will be a live eBay arbitrage experiment right in front of you eyes.  I could not do a video with me bidding on the auction that I have won, because I did not want anybody else bidding on it.

For more information on eBay arbitrage, I would recommend eBay arbitrage, the complete guide to flipping, which will show you in more detail how to search, find, buy and re-sell products on eBay for huge profits.

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Have you ever been in a position where you have an item to list on eBay, but not sure what category to list it in, what price to sell it at, or start the auction at and what day to have the auction end?  Well, now you can find out all of this information and it will help you get the best possible price for your listing. 

I have found a 100% free eBay market research tool.  It will search up to the last 90 days of completed listings on eBay.co.uk, eBay.com, eBay.ca, eBay.com.au and eBay motors.

You select which site you would like to research on from a drop down menu, then select if you want to search back on the last 30, 60 or 90 days of completed listings.   There is a search box where you enter the key words of what you want to research.

The results that come back will tell you the following:

• the number of listings there have been and the sell through rate
• the average sell price
• keywords that were used
• the average selling price on each day for the period of time you selected
• the category the listings were in and the average sale price for each category
• the average price on each day of the week
• the percentage of listings for each day of the week

The name of the website it Get4it.com.

I have made a video to show you how it all works and explain the results for an example research term

From now on, I will be using this tool as a part of my eBay research techniques in conjunction with using the completed listings information on the eBay site itself.

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This method is kind of similar to that described in the previous post, but you use online retailers, preferably when they have a sale on, but in theory, you could use this method any time, which is why I personally like it so much.  Again, as before, it is a method I use personally so you know it does make profits.

There are however, in my mind, a couple of disadvantages over using high street retailers when they have a sale on.

• it is not so convenient to return merchandise to the retailer, as you have to pack and ship it which costs you, so you need to be more careful when selecting products to resell, else you could end up with stock you can’t make a profit on or worse, sell at all.  With the high street retailers, at least you can do that with ease.
• there is the potential for the competition to be greater, as the online retailer has it’s doors open to a wider audience than your high street retailer, therefore you may find more people selling the same product as you.

These are small disadvantages though if you do your research properly and buy sensibly.  I have created two videos for this post.  One shows you how I search for products with an online retailer that I use, and the other shows bad products to buy to resell for profit.

The first video shows how I find items to resell using an online retailer. Enjoy…..

In the second video, I show you examples of bad products to buy to resell, and explain why….

This is another very good method of getting started to sell in the world of online auctions, as your initial outlay is low, and risk very minimal if you research.

If you use or are already using this method of product sourcing, let us know how you get on.

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Happy new year, and may 2010 and the whole decade be a successful and prosperous one for you.

This takes me nicely to the next series of posts in this series of ‘product sourcing ideas for your online auction business’.

The title of this post speaks for itself.  Getting your products from high street shop sales to sell for profit on the online auction site.  But ofcourse, it is not just a matter of going to whatever shop has a sale on, filling your basket with bargains and then listing them on eBay.  There is more to it than that.

After all, you don’t want to be left with lots of stock you can’t sell, or sell but make a loss on it.

Here is what you should do.

1. Decide on a niche area, for example clothing, media products such as DVD’s, Blue Ray, PS3 games etc.  This may well depend on how much you have to outlay in the beginning.    The reason you want to do this, is you are more likely to get a buyer purchasing more than one item from you.  If you have just X BOX 360 games, the chances are someone may bid on more than one auction, but if you have an X BOX 360 game and a Hugo Boss pair of jeans, this is less likely to happen.

When deciding on your niche, I would bear in mind that some items are seasonal, and some items will devalue over time, some very quickly.  Unless you are very confident you can turn over the items that will devalue very quickly, I would steer clear of them.  If you choose seasonal items, such as Christmas items, you need the space to store them safely until the time to right to sell them.

2.  It’s going to be tricky to know what the store will have on sale, but it is a good idea to do a bit of research on eBay before you go.  In my previous post, I done a video showing you how to check completed listings.  Look to see what is selling for good prices and make a note of them, and what they have sold for.  Say you have chosen to sell Nintendo Wii games and accessories.  Just type in ‘Nintendo Wii’ and click on search.  Then look at the completed listings.  Don’t forget you need to be signed in to your account to use the completed listings feature.  If you haven’t already, I suggest you watch the video on my previous post so you get an idea of how it works.  Once you have the completed listings up, sort the search by ‘price and postage highest price first’, then you will know what is the most people are prepared to pay for an item including the postage.

If you have access to eBay on your mobile phone, I would still do this excercise before you leave for the shops, incase you are not able to access it in the shop due to poor signal.

3.  Go to your chosen shop(s).  Make sure you get a receipt for everything you buy.  This may seem obvious, but if when you get back home and checked the completed listings, you may decide you don’t want to try to sell it, so take it back for a refund.  For example, I would imagine DVD’s and CD’s are going to be very difficult to make any profit on, but say you didn’t think of this, and you bought a load of CD’s, and you checked completed listings, and found the most anyone paid for a CD was £4 including postage, and you paid £3, you probably wouldn’t want to try to sell it.

4.  When considering if you want to sell the item, remember your other associated costs when trying to work out your potential profit.  There is your eBay listing fee, final value fee, postage, packaging, pay pal fees. This is a common mistake, especially for those new to selling.  Here are links to the fees associated on eBay:-

eBay selling fees for the United Kingdom eBay site (ebay.co.uk)

eBay selling fees for the Republic of Ireland site (ebay.ie)

eBay selling fees for the United States of America (USA) site (ebay.com)

eBay selling fees for the Canadian site (ebay.ca)

eBay selling fee for the Austrailian site (ebay.com.au)

If you sell on any other eBay site other than those mentioned above, use the help link from your eBay home page to find the fees.  I only use ebay.co.uk, and I found all the above easily enough so you shouldn’t have any difficulty finding it for your site.

5.  For any items you have decided you don’t want to sell, take them back with the receipt and get a refund.   Now you are left with a load of items you are confident you will make a profit with.  Simple.

Now comes the question of listing and selling your newly acquired items successfully.  This requires another set of posts, but I have already written some simple listing and photography techniques.  Look in the eBay category of this blog.  They are some of the very first posts I wrote.

This method is one I have used and had success with in the past, so I know you will too.  I would love to hear how you get on.  Drop me an email, or leave a comment below.

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If you are a regular listener of eBay radio, and tried to listen to the broadcast since last Tuesday, 3rd November, you will have realised it is no longer where you would expect to find it. Both Griff and Lee, the presenters, have been saying there is going to be some changes, but never actually said they would be moving.

Anyway, if you have had trouble finding them, here is where you can find it now:

http://groups.ebay.com/forum/Ebay-Radio-Broadcasts/Welcome/1278.  This link will open in a new window.

If you don’t listen to it, and you are either a buyer or a seller on eBay, I would highly recommend you ‘tune in’.  You can either listen to the broadcast live, or you can listen to it at any time.  You can either play it on the computer, or download it to listen to your mp3 player.

You can still listen to the archives from when eBay radio was on wsradio.  Click HERE to go there. 

Happy listening.

Marc.

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Hello,

Welcome to the first post about product sourcing for your online auction business.   Remember, I am going to write about my own personal experiences and tell you and show you what I do.  This way you know that you are getting information from a real eBay powerseller, as it is the same methods I have used.  I make 100’s of £££’s a month on eBay.  I hope that each post will spark a little bit of excitement inside you. 

As the title of this post suggests, I am going to talk about sourcing products from around your home.  The reason I am starting with this, is this is how most people get started.  This is how I got started a few years ago.  I am also going to show you my eBay store.  Not to advertise my listings to you, but to show you items I have found from around my own home, one which when I tell people I sell them, they can’t beleive that people pay money for these items.  I will show you this in a video below.

When I got started selling on eBay, I needed to raise some money quick.  I took a load of CD’s that I didn’t listen to any more down to one of those cash converter places.  I got such a small amount of money for them, I could have cried walking back out of that place, but I needed the money.

I then discovered eBay.  I can’t remember how exactly.  Most probably from a television advert.  Anyway, I opened up an account, read through some tutorials and started selling my CD collection on eBay.  I put each one on an auction and sold each CD for much more than I would have got at the cash converters place. 

Of course, I soon ran out of CD’s to sell, but I was hooked and wanted to keep selling.  I started looking for other ideas of sourcing products.  Basically I just rummaged around the house some more and found some stuff that was just sitting in drawers and on shelves etc.   I listed and sold these items.  I generally didn’t make as much per item as with the CD’s but I didn’t care as it was only things not wanted any more.  Things like ornaments, clothing, books, key rings, video tapes etc.

In this video, I am going to show you some listings in my shop and a recent auction that ended, just from items I found around the house.

To browse around my eBay shop, click here www.marcsampson.com/eBay_shop

Another way of getting ideas of things around your house to sell, is to look in the ‘home & garden’ category of eBay’s main listings.  To go straight there, click here http://home-garden.shop.ebay.co.uk/.  These links will open in a new window so that you don’t loose this blog post.

Watch this video to see how you can get a rough idea of what to expect to receive for the items you find around your home.

I do hope that this post has given you food for thought.  If you haven’t yet started to sell on eBay, but would like to, this is the perfect way to get started, mainly because you do not have any initial financial outlay.

Good luck!

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Hello,

Welcome to the first of a series of posts that I am going to write which will help you get starting selling on online auction sites such as eBay and for those already selling, learn strategies you probably are not using.  I do not know yet how many posts this seres will be, but I hope you like them.

I mentioned in one of my more recent posts that I would deliver the following information on my blog: 

• how to source products to sell on eBay for profit, including some you can get for free
• how to increase the visitors you get to your listings and hence sales and bids on your auctions
• how to get repeat customers coming back to you
• how to encourage your customer to buy more than one item in the same transaction
• how to increase the visibility of your listings

I am going to cover the above in this series of posts, starting with this one.  Each point will be covered in several posts, some with video so that I can show you exactly what I do to succeed on eBay.  If you are not on eBay, but another auction site, the information I will be providing, can just be adapted to suit.

In this post, I am going to start covering product sourcing.  This post will simply be a list of the several methods you can use.  Some of which I use today, and some which I am still to experiment with.  The posts following this one will go into more detail on some of the sourcing methods.  For example, how to use auction sites themselves to source your products to sell back on the auction site.

• eBay and other online auction sites
• wholesalers
• around your home
• car boot, garage, yard sales
• sales from shops on the high street
• sales from online retailers
• charity shops
• friends and family
• creating your own products
• drop shipping
• auction houses
• government auctions
• police auctions
• getting items for free
• second hand shops

I think that list is enough to be getting on with for now.  As I have already mentioned, I have not used all of these methods myself, but in the following posts, I will write a dedicated post to those methods I do and have used.

I hope that this series of posts will be useful, informative and interesting for you.

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Hi all,

This is a very quick post.  If you have read any previous posts of mine, you probably know that I listen to eBay radio regularly.  I was listening just now, and thought this particular segment of a recent show would be very useful to my blog readers.  Here is the link to listen to it.  CLICK HERE.  You will listen to some fantastic tips from an eBay powerseller called Suzanne Wells.  Even if you are an experienced eBay seller, this is well worth listening to.

To be taken to the eBay radio home page, here is the link:

http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/eBay-Radio.html

Please let me know what you think to eBay radio by leaving your comments below.

Happy listening.

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Hello blog readers,

I just made a quick video to illustrate a very simple eBay listing technique that I have been using.  I’m sure this has helped increase my sales and contributed to me getting powerseller.

One thing I didn’t mention is that video is that, because most people will bid on an auction as the listing is coming to an end, this listing will probably get number one for the search term, ‘digital watch’, for several days.

It is also a good idea to do a search using the keywords you are aiming for before you list your item.  If there are lots of people also listing from 1p with free postage, then it probably isn’t worth doing.  If this is the case, experiment with different key words.

Lets say, for example in my listing, there were other listings with 1p and free postage for the search term, ‘digital watch’, then I could have seen how many listings are coming up for ‘men’s digital watch’, or ‘men’s watch’.  Then when I get a results page where there are no other 1p listings and free postage, I would put these key words in my title.

Hope that if you use this technique, that you see favourable results.

Share your experiences by commenting below.

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Hello,

It has been too long since I last made a post, so to all of my regular readers, I apologise, but you will understand why in just a minute.

At the end of my last post, where I explained about how I met my May eBay challenge, I hinted that I would set myself a June eBay challenge.  Well I did set myself one, but didn’t get time to write about it really, so my next few post will be about this.

The next challenge that I set myself, which was my June eBay challenge, was to become a powerseller by the end of June.  Well, I am now an eBay powerseller.   The image below is copied from my eBay account. but to prove I did not just create this in some photo editing software, click on it to be taken to my eBay shop for prove.

Now that I am a powerseller, over the next few posts, I am going to share with you some techniques that I have used to reach this status.

It all started when I became a member of the 90 day powerseller program.  Without this, I know that I wouldn’t be a powerseller now.  This provides you with video tutorials on how to make your own CD ROM products that you can sell on eBay or any other auction site for that matter, and even provides you with 100’s of information products you need to create these them.

Now, while becoming a member of the 90 day powerseller program got me started on the road to becoming a powerseller, and while I used the techniques and products I created from the tutorials inside the members area, I have been sourcing and selling non cd rom products too.  It is the techniques I used with these products that I want to talk about in my following posts.  I am going to cover the following

• how to source products to sell on eBay for profit, including some you can get for free
• how to increase the visitors you get to your listings and hence sales and bids on your auctions
• how to get repeat customers coming back to you
• how to encourage your customer to buy more than one item in the same transaction
• how to increase the visibility of your listings

Would you like to learn all of the above information in my next few posts?  As I am going to share this with my blog readers for free, I encourage you to sign up for the updates if you have not already done so.

Until next time,

Marc.

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