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I am sorry that this month’s issue of UK Auctionline is a little late but I have been waiting for the revamped web site to go online before sending it out. Like most projects involving the Internet it has taken longer than I had hoped but phase one is now complete. Phase Two is an ongoing process of adding more and more informative content to the site.

For the more technically minded we are also adding a Blog and RSS feeds to the web site. This will allow subscribers to add their own comments and pass on their views and opinions to other readers. Another feature I want to include is a review of software and books relating to eBay. I am looking for readers who would like to submit reviews of any programs they have used or books they have found particularly useful.

Car boot sales are now in full swing after the winter break and many of us will be searching around for bargains to sell on eBay. So far this year I have managed to make several good purchases a set of golf clubs for £20, 6 unabridged Chivers talking books in mint condition for £10 and a complete writing course for £1. So it does appear that there are still bargains to be had at car boot sales if you are prepared to go out and search for them.

Did you know that every week Radio eBay has a 2 hour broadcast.? Presenter Jim”Griff” Griffiths hosts the show, which includes interviews, hints and tip plus the latest eBay news.

There is also an interesting phone section when eBayers get an opportunity to ask questions or express their views. To be fair as you would expect the program obviously has more relevance to ebay.com users who are based in the states. However, there is a lot of material in the programs that could be of interest to eBay members in the UK.

By clicking on the link below not only can you hear this weeks program but also listen to past broadcasts contained in the archives. http://www.wsradio.com/ebayradio/

Last October eBay ran an advertising campaign on television and radio. This was successful and the company claim that it attracted over 1 million new users to eBay. It also raised the awareness of eBay to a new section of the public.

EBay have now announced that from this month they will be advertising again, this time with the intention of increasing bidding and listing activity by encouraging people to explore categories that they have not before.

They are going to sponsor 40 satellite/cable television programmes, highlighting the range of products available on the site, ranging from Golf Clubs to Cars. The sponsorship will run continuously from 4th May until the end of June, giving people consistent reminders of what they can buy and sell and the benefits of doing so on eBay.co.uk

The categories featured within last year’s advertising campaign saw strong growth and this could happen again this year. The categories highlighted this year are: Sport & Fitness, Golf, Fishing, Cars, Bikes, Clothing & Accessories, Home, Garden, Baby, DIY, Technology, Collectibles, Entertainment and Music. So if you sell or have a business in these areas, you might want to prepare for the increase in demand from early May.

eBay made the front page of our local evening paper recently. A local Grimsby man was sentenced to 240 hours community service after being found guilty of two offences of threatening to kill another person. The offence occurred after a dispute over an eBay deal “went wrong”. Daniel Finch sent two packages containing white powder purportedly coming from Jihad terrorists to David Mackie with a warning that he only had 22 hours to live.

Having read the message and got some of the powder over his hands was shocked and filled with panic thinking it was anthrax.. It transpired that the powder, which cam e from the chemical works that employed Finch was harmless but even so it was a frightening and worrying experience for Mr Mackie. The problem arose from the sale of a £40 DVD drive. Finch made a full apology in court and in addition to the community service order was ordered to pay £750 compensation.

GoldenPalace.com won an eBay auction for Pope Benedict XVI's previously owned 1999 Volkswagen Golf, bidding Euro 188,938.88 (approx. $244,590.83 USD). A few months before being elected head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger) decided to sell his six-year-old VW Golf. The new owner subsequently posted the car on eBay, and the auction reportedly shattered eBay records by receiving over 8.5 million visitors to its auction page

By Dave Bromley

In the heady financial world of Stock Markets and Currency Exchanges there is a technique known as Arbitrage. This is when you make a transaction in which you know you cannot lose. For example if the £ is selling in London at $1.82.5 but selling in New York at $1.87 They will buy at the lower price in London and immediately sell in New York for the higher price.

Of course they are dealing in millions of pounds but you can use the same principle with your online auctions. You will need to apply the same two factors that a currency exchange dealer or International trader uses, namely, knowledge and timing.

If you can source items that are proven sellers at a price that provides you with a profit then you cannot lose either. What you need to find are items that are under priced and a niche market that wants them.

Now for the purposes of this article I am going to look at 3 sources to make your purchases. Off Line, Other online auctions and eBay itself. But before you do any buying you have to make sure that you have some knowledge of a specialised niche. This could be Toys cars, Zippo Lighters or any particular niche you have an interest in.

You need knowledge both of the items you are interested in and of the current value of those items. For instance to most people a Zippo Lighter is a zippo lighter and one is very much the same as another, but not to a collector, whilst one with a run of the mill design may only be worth $10 another with a rarer design could be worth $200 or more for all we know.

Obviously it can take years to gain a real in depth knowledge of a market. But just by reading a couple of books, getting some sellers price lists and visiting some specialist fairs and markets will set you above many in your field. Take every opportunity to actually handle the items you are dealing in and of course monitor the prices in your market. This alone will give you enough knowledge to set you apart from the average seller.

Offline flea markets, thrift shops and garage sales can be good hunting grounds and you can often spot a real bargain. You could also advertise in your local paper or community board letting people know that you are interested in buying whatever your specialisation is.

But there is no need to leave your computer unless you want to. By using your knowledge and timing it is quite possible to build up a good business just buying and selling online. You can use the arbitrage technique to buy and sell through eBay and the other online auctions.

Generally it is a fact that the more people who view an auction the higher the final selling price will be. And for this reason alone it means that bargains can be found in the smaller auction sites. Quite often you can make a handsome profit by buying from one auction site, relisting on eBay and just watching the bids come in.

It is also quite possible to buy items from eBay and relist them and make a nice profit. Now why should this be?

Firstly you have recognised its true value

You have described it correctly and added a photograph which shows off its best features.By giving a knowledgeable description you have displayed your expertise and thereby created confidence for your bidders.

In other words you have added value.

Most buyers start looking for items by using eBays search facility. If the seller does not included the words or phrases that a would be buyer will use when instigating a search his item will not be found. Therefore if you can find them it is a good bet that they will either attract only low or no bids at all and you can snap them up. I find that if you use the search tab at the top of the page next to the browse tab this is better than the normal search tool. This allows you to include the words in the description as well as the title in your search.

Also it can pay to check misspellings, again for example if you were looking for zippo lighters try a search spelling zippo with just one p or with two o’s.

As you become more experienced you will be able to build up your own list of words and phrase to search for. When you are developing this list of terms try and think of terms that a person who didn’t know a thing about what they have listed would use.

Another error that inexperienced eBayers do is to place their items in the wrong categories and this can often lead to them being missed by would be bidders and again. With experience you will learn which categories to keep your eye on.

So having found an item that interests you should decide what is the highest price you are prepared to pay and submit you bid. And that is it, never go back or be tempted to submit another bid. You have decided on a price that you believe you can make a profit on so leave it at that. OK you are not going to win every item you bid on and if the item goes beyond you price just forget about. If you bid on 100 items and you win 20 or 30 you are doing pretty well and will make a good profit.

This can be a particularly good way to build up an eBay business if for any reason you are unable to get out and about so well or have family commitments that keep you tied to the home. I have to admit that whenever I buy something at an online auction and then resell it at a profit it gives me quite a buzz.

To summarise to make eBay arbitrage work for you need to know your subject , know your values and be able to list items to attract the maximum interest. Do this and you will be able to build yourself a really good business without ever leaving your computer.

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After I started selling on eBay, I was approached by friends without computers who wanted me to sell their items for them. They had heard stories about the outrageous prices items some ebay auctions brought. They knew I could get more money for them on eBay than they could get selling the items themselves. An added incentive to them was I did all the work. All they had to do is say "I don't want this anymore, sell it for me;" and within a few weeks I converted their castoffs into cash.

I was already selling on eBay, and I had developed a system for listing and dealing with sales that allowed me to list lots of items in a short time. The chance to make a few dollars without any investment was too much to pass up. I made some good money doing this and because I didn't have to tie up my money buying inventory I was able to use it to grow my train business.

Consignment Selling Is The Perfect Way To Start Your Own eBay Business.

There are no set up fees or investments. You won't need to risk your own money buying items to resell. You don't need a detailed knowledge of antiques and collectibles. You only need to know how to find the right category, write an adequate description and take some high quality photos.

Selling on consignment allows you to learn about antiques and collectibles without risking your own money. By selling other people's items you learn the value of items in the most practical way. By handling them and selling them. No matter how many price guides you read, and antique shows you attend, you will never get the feel for items until you sell them.

When you sell on consignment, you provide a service that makes your clients additional money. When most people sell something, they sell to a dealer who needs to mark up the item to make a profit. This is not what happens on eBay.

On eBay the END USER is the buyer and will always pay more than a dealer would. Even after paying a consignment fee, the seller makes more money.

This is the true benefit of eBay consignment selling. Finding the END USER. Before eBay this was a difficult and daunting process. With eBay, a simple listing placed in the correct category, with a good description and some high quality photos, is enough to get a few END USERS to fight over the item.

Things You Need To Succeed With Consignment Sales:

1. You need to take possession of the items. When you sell items on consignment you risk your eBay name and reputation. You take these risks when you sell your own items, but you are in complete control of your actions. In order to lower your risks you need to get complete control of the items you are going to be selling. This prevents sellers from changing their minds, and allows you to ship the items as soon as you receive payment.

2. You should always have a written contract. One of my friends was sued by a consignor who felt the commission was too high. The consignor agreed to pay 20 percent of the selling price, then when the item sold for $8500, got upset about paying $1700 to someone for doing 30 minutes of work. While my friend won in court, it would never have gotten to court if he had a written contract.

3. You'll also need to perfect ways to get items. At first your friends and co-workers will provide you with a good stream of salable items. After a while this stream will dwindle and you will need to go out and find consignors. This is not as difficult as it may seem. Remember, by consigning with you, the seller gets more money than they would otherwise.

Learn more about ebay consignment at: http://www.iwantcollectibles.com/consign5.html

About the Author

Terry Gibbs is a collector/dealer of old toys and trains, and teaches others how to buy and sell antiques and collectibles. Gibbs is the author of two best selling eBay books "The Auction Revolution," and "The Complete Guide To eBay Consignment Sales." He has also written numerous other books about buying and selling antiques and collectibles. Learn more at his website: http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com

It is so easy to get started selling on eBay and the other online auctions. And in some ways it is that ease that stops people making the most of the potential. What happens is that many sellers drift into the market and start by selling surplus items from their own homes and then start looking around for other products. They go to an auction or flea market and pick up some bargains and list them and make a few sales. Perhaps they then buy a few items from wholesalers either on or offline. What they do not do is stand back and take a look at their business and plan what direction they want to take it.

I have been taking a look at Power Sellers recently and what I have discovered is that most of them specialise in a specific niche market. Another common factor is that they often sell the same items over and over again. Just imagine if you had say 30 repeatable products that are all targeted at a specific niche market which you know and understand, do you think you could make money. Providing the products are right of course you can. And you will do it with far less effort than if you are listing and selling 30 one off individual items.

If you want to make the transition from small time seller to Power Seller the first thing you should do is to STOP SELLING. That is right, stop for a couple of weeks and devote yourself to research. The time you spend will be richly rewarded. What you are looking for is a niche market that you can target. Ideally this should be an area that you have an interest in, you can get product to sell at a profit in quantity and are already purchasing on eBay.

Once you have selected your niche you can start your serious research. Find out what other sellers are offering and the prices they are getting. You will also need to track down some sources of supply, wholesalers, manufacturers or whatever.

Although the auction sites will not admit it, selling through auctions is one of the best and cheapest ways to build up a customer list. And selling back end a product to your customer list is a little like taking candy from a baby, inn other words very easy. Now if you sell “all and everything” a list of your customers is not going to be very useful. But say for instance your niche market is British Postage stamps a list of buyers who have already purchased British Postage stamps from you would be worth its weight in gold. You would be able to make back up offers to them knowing full well they are interested in that particular type of product. And of course you could offer them not only stamps but catalogues, albums and all the other specialist items required by philatelists.

A skeptic's transformation to an eBay fanatic

Beckenbauer sees little chance of stopping eBay sales

eBay fraud boy detained for year

This months special offer

We had a problem a couple of weeks ago with our e-mail and as a result lost quite a large number of mails. One of the mails I lost was from a subscriber who wanted me to test a video screening system. If they would like to get back to me I will see what I can do to help.

I have finished off a book that I have been working on for the last couple of months dealing with buying on eBay. It has gone off to the publishers this week and I hope it will be out soon. More news about that next month I hope.

That is about it for this issue, I hope you have a successful month selling and don’t forget to go and have a look at the revamped site at www.ukauctionline.co.uk online this weekend.