Well, on Tuesday 20th July 2010, I called in.  I wanted to talk about having your listing showing on other countries eBay sites, for example www.ebay.com, www.ebay.ca etc.  The show is broken up into segments.  You can listen to the show by clicking the link below.

eBay radio show number 393 – 20th July 2010.

Next to each segment there is a short description of what they talk about in that segment.  I was featured in segment 3.

If you are not a regular eBay radio listener, and you sell on eBay, I would recommend you ‘tune in’.  Not only is it very factual, it is great entertainment too.  The host, Griff, is such a character.   If you can’t listen to it live, you can listen to the shows in the archive section, such as the link above.  You can even download the segments and put them on your mp3 player.  Since listening to the show I have picked up so much useful information.  If you do listen live, you can interact with other listeners on the discussion board.

To sign up to the eBay radio group on eBay, click here.

Happy listening.

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If you use Auctiva or Selling Manager Pro, you can have it set up so that feedback is automatically left when you receive feedback.  I don’t want to use that option, because I have auctions running from 1p, and I find people buy these from me, not because they want the item, but want the feedback.  This is called ‘feedback manipulation’, and is against eBay’s policy.  Therefore, I don’t want to be leaving feedback for these items.  I have auctions starting at 1p as a traffic generation technique.  So I don’t want to be leaving feedback for the buyer, as I could be seen as manipulating feedback too, which ofcourse, I don’t want.

Up until now, I have been leaving feedback for one item at a time, and takes up a lot of time.  Time I could be using listing more products.  But now it only takes me one minute to leave feedback for many items at once.

I have made this short video showing you how to do it:

For more ways to minimise your effort on eBay, allowing you more time to maximise your sales and profits, then I recommend The Lazy Way to Wealth on eBay.

I always appreciate your comments.  Please leave them below.

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I list several ways of sourcing products, most of which I have not yet covered.  Now is an ideal time of year to be using one of these methods in particular.  That method being car boot, garage, yard sales etc.

Many people use this method, and not any other method as you have virtually an endless supply of products at next to nothing prices.  It is amazing what price people sell their unwanted items for at a car boot sale.  For example, my sister went to a car boot sale two weeks ago, and bought a Barbie doll for her 3 year old daughter for 50 pence.  I saw it too, it is in immaculate condition.  Now you go and search completed listings for used Barbie dolls, that’s all I am saying.  And that is just one item from which there are literally thousands of bargains to be had.

If you are not sure of where your nearest car boot sale is, then carbootjunction.com will tell you what you need to know.

To learn more about finding products at car boot sales, garage sales etc then Garage Sales Strategies for eBay Success will tell you what to look for when finding products to buy to resell on eBay.

Now that finally we have some good weather, get out there and grab some bargains to make hugh profits with.

Please share any success stories you have and products you find from this method, by leaving comments below.

GOOD LUCK.

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If you have lots of eBay listings, it could take you a very long time to edit all your listings, but it doesn’t have to.  I have made this short video to show you how to edit the postage and packaging charges quickly and easily, and will only take you a few minutes.

Hope you found it useful.

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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.

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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
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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.

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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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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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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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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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