As an eBay Consultant one of the questions I like to ask a client both old and new is “What business are you in ?”. Now normally I either get a blank stare or they come out with what ever they are selling. For example if they are selling shoes….they say they are in the show business.

Now while they are right, they have missed out a major part of the business they are in. Some people who have been selling online might come out with a phrase such as “We are in the marketing of shoes business” Again they are right, but as an eBay consultant the words I am always looking for is “We are in the attraction business”

To many people this is a major mind shift, they have gone from selling say shoes, to marketing them, to being in the shoe attraction business, and until online sellers can get this they will just be shoe sellers – Selling shoes day in and out, but as soon as they get get the word attraction business into their thought, they will be selling and marketing items on a much larger basis.

So what do I mean the attraction business ? My thinking is we need to move from just being a seller of an item to someone who attracts buyers and lookers to our shop on a regular basis and the more attractive we make our eBay shop and listings the more items we will sell.

As we look around the world we are bombarded with adverts and sales gimmicks, but our minds focus and draw into those adverts and listings that look attractive. Our eyes scan eBay listings for an everyday product, but all of a sudden they stop and focus on a listing. It is the same product, same title almost, same price, but something has stopped us in our tracks. The picture and listing looks attractive, the person has made their listing stand out and almost forces us to click on the listing and then once inside the listing they make it even more attractive and by the time we have come to the end of the listing we have already bought the item.

So the next time you write out an advert or eBay listing, stop, plan and think on ways on how you can make your listing more attractive and stand out from the rest of the crowd. If you can learn this skill then you will be able to drive more traffic to your eBay listings and because you have more traffic in the end you will have more sales and more sales means more profit for you.

So go and make your listings more attractive and make them stand out from the rest of the crowd, 

Happy Selling

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Life as an eBay Consultant is different each day, you get to talk and interact with many people from all walks of life and from all corners of the world. As being an eBay Consultant allows you an insight into many different areas of a persons life, and at times they share some of the deepest secrets with you – I find this a real privilege and  when I see their dreams and visions come true is such a fantastic feeling that I have been allowed to part of their journey.

One of the areas I have to visit with a client is their vision for their business, many of them have the strategy mapped out and the different stepping stones on how their business will run and be run. But I believe my job as their eBay Consultant is to take them back to the very beginning and ask them “What their vision is for their business”, in most cases they will say to make money. More often I will say ok that’s fine. I will then say so what will you do with your extra £10.00……more often than not I get a look, what do you mean.

I then explain that if they say to make money this can be anything from a few pounds up to many millions they need to define their vision for their business. You see once the vision is set down on paper, you can then put into place the strategy to make the vision come true.

But first the Vision Statement.

It has been said that your vision statement needs to be written in the present tense, this helps you and your brain to live out your vision and the vision will then become true. Also it helps to read your vision statement on a regular basis. For example :

I list 10 items a day in my eBay shop

I sell 5 items a day

I attend 3 Trade Fairs a year

Your vision statement has to be personal to you and your business, you should never take someone else’s vision statement as it will never work for you as it was their vision and not yours.

It is a good idea to take some time out to write the vision statement and I often find and recommend to my eBay Consultancy clients to find a quiet place where you are on your own. Turn off your mobile phones and computers and start to write down what you would like to see from your business.

You need to write down where you are now – this may be hard for some people as they do not like the position they are in, but it needs to be done. And note what changes need to take place

Next write down where you want to be (Note you do not write down the steps needed to get there, this is where the strategy comes in). Write it in present day sentences. Also try and make the vision challenging so it will stretch you, but also it is possible to achieve. If you write too challenging visions you will never meet them.

As I mentioned as an eBay Consultant it is a real privilege when people share their visions with me and then later on seeing them come true.

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As an eBay Consultant one of the questions I get asked and I know other eBay Consultants often get asked “How long should I keep an item in my eBay Shop before I take it out and donate to a charity shop. To me this is an open ended question and I do not think there is a definite answer, as it all depends. Depends on what the item is and how much it has cost you and if you have the storage space for the items.

Hands in the air I am guilty of leaving items in my eBay shop far too long, and I make a note to remove an item and then just forget…….silly me.

Now there has been an item in my eBay Shop for many, many months and it was one of those items that I had marked on my list to take out the shop and re-think what I was going to do with this lovely Christmas Plate. It was just too good to throw away, so it stayed in my shop, and there it stayed. When Christmas had come and gone yet again I said I must take that plate down and then re-list it next October.

But even eBay Consultants forget and the plate stayed in my shop and then out of the blue I had a best offer, this first one was very low and so I sent the buyer a counter offer and this carried on back and forth for a bit and then another offer came through…….yes it was a bit lower than the asking price but I thought the item had been sitting in my shop and was not going anywhere, so I thought just let it go, and today it has gone out to a new owner.

So if you have room and it is not costing you much keep your items in your shop for as long as possible and one day you may suddenly find that item has just sat there sells. I have changed nothing, it is just that the right person came along at the right time for a product I was selling.

As an eBay Consultant I love this business and how each day is fun and no two days are the same.

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Here in the UK we have another free listing weekend here on eBay Uk. This time around it is for 100 items listed as auction items with a starting price of 0.99p or more.

The free listings are open to personal sellers only – (So no business sellers), and you have to use the eBay listing tool – no professional listing tools or bulk listing tools.

These free listing days and weekends are a good way for people to learn the ropes of listing higher value items on the site, but as with anything they do have their drawbacks and one of these is there is a large amount of items added to the site and then the following weekend large amounts finishing.

This can have negative impact on some listings but if you know what you are doing it gives people in the know a chance of picking up a bargain and them reselling it back on eBay or Amazon.

So if you have a lot of items you want to list, spend the next few days taking pictures and listing like mad.

Happy Listing.

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There is a saying “You are never too old to learn” and this is so true in all areas of your life, even when you are selling online on such sites as eBay. Here in the UK we are privileged to have a vast amount of teaching material coming from all corners of the world. Now while this is all good, there are times when you would like something British, showing you examples from British sites and giving a British sellers view point. A few months ago I was given a review copy of an eBook called “Pre-Owned Profits” by Ben Doyle. Ben brings a fresh look at an area a lot of sellers tend to sweep under the carpet, but in Pre-Owned Profits Ben shows us that with very little money and some spare time we can turn small amounts of money into larger amounts time and time again.

Pre-Owned Profits is very well laid out and is an easy read with plenty of screen captures explaining how and why he does some of the things he does in his business. The book comes as a PDF and is 79 pages long. This book has no fluffy it gives you good solid content that you can use time and time again to make a profit. But as with anything in life……….you need to read the book and then you need to take action and put in the work, and if you do put in the work that Ben talks about you will see results time after time.

Within the book Ben takes you step by step through the whole process of the business to sourcing the product to doing the photo’s, through to the listing. Here he tells you the best ways of the doing the listing – it is something we see a lot on eBay but very rarely use as a lot of people think it is too hard. But if you follow the examples and use one of the free bonuses in the package you will be doing listings like the pro’s within hours of finishing the book.

With the book you get a range of free bonus, at the time of writing this review you get three fantastic bonus, and the first one is worth the whole price of the book on it’s own. To me Pre-Owned Profits covers all types of sellers from the new person just starting out on the site to a person who has been selling on the eBay platform for many years, as I said at the beginning of the review “we are never to old to learn”

As with all the reviews I do on this site I like to try the program or course out before I write a review as I feel I can give a balanced approach to it all. To me this course is a must read, and if you are then willing to put in the work, you will make the money. Ben’s approach is very user friendly and his layout is very clean.

If I could pick a fault with the book and this is a silly fault I guess I found when you clicked on one of the hyperlinks in the ebook to took you from the book to that new page without opening a new tab or window. Ok once I found this out, I could just right click on a link and tell it to open in a new tab……….but to a new person who did not know this trick would be taken away from the ebook and not know how to get back there, without opening up a new copy. Like I said a silly fault.

So if you are looking for a new approach to sourcing products to resell on eBay, give Ben Doyle’s ebook “Pre-Owned Profits” a try and  know it has help me add a new revenue stream to my business.

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One of the top questions I and many of the other eBay consultants from around the world get is around the topic of Product Sourcing. On Saturday I had a meeting with a client and he and his girl friend new exactly the type they would be selling and where they were doing their product sourcing, you see they had a plan, and it will be a privilege to watch them grow their plan out on eBay.

Then a short while later while having a casual chat with a couple of people, that famous quote came up…..”So what’s the hot product I should be selling on eBay”…….I just smiled and said well if I knew, I and many others would be selling it. All products are hot, some for a short life time and others for a much longer one and in some cases many years…….cars, TV’s spring to mind for these long term products.

So you want to know all about the latest and greatest in the world of New and Hot products……….is so get yourself along to the Trade Only Spring Fair at the NEC in Birmingham, The Spring Fair is backed with items for the Gift and related trade. There are thousands upon thousands of trade stand selling everything from a humble card through to diamond rings. There are Traders from all over the world hoping that their product will be hot and you will take some and run with them.

The Spring Fair is attend by the small trader who works from home selling items on eBay and Amazon, through to shops and then to TV shopping channels and large multi-retailer buying groups. Each one is there to product source for their business and each have there own budgets from a few hundred pounds to many millions. But we all have a common goal with the products we source….we need them to sell and make us profits.

So if you like in the Uk or fancy a trip here pop along to the NEC the show is on Monday to Thursday (6th February -  9th February), and get product sourcing

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In the second part of this mini series Do Something Every Day, I want to cover something that may seem very basic, but if we want to be successful with our eBay business then we need to take steps to learn how to do the basics to improve our business. Now before we get into the main parts of the article I do want to say there are times and places where I do suggest you need to out source some parts of your business, but for today I just want to cover some basics that you can learn.

So why do you need to learn new things everyday…….well by learning about ourselves and our business and finding out new ways of doing some aspects of our business, then we can move on and reach our goals. And as I mentioned before if HTML scares you to death…….fine out source the website design to someone who knows coding, but I do suggest you learn the basics, for example how to add the image tags to a picture…….the reason being you will be using tags like these on a daily basis so if you need to out source this simple task then it will cost you money plus you will also have to wait for someone else.

Another thing is learning to buy domain names…….again if you have to rely on another person then you could loose that domain name. Just spend a little time on sites such as Godaddy.com and they have simple to follow videos on how to buy and register a domain name.

Just learn how to do the basics and out source those big projects. But you will find by allowing yourself time each day learning how to do some basics in your business then when you need to add a tag or buy a domain name, you will do it in your sleep.

But also take time out each day and spend it investing in you as a person and if you just spend 30 minutes each day investing in you as a person then over a year you will have input many hours into yourself and over time this will show in both your business and personal life.

Now go, and invest sometime each day improving your eBay, and other online businesses.

Happy Selling.

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This weeks Tool Tuesday is going away from gadgets and systems and is going back to some basics. We need to get back to reading books and magazines on a daily basis. It is a proven fact that the people who read on a daily basis are the ones who achieve more things in life. Now I am talking about novels and fiction here (These are good), but about books, magazines and articles that can help you take your business to the next level.

A few years ago it was very hard to ready books while on the train going to work due to the size of books and having to carry them around with you. But today we are so Blessed due to the fact we have the Kindle and Kindle Apps for our books and magazines and nowadays we can carry around with us hundreds of business books and magazines in our pockets.

Today Kindle have a large range of business titles and business magazines that we can download and read on the train, when we are waiting in a queue, or waiting for a client. No more wasting time !!! Now you can improve yourself and your business.

So what types of books should you be reading, well I would love to help you with this, but sadly I do not know your needs and what areas you want to improve in your life and the the life of your business.

But there are books and magazines out there to help you with :

• Self Improvement
• Accounting
• Book Keeping
• Marketing
• Product Sourcing
• Social Media
• General Business
• Internet
• And the list goes on and on

So as we bring this tool Tuesday article to a close can I please encourage you to start reading more and as you read more you will find that your business will grow and so in turn as a person you too will grow.

Happy Reading.

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One of the biggest costs that can hit an eBayer seller is Postage and Packing. This hidden costs can surprise not only the new seller but also the seasoned seller who has been selling online for many years. When I first started out selling on eBay there was only really the Royal Mail I could use to send my items out. But now there is a whole host of carriers and suppliers that you can use. You can either go direct to companies such as DHL, FedEx etc or go via a broker such as Parcel2go – More on this later.

The other hidden costs in Postage and Packing are things like envelopes, boxes, bubble wrap and parcel tape. Yes you can buy these items at places like the Post Office (here in the UK the postal service do not give them free to us, some carriers if you go direct will give you supplies). You can buy items from places like Viking Direct and even your Local Pound Shop sell items………but you get what you pay and also if you are sending out items on a regular basis you will pay loads more than you should.

So how and where do you buy your packing items for your eBay business ?…………….eBay of course. A quick example is Bubble Wrap if you buy from from your local shop you pay around £6.00 for a small roll. At present I pay £18.00 for a massive roll. If I bought the same size from my local shop the cost would be £120.00…….so a massive saving.

Again boxes, source these on eBay and you will save yourself a large amount of money, and the same goes for packing tape, void fill etc. Watch those pennies and will always make a profit.

In another article we covered how important it is to know the weight of the items you are selling and need to work out the postage costs before you list your item. If you get the postage cost wrong you could loose a large amount of money and it comes out of your pocket and not your customers pocket. You have been warned.

It is a good idea to have your own postage and packing area where you have all the items ready to pack your items so that you are not looking around for scissors and tape, as this soon adds up and you will be wasting time as you keep looking for missing items. If you are not able to have your own area always set up, get yourself a plastic box and have all your items in there ready to go.

As I mentioned at the start of the article back in the days when I started to sell online there was just the Royal Mail, but today there is a whole list of places where you can get your items taken all around the world. One of the best suppliers I have found is Parcel2go.com. This a broker company and they use companies such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, City Link, Parcel Force. Everything is the same as if you used the carriers direct, but you will make massive savings as the broker works on your behalf.

There are plenty of these brokers around you just need to use one that you feel happy with and they offer the best service for you, and of course deliver to the areas and countries where your customers are.

In closing postage and packing is a must for any mail order business, buy at the right price, keep those costs low, but do not buy too cheap as you want the item to arrive in one piece. And know those costs before you start to list your items.

Happy Selling.

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As we continue to look at product sourcing for your eBay and Amazon business one of the areas that I like to cover with a client is look at the major holiday’s and events that happen throughout the year. As we have discussed before product sourcing has to become the life blood of your business, and you must always be thinking ahead of what events and holidays that are happening in the up and coming months.

An event that is coming up very fast is Valentines Day, we still have sometime left to buy products and list them on eBay, but we should have been sourcing and listing back in December just after Christmas.

But I want you to just think outside the box for a bit. Around Valentines Day a lot of men are buying a gift for that special lady in their lives. But very often men get stuck on what to buy…..so in the descriptions help the men with the shopping experience and then for an extra cost – (Here is where we think out side the box…….use multi variation listing format and offer different types of gift wrapping service).

Men will love this, so will the ladies but a lot of men cannot wrap a present up…….offer this service and what the orders come in and with this watch the profits come in too.

So what types of Products can you source to sell on eBay :

Perfume
Aftershave
Clothing
Chocolates
Handbags
Books
Rings
Bracelets
Lingerie
Presents a loved one would like 

Then of course you have the industry standards not only for Valentines Day, but for presents every day of the week.

Candles
Make-Up
Flowers
Scarves
Gloves

One of the big issues is buying presents for the men in peoples lives, but we are product sourcing guru’s now. Men love :

Books
Sporting Items
Games
Electronic items
Gadgets

As we bring this product sourcing article for Valentines Day to a close, remember that the whole time we need to be sourcing items that are easy to ship, and there is a good profit margin in there. Please do not get caught out with a great looking product and buying it and then finding there is no profit margin there.

So get going and Happy Product Sourcing.

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