Dream Pets - From being Stuffed in Train sets in the 50s to now...

One thing about eBay, is that you learn something new pretty much every day. A while back , trusting my 16 year old daughters instinct we purchased some "Dream Pets" to sell . You can see one in this post . The interesting story behind these little animals is that in the 1950s the Japanese use to stuff to them in between toy electric train sets to protect them during shipment. The cute little stuffed things became a hit. Many years later they re-issued them in limited quantities. Due to an absolute freaky streak of luck once they were done sending small quantities to distributors the rest showed up somewhere where we found them. We had some of each of the many pets but just last night a buyer from the UK purchased 13 of the Pink Poodles you see on the left , cleaning us out! While these will never make the Beanie Baby hysteria level , they are extremely cute and retro looking , and that is a look which is definately in now! Unfortunately I have not gotten around to listing all the animals we have but we did get some of them up! - Marty

Ebay Express Heating Up? Time to Opt in?

Most people familiar with eBay know that eBay Express has not been quite the hit they thought it would be. It seemed to literally die in terms of traffic to the site and people pretty much gave up on it . Sellers, given an option to OPT OUT of eBay Express (have their items not appear there) were doing so (myself included) because of the strong evidence that sales were lower for store sellers when remaining opted in due to indexing and or other issues which were never really clearly determined. However.... Every dog has his day! Ebay Express seems to be pickign up lately. When I saw a sale from Express I did not think too much until we had 4 in one week. More than we had in months ! I then went to Alexa.com and noticed traffic perked up and was triple what it was just a few months earlier. The spike was somewhat short-lived but given that its make or break time for Express now I would consider opting in to Express. You can see our items here http://search.express.ebay.com/merchant/clact . Take a look to see how clean Express looks. The items we have been selling on Express seem to represent a different type of buyer. If you have any comments please post them! Thanks for reading this blog by the way soon we will have some cool new stuff here to show you! -Marty

Update on Traffic Program -Driving Business to Your Ebay Store

I am currently in the 3rd month of our traffic program trials. So far I have been happy, but want to update you a little on how things are going.

December and January were both great months for us. In February things started slow, but have been picking up some. I noticed my hits having been coming in slower from the traffic program. I am also not working as much with the store as I usually do. I have found that in order to good sales I need to target traffic of 1200 visitors a day for about 600 items in the store. I am going by the Omniture Traffic reports given to store owners free of charge in the store description. It seems to me when traffic spikes to those level things start happening.
What I mean is that small increases in traffic do not seem to show results I need to get to that level which I did in February, and in December and also in March 2006 when stores were in eBa's core search. So bringing in traffic more slowly is not helping proportionately it has to hit critical levels. I am working on that now. Below is a banner for the traffic program.



Lots of people are emailing me or messaging me for help with accounting for their eBay business. I want to mention that if you scroll down a bit you will see a banner that will take you to my friend Rogers software for eBay sellers . It is inexpensive and handles your eBay business, we use it! There is also a program for selling on ebay for consignment. IF you are lazy and dont want to see his banner his site is located at http://auctionsellersolutions.com

So far on the hit program we have had solid store sales every month. February ended with our lowest fee bill in two years and we sold over 100 store items!

I still need to do more testing (seems like a never ending job), and also sample out some international traffic from other sources!

Marty

Using GivingWorks at Ebay to Increase your Sales & Help Charities

Here are few links concerning using eBay's GivingWorks to do good, and increase your sales!

This first one is how to use the charity section to potentially get better pricing on your items by using the extra attention the charity section brings in . This has worked for me very well in the past. I highly recommend printing these out and reading through them a few times.http://www.tastefulgraphics.com/_CauseMarketingforSellerseBayLive2006_eBayLive2006_FINAL.pdf

The second one is if you were considering being a trading assistant to help nonprofits, also loaded with good info!

http://www.tastefulgraphics.com/eBayGivingWorks_TradingAssistants_final__eBayLive2006.pdf

The classes were dont by the Givingworks team at eBay were great! You can tell they loved what they did. When I mentioned the info was great they emailed it to me so I can share it with people (this was a while ago) .

The type of people that visit charity listings are the type of buyers you want. You have to trust me on that one! They are often people doing the charity listings themselves checking out others, and people more inclined to buy something if a portion goes to charity (makes them feel good).The Givingworks people fought hard to get a $5.00 minimum donation instead of the old $10.00 one so that makes things more affordable to do. Now, at the end of the year... they even send you a report of all the donations you made!When you read the report you will see that many times (but not always) finally prices are higher by MORE THAN THE AMOUNT YOU DONATED!!!!!. So you get a better price, the charity gets some money etc.Also, many charities monitor listings and send you thank you notes.

Overall, I think as part of the big plan running a charity listing or two per week if you have the right items will bring in more traffic and aid sales.I hope some of you find this info helpful. My thanks to the people at Givingworks that you never really hear from that behind the scenes set up eBay to raise millions of dollars for charities.Occasionally there will be a challenge to the eBay community and there remains and anonymous donor who sponsors a large charity. That donor sometimes comes forth and adds to your dollars you raise for the charity!I think its Warren Buffet, but it could be Gates... Maybe its you?? LOLMarty

Save on Ebay Purchases with Paypal Coupon!

Just a quickie update for now!

*** If you received a promotional email from Paypal dont ignore it, you could get some free money! You need to have received the email to use this coupon! *****

How these work is Paypal occasionally does stuff like that to encourage you to buy something and pay with Paypal! You must have a paypal account (or set one up then use the link I suppose if you dont have one), and then buy an item that meets the criteria which I think is $30 or more between Feb 8th and March 31st.

https://paypal.promotionexpert.com/greatshopping/signup/200702/misc_s.html?route=misc.s

They give you a $15 rebate! That is darn good hey?????

Now that you might have some FREE DOUGH I strongly suggest you check out my store, and perhaps me eBay ME page where I list some of my friends ebay stores!

You can get to some awesome eBay shopping here..


http://Onceuponabid.com



Marty

Using FilmLoop To Help sell items from your Ebay store!

A picture is worth a thousand words! I figured I should show you why you should check out filmloop.com . At filmloop you can create and eBay slideshow you can post all over the web! I have this slideshow running on our Myspace and now on the blog here! It only shows about 30 items or so but automatically updates over time! It is a great sales tool! Customers can click right from the picture to the item itself as listed on eBay! Let me know what you think! - Marty