How to Sell Used Books on eBay

It is a very attractive notion to work completely from home.  No more getting dressed up in the morning and wasting gasoline by rushing out to some rat race that is completely exhausting.  No more bosses, either.  A nice, calm yet fun lifestyle from home while running one’s own profitable eBay business is the best type of business to be in.  Perhaps this is why many have looked to the question of how to sell used books on eBay.

Books are all around us.  It is possible to pick up amazing deals on interesting books when one is looking out for them.  People get tired of their books and sell them off inexpensively or even give them away.  Anyone who is a book reader for entertainment normally goes through many books a year and requires a constant supply of them.  Some people read for entertainment, some read for enjoyment while still others merely read to relax and unwind.  It seems that book lovers can never get enough books.

For anyone who would like to own a business selling used books on eBay or half.com, there are many possible sources of used books.  For one thing, a good place to start is by thoroughly cleaning out the house and selling your own old books.  Next, try perusing flea markets for good bargains on books.  Also, consignment stores may have interesting books at great prices. 

Once the book has been purchased, or even while the business owner is making the decision whether or not to purchase the book he could look up the book on www.abebooks.com in order to help determine the potential market value of the book.  Some experts feel that the best books to purchase for resale are nonfiction books with the dust jacket still on and the backs or “spine” of the books should be unbroken.  These are the books that have the greatest potential for resale and profit.

After researching and purchasing the book, it is really the simple process of obtaining or taking a nice photo and following through with the listing process as outlined by eBay.

This is similar to the listing process for selling any other item.  As with any type of sale, it is important to design the ad attractively and list the benefits to the buyer.  Buyers seem to like the ‘best price’ option.  Also, the ‘buy it now’ option could be used.  Buyers are always comforted by the money back guarantee option.  Equally popular is when the seller bears the shipping fees.  It is up to you if you want to do these things.  Business owners must consider whether or not they can afford to offer these benefits to your customers.

One of the best parts of having a business selling used books on eBay or half.com is that there really is no major startup funding required.  How much could a used book cost?  If a business owner is buying the book for the purpose of resale, then it is not advisable to spend over one dollar to buy it.  There are some exceptions to this obviously, as in the case of an extremely valuable book which could be an investment piece.  However, more than one dollar is not wise nor is it advised as expenditures for beginning business owners.  

The above is some advice on starting a business selling used books on eBay.  Follow these suggestions and use your own selling experience as a guide as well.  Selling used books on eBay can be a profitable and very fun business that can be run from home.

How to Sell Bulk Wholesale Clothing on eBay

Did you know that on eBay, there is a pair of women’s jeans sold every 22 seconds? Clothing has long been a hot seller on eBay, which is exactly why getting into sourcing bulk wholesale clothing is a viable business option for many eBay sellers!

If you are new to selling on bulk wholesale clothing on eBay, here are a few quick tips to get your started:

Start by doing a little research on what sells best on eBay. So many sellers are afraid of the words “market research” because they think it’s difficult and time consuming. The truth is, while it can take time, without it, you can easily fall into the same situation that so many other sellers who avoid this crucial step.

When you include market research in your preliminary planning, you are giving yourself a huge advantage over your competitors.

How to perform market research on eBay.

One of the best things you can do is search through eBay’s completed listings. This is one of the best ways you can research selling bulk wholesale clothing. Start by clicking ‘Advanced search’ which is located next to the search field on pretty much any eBay page. Then enter keywords describing the clothing items you are looking at selling. For example, if I want to sell True Religion jeans, I would enter this as my search term. 

Then scroll down to the option ‘Completed Listings’ and check the box next to it. This tells eBay that you only want to view results of listings that have already ended.

When the results are generated, you should see the prices of the sold items represented in both green and red. Using this color code, you can see which items sold (prices shown in green) and which listings ended without being sold (shown in red).

Go through the results and count up the number of red results and the number of green, and compare them. If there are more green results than red, you are onto a good thing! If not, try searching for something else. I look for items that have sold 60% of the time. This is a good benchmark to work with when you are selling bulk wholesale clothing. I recommend that you go through as many pages of results as you can to get a more accurate idea of how well the item sells. Some items may only show you 100 results, whereas other items such as bulk wholesale clothing items might give you say 5000.

You don’t need to go through all 5000 results and count up the results, but I would recommend trying to gather data from at least 200 listings.

Finding a wholesale clothing supplier

When you have decided what to sell, it’s time to find a bulk wholesale clothing supplier. For many sellers, this can be a daunting task, as there are so many different ones to choose from. I’ve dealt with my fair share of supplier over the years. Some worked out great, while others turned out to be a disaster! So to help you avoiding some of my pitfalls, here are a couple of things to look out for when finding a new supplier:

Avoid suppliers of fakes. This is really important. Back in my rookie days, I thought it would be a great idea to fool my buyers into thinking that the “Gucci” sunglasses I was selling were made by he, himself, Paolo Gucci. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to sell even one pair, because the minute they arrived in the country, they were seized by Customs. Leaving me $500 out of pocket!

Another of my mistakes that you can learn from is not using safe payment options. I was ordering a bulk lot of stuffed wild animals, and dealing with a new supplier that I found through a Google search. After emailing my order through, the supplier insisted that I pay via Western Union. What I didn’t know at the time is that Western Union is one of the most unsafe payment methods available!

When I received my order, many of the stuffed animals were damaged (some had no eyes which made them look very creepy!). I contacted the supplier, but he didn’t want to hear about it. When I requested a refund several times, he ignored me.

If I had paid by credit card, I could have requested that my bank perform a chargeback, which would get me all my money back.

I hope you can learn from my amateur mistakes!

How to Attract More Buyers to Your Auctions

If you are looking for some guidance on how to attract more buyers to your auctions, then you will want to read this article.  Specifically, I will go over proper ad design, attractive offers and buyer trust.  After you are finished reading this article, you will be ready to attract far more buyers to your auctions. 

Ad Design

Ad design is a crucial aspect of attracting buyers to an auction.  There is a great deal of information on the internet and as the seller you have only moments to attract a buyer.  Naturally, you will want to use good photographs with close ups in order to achieve this.  Also, be certain that the proper keyword for your item is used in the advertisement.  Some people actually forget the keywords and that causes the item not to be at all discoverable in a search.  At times, buyers will be hunting for the very thing you are selling but if you have not placed proper keywords in the ad, then they will not see your ad at all.  Finally, your ad should have eye appeal.  Be sure that your ad really looks nice.  Even if you have to take several photographs, be sure that every detail in the picture is showing to best advantage.

Attractive Offers

When you are setting up an advertisement in order to sell something, you are making an offer.  Be sure that your offer has elements within it that are interesting to the buyer.  In other words, think about the sale from the customer’s point of view.  What do they want?  What can your product offer them?  Many people have found that putting up the “best offer” option encourages buyers.  Also, it helps if you have a product that is in demand.  It is a much better position to be selling something that everyone wants then to be selling something no one has ever heard of before in their lives. 

One great way to generate a feeling of goodwill with a buyer is to offer free shipping.  People always jump at the free shipping offer since everyone hates to pay those shipping fees. 

Another great idea is to use loss leaders.  This is basically when you advertise a few of your product at an extremely low price in order to get many customers into your store.  Then you can more than make up the loss on the additional sales that you will make from the other items in your store.  Department stores do it when they run sales and they do it for a reason:  it works.

Another thing to think about is whether you would like to serve a specific niche or not.  It has been found to be a good marketing strategy to focus on one target group of people.

If your product has a brand name, then use it and in fact use it in the headline of the ad.  Brand names comfort people, because they feel like they can trust it.

Buyer Trust

Buyer trust is a crucial aspect of a business transaction.  Some ways to inspire buyer trust include offering a money back guarantee.  This shows that you stand behind your product.  In fact, in some industries a money back guarantee is in fact an industry standard.  People will look askance at you if you don’t offer a money back guarantee because everyone else does. 

Also important in the subject of buyer trust is the importance of obtaining very good feedback scores.  Feedback scores are posted and everyone will see them so keep that in mind and do not sabotage yourself. 

The above is some information and strategies about how to attract more buyers to your auctions.  You now are aware of the importance of ad design, attractive offers and buyer trust.  Use this advice and prosper in your auctions.

eBay Selling Tips

Tip #1 - Create “smart” titles

The first item of importance in this list of eBay selling tips is creating a “smart” item title. I’m amazed at how many eBay sellers don’t realize how important a good title is.   You can have the lowest price, the best shipping, and the most beautiful description in the world, and it won’t matter if no one can find your listing.  This makes creating a good title one of the most crucial eBay selling tips.

The vast majority of buyers search only by keywords, so it’s crucial that you pack your title as full of popular, relevant keywords as you can.  Try to use as many of the 55 allotted characters as possible. To determine which keywords to include, pretend you’re a buyer looking for that item.  What would you type into a search field?  Would you type in “WOW”, “L@@K”, or “$$$”? Probably not, so don’t include those terms in your title. 

Once you’ve come up with some great keywords for your title, here are other important considerations:

·         Separate each keyword in your title with just a space.

·         Avoid punctuation unless absolutely necessary.

·         Avoid any other special characters (*, $, &, %, #, -), as they can confuse eBay’s search system and prevent your listing from appearing properly in search results.  Many of these characters are advanced Boolean search commands, which can affect the search results, so it’s better to stay away from them. Plus, very few buyers include special characters in their keyword searches, so using them can prevent your listing from appearing in search results.

·         Capitalize the first letter of every word -- after all, this is a proper TITLE.

·         Look at other listings for your product.  If most of them use lower-case letters, or a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, use all caps for your title, and vice-versa.  That will make your title stand out in the search results.

·         Your title doesn’t have to be catchy, clever, or even grammatically correct.  The best titles are long strings of popular, relevant keywords. 

Tip #2 - Appearance Matters

Another important addition to a list of eBay selling tips is that appearance matters.  To create a successful listing, factors like pricing, shipping cost, and title are very important.  But you also can’t get away with incomplete, haphazard, or unprofessional-looking descriptions.  Your description might be what separates your listing from all of the others with similar prices, and could make the difference in whether or not you have a successful sale.

An eBay listing is an advertisement, pure and simple.   An item description that is too short, poorly-written, too plain, or otherwise unattractive, can do nothing to help you sell the item, but only hurt your chances of selling it successfully.  Please take this very seriously; this is one of the most effective eBay selling tips you can employ.

Tip #3 - Be Original

Leading into the next important item in this list of eBay Selling Tips, although eBay has made some effort to provide sellers with visual “helps” like Listing Designer and Store Themes, these have been so widely-used that most of them are now so common, they often seem trite and unoriginal.  One of the best things you can do to make your listings and/or eBay store stand out from most of the others is to refrain from using these eBay default features.   There are many other options at your disposal, and most of them are just as easy to use and implement.   This is yet another wise addition to any good list of eBay selling tips. 

Want to Buy and Sell Online?

So many people want to buy and sell on the internet but they are afraid to lose money and venture into unknown territory. Internet auctions are such a great way to make money, yet those who are beginners are often frightened of the uncertainty of doing something so new. What is really needed is a way to obtain knowledge and guidance from someone trustworthy. Luckily, all this is available in an online community called SaleHoo.

How comforting it is to be able to trust in an online community that really has the know-how and the expertise to give assistance to the business owner. SaleHoo has the knowledge and experience base to help you whether you are completely new at online selling or whether you have been around for a while but just need a bit more guidance to reach your full potential.

As one of the biggest, most trustworthy communities of wholesalers online, SaleHoo is the best place for anyone who wants to buy and sell on the internet. SaleHoo is very trustworthy because SaleHoo has more than eight thousand premium, completely safe wholesalers in every type of industry that exists. SaleHoo has even arranged it so that in many cases you can go with suppliers who have a low minimum order or no minimum order, which is extremely beneficial for small business owners.

There is no need for confusion because it is really easy to use the search feature at SaleHoo in order to quickly find what you are looking for. Check out SaleHoo’s member reviews in order to get some feedback on any supplier you would like to do business with prior to deciding. SaleHoo can easily accommodate your need for drop shipping and international shipping.

One of the most impressive benefits of SaleHoo is definitely the fantastic Research Labs. By using SaleHoo’s education tools the risks involved in buying and selling online are greatly reduced or eliminated. This is because the state of the art Research Labs can give you guidance about such important matters as what profitable niches are, choosing a good supplier and how to write your listing.

SaleHoo helps you base your decisions on facts and even help to explain about import duties. SaleHoo has selling down to a fine art and even offers advice on when to start and end your auctions because the timing could make a difference in your profits as well.

Another great benefit of SaleHoo is the support staffs that are available ten hours a day, six days a week to assist you. You can also email your questions to support staff. SaleHoo also has a very active forum with seventy five thousand members to discuss important matters with.

Check out SaleHoo’s informative selling guides for knowledge and assistance in getting started. SaleHoo has created The Dropship Handbook as well as a guide on what are profitable products to sell. There is also a handbook titled Shipping Handbook 2010 as well as some niche specific Market Guides. There is also How to Find Fantastic Suppliers.

When you join SaleHoo for only $67 per year, you get to have all the following amazing benefits plus their full 100% money back 60 day guarantee immediately:

-Member’s Forum

-Customer Support

-Supplier Directory

-SaleHoo Research Labs

-Smart Seller Training Guides

Now you know what SaleHoo is and some of the advantages associated with it. With all of these benefits to joining SaleHoo and with such a low price, why not join SaleHoo today? You can achieve your dream of buying and selling profitably on the internet and start rolling in the profits.