Hi Bob,
There are literally hundreds of ways to make money on eBay.
What do you want to sell? Do you want to sell movies, TVs, hardware, eBooks, what?
Well, I don't have much to go on here, save "How do I make money on eBay?" So, I will just give you a crash course in buying product per how I categorize them.
The next email will be selling product.
There are FOUR main ways to obtain product, as I would classify them:
1. Salvage/Overstock/Returns/Closeouts/Gov't Auctions/Etc.
2. Import (from China or some other country)
3. Buy on eBay and turn around and sell on eBay, which I do ALL THE TIME.
4. Sell electronic product, namely eBooks, services, eproducts, products that are electronic.
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THE FIRST THREE ABOVE:
I don't recommend dropshipping or affiliate marketing, as I have done a bit of both and found them not profitable.. Simply put, everyone wants to do this when they first get into selling. I say this broad statement, because so far, out of about 17 people who have signed up for my coaching, about 14 of them said they wanted to "dropship".
The problem is dropshipping is more of a trick than a profitmaker. Basically, the companies who offer this type of selling are not interested in real sellers looking for real profit. Rather, they are looking for inexperienced sellers who will be duped into selling their products. I say this, because when I did a lot of research in the area of dropshipping and tried it myself, I found that their claims of "low prices" were false. I also found that the one I did use was only reliable about 50% of the time. I would sell a product and half the time, they would say it was not in stock.
So, though it appears to be easy, dropshipping ends up being a difficult way to make money.
BUY THEN SELL ON EBAY:
Wholesale Lots~
Simply go to any main category on
www.ebay.com, such as "DVDs" and then find the subcategory "Wholesale Lots". In there, you will find product in lots of 50, 100, you name it..
The trick is to not bid on the glamorous auctions at the top of the page, but the auction on the bottom that no one clicks on. Often, those are the real deals, where you can turn around and make a real profit selling each item individually..
Believe it or not, there are items ending all the time that are low priced.. This works well and can be a very profitable way to do business on eBay.
SALVAGE / OVERSTOCK / RETURNS:
This is probably the best way to make REAL money on eBay. From what I have done with this and from what I can tell, most of those making solid income on eBay are buying their product in this manner..
Basically, you can buy returns, overstocks, etc from chain stores like Sears, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.
http://www.surplus.net is a pretty good source for companies that offer such product..
For instance, this is a solid company that offers such product:
http://www.amlinc.com/ Just look at the above links and do some searching and I think you will see what I mean..
You basically buy it for about 30 to 50 % of wholesale and can turn around and sell it for double on eBay.. The best is to buy "manifested" pallets of such product.. Manifested means it tells you what is actually on the pallet.. You can take that and do searches on eBay to see what it sells for..
IMPORTING:
I have done this several times.. Generally, you spend about $5000 or so at a time and you can buy product from China.. This is also a very large way to make REAL profit on eBay and many of the larger companies end up going this route.. So, a lot of the bigger companies on eBay do this, but it does have more risk and requires more preparation than the Salvage method..
Here is a great website for finding companies that sell this product:
http://www.alibaba.com
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THE FOURTH, EBOOKS:
Regarding eBooks, I think the key to your success will be to go for quality rather than quantity, with respect to your approach..
These give a crash course in writing very good sales ad copy. These are very effective techniques that I have taken directly from books I have bought on the subject.
QUALITY:
1. Find one of the better, more popular, higher priced or potentially higher priced eBook to sell. Whether or not they sell at a high price, try to gage the "value" to the customer, as you can often sell at a high price next to a competitor's low price and STILL get the sale and I will tell you why below.
2. Write a good advertisement per the tutorials above.
3. Brainstorm all the categories.
4. Brainstorm all the keywords.
HOW TO KNOW WHICH EBOOK TO SELL:
* Look for one in the list that seems like someone "might" pay a good chunk of money for AND would seem like many would want it.
* Then, do searches on eBay using related keywords to that eBook. FIRST, do not be shocked if you see it selling for a low price. The key is that they have fallen for the "low price trap" believing no one will buy if its a higher price. Its a bunch of bull. To clearly demonstrate this to you, consider my "Powerseller Coaching" I sold you. There are MANY selling similar products for low prices. But, you bought from me, right? Now, ask yourself, if I would have sold it for $5 bucks to you, would you have thought it was worth anything? Probably not? WHY? Here is the SECRET. Its so simple.. Basically, you write a SOLID AD and then back up the ad with a SOLID PRICE. You build up the value in their mind and meet the value with a price..
I explain the above, below, in more details:
A. Designing a "Solid" Ad using Sales Copy Writing Techniques.
B. Adjusting the price.
C. Expanding and Selecting the Best Categories.
D. Expanding and Selecting the Best Keywords.
"A" is probably the easiest. Basically, use standard sales copy techniques to write your ad. What I did was goto a book store, find a book on writing "sales copy" or "sales ads". Could be one of those "Sales Ad Writing for Dummies" books.. It might take you a full 4+ hours to write a killer ad, but once you are done, you will have to do little editing to it in the future. Just read the book, or skim it, highlight the good stuff and apply it to your ad. I have a "crash course" on my website:
http://www.saledaddy.com/memberspro/ if you want to just do the basics..
"B" Is like a lab experiment.. "B" is actually the last thing you do of all the steps.. Basically, figure out A, C and D and then just pick a good B to start out.. Then, over time, maybe every week, try a new price, see how the sales go. ALSO, higher prices sometimes can bring in MORE sales, so never hesitate to try higher prices and lower prices.. The idea is to analyze the "profit" that the prices generate.. The one that generates the highest profit is the one you keep.
"C" and "D" are also rather simple, if you do them correctly. For categories, basically you just do searches for related items and look to the left side menu on the search result page, and it will list all the categories they are listed in. Also, you can just navigate through all the main categories to see which categories throughout all the categories relate to your product.. Generally, you should be able to find a BARE minimum of 3 to 5 categories to list one product in.
For keywords, its simple also, if you know what you are doing.. Basically, one good method is to just open MS Word and just start brainstorming related keywords to your product.. Make sure to think of famous words that relate, including competitor brand names that you can somehow put a word or two of in the title.. So, you can use the Thesaurous on MS Word to give you even more words than the ones you just brainstormed.. THEN, you can go over to Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool to see how popular the words are and to find other popular words that are related:
Believe it or not, if you just do trial and error with the above, you can easily after a month's time have solid sales and profit on various products you resell over and over..
You have seen some of my products, right? Some of them I have been selling since I started selling on eBay practically! I am STILL selling them for profit!
ALSO, once you have done the above several times over a couple years, you get SO GOOD at it that you practically don't have to do ANY trial and error..
You will have to do a little still, but it is far easier and you can do it sometimes in a week or two's time..
ROBERT CARLIN <bcarlin@aaaa.net> wrote:
I bought your program on eBay because it was advertised as revealing your business model. Now you tell me that I have to ask questions to figure out how I want to make money. Well, I asked a question by buying your program. The question is: "How do I make money on eBay?"
