Ebooks and eBay are a great combination. Ebooks are a perfect product for eBay with no inventory, no carrying costs, no shipping and they never run out. EBay is the perfect venue for ebook sales. It is the largest online marketplace in the world. It is the site with the largest collection of buyers with credit cards in hand desperately looking for something to buy. What better environment could there be for selling ebooks?
The best part of the whole system is, if you do it right, you can boost your sales in twin fashion. Let me explain. Generally ebooks, with few exceptions, sell at the auction site for somewhere between a penny and ten dollars. More are closer to the penny price than to the ten dollar price. To be perfectly honest, it is hard to make a profit when selling items at very low prices. The fees from eBay will eat up your profits on the front end, and your fees from PayPal will get whatever profits are left over on the back end. That doesn’t leave you with much to show for your efforts, unless you properly utilize a sound ebook follow up strategy.
Successful ebook sellers do not make money on the small sales of ebooks through their auctions. They make money from follow up sales through their store where they have more profitable books listed. You try and entice your customer who just bought your 99 cent ebook to go back to your store and buy a ten dollar book. Now you have turned a 99 cent sale into a 10.99 sale.
There are a number of ways to drive that customer back to your store. First you always have links to your store in your listing. A buyer that is not interested in the item for auction, may look at your store for other items.
Another way is to induce your winner to go to your store by offering an incentive such as a two for one sale on any book he buys from your store in the next 24 hours. But getting them back to your store isn’t the only strategy. You can double the effectiveness of your ebook sale on eBay by sending them to your off eBay website where you still have more higher margin books.
The easiest way to do that is to create an off eBay download page where your winning bidder goes to get his item. From there, you can get their email address and market to them with an email campaign or you can offer them a one time offer of bundled ebooks or both.
Creating additional sales on top of the first small sale is how the successful ebook sellers make substantial profits. By targeting your customer to visit your store and your website you are creating a double advantage through one small sale.

If you want to make a full time living or even a part time income out of old books, first of all you have got to find physical copies of them. There are many avenue’s available to help you search for your ancient book of choice and all of them are extremely simple to carry out.
One of the least time consuming, but most comprehensive ways is to do a search on ebay under Books Comics and Magazines, Antiquarian and Collectible. Just type in “Old Book” in the search box and you will be returned a truly phenomenal amount of answers, many showing Historic Books up for sale.
A fair quantity of these will be from pre 1923 in the USA or more than 70 years to the year end, since the death of the Author if from the United Kingdom, which means they are in the public domain and legally yours to use as you like.
It’s fair to say that a large proportion of them will be of no use to you, but go through the list and make a note of all the books that you are interested in, just to check that you have not missed out something that could prove very useful to you or indeed turn out to be a real gem in your chosen niche.
Narrow down your list by discarding those that do not seem worthwhile and place a “watch this item” on the books that appear to be of the right calibre for your chosen niche.
If the particular book you are watching seems to “jump out at you” as a fantastic find then make sure to take a note of the end time for the auction, but do not bid on it straight away as this will possibly bring it to the attention of a rival buyer or number of prospective historic book purchasers all looking for a similar market, which in turn will have the effect of driving up the final price if it is an auction format item.
Far better to wait until nearer the auction end, therefore reducing these possibilities.
Of course if the ancient book you want is on sale as a Buy It Now format, then you obviously want to snap it up immediately in order to stop anyone else getting to your prize first. Because as you now realise this particular old book is going to be your main tool in creating your very own new work of art, which you can resell over and over again as many times as you like in order to give you a recurring lifetime income.
So just to recap:
1 DECIDE WHAT NICHE MARKET you want to create a saleable work in.
2 USE EBAY AS YOUR RESEARCH TOOL for a physical copy of an old book in your niche market.
3 SEARCH EBAY under Books Comics and Magazines, Antiquarian and Collectible, plus (Illustrated) if you wish, etc, etc.
4 USE THE SEARCH TERM “Old Book” or “Old Books”
5 IF YOU WANT TO DEFINE YOUR SEARCH INTO YEARS,.. for example:”1850 to 1900″ or something similar.
6 WHEN YOUR LIST IS RETURNED discard anything that looks totally irrelevant.
7 MAKE SURE THE BOOK YOU CHOOSE IS DEFINITELY IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN and suitable for converting into your new product.
8 WATCH (IF AUCTION) OR BUY (IF BUY IT NOW) any books that definitely fit your niche requirements.
9 WHEN YOU ARE SURE OF YOUR BOOK CHOICE – BUY IT AND TAKE DELIVERY – then get excited about the new product you are about to create for an ever increasing income.
10 CHECK WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING to create lifetime incomes out of their historic books and public domain items.

eBay is an interesting website that provides a service to sell and purchase goods. It simply works by allowing its members to post items they want to sell. Where as the people who like to buy theseproducts can browse the website to search for the items with the most reasonable price. Once they have found the suitable products, they can place an order and make an online purchase. Today, eBay has become a big market place where you can find a large variety of goods from the countries all around the world. There have been certain changes in eBay’s rules and policies over the past few months. It has put a ban on instant delivery of digital products.

These digital products can include various items like e-books, software and reports etc. eBay disallows the sales of the digital items with the help of download links. These links are sent to thecustomers so that they can download the purchased product such as e-books from an online location.

The new rule has banned digital products from being sold in standard auction listings, but items like e-books, videos and applications can still be sold through eBay’s Classified Ad listings. Their Classified Ads section was introduced over a year ago. It is almost unknown or mostly misunderstood. Amongst the millions of members, only several thousand people have actually used the Classified Ads. Now this new tool is being brought to the line light because of the latest eBay rules.

Initially eBay’s Classified Ad section was created to assist in lead generation. Marketers should not protest about that, since all the auctions starting from $0.99 bid were not meant to make money. Actually they were intended at collecting leads. With eBay’s classifieds, you are provided a fresh opportunity.

Sellers should proceed with care. Unluckily, even eBay’s team is a bit confused over the Classified rules at this point, in spite of introducing the option over a year ago. Their unpredictable naturehas led to the rejection of large number of ads. This has left the sellers confused.

The rules and regulations are totally different for Classified Ads:

- No bidding takes places within the Classified Ad section

- The feedback system is not applicable.

- The transactions between buying and selling parties do not take place on the eBay platform.

The seller of digital products and goods are advised to learn how the Classified ad sections work. They should sell their digital items by copying them on a CD or DVD. This is a more profitable approach. You have to pay a flat fee of $10 for an ad that is displayed for the period of 30 days. A great offer when compared to pay per click advertising. The cost per lead can be very economical.

If you want to learn step-by-step how to sell digital items on eBay, you can visit: my Auction Profit Streams website.

Dear Friend,I was actually very reluctant to give this information away to people, but I believe Ebay! is big enough for the both of us. Now with that said, let’s get on with it.Selling information products on the Internet has been one of the biggest boom markets in the last 3 years. You can see that in the number of people selling ebooks, videos, membership sites and so on, on the Internet. Back in 1996 there were under 50 people selling information products online, now in 2005, there are literally millions of sites selling all sorts of information to all sorts of people.So why are all these people flocking to sell information products online? Because of the promise of quick money from scam artists. Most people who are selling any sort of information online are usually resellers (affiliates or people who brought reprint rights to a product) or they created an ebook themselves.What these people don’t understand is that the market is nearly saturated with the same books they are trying to sell. This of course leads to a price war, and then no one makes any money because they are all trying to undercut themselves to be the cheapest in the market. This is not a viable business idea.â??How to create an automated monthly income selling easy to make information products on Ebay!â?I first started selling information products on Ebay in 2002, it wasn’t a work of art thats for sure. It was a book on how to start your own pay per click search engine on a tight budget, which was a hot topic at the time, with many people selling pay per click search engine scripts and websites on Ebay. My first book (that book) only sold for $9.95 and was only 50 odd pages in length, but in 4 weeks I sold 52 copies with my expenses being under $20.So not only did I make close on $500 for a few hours work, I gained a lot new customers to sell other products too. I ended up selling the master reprint rights to that book and sales letter for another $1500.But you don’t have to limit yourself to selling ebooks on Ebay, there are so many different types of ways to sell your content, it’s just a matter of find the right way for you.Audio tapes are a great way to sell products online. All you need is the dubbing equipment and your set. These types of products can sell for over $50. The best way to sell audio tapes is also to send them the tapes transcribed into text so they can read it as well, and this adds more value to the product.If you really want to churn out audio tapes in record time and don’t want to do the content yourself, why not hire an expert to talk on the tapes for you?Getting a professional in the field to answer your questions would have to be the simplest ways to create a product. If you were doing a book on direct mail, why not hire a guru for a couple of hours, grill him over the phone or in person, have the conversation taped, and there you go, instant product.Most times people will do interviews with you if you give them the rights to sell the audio tape to their mailing lists. If they won’t do this, then all you have to do is hire them for an hour or two, pay their usual consulting fee (a few hundred dollars should do it) and you then have no competition at all.

As if you haven’t already heard, millions upon millions of people of people buy and sell on eBay every single day. Some only make a few sales here and there. Others have figured out what it takes to become “Powersellers.” Powersellers are the very small minority of eBay sellers that do at least $2,000 per month in sales on eBay and maintain a 99% positive feedback rating. Powersellers are the ones that really know what they’re doing and if you really want to be successful on eBay then follow the secrets they revealed to me.

So, what are the secrets, tips and tricks that will cause you to become a Powerseller as well?

Well, I’ll be completely honest with you… I may be well on my way but I’m not a Powerseller yet. However, one thing that I know from creating several successful businesses is that if you want to become the best at something, you need to copy those that are already successful, ask them to mentor you and ask questions and take notes. And now I am going to take what they taught me and pass it on to you.

This is part four of a four part article series. You will find links to the other parts of this article series at the end of this article.

SECRET STRATEGY #16 – OFFER DISCOUNTS

Every single Powerseller that I interviewed offers some type of discount. It could be something like buy one and receive a second at 50% off. Or it could be that you offer free shipping on another purchase. Just make sure that you offer some type of discount and also keep in mind that “free” always works much better than anything else. For example, rather than say “Buy two and receive 50% off” say “Buy one get one free”. “Free” is a trigger word that really hooks people.

Furthermore, I have found that for most items, that offering free shipping can actually make you more money than if you didn’t. For example, a few years back, I wanted to find out if this was actually true. I had two whole rows at a concert and for the front row, I had people pay for the actual shipping costs which was like $9 to send them via FedEx 2-day delivery. A set of two tickets sold for about $400. The row in the back had free shipping and they sold for about $490 a set.

I made $81 more by offering free shipping. And it had to be the shipping because everything else about the auction was the same. In fact the better tickets made me less money. Now, I am sure that there are some exceptions to this rule (like maybe you are selling bulk items for $.01 and really making your profit off the handling) but I can’t really think of many examples. In fact the only exception that I can think of is international shipping.

But my point is that “FREE Shipping” works because it is very noticeable on search pages. Remember that the word “free” is a trigger word that catches people’s attention. The only other words that catch people’s attention like “free” is “you” and “sex”. Hey, I’m scared to think of what might happen if you put all these words in the same sentence!

Finally, with regards to the word “free”, always include it in your title IN ALL CAPS by simply adding “FREE bonus”. And then give your customers something for free. You can tell them what it is or not but always be sure to put a dollar value on it. For example, when I sell my information products, my bonus is a subscription to my email newsletter which I always give away for free but I put a value on it of $9.95 per month because I really believe that it’s worth that much since I know that I always over deliver. So I always tell my buyers that they are going to get a “bonus worth almost $120 per year!”

But here’s the key: it’s doesn’t really matter what the bonus is… all you are trying to do is get eBay users to click on your auction because you can’t start selling your product to them until the open the listing! Remember this every time you create a new listing. Your first objective is to get them to click on the auction listing. Think of it this way, you can’t sell to someone unless you get them in the store!

SECRET STRATEGY #17 – KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR GREAT DEALS!

Every single Powerseller that I spoke with told me several stories about one little deal or something that they found for free that made them a ton of money. One of them told me about how he goes to swap meets and watches the buyers all day looking for one item that a bunch of them seem to be buying. He then buys one for himself and tracks down the manufacturer so that he can sell the product on eBay. This is an awesome idea because really what he is doing is market research by watching the buyers at the swap meet. In addition, this same Powerseller oftentimes buys a large quantity off a swap meet seller at a really low price right before the seller is about ready to leave for the weekend because would the seller rather make a little money or haul everything back?

Another Powerseller went to Africa for his honeymoon and while he was there he found some fabulous African headdresses. He struck up a deal with the maker and bought 500 of the headdresses at $2 a piece for $1,000 total. When he and his bride returned home, he sold the headdresses on eBay for about $75 a piece, made over $36,000 and got to write off his $10,000 honeymoon as a “business expense”! He did so well selling the headdresses that he decided to “take a business trip… tax deductible of course… back to Africa” and order 2000 more. Also, to share the wealth, he “gave the maker a raise” and paid $5 each without the maker even asking for it! I bet he was pretty happy. But here’s the really funny thing… he got such ecstatic reviews for his previous buyers that the headdresses became much more in demand that his average sale increased to over $125! With these headdresses, he has made over $270,000!

So, keep your eyes open and snatch up those great deals. On thing to remember, if you see a bunch of people buying something, then you can be sure that you will be able to find others that will buy. At the county fair? Ask the popular vendors if they would like you to sell their products on eBay and split the profit. See a great deal at Wal-Mart for some killer product? Buy a bunch of them and sell them to people that don’t live near a Wal-Mart or other discount store (and always list your items internationally because international buyers will often pay you more and even pay the shipping for certain items because many times that item is much more expensive in their country… even if it’s made there!) Basically, make offers that you can profit from everywhere you go. Sure, you’ll get dozens of “no’s” but one “yes” can make you thousands of dollars.

SECRET STRATEGY #18 – INVEST IN YOUR BUSINESS

Of course, you don’t want to waste money on your business but I constantly see people that don’t want to spend money on their business to make money. eBay, in particular, has some features that can make you more money when you use them and others that may not make a difference for your product.

For example, one of the biggest mistakes that sellers make on eBay is not spending $.35 to have the product’s photo show up in the gallery. This is the biggest listing mistake! Gallery photos draw considerably more clicks and bids and yet do a search for a specific product and you will see that about 1/3 don’t have gallery photos and always have lower highest bids. Without exception, all of my auctions have a gallery photo and are listed in bold as are just about every Powerseller listing.

And don’t be afraid to invest in your business by purchasing things like auction software, a digital camera (especially now that you can get them for under $100), a postage system (I use Stamps at http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/stamps.html) or a web authoring program like DreamWeaver. Definitely be sure to invest in a high-speed Internet connection like the ones below because they will save you an incredible amount of time and frustration.

Comcast High Speed Internet Cable – http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/comcast.html
Earthlink High Speed Internet DSL — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/earthlink.html
Qwest High Speed Internet DSL — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/qwest.html
Verizon Online DSL — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/verizon.html
Time Warner High Speed Internet — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/tw.html

Or my personal choice:

Time Warner Digital Cable High Speed Internet — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/tw-dig.html

Just do some research and determine how it will make you more money before you buy anything.

SECRET STRATEGY #19 – ALWAYS BE LEARNING… ALWAYS BE UP TO DATE

As a personal coach, I recommend that people reinvest 10% of their income in their personal education so that they constant grow. And I suggest something similar for your business. Constantly read books about eBay and the Internet all of the time and you will grow year after year after year. Here are a few titles that I suggest to get started on eBay:

The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay by Jim Cockrum
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/silent-sales.html

eBay Cash Machine by Sebastian Foss
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/ebay-cash.html

What to Sell on eBay and Where to Get It by Chris Malta
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/what-to-sell.html

eBay Powerseller Secrets: Insider Tips from eBay’s Most Successful Sellers by Debra & Peter Schepp
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/powerseller-secrets.html

eBay Timesaving Techniques for Dummies by Marsha Collier
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/ebay-timesaving.html

In addition to these titles above, the is one other great resource: EBAY!

Check out the following eBay pages:

Learning Center — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/ebay-learning.html
eBay University — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/ebay-university.html
Security & Resolution Center — http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/ebay-security.html

Well, that’s it! Armed with these secret eBay strategies, you too should be well on your way to making a very substantial income on eBay. However, should you wish to obtain even more information about how to make money on eBay and the rest of the Internet, please visit our eBay store for some fabulous informational products.

Unleash Life Success Coaching eBay Store
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/links/ulsc-ebay-store.html

And be sure to check out the extremely powerful A2Z Web Building & Internet Marketing Platinum Package. It’s over $1,500 worth of the best web building and Internet marketing books and programs in the world for less than $50. Check out our eBay rating and you will see that people love this package!

http://www.a-to-z-web.com/A2Z-platinum.html

Finally, if you missed any of the four parts of this article, you can read the other three at the following addresses:

http://www.a-to-z-web.com/ebays-secrets-1.html
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/ebays-secrets-2.html
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/ebays-secrets-3.html
http://www.a-to-z-web.com/ebays-secrets-4.html

EBay provides a wonderful avenue to sell digital informative products. One such product that is in huge demand, and can tremendously increase your earnings is an eBook. While some people are predicting doom for eBooks, the sales statistics are providing a different picture. While it wouldn’t be fair to say that eBooks are going to replace print, the fact is that eBooks are in huge demand, and people all across the world are buying them. Selling such a product on eBay has its own obvious advantages.

EBay has thousands of buyers across the world and provides a dedicated traffic of people. Selling such a book on your own by developing your own web site presence can be a very difficult task, but all the traffic of prospective buyers is readily available with eBay. All you need to do now is grab their attention and turn it into dollars.

EBooks are highly popular with sellers as it is very easy to compile a book, and get it ready for sale. An eBook can be as small as 5-10 pages, which doesn’t take much time to prepare. With eBooks, you don’t have to worry about maintaining an inventory, and shipping the product. It can be sent easily as a digital download to a person’s mailbox, which makes it easier and cheaper for both the buyer and the seller. Thus you can sell the same product over and over again without incurring any additional costs, and make a huge profit. Most people are looking for information online and if you can supply the information in an easy, cheap and quick manner, then your business will succeed. Ebooks can do just that.

There are a few mistakes that many people make while selling eBooks on eBay. After negligible sales for a while, they quit altogether. If you wish to avoid this path then there are certain things that you should take care of-

Be Original- Whether it is your book or your way of marketing, bring some originality into it. Most people do things in a common manner, so try to be different. Have an original book that targets a particular niche, and is put together differently. While people are looking for information, they are actually looking for new information. Use the same principle in your marketing techniques.

Market Properly- Don’t get into jargon and fancy distractions. Offer proper information about your book and do not try to misguide, or give irrelevant information by beating around the bush. It is not wrong to use graphics, and catchy headlines, but selectively. While marketing on eBay is very cheap, and it provides good profits as compared to any other method, remember that like in any other business, you need to spend more to earn more. Spend more money in things like getting a new template for your eBay store, or the services of a professional writer to write the content.

Despite the fact that eBay has provided sellers and buyers with a perfect venue to interact, yet there is the need for you to make extra effort in planning and proper coordination to enhance your trading ventures’ profitability. This is the difference between the ordinary seller and the extra ordinary or super-sellers. Before you will earn above the ordinary eBay traders, you must move from the ordinary level to the extra ordinary. I will show you how!

I will now tell you what you should do before, during and after each trading effort at eBay so that you will be classified among the few that are successful on the wealth-creating mega-market forum. Even if you are a newbie, these tips are good for you!

PRE-SALES PLANS
Note the following points when making your plans:
Ensure that your plans are written.
Keep your plans where you can see it daily.
Your plans must be measurable so that you will be able to evaluate your result
You may need to change some of your plans. But, you must be as rigid as possible. Those who change their plans frequently hardly achieve anything in business and even in life.

WHAT TO DO DURING SALES.
When you have taken the pre-sales decisions, there is the need for you to make necessary decisions during selling operations. Some of the decisions are as follows:
1. Time planning and Mental-Scheduling. Determine what to do at what time. As said above, be rigid. Procrastination is dangerous and will make you a failure. Set time to search for and procurement of merchandise, shipping of goods, posting your sales and purchases day books, balancing your accounts and bank statements. You need to give time to attend to customers’ questions.
2. Make use of tools available. Some are provided by eBay free while you buy others. There are some good books which you must buy and read depending on your budget. These tools are dealt with in another article.
3. As your eBay business expands, you may not be able to cope with every aspect of the operation: the procurement, sales, book-keeping, payment-processing, inventory, etc. You may need to hire few hands. Although you may automate your business with the use of various tools mentioned above, yet, you will need some employees sooner or later.
4. Guard against fraud. Although this is not rampant with eBay, yet, you must guard against the following situations:
a. Non-paying bidder. Send a reminder to him to know if he has a legitimate reason for not responding. You will now file unpaid item alert. After 10 days of trying to resolve things with your buyer/bidder, you can request a Final Value Fee Credit. A refund will be credited to your account within 48 hours.
b. Bid-Shielding. This occurs when a bidder/buyer is protecting a low bid by intentionally using a secondary User ID to place an exceptionally high bid that is pulled away at the last second—report it to eBay’s investigations department.
c. Ensure that you have received payment and it has cleared before shipping an item.
d. Track your shipment and deliveries. Some might dubiously claim that the item was not received. You must have a proof of delivery.
e. Check and evaluate your bidder’s feedback rating. If a buyer has a bad record, you might call him on the phone to ascertain his seriousness on the current item.

AFTER SALES PROCEDURES
After sales services are known to be crucial for effective feedback mechanism. You must be accessible to your buyers after you have shipped the item and the payments have been cleared. The buyer may want to ask one or two questions concerning the product, may want to make one comment on the other on the item purchased.
Feedback is imperative to the eBay user, according to Joseph Sinclair, author of eBay the Smart Way: Selling, Buying and Profiting on the Web’s #1 Auction Site: “If a buyer is purchasing an expensive item, maybe over $100, they’ll definitely look at the feedback of the seller first. If it’s not good, many people won’t bother bidding.”

These are tips for good feedback and good after sales bidders relationship.
Avoid cover up. Use the listing description to expose the quality of the item being sold. Take a picture of the item and tell the bidder of any defects on the item.

Make sure you ship the item securely. Use a secure shipping organisation with good track record and reputation.

Check buyers feedback. Respond to them since this can be insurance and testimonials for future dealings.

Withdraw negative feedback. If you bag a negative feedback, you may work it out with the buyer to withdraw it. eBay recently put in place a procedure whereby this could be easily effected.

Refer un-resolvable problem to Square Trade. If a problem does arise, try to contact the buyer directly to resolve the problem. Those who can’t work out their disagreements can also turn to Square Trade, a fee-based third-party arbitration system. Square Trade acts as a mediator in situations where negative feedback has been given and will help resolve conflicts, often resulting in negative feedback being removed.

Want more, visit the author’s site.

About the Author.
James Ojo is a prolific and seasoned author of many online articles.
He is the President of Hot Home Business Online.
http://www.hothomebizonline.com
http://business.hothomebizonline.com
http://tinyurl.com/oloc5
e-mail: admin@hothomebizonline.com

Your biggest obstacle to selling at the outset is going to be that you have no transaction history on eBay. Buyers have no reason to trust you. And the best indicator of whether or not they should trust you to deliver what you promise is your feedback rating.
This is how eBay describes feedback ratings:
“Feedback ratings are used to determine each member’s feedback score. A positive rating adds 1 to the score, a negative rating decreases it by 1, and a neutral rating has no impact. The higher the feedback score, the more positive ratings they’ve received from members. However, a member can increase or decrease another member’s score by only 1 no matter how many transactions they share.”
There are two ways to quickly build feedback while you are establishing your new eBay business. One is to make purchases, and the other is to sell inexpensive things that bidders are willing to risk a couple of dollars on. You should achieve a feedback rating of no less than 25 before listing items in your specialty (unless you can sell some cheap items in that niche). Doing so will bring more bids and higher selling prices when you list those items.
When exploring eBay for bargains to build your feedback, you might think about picking up some business or success books. These are tax deductible for you as a business owner. One book that every business owner should read at least once a year is “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. You should be able to pick it up for five or six dollars, including shipping. Be wary of shipping costs while bidding, by the way.
Always decide the most you are willing to pay for an item prior to bidding, subtract the shipping cost, and bid no higher than the difference between those two figures. You might also look for some books about selling on eBay, or a recent edition of “Taxes for Dummies.” If you haven’t received feedback by the time you receive your item in the mail, first leave feedback for the seller, then send them an email informing them that you received the item, posted feedback for them, and ask them to post feedback for you as well.
Another quick way to build feedback is by bidding on penny auctions that have no shipping fees associated with them. These are usually placed by sellers trying to recruit bidders into a business opportunity. Listing these types of auctions is against eBay’s policies, and many will be closed before the auction ends. However you should be able to gain at least a couple of feedbacks a week by bidding on them. Use the advance search feature to ferret them out. Search for the terms “no shipping”,”free shipping”, “free auction” or something similar in the auction description, and only search auctions that are between one and three cents.
Sort the results to display the auctions ending soonest, and bid on the ones ending in the next couple of days. Make sure you don’t win more than one from the same seller, as only the first feedback from each member will count in your rating.
We also mentioned selling some cheap items that bidders will be willing to risk a couple of bucks on. Small paperback books or other items around your house that are inexpensive to ship work well for this. Mark the shipping up by about a dollar more than it will actually cost to ship your item, and start the bidding at a penny. Even if the item only sells for a penny, you will probably break even on the auction after you pay your eBay and PayPal fees. Remember, this is about building feedback, and not about making money (yet).

For our books eBay PowerSeller Secrets and eBay PowerSeller Million Dollar Ideas my wife Deb and I interviewed hundreds of PowerSellers. Male, female, young, old, couples, single folks–they ran the gamut. Some make the PowerSeller minimum of $1000 per month, while others gross millions. Despite their differences they all had one thing in common, and this is the thing that few other eBay experts will tell you.

They work HARD. eBay is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Building an eBay business takes commitment and time. PowerSellers are some of the hardest working people we know. It drives them batty when scam artists sell CDs, books, ebooks, videos, etc. that promise to disclose the hidden secrets of making money on eBay. Other scam artists promise to provide a list of wholesalers or dropshippers that will provide great products at great prices, so you can make lots of money. Sorry, but it’s not that simple.

But wait. This is not to say there aren’t tricks of the trade, and some great ideas that we’ve seen PowerSellers put into practice. We’ve spent years now uncovering these and without giving away the farm, they range from hiring import agents to help you source products from other countries, to making yourself the local eBay expert–the “go-to” person for all things eBay. Some of the best “secrets” are right under your nose. Right on eBay. For example, eBay now makes sales reports available, but you’ll need to subscribe to them (go to your My eBay page and click on the Subscriptions link). eBay Sales Reports

And did you know that eBay provides FREE consultation to sellers at all levels? This is one-on-one telephone consultation with an eBay marketing and sales expert. This person will spend some time going through your listings and give you advice based on what he sees. Some of the savviest sellers we know have learned a thing or two from these folks and it only cost them a bit of time. So why wouldn’t you take advantage of this service?

eBay’s OnRamp Consulting Program

I could go on, of course, but then you may not be as interested in our books, eBay PowerSeller Secrets, or our new one coming out this September, eBay PowerSeller Million Dollar Ideas.

There’s one more thing you should know. Many PowerSellers work hard yes, but they wouldn’t want to make their livings any other way. There’s nothing like being your own boss, and if you question this just ask someone who’s spent years working for others. It seems almost everyone dreams of working for themselves and this dream only grows as you get a bit older (or is it wiser?).

I firmly believe that to be a success when selling ebooks on eBay you need to have an eBay store. They more than pay for the £6 monthly fee with the benefits they provide. These include cheaper fees, longer listing duration, and much more. Find out about all the benefits below:1) Cheaper Fees:- The insertion fee for an auction listing on eBay is 15p. The insertion fee for a buy it now listing on eBay is 20p. However, the insertion fee for a store listing is only 3p. On top of this the gallery fee for auction and buy it now listings is 15p whilst the gallery fee for a store listing is only 5p. These are the only two listing features I use for my eBay ebook listings which gives me a total saving of between 12p-17p per ebook I list in my eBay store. Now this doesn’t seem like much of a saving, but since I list all my ebooks as store listings and only a small proportion as auction listings this actually equates to a significant saving. I would advise any other ebook sellers on eBay to also list their ebooks in this way as it will lead to huge cost savings for you. If you list your full inventory as eBay store listings, and then your most popular items on the main eBay site as either buy it now or auction style listings you can save money and promote your eBay store (I will discuss this promotion aspect further in the next edition of the newsletter).2) Longer Listing Duration:- The maximum listing duration of a buy it now or auction style listing is ten days. With a store inventory listing you can list for 30 days, 90 days, or Good till Cancelled (the listing renews every 30 days till you cancel it). Not only does this provide the benefit of added value for money, but it also saves you a lot of time. Instead of relisting an ebook every ten days you can simply list it in your store as Good till Cancelled and not worry about it again.3) Unlimited Inventory:- When you list an ebook as an auction or buy it now the insertion fee goes up depending how many items you want to list. When you list in your eBay store the insertion fee remains at 3p whether you list 1 item or 1000 items. This is a huge benefit to ebook sellers because as you already know, you can sell infinite copies of the same ebook, since it is digital. Therefore, if you list 1000 copies of your ebook (or even more if you wish) as a Good till Cancelled listing you will hardly every have to maintain it. This will not only save you time but also money.4) Custom Store Pages:- With a basic eBay store you get 5 custom pages (and even more with anchor and featured stores). These custom pages are useful ways of conveying extra information to your customers. I use my custom pages for; a Disclaimer page, a Privacy Policy page, a SPAM Policy page, a Terms and Conditions page, and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. However, they can also be used to convey other important information to your customers or to promote one of your products or websites. Having these custom pages available in your eBay store makes you look more professional which in turn generates increased customer trust.Recently eBay has also added the ability to cross-promote with other sellers. This is very easy to set up and eBay manages the whole process for you. All you have to do is go to the “Cross-Promotion Connections” area of My eBay and then use the request cross-promotions link in order to set them up. If the other seller agrees then a box promoting their products will appear on your listings and vice versa. This is again a valuable opportunity to increase sales.The sales reports are particularly useful because they incorporate eBay fees and PayPal fees. This means you can see how much actual profit you are making after all fees have been accounted for. They also show sales growth so you can monitor this also.The newsletter tool whilst basic is also useful. If people opt-in to recieve your newsletter then it can automatically be set to send out monthly updates of new items that have been added to your eBay store. This again increases the chance of repeat business. It is particularly useful for ebook sellers who are likely to be adding new products on a regular basis.5) Store Customisation:- With an eBay store you can customise the look and feel of the store, making it unique. The ways you can do this include adding a store logo, adding a custom header to all your logos, choosing the layout of your categories and listings, changing the colours, using promotion boxes, and much more. The benefit that this provides is that when customers visit your store it is different and stands out from the rest. This will make them pay more attention to your store, spend more time browsing, and hopefully lead to increased sales and long-term business.Hopefully this article has shown you that for the low monthly fee of £6 you can save time and money, look like a more professional business, and increase your traffic and sales. You even get your first month of having an eBay store free so there really is nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain.