Build an eBay Business Part 3
Developing Selling Strategies and Inventory
To operate a successful business on eBay, you need to
consistently offer items for sale that buyers are interested
in purchasing. The key to consistent selling is to have a
steady stream of product available to list and to develop
selling strategies that keep you one step ahead of the eBay
competition. These concepts are true whether you sell unique
and hard-to-find items or if you volume-sell a single product.
In this chapter you will learn how to develop and apply
strategies to help you sell your product and stand out from the
competition, and how to become a good buyer (or purchaser)
and procure items (or inventory) to sell beyond the yard sales
and thrift stores where many of us started finding items to sell.
Develop Sales Strategies
Two basic sales strategies are employed on eBay, although there are an infinite
number of variations on these two central themes:
• Sell fewer, more expensive items, where each sale provides the opportunity for a
high profit.
–Or–
• Sell more, less expensive items, with each sale providing a small profit.
For example, you can sell one antique Oriental rug and retain a profit of
hundreds of dollars, or you can sell hundreds of battery-operated bug swatters
and net $1.50 per sale. From a profit standpoint, the businesses are a wash, but
there are other factors to consider:
• Selling unique items requires you to be a specialist in that genre, or at least highly
knowledgeable. eBay buyers want reliable and accurate information on items, and your
inexperience with an item will be obvious to an informed pool of bidders. Also, there is
typically a smaller pool of buyers for unique items than for mass-market items. If you
are a specialist in a specific area, you are more likely to develop repeat customers.
If you want to be a specialist in one area, you should be flexible enough to consider
other types of merchandise outside your current area of expertise.
• Volume selling can be labor-intensive. Each transaction requires time to process, ship,
respond to inquiries, deal with buyers who don’t pay, and all the other details involved
in completing a sale on eBay. You can use certain techniques to minimize time spent
on a transaction (see “Use Drop-Shipping” later in the chapter and Chapters 4 and 5
for information on using software tools, such as Turbo Lister and Selling Manager/
Selling Manager Pro), but many charge a fee for the services provided.
Ultimately, there is no right or wrong, better or worse, sales strategy to pursue.
Depending on your interests, merchandise availability, and the time you have
to devote to the eBay business, you can successfully employ either strategy or a
blend of the two.
Sell by Volume
Volume sales concentrate on selling a lot of a few items. You can achieve several
economies of scale by selling more and more of the same item:
• Negotiate better prices with your supplier. The price per item you pay is lower if you
buy in bulk.
• Listings are similar, if not the same. You can leverage the work you do creating a
listing, thereby lowering your transaction costs per item.
• Packaging becomes cookie-cutter. The item’s weight, dimensions, insurance,
and other packaging considerations are static and allow you to obtain quantities
of packaging material at a lower cost. Labor time and cost are also reduced as the
process becomes rote and more efficient.
eBay offers several features that help you sell similar or multiple items (see
“Acquire Inventory” later in the chapter for information on finding multiple
items to sell).
SELL MULTIPLE ITEMS AT A FIXED PRICE
In a fixed-price listing, you sell all items for a fixed price. Bidders enter the
number of items they want at your fixed price. After each sale, the quantity
of items is reduced by the number sold in that particular auction. The listing
remains active as long as there are items to sell; it closes when the quantity of
items is zero.
SELL LOTS
Lots are packages, groups, or collections of the same or similar items.
For example, you could sell 200 scarves in groups of ten. You can choose
to sell items at a fixed price, such as $8.99 per lot, or you can list them as
auction items. Enter the number of lots and the number of items per lot in the Quantity area of
the Sell Your Item form.
You may need to click the Add Or Remove Options link to find the Lots entry
box. Some pointers to consider when selling lots:
• Don’t add too many items per lot. Although people like buying in Costco-sized
quantities, there is a point of diminishing returns. For example, in the field of collectible
magazines, you often see a single issue sell for $15. At the same time, another seller
will offer a lot of 20 similar issues that only sells for $25. Typically, the buyers of such
lots are dealers, who break the lots up and sell them individually.
• Keep the lot starting price low to attract bidders.
• Add the number of items per lot and the most commonly searched keyword for bulk
items—“lot”—to the listing’s title. For example, “Entire Lot Gone to Dogs—50 Brand
New Nylabones.”
• Package lots to sell in the sweet spot of lot sales: $150–$1,500 (source: eBay Live!).
• List in the Wholesale subcategory (available under many categories, using Search).
Target Selling with Your Sales Data
To assist you in analyzing your sales data so you can make listing decisions, such
as which sales format to use (bidding or fixed-price), what listing durations and
ending times seem most effective, which categories are doing best, and several
other sales metrics, you can receive Sales Reports from
eBay. The basic (although limited) Sales Report is free
(your seller’s account must be in good standing, must
have sold at least one item in the last four months, and
must have a feedback rating of at least 10). The more
robust Sales Report Plus incurs a $4.99 monthly fee but
doesn’t have minimum requirements to subscribe.
1. Click Site Map on the eBay header.
2. Under Selling Tools, click Sales Reports.
3. On the Sales Reports Overview page, view the side-by-side comparison of
the products:
will be offered only the Sales Reports Plus option.
• To sign up for Sales Reports Plus, click the Sales Reports Plus (Free)
Sign Up Now button, and click the I Agree To These Terms button.
After accepting the terms and conditions, you’ll receive a congratulatory
page and an e-mail with welcome information.
days to generate). Under My Subscriptions on the sidebar, click Sales Reports. Your Sales Summary will look similar to Figure 2-4.
Gain a Competitive Awareness
eBay is a highly open market—there aren’t many secrets associated with a
transaction. This can be a proverbial double-edged sword at times. If you find
an item that sells extremely well, it won’t be long before others pick up on
your good fortune. It may be simply the product you are selling that increases
your sales, the category where it’s listed, the appearance of your listing, or a
combination of these and other factors. Conversely, there’s nothing stopping
you from mining competitor information on eBay (and beyond) and picking the
best-of-breed data to emulate. To this end, eBay goes out of its way to share best
practices, lessons learned, and success stories. (eBay makes money, regardless
if you or your competitor succeeds, but they would rather see you both do well
and pass along those listing and final value fees!) Consider integrating these
practices into your eBay business:
• Research Completed Items listings in the categories where you sell:
Chapter 4 for information on improving your listings).
• See what type of listing format seems to be getting top dollar. Are top sellers using
fixed-price listings or letting the bidding process do the heavy lifting for them?
• Check the return and shipping policies of your competitors. Especially in lower-priced,
competitive sales, shipping costs can quickly sway a buyer from one listing to another.
discussion boards, workshops, and the latest announcements.
• Determine current trends:
highlighting on the home page in the next few months. Click Site Map on the eBay
header, click Seller Central (under Selling Resources), and click What’s Hot on the
sidebar.
• See what buyers are searching for by
category. From Seller Central, click
Category Tips. Scroll to the category
you’re interested in, and click the In
Demand link. Top searches are listed
according to subcategories.
• Read trade periodicals (for example,
Antique Trader, Sports Collectors
Digest, Hemmings Motor News, and
Comics Buyers Guide) for insight into sales from storefront businesses.
• Peruse retail catalogs (Williams-Sonoma) to see what Madison Avenue is telling
everyone will be the latest must-have items.
MAKING IT EASY FOR YOUR
BUYERS
A timeless sales strategy and competitive advantage is
to make the buying experience easy and straightforward
to entice buyers to return to your sales outlet. eBay offers
several features you should consider that relieve the buyer
of anxiety and make the purchasing process simpler.
USE COMBINED PAYMENTS
To make it more convenient for repeat buyers to make
payments, you can combine the payments on multiple
purchases so the buyer only has to make one payment.
Besides the ease of making just one payment, the buyer
might then qualify for discounts you offer based on the
final purchase amount (and you can save in PayPal
fees). To offer combined payment, follow these steps:
1. In My eBay, under My Account, click Site
Preferences.
2. Under Selling Preferences, click Show
for Shipping Preferences. The Site
Preferences window expands to show
shipping preferences.
3. Click Edit to open the My eBay:
Combined Payments And Shipping
Discounts page.
4. On the Combined Payments rule, click Edit:
• On the Edit Combined Payments dialog box,
verify that a check mark is next to Allow Buyers
To Send One Combined Payment For All Items
Purchased.
• Set the Time Period For Combined Purchases
to the time period you want.
5. Click Save.
USE SHIPPING DISCOUNTS
You can combine shipping discounts by specifying rules
for flat shipping (when your items are combined into
one package using the flat-rate shipping costs) or for
calculated shipping (where your buyer’s shipping cost
is based on his or her ZIP code, promotional shipping
discounts (where you may offer special discounts to
promote your listings), and insurance offerings.
To enable the shipping discounts features for existing
listings:
1. In My eBay, under My Account, click Site
Preferences.
2. Under Selling Preferences, click Show for Shipping
Preferences. The Site Preferences window expands
to show shipping preferences. Click Edit.
3. Under the Combined Shipping Discounts area,
click Create to open a specific shipping rule pane.
4. On the specific shipping rule pane, either open
the drop-down menu and click the option you
want, or click the option buttons. Follow the tips to
set your shipping rules.
5. When you have selected the option you want,
click Next and a message will be displayed with
the options you have set.
6. Click Save.
Ask anyone in Outer Mongolia if they’d like a Coke, and they’ll probably smile
and say, “Yes, thank you.” They may never have drunk one, but chances are they
know what it is. Ask these same people if they’d prefer an “Acme Cola,” and
they will probably give you a blank look. The difference is that Coca-Cola (and
its variants) is one of the world’s most recognized brands, while Acme Cola isn’t
well known beyond the bathtub it’s made in. The classic definition of a brand is
a name, design, term, or symbol that identifies a product. As an eBay business,
chances are you didn’t make the product you’re selling
(although there are many craftspeople who sell their
wares on eBay), but you still can work on establishing
an identity on eBay that buyers will remember and
trust. Brand loyalty can be a powerful prime mover for
repeat sales. Four areas exist where you can personalize
your eBay business’s presence and create a branding
aura for you and/or your product.
DESIGN A KILLER LISTING TEMPLATE
Just as many books are judged by their covers, the fortunes of many eBay sellers
are made or lost based on their listing templates. A template that has too few
pictures, doesn’t show enough detail, lacks depth in its description, or whose
layout conveys amateurism can quickly turn off a prospective buyer. Develop
the skills to work with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the language
used to create Web pages, or get someone to create a listing template for you.
eBay provides many templates you can use for free, but much like clip art,
it tends to lose its effectiveness when viewers notice it used elsewhere. See
Chapter 4 for an in-depth dissection of eBay listings.
CREATE A LOGO
The easiest way to personalize your business or product is with a logo.
Consistency is the key element in establishing a brand. That is, consistency
in how your design complements your business, product, or organization
(nonprofit charitable organizations are discussed in Chapter 9). The design
should be simple and small enough to see clearly on eBay promotional venues,
such as About Me pages and eBay Stores.
EMPLOY AN ABOUT ME PAGE
An About Me page lets you showcase your brand. You can add information
about your business, display listings you have for bid, show feedback you’ve
received, and provide links to off-eBay Web sites, including your own (see
Figure 2-5). Chapter 10 describes how to create an About Me page.
CROSS-PROMOTE
The adage “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” aptly applies to the
use of cross-promotion in eBay to build a branding sense among your bidders
and buyers. A free eBay feature lets you advertise other items you have for
bid or sale when a buyer bids on or views a purchased listing (or, for eBay
Stores, when a buyer views your item), as shown in Figure 2-6. Also, if you
have an eBay Store, items you have in the general listings are integrated with
your store items, and you’ll have a unique Internet address (URL—Uniform
Resource Locator) for your store’s home page that you can use off-eBay to drive
customers to your items. See Chapter 6 for more information on eBay Stores and
Chapter 10 for more information on using cross-promoting, in and outside of
eBay Stores.
You can tailor your cross-promotions to match your items. For example, if you
are selling gold rings, you can display other gold rings when a buyer bids on
or views a purchased item, or views a gold ring listing in an eBay Store. To
customize your cross-promotion:
1. Click My eBay on the eBay header.
2. Click Marketing Tools in the sidebar.
3. On the Marketing Tools page, click Edit next to Cross Promotion Defaults.
4. On the Cross Promotion: Defaults page, click Create New Rule.
5. Click Select An eBay Category under either of the two selling situations, and then follow the prompts to tailor your categories.
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