Using Twitter to Increase eBay Sales and Profits

The eBay Seller's News, June, 2009, Volume 9, No. 9

eBay Tips, Tools, News and Resources for the Professional eBay Seller
by: Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings

1. Using Twitter to Increase eBay Sales and Profits
2. Can Increased Watchers Translate to More and Higher eBay Sales?
3. How to Import from China for Your eBay Business
4. New eBay Wholesale Sources for Mid-June 2009

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody" 
~Bill Cosby

Musings

eBay made some major changes last week.  These were the changes they announced in April, but they took effect June 16^th.  Probably the two most important from the standpoint of your eBay listings were the category changes and the shipping and handling notice requirement.  eBay made major changes to several categories. If your listings fall into these then you really need to change your listings to the appropriate category or your auctions will be cancelled.

The other requirement is to state your shipping and handling time. When you do a new listing, you will see a drop down box where you select the number of business days you require for shipping and handling.  If you are launching with the eBay sell your item form, you will be presented with this option. But if you have listings already created with one of the auction management companies such as InkFrog, Auctiva or Vendio, then you will need to go into each listing and select the option you want.

You can find details in the eBay Announcement Board.

eBay also announced a new fee promotion. You can get five free listings each month for any item you list with the eBay Sell Your Item form. Because this doesn't work if you are using an auction management service, it is frankly a pain in the butt to do this each month and it really screws up my inventory tracking -but the savings are so important in this economy that I am taking advantage of it.

I am very new to Twitter and have to admit I resisted it for a long time. But now I wish I hadn't.  It took me about 10 minutes to set up an account and learn the basics. Then I found a super system for building a list of followers.  (I talk about that in the article below).

I am using Twitter to let readers know whenever I post to my blog or send out a new issue of this newsletter and to help drive traffic to the items I am selling on eBay. I also use it to generate affiliate income.

I have just written a FREE 25 page eBook, Using Twitter to Generate Instant Online Profits. Here is how you can get your copy. For the last month I have been running a special offer to introduce my new readers to our eBay Personal Training Program. If you will fill out a contact information form (don't worry - it is private and we will not sell or share it with anyone) and schedule a FREE 30 minute consultation, I will give you a copy of my free book. Just click here to fill out your information form if you would like to learn more about our personal one-on-one eBay and website marketing training program.

My new publishing venture, The Official Geezer Guides series of books is doing very well. We have just released our latest title: The Official Geezer Guide to Making Money with Craigslist.  Before reading it, you may want to look at our flagship book, The Official Geezer Guide to Making Money With an Online Business.

The series is aimed at people who are retired, or about to retire, but amazingly I have had email from readers who were much younger and bought the books anyway and loved them.  So if you are mature -or even not so mature, take a look at the Official Geezer Guide Website.

Last month I told my readers about netSpray.  We had a lot of you sign up and I received a lot of positive email from readers who tried the service.  netSpray is a system whereby you can sell items on social media sites like your blogs, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, with NO listing fees and NO final value fees.

This week they just rolled out a new really cool tool that will import all of your eBay listings into netSpray and create netSpray listings.  This saves hours of work and should give the system a lot of traction with sellers.  I asked the folks at netSpray for a report and they told me that 13% of sellers who signed up have already sold something via netSpray. That may not sound very high but that was about what eBay was like in the early days -and netSpray seems to be growing at similar rates as eBay was back then too.  Click here to learn more about netSpray and you can download two free bonus reports.

Let’s get started with this month’s issue:

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1. Using Twitter to Increase eBay Sales and Profits

The key to using Twitter to increase your eBay sales is based on the premise that each twitter message (tweet) is essentially a webpage.   Search engines like Google and Yahoo look for keywords in webpages when people search for stuff on the web.  So all you have to do is send out tweets with the listing title and a link to your item.

Here is an example from one of my auctions:

There are two ways this can benefit you. First if you have a lot of followers, one of them may be interested in what you are selling.  This would probably work if you are selling in a narrow niche -especially if you sell to collectors.  For example, if you sold a specific collectible such as fountain pens or Starbucks mugs or animation art, then you could most likely quickly build a list of followers that are interested in this topic.

The second way this benefits you is that each individual tweet is essentially a web page that can be found by Google.  Here is an example. I did a search on Google for Laguiole wine knife and this was the result. (The Twitter item was the fourth item on the page.

I sell this particular wine knife on eBay as a standard item in a fixed price listing. I usually get about 40-50 hits per week, but when I put this tweet out my hits almost doubled. This particular listing has already received over 350 hits. I was down to just one knife left and just revised my listing to add three more.

Notice that the URL in the twitter post is http://budurl.com/f2uh. The actual URL on eBay is really long -probably about 50 characters.  Twitter limits your posts to 140 characters (including spaces).  The way you solve this is to use a free URL shortening service. I like www.budurl.com but there are other services such as tinyurl.com and bit.ly.com.

Lest you think I thought up this brilliant strategy by myself, let me give credit where credit is due. When I was set up on Twitter one of my early followers was eBay user lattegirltoo.  I saw her tweets and reached out to her and she explained the strategy to me. If you are selling on eBay and you would like to see what a successful seller's auctions look like, then take a look at her eBay store.

Of course the key to being successful on Twitter is building followers.  When I got started I found a great low-cost system that is really working for me. As you can see, after just a few weeks I have over 3000 followers.  I am still gaining followers at the rate of about 30-40 a day.  The system I used is called The Twitter Traffic Machine. It is very easy and works like gangbusters. I use Twitter to promote my blog, website and eBay listings and to keep in touch with my readers, but you can also use Twitter to earn affiliate income. Thousands of people are doing this.  Another system I like is The Twitter Online System by Alvin Phang. It is a little more expensive and his sales letter is pretty noisy and in your face, but the product is excellent. (He has some horrible music on the sales page but there is a mute button you may want to hit while you read his description.)

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2. Can Increased Watchers Translate to More and Higher eBay Sales?

eBay sellers can stimulate shopper interest by having your item's Watch Count automatically appear within your eBay listings. The service is a free tool from Watchcount.com, an eBay third party developer.  The tool has two parts:

• Sellers can create a Watchcount Widget that displays in their listings to show prospective bidders how many watchers there are on an item.
• Watchcount also offers a search tool that shows what the most watched -and therefore most likely the best selling, items on eBay.

Let's look at the Watchcount Widget first.  According to the folks at Watchcount it can help you sales in several ways:

• It can help stimulate interest in the item, perhaps provoking bidding, since it shows how many other people have "voted" for the item with a Watch Link click. Social proof can reflect an item's value.
• It shows cumulative interest in the item at a deeper level than a mere hit/view counter since votes require an active click by an eBay-registered, logged-in user.
• Unlike Bid Counts, Watch Counts accumulate for all listing types (Fixed Price, Auction, Stores, etc.) and throughout the entire duration of a listing.
• A simple tweak will make the Widget hide itself until the Watch Count reaches your specified minimum (many sellers choose between 2 and 5 as that minimum threshold).
• The free Widget HTML snippet can be either added to a listing template or individual item -- and even appended to a listing mid-duration without losing count, such as when you have a certain auction ending soon that has tons of watchers you'd like to boast to entice more bidding.

The Most Watched Search Feature also has some benefits:

• Get a quick sense of market demand in various categories.
• See how your items stack up against that of your competitors.
• See what title keywords, photos and ad copy are used in the listings that have captured the highest number of "Watch This Item" clicks.
• Advanced Search options allow for more in-depth searching: more results, multiple categories, excluded categories.
• Get a feel for how many watchers are required to get showcased on eBay's famed Pulse pages for your subcategory. eBay Pulse Most Watched items (in a variety of categories) are promoted around the 'net on many affiliate sites, so it can be beneficial to get one's listing(s) onto Most Watched lists.

The best thing about Watchcount is that it's free.  In this day and age where just about every eBay application, tool and gadget wants some money from sellers, this is a good deal.

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3. How to Import from China for Your eBay Business

Importing can be a pretty scary thing but more and more eBay sellers are finding this is the way to real profits.  The problem with most US wholesale sources today is that they already buy from China, mark up the products and sell them to sellers. But you can buy for the same prices they do. Global Sources is one of the leading providers of import information and links to overseas wholesale sources. They also publish magazines where wholesale sources and manufacturers advertise. The magazines are all specialized by category of product.

Last month they had a special offer for my readers where you can get a free magazine on any product category.  Each magazine is loaded with advertisements from wholesale sources which are looking for buyers like you. These magazines are meant for importers, but they are really valuable for any seller. Most of the sources sell in large quantities, but many of them import directly and will sell direct from their US warehouses.  Also if you ever thought you may want to try importing, there is a ton of useful information in each issue.  These sourcing magazines normally charge over $20 per issue, but you can get a sample issue now for free.  Click Here to get your Free Product Sourcing Guide.

Since there is so much interest in importing, I asked Peter Zapf, VP at Global sources -and an expert on importing to write an article for our readers that outlines the importing process and shows you where to get the resources you need.  Here is a link to the article: http://www.skipmcgrath.com/articles/import-china-ebay-product-sourcing.shtml

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 4. New eBay Wholesale Sources for Mid-June 2009

One of the hot markets is the liquidation and surplus market.  With this economy everyone is trying to save money and liquidation goods offer this opportunity.  My three best sources are:

• For small quantities are Topper Liquidators. I have featured them recently and got some nice positive emails from readers about their products, pricing and service.
• For larger (pallet sized loads) is Liquidation.com. liquidation.com is used by a lot of PowerSellers but I often hear stories from readers who had a problem. The thing you have to remember about Liquidation is that it is an auction -just like eBay. So make sure you are dealing with a good seller and be very careful to understand the shipping costs before bidding. I always recommend you communicate with the seller before bidding -but you can get some great money-making deals from Liquidation.
• If you live near Chicago or can get a cheap flight to Chicago, The Transworld Closeout center is just one mile from Chicago O'Hare airport. They have 90 wholesale, closeout and liquidation distributors located in a giant warehouse. This is the place where you can actually touch and feel what you are buying..

Before I get onto more wholesale sources, I just heard from WorldWide Brands and they have just lowered the price of their premium package that includes all of the wholesale sources and their educational material. Here is the link to the special offer. I strongly recommend you watch the videos before purchasing so you know exactly what you will get.

Bluebird Electronics is a large internet retailer of refurbished electronics but they also have a wholesale division.  They sell Sony, Garmin, apple and other refurbished electronics. You can see the products here at http://www.bluebayelectronics.com.    The wholesale information page is at http://bbewholesale.com/default.aspx

I got a call today from one of my readers looking for cell phones to sell. The problem with that is you have to buy in really large quantities to make money. But there is some good money to be made in refurbished cell phones and cell phone accessories -and other accessories for MP3 players and so on.  Here are some wholesale sites that deal in those products.

Fun Friends Plush Cell Phone Covers

Electronics Mass sells directly from China -Most of their stuff is OK but beware of representing knockoff as real.

Totally Cellphones specializes in cell phone accessories.

Empire Scientific is a leading supplier of batteries, chargers, and accessories to retailers, wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers in the cellular, video, and cordless telephone segments of the consumer electronics industry.

Delight Art and Crafts is the West Coast's largest distributor of Handmade Fountains, Lucky Bamboo and Tropical Bamboo furniture.

The Cranberry Cupboard offers primitive and country home decor & gifts. Barn stars, Lath ladders, Country baskets, Fixens & Mixens, Woodcrafts, Primitive art prints and much more!

Well that's it for this month. I'll see you after the 4^th of July holiday. I hope everyone has a great Independence Day.  After watching thousands of young Iranians pour into the streets to protest a stolen election and get beaten and shot for their actions it reminded me that our freedom wasn't free. It was purchased at a great cost by the blood of thousands of patriots over the space of 200+ years. I have always thought of  Independence Day as our other Thanksgiving holiday.

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

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

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