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What's Selling on eBay Now - Top Products During a RecessionThe eBay Seller's News, March 2009, Volume 9, No. 4 Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The
Newsletter for Professional
Interest in selling on eBay is rebounding strongly. After several months of slow growth, the number of new members registering as sellers is picking up. I have also noticed this trend as the number of new subscribers to this newsletter is at an all time high. Over the past year we added new subscribers at the rate of around 400-500 new subscribers per month. However in February we added over 800 new subscribers and over 30 per day the first three days of March. So welcome to all our new subscribers and we promise to do our best to provide you with the information you need to succeed on eBay and other online markets. Do you sell merchandise in an eBay store where buyers have a choice of size, color, options, accessories and other specifics? One problem for these types of sellers has been that you have to list separate auctions for different sizes. For example: If you have three identical shirts in small, medium and large then you have to list three items and pay a listing fee on each one. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just make one listings and the client could then select the size (and/or color) they want. Well now you can. The eBay Configurator is a program that allows your customers to order a product exactly the way they want it (color, size, accessories, etc.) from right in the listing. The eBay fee promotions that have been running since December will end in March. Everyone is waiting to see if the fee cuts will be made permanent. My bet is: Yes! Given the existing market downturn and the increased competition from Amazon and other small auction sites that are eating away at eBay's margins, I am confident that eBay will make a fee announcement in March that will make at least some if not all of the current fee reductions permanent at least through the end of the year. There may be some other fee adjustments and further fee promotions as well. Back in January I told my readers about the Instant Niche Maker from my friend Mike Enos. Several readers took the trial package and ended up upgrading to the full program. Instant Niche Maker is an automated system that creates instant niche websites with affiliate banners already plugged in to earn passive affiliate income. Mike has developed a great series of simple short training videos to make it easy for anyone to do -no website experience necessary. He even hosts the site for you. Best of all you can try it out for only $4.95. Click here to read more about Instant Niche Maker Easy Auctions Tracker is an Excel spreadsheet solution for eBay sellers and Trading Assistants. This spreadsheet doesn't calculate your fees, it actually collects your transaction information from your eBay account for you. Easy Auctions Tracker is fully automated and has been tested & certified by eBay as a compatible application. The spreadsheet allows you to quickly collect and record your transactions (sold items and unsold items!) without the need to manually enter the information. With the simple click of a button, Easy Auctions Tracker is able to collect all the information for a entire month's worth of sales from eBay's servers for you. Look for the link where you can download a free trial. Steve Maxey is a double platinum eBay power seller. He built his first platinum level ($25,000 month in sales) eBay motors business in 2002 and became one of the top sellers on eBay motors. Later he built another eBay business selling electronics and other goods eventually selling the business when it reached over $500,000 in sales. Steve recently put his methods down on paper in a special report called: "The Yes Program." Steve's methods are quite different than mine, but I can't argue with success. If you have one of my books and you would like to see how someone else does it, check out Steve's report, The Yes Program. There is no risk. I know Steve, he is a great guy and his report comes with a 60-day money back guarantee. Let's get started with this month's articles: [top] 1. What's Selling on eBay Now - Top Products During a Recession As the recession deepens there is a seismic shift happening on eBay. The eBay platform has been dominated by large sellers of popular consumer products for the past few years. But today the large sellers are struggling as consumers lower their spending and expectations. The new stars on eBay are the small sellers offering unique niche products, bargain products and most of all -used products. I don't want to sound like I am celebrating the misfortune of others -I wish we weren't in a recession and that people were not losing their jobs. But, when the economy goes into recession buying habits change --and the opportunities for sellers change with them. People are now looking to save money. And they aren't turning their nose up at used products. I have spoken to several sellers of baby clothing and used adult clothing over the past couple of weeks and all of them report strong sales. Some areas that are strong include the Do It Yourself (DIY) market and auto parts and accessories. In a recession people are keeping their cars and houses longer and doing improvements and their own maintenance instead of buying new, or paying someone to do it for them. For example, one of the hot product areas now are tools -both new and used. Auto parts and items related to car maintenance are also doing very well. Babies & Pets: No matter how bad the recession gets people still spend money on their children and their pets. The more luxury items drop off but the basics usually remain strong. Crafts, games and items related to cooking are also hot areas. As people stay home more they look for things to do at home. Eating in is the new eating out so kitchen ware and gadgets are doing well. Sellers of art and craft supplies report firm sales as do those who sell games and other at-home entertainment supplies. Coupons are another hot seller as people look to save money. Another hot area is used books. Several people who purchased my eBook, How To Make Good Money Selling Used Books on eBay and Amazon have written me that their sales have really increased over the past couple of months. Finally a big opportunity during a recession is consignment selling which is seeing a big rebound right now. See the article below for more information on this highly profitable area for eBay sellers. [top] 2. How to Contact Wholesale Suppliers I got a question this week from one of my readers who pointed out that although I have lots of good information in the Wholesale Buying System and The Complete eBay Marketing System about how, what and where to find wholesale products to sell on eBay, that I didn't tell readers how to contact and what to say to wholesale suppliers. Legitimate wholesale suppliers are often contacted by people just looking for a deal for themselves or folks trying to scam them out of free samples, so many of them have their radar on full alert when new people contact them. A few years ago a lot of wholesale companies would not deal with eBay sellers. That is less true today, but you will still run into a few. (When this happens there are a couple of tactics you can employ, but I will handle those in an article in the next issue as it requires more room than I have here). If you are going to be taken seriously by legitimate wholesale suppliers, the first thing you must have is a state sales tax number. Here is a link to a free article about getting a sales tax number. When you get a sales tax number, most states will allow you to register a business name. Take the time to think up a professional sounding name. You don't need to sound like a giant corporation but your business name should sound professional. I like to use a more general name as that allows me to deal with a wide range of people. For example, one of our business names is Summerdale House. That is the sort of name that could be anything. Whereas if I called my business Skip's Gourmet Kitchen Supplies, that would work well when I tried to buy kitchen gadgets, but not when I want to purchase clothing, tools or garden décor. The next thing you want to get is what the IRS calls an EIN number or Taxpayer Identification Number. This is nothing more than a number that identifies your business instead of using your social security number. Getting this number is free and only takes a few minutes on the IRS.GOV website. Having this number has two advantages - it makes you look more professional and it will keep you from having to give your social security number out to strangers. Now, once you have those things in place, what do you say when you contact a wholesale source? Whether you contact a wholesale source by email or fax you want to communicate in a businesslike manner. Here is an example of an email that I use. Just fill in your own product, location and company name:
Notice that I didn't say anything about eBay or selling online. I just said I was a reseller. Most importantly I put my sales tax and EIN number at the end of the email so they know I am a legitimate reseller. I also included my phone number (that will be answered in the name of the business) so a sales rep can call me which is usually what happens. For reasons that should be obvious, the numbers I included above are not real. If you were to contact a company by phone, you would say much the same thing. You call the company and ask for their sales department. When they get on the phone, you simply introduce yourself such as "Hi, this is Skip McGrath with Summerdale House. We are a dealer in kitchen ware and accessories. I saw your online catalog and saw a few things we might like to carry. I was wondering if I can get pricing and delivery information." If you follow these guidelines and remember to always act and sound like a business you will find the wholesale sales professionals will be very helpful. [top] 3. eBay DSRs - Are They About To Change or Go Away? Detailed Seller Ratings - DSRs (The 5 -star rating system for sellers) have been the single most controversial policy instituted by eBay over the past 5 years or so. Anyone who has been on eBay knows the issues, but for those of you who are fairly new, the big issue about DSRs is that they are tied to eBay fee discounts. The higher your DSR scores the greater your fee discounts are. The fee discounts can vary from 5% to as much as 20%. The controversy comes from the fact that the DSRs are quite arbitrary and anonymous. Last week eBay held a town hall meeting where the topic of DSRs came up in several questions. The answers from eBay executives indicated that some "changes" were coming to the system. This started a lot of speculation on the eBay message boards and a series of rumors that went from "the whole system will be abolished" to "they are going to change from 5 stars to 4 stars" and lots of ideas in between. About all we really know is that eBay will announce changes to the program soon. One of the changes I think (and hope) will be made is to not allow international buyers to post DSRs. I used to sell internationally but stopped. What happens is that my shipments overseas are a) quite expensive to ship, and b) often delayed by customs or other shipping delays completely beyond my control. So even though I ship immediately and only charge actual shipping charges, the buyers are unhappy with the delays and costs and they hit me with a low star rating. Once I stopped selling internationally, my DSR rating increased so I now earn the 15% discount and occasionally the full 20%. So let's all keep our fingers crossed and wait for the new policies. [top] 4. How to Save over 50% on Shipping Insurance We all know that high shipping costs hurt sales and are the source of poor Detailed Seller Ratings. If you ship expensive items (over $100) by UPS or anything via USPS then you know how expensive insurance is. For the past 5 years I have purchased my shipping insurance from a company called DSI - Discount Shipping Insurance. DSI just went through a name change and is now called Shipsurance.com. Shipsurance is a private insurer that will insure domestic and international shipments that go by private carrier such as UPS and FedEx and shipments from the USPS. Shipsurance can save you up to 90% on your shipping insurance. For example, if you insure a package valued at $300 via UPS or FedEx (ground or air), the first $100 of insurance is free, but the next $100 has a minimum charge of $1.95 and then it is $0.65 for the next $100. That is a total of $2.60. The same package with Shipsurance is $1.05 and can be even be as low as $0.24 if you have high volume. Even with a package valued at $30 sent via the post office (USPS) you will pay $1.70. If you ship with delivery confirmation, Shipsurance will only charge $0.50 -$1.05 depending on your volume. Shipinsurance is integrated with all of the popular online postage systems such as Stamps.com, Endicia and the eBay/PayPal shipping utility. Best of all their claims process is faster. Typically claims are paid within a week or so versus 30 days for UPS and 90 days for the post office. One of the past drawbacks to using 3rd party insurance was having to report your insured shipments in order to receive coverage. Since Shipsurance coverage is integrated with most shipping systems such as UPS, USPS.com, Endicia, Stamps.com, and eBay/PayPal shipping, it is easy to insure your shipments with them. As I said I have been working with them for over 5 years. So I spoke with them last week for help with this article and asked if they would put together some type of discount for my readers and they agreed. Use this link to Shipinsurance and they will give my readers 5% discount on all insurance rates for your first six months [top] 5. Consignment Selling Rebounds on eBay A big opportunity in this economy is consignment selling. Sadly there are people who need to raise cash and when this happens a lot of treasures come out of the closet. These treasures can add up to big profits for skilled eBay sellers. Although consignment selling is hot, you can't sit at home and hope someone calls you. This is a business that needs to be actively marketed. You need to advertise and get the word out. Most consignment sellers charge between 30% and 40% for their services so this is an opportunity to earn some serious money. Here are some tips to build a successful consignment business:
If you are interested in learning how to sell on consignment I wrote a book a few years ago called How to Start and Run and eBay Consignment Business. The book is out of print, but there are some copies floating around on eBay and on Amazon.com. If you buy the book, just realize that some of the information is out of date as there have been many changes on eBay since then. But the basic techniques of running a consignment business described in the book are very sound and still work today. [top] 6. New eBay Wholesale Sources for March 2009 Check out our wholesale search engine on the website but please read the information on the page before performing a search. Wholesale Mart has over 3000 inexpensive products in light bulk quantities. Burton & Burton has a large line of wholesale gifts and accessories At first glance, World Buyers has a lot of cheap junky products, but if you take your time to look through the site there are some nice items for resale. They currently have a $150 minimum order. Shirt Supplier is not a true bulk wholesale company but their discount prices are deep enough that you can buy for resale on eBay. Zoloware manufacturers a neat line of baby slings and carriers. Click on the link that says "Wholesale" to register and get wholesale pricing. Sootheez sells a line of aroma therapy and luxury spa products. Neck wraps, teddy bear gifts. ReGo Trading is a Wholesale Distributor of Health and Beauty Aids. Good prices on Household Products and Baby Care and House wares. Pet Gifts International is a wholesale distributor and supplier of fashionable pet carriers, breed specific gifts, doggie handbags, handbags, luggage and other wonderful pet gifts. They offer a dropshipping program and will also do custom photo work on their products. Retail Pets sells both retail and wholesale. Use the online form to register or call the number provided to get wholesale info. G-Cor Automotive is a liquidation dealer of automotive supplier and accessories. Use the email address or phone number on the web link to contact them for current wholesale lists. That's it for now. Stay tuned for another issue in about two weeks. Skip McGrath P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.  Click Here. Double your traffic. Get Vendio Gallery - Now FREE! |
 
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