But what now?  You will probably expect or find a big drop in sales.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  I remember last year, I was very surprised how busy I still was in early January, and this year was the same.  Why could this be?  Well here are some of my thoughts:

- to begin with, I was surprised how many Christmas items I was still selling after 25th December.   Then I noticed what I was selling was being ordered from overseas.  You have Coptic Christians who’s Christmas is later, so could be why for these products.

- diaries are always popular, still into the new year.  You would think people would purchase their diary before the new year starts, but maybe people wait to see if they get one as a present, and when they don’t then order one.

- that leads me on to another reason why high sales continue into January.  People don’t get what they wanted for Christmas, so now go to buy what they didn’t get.

There will be more reasons, but the above are ones I have thought of.  So how does this help you now?  Well to be honest, it doesn’t help you now, but points to remember for next Christmas time.  For example, if you sold Christmas items, e.g. trees, decorations, gift sets etc.  Don’t take the listings down on 26th December, keep them up.

So what to do now then?  Well, just before Christmas, the subject of what to do after Christmas was a discussion on eBay radio.  To listen to the segment here is the link:

eBay radio 20th December 2011 segment 5 – Top 5 things you MUST do after Christmas

I found this really useful information, and I hope you will too.

eBay radio has two shows every week, one on Tuesday starting at 11am PST (7pm GMT) for three hours.  The other show is on Thursdays from 3pm PST (11pm GMT) for two hours.  The show I prefer to listen to is Tuesdays as they have guest speakers as well as sellers and guest speakers phoning in.  Thursdays are just for the audience to phone in.  However, if you can’t listen in live, then you can listen to the shows in the archives when ever you want.  You can even download them to listen on your mp3 player on the go.

The website for eBay radio is www.ebayradio.com.

As I mentioned, I listen on Tuesdays.  I also like to phone in.  On a recent show, I did just that.  It was my second time to phone in.  I rang to ask about seller protection.  You can listen to that segment here.

There are several advantages to having video in your listings

• shows proof that electrical or products with moving parts works
• shows how the product works
• for static products you can give a 360 degree view of the product
• gives your listing the edge over competitors selling the same or similar product
• there are no extra eBay fees for adding video
• quick and easy to do
• you can literally talk to your prospective customer
• by hosting the video on youtube, and if using keywords, you can create extra traffic to your listing resulting in more bids or more sales

Here is the video I created to show how to add video to  your eBay listing

As I said, it is easy to do once you know how.  Hope you get on alright with it.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I will reply.

Well, on the latest eBay radio show broadcast on 27th September they also spoke about this.  So I thought I would share this with you.  They pretty much said the same as what I said in my post as well as further ideas.  I urge you to listen to it.  Simply click on this link to hear it.   It will play through your web browser and will open in a new window:

http://www.voicemarketingradio.com/vmr/sites/default/files/audio-segments/eBayRadio-Show438-Segment4.mp3

I listen to this show every Tuesday, and if you are serious about getting the most out of eBay, I strongly recommend you do also.

But you may be asking “How do I tune in?”

1.  Log into your eBay account on www.ebay.com regardlss of where your account is registered.

2. Then at the top right hand corner of the screen, you will see some drop down menus.  Hover over ‘communit’y and click on ‘groups’

3.  Half way down the page in the centre, there is a box ‘Browse group categories’.  Type ‘ebay radio’ and click search.

4. Only one result comes up, click on this.  You will need to sign up to the group to access it

You can listen to old shows, download to your mp3 player to listen on the go, and listen to live shows.  You will get an email the day any show is broadcast live.

Just thought I would share this with you.

Happy listening.

I don’t know about you, but quite often I run out of characters when choosing keywords to put into my titles, so this is good news indeed.  Here is the link to the new policy on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie.

Giving you space to write better item titles

I have also checked out the news pages on the US and Canada sites.   This also applies to eBay.com but I can’t see anything about this on eBay.ca.   If any of my Canadian readers find differently, please leave a reply below this post.

The link above also gives you advice on best using your listing title.  You should always try to use all 80 characters without keyword spamming, i.e. using words not relevant to the product.  I have done a post some time ago with a video also giving advice on how to write a good title.  You will find this in the ‘eBay’ and ‘Videos’ categories of my blog.  However the main rule is to try and think what words people will type to search for your item.  The number of times I have seen ‘WOW’ or ‘L@@K’ when this is just a waste of character space.

I hope you have found this post of some use.

Here is the video

Now lets do the maths.

Sale price £18.45

Minus

Item purchase price including postage: £2.29
eBay fees: £1.84
Charity donation £1.84
Postage: £1.72
paypal fee: £0.83
—————————————
Sub Total: £8.52

eBay’s 10% reduction due to charity donation £0.18

Total: £8.34

Profit: £18.45 – £8.34 = £10.11

That is the result of one simple listing I found, with minimum effort. Now, if you can just repeat this many many times, you can see the potential for massive profit just from doing this on eBay.

Want to learn more? Then check out The eBay Arbitrage Secret.

In this video you will see the item I won at an unbelievably low 99p, and what the same product is currently selling for, and finally my re list.

So I will do another short video after this auction ends to show you the result.  I’m sure this will have a very high profit margin, but in 10 days time we will find out for sure.

That is selling information, training videos and software via CD ROM’s.  If you go to my eBay store (info-sources eBay store) you will see the type of products I sell.  I also sell non CD ROM products, but all of my CD ROM’s are shown at the top of the category links down the left hand side.

You will notice that the prices range from £1.99 through to £17.00, and I regularly sell all of them.

The beauty of selling these products, is that you only need to acquire the product once, but you can resell it as many times as you like.  The reason for this is because you acquire products which come with ‘resale rights’.  You would be mistaken for thinking that these type of products come with a high price tag when you first purchase them, but actually you would be incorrect.

These are mainly eBooks which I have converted into CD ROM products, as you are no longer allowed to sell ‘non physical’ items on eBay.

The first eBook I bought was ‘The 90 day powerseller challenge’.   It does what it says on the tin.  It walks you through the steps required to become an eBay powerseller in 90 days by selling eBooks.  However, since the first version of this was released there have been many policy changes on eBay.  Hence there has been a second, third and now newly released, a fourth version.  This walks you through the steps required to become a powerseller in 90 days by selling CD ROM products, just as I do.

This product itself is a CD ROM, and I am selling it in my shop for just £1.99 and it comes with resale rights.  Here is the link to the listing 90 day powerseller challenge v4.0. It you are wanting a copy, I wouldn’t hang about though, as this listing is only for 20 copies.

I have mentioned in one of my other posts regarding new rules for using the word ‘powerseller’ and the powerseller logo in your listings.  You can find that post HERE.  This does not mean the powerseller program no longer exists.  In fact you first need to become a powerseller before you can go on to become a Top Rated Seller, which is the goal for most sellers, as it comes with many benefits.

If you have never seen the 90 day powerseller challenge before then I highly recommend you check it out, as this is what got me started, not only selling information on eBay, but has also led me into the internet marketing business.

The auctions have now ended.

Watch this video to see the results.  Remember this video is just to show the procedure of what I do in this method of product sourcing.  Each auction ended up with a higher price than those auctions that I won.

I use this method regularly, and it is very successful.

To learn more about this subject, I 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.

At the end of my last post, I said I had some products that I had won by using the technique I had explained.  Now they have arrived.  I have 6 bears to list.  One of them, I will not make any profit from, as I did not do my research properly, so this will highlight why research is important.  This particular bear, I have listed on a buy it now.  All the other 5 bears I have listed on auction.

In the below video, I will show you the listings which I won, and the new listings I have made to relist them, and you will see the big difference in the listings.

This is how much I spent, including postage, on the items shown in this video:

Bundle of teddies – £3.49
The two me to you bears – £8.50
—————————————–
Total spent – £11.99

So, for this to be a success, I need for these combined auctions to finish for more than £11.99

I will write another blog post and make another video after the auction has ended.  Depending on how the auction goes, I may well do a post and video half way through the auction too.

So, watch this space to see the results of this live eBay arbitrage experiment.

Anway,  I now want to show you another method of sourcing products on eBay.   This involves buying a job lot of an item.  Again this is something I have had a lot of fun and success with, and in this video I show you how I find such listings, and generally what I go for.  I also found a badly listed job lot, which I actually ended up winning.

Finding good job lots on eBay

The job lot of jewellery items I showed you in this video, I did snipe and ended up winning for £3.31.  When I receive these and list them, I will do a video.   Then when the auctions end, I will show you the results as proof that this method actually works.

I do also have fun with this method, just like I do with the arbitrage method.

If you give this a try, let me know using the comments box below how you get on and what you think to this method.