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Welcome ::
Starting an eBay business
Starting a successful eBay online auction home business
While it's true that starting a business on eBay isn't rocket
science, that doesn't mean that you should rush through the planning
stages. As with any new business, this initial development of a
sound eBay business plan is crucial. You wouldn't jump in the
water before you knew how to swim would you? Neither would we.
Read this page to learn about some of the things you'll need to
consider when starting your business on eBay.
There are a few requirements to starting an eBay business that
you'll have to meet to be successful in your new venture. You'll
need:
- a computer
- an internet connection
- a digital camera (unless using
drop-shipping to supply your auctions)
- a drive to succeed
- an ability to have fun with your work
If you are completely new to eBay, we recommend
you that you get some of these basics down:
What Products Should You Sell?
Our unwavering opinion is that you've got to set up an eBay
business to sell products that you are genuinely interested. As
we're sure you're aware, you can just tell when someone is truly
interested in the product being sold. Likewise, you can also
easily tell when someone is only interested in dumping products on you
for money. Design your eBay business around you. That way,
you'll not only seem more real to your potential eBay buyers, buy you
won't get bored with your merchandise.
That being said, make sure that you don't choose products for your
eBay business that no one wants. Read this report (pdf) to see a
listing on eBay hot products (it's updated every month).
- http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf
Develop Your Niche Market
Okay. You've come up with product ideas for your eBay
business, so now it's time to further develop that idea. All you
really need to do is to make a list of all things related to your
product. If, for instance, you want to sell DVD players, then
your niche market would also include things such as DVDs, DVD
recorders, blank DVDs, movie posters, etc. In other words, you
need to think of anything that someone buying your product might also
want. That way, any visitor that is interested in your main
product (e.g. DVD players) will also be interested in anything else
you sell (which can be listed on your product page).
Keeping Track of All Your Auctions
If your eBay business is going to have less than 20 auctions or so
online, keeping track of them on paper is not a problem. But if
you're going to get serious about running a business on eBay, then we
recommend that you use software to keep track of all your auctions.
You should visit our
eBay tools section to see what software we
recommend.
High- or Low-Volume Seller?
There are two ways to make a lot of money online with eBay: you can
be a high- or low-volume seller.
- High-volume sellers have many auctions going on at once.
Their goals are to sell as many items as possible. It's all
about how much merchandise you can run through.
- Conversely, low-volume sellers have only a few items listed on
eBay, but they sell for lots of money (think cars, real estate,
etc).
It's easier and less costly to start an eBay business as a
high-volume seller, and that's what we would do if we were starting
out. Also, it's much easier to find buyers who are willing to
spend $40 for a product they've never seen, but it's not as easy to
find ones willing to spend $15,000.
Keep Good Records & Monitor Your Progress
This point is very important. Be sure that you're monitoring
your progress as you go along. You wouldn't want to have so many
items going on eBay that you decided to stop paying attention to each
one (software is really the way to go). Once you stop paying
attention, you could be losing money by listing dud items over and
over again and not really notice for awhile. Don't let this
happen to you.
Remember, the more you develop the business side of your eBay
venture, the easier you'll be able to actually
make money with eBay.
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