Archive for February, 2008

Payment Method Include as many different payment methods as possible (eBay rules prohibit cash) one of which MUST be PayPal. I regularly see eBay sellers refusing to take PayPal because of the fees, these sellers are severely reducing their final values by doing so as most eBayers expect to pay with PayPal and will ignore [...]

Price I have tested starting prices extensively and my conclusions are that £9.99 is the optimum start price for my own particular niche. (obviously your starting price will depend on the type of products you sell, but the following general principles will still apply). Starting at 1p or 99p does bring in more bidders but [...]

Auction Term My extensive testing confirms that 7 days is the optimum auction term. Anything less reduces the number of potential buyers who see your listing and 10 days I find doesn’t improve final values. The important thing is that your term covers a weekend and that your item doesn’t end during the day when last [...]

Encourage ‘newbies’  I see so many eBay sellers putting new eBayers off bidding with phrases such as ‘new ebayers must email me BEFORE bidding’ or ‘contact me if your feedback is less than 10’ This is counter productive and unnecessary. TIP: There is space in the ‘item location’ field which you can use to encourage [...]

Title  The most important component of your listing is the title as it contains the words that your potential buyers are searching for. If your title does not contain the right keywords or misspelled keywords your item will not appear in your buyers search results. Subtitles are a waste of money, as the eBay search [...]

Do try the brilliant free research tool at mpire.com  Click the link above and go down the page to the links section (beginning ‘About Us’) the ‘Researcher’ link is to the right. This tool searches millions of recently ended eBay auctions and provides priceless information to the switched on eBay seller such as; The average selling price [...]

Category Your item must be listed in the correct category as many ebayers search through categories as opposed to searching for a specific item. The easiest way to identify the correct category is to search for items similar to your own and list yours in the same category. You can list in more than 1 [...]

Following on from my recommendation of Terry Gibbs The Auction Revolution, Terry has also written 2 FREE eBay guides which cover the basics of buying and selling including 13 ways to find hidden items on eBay (items that can be bought cheaply and resold for a quick profit). You can download these guides for free by clicking [...]

My early eBay selling experience involved a huge amount of trial and error to establish the best way of listing my items. How do I choose the right category for my item? How do I construct a compelling title? What should my starting price be? Should I use a 7 or 10 day auction? What information should [...]

Founded in September of 1995, eBay is a global online marketplace where practically anyone can trade practically anything. eBay has a global presence in 38 markets, including the U.S. eBay has approximately 248 million registered users worldwide. eBay users worldwide trade more than $1,812 worth of goods on the site every second. There were 556 million [...]

Today I worked for approximately 2 hours on my blog. I opened a Google AdSense account which will enable me to earn an income from clicks on Google ads placed on my blog. I opened an account with Aweber.com who provide various services including autoresponder and email newsletter services. The aim here is to build a list [...]

I intend to record my activities on a regular basis and this post is the first of these ‘regular diaries’. During the last two weeks I  purchased a domain (stuart-turnbull.com) through 1and1.  I opened a hosting account with d9 Hosting. The customer service I received from d9 was second to none and I recommend them without [...]

Of the many ebooks I bought and read only a few lived up to their sales pitches. One that I particularly recommend is ‘The Silent Sales Machine’by Jim Cockrum. This ebook explains a simple strategy for developing your eBay business by directing some of your eBay traffic to your other ‘off eBay’ products and services. In [...]

The purpose of this blog is to record my journey to successful online marketer. Having discovered eBay some 3 years ago I realised that it is possible to make money using the internet, my ‘eureka’ moment came when I sold an item for £150 that had cost me £20, from this point on I was [...]