Increasing Your sales for your eBay Store UPDATE

Hey! This is one of the first times I have been excited in a while. We are having an excellent sales month and in sharing a lot of details with other sellers I have learned even more things to pass along. So if you are strolling in for the first time or just checking please keep checking back over the next few days at least so I can feed you some useful info.

If you have been reading you will know by now I have been using a traffic program that I started trying out in December. This month so far I have had 106 store sales and 29 CORE sales on eBay off a base of less than 600 items. That is probably the best eBay store item sales number I have had and our fees are running very low this month (ebay fee bill). Now I am doing a bunch of things, so Ill go over them all here...

1- I am opting in / out of Ebay Express every 7 days
2- I am bringing in 25k in hits a month using a traffic program. Allocated cost to this month $61.00
3- I have been using search engine submission sites and manually submitting this blog, my ebay store, my ebay store domain and my myspace to all of them I can find.
4- I cut back core auctions to 10 or less items a week and have had a decent sell through on those as well

That is the basic plan I am following. During the course of my research, I had the idea to try out some foreign traffic programs for the next month . I have not done so yet and will not mention any providers until I can get some info as I have not decided on which one to use yet and they are different than the first one I am using for US traffic. I asked a few questions and found out we , as eBay store owners have stores on other eBay sites if we sell to those countries! I never knew this! Let me give you links to our UK store and our Australia store...


http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Once-Upon-A-Bid


http://stores.ebay.com.au/Once-Upon-A-Bid

This is something that I did not know, and which could be of value. I stumbled across this after asking some questions and figured we could list items on these other sites and point people to our stores in their country! As you know eBay policy makes it so you have to be clear on the location of your item as being in the US (if you are a US seller) and you should note any special concerns for those countries in terms of what you can ship there. Generally the UK and Australia are pretty easy , its other countries which are more difficult in this regard.

So I am actually going to look to not only promote my US url but the foreign ones as well and build up some knowledge of my store on these sites.

I started using the traffic program mentioned a few posts below on December 18th. I ran one program from Dec 12-Jan 12 and then another started Jan 18 and will run til Feb 18th. Some other people have started trying it out as well and I will report how things worked out for them . So far out of 3 other people I am familiar with 2 others (besides me) were fairly happy with it so far. One person directed the traffic to an off eBay website and had a poor result. As a result of her analysis of this I would not recommend the program for this purpose. My reasoning on this is that it is redirected traffic. This means people come to you after they looked for something else similar to what you sell. The eBay name gives these strangers to you a slight amount of thought that they are somewhere familiar or that they can rely on. So while 95% of your traffic will just click away I believe it helps turn a little more of whats left into buyers.
Another issue is that the seller who had a poor result sellers primarily a single product line. As such I would not recommend this for a single product. Remember the odds. 25,000 visitors maybe only 1000 will take a peek maybe only 30-50 will become buyers maybe less. If you sell a variety of items I feel you are more likely to do well with it. Also if you have a small store and not much in it yet, I would hold off on much traffic and search engine stuff until you stock up some. A larger store provides some if its own traffic as it gets indexed. You need this traffic to work with other sources to make things work. I am only offering these cautions as the best info I can offer , it could be be that your experience would be different.

I will be giving a full report when the month ends which is later tonight, so probably by some time tomorrow.

I will be reporting more on promoting the foreign URLs for our stores and I am going to start recommending some other resources that I have used like books I have read etc, in case people like those things. Right now I have a few in my store, the cheapest and most ebay related is the Grilled Cheese Madonna book whic talks about all the crazy eBay auctions and might give you some marketing ideas. I have a few other market specific books listed on the Tween market and Creating Ever- Cool how companies create brands that live on. Those are more general.

The comment section is open for others recomendations as well.

Another project I will be working on is creating a Squidoo lens for all our content and some new ideas . A good friend of mine (Sallie) who is featured way way down the blog (She sells some nice jewelry) has been working with Squidoo and doing and excellent job. Its time for me to get moving on it!

More sooon...

Marty

Use FREE Search Engine Submissions to Help Sell your EBAY items!

It does seem like lately, it has been all business and no fun pictures huh? LOL In any case another good marketing strategy today. This one costs ZERO! Many years ago before Google was huge and everyone thought about how they showed up in Google in the rankings, people worked hard on submitting their sites to as many search engines as possible. I have found this strategy still works today. There are more search engines than ever and even though the top ones still throw around the bulk of the traffic there are many small niche search engines that people stumble upon and can find your business in! Basically this will take you some time. So stop wasting time and have some tea, a cold drink or whatever you need and get to work! You need to go to Google, then to Yahoo and type in "free search engine submission" . You will be happy when you get a ton of results hey? Well , its not that easy. Many of these are just covers for charging you money so you have to dig through a little bit. Over the course of a few nights I found I could get coverage in 100 or more search engines then paid 5 bucks to pick up another 300 or so then I kept submitting anywhere that would take me. I noticed my small hits from odd domains increasing in my traffic reports.

While everyone looks for the "home run". Its often a matter of building a "web" of your business all around the web. For example. Right now you are reading my blog, I submitted that as well to search engines. I also submitted my myspace page. Submit anything you have that talks about you, especially if its rich in content. Remember the more you can talk the better!

To get you started here is a site which on the right side of the page you can start by submitting to 40 search engines free! http://www.submitexpress.com/ !! Keep in mind that you will receive some emails from this process. So if you do not want to clutter your box create a hotmail email or another email addy just to click on the confirmation notes etc. With 40 search engines its really not too bad but if you blast out there then it will get to be a bunch of mail!

Good luck and I promise some fun stuff is coming up! -

Just as a reminder. here are my sites

http://Onceuponabid.com <----Ebay store

http://Myspace.com/Onceuponabid <----Our Myspace with music and a slideshow that you can creat for your business as well!

http://www.worldofebay.blogspot.com <--- This blog that you are reading now. Save them all these are great places for great info

Also keep in mind the Accounting Software to get you ready for the Tax man by Roger in the banner below and also the hit program I am sampling out also shown a few posts below.

Coming up on the blog will be some information on something new I found ! International traffic! Time to grab some Europeans! Ill be back with more info! :)

Marty

Using Myspace as an eBay Tool

Just a short post here to direct you to take a look at our Myspace for our eBay business. We have developed a basic site and used a filmloop to show a slideshow of our items and hook up with other eBayers. I highly recommend giving this a try as you can connect with other ebayers there and get some hits and sales. We are just in the initial stages of this project but wanted to show you the possibilities. Also , on Myspace you have "friends" if you click on some of mine you will see some more advanced possibilities as many people have done a great job with their sites. Here is a link to our myspace .... http://myspace.com/onceuponabid
Let us know what you think! -Marty

Accounting, Record-keeping , Tax help for your eBay business!

Many eBayers have asked how the heck do we keep track of things we are selling on ebay? How do you know what you are making on your items and how to accumulate information for filing your taxes and figuring out if you are making money?

Well a good friend Roger has developed this program that you can get to from clicking the banner below. His solution which is always being updated takes you from soup to nuts through the process of accounting for your business. If you have been looking around for something that looks good, has the right feel and isnt overly expensive and does not charge a monthly fee this software might be right for you. He currently has two main programs one for accounting for your auctions business and one if you work selling items on consignment from others on eBay. We work with both programs and Roger will be stopping in her to the blog to talk more about them. You can take a peek at tons of screenshots to see how these work below! One great thing about these is if you do not have Microsoft Excel he has an open office version . OPen office is a free spreadsheet out there and Roger has a link to it on his site! So take a look at these programs , even if to just get a feel for what you might need to gather to get you info in order! They are also very inexpensive ! He is working on even more auctions solutions and will be posting here about them. Make sure to comment to let me know what you think! ... More soon!

Update on Driving Traffic to our eBay Store

As I mentioned in some prior posts we are using a traffic program to build some off ebay traffic flow to our ebay store. Our first program ran from December 12th until Jan 12th and delivered 25,000 targeted hits choosing the main category of "Gifts" to our store.

We felt sales benefited from the program, we saw the traffic saw some click through and visits, but its hard to tell in the holiday season and while running a lot of core auctions how everything interplayed. We decided to try another program in January and overall since Jan 1 we changed our style to run LESS Core auctions , a lot less since they cost a lot of money to gain exposure. For those who do not know what core means. This is running fixed price or auction style listings at fees ranging from 70 cents on up to a few dollars or so for a weeks exposure on eBay. Store listings cost 6-10 cents a month by comparison.

In any case by running less core auction in January ( and average of less than 10 per week) we had HUGE store sales with just the traffic program running to Jan 12th, then a pause before starting the new program which took a few days then more sales since. We lucked out this month as the traffic selection we made was on a 50% off special. You can check here as this sale is going on til the end of the month I believe..



Now some people have written and heard that these programs are "rip offs" . It seems to me that a good chunk of these targeted hits are click in click outs. These are people searching for gifts and getting redirected because someones domain expired. However, we are getting a small percentage of people poking around in our store and buying. Sometimes the orders are better. Most of the time something catches their eye in these cases. Our store carries something for everyone so if it was just say a hunting fishing store, there might be less success unless of course you had targeted hits for that area.

Another thing I wonder about is when you bring hits in, does that change how search engines look at you? It seems as though other things improve as well.

Overall I think in the price range of the current sale of 25k in hits for 49 bucks its worth a try. I will be reporting more on the second program as we go along here as well.

Coming up in future posts I have some great info for you!

1- Tons of places to submit your site free across the net

2- How to use Myspace to generate some eBay traffic

3- Some great software to keep track of eBay sales and even Consignement eBay sales when selling for others!

So stay tuned for more!

Marty

Bringing in Traffic & Sales to your your eBay store

Some people have contacted me with concerns or requests for more info on how the traffic program is going. I wanted to update everyone. If you read the post right below this one you will get a basic overview. The answer so far is.. I am still testing this out! On December 12th I began a 30 day period of 25k in purchased hits. I am getting traffic, visitors (longer stays) and sales. eBay doesnt have the easiest system for drilling down for information on this but if you are really familiar with their advanced traffic reports for featured stores and familiar with your buying patterns and graphs you can narrow this down. The last time I checked I was only 13k through a 25k program of targeted hits. The total cost of my initial hit generating program here is 99 dollars. So Im about halfway through. Some people have had concerns about these type of companies with this traffic. So far my statistics and those provided by the hit company have seemed to match though there is a delay at times in my traffic reporting (it seems) through eBay. I am going to try to post a picture here to show you what happened to my traffic since December 12th when I started this. Also the graph you will see is what is called "VISITORS" these are longer stays, longer than just a click in and out apparently. My research has shown that there are a few good companies with this type of traffic but that there are many other "scams" . My personal opinion is that when eBay ended their keywords program the replacement program was something I couldnt even understand let alone try and has not worked for us. We are branching out to try a few new things and it might take a month or two of testing (so keep checking back) to really give an official opinion on this. I have a few different things I can try. First, I can try to run a lot less auctions and just bring this type of traffic in for January and run a few TA (Trading assistant) auctions where the customers pay the fees, and a few collectible auctions. The other thing I can try is the 7 day burst they offer where I bunch this all up in 7 instead of 30 days to see if I see a surge in sales. If you are curious and cautious dont try this until you get some more info from my trials :)

Increasing your Sales on eBay with Off Ebay Traffic

Hey everyone! I have some interesting information for you. Recently eBay has had it share of issues. The growth of sites like Youtube,Myspace and others has led to a decline in traffic on some sites such as eBay. As a result we are always working on ways to build traffic. When I was researching eBays traffic decline on Alexa.com I came across a company that redirects traffic from dead domain names to your site. I thought the concept was interesting. From what I gather someone can search for something like TomsGiftshop dot com and if Toms is closed they get taken over to you if you are a gift seller etc. So far I am 20-25% into my hit campaign and seeing very good results. It is not expensive to try and seems to work when adding off ebay hits to the existing eBay traffic. I will be posting additional info and graphs as I study this. Here is a banner below so you can check it out.

Huge Star Wars PEZ - The Value of Multiple Keywords in Selling

Hey everyone! It has been so long since I have posted to the blog here, my apologies! I have been busy selling and handling matters for my aunt's estate. Today I am going to review an important concept . That is the value of having items which contain multiple keywords of value when buyers are searching. For example.... You will see pictured here a set of Star Wars PEZ containers. This is a HUGE 12 inch high one! These items have "Star Wars" and "Pez" as two very valuable keywords. "Star Wars" has recently been listed as THE top keyword in collectibles! "Pez" is very high up there as well. These items thus can appeal to both star wars and pez collectors! We have other large PEZ items as well like Kermit Sesame Street Muppets PEZ and Big Bird Sesame Street PEZ , see how this works? All these by the way are MUSICAL PEZ containers and when you open them they play music! They dole out huge packs of PEZ not just individual candies! You can find these items in our store at http://Onceuponabid.com . We sometimes like to look for items with a "functional use" as well as popular keywords. For example, we sold out of another PEZ item recently. It was a "glow in the dark" "PEZ" " Freezer MUG" . It had a good use, was collectible for PEZ people, and then others like glow in the dark items. So look for multiple reasons people would want an item and that should help your ability to sell them! So far Miss Piggy PEZ has sold out.. lets us see who is next! Until later.....

What are Vintage Video games and why do they sell well?

It is hard to believe but enough years have past where we now have what are called Vintage Video games or even vintage computer software! Both categories sell fairly well on eBay though you might want to put the older software titles in the ebay store until the right buyer comes along. Vintage video games are sometimes called first generation games and are basically games that came out with some of the first gaming systems. Generally you would want items from 1990 or earlier to get any interest but there are some exceptions. Recently I picked up a bunch of vintage nintendo games from the late 80s for only $2.50 in total! I have shown you an example in the picture with this post. There are lots of great books out there on vintage video games, video game history and even some price guides. It is a great area to go into! Vintage computer software also sells well. Apparently some people still have the old pcs and like to buy items from time to time or they collect these now collectible software titles! You can see our listings at our eBay store at http://Onceuponabid.com

Halloween - the underrated holiday -Items to sell on ebay

Here you will see a few items we listed for Halloween sales on eBay. We have a animated Witch doll that is very cute, some stencils used to carve critters out of Pumpkins (like owls, cats, rabbits etc) and of course a spooky house. Halloween is one of those holidays that is growing rapidly in terms of retail sales and should not be ignored as a seller. You can find these items and many more in our eBay store at http://Onceuponabid.com

One Small Treasure Headed for A Castle -eBay

Well finally a nice story to share with you! This little lady you see pictured here was a framed print I picked up at one of those 1.00 a box auctions along with a lot of other stuff. I just thought it was the most awesome little find. She has character! She was painted by Velásquez and this piece was framed in Spain. What a nice little find for an old box of odd stuff! Well at first noone wanted her, and she didnt sell but on a second listing a bidding war broke out and she is now on her way to a house built like a castle and the buyer is so excited to see her. I had to share this with you! Keep your eyes out for anything with character, that stands out as different to you..

Selling From eBay Stores- Recent Fee Increases and News

Well the news is abuzz of some recent changes eBay has made to their fee structure. While fee increases are never popular this one seemed to arrive at a time when many ebay sellers were already struggling. eBay raised its monthly listing fees fairly dramatically and this caused many store sellers to close their stores or downsize them. While I was not sure what to make of the changes and how sales would be , I do see some positives amidst the haze here and I wanted to point them out to those still interested in selling successfully on the site. It clearly seems that those who stuck it out might be at an advantage as store inventory across the seller base has declined dramatically. Also eBay seems to be pushing what they call "Core" listings (listing in auction and fixed price format). We have been having very good results listing in fixed price format (where there is no bidding a buyer just pays a fixed price for an item) and our store sales have been fairly good lately and improving. My advice to those concerned about the changes would be to stick it out through the busy holiday selling season and look at mixing up your strategy some for better sales. I have a feeling with falling gas and fuel prices , interest rates leveling and starting to fall that the consumer will be spending in sort of snap back fashion and this holiday season might surprise people. Some retail stores are already boosting estimates! Hang tight, some good tips to come.... http://www.onceuponabid.com

Selling Items on eBay Noone Else Has - Christmas Decor

This morning's post is a reminder of one of the major themes an eBay seller wants to keep in mind. Whenever possible it is always good to have an odd item that noone else seems to be selling at the current time. I will show you one such item here. This is a Climbing Elves Kit from Better Homes & Gardens in the late 80s. Noone else has one for sale now. It appeals to a few different selling themes. First, Christmas themed decor, second kits where people create something are always popular, and of course one of kind on eBay type things. Despite the millions of items up on eBay at any given time there are many times when we have the only one of an item up for sale. It greatly increases the chances of selling that item since you do not have people competing with you AND because some people ask for too little for clearly collectible items!

Halloween Decor - Gurley Candles SPOOKY

Just a short post today on something I found while out at a tag sale this weekend. These are some spooky vintage candles that people love to collect. They are made by Gurley Candles and come in various freakish characters! I have them listed now on auction on eBay so let us see how they do. They usually sell fairly well! Halloween is second in spending to Christmas and becoming more and more popular every year. We have even more cool Halloween themed items going up in our store and they are probably a good bet for you to have in your store also! People buy things a few months ahead of time on eBay so start selling your spooky stash now! As always you can find our eBay store at http://www.OnceUponaBid.com .

(Google photo add is down now I will add a picture as soon as it comes back up!)

Selling on eBay - Vintage Playing Cards

One great thing to sell on eBay are vintage playing cards. There are tons of collectors for nice older cards and they especially like sealed packs. This week I added some great older cards. These are some of the nicest I have sold on eBay. One set has a Wedgwood Medallion pictured on the cards and both decks are sealed. Another card set is made by Clemente Jacques in Mexico and these are collectible also! Take a look at the picture of the Wedgwood deck (from 1946).

Retro 1980's MOD Hip Jacket Best ever sold on eBay!

Well this is a cool item! I have not listed it yet, but it will be listed soon. It is a retro JouJou 1987 jacket with cool designs and wording on it. I picked it up a Church thrift shop where for some reason I was able to get some amazing items really cheap this week. I will be listing this item soon on eBay. You can always find our store located at http://www.OnceUponaBid.com . This jacket fits the theme of unusual items you do not normally find anywhere! I have not found one jacket even remotely looking like this one!

If you are interested in this jacket send me an email at clhct1@aol.com for a special bidding coupon just for reading my blog! :)

Selling the Unusual -Stanhope , Space Station Kit , Religious items

Hey Blog readers! Today's post is about selling the unusual items on eBay. Often times people think in terms of competion on eBay. I feel whenever possible its a good idea to have little to no competition by finding oddball items and marketing them in creative ways. Recently I decided to persue this strategy a little more and listed 3 new items , 2 had bids within hours! I listed a vintage Space Station Kite, a carved bone rosary bead with a stanhope cross with a picture of the baby Jesus in it, and a carved wood (driftwood I think) sculpture of a Morada, a building used by a secret Catholic Society in New Mexico called the Penitente Morada. I will add some pics for you as soon as Google's pic manager starts working again LOL. I plan to offer more items in my new store category called Strange and Unusual! So stay tuned for that! Some people have asked me "what the heck is a Stanhope?" Well I did not know the term either until a friend told me about it. A stanhope is a term used to describe a small peep hole type window in an item that shows an image similar to a tiny piece of microfilm inside a viewing chamber. They really are amazing. You can do a quick search on the term stanhope on Google and get loads of info! You can see these items and many more at www.Onceuponabid.com (our eBay store). If you are interested in learning more about selling on eBay, my wife is an Educational Specialist for eBay and can be reached at Onceuponabid@hotmail.com . We offer tax consultations for eBay sellers in our eBay store (link shown above). If you really want to learn to sell on eBay and do it successfully we are definately the right people to talk to ! We are powersellers, trading assistants (sell items for others for commission), have an eBay store and a wide range of contacts across eBay seller groups .

Selling Vintage Belt Buckles

Sometimes the simple things work well. One area we have had continuous luck in since we started selling is with Vintage Belt Buckles. There are many collectors out there. It is a good idea to use supersize pictures and to show both the front and back of the buckle in your listings. We were told this by a few collectors back when we first started selling them. Here you will see a few buckles from the 1970s that are really cool to look at. Hopefully the buyers will like them also :) You can find them in our ebay store at http://www.Onceuponabid.com

June Update - Ebay Live! & Giving Twice with Charity

Hey everyone! I am sorry it has been a while since I have posted to the blog here! I have lots to tell you though ;) First, we attended eBay annual LIVE! Convention in Las Vegas , Nevada last week. I bought along the whole family and it was an excellent time. In addition to some courses and meeting vendors selling various tools to help you with your eBay business, we had some private get togethers with friends that were just awesome! I highly recommend eBay LIVE! for ebayers , so make sure you get to the next one in Boston. It will be in mid June of 2007 ( I believe Jun14-16th ) at the new Boston Convention and Expo center! While at eBay live we learned more about Givingworks on eBay. This is where you can specify a portion fo the proceeds from your listings on ebay to go to charity. It also brings more traffic into your listings! Here are some links to learn more about the service and some pictures of things we will have c in our listings running now! http://givingworks.ebay.com/sell/ Our store can always be found at http://www.onceuponabid.com (which takes you right to our eBay store!)

Selling Retro Vintage 50s Always Hot!

I just listed these Fish lamps from the 1950s. Colors of pinks & blues are often found on this type of decor which remains fairly popular on eBay. These were made in Italy and in really nice condition. They were too cute now to pick up when I saw them!