WOW, I must have done something right this month, I smashed my target figure.

I’ve only been doing what I have been writing about on my blog over the last couple of months.

What do I think has been the most successful tactic? – I believe it has been not over charging on postage costs to send abroad.  As an estimate, I think roughly 30% of my sales have been to people outside of the UK.  I wrote about this in my last post.

As a complete coincidence, I received an email from eBay today which among other items, explains that from 3rd June, items on eBay.co.uk, the UK listings will appear on all of European eBay sites too.  You can read more about this HERE.

Actually I didn’t know they were not being shown on European sites, certainly judging from the number of sales I have had from European customers.  I can only think they physically looked on eBay.co.uk to find my items.

The main purpose of this challenge was to try to highlight a post I made a couple of months ago.  Here it is again.

I set myself a goal, and I accomplished it.  I may not have done it on my first attempt, although I still say the April challenge was a success, I did on my second attempt which was this May eBay challenge.  I know I wouldn’t have made this value of sales had I not set myself this target.  A value of sales which I have never achieved before but still I believed I could it.

Although the challenge is over, I will still continue to post tips and tactics to increase your online auction sales and traffic.

Looks like I will reach my target.  Only need to sell another £60 worth of items with still more than a week to go.

So far my May eBay challenge updates, have been to do with increasing traffic to your store or listings.  In this post, I want to share with you a very effective technique for increasing sales once you have visitors to your listings.

If you are in the UK, like I am, you know we are suffering from very bad currency exchange rates.  Well, you can use this to your advantage on eBay, or indeed any other online auction site.  The fact that us Brits do not get as many Euros, US dollars, Canadian dollars, Japanese Yen, Egyptian pounds etc etc, for our pound, means that items are more expensive for us abroad.  Well, if you turn that around, it means that residents of these countries will find items cheaper when shopping in the UK, including on eBay.co.uk.

So, make your items available to international buyers.  To do this, select ‘will ship worldwide’ when completing the postage section of the listing.   Do not overcharge on your postage outside your country of residence.  If it costs you £2.60 to send your item to another EU country, only charge this, or slightly more to cover your postage.  Say £3.00.  On today’s exchange rate, this is only 3.30 Euros.  You will probably find this is not much more than postage from a domestic seller of their country.

This is what I do, and I am sending items outside of the UK on a daily basis.  I have sold to many countries, including:

• Norway
• Holland
• Ireland
• Spain
• Portugal
• Italy
• Lithuania
• USA
• Canada
• Greece
• Israel

If you list auction style listings, and you list on eBay.co.uk, for an extra 5p, you can have international visibility.  This option is not available on Buy it now listings, but international buyers will still find you if they want the product you have on offer.

If you don’t already ship abroad, you want to start, and your sales will increase.  I guarantee it.

Since I last made a post, I have done a couple of things to help increase traffic to my listings.

I have continually added new products to my store, as usual.

I have been increasing my twitter followers which in turn will increase traffic to my eBay store.   I now have over 1,000 followers.

One of the new products I have added to my eBay listings is the series of videos which has taught me all I know about Twitter.    Here are just a few things the video series will teach you

• How to quickly increase your followers
• How to design your own graphic for use as your twitter background and how to upload it
• How to integrate Twitter with Aweber
• How to integrate Twitter with your wordpress blog
• How to automatically follow people when someone follows you
• How to automatically send a customised message to your new follower
• plus much more

I now have these videos available on CD ROM viewable on all PC platforms, via my eBay store.   Click HERE to see the Video CD ROM category of my eBay store.  Hint: especially for my blog readers.   I have not advised of this anywhere else.   I have set this up on ‘best offer’.  It is on a buy it now for £9.99, but if you put in an offer for £5.00 or higher, I have set the listing up to automatically accept your offer.

Since my last update, I have been, apart from the obvious listing of more products, been continuously looking at more ways of driving traffic to my store, and hence my listings.

Now this post covers something that I touched on in a post for my April eBay challenge, but I have recently discovered it is so much more powerful than I originally thought, it deserves another mention.

In a word ‘Twitter’.  You should tweet to the tweeple.  If you are already a twitter er, then you will now what I am on about.  If not, you should register now.  Here is my twitter page:  www.twitter.com/marcsampson.

I have recently purchased a video series of tutorials for twitter, and golly, it is so much more powerful than I realised.  This is the reason why I am mentioning it again.  I am still going through the video course, but when I have finished, I will be selling the same course in my eBay shop and also via digital download, as I have master resale rights to it.

There are so many twitter tools, and it is these tools that make twitter as powerful as it is.  The two most exciting is that you can incorporate it with your blog, and also Aweber.  The video series will explain all.  I will make a separate post about it when I have it available.

Anyway, go tweet, and I will catch up with you again soon with another update.

Since my last update, as always, I have been adding more items to my inventory, but I have also given my eBay shop a face lift.  It now has a completely different look.  In fact if you were used to my old eBay shop, you now will not recognise it.

The reason for this is to try to create my own image and have a unique look.   One thing I done to give my shop a unique look was to create my own logo.  Here it is.

I can now use this image on other websites, including this blog, and also have it link to my eBay store or where ever else I want it to link to like my eBook website.  The one above links to my eBay shop, and the one below links to my eBook website:

This on it’s own wont create extra traffic or many extra, if any extra, sales but I’m hoping it will help with repeat customers because they will recognise my label and brand if you like.

I welcome any comments you may have.

You can create images very easily such as the above with photoshop, or if you don’t have photoshop, gimp which is a free alternative.  You can get gimp at www.gimp.org.

Another tactic and eBay challenge update will be posted in another couple of days.

Until then, look after yourself and your eBay identity.

I am closer to my target compared to the same day in April.  I really have the bit between my teeth this month.

Today, I want to tell you about another very simple traffic generation tactic that is very easy and free to implement.  It is very similar to the method I spoke about in my last post.  That is build a blog, but this time build a blog on the eBay site itself.  Not a lot of people know you can do this.  Ofcourse, you can only post about eBay related topics, but that is fine, as you want to write about your eBay listings.

I will do a separate post about how to do this so that it has a relevant post heading, but briefly, follow these steps:

1.  Log in to your eBay account
2.  Click on your eBay username that is a link.   This takes you to your ‘My World’ page.
3.  Click on ‘Add Content’
4.  Down the right hand side, you will see ‘Add Modules’.  One of these is a blog.  Just follow the steps, it’s very simple.

Then what I do, is each time I write an eBay related topic, I add the same post to my eBay blog just by using copy and paste.

You will be surprised as to how many hits your eBay blog gets.  At the time of writing this post, I have had 1715 visitors to my blog on eBay.  That’s 1715 potential visitors I would not otherwise have had.

Also you get your own url for the eBay blog.  Mine is http://blogs.ebay.co.uk/mompessons.  Go ahead and take a look.  You will see this same post on there.

So go get blogging.

What I will try to do in this month’s series of blog posts on my May eBay challenge, is to give you constructive and useful information that you can use to help with your eBay business.

I will not go into a lot of depth on each tactic, as I would like to write a separate blog post on each tactic with the appropriate blog post title rather than using ‘My May eBay challenge …..’ for example.

You need to get traffic, or visitors, to your eBay listings.  After all, more traffic equals more sales, and more sales equals more profit.

One method you can use to drive traffic to your listings is what you are reading right now.  My blog.  Write a blog post about your eBay business.  Write a seperate blog post on your different listings.  Write a blog post each time you list a new item to your inventory.  Put a link to your eBay shop on your blog, and in the relevant blog posts.

To browse my eBay listings, you can view my eBay shop by clicking HERE and my eBay shop will open in a new window.

If you do not have a blog, you can get one started for nothing.  Simply go to www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com, and then get posting and writing articles about the products you are listing.

You may wonder how this will help.  Well search engines love websites with rich original content and that are regularly updated.  Because of this, blogs can get great positions in search results.  For prove of this, search Google for my name, ‘Marc Sampson’.  At time of writing this post, this blog you are reading right now is number one, and look how many results there are.  Now think about if you are writing a blog post on a certain item in your eBay inventory, and then someone searches Google, or any other search engine, for that item.