New eBay Tool To Make An Offer Fun --and Profitable

The eBay Seller's News, April 3, 2008, Volume 8, No. 7

Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The Newsletter for Professional
eBay Sellers by: Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings

New eBay Tool To Make An Offer Fun --and Profitable
Don't Turn Your Nose Up At Selling Used Goods on eBay
eBay Kills Digitally Downloaded Goods on the Platform
Making Best Match Work For You
Niche of The Month: Selling Your Own Photography on eBay (and the Internet)
New eBay Wholesale Sources for April 2008

"I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs, but how high he bounces when he hits bottom."
~ General George S. Patton

Musings

This year we started publishing our newsletter twice monthly instead of just once a month. However, this will be the only newsletter we publish in April. Karen and I will be spending most of the month traveling around Italy (Attention would be burglars; Forget it. Our son and his really big dog are house-sitting while we are gone.)

Karen and I have been planning this trip for a long while. We are going to start in Venice and work our way down to Florence and Rome over a three week period. We will still be running our business. Whenever we go on vacation, we take down our auctions for items that we have to ship but we still sell our drop shipped items. This cuts our business by about 50%, but we can keep our business going while on vacation. That is the beauty of an online business. But I will not be doing a mid-month issue of this newsletter.

I am going to try doing a few blog posts from Italy. My blog is at blog.skipmcgrath.com. There are little buttons at the top of my blog where you can click to add the blog headline to your home page.

Besides following the goings on with eBay while I am gone, I hope to do some fun stuff and give you my impressions of Italy. Karen is looking forward to dragging me through every museum, cathedral and garden in Italy, but I am planning to eat my way across the country. I also plan to look up some eBay sellers in Italy and see how things are working out for them.

If you are one of my regular readers you know I am a big believer in multi-channel selling. To use an overused expression, you should never put your eggs in one basket --or your online sales on just one platform.

I have been selling on Amazon.com for about a year now with only mixed results. On one hand, it costs nothing to list on Amazon, so when I make a sale, I consider it found money. With Amazon's sale's fee I make a little less than I do on eBay, but when I factor in the eBay listing fees on those items that don't sell, it actually works out about the same. And with Amazon, all I have to do is ship the item. I don't have to deal with the customer --they do that for me.

I have always believed that I could increase my sales on Amazon if I could just find the time to learn more about the platform and their best practices --but I never seem to find the time. Well my friend, eBay University Instructor, Steve Lindhorst has solved the problem. Steve has just released a fantastic new eBook called Selling on The River. It is a great primer and takes you step by step through how to list your items on Amazon for maximum effectiveness.

I was only half way through the book, when I stopped reading and popped over to my Amazon account and started making changes to my listings. Then I went back and finished the book and then made some more changes. And, bang, the very next day, one of my products that hadn't sold in several weeks came through with a sale. That was $227 in sales in 24 hours --about ten times what I paid for the book.

Selling on the River is short and sweet --right to the point. And it is written by a very respected guy who actually does what he says. Steve sells very well on Amazon so he speaks from experience. I was so delighted with the book I agreed to write a foreword for it which is something I seldom do.

I will be speaking at eBay Live this year. I am joining with Colette Marshal from WorldWideBrands to do a presentation on Wholesale Sourcing from Tradeshows.

I am also one of the sponsors of the eBay Meet & Greet. This is a 3-hour event with food and drink that is held the evening before eBay Live opens. So if you are in town the evening of June 18th, please drop by. We will provide some light snacks and you can purchase food and drink at the event. It will be in the M/X Restaurant & Bar at the Hyatt Regency next to the convention center. I will have more details in subsequent issues of the newsletter as we get closer to eBay Live.

eBay hit sellers with another blind side this week. Starting in a few weeks, the Best Match search results will begin taking shipping cost into account. If you are selling an item where your shipping cost is higher than the average for other items in your sub-category, eBay will penalize you by listing your item at the bottom of the search results.

The idea behind the strategy is to prevent sellers from making profits on shipping. But the problem is, not every seller is equal. I was posting a listing for one of my solid steel firepit grills today. When I got to the review page, eBay had a big warning in bold red letters that my item exceeds the shipping costs for similar items in the category. The problem is that my firepits weigh about 50 pounds, whereas there are a lot of cheap, lightweight copper firepits in the same category that weigh around 10 pounds. So my shipping cost at $49 is quite a bit more than the average for the category. Most of the other products in the same sub-category average around $10-$15 shipping cost.

Another eBay seller I know will also be affected by this. She sells art prints. Most of her prints are unframed and shipped in a cardboard mailing tube at a shipping cost of around $6.00. But her most profitable items are the framed prints that weigh about 15 pounds or more when shipped. These items far exceed the shipping average for the category, so her listings for those items will obviously be penalized.

Of course I could offer Free Shipping. I often do that on items with a low shipping cost. One of my most profitable selling strategies is to offer Free Shipping with Buy-it-Now. I simply build in the shipping cost plus a little extra. This works especially well around the holidays. But I obviously can't do this on my firepits. The category is very competitive and I doubt if bidders would drive up the price to where I could make any money. I used to control a large market share in this particular product, but I doubt if that will last much longer. So I am researching new niches and will be concentrating on light-weight products that are easy and cheap to ship. All of a sudden I envy all the people who sell baseball cards.

WorldWide Brands OneSource is running a special spring promotion for the month of April. If you use this link, www.worldwidebrands.com/skipmcgrath, you can get a $30 discount + an additional $20 discount for my readers --total $50 savings and a free bonus eBook: Product Trending Categories for 2008.

Product Trending Categories 2008 reveals the top ten trends driving online sales this year, and teaches you how to apply that knowledge to your own product market to bring your buyers the products they want now. Worldwide Brands has teamed up with product trending veteran Lisa Suttora, of What Do I Sell, to show you which trends are influencing your buyers and help you put that knowledge to good use in your eBiz. It's only available in the Worldwide Brands Member Center until the end of April 2008, so order now!

I hate to push so many items in the same issue of a newsletter, but I came across another great eBay training program earlier this week. It is called Simple Market Research. It's not a market research tool like HammerTap or TeraPeak, this is a method for helping sellers figure out what to sell. Simple Market Research shows you new ways to find profitable niches. This is a great method --it is different that the way I teach, so if you have had problems finding your niche or finding profitable products to sell, check out Simple Market Research.

So let's get started with this month's articles.

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1. New eBay Tool To Make An Offer Fun --and Profitable

Best Offer (aka Make an Offer) is a service you can enable on eBay Fixed Price Listings and your eBay Store Listings, whereby a potential buyer can make an offer to purchase something you have listed. If you have the time for it, this can be both fun and profitable. But there is a new service that just launched this week called Deal4It that automates the process. Best of all, Deal4It is really cool --it works, and it's fun.

When your listing is clicked on, a video panel comes up that invites buyers to click on a video link. When they do, a professional actor appears on the screen and invites bidders to "make an offer." The service has been in Beta testing for several weeks and I have been using it for the past few days. And it works - I am getting offers and have even sold an item that is usually a fairly slow moving item.

You have to see this to understand it. Here are some auction numbers that I have running with the Deal4It service. Just type this number into the eBay Search Box and it will bring you to the listing. Unless you are interested in buying the item, don't make a high offer. Just make a lowball offer like a dollar or two so you can see how the system works. Of course if you would like to buy my item, go ahead and make your best offer.

370038378026
370032909745
200183524681
200211627807

If these are not working when you go to them that is because they already sold by the time this newsletter went out. But at least one of two of these should still be there.

One drawback is that if you submit your listings through a third party tool such as Vendio or Auctiva, you will have to launch your listings and then go to the listing, click on Revise Your Item and click on the box to allow best offer then enter your best offer price and set your minimum price at 1 penny lower. This is a bit of a drag for those of use who use third-party services, but in testing this service has already proven to increase sales. And best of all in these days Deal4It.com actually brings some of the fun back to eBay. If you use my link http://deal4it.com/skip you can get a free 30-day trial --no credit card needed.

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2. Don't Turn Your Nose Up At Selling Used Goods on eBay

This is actually an updated article from my blog, but it go so much traffic that I thought my newsletter readers might find it useful.

Too many sellers turn up their nose at selling used goods. I have heard other sellers referring to them as eBay Junk Dealers. Well, call me names if you want but used items usually result in higher profits than new goods.

Although we make most of our income selling our books and new merchandise, I am always on the lookout for vintage or used goods to sell on eBay where I can make a profit.

Over the past ten days I have sold about $2,100 worth of used goods on eBay. One of the items was a folk music CD boxed set that I bought for $20. It sold for $141.33 This was the item I mentioned in my Niche of The Month in my last newsletter. I expected it to go for about $60-$75. When the bidding went over $100 I was pleasantly surprised.

I also sold an old film camera and two lenses. The camera went for over $790, one lens sold at the BIN price of $499 and the other lens went for $788. My cost for all of these was less than $400.

In my newsletter I often feature an article on Niche Market of The Month. Most of the niches I feature are for used or vintage items. I also publish an eBook called Ten Highly Profitable eBay Niche Businesses Anyone Can Do, that features several easy to start niche businesses that require very little investment. Several of the niches I outline are for used goods that are very easy to source.

Although a lot of sellers turn their nose up at selling used goods on eBay, consider this:

The average gross profit for new goods on eBay is about 30%
Gross profits for many used goods are as high as 90%
Used goods are easy to source. You can find them at garage sales, estate sales, thrift shops, by advertising on Craigslist, or taking out small classified ads in your local paper.
You don't need a state sales tax number to source used goods
You can turn your inventory over quickly. No need to stock large amounts of merchandise that tie up your cash.
There is far less competition for used merchandise so you will usually come up very high in the search results.

One of the really neat things that you can do today is check prices and values of goods from a PDA or cell phone. If you have a portable device that is enabled for the internet, it is a snap to check the value of an item before you buy it. For example, lets say you are at a garage sale and you spot a used espresso machine that you think might be valuable. Just go to eBay and search the brand and model number on eBay completed items search and you will see how much they are selling for before you buy or decide what to offer.

You can even get stuff for free. One of my readers told me about placing an ad on Craigslist for things he was looking for. Not only did he get messages from people with things to sell, several people offered him saleable goods for free if he would just pick them up.

And you don't have to sell on eBay. Not too long ago, I had a call from a lady with tons of 1950s vintage fishing gear. I sold the small items like fishing lures and reels on eBay, but I really didn't want to deal with shipping fishing rods, so I listed them on Craigslist. Literally within hours I had a guy standing in my driveway with cash who took them all off my hands at 300% more than I had paid for them.

Vintage items are the best --usually the most profitable and easy to sell, but really almost any used item in decent condition has a good market on eBay and many products can be the start of a full-time very profitable eBay business.

Some of the best and easiest categories to work in include non-fiction books, (especially how to books), vintage electronics, vintage photographic equipment, sporting goods, vintage clothing, small appliances, and anything for old cars. There are many-many others, but these are some of the best.

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3. eBay Kills Digitally Downloaded Goods on the Platform

I try and make a habit of checking the eBay announcement board frequently so I can keep up with all the changes on eBay, but for the past few months I've been almost afraid to. It seems every time I look at the announcement board, eBay smacks me upside the head with some new draconian policy.

A few days ago I woke up to find that eBay had issued a new policy on selling digitally delivered items. Actually it was more of a ban than a policy.

eBay announced that heretofore you could only sell digital items in the Classified Ad category. At first glance I didn't think too much about it, because I have been selling one of my eBooks in the classified category and it had worked out well. The other part of the requirement though was that you could not actually "sell" an item. If you list a digitally downloaded product (photos, music. eBooks, videos, auction and eBay store templates, etc.) you are not allowed to include a link to anywhere, including PayPal or a website, that a person can actually pay for the item. All eBay will allow you to do is put an email address or a phone number where the person can contact you for more information.

This is one of those times where eBay's heart was in the right place (they were trying to get rid of all those sellers who sell one-penny eBooks as a way of building up their feedback quickly), but as usual they designed a policy that affected honest sellers as well.

Most of the 1-cent and 99-cent eBooks are pure junk --usually something someone bought with resale rights that is just a come-on for another more expensive product. Now don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with selling a low-cost product to use as a method of capturing a customer whom you can market other goods to, as long as you deliver a valuable product. But the vast majority of the sellers were delivering pure junk.

This is another case of eBay dropping a 2000 pound bomb on a target that could have been taken out with a rifle. And in the process they destroyed the market for thousands of people selling real products that deliver value. This includes a lot of software designers, store designers, visual artists, musicians and writers who use eBay as a primary market for their products.

All is not lost. You can still sell a digital item, including information products, as long as you can actually ship it. This means you can sell printed books, CDs, DVDs and other medium --but you have to have a physical product to deliver.

Oh, by the way, Amazon does allow the sale of digitally delivered products. In fact they are aggressively seeking out authors to create eBooks for their new Kindle Wireless Reading Device .

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4. Making Best Match Work For You

Ever since eBay made Best Match the default search result, sales in several categories that I had formerly done very well with have fallen off a cliff. I wrote about this last month and detailed several tactics you can use to improve your results. Although many of these have helped, I am still struggling in several areas.

Last week, PESA (Professional eBay Sellers Alliance) and ECMTA held a free conference call with several top sellers and Jeff King from eBay to help sellers who are struggling with Best Match. You can listen to a recording of the call at this link.

http://www.noblespirit.com/PESA/bestmatch.mp3

Before you click on that link, go to this link first and download the PowerPoint presentation which will make it easier to follow along.

http://www.ecmta.org/bestmatch.cfm

The call is about 1-hour long, but it is well worth it. And one of the free tools you get is an eBay keyword checker/generator that will help you create more relevant titles that will be easier for buyers to find.

PESA and ECMTA hold meetings twice a year where sellers can attend to meet other, top sellers, see vendors with product offerings and attend seminars on many aspects of selling on eBay, Amazon and the internet. The next meeting is in New Orleans, April 22-24. If you stay on a few days the New Orleans Jazz Festival starts on the 25th. Here is a link to register that will save you $100 if you register before April 20th:

www.ecmta.org/ecommerce-summit-spring-2008/index.cfm?code=ECM1474

PESA is an organization of the top 500 or so sellers on eBay. Last year they started ECMTA for the rest of us. The ECMTA is a great way to build your online selling skills. They have meetings twice a year, weekly conference calls with top sellers, a great forum where you can pose questions and get advice and discounts of many third party services. Their meetings move around the country so you can often attend one near you.

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5. Niche of The Month: Selling Your Own Photography on eBay (and the Internet)

A few months ago I told you about sellers who work in the very profitable niche of selling custom t-shirts and other clothing with their own images, slogans and artwork on them. The shirts are produced for you and drop shipped by Cafe Press.

In addition to t-shirts, caps, cups and other items, Cafe Press will also print and frame high-quality photographs and ship them to your customers. this can be a great niche.

I became interested in photography when I was in my late teens. Like any young person my dream was to sell my photographs. Over the years I did manage to sell a few and even landed a magazine cover once, but the problem I always had was affording camera equipment. And once I saved up enough for good equipment I was always going broke purchasing film and producing prints.

Well digital photography has changed all that. You can now buy a professional-quality digital camera for far less than the Nikon and Canon pro gear used to cost and digital film is free.

Martin Hurley is a photographer who figured out how to use Cafe Press and several other methods to sell your own original photography on eBay and other online venues. He has produced a great little eBook called The Guide to Using eBay and Cafe Press to Sell Your Photos Online. And you won't believe the price --Only $7.00. If you buy his basic book, he will also offer you 50% off on his advanced book that covers many more ways to make money online with digital photography.

Whether you want to sell your photos as fine art to grace someone's walls or just put your shots on t-shirts, this is a very profitable niche --and it's fun.

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6. New eBay Wholesale Sources for April 2008

Please Note: Some of these web sites are retail sites. Look for a link that says wholesale pricing or wholesale information. If you don't see that, use the Contact Us form on their website to ask for wholesale information.

Yes Anime is a wholesale supplier of anime toys, cards, clothing and accessories.

Toy Wonders is a wholesale distributor for diecast model cars.

Entertainment Earth is a major wholesale seller of Action Figures, Toys, Replicas, Collectibles, Gifts, and More! From Star Wars and GI Joe, to The Simpsons and Anime. Manufacturers such as McFarlane, Sideshow, Dragon, Mattel and many more!

Captain Eds Bottom Line Wholesale sells a lot of low-cost flea market merchandise but they do have some more expensive items if you take the time to look through the site and they will drop ship.

Beat Mugs is an official licensed distributor for Beatles coffee mugs.

European Gift & Housewares will drop ship from their line of espresso machines.

Last month I featured an article in my newsletter about the niche of selling out of production CDs and DVDs on niche topics and special music collections such as folk, jazz, opera, classical, etc. That article was about finding those items used, but you can also find them new. Two leading suppliers are DV&A Distributors and A To Z CDs.

NJ Croce sells licensed products including: Betty Boop, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Elvis, Gumby, Peanuts and more.

Bell Golf is both a manufacturer and a distributor of golf clubs and other golfing products. They will drop ship some of their products.

Roketa sells a full line of all terrain vehicles, golf carts, mopeds and even has an electric motor scooter.

3L International is an importer and wholesale distributor for airsoft and paint ball guns and supplies.

Craft Hobby Wholesale sells a large line of art, craft and scrapbooking supplies.

Back to Africa is a direct importer and wholesale supplier of arts and crafts and other merchandise from Africa.

Don't forget to check out our Wholesale Search Engine and if you haven't seen it, My Top 20 Wholesale Sources for eBay PowerSellers. My Top-20 Sources is a product I give away for almost nothing to introduce new readers to my materials.

That's it for this month. Don't forget to look for my blog posts from Italy

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.