Online Selling Tip of the Week

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Build up your followers on Twitter and start using eBay’s app to automatically tweet your listings for you:

Froo! Smart Social is the name of it.

It will automatically tweet your listings for you or post them to Facebook, or both.  You set up the rules for tweets.  I have mine set to tweet all new listings, one listing per hour.

Items That Sell Right Away

Lately, I’ve been trying to get my items out the door faster.  I want to decrease the time from the time I when I purchase an item until I ship it to the customer.

Here’s my strategies for accomplishing this task:

#1 Look for items that are HOT sellers and higher in demand.

I’ve been trying to think short term, what is the next season or holiday coming up and focus on those items.  Also, some brands seem to fly out the door for me, so I try to stick with those while branching out and trying some new brands or types of items too.

#2 Price items to sell.

In the past, I was a huge fan of over pricing and accepting offers, but right now since I’m in a rebuilding phase and my online sales are 90% of my income, I’m pricing items to sell.  That means I might make a little bit less on the items than I could if I waited longer, but right now I need to turn my items as quickly as possible.  For instance if I’d normally price a pair of jeans or shoes at $59.99, right now I’m pricing them at $49.99.  If I’d normally price a plush at $29.99, I’m pricing it at $24.99.  I’d rather mark it down a little bit right now than have it sit around.

#3 Improve keywords and descriptions.

This is something that I’ve been working on for the last 10 years and I don’t think it will ever go away.  It’s amazing how I can list something one day and then analyze my store a few weeks later and think to myself……..I can’t believe I didn’t put that in the title!

I try to be as descriptive in the title as possible to give people a really good visual of the item.  Even if it’s obvious in the picture, I still state it in the title so there are no questions as to what the item is like.

#4 Utilize social networking.

I can’t stress this one enough.  Social networking is a powerful tool in this age we live in.  There are so many ways to do this.  Currently, I have my new listings set to tweet automatically.  One every few hours.  I also pin items to Pinterest.  Not every item that I list, but about 50% of them.  Pinterest has been a HUGE help with my sales.  If you’d like information on how to use Pinterest to help your sales or how to get more Pinterest followers to broaden the audience of your pins, join our Facebook Group Increase Your Pinterest Followers.  There’s also information there on creating Facebook fan pages and increasing your fans on Facebook.

Seller Challenge: Promote Your Listings

No matter what site(s) you sell on, promoting your listings can pay off BIG time.

When you’re done working on a listing, It only takes a few seconds to promote what you just listed.

Here ares ome ideas for you:

1. Tweet your listings

If you don’t have a twitter account, consider setting one up. Work on building up your followers.  The more followers you have, the more people your tweets will go out to.  You can set up your eBay listings to automatically tweet for you.  If you’re selling on another site, you’ll need to manually tweet your listings, but that can be done fairly quickly either when you’re done listing, tweet as you list, or tweet a few times a week.

2. Link to your site in your email signature

Make sure you link to your site in your email signature.  You probably email people constantly about a variety of topics or business related issues.  If people are interested, they’ll click on your link and view your store.

3. Pin your listings

Pinning your listings is kind of like tweeting your listings, but in my opinion it’s faster. An added bonus is that  your followers on Pinterest get to see the pictures of your item, not just read your tweet.

It’s easy to set up a board on Pinterest for your items that you have for sale.  You can decide if you want to pin listings as you go, a few times a week or whatever works for your schedule.

There are several other ways you can promote your sites and listings.  Whenever I consistently work on promoting my items I see an increase in sales.

Don’t feel like you have to spend a entire day promoting or that you have to do every type of promoting possible.

** Start small.  Pick one and try it.**

If you don’t see results, work on a different way to promote, or continue promoting the first way and start promoting the second way simultaneously and see where it takes you.

I’d love to hear what ways that you’ve promoted your items that’s been successful for you.

Summer Sales Goals

Setting and accomplishing goals is one of my favorite things to do when it comes to running my business.  No matter where you are in the process, setting and reaching goals is an important part of growing any business.

Goals can be anything you choose.  You can set listing goals, shipping goals, sales goals, feedback goals, or all of the above.

Maybe your goal this summer is to get your storage area organized, or to shop less and list more.  Whatever your goal is, once it’s set you need to determine HOW to reach it. Then start working toward your goal.

I like to work on goals that I set in small steps.  For instance, if my goal is to increase my sales by $300 per month, first, I would analyze my current situation and decide:

*Do I need to list more items?

*Do I need to sell higher priced items?

* Do I need to run a sale on my current items?

*Do I need to promote my current items on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

*Do I need to branch out and start selling on other sites?

*Do I need to learn about new or different products to sell?

*Do I need to brainstorm with other sellers?

Once I’ve identified which area I need to work on to increase my sales, it’s time to get busy and decide my first step.  I don’t usually have a large block of time that I can work on things all at once, so I try to work on my goals a little bit each day.

I might set a goal to tweet or pin 5 items out of my store each day.  That only takes a few minutes, right?

Another goal might be to list at least 3 items per day, even on days when I didn’t plan to list. If  I have the pictures ready, it shouldn’t take too long to list 3 items per day.

Something that I did a few years ago was identify the time of year when my sales are low (at that time, it was typically February thru May) and decide what I should list in my store to carry me through that time of year.  For me, it was listing things like rain boots, swimming suits, shoes, capri pants, sandals, etc.

Regardless of what your goals are, make sure that you make the something that’s a reasonable goal for you so that you can see progress in the right direction. Don’t set  a goal that will leave you  frustrated about your work.

If you’re selling $300 a month online right now, setting a goal to get to $3,000 a month, doesn’t sound to me like a reasonable goal for you, at least not as an immediate goal.  It might be your long term goal, but take small steps to get to it.  If you’re selling $300 a month right now, what can you do to get to $500 a month?  Eventually, you’ll reach your BIG goals, but you have to start small and take it one step at a time.

I’d love to hear your summer business goals.  You can either drop us a line via email or leave a comment.

Simple Steps To Increase Your Sales on Bonanza

In my conversation with Brienna, I found out that tweeting your Bonanza inventory is essential because sites like eBay send your listings to Google for you, so while you can promote your eBay listings yourself, promoting your items from sites that don’t do as much promotion for you is where you should spend more of your effort. Also, the fees are lower on Bonanza, so you might as well encourage buyers to buy from you there