UK Auction Line News. Issue 14

The leading ezine of users of Ebay.co.uk...

05.01.04

The Path to Power Selling

Archive

Editor's Note

Welcome to the 14th issue of UK Auction Line

I hope you have all had a Happy Christmas and would like to take this opportunity to wish you a prosperous New Year. In this the first issue of 2004 we have more news, information and help than ever. So lets kick off straight away with some news from France, which came courtesy of the Auction Bytes Newsletter.

It is a well-known fact that one of the first tools of protest in France is the Strike. However even I was surprised to hear that sellers on eBay’s French site are planning a week long strike on eBay starting on the 14th January. This is in protest to what has been described as “an incredible rise in fees”. There basic argument appears to be that the price rise is purely to increase eBay’ profit and is not accompanied by any enhancement of the services. Some sellers are moving over to Frances other auction sites and we will watch the situation with interest.

Apart from the French there has been quite an increase recently in complaints about eBay, especially from sellers. Their slow or non-existent responses to customer queries, the increase in fees and introduction of charges for previously free services are just some of the contentious issues. Talking of this just a quick reminder that if you have an eBay shop unless you cancel before next Friday 9th January it will start costing you £6 per month. As reported elsewhere eBays business and shares have grown dramatically over the last 12 months but two things could kill the goose that lays the golden egg, failure to curb any increase in the levels of fraud and large-scale customer dissatisfaction. 2004 could be an interesting year in the life off eBay.

Ever since I started selling on eBay I have been campaigning for more auction software to be produced that is compatible with eBay.co.uk. Well I am pleased to say that my campaign is beginning to bear fruit and Joel Peterson has agreed to produce a UK version of his Profit Calc software program. If you want a simple way to calculate your eBay costs and profits this could be just what you are looking for.
For more information visit the ProCalc link in this newsletter.

In this issue I am introducing a short audio lesson on Consignment Selling. I know that many people prefer the spoken to the written word and if this section proves popular I will try and include one with each issue.

Dave Bromley

Contents:
1. Corrie, Eastenders and the Rest.
2. You are Wrong!!
3. Final Thoughts

 


Content section 1

Corrie, Eastenders and the Rest.


One of the commonest questions I get asked is, “What can I sell on eBay?”
The simple answer is, “just about anything” but if you want to do really well in the long term I have always advocated finding yourself a small niche market and building on it.

In the run up to Christmas I could not help but notice the number of gifts related to TV programmes, especially “soap operas”. There were books, videos, games and goodness knows what else. And that got me thinking. There must be a market on eBay for soap opera related items.

So how would you start? First of all I would browse eBay to see what is currently on offer. I would also go and look for discussion and chat groups that dealt with soap operas. I discovered the Soap Chat room on AOL and I am sure there are plenty of others. These should give you some idea of what questions soap aficionados are asking and give you some idea of the type of products they may be interested in.
Next I would send a series of fan letters to soap stars telling them how good I thought they were and asking for a signed photograph.

Next I would start going to car boot and table top sales looking for product. From what I have seen it should not be too expensive to build up a comprehensive stock of about 20 or so items. These along with your autographed will give you enough items to test the market.

If it works for you there is an opportunity to build up a good customer base that you could sell to directly. I would also think that there is scope for a newsletter as well.
For the right person this could be a great “niche”.


 
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Content section 2

You are Wrong!!

The other day I got an e-mail from someone who had subscribed to my 6 part mini course. It took me to task for some advice I gave about using TurboLister to improve your listings.

Basically the writer said that he had followed my advice and rather than increasing his sales they had gone down. To make matters worse a competitor who just used the standard listing form sold more and got better prices than he did. He then went on to say that he thought I should review my advice on the subject as it was obviously wrong.

Well I must admit that went against all my experience and that of the many successful eBay sellers that I speak to. A well laid out listing using TurboLister or one of the other software programs does improve response. I am always prepared to admit when I am in the wrong, (After all I am married so get a lot of practice!) so I asked him to send me details of both his and his competitors listing.

I have promised not to name the individual or the market he is targeting but what I discovered may be relevant to many you, whatever you are selling. Fortunately both sellers used visible counters on their auctions. The first point I noticed was that the competitor was getting as mush as 8 times the visitors than my correspondent was.
The reason for this quickly became apparent, in the titles he would use words like fantastic, super and beautiful but never once did he have the actual words that anyone would use on the eBay search engine. For instance if you were selling a salt and Pepper shaker shaped like a golfer and golf ball you would not have a title like:

Beautiful Golfer and Golf Ball 3” high.

But that was effectively what he was doing. His competitor on the other hand had something like:

Golfer and Ball - Salt & Pepper Shaker

Now this may seem obvious but I promise you this happened and I have the e-mail to prove it. When creating a title you have to get into the mind of your potential buyers and work out what words they will put into the search engine if they are looking for the type of product you have for sale.

You only have 45 characters, including spaces so it is important to get all the main keywords in; even if the grammar is not perfect. In this case it made 800% difference in the number of visitors to their respective auctions.

What was encouraging was that this gentleman was keeping an eye on what his competitor was doing and noticed that they were getting better results than him.
This is good, always study those who are doing better than you, find out what it is they are doing to attract more visitors, and why they are able to get better prices.
Once you discover this you can often adapt their ideas for your benefit.

I have offered the correspondent one or two suggestions and I would expect him to see some improvement in the coming months.

 
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This Months Extra News

Audio Tutorial - Consignment Selling

Profit Calc

UK Auction Site - CQ Out

Ebay Shops

Offers of the Month

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Content section 4

Final Thoughts

Ebay announced some interesting figures that other day. In September 1998 eBay became a public company and it shares were valued at $18 each, today those same shares are worth $760!! When you consider what has been happening to other shares during the same period that really is amazing. The company’s current market value is $40.9 billion, which is 11 billion more than the Ford Motor Company.

Other figures to come out:

$729: Value of goods sold on eBay every second
86 million: Registered users of eBay
$20 billion: Value of goods sold on eBay in 2003
19 million: Items on sale at any given time.

Finally, as I write this the dollar exchange rate stands at one pound sterling equalling $1.78 . This is very advantageous to the UK and now is a good time to be having a look around eBay.com for some bargains. However, do remember that anything that you import from the USA can be liable to duty charges and VAT although so far I have not had to pay on anything that I have bought from the States through eBay. Although, the other day I did have to pay £59 VAT and Duty for some DVDs that I ordered through the Internet.

 

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