AuctionTip #90: Information Products, eBay and Your Success

Selling information by CD, floppy and download is the way I went on eBay when it was all said and done.

I did everything else in the book and finally came to the conclusion:

I had to be the source of my own product.

As a result of that shift in business thinking, my overhead and workload has almost vanished.

If you are going to sell information products on eBay, I need to warn you... the competition can be fierce at times. With a little savvy, this won't be a problem.

If there is one advantage this book will give you over the next seller on eBay, it's to look far beyond the initial sale- most eBay sellers do this.

Just keep in mind that with your own info-product, your inventory costs are laughably low. Your markups are high. And you can more easily harness the automation powers of the Internet.

Simply find the hottest selling information products and change them a little, give them a name and make them yours.

Go with the proven winners- check the featured auctions to find out what the hot items are.

One of the main reasons eBayer's fail... their profit margins are too low. All their money gets locked away in inventory that's not giving them the return they need to cover their overhead.

I speak from experience. I have had thousands of dollars locked away into Palm accessories as the market started to sour.

It's a very sinking feeling. I started selling my own products exclusively after that.

AuctionTip #91: Boost Your Profits By 35%... Up-selling Your Way to Success

How would you like to skyrocket your auction profits on each auction bid by 30-40%? You can do it, and it's ten times easier than you can imagine.

One common sales technique that works like magic with online auctions is offering your bidder something called an 'upsell'. This is an irresistible something extra to your customer right when the transaction is about to be made.

You see examples of upsells everywhere- when you go out to eat, and the waiter brings you the desert menu... that's an upsell.

When I was selling really heavily on eBay, upsell products almost resulted in a lot a of excess profit. And it always kept any one of my auctions from becoming unprofitable.

Let's say for instance you sold $180 worth of product. You pay $100 for the ad on eBay and $100 for the product in your inventory. Well, if you quit there you would have lost $20- and if you keep it up at that rate you may go broke.

But lets say that you offer another complementary item for an extra $5. If you had 20 winning bidders and half of them took you up on the offer you would end up netting $30 on that auction.

And you would have just turned a loser into a winner. With some auctions, especially ones that go south on you, up-sells can mean the difference between making money and losing it.

Probably my most successful example of an upsell from personal experience came from an auction selling an info-product I made myself.

I ran a featured ad I ended with over 120 bids with a lot of people buying more than one. I was making about $10 per CD. That's $1200, I could have stopped there.

But since I don't pass up an opportunity to make some extra money, I applied this special sales getting technique. When all was said and done I netted just a little over $1900 with my extra product offers from one auction.

It definitely works.

Here are some guidelines to help you benefit from offering upsells:

1.) Make certain that it strongly complements the product they bid on or that it will be something they would likely buy.

2.) Keep the item around 30-40% of the original products' price. If it's too cheap you won't make what you can and if it's too expensive no one will buy.

3.) Show them how the item will benefit them, let them know it is a special limited time offer and ask them emphatically to BUY.

4.) Don't limit the amount of business the customer wants to do with you. After you have gained their trust you have done the hard part. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by not trying to offer them something else.

5.) Ideally this product costs you little if anything to offer. Either that or it's something you have an ample quantity of. Information and consumable products to the rescue once again… these are the ones that I constantly use for upsells.

If you sold hand-made quilts, then a good upsell would be a small info manual showing someone the inside tricks to making their own beautiful quilts.

Not only would the information be relevant to them, but immediately accessible- instant gratification, a big plus.

You won't always be in the position to offer up-sell product starting out, but as you get more experienced you will see some obvious opportunities;

It's an untapped well of profit.

If you're selling information and consumable products it will be easy to create good complementary offers that your customer will want. If you're selling something like collectibles then it may be tougher.

Auction #92: The Real Way to Boost Your Profits

The other way to boost your sales is by offering your customers products called back-ends. This is where you can make major money if you prepare.

Once you have built the trust of your customer they're likely to buy from you again and again- take advantage of this by offering them things they will want and are interested in.

Think of a professional stamp seller who uses eBay to add to his customer base.

Let's say he has a customer database of a 10,000 avid eBay stamp collectors. If this stamp seller does his homework then he will know what types of stamps his customers are crazy about.

He will find the right source for these stamps and Voila! He will make money. One day he sends them an email explaining to those 10,000 people that he has 5,000 rare civil war stamps.

Within a couple of days he sells them all and nets a $50 profit per stamp. He just made $25,000!

You'll want to approach your auctions the same way- that is why you need to find a corner of the market to work from.

That way you'll be in a better position to resell to your customers over and over again.

Not only will you know what your buyer wants in general, but you'll have a huge base of people who have similar interests. If you don't have a niche you can't do this.

AuctionTip #93: Your Customer's Lifetime Value

Do you know your customer's marginal net worth? What is that? This term simply refers to the long-term value of your customer.

Develop a long-term relationship with your bidders and offer them similar products they will want (by email). Look past the initial sale.

If you know that your average customer is worth $1000 to you over the span of 5 years, then it only makes sense that you would be willing to spend money to get them.

For instance, let’s say you sell porcelain dolls on eBay. Your ideal customer is someone who is just absolutely crazy about collecting these types of dolls. And chances are, they will always be.

As a businessperson who sells to this market, you should be willing to spend money up front just to have this customer in your fold. They will buy from you again and again.

You paid for the advertising to acquire this customer. After the initial sale the trust has been built and you no longer have to pay to acquire this customer.

What makes eBay so wonderful is that the customer acquisition costs are so cheap.

The higher the lifetime value of your customer, the more you should be willing to spend, in the form of advertising, to get them.

For most sellers on eBay, they have never even thought of this, so the customer only has value inasmuch as they can make a profit on the first sale. This is very narrow sighted.

Very few businesses can get away with this for long.

AuctionTip #94: Mister Lister, Who's That?

EBay offers the program called Mister Lister that will save you hours of listing time every day- it's real helpful if you have lots of the same items.

Make one good ad for them and list it over and over for years.

It's easy to use and it gets you one step closer to auction automation.

Normally you'll have to post each auction manually- this can take a very big chunk of your day if you want to have a lot of auctions.

Use programs like Mister Lister to get around this:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sellerguide/mr-lister-faq.html

Andale has a similar program in beta. Most novices find Andale intimidating and hard to use.

AuctionTip #95: Must Have Programs

Here are the several programs I use daily that you can download for free at http://www.hotfiles.com

·        A.I.D.- Auction information database program

·        Eudora Lite- fully featured email client.

·        Homesite- an excellent must have html editor.

·        Paint Shop Pro- graphics software.

·        CuteFTP- FTP program for uploading files to the Internet.

·        SmartSaver Pro- Crunches pics so pages can load faster

·        ShortKeys Lite- Email shortcut program.

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AuctionTip #96: Verza and CCNow Will Offer You A Solution for Your Secure Server Needs

Earlier I touched on merchant accounts. If you have a website or are selling one product at a fixed price then you need short-term solution for taking orders via secure server.

Two services I recommend for this are CCNow and Verza:

http://www.ccnow.com

http://www.verza.com

They are easy to set up- compare these services with Paypal to see what works best for your auction business.

AuctionTip #97: When To Ship Your Item

Customer satisfaction is your number one aim. So, you need to ship fast… but don’t let this throw you off.

I used to ship 4-5 days a week. This eventually shrank to one day, Friday. Most customers complement my fast shipping. Never once has someone said, "Hey, you were a little slow with the shipment.”

Actually, it’s a little unfair for the folks who win on Friday, but as a rule I never end auctions on a Friday since it’s probably the worst day to end an auction.

I did this for site traffic reasons by the way.

The people who win on Saturday and Sunday never expect the shipment until the next week.

I also alert them about my shipping day and give them a reason for it… most people appreciate that. They know when to expect the shipment and I don’t have to email them to let them know when I send it.

So every Friday, back when I sold heavily, I would get up around 7am and get everything ready to go. It normally took me about an hour or two to prepare things for delivery to the Post Office.

Pick one or two prime days per week to do your shipping business. Stick to it, it gives everything order. Get it done and out of the way.

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AuctionTip #98: The Importance of Good Feedback

Building up a good feedback record on eBay is your #1 priority starting out. The credibility factor will weigh on you at the beginning but this can be overcome.

Remember:

§        Treat your winning bidders like royalty...

§        Sell them a quality product...

§        Actively pursue positive feedback...

Winning bidders will leave feedback for you only about 35% of the time if you don't prompt them at all. Let them know that you NEED feedback.

Make it easy for them to get to the forum by emailing them a link and consistently follow-up. You can get that feedback up to about 90%.

Once you have a good record people will be much more likely to do business with you. Make it your goal to never get a negative comment.

This is hard to do but very impressive with the buyers. If you get 'negged', correct the mistake and move on, it's not the end of the world.

Kindly reply to the response with a rational explanation for the problem and your buyers will overlook it when they view your profile.

If you respond with a little magnanimity, you can even turn a neg into a positive in the browser's eyes.

For an example of an excellent feedback record and what positive feedback will do for you... check out eBay's all-time greatest seller:

http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/parrothead88/

This fellow has over 20,000 positive feedbacks. I wonder if he's made any money on eBay?

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AuctionTip #99: A Program That You Should Try

Throughout this eBook I've touched on the importance of automating repetitive tasks in your business.

While it's not the easiest thing, there's one tool on the market that some use everyday and would have a hard time getting by without it.

The name of this revolutionary program is Mailloop- you can find out more about the benefits of this awesome software and what it can do for you at:

http://www.marketingtips.com/mailloop/mailloop.html

You can download a functional demo of the program. Look into it. Play around with it a little bit.

Tip for the Power BIDDER

Here's a little trick I use to save money, time and win almost every auction I bid on... this is a strategy is so simple yet few people have the patience to use it.

It's easy and it works: bid on the auction late and bid only one time.

Don't get in there and start competing for an item in the early and mid-stages. You want your prospective auction to stay low profile.

If you start a bid war others will join in because of the excitement and the price will spiral up, and out of bargain range.

When people see that an auction has few bids they may just pass on by it.

All you need to do is find the item you want to bid on early, and wait until the last few minutes to bid. This is called sniping- if you're good enough, you can get a bid off with only seconds remaining in the auction... leaving other scrambling bidders in the dust.