23/10/09 eBay Powersellers Secrets Newsletter

“In this week’s newsletter Amanda orders something other than Sweet and Sour Chicken from the Chinese Takeaway.”   

Hello!

‘Taking a risk’. Three little words that come together to form a phrase which produces images of rashness, thoughtlessness, failure and loss, and are perfectly capable of giving you the hot and cold sweats, have you reaching for the nearest bottle of brandy and taking to your bed for 3 days until you get over the sheer terror that they conjure up. 

How did I come to this conclusion? Well, from experience. Because, I used to be the proverbial ‘non-risk taker’. Honestly, I couldn’t even order something new from the Chinese Takeaway menu without having a full scale family conference over it just in case I didn’t like what I ordered.  

But Sweet and Sour Chicken with Egg Fried Rice got a bit boring in the end and so I eventually had to enter the world of …Chicken Satay. Hey, not a big risk I agree, but definitely a bigger risk than I’d normally take on a Saturday night, and actually I quite liked it. From there I progressed to Beef Chow Mein until I finally reached the dizzy risk taking heights of Szechuan King Prawn. Pretty impressive I think! 

But to be serious, I know that it’s not really fair of me to compare the risks you take with your eBay business to a Chinese takeaway menu, and my point is that if you don’t take a risk you will never know what might have been. How far could you have gone? What might have happened next? What opportunities have you missed? 

There’s a saying that sticks in my mind, but I can’t remember where I heard it and it goes something like this:  

“What you have to do and the way you have to do it is very simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter entirely.” 

I got thinking about this recently because I received an email earlier this week from one of my readers. He told me that he had enjoyed a newsletter of mine from a couple of weeks ago and he had been inspired to look for a supplier of one of the products I had mentioned in that newsletter.  

As it happened, he found the same supplier that I showed you in last week’s sourcing video! But this reader told me he just did not have the confidence to order a quantity of the item. After watching my video and seeing me talk about the very same supplier that he had already found, he was kicking himself for not ‘taking the risk’ and going ahead with a small order.  

He simply didn’t have the confidence to realise that he knew what he had to do and everything he had done was absolutely right, but his overwhelming thoughts were that he was taking a risk, i.e. the stock would not sell, which stopped him from taking his first step.  

If he had ordered that product, he could have been one step ahead of the competition by now and actually selling the item on eBay.  

Instead, he had done all the leg-work - found the supplier, knew that the product was a sure-fire hot seller - but got frightened off by the risk factor. He had come up against his ‘terror barrier’ and acted just like 95% of the people who find themselves in the same situation do. He retreated! He hurried back to his comfort zone and found a myriad of reasons not to order the product.  

The ‘terror barrier’ is something that we all have inside us, including me, and you need to constantly challenge it in order to become more successful and to grow. 

Risk taking is part of any business and running a successful eBay business is no different. I totally understand why many people see this as a challenge. But taking calculated risks does have it’s rewards:

Just think: What happens when your risk pays off?

Because of course if you take a calculated risk and do your research then this is the most probable outcome.

If you never order your first lot of wholesale stock and list it on eBay, how will you know whether it could have made money for you? You won’t.

Just a little more confidence, a little more courage and a little more persistence can produce huge gains in the long run but you have to take that first step and often it is a risk – but it must be a calculated one.

Yes, there is the chance that it might be a disaster but if something doesn’t work for whatever reason, it’s not failure. It’s a learning curve. And you will have learnt something for next time. Giving up completely is failure. Taking a risk and it not working out is not. 

You will minimise your risk by ordering small quantities of products and testing them before you go for larger quantities.  

That’s worth repeating – always test a product first. 

Now, here’s a tip for you. This is something that I have done myself when I am not totally sure about a product even after I have done the necessary research.  

I look for a similar product on eBay.com and buy a really small quantity of between 5 and 10 items, then I list them on eBay UK to gauge how well they sell. I’m not looking to make a profit on these, only to cover my costs or even accept a very small loss.  

The point of this exercise is to enable me to work out whether the product is definitely worth sourcing at wholesale in larger quantities and my small test will give me important information that will help me reach a decision. 

So, whilst there is always some risk in ordering products, there are ways of minimising your risks, just like the small test, which will give you the confidence to go ahead and get your first products ordered and listed on eBay. 

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

Amanda

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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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