Overview
Want to turn your eBay use into a steady revenue stream? Come to where everyone starts, with a copy of the latest edition of Starting an eBay Business For Dummies. EBay superstar author Marsha Collier packs the fourth edition of her mega-selling book with everything you need to know, from how to tap the explosive power of social media for promoting your business to the very latest on eBay's fees and payment structure, how to maintain your own customer service center, ways to build an audience, and much more.
- Shows you how to lay the foundation for a business by setting up a store and reviews legal requirements and restrictions
- Helps you price and source your merchandise
- Explores how to attract an audience using social media through your own site
- Gives you a quick MBA in budgeting, money transactions, customer service, shipping, and more
- Offers insight on other sellers who have been successful on eBay and what you can learn from them
Kick-start your eBay business and get profitable with this must-have guide from eBay superstar Marsha Collier.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781118067383 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wiley |
| Publication date: | 03/16/2011 |
| Series: | For Dummies Books |
| Sold by: | JOHN WILEY & SONS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 982,296 |
| File size: | 22 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Starting an eBay Business For Dummies
By Marsha Collier
John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0-7645-6924-4Chapter One
Using eBay to Launch Your BusinessIn This Chapter
* Getting serious about your business
* Making decisions about what to sell
* Having what it takes to make a living online
* Running an efficient auction
You've decided to get serious about your sales on eBay, so now you have to step up to the plate and decide how much time you have to devote to your eBay business. I talk about all kinds of eBay businesses in this book. Even though you're not quitting your day job and selling on eBay full time (yet!), I still think you're serious. A large portion of sellers, even eBay PowerSellers (those who gross more than $1,000 a month in sales), work on eBay only part time.
eBay sellers come from all walks of life. A good number of stay-at-home moms are out there selling on eBay. And so many retirees are finding eBay a great place to supplement their income that I wouldn't be surprised if the AARP creates a special eBay arm. If you're pulled out of your normal work routine and faced with a new lifestyle, you can easily make the transition to selling on eBay.
In this chapter, I talk about planning just how much time you'll be able to devote to your eBay business - and how to budget that time. I also talk about figuring out what to sell. Your eBay business won't grow overnight, but with dedication and persistence, you may just form your own online empire.
Getting Down to Bidness (er, Business)
Before launching any business, including an eBay business, you need to set your priorities. And to be successful at that business, you must apply some clear level of discipline.
I won't bore you with the now-legendary story of how Pierre Omidyar started eBay to help fulfill his girlfriend's Pez dispenser habit, blah, blah, blah. I will tell you that he started AuctionWeb with a laptop, a regular Internet Service Provider (ISP), and an old school desk. He and his buddy Jeff Skoll (a Stanford MBA) ran the twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week AuctionWeb all by themselves. When I began using the service, I had a lot of questions - and I always got prompt, friendly answers to my e-mails. When the site started attracting more traffic, Pierre's ISP began to complain about all the traffic and raised his monthly fees. To cover the higher costs, Pierre and Jeff began charging 25 cents to list an auction. Pierre was so busy running the site that the envelopes full of checks began to pile up - he didn't even have time to open the mail.
When Pierre incorporated eBay AuctionWeb in 1996 with his partner Jeff, they were each drawing a salary of $25,000. Their first office consisted of one room, and they had one part-time employee to handle the payments. They started small and grew.
Budgeting your time: eBay as a part-time money maker
A part-time eBay business can be very profitable. One thing that I stress in this book is that the more time and energy you spend on your eBay business, the more money you can make. That said, I now move on to the lowest possible level of time that you should devote to your business.
Maybe you enjoy finding miscellaneous items to sell on eBay. You can find these items somehow in your day-to-day life. So let's suppose that you could spend at least a few hours (maybe three) a day on eBay. Now you must include the time it takes to write up your auctions. If you're not selling only one type of item, allow about fifteen minutes to write your auction, take your picture or scan your image, and of course, upload it to eBay or a photo-hosting site.
How much time it takes to perform these tasks varies from person to person and will improve according to your level of expertise. Regardless, every task in your eBay auction business takes time, and you must budget for that time. See the sidebar "Some handy eBay timesaving tips" for pointers.
Only you can decide how much time you want to spend researching going rates for items on eBay and deciding which day or time your item will sell for the highest price. You can take great photos and write brilliant descriptions, but cashmere sweaters won't sell for as much in the heat of summer as they do in winter. Doing your research can take up a good deal of time when you're selling a varied group of items.
You also have to consider how much time it takes to shop for your merchandise. You may have to travel to dealers, go to auctions, or spend time online discovering new ways to find your auction merchandise. Many sellers set aside a full day each week for this undertaking. Your merchandise is what makes you money, so don't skimp on the time you spend identifying products. The time you spend on this comes back to you in higher profits.
Here's a list of various activities that you must perform when doing business on eBay:
Time yourself to see how long it takes to accomplish each of these tasks. The time varies when you list multiple items, so think of the figures that you come up with as your baseline, a minimum amount of time that you must set aside for these tasks. This information can help you decide how many hours per month you need to devote to running your part-time eBay business.
Jumping in with both feet: Making eBay a full-time job
As you can see in the list in the preceding section, the tasks required for your eBay business can be time consuming. But careful planning and scheduling can turn your business into an online empire.
The best way to go full time on eBay is to first run your business part time for a while to iron out the wrinkles. After you become comfortable with eBay as a business, you're ready to make the transition to full-time seller. The minimum gross monthly sales for a Bronze-level PowerSeller is $1,000. If you plan your time efficiently, you can easily attain this goal. Head to Chapter 3 for more information on the PowerSeller program.
Running a full-time business on eBay is the perfect option for the working parents who prefer staying at home with their children, retirees looking for something to do, or those who'd just rather do something else than work for their boss. Read some real-life profiles of happy full-time sellers in Chapter 18.
See Figure 1-1 for an example of the eBay home page, the first stop for most buyers on eBay. Note how eBay makes an effort to reflect some sort of promotion to better market the items you put up for sale.
Deciding What to Sell
What should I sell? That is the million dollar question! In your quest for merchandise, you're bound to hear about soft goods and hard goods. Soft, or nondurable, goods are generally textile products, such as clothing, fabrics, and bedding. Hard goods are computer equipment, housewares, and anything else that's basically nondisposable.
Following are just a few points to consider when you're deciding what to sell:
TIP
You don't always have to buy your items in bulk to make money on eBay. The first things you sell might be items you find in your garage or attic. To find out about some other fun ways to acquire goods to sell, check out the next section.
Turning your hobby into a business
C'mon, you've got a hobby; everyone does! Did you collect stamps or coins as a kid? Play with Barbie dolls? Maybe your hobby is cars? Did you inherit a bunch of antiques? Been collecting Hummel figurines for a few years? eBay has a market for almost anything.
TIP
You can't possibly be an expert on everything. You need to keep up-to-date on the market for your items, and following more than four or five basic item groups may divert your attention from selling.
Selling within a particular category or two can be a good idea for repeat business. Should you decide to major in miscellany and sell anything and everything, you may not realize the highest possible prices for your items. This can be okay if you have a source that permits you to buy items at dirt-cheap pricing.
Collectibles: Big business on eBay
Pierre Omidyar started eBay with the idea to trade collectible Pez dispensers. eBay now lists fifty main categories of collectibles (see Figure 1-2), and those categories are divided into thousands of categories, subcategories, and sub-subcategories. Almost anything that you'd want to collect is here, from advertising memorabilia to Girl Scout pins to Zippo lighters!
If you have a collection of your own, eBay is a great way to find rare items. Because your collection is something dear to your heart and you've studied it on and off for years, you could probably call yourself an expert. Bingo - you're an expert at something! I recommend that you hone your skills to find things in your area of expertise at discount prices (you're liking this more and more, aren't you?) and then sell them on eBay for a profit. Start small and start with something you know.
If there's one thing you know, it's fashion!
Are you one of those people who just knows how to put together a great outfit? Do you find bargains at Goodwill but people think you've spent hundreds on your garb? Do you know where to get in-season closeouts before anyone else does? Looks like you've found your market (see Figure 1-3).
Buy as many of those stylish designer wrap dresses (you-know-whose at you-know-where) as you can, and set them up on the mannequin you've bought to model your fashions for eBay photos. (For more on setting up fashion photos on eBay, check out Chapter 11.) Within a week, you just may be doubling your money - 'cause sweetie-darling, who knows fashion better than you?
If a ball, a wheel, or competition is involved - it's for you
I don't want to preach in generalities, but I think I'm pretty safe in saying that most guys like sports. Guys like to watch sports, play sports, and look good while they're doing it. I see that as opening up venues for a profitable empire on eBay. I don't want to leave out all the women out there who excel and participate in many sports. Women may have even more discriminating needs for their sporting endeavors! I know I do. My golf game stinks - but I do make a point to at least look good when I go out there, with respectable equipment and a fabulous outfit.
eBay has an amazing market going on right now for soccer equipment, and I don't even want to go into how much football and golf stuff is selling on eBay. And the last time I looked, golf items totaled more than 57,000 listings! What a bonanza! New stuff, used stuff - it's all selling on eBay (see Figure 1-4). It's enough to put your local pro shop out of business - or perhaps put you in business.
Including the whole family in the business
Sometimes just the idea of a part-time business can throw you into a tizzy. After all, don't you have enough to do? School, work, soccer, kids glued to the TV - you might sometimes feel as if you've no time for family time. However, the importance of family time is what brought me to eBay in the first place. I was working long hours in my own business, and at the end of the day, when my daughter Susan wanted to go shopping, perhaps for some Hello Kitty toys or a Barbie doll, I was just too tired. (Can you relate?)
I'd heard about AuctionWeb from a friend and had bought some things online for my own collections. (Okay, you got me; I collected Star Trek stuff - call me geek with a capital G.) I'd also browsed around the site and found some popular toys selling for reasonable prices. So one evening I introduced Susan to eBay, and life has never been the same. We'd go to toy stores together right when they opened on Saturday morning, so we'd get first dibs on shipments of the hottest, newest toys. She'd go to the dolls and I'd go to the action figures. We'd buy several, go home, and post them for sale on eBay. We made money, yes, but the best part was our toy runs. They will always remain a special memory.
Susan has since graduated from college (she majored in business and marketing - must have been inspired by our eBay enterprise) but she still calls home when she finds a hot CD or closeouts of a top-selling item. We still purchase and list items together. The family that eBays together ... always does.
My short trip down memory lane has a point: A family business can succeed and everyone can enjoy it. I was in charge of the financing and the packing while Susan looked up ZIP codes on the Internet and put pins in a 4' x 5' map showing every city that we bought or sold from. She learned some excellent lessons in marketing, advertising, and geography, all in one swoop.
Toys, books, and music - oh MY!
Having children in your home brings you closer to the latest trends than you could ever imagine. I remember sitting at a Starbucks a couple of years ago watching some dads and their sons pouring over notebooks full of Pokémon cards. (Actually, the kids were off playing somewhere and the dads were coveting the cards.)
And what about Star Wars? Star Trek? G.I. Joe? Can you say action figures? (If guys have them, they're not dolls - they're action figures.) If you have access to the latest and greatest toys, buy them up and sell them to those who can't find them in their neck of the woods.
Continues...
Excerpted from Starting an eBay Business For Dummies by Marsha Collier Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1Part I: Getting Serious about eBay 7
Chapter 1: Launching Your Business on eBay 9
Chapter 2: The Finer Points of eBay Selling 31
Chapter 3: Cool eBay Tools 57
Chapter 4: Safe Selling Equals Profitable Sales 83
Chapter 5: Expanding Sales with an eBay Store 103
Part II: Setting Up Shop 119
Chapter 6: Finding Merchandise to Up Your Profits 121
Chapter 7: Pricing Your Items to Sell 139
Chapter 8: Establishing and Marketing Your Web Site 151
Part III: Business Is Business — Time to Get Serious 167
Chapter 9: Software Built for Online Auctions 169
Chapter 10: Dollars and Sense: Budgeting and Marketing Your Sales 185
Chapter 11: Setting Up Listings That Sell 199
Chapter 12: Providing Excellent Customer Service 219
Chapter 13: Collecting Your Money 231
Chapter 14: Shipping Your Items: Sending Them Fast and Saving Money 249
Part IV: Your eBay Back Office 263
Chapter 15: Getting Legal: Understanding Taxes and Licenses 265
Chapter 16: Savvy Record Keeping — Keeping the Tax Man at Bay 277
Chapter 17: Building an eBay Back Office 293
Part V: The Part of Tens 311
Chapter 18: Ten (or So) Sellers Who’ve Made the Jump from Hobby to Profits 313
Chapter 19: Ten Other Places to Move Your Merchandise 323
Appendix A: eBay Business Glossary 333
Appendix B: The Hows and Whys of a Home Network 339
Index 345