Grow and Promote Your Ebay Store Sales & Creating Multiple Streams of Ebay Income!     by OnceUponaBid

#195 in Business
1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic (by 398 people)   Your rating: 1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic

Selling on Ebay by Maximizing your Ebay Store

Learning How to Make Money on ebay (the right way!).

This lens is about selling on eBay to make money by using an eBay store and considering all eBay has to offer you in terms of opportunities to make money and promote yourself. We operate our ebay store located at http://Onceuponabid.com  . As sellers involved in almost every aspect of eBay we felt we can provide valuable information to those just starting or looking to take their ebay business to the next level of success. We will be discussion selling on auctions, selling in fixed price format. Selling by using an eBay store and ebay store selling format. We will be discussing selling for others on commission which is called being a Trading Assistant. And we will be talking about my wifes Educational Classes where she teaches eBay in a school and adult ed setting.

If you really would like to open an Ebay account, Paypal account and or an eBay store you can do so right here from the LENS! Scroll down and look for the banners for opening the accounts and just click! Easy easy! :)

If you want to learn more about eBay read on....

So What are the different ways to make money on Ebay that we will be reviewing here? Here they are..

1-Selling your own Items on Ebay from around your home

2-Buying items to resell on Ebay for Profit

3-Selling items for other people on a commission basis for profit. This is called being a "trading assistant"

4-Teaching others how to sell on eBay in an educational environment or through private in person or telephone conversations.

5- Developing your own products to sell at your classes and or to others regarding how to make money on eBay.

6- Using Squidoo to make extra money selling more of your items or earn money selling other's items as well! 

7. What is Ebay Local and Why is Local the next BIG thing for your business?

 We have done all these things and we believe that while there are no get rich schemes here , with hard work you can make a decent living or at least make a nice additional income to help with your family budget. If you you have stopped by your visit is timely! Ebay just announced Ebay Local Trading and while it has not been implimented across the ebay site yet it is going to provide for an unprecedented increase in the possibilities you have to make some extra money on eBay.

We offer personal consultations and help to get started. Just read through this lens and some of our content sites like our blog and then email us. Once you read all we have to offer you will know we are the right people to help you get started.

You can email us at clhct1@aol.com

Marty & Cheryl

OnceUponabid.com 

 

Lets Get Started...
Welcome to our first posting on our new Squidoo lens! We might be new to Squidoo but we already have a ton of information ready for you to help with your eBay business! If you slide down to the links section you will find links to our blog on Google which has been going on 2 years strong now with tons of info on our eBay selling experience as well as our much newer myspace page complete with a filmloops slideshow of some of our items for sale set to some music! A great place to start! You can learn more about who were are on these links and on the link to our store also in that section. Take a peek at those and get ready to make some money on eBay!! Yeah it takes work , and no you wont be a millionaire this month, but If you found this lens I am sure you know this already! Talk soon ! -Marty

HERE IS WHAT WE PLAN TO COVER

1 ) Selling your own items on eBay
2 ) Why you should have an eBay store
3 ) What is a Trading Assistant? Why be one?
4 ) How do I market my items and my Ebay Store?
5 ) What is an Educational Specialist? Why be one?
6 ) Info on Paypal, Skype, and much more!
7 ) What is EBAY LOCAL? How can it help your sales?
8 ) What is San Dimas? How Ebays new desktop application can enhance buying and selling.

There is a lot to know so a lot for us to tell you about. Keep in mind that if you need training to open a store or grow your ebay business we offer consultations. You can contact us at clhct1@aol.com . But keep reading here for some great help!

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New Table of Contents 

Exciting New STUFF coming to this Ebay Stores Lens! 

Get ready for some awesome tools and help!

GREAT NEWS!

We have a ton of new ideas for the lens. Now that we have the basics of this grow your eBay lens started we are going to start reviewing and showing you ways to start or grow your business using tools that others have used successfully. You have already seen some easy to use software and a hit program above but I have tons more things to show you that can aid you in starting or growing your business. And better yet I have been the guinea pig for so many "tests" that I can show you what might work best!

We will continue on the themes we started with and provide tools and products for each section.

For example.. We will go over being a Trading assistant in Depth then provide links to books, tools and software that will be useful to you, and add a blurb section for Trading Assistants.

We will show you how to maximize social networking sites to get more views to your items and provide you with products and or books of interest for further reading.

Basically each section will become a resource center for you. We feel this is the best way to guide you (and keep ourselves on track). I am really excited as I look over the list of things we are going to cover here!

Keep in mind if you trying to get things organized for taxes the tax program banner below for Auction Seller solutions is the place to take a look!

More solutions, more ideas more thoughts all coming up! Thanks for checking out this lens!

So hope aboard the SELLING TRAIN! (picture from one of the books im selling)

EBAY GIFT CARDS 

Give the Gift Of Anything in the World!

Gift cards make up almost 20% of the holiday spending budget these days and represent BILLIONS of dollars in spending. Ebay has been slow to develop this market for themselves but now its time to take advantage of the huge eBay community and
work these cards into the mix for added sales, especially for the post holiday periods!

It is a great gift because one can give a gift of almost anything with this card and not be limited to one store gift card as many cards are today. Ebay has a broad range of items from many stores as well as homemade items and one of kind special items!

I am VERY excited Ebay Gift cards! They are an important part of the shopping puzzle!

We have spotted Ebay Gift cards at Stop n Shop a local Supermarket chain and will post the available sites to find these shortly!

HOT TOPIC - International Exposure Explained 

Why Pay for more exposure internationally?

If you are an active seller you need to pay attention to this info. Recently Ebay added International Exposure as an additional fee on the Sell your item form. This would be for the UK site.

For 10-40 cents, depending on the price of the item you can promote your item on the CORE of the UK site.

This means it will be seen by UK shoppers just like you would see it on the Ebay.com site.

At first, I thought this was a good idea, but it actually turned out to be a great idea for reasons that were not apparent until I started looking into our traffic reports.

Apparently the following is taking place.

1- As expected we are getting hits from the Ebay UK site.

2- We are getting sales from the Ebay UK site

3- Regional search engine expousre (google.uk etc) is picking up and filling up the traffic reports.

4- Buyers seeing our items in the UK can go to a clone of our store eBay has on the UK site. This is true for every ebay site I checked.

5- People from the UK currently staying other places stop by the UK site to shop..

6- Buyers across Europe stop in to shop the UK site.

It is my feeling that if this program is expanded it will lead to a huge increase in the ping ponging of buyers across Ebays properties.

You need to sample this out with a large amount of items and review your traffic reports. This is probably the most current, recent and useful info for experienced sellers on this lens. So go do it! LOL - Marty

HOT OFF THE PRESS TIPS/NEWS 

Quick tips to Grow your sales..and eBay news !

9-01-08 - Ebay announced fee structure changes to take place mid-Sept. Fixed price core listings to go to 35 cents for 30 days! Changes to the UK fee structure indicate that like in Italy, stores might become discounting mechanisms for for fixed price core listings. More soon...!

Ebay purchases 40% stake in Gmarket in Korea

7-24-08 - Ebay running 25 cent fee sale til 7/31 Great time to try the 10 cent intl exposure option during the sale.

6-6-08- International Exposure is highly recommmend after testing it these past few weeks. You can find this option on Page two of the Sell Your Item form (cost 10-40 cents).

5-28-08 -Ebay's International Exposure in Full Gear. Make sure to get to the new Ebay Global Trading page and find out more. Sellers in the US can now post to the core of the UK site for 10-40 cents extra (depending on item price). So far we have doubled our intl sales in a month! (more detailed info soon)

5-13-08 - Ebay has new pricing scheme announced in Italy , looks like Store items will become core items and be discounted with higher store subscriptions ... more soon

3-28-08 - Ebay announces it is taking its affiliate business in house! The new program starts April 1 and will run side by side with the old program for one month for transition purposes. Check affiliate.ebay.com for more info.

3-3-08 - Ebay launches Best Match as default search on the site. While some searches have been coming back needing some work, it appears to be helping media (books, CDs, audiobooks etc.) So far.

2-25-08 New Trading Assistant platform is launched and new tools added to the TA toolkit for those that sell for others for commission.

12-31-07 Ebay has new Online Flyer creation tool for local items! Go to Google and search Ebay flyer !

11-24-07 Ebay has killer Black Friday per the news reports!

11-14-07 -Ebay set to expand Local Service options. Will be able to see items by zip code. Also on UK site, there is a new local service directory! Awesome stuff!

11-01-07 Ebay Gift Cards are out! Buy yours!!!!

10-16-07 Skype Inks deal with Myspace for Voice IMs

10-10-07 Ebay mentions New Shopping Carts might be coming!

9-16-07- Ebay announces EBAY GIFT CARDS !

9-7-07 - Ebay Beta tests San Dimas desktop software. Cool application-my review coming soon!

9-1-07 -Lower fees for Auction listings! Ebay announced a new pricing plan a few days ago reducing the cost of core listings with gallery to just the cost of the gallery picture! This opens up a lot of opportunities for sellers of smaller dollar value items!

8-24-07 Ebay Expanded credit lines recently and might be interested in Mercado Libre the Latin American Ebay type site that it already owns 9% of!

8-06-07 Ebay Ad Exchange for TV ads in business!

7-22-07 - Ebay Adds "Store Tab" to top of screen on many pages! Sales seem to be up , and there might be advantages to Featured and Anchor stores now.

7-10-07 Millions see Ebay featured in Transformers movie! See the movie its awesome!

7-6-07 - Ebay opens Kijiji.com Online classifieds site in US

6-20-07 Increase the size of your.. Widget! If you are using the stores widget increase its size by changing the numbers in the cut and paste for sizing from 355,355 to like 600,600 see my myspace for an example.. of how it will look at http://myspace.com/onceuponabid.

6-19-07 - Ebay releases store togo widget ! This is a well designed visual search box for stores! Go to togo.ebay.com for more info and choose the STORE option! Awesome. I have an example on my Myspace page in my content links area.

5-18-07 - Ebay just increased its payout from its Affiliate arrangement for eBay and there is a new paypal partner arrangement! You should look into both of these! Affiliate.ebay.com and paypal.com.

5-1-07 - Ebay announces Togo.ebay.com with new widgets you can place on websites/blogs etc to market your items! Check out my blog post on this! Note there is also a new discussion board on eBay about it!

4-30-07 Check out Stumbleupon.com . Ebay store owners are using it to drive traffic to their stores. There is a full blog post about it in my blog section on this squidoo lens!

3-6-07 Watchers notified of items marked down by Markdown Manager
eBay started a new option in your store called Markdown manager. It allows you to mark down items in in bulk. Items show regular price and then a line through it and then the sale price. It works well! One of the reasons it works is that people who are watching your items see a yellow box near thei

EBAY LOCAL TRADING 

*** UPDATE 8/14/08 - ****
Beta Advanced search page shows check box for LOCAL ITEMS, allowing for much better local search. This is a great development if it is in the final version *** (more soon on this)

Ebay Local Trading might be eBays HOTTEST area of expansion in the coming years and if you are willing to do business locally or help others to as a Trading Assistant you need to be on top of this!

While not directly related to Ebay's investment in Craigslist, Ebay has decided to expand its return to local area trading. A while back in 1999 Ebay had a regional system which some people really liked. It had ended this section a long time ago but something new is coming in its place.

Stage one is to provide search results with some local options. This could be huge for sellers of larger items or local pickup type items. Ebay also intends to expand beyond this to provide landing pages of sorts for areas or cities and while fairly close mouthed about what things will look like since they were not ready to announce them at live, from the people that showed up to listen and share their thoughts it looks like people are already looking to impliment these features.

Some things we have now are narrow your search by zip code, put a zip code in your search box, and a new MAP IT functionality.

What is coming might be a page for a site like BOSTON for example where people can sort through items in the area. I think this is the most exciting announcement of Ebay LIVE so far and I plan on updating everyone on this as I learn more, stay tuned! -Marty

UPDATE - 9-2-07

The trading assistant discussion board on Ebay has been heating up lately with a new moderator and some of us are discussing the Ebay Local opportunities. To get there just go to eBay.com then to community then to discussion boards and choose trading assistant!

Links to our Ebay Selling Content sites 

Where you will learn everything we learned!

Our eBay Content Sites!

#1

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The Incredible World Of eBay

Our blog on our eBay selling experience going back more...6 points

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Start your own Squidoo lens!

Start your own lens! Use this link! If you earn mo more...4 points

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eBay Store - Once Upon A Bid: Toys Games, Assorted cool stuff, Kids Books

Our Ebay STORE! Buy Toys Games and Assorted cool s more...1 point

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Lensworthy: Interviews and profiles of Ebay community members

The purpose of this lens is to spotlight Ebay memb more...1 point

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Auction Ads

AuctionAds is a great way to promote your eBay auc more...1 point

68 more links: See all

More about us.... 

This is a video Ebay did of our family. It was used for an investors conference. Just a brief intro to our business and thoughts about Ebay, Paypal, Skype etc.

Selling On Ebay - A little about Us - Paypal Skype also..

Promo video eBay did about us. If you are interested in learning to sell on eBay take a look at the video and contact us, we train people in classroom settings, and also provide private help. We also have HOT LISTS and software to help you!

Runtime: 2:59
3974 views
2 Comments:

powered by YouTube

THE BEST EBAY USER TOOLS 

Record Keeping for Taxes and Sales and Promotional Tools for your eBay Business

***GET READY FOR THE IRS AND KEEP GOOD RECORDS WITH THIS SOFTWARE TO HELP YOU GET THINGS IN ORDER FOR YOUR EBAY BUSINESS!***

As many of you know the IRS is looking to make sure eBayers are paying their fair share of taxes on their profits. Ebay of course, does not make it easy to figure our all the info you need! But there are some great tools out there!

Check out this Ebay Software! Many Ebayers struggle with record keeping and getting ready for their tax return. This software is quick and easy to use. Click on the banner to take a peek at the software and screenshots.This is the program we use for our work here on eBay. The good news its cheap, the better news, its great! Please ask questions if you need to as we use this every day!



Top Ten Reasons To Open an Ebay Store 

In case you were wondering why you should have one...

Top Reasons To Open An Ebay Store
  • Provides you a fixed URL (website address that you can put on a business card and promote for repeat business
  • Allows you to list items at lower listing cost that might sell slower than items on auction.
  • Allows you a source of traffic because store items stay up long enough to get indexed in search engines whereas auction items do not.
  • Allow you to categorize your listings for easy shopping by your customers.
  • Provides you special marketing tools to bring in repeat business like email marketing,fliers etc.
  • Gives you access to the Stores Traffic Reports through Omniture which are loaded with useful info on how people got to your store, where they went, what they looked at bought what keywords they used..Very helpful info!
  • Allows you to list multiples of items at no additional listing cost. 100 of your Harry Potter book costs 10 cents to list , same as 10 Harry Potter books!
  • Allows you to do your own off site marketing and earn Store referral credits that reduce your final value fees to ebay. Go to HELP on ebay and type in store referral credit for more info
  • Allows you to get a domain name such as MycoolToys.com and forward it to the URL eBay has for the store . You then have a name and site that provides a customer with and easy way to remember you and come back. Ours is Onceuponabid. So people can remember Onceuponabid.com
  • Gives your auction buyers a place to add things to their orders with you. You now have aisles of merchandise ready to pluck out. Effective strategies could be used to cross promote your items!
  • Allows you to have FREE mirror stores on each Ebay country site!

Books to Help You With Opening an Ebay Store 

Opening an eBay store is easy. Here are a few book recommendations. Soon you will be able to open your store from right here in my lens! :)
Launching a Successful eBay Store

Launching a Successful eBay Store

by Ron Mansfield

The best existing resource for you as a potential new store owner!

Amazon Price: $18.24 (as of 10/12/2008)

eBay's Secrets Revealed: The Insider's Guide to Advertising, Marketing, and Promoting Your eBay Store - With Little or No Money

eBay's Secrets Revealed: The Insider's Guide to Advertising, Marketing, and Promoting Your eBay Store - With Little or No Money

by Dan W. Blacharski

Released soon, this one is supposed to be great!

Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 10/12/2008)

Starting an Online Business All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))