7/5/10 Powerseller Profiteer Newsletter

The advantages of fat fingers….

Hello!

A few weeks ago, I talked about ways to raise capital to actually get your eBay business started. Although you can set up with very little, especially if you take the drop shipping route, I know that sometimes it’s good to have a little nest-egg as a safe-guard. Following on from that I just wanted to remind you that eBay is not just about selling. What about the buying side of things? When you start up your eBay business (or even if you have been selling on eBay for a while) don’t forget that you can purchase items from eBay to then resell on the site – a method that is often overlooked because it’s right under your nose.

Of course, the most popular business model on eBay involves purchasing from wholesalers and manufacturers or from car boots and charity shops and then reselling at a profit. This is a very simple and straightforward approach. But, if you don’t want to use a wholesaler, manufacturer or drop shipper straight away, you can utilise eBay to find products that you can buy from other sellers at a bargain price and then resell for more.

This is in a way a kind of eBay arbitrage – buying from one eBay seller and then simply relisting on your own ID and selling at a profit - a method that many really successful eBay sellers use to add extra products to their inventories.

Who’s got the fat fingers?

Well, hopefully it’s not you that’s got the fat fingers if you want to make sure your products sell each and every time you list! I know how easy it is to mistype a word – I’m not perfect, I do it all the time, but I always spell-check before I submit my listings to avoid any mistakes going live –casual eBay sellers don’t worry about this kind of thing though – they just want to get their listings out there and sell their items as quickly as possible.

As you know, there are literally millions of people selling on eBay and while many of these are full time or part time professional sellers, there are also a great many others who only sell occasionally when they have had a good spring clean and who want to make a few extra pounds from their personal items. These sellers – the casual sellers - are of great interest to professional sellers like you and me. Casual eBay sellers are simply not experienced at the important things that shouldn’t be overlooked in order to get your item to sell.

Things like title keywords, good photographs, correct categories for their items, and spell-checking – most casual sellers don’t bother to spell-check and so often their listings are not found due to their main keywords being spelt incorrectly or totally irrelevant. Now you and I know that title keywords are vitally important - this is basic information that every professional eBay seller should know, but it’s the casual sellers’ downfall and can mean the difference between their items selling or not. This means that mistakes are very often and very easily made. But this is actually a real advantage for you because you can seek out those misspelled or poorly described listings, grab a bargain and re-sell for a profit.

You can use this method on eBay.co.uk and eBay.com or any other eBay site for that matter. It works and is a great way to get a feel for eBay buying and selling if you haven’t started already. It’s also a really good way to add extra stock to your store.

In order to do this you will need to have more than one eBay ID but that’s ok because it’s perfectly acceptable and is allowed by eBay. You need a buying ID and a selling ID so that the items you have purchased on eBay can’t be seen as a purchase when you come to sell the same item! It would rather defeat the object if your interested buyer could simply look at your feedback and see that you paid next to nothing for something that you are now listing for a lot more.

eBay allow as many ID’s as you want – all you have to do is sign up again using a different email address. You will also need to open a new separate PayPal account too but each of these takes only a few minutes as you know.

So, what you need to do is take a look at some categories and markets that you know a little bit about, after all if you try looking in a market that you don’t know anything about how will you know that what you are looking at is a bargain or not? You will be in the same situation as the seller! Start by doing some searches with commonly misspelled words and look for listing titles that are very badly worded. You can also search for keywords such as ‘Wow’, ‘Gorgeous’ and ‘The’ as these are unnecessary title keywords – if a seller is using one of these words in their title, the chances are that the rest of their keywords will be a bit dodgy too. People don’t search for those words in normal, everyday life when they are looking for specific items. You can also search for listings that have been placed in the wrong category and don’t forget to look for under-priced items on Buy It Now listings. All of these are the types of listings that will get very little traffic, leaving the door open for you to swoop in, purchase and then re-list with a better description, better keywords, better photographs and a higher price.

There are some great tools around that will help you search for spelling mistakes in eBay listings. Try Fatfingers, a really simple to use site to find misspelled items – go and have a play around with it, it’s free and good fun!

Split job-lots for big profits 

Another way to go about this is to look for job-lots of items that are listed very cheaply. It’s likely that the seller can’t be bothered or simply hasn’t got the time to list each item individually so is just selling everything as one lot. Check out the lot because there could be a few pieces in there that are worth more than everything put together. You can then purchase the lot, split the items and sell them individually, each at a profit. Obviously you will have to do a bit of research to make sure you know the true value of what you are buying, but it can be worth it. The same goes for stuff listed as ‘wholesale stock’.

For a long time I purchased wholesale stock from an eBay.com seller at a greatly reduced rate which became even better value with the exchange rate at the time, and sold it on eBay.co.uk for a good profit, so you can find some great bargains. It does take a bit of practice to know where to look, but after a while you do get a feel for it!

Do try this method out and remember, if you don’t take advantage of poorly listed items, there is always someone else who will!

As always I wish you the very 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 2010

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