Tweet

Earning Quick Cash From Ebay Step Two How To Grow Your Ebay Business And Succeed

Written by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: Earning quick cash on Ebay is simple. You open a PayPal account and then ransack your home—don't forget basement, attics, garages and junk drawers and closets--and sell all those extraneous possessions... i.e “cool but useless stuff” that suddenly seems less important now that you don't have a job...or your stock market portfolio has severely devalued or disappeared overnight. Price it realistically and in anywhere from a few minutes to ten days you can have some or all of the cash you need to meet your basic bills that month. All that's great but for it to do you and good in the long run, you need to build your Ebay business into something sustainable that you can survive—or even thrive on.

Earning Quick Cash From Ebay Step Two How To Grow Your Ebay Business And Succeed

In order to have a successful business, on Ebay or otherwise, one must have customers. Without buyers a business will quickly fail. Ebay can work for you as a source of quick cash, or if you work it right, it can work for you as a long-term sustainable source of income. The difference between the two is learning how to build a customer base. It is not as difficult as you would think and the extra effort will pay off big time.

What exactly is a customer base? This is a base of “satisfied” people who have purchased from you in the past and it can be a literal gold mine. It is easier and less costly to sell to current customers than it is to go out and get new ones. All of the how to sell on EBay articles will talk about your listing and what to sell, but very few articles or books talk about your existing customer base and how to effectively use this information to increase sales and profitability.

Every sale should be your most important sale. Treat every customer as your most important customer and you will get return business if you ask for it. That is the key. Asking for repeat business is crucial to running a successful EBay business from home, or almost any business sale. Even if you are sending out salesletters, or resumes, you always--always--ask for the sale one last time before closing.

The Video Professor guy on television who sells computer lessons on CD and gives aways samples, does this beautifully with his simple tagline, “Buy my product.” Of course he does it was the sort of grandfatherly reliability that appears very Walter Cronkite, rock solid and eminently trustworthy; but even so it is his simple statement,so simply voiced that sticks with you none the less. He knows the one truth that is as timeless as advertising itself--getting customers to purchase and return is not difficult--just ask them.

Learning how to generate repeat business from your customers, really is easy, and actually just consists of a few basic steps.

Start a wish list. Ask your customer at every sale if there is a particular item in your category that they are looking for. This works especially well in the collectibles, antiques, vintage and designer clothes, books, and other media categories. After a customer receives their item and you know they are happy with the purchase because you provide outstanding customer service, ask them if there are any items they would like for you to look for and also ask them if you can email them with auctions that might be of interest to them. Most will say yes. In addition--always ask them if they want to sign up for your newsletter, and offer a gift or other incentive to be sure they do.

To succeed long-term on Ebay you need a newsletter.

Customers have short memories. If they do not hear from you “at least” every 30 days or so, they will forget you. The trick is to give them the information they want and need without becoming annoying. This is where a newsletter comes in. Let your customers know that newsletter subscribers get promotional discounts that others will not have. Your newsletter does not have to be long. You are not writing the NY Times, just a page, no more than 600 words. Remember it is going out via email and there are people who use dial up services. Feature one topic of general interest to your customers. For example, if you sell collectibles, write a little bit on how to detect fraudulent collectible items on EBay. Then offer a discount to anyone purchasing or winning an auction that month. For example, you can offer free gift wrap during November. Have a code so when they pay online they can contact you about the newsletter special.

Your customer list is your lifeline to success.

Check your wish lists prior to ordering inventory and after receiving a shipment, or before hitting your local yard sales, flea markets, thrift shops and second hand stores. If an item that is wanted has been obtained by you, email the customer and let them know that you are putting this item up for auction. When you list the item, offer a buy it now option with the auction so that your customer can purchase it quickly if they desire. Be sure to ask again if they want their wish list updated. Good communication between you and your customers will result in repeat EBay business, especially if you learn to deliver what the customer want. This is a technique that many PowerSellers use but do not share with others.

Once you have the tools and you know how to work from home on Ebay treat it just like you would when you have a brick and mortar business in your own home town.

Show up to work everyday.

Treat all of your customers honestly and with respect because it is the right thing to do and because your personal integrity and reputation in on the line.

Look for inexpensive ways to expand your business and the items you offer for sale. In your local hometown store they call them “loss leaders” i.e. those inexpensive sale items that get people in the door, and those expensive “value added” accessory items that go along with the sale, and of course, those ever popular little inexpensively priced “everyone wants or needs them” items that are temptingly lined up as you wait in line at the checkout counter.

Once you build your customer base and be sure to unobtrusively stay in contact with them.

Doing these things will ensure that your business grows and you thrive.

**************

Also see my articles on:
10 Steps To Selling on Ebay
Low And No Budget Home Based Businesses Any Woman "Or Man" Can Start
Step By Step How To Start Your Own Home Business
**************

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 ? 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915

Related Articles
  How To Create Your Own eBay About Me Page
  Earning Money On eBay - 3 Important Tips
  You Should Be Very Careful on Ebay
  Selling on eBay: How to Help Local Business Sell Their Products on eBay
  Steps You Need To Take To Start Your Own Ebay Internet Business

Article Tags: big time, business from home, computer lessons, customer base, ebay, ebay business, gold mine, last time, one truth, profitability, reliability, repeat business, return business, successful business, sustainable source, tagline, television, video professor, walter cronkite, wish list



Related Forum Posts
Re: Selling on eBay - [quote="BuzzAroundBooks":ctamvpom]Does anyone know if you can remove an item that you've listed for auction on eBay and then conduct a private sale? Is there a way to do this without violating the rules on eBay?[/quote:ctamvpom] If you are going to have a private sale with someone that saw the listing on Ebay and you complete the sale off the Ebay site, it violates their rules as far as I understand them. You can re-enter the info on Ebay and let someone bid right away to complete the sale and then Ebay gets their share. Chris
Ebay actually drives prices up... - I have an acquaintance who collects rare books. He went off on a rant about Ebay in his blog a couple of weeks ago. It used to be he could buy books for quite reasonable sums, but ever since Ebay debuted, people are putting their stuff up their with inflated reserve bids, and the uninformed public are buying those books at ridiculous prices...so now even book collectors that don't deal on Ebay are also inflating their prices, because if people are too stupid to know what is proper market value... For myself, I fell victim once... not so much to a scam but to my own lack of knowledge of what I was buying... Way back in the 70s Forrest J. Ackerman published 8 issues of a magazine called Spaceman, and I wanted them all. I also thought they were very rare and was willing to pay any price to get them. So I bid $100 for a beat up old issue of Spacemen 1, and got it, and of course next week another issue was up there for $20. So I was not a happy camper. Lessons are - know the market value of what you want to buy and realize that there are other places besides Ebay where you can get it.
Re: Picking an external hard drive to backup my files - I bought one from Ebay and it worked great for about a year - I forget the brand. But, about 2 months ago, it froze up and all the info is stuck there. Luckily most of the info was still on my desktop computer - but I had a quote of $250 to get the info off the hard drive. I love the flexibility of moving info from one computer to the other with an external hard drive, but seems I would need to find a way to back up the hard drive somewhere else as an insurance policy. When mine froze up - I found a good number of questions on forums from people who had the same problem. So, it doesn't seem that buying Ebay was the issue. I've bought plenty of electronic things on Ebay and they have all worked. I think the issue with my external hard drive could've been because I was using it all day every day to store and retreive files and it was also turned on all the time - until I did that, I didn't have any problems at all. Shri
Re: How Important is Feedback in eBay? - 1. Have you made eBay purchases? Almost once a week. 2. Was the seller's feedback important? VERY! I always looks for seller's with good rep. 3. Do you sell on eBay? No. 4. Do you worry about your feedback score? If I were to sell anything on Ebay, I would. The feedback is very important. A lot of sellers are crooks and Ebay buyers are aware of it.
I think Craigslist is better than Ebay - As a relative novice to selling online, I found that Craigslist is a very effective tool. In less than a month, I've sold over $800 worth of my excess tennis gear (which I was planning on getting rid of) and I haven't really lost much from my original purchase price. The postings on Craigslist are very search engine friendly on Google and I feel it's an easier site to use than Ebay (as a seller). Unlike Ebay there's no seller/posting fees on Craigslist and you're not even limited to selling to "local" consumers. I've had international buyers contact me and pay for the shipping costs. These buyers will pay me first via PayPal, and then I'll simply ship out their product and provide a tracking code (and the parcels are automatically insured for up to $100). Do any of you have any selling experience on either platform you'd like to share?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Convening a focus group for a niche product

The Biggest Domain Name Myth

Reverse Mentoring

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.