Topic: Member Workshop: What eBay Sellers Need to Know Right NOW
Host: worldwidebrandsinc Date: Thursday 08/14 Time: 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Pacific time Location: Workshop Board
Description: Selling profitably on eBay doesn’t have to be a mystery. Colette Marshall, Marketing Director for Product Sourcing Experts WorldwideBrands.com, will explain what successful sellers have in common, why it matters RIGHT NOW, and what you should be doing to get your eBay sales in tip-top shape.
Hello, this is Colette Marshall, Marketing Director for WorldwideBrands.com. I’d like to welcome you to today’s workshop!
Today I’m going to talk about the differentiating factor between eBay hobbyists and really successful eBay sellers who make their full-time living on eBay. Please ask as many questions as you like!
Making smart sourcing and selling decisions is easy when you understand the “How’s” and the “Why’s” behind choosing the best products to sell, finding legitimate sources for those products, and profitably selling those products on eBay. Today, I’m going to discuss why gaining an understanding of your product market is critical, why this is a time-sensitive issue, and how you can become one of the eBay success stories we all love to hear.
1. What separates the eBay PowerSellers and the eBay success stories from the sellers who just can’t seem to make it happen? You can succeed in any kind of business when you understand the basic principles. If you sell on eBay, you need to understand the basics of online selling – the What to Sell, the Where to Find It, and the How to Sell It.
Understanding the issues that impact eCommerce sellers is the biggest dividing factor between the sellers who make a serious living on eBay, and the sellers who make a little money on eBay, You absolutely have to educate yourself and become knowledgeable about creating a business and growing a business.
This is how you make good decisions, how you minimize your risks, and how you maximize your selling success. Most of the time, the sellers who are struggling aren’t making gigantic mistakes; they just need to make better choices, because they don’t totally understand some aspect of eCommerce.
2. Is this a time-sensitive issue? ECommerce education is an especially important topic right now, because we are very quickly approaching the biggest selling season of the year. The holiday shopping season often accounts for a quarter of an e-tailer’s total annual income; and a huge percentage of holiday buyers will start their shopping in September, less than a month away. Some will have already completed their holiday shopping by the time December arrives. Research has proven that these early starters are the biggest spenders as well.
eBay sellers who have their businesses prepared, and who understand How to get prepared, are going to benefit the most from the fast-approaching holiday buying frenzy. Right now, they are doing their holiday research, sourcing and preparation; and when the holidays get here, they’ll be ready.
3. Is it too late for sellers who aren’t ready? It’s not too late to get in on the holiday selling season; but if you haven’t already started, then NOW is the time for you to be researching your product markets, laying out your holiday product line up, planning your holiday marketing strategy, and setting up accounts with the suppliers that carry the products that will make you the most money this Christmas.
Use the research that eBay makes available to see what items are selling well, what items sold well during the holiday selling season last year, and what the current product trends are.
Use drop shipping to start test-marketing products.
Talk to your suppliers, check out their catalogs and see what products are going to be available during the holidays. Ask your suppliers what seasonal merchandise they offer and their top sellers were last year.
Find out about their close-out inventory. Suppliers are several months ahead of retailers, in terms of prepping for the holidays. Right now, they’ve already completed their own holiday research and have placed their orders with their manufacturers. They’re getting rid of old inventory to make way for new shipments, so you may be able to get some super deals. Find out what’s available, do your research, and if it makes sense, then take advantage.
Start preparing your marketing plan – looking at keywords for descriptions, PPC, etc. You need to be testing your titles, descriptions and images. Determine what’s working Now, before the holiday traffic arrives. If you wait until the holiday traffic arrives to determine what’s working, you’ll miss out on a lot of that traffic that could be yours.
NOW is the time to be thinking ahead about any holiday specials you want to run, or loss leaders you want to use, to draw traffic into your eBay store.
It’s also important for you to share any plans you have with your supplier. If you plan to run sales or specials on a product or products, let your supplier representative know, because that will affect your order volume. When your supplier knows in advance, they can adjust their own inventory plans, whether that means submitting a larger order to the manufacturer, or re-ordering sooner to allow for lead time and avoid an out-of-stock situation.
If your market research indicates that you can do well with a certain product that none of your current suppliers carry, or that you think you can find at a better price from another supplier, then you need to be contacting those suppliers and setting up those new accounts right now. During the holiday season, wholesale suppliers are extremely busy, and will probably take longer to respond to you than they normally would. The holidays are NOT the time for you to contact a supplier to ask for an account.
Lastly, now is the time to be streamlining your operational processes.
For holiday shoppers, the number one concern isn’t the cost of the item, or even the cost of shipping, but whether or not the seller can provide on-time delivery. Don’t wait until your holiday shoppers arrive to make sure that your shipping procedures are running smoothly. You don’t want shoppers to experience any shipping delays due to non-payments or missed emails – the holidays are not a time when buyers are willing to overlook a late delivery.
Keep a close eye on your supplier’s inventory, so you’re not running any auctions on products your supplier is nearly out of. A back-order situation right before Christmas will mean unhappy customers who don’t come back and buy again. If you use drop shipping, look very carefully at your supplier’s shipping policies. Study and understand their shipping times, so that you aren’t making promises to your customers that you can’t deliver.
you’re taking these steps now and getting your eBiz prepped for the holidays, you’re going to be in a position, when September rolls around, to attract the seasonal shoppers that are coming online and turn them into repeat buyers throughout the rest of the year.
Just by understanding How the different seasons impact online sales, and When early preparations for those seasons need to begin, you can avoid being caught off guard and missing out on the biggest selling season of the year. It all comes full circle back to educating yourself on the issues that impact online sellers.
4. It sounds like there’s a lot to understand. How can sellers educate themselves to get their eBay sales in tip-top shape? Utilize all the eCommerce resources at your disposal – listen to podcasts, watch videos, listen to CDs, and webinars, attend conferences and seminars, subscribe to newsletters, and study books, eBooks, magazines, ezines, articles, and workshops. There are many free and paid resources on- and off-line that can demystify the eCommerce issues that keep you from making eBay your full-time income. There are targeted resources that will teach you how to choose the most profitable products to sell, how to figure out a potential product’s profit margin, how to outsell your competition without competing on price, how to get wholesalers to work with you every time, how to prepare your online business for the holiday selling season, and more.
A word of caution: Check out the reputation of any “eCommerce expert” before you invest in their materials, and even before you implement the strategies in their free materials into your eBay business. Try doing an Internet search for their name, the name of their company, the name of their website, etc. to see what people are saying about them. Look around in eCommerce forums to find out what experiences other people have had with them. Ask them for customer references, and then follow up on them. And always make sure you check out RipOffReport.com and BBB.org to see if other people have had problems with them.
Check out Certifiedprovider.ebay.com for companies that have been certified by eBay to provide you with a service or solution that will help you grow your business.
If the majority of the feedback is good and there are no red flags, then look through their materials and decide if the content they are providing is pertinent to your particular business model and informational needs. Many educational programs come with a satisfaction guarantee, so when you order an educational product, check it out right away: Is the quality of information what you expected? Will it teach you what you hoped to learn?
If you feel that the content can really help you understand how to sell more successfully on eBay, then don’t put it down or put it off! Delve into the content – after all, it won’t do you any good sitting on your shelf. Knowledge plus action equals success; so study it, learn it, and then put it into practice.
We love workshops to be interactive, so please feel free to ask your questions that directly relate to this topic.
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I just started selling on Ebay in March. Since this will be my first Christmas season to sell do you recommend newsletters and how often should they be sent?
Relevant Content in your stores and auction listings is always great. It improves the customer experience and it tells the customer as much as possible about the product. Notice I said "RELEVANT". You always want to make sure whatever you send to your customer is relevant to what they're looking for. As for newsletters, they are always good for driving traffic to your stores and listings. Our newsletter is sent out once a week, and that is pretty standard for newsletters, but it all depends on your customer. They may not want to receive that much communication. You have to test and try different frequencies.
For additional information, click on the Help link located at the top of the page and type in the word newsletter. You should receive approximately 21 topics on newsletters.
Whenever you send newsletters of any kind you must always only send to people who have requested it. Now something that you can do in regards to flyers and product sourcing is if your supplier will place inserts in the package for you.
For example, you might have a flyer of a related product that goes well with the item the customer just bought. That flyer brings them back to your ebay store. If you supplier will put the insert in the box before shipping then that would be worth sending to the customer. Not every supplier will do this though because it does take extra man power. If they do do it, then they may charge what's called a pick-n-pack fee. If you use a fulfillment center, they generally will do pick-n-pack of inserts into your shipments. Of course you always just have to check into it and find out whether it works for your ROI (Return on Investment)
Beth, Great question! Worldwide Brands looks for suppliers of all types including drop shipping and light bulk wholesale. For dropshipping it's obviously a minimum of 1. But for light bulk wholesale , the minimum orders are less than $500.00. Depending on the product, the quantity then will vary. When we qualify wholesalers, we verify that a minimum lot order with be less than $500.
Light bulk wholesale will give you much better profit margins over dropshipping due to the wholesale discounts that suppliers are then able to give.
Does this answer your question? Thanks, Colette Marshall WorldwideBrands.com
There are many more tips that Worldwide Brands has learned over the years, working with thousands of wholesale suppliers and over 100,000 online retailers. To summarize, I’ve gone through the need to educate yourself what to sell on eBay, where to get it, and how to sell it, and discussed how that education is critical to your Holiday sales success. There is a great amount of additional free educational videos and information available at http://blog.worldwidebrands.com/.
Any remaining questions from this workshop can be answered by reading our free material at www.WorldwideBrands.com, calling our toll-free Customer Service Line, or emailing our Customer Service Department. Our contact information is available on our site.
Our company, Worldwide Brands' full-time staff is dedicated to finding and qualifying the factory-authorized wholesale suppliers with whom online sellers can use all the various methods of product sourcing. We also publish all the results of our years of research in our members’ center. There is a free preview available if you’d like to explore what’s available within our wholesale supplier database.
Thank you very much for being here today, and thanks to eBay for providing this workshop so that we could talk, and help each other learn more about becoming successful eBay entrepreneurs!
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