The Mega Guide to Selling on e. Bay. Contents. Introduction to e. Bay. Beginners Guide to Selling on e. Bay. Creating an e. Bay Business. Resolving e. Bay Disputes. Advanced Selling Tools. Introduction to e. Bay. Over the last 1. Internet has revolutionised businesses and the global opportunities available. Not only is it your own website that. There are millions upon millions of accounts registered on e. Bay, with 1. 7 million unique visits a month from the UK. According to Experian Hitwise, e. Bay accounts for roughly 1. Beginners Guide to Selling on eBay Setting up an eBay listing Seller costs. Many of the inventory management and multiple-channel selling tools for eBay sellers we list below offer a free trial. Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type. Join the 2.6 million eBay and Amazon sellers using Terapeak! Product Plans Community Help Center About Us. Selling Tools For Ebay Uk OnlyBest Selling Items On Ebay Reviews http:// those are the finest selling items on ebay. Useful Tools & Links Developer Help Center. Programs & News eBay Developers Program Blog. News, updates, critical changes & informative articles. We specialize in selling used and vintage leather tools. Stamps primarily, but you will also find swivel knives, mallets, edgers and other great vintage leather tools. Craftool Co USA stamps, Craftool USA stamps, Pre '64. My Top 10 eBay tools and software that can cut your work load.I want to start using ebay Selling Manager Pro. Created UK's Best Selling eBay video course. So, what about the buying perspective? Well, there are around four million choosing e. Bay to sell their products online every month, with around 1. UK business included in this. Fashion has proven to be one of the most successful industries for online businesses, making up roughly one fifth of this total (around 4. Bay fashion category monthly too). Mobile phone technology has only added to e. Bay. With it only taking a minute to quickly list items and have access to potentially millions of buying customers, it makes complete sense to turn to e. Bay for your business sales. When you combine both business and personal sale items on e. Bay, you have close to 6. Plus, e. Bay is only becoming more and more popular, with sale items tripling since 2. Bay allows you to sell the odd listing or even create an online shop, whereby you. This allows you to shift stock quickly and sell internationally at the touch of a button. The history of e. Baye. Bay has been in operation for over two decades now, first founded way back in 1. From the initial conception of Pierre Omidyar, e. Bay was always intended as an online marketplace for the sale of goods and services. But, even in his wildest dreams, he probably never expected the global success it has clearly witnessed. Bay quickly grew from strength to strength, especially as dial- up Internet reached homes around the world. To push the business into the Millennium, Pierre and his co- founder Jeff Skoll, began to create a team that would take e. Bay to the next level. Meg Whitman was chosen to lead this team and tasked with branding e. Bay to become a household name. With staff headhunted from companies including Pepsi. Co and Disney, a strong vision was created and e. Bay became a website to connect, rather than just sell. Now, e. Bay is the biggest auction- type selling website on the Internet. It brings buyers and sellers together in a safe environment and users can search for almost any product, making bids quickly and easily. Bidding on e. Bay is free of charge, whilst those selling must pay for each listing. There are two options available in this regard: Insertion fees: Ranging between 3. With additional selling options included, you may be charged a greater fee. Final value: This is a set fee charged when a listing comes to a close. It will typically be a percentage of the sale value . Successfully winning a bid enforces a binding contract between buyer and seller. Why should I sell on e. Bay? Selling online offers huge opportunities for private individuals and businesses. Thanks to its unprecedented success levels, e. Bay has become a legitimate route to the market. In fact, the e. Bay marketplace isn. The virtual shelves of e. Bay are littered with household names, not just the independent businesses. So, with that said, why should you be selling your goods on e. Bay? There are several excellent reasons to choose e. Bay and some of the superb benefits are listed below. A global market: Where else could you advertise your goods and services, whilst reaching a worldwide audience? Therefore, it makes clear business sense to utilise the mass audience. Know your costs: e. Bay selling costs are fixed, so there. This provides more stability to your online selling than using paid search or other advertising channels. Earn a glowing reputation: With e. Bay you. Whether this is achieved by excellent response time to questions or outstanding post and packing, you can grow your reputation and ensure people are more likely to shop with you. Be part of a larger shopping basket: With e. Bay, customers can search and buy a number of items in one visit, all from multiple sellers. This is of course much more convenient for the customer and in turn, ensures more sales. Range of payment options: e. Bay is convenient for both customers and sellers, by offering a number of payment methods. Pay. Pal is also a handy addition to e. Bay, as customers are more likely to purchase online with the spare cash available in their account. Ease of use: e. Bay is pretty easy to use, there. You can have multiple listings online in no time at all, easing the minds of those who think they? There are so many opportunities to get your company out into the global market and your options are seemingly endless. Setting up an e. Bay listing. First thing. This can include how much similar items sell for, the starting price you should set and the category you. Customers will want to know if there are extra charges for this in advance, so make sure to weigh and check with your local post office before creating the listing. Make sure you. This initial research will put you in good stead for the future. Include an FAQ section. If e. Bay customers have any queries regarding your sale items, they. You can include an FAQ section on your listing. For other queries, the buyer can contact you directly . For the first item listed, it. Include a starting price, images and a full description, so customers know exactly what they. The more information you include, the more likely you. Again, this is a straightforward process and details can be changed and updated as you wish. Some of the things to add to your e. Bay account include: Phone number (Including the dialling code). Arrange your automatic payment method for seller fees. Ensure your feedback profile is public. Choose the various payment methods buyers can utilise. Verify your Pay. Pal account. Keep an eye on your listings. The more e. Bay listings you have active; the greater amount of work you. When setting up your e. Bay account, you can choose to receive notifications for every person watching your listing, making a bid and even when the sale period expires. You. If your buyer still hasn. The better service you provide the customer, the better your feedback rating will likely be. And that. See the graph below for business fees (excluding VAT) that apply on e. Bay. There are certain times when you can benefit from reduced e. Bay fees too: Top rated sellers: If your listings meet the e. Bay Premium Service guidelines, you. This will be explained in more detail later in the guide. Donating to charity: If you choose to donate up to 1. Bay will knock off a percentage of the fees. This is determined by the total amount going to a charitable cause. Managing your e. Bay activity. For those with many listings all running concurrently, the ability to manage all of these is crucial. Of course, e. Bay may only form one part of your business or could even be something you do on the side, so being able to manage this effectively is important. The better equipped you are to manage e. Bay listings, the more you. The exact information you can change is dependent on the time remaining on the auction item and whether you have any bids in place. For instance, you wouldn? The chances are your product isn. There could be dozens of similar items up for grabs, so what sets yours apart from the crowd? Take a look at the following tips for increasing traffic to your listing, which will in turn, hopefully lead to you receiving more bids. Build your e. Bay reputation. This is something that doesn. The more items you sell on e. Bay; the more feedback you. Positive feedback will lead to more customers considering you as a genuine seller who won. Your business name would be ideal . This could be the quality of product, shipping information and of course, high quality images. With every listing on e. Bay, get into the habit of including: A number of quality images. A full description, including damage where appropriate. The cost of packaging and shipping. Your returns policy. How you will accept payment from the buyer. Add an about me section. When parting with their hard earned money, e. Bay users will be more trustworthy to companies including this section. Tell everyone about your business to give them confidence they. Strangely, only 6% of e. Bayers use this feature, so you can certainly stand out from the crowd by utilising it. Start an e. Bay shope. Bay allows you to start your very own online shop. From here you can better manage listings and ensure a strong brand presence online. Customise the shop to reflect your business and link to it wherever possible; from your listings, about me section and other custom pages. Consider international selling. Selling internationally does have its problems and you. However, it does open up your business to a worldwide audience. Instead, focus on the important keywords . In fact, over 9. 0% of e. Bay sales go through Pay. Pal, so it. With that said, why not start your very own e. Bay business? Whether you use e. Bay as your sole business or simply as a side project to help bring in more income, the platform is easy to get a hang of, especially for those starting- up. In this section we? With the rise of the Internet, your business can reach a much larger market. This of course brings about its own set of challenges, but by and large will only bring excellent benefits to your company. So, why turn to e. Bay to improve your online presence? Increase brand awareness. Owning a high- street shop may put you in front of a few thousands potential customers living in the area. Online, on the other hand, gives you the power to advertise to millions. You no longer have to sell to a particular region and can instead sell to other towns, cities, counties and even internationally. Unlimited opening hours. Unless you opt against a social life, you. The chances are though; you. By turning to e. Bay, customers can find your products at all hours of the day and night, so in effect you. My TOP 1. 0 e. Bay Productivity Tools! Do you WORK online or do you have an online BUSINESS? As there’s a difference, a huge one in fact. Over the years, I have been contacted by hundreds, probably thousands of e. Bay business owners seeking advice on how to improve their business, listings and so on. And almost in all cases the main thing I notice is that e. Bay sellers work very hard! I’m talking about such tasks as: Research. Product sourcing. Creating listings. Order processing. Order packaging / dispatching + returns. Customer support. Feedbackand so on! And they have to, right? As all small time traders are faced with these tasks when doing business on e. Bay. Yes, correct. The problem is that most people spend TOO MUCH time on these tasks! They work crazy hours just to get everything done and even then, in many cases they earn less than minimum wage! I? These tools will help you free up your time from mundane daily tasks (with low return) and spend more time on tasks that can help you grow your business. Research. I know this is beginning to sound like a broken record but seriously – if you want to do proper research on e. Bay, you have to get a Terapeak subscription! There’s currently a 7 day free trial available and after that it’s $3. If you’re just starting out on e. Bay, this really is the best investment you can make for your business. Usually, all you need is one month to research products and find a new niche to start in. Listing Creation. If you’re still manually creating your listings using e. Bay’s interface, you’re losing out, big time! As it’s just so much quicker and easier to create listings using a proper listing tool. I personally use Turbo Lister for this task and it does the job. Just don’t click all over the place when it freezes – wait for some time and in most cases it will resume and go back to . Just one important piece of advice with Turbo Lister; make sure you do weekly back- ups of your listings so you don’t lose any important data should disaster strike. Image Management. If you’re serious about your e. Bay business, you can straight away forget about free image hosting websites such as Photobucket. Getyour own hosting account & use a FTP client such as File Zilla to upload and manage your product pictures. This one tool alone can save you hours upon hours each month spent uploading and managing product images – especially if you have hundreds of live listings. If you’re new to image hosting, take a look at my Image Hosting Video Tutorial here. Listing Management/Scheduling. Here’s what I do – create one perfect e. Bay listing in Turbo Lister and save it. Then simply duplicate that listing for other items as well. All I have to do then is change the image URLs, description and shipping terms which takes less than 2 minutes for each new listing. Scheduling – if you’re always waiting for the right time to list MANUALLY, you’ll love this! With Turbo Lister and a Selling Manager Pro (SMP) subscription you can schedule all your listings in bulk, upload to e. Bay and that’s it – It will automatically start listings based on your settings! Plus it’s all FREE when you have an SMP subscription. And this is crucial to get right!!! Many newbie e. Bay sellers do it this way; they simply list items when they finish them – be it 1. AM, 5. PM or 2. AM at night. While with BIN & . As right before it ends is when e. Bay gives the biggest boost to your listings in search results. That’s why you want to make sure to END your listings at the times when your potential buyers are online and in a buying mood. To find out what precise times are best for your listings, use Terapeak. Stock Management. You need a system for stock management, period. And there are 2 major ways to go with this. The first one is to manage your stock levels through Selling Manager Pro. This gives you the option to add SKU numbers to items for easier integration with your e. Bay warehouse set- up. With SMP you can also set- up Low stock alerts which are very handy when dealing with hundreds of different items. And all this for just 5 quid per month. Alternatively, you can look into more sophisticated cross platform selling solutions such as Linnworks. Not only will it manage your stock levels and help with order processing, it will also allow you to sell on Amazon and your own website using the same stock level and order processing system. Yes, there is a learning curve involved with this one but in the long term; it should definitely prove to be a prudent investment for your business. Order Processing. If you’re still individually printing out each order from e. Bay and then manually creating invoices, labels and packing lists, then to put it bluntly – you’re lost. No, seriously – if that’s the case, then it really shows where the full time e. Bay work title comes from. Order processing (printing invoices, labels, marking orders dispatched etc.) should be a one click operation. Selling Manager Pro, Linnworks and countless other tools allow you to BULK process your orders meaning you select all orders, make a few clicks and all orders will be processed, invoices created, packing lists and shipping labels printed, and marked as dispatched. Shipping Labels. This is a good one! I’m still surprised to see how many e. Bay sellers do this manually – copying & pasting each individual addressee into Excel, then printing them out on A4 sized paper, cutting them into pieces using scissors and then attaching the home- made . Again – there are no excuses for having such a time consuming process for something so simple! Whether you use Integrated Labels or Dymo (thermal) labels, it really! Linnworks integrates easily with both and with Selling Manager Pro, you can print out each integrated label individually OR by using one of the free tools provided by Integrated Labels to process all orders in bulk (most probably the best method). Not only will this free up your time but it will make your packages look professional! Remember – thermo labels are water safe while ink jet print outs are not! So if you use integrated labels, print them using a Laser printer, not an Ink Jet one. Feedback. I personally leave feedback to buyers right after payment is made. But I don’t do it manually! Selling Manager Pro does this for me 2. Another thing you want to watch out for is negative feedback. You will get much better results if you act on them as soon as they’re left as the quicker you respond to an unhappy buyer the better your chances of getting the negative feedback amended and maintaining your all import seller ratings! Selling Manager Pro will alert you immediately when you receive a negative feedback and that. Emails. Some people must really enjoy hard work, seriously! Very often I get hand written messages/e- mails from e. Bay sellers when I make a purchase to thank me for my custom. Which is a great touch of course BUT why do it manually? Selling Manager Pro allows you to customize payment received, item dispatched and feedback reminder e- mails so they are sent out automatically and best of all you set the exact wording of the message that is sent so they can still be designed to look real and personal! The only difference is you don. I still don’t know why e. Bay sellers are so lazy in using new technology and improving their business and this is a prime ? YES, but the problem with e. Bay is that your customers will forget about your shop in a matter of days after receiving their package. And the next time they go on e. Bay looking for a similar item they! So you can REMIND them about your company by sending out regular newsletters, sales promotions and special offers. If you have a website, this would be the easiest way to “funnel” your e. Bay customers to your e. Commerce shop and avoid those e. Bay fees! The most effective way to do this is by sending out special discount codes which your customers can then redeem at your online shop. After all, who doesn’t like to receive a discount? Accounting. Lastly – accounting. I’ll be totally honest with you – I don’t know much about it and I have no plans to change that. I started outsourcing accounting from the day my first company went VAT registered. In my humble opinion, life is too short to be wasted on accounting tasks especially when you can pay someone to do a much better job for you. Plus this is a task where it. All you need is someone who can prepare your tax return once a year (based on the invoices & receipts you have collected). You can of course organize your books using an Excel spread sheet BUT why not use specialist tools, built specifically for this purpose? There are various online tools perfectly suited to small e. Bay traders! I don’t want to recommend any specific tool as I haven’t tested them personally but here are some of the UK’s most popular online accounting tools: http: //www. Conclusion. So, that! I’m almost certain that when you implement all of these tools in your e. Bay business, you’ll reduce your work load dramatically and most importantly free up your time for the really productive tasks that will keep your business growing. To sum it up, here’s the list of tools I use to help me automate my e. Bay business: Yes, some of these are paid tools but you really shouldn’t look at this as an expense. It’s an INVESTMENT. Also, make sure you SAVE money whenever you can! For example, each year Terapeakruns a massive promotion on yearly accounts – offering huge savings. I’m on a yearly Terapeak account with access to ALL sites for just $1. There are of course some limits though and it’s only free until you reach 2. The only significant expenses are the auto- responder account, Terapeak and Selling Manager Pro and all this together won’t cost you more than 5. BUT will give you countless benefits while definitely improving your productivity! Have a great e. Bay tool I haven’t mentioned? Feel free to share it with our blog readers below, in the comments section.
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