SECTION 1. SELLING ON EBAY: PART 2: SET UP TO SELL

Here begins a series on the basics of selling on eBay. The basis of earning money on eBay is to apply the key concepts of lesson 1 to eBay. That is:

A. Fill an Unmet Need, Provide Perceived Value

Easy to say, hard to do. Variations on this theme include:
Sell Low, Buy Lower: Finding something at a far lower price than the general public can find, and selling it at a price that is still low but allows you an adequate profit margin.
Sell Something Unique or Hard to Find. Examples include all sorts of memorabilia and collectors’ items.
Sell Time or Convenience: A product that saves buyers time, like a directory of hard to find products or services, such as kosher restaurants in Mecca, or antique car parts suppliers in Beijing.

More on finding ideas and suppliers in future lessons.
B. Why use eBay?

Main reasons include:
· Targeted customers – you can find those who are searching for exactly what you’re selling
· Small investment to get started
· Fast startup time. Once understand 5 min to list something
· No need advertise – you’re in targeted market
· Global audience
· Easily create or expand your client base

C. Steps to getting started on eBay

1. REGISTER:
2. Fill out form, click activate now
3. CREATE PERSONAL PAGE: when set up a/c set up personal page immediately with picture and background to give comfort/trust/credibility. MUCH DEPENDS ON YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE. There’s a place to link to your website to your personal page.
4. BUY A WEBSITE ADDRESS. If you don’t already have one, then at least reserve a website address (URL – Universal Resource Locator) at http://www.godaddy.com/ or similar site. It costs about $10 just to reserve the URL. While website setup is a later topic, but for now just know that creating a URL for a future website and matching/similar email will be useful. Here are a few basic tips for now:
5. IDEALLY, YOUR EBAY USERNAME, WEBSITE ADDRESS (URL), AND EMAIL SHOULD MATCH. They should be the same or as close as possible to each other or convey the same meaning. This usually means setting up all three at about the same time. All three should remind your buyers of the other two, and reinforce and clarify what you do.

For example, if you’re selling camping gear, you’d want something like:

EBay username: campinggear, or mycampinggear, or outdoorstuff, etc
URL: http://www.campingear.com/, mycampinggear.com, outdoorstuff.com, etc
Email: campinggear@yahoo.com, mycampinggear@gmail.com, etc.

You can always change your eBay username at a later time if needed (go to http://www.ehow.com/how_4502111_change-username-ebay.html ) to get a closer match to the URL and email addresses.

Note: Unless you’re selling in a very unusual niche, all the best usernames, URLs, and emails related to your niche are usually either long taken or being sold for hundreds to thousands of dollars. Avoid those until you’re already successful. When you begin searching for a URL on http://www.godaddy.com/ the site will automatically provide you with close alternatives at the basic $10 price if the site name you want is already taken. Stick to these for now. When you’re successful in a given niche you can consider spending for these or seeking out expired URLs that are better.

6. CHOOSE A URL WITH “.COM” SUFFIX. This is reputed to be an advantage since those searching the web will often just enter what they want with a “.com” suffix.


NEXT TIME, WE CONTINUE WITH SETTING UP ON EBAY. TOPICS WILL INCLUDE SETTING UP PAYMENT METHODS, GETTING CREDIBILITY, AND MORE. SEE YOU THEN.