14/8/09 eBay Powersellers Secrets Newsletter

“In this week’s newsletter Amanda teaches you how ‘bundling’ your eBay products can set you apart from your competition.”  

Hello!

You might know the story already - you’ve found the perfect product to sell on eBay, you’ve researched the market so you know for sure that it’s going to sell, so you list it and as expected it starts selling like it’s going out of fashion. You’re making a tidy profit and you know you can relax and start sourcing new products as the sales keep coming in.

Then ‘Bam!’ out of nowhere appears another seller who insists on listing the very same product as you, except he has undercut you at a price you just can’t, and more to the point won’t match (because unlike your competitor you actually want to make more than £1.50 profit on each of your sales!). How frustrating is that and what do you do?

Well this is what happened to me and is actually a personal frustration of mine. It gets me on my soapbox a bit!   To this day, I still don’t understand why anyone would prefer to make for example £1.00 profit on their products when they are perfectly capable of making £5.00 profit. Why buy at a really good wholesale price and then set the resale price so low?

All this does is ultimately start a pricing war between sellers of the same product, each undercutting each other until eventually none of these sellers can drop their prices any lower and so it becomes untenable, and no-one can sell the product and it fizzles out.

From experience, if I start to see this happening in any of the categories I sell within now, I simply do not get involved in the price war. I either let my listings run their course and then don’t relist and watch the others sellers descend into a downward profit spiral as they fight it out between themselves, or I ‘Bundle’. And that’s what I want to tell you about today.

I have said before, that in order to stand out from your competition you need to do something a bit different. By all means sell exactly the same product as other sellers but make it your own - offer that little bit more, whether this in the form of a super-duper guarantee or simply a more descriptive listing that makes people want to buy, it’s up to you - but you need to be ‘better’ than the rest. 

‘Bundling’  is like a type of up-selling except you are not trying to up-sell people by directing them to separate listings for your other products, you are offering them a unique package or ‘Bundle’ in which they get related products at a discount, compared with if they were to purchase them individually.  

So, as an example, let’s just say you are selling Dog Training Collars. Your potential visitors are obviously looking to train their dogs, therefore if you can source another dog training product like a whistle or a clicker or a lead or all of these and make your Dog Training Collar into a unique Dog Training ‘Bundle’ you will have four clear advantages immediately: 

1. You can set your price as you wish because you have created a unique ‘Bundle’ which buyers do not have anything to compare with.  
2. You are offering greater value for money than your competitors because you are offering ‘the whole Dog Training Package Deal’  
3. You have removed yourself from any pricing wars before they even begin because you are offering a product that is only ‘similar’ NOT ‘the same’.  
4. Your margins may drop a tiny bit, but actually your total profit goes up, because now your buyers are purchasing more than they had originally planned!  

So, by ‘grouping’ complementary products together to make a ‘Bundle’ and as long as you write a compelling, descriptive listing with plenty of photographs, benefits and features you will still be selling your original ‘hot product’ but the chances of being undercut are considerably less. Plus you are following the rule of ‘similar, but better’.

Give it a try!

Until next week as always I wish you the best of success,

Amanda

P.S   For those of you who have already purchased the Home Study Course, I have added a new useful tool to your exclusive web-page, designed to help you promote your listings outside eBay.

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I produce this newsletter on the understanding that these are my own personal opinions and experiences, which are as accurate as possible at the time of publication. I cannot be held responsible for any error in details, accuracy or judgment whatsoever. 

© Amanda O’Brien 2009

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