Online Selling Tip of the Week

Designate where to spend the money from your online sales

Use the money from online sales to pay your phone bill, credit card bill, kids school tuition, gymnastics class, vacation,  down payment on a house, or fun money.

That way, when you’re not motivated to list, take pictures, or ship, you can look at your paypal account and see progress toward your financial goals. Sometimes, that’s all the motivation you need to get out the camera and start taking pictures

Online Selling Tip of the Week

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t meet your sales or listing goal for the week.

Real life is what happens when we have other plans.

Try again next week.

Analyze what you could have done differently to be able to make higher sales or list more items, make a game plan and then implement it.  You know what works best for you, your family, and your schedule.

5 Ways to Increase Your Online Sales in September

#1 Give your store front a makeover
Take a look at your store front and try to see it from your customer’s eyes.

*Do the colors and the graphic look inviting?

*Is the wording in your heading positive and upbeat?

*Are the categories easy to use?

*Is there a different template you like better than your current one?

Take a little bit of time and play around with your store front and see if you come up with a new look that you like better than the current one you have.

#2 Keep looking for and listing Christmas items

Christmas is just right around the corner.  If I had the option right now of listing some shoes or books and the option of listing toys and Christmas specific items, I would choose to get the toys and Christmas specific items listed right away.

People are already shopping for Christmas items, and you don’t want to miss out on sales because your items aren’t listed yet.  Even over the summer, I sold several items that are specific to Christmas.

#3 Clean out your shoes

Now that you have your Christmas items listed you can clean out your closets and sort out the shoes you don’t plan on wearing this winter.

Anything that’s still in good condition is a candidate for your eBay inventory.  If you’ve never listed shoes before, or if listing shoes doesn’t sound like fun to you…….just give it a try.  If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep listing shoes, but I’m pretty sure that you’re going to enjoy it as much as I do.

Shoes are super easy to list, a good profit maker and  super easy to ship.

#4 Get your new inventory listed within the week it’s purchased

Even if you feel like you’re “behind” on listing your inventory, try to start listing all of your new inventory within the week it’s purchased.

You’ll be amazed at the items you list right away that either sell the same week or the week after.  What I try to do is list all of my new inventory the same week it’s purchased (and usually within 48 hours of purchasing)  each time I list my new inventory, I also try to pull 4-5 items out of my “to be listed” bin. I list those with my new inventory so that I can catch up on listing without it feeling like it’s a big chore.

#5 Use Mark Down Manager

I know I’ve mentioned Mark Down Manager before, but I’ll mention it again.  Even a sale of 10-15% off helps generate some good sales.  If you have items that have been in your inventory for awhile and you’d like to see them moving, try a 30% or 40% off sale.

Keep Believing in Yourself

More and more as we linger in this uncertain economy, I hear sellers talking about low sales or no sales.

I know there have been a few times  when I’ve been a little uncertain about if my items will ever sell, or if I’m going to sell enough inventory each month.

I’m finding more and more that worrying about it isn’t going to change a thing. So, I’ve stopped worrying about it.

Every month for the last 6 years, my sales have been higher than they were that same month during the previous year, so what do I have to worry about?

I prefer to look at a situation and work on solutions, rather than get upset about it or worry about it.

There are plenty of sellers on eBay and other online venues that make hundreds of sales a month, so you can too.

Solutions that I’ve come up with are:

*Running a sale using markdown manager

*Offering free shipping on items that are lighter weight

*Offering international shipping

*Looking for different types of items to list

*Learning about new items that are good sellers

*Importing my items to other venues (Addoway and Bonanza have been pretty successful for me.)

*Improving Store Categories

*Using social networking tools to increase exposure to my items

If you tell yourself that your sales are slow and there’s nothing you can do about it, then you’ll continue to have slow sales because you’re not trying to do anything to change it.  Keep setting goals and working toward them.  You may not always reach your goals, but as long as you’re seeing your sales increase, you’re headed in the right direction.

Believe in yourself.  You can make it happen as long as you’re determined.  Yes, it takes a little bit more effort in this type of economy, but it CAN be done……….YOU can do it.

5 Ways to Increase Your Online Sales in June

#1 Promote your items with social networking

The more, the merrier is what I always say . In this case, it’s the more exposure your items or your store have, the merrier!  Use social networking to increase traffic to your store.  Twitter, Facebook fan pages, post the link to your store on your Facebook account, post links to items listed in your store to your facebook newsfeed, blog about your items, put the link to your store in your email signature……anything to get more people attracted to your items.

#2 Maximize your description

One thing I notice right away when I look at descriptions is that a lot of sellers put very basic information in their descriptions. Many times I see descriptions that read “great condition, thanks for looking.”

Sorry, but that’s not a description.  Descriptions are FREE, it’s not like you pay per word or per letter, so use your descriptions liberally.  State details about the item, even if you feel like it’s obvious, state it anyway.  State measurements, color, describe the design, help the person fall in love with your item and make them feel like they just have to buy it!

#3 Increase your feedback score

The system of selling on eBay is kind of like a cycle. One part of the cycle affects the next part.  For some reason, the more sales you get, the more feedback you get. The more feedback you get, the more sales you make.  The higher your feedback score is, the higher prices your items will sell for, and the more customers will be willing to buy from you.

#4 State the shipping cost in your listing

I am just going to come out and say it: I am not a fan of calculated shipping. Most of the time when I look at a listing that has calculated shipping, it’s SKY HIGH.  To ship a women’s knit top, it will come up with something crazy like $10.85, when I know it can ship for less than $2.99 to anywhere in the USA.

I determine my shipping cost and sometimes I lose money on it, but most of the time I don’t.  The other great thing about flat rate shipping is that I can state the cost that item’s shipping right in the description.  I know the eBay populates the shipping price in the listing under the selling price, but for some reason since I added this line to my lisings:

Shipping is only 2.99!

My sales have gone way up.  It’s right in front of their face and encourages them to make the purchase.

#5 Upgrade to a premium store

I cannot say enough about what a huge time saver my premium store is.  Yes, it does cost more per month than the basic store, but the price per listing is much less (.05 per listing VS .20 per listing.)

The benefits of a premium store are fantastic and I’m learning more about them every day.  One of the things I like the most is the ability to automate feedback.  Once positive feedback is left for a transaction, I have it set to automatically leave one of five positive feedback phrases that I typed in for it to choose from. I love it that I haven’t had to leave feedback in months. I don’t even think about it any more

The more time I can save in doing little tasks like leaving feedback, the more time I have to list new items and stay on top of my shipping.  Time is money, and I’d rather use my time doing things that make me money!

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