Your Home- While there are many ways to come across mass quantities of products such as wholesales, you can start from the ground up, simply by searching your own home. Most homes are filled to the brim with items that are no longer used, from old clothes to appliances. The home is a prime place to search for your future product

Garage Sales- To expand on searching for products on a local level, many have taken to garage sales and other brick and mortar locations such as Flea Markets. Both of these provide a plethora of products at cheap prices that are sure to turn a profit online. You must be aware of quality while using this method. No one is going to purchase garbage online, so always scrutinize over the quality of the items you find in these places.

Storage Units- Another method that’s use has skyrocketed is Storage Unit sales. These are used by people that are in need of more space for their items, however if the renters fail to pay the monthly fee the items inside are up for grabs to the owner of the units. Many times the unit owners put these items up for sell. To get in on the action, simply call your local storage companies and ask to be notified of such sales.

eBay- Surprising as it may be, eBay is another promising way to acquire new products to sell. Most sellers on eBay are ill prepared to create a listing that will help sell their product. One should capitalize on this and invest the small amount in their failing sale. After which, you may find the product sales fairly easily and for a profit after you put your own spin on things.

Consignment Selling- Consigned selling occurs when you sell an item for someone else. This person could be a friend of yours or even a business looking to get their products to a wider audience. For this service, you collect a predetermined percentage of the sales price. This method can usually get started with a simple phone call offering to list their excess goods.

Local Auctions- live auctions are a great way to find products to sell on eBay. Most items have very little interest from those attending and the amount exposed to the item is not anything like the 100 million plus buyers on eBay. A great resource for finding local auctions is www.AuctionZip.com. This site allows you to enter your zip code and a distance radius, it will then return a calendar with all upcoming auctions. The one drawback to live auctions is that they require a lot of time. You will need to research what is being sold and most auctions last longer than 2 hours.

These are just some of the easier ways out there to find product to sell on eBay. Many others have formulated their own personalized methods for acquiring products. Whether you work your way up to buying product in bulk for your eBay store or stick to using the older items found in the home, how you find items to put on eBay depends largely on your own creativity.

One of the biggest causes of failure to continue the pursuit of an eBay business is a lack of testing. eBay is a wonderful place to sell because so MANY buyers are searching for products on eBay. But eBay draws so many buyers and sellers that conditions change just like the weather – and often faster. What’s hot one day barely seems to attract bids the next. Therefore, it’s important to commit to testing and monitoring your sales on an ongoing basis.

Track, track, track.

Keeping records for your eBay business isn’t just about filign tax records! Take notes – eBay is a great learning experience. Track what works in any given eBay auction – how did you write your eBay auction ad? How quickly did the item sell? What were the reasons for returned merchandise (if any)?

Always ask for more sales.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to achieving eBay Power Seller status is a lack of
follow-up with past satisfied customers. Here’s an example: A customer wins a
bid for a pair of sunglasses. A month passes by, and you find a nice women’s pocketbook by the same designer who manufactured the sunglasses you sold. You list the pocketbook and (because you track everything), you have a record of the transaction selling the sunglasses. You’d be doing your successful eBay business a huge disservice by not notifying the person who bought the sunglasses that you’re selling a nicely-matching pocketbook! A bird in the hand is always better than ten in the bush.

Put these three eBay selling tips into practice and you’ll enjoy an eBay business that sells more than you could have expected. You’ll also be well on your way to eBay success!

Dzine-Hub

Dzine -hub means design. This website offers four primary services including eBay store design, eBay template design, eBay bulk upload, and ecommerce web design. The goal of the company is to boost your sales through custom design using flash, branding, and custom listing templates. They offer a unique bulk upload to quickly arrange and start sales of several items.

GeoGrafixx

Geografixx offers a wide variety of services to create a successful eBay store. Aside from templates and design for the online store, they also offer graphic design, logo design, and internet advertising. Geografixx also offers eBay templates through several channels and printing services. This is a great all around store to get started from.

Frooition

Frooition delivers a unique setup for eBay store designs. This site offers several unique features with their service. These include cross promotion of products in side panels while the main search is displayed in the center, dynamic category organization and custom box management. This site also offers multi browser compatibility for a competitive edge.

Trusky

Trusky offers a unique and complete start up package for eBay store design. The start up package includes custom header and store front, flash banner, custom navigation and a unique categorization technique. They also offer hi-res logo design and a listing manager feature. Trusky is a good choice for startup stores.

Power Seller Templates

This site offers a great variety of services to help business get off to a good start. Along with store design, template design and logo design, they offer brochure design and website design. These unique services are aimed at marketing and drawing more people into the web store. A great boosting method for any business.

OC Designs Online

This website offers knowledge as well as design. They explain the reasons for having the features and why they are good. Along with website and store design, this website offers banners, brochures and stationary design for any company. This site offers good services for new businesses and tips for the experienced.

Pro Impulse

Proimpulse is a unique store on several levels. Each job is taken on with a tenacity for high quality service and customer satisfaction. They offer a wide variety of custom made templates and store design. This store is a unique, laid back company that offers great services.

Debs Custom Webs

Deb offers a lot of services ranging from eBay store design, website design and auction templates. She also offers a unique hosting service and domain registration service. The website can literally take care of all aspects of starting up an ecommerce website.

Launch Pad Auctions

Launchpad is a great website for bouncing ideas off of. Their unique consultation service works with the customer to develop and design. Aside from this service, they offer template design, store design, flash design and logo design. This website is a good start for anyone looking to start a business.

Diztinct

Diztinct is sleek design company that offers several services to their clients. Some of their services include web design and a unique channel advisor service. The site also offers search engine optimization, email templates and blog design and development. This site can take any business to a more social level.

Although there is a massive selection of listing services at your finger tips you must be wary at all times. For this reason I have compiled a list of 10 tools that are trustworthy. Each comes coupled with different offers that make their service differ from the rest:

Vendio: Vendio is a well known ecommerce website that actually operates across multiple marketplaces. It’s cost comes in at $10 a month, and you can also expect to pay between 1% – 1.95% of your sales. Many sellers see this as a more than fair price for the increase in productivity gained from being able to manage orders, customers, and shipping in one place.

Auctiva: Auctiva happens to be another prime choice because it essentially specializes in eBay listing. This tool enables you to list unlimited items, employ a scrolling gallery, and unlimited image hosting. Prices range from $2.95 a month to $19.95 a month. Fortunately this website gives the user a 30 day free trial with full use of its services.

PageMage: Page mage is another listing service that’s service is very visually oriented. This tool allows the seller to include slideshows, marquees, and even video in your listings. One can even post the listing directly to a facebook page, all without even knowing HTML. Pricing is another perk with all features being included for free users.

Listomax: This is a tool created by users for users. Their insight into the needs of the seller gives you everything you need to create an effective listing, from unlimited photo insertion, customer info inventory, and live listing revisions. Another benefit some may enjoy is the one time cost; a lack of monthly fees makes this a great choice.

TurboLister: Turbo lister is a tool distributed directly through eBay. It helps the seller create professional listings while allowing you to upload in bulk. The search feature also allows the user to cycle through their listings quickly and effectively. Best of all, this support is free.

Sell Your Item (SYI): SYI is another lister put out directly from eBay. This is aimed towards new sellers, by providing simple directions for easy listing. All the while, it still remains useful for everyone by creating a sense of control in listings through templates. The price remains free.

Supreme Auction: Supreme Auction is a very established tool and has a far reaching user base. This service allows one to store up to 80 pictures at a time on high performance servers, create “Supreme” Galleries, and even choose between over 500 professional template designs for your own listings. This package ranges from freeware with fewer benefits to a business package.

Kyozou: Kyozou is online software for merchants. Among its benefits are the managing of extensive inventory, added communication with buyers, gauging of productivity, and even the creation of reports for your online listing sales. Each of these services will save you time and grow your business. Kyozou pricing is specialized for each seller visit http://www.kyozou.com for details.

Auction Listing Creator (ALC): ALC is another service that is extremely graphics driven. The main draw to this listing tool would be the massive number of designer listing templates at the seller’s disposal. Bundled with it are free tech support, image hosting, and software upgrades. Knowledge of HTML is not necessary to implement any of these. This whole package comes to a minimum of $49.95 a year.

EsellerPro: Eseller is another tool that has been created to be simple and intuitive for the user. It comes with full inventory API integration to Ebay, Paypal, and even major parcel carriers to expedite the process further. This listing service is centered around a speedy delivery and forgoes flashy designs.

As you can see there is a wide variety of unique characteristics between each of these services. In some cases the differences may be so minute that the choice equates to pure preference. Other times the choice may be as clear as night and day based on your own personal necessities for your online business affairs.

International site visibility requirements

• You must have a verified PayPal account associated with your seller account.
• Your listing must offer PayPal as a payment option.
• You must have a Feedback score of 10 or more.
• If you’re listing on eBay.com or eBay.ca, your item’s location country can’t be the U.K. or Ireland.
• Your item must be posted in an eligible category. Ineligible categories include video games, DVDs and movies, hunting knives, auto parts, and vehicles.
• You must offer shipping to the U.K., Europe, or worldwide. Specifying shipping service to these areas is highly recommended, since listings without specified shipping may be moved to the bottom of Best Match search results.
• Your listing must meet all applicable country policies.

It’s important to remember though that every country has different rules when it comes to the selling and shipping of items across the globe. To truly allow your business to prosper, it’s vital that you acquire a basic understanding of the principals involved in this process.
The first thing you need to check is that the item you’re selling isn’t prohibited by eBay or other international countries. This will help you avoid any potential legal trouble, or having your account banned by eBay itself.

The next thing you should check is where you can, and you can’t ship. There are certain places that some items can’t be shipped to, and it could potentially cost you a lot of money in seized packages if you’re not careful.

When you’re setting the price for your product, eBay will automatically convert it to the local currency. The single most useful payment processor is PayPal, they will allow you to convert money from over a 100 different currencies, and simplify the payment process.

The next most important task you will have is selecting a proper carrier for your packages. It’s important to tailor each of your items to the carrier itself, and you will often find that one carrier works a lot better for one item then it does another.

When selecting carrier make sure your looking at their shipping method, speed of delivery, and item restrictions. You should always try to find a good mix of speed, and reliability when selecting a carrier. Any item that is late or never delivered at all can cause a negative feedback on your seller rating.

When filling out custom forums, make sure that you take the cost of duties, and tariffs into account when setting the price for your items. You need to have a solid understanding of all the costs that are involved with shipping internationally to ensure you are still making a good profit off any transaction.

One of the most daunting tasks in international shipping is the potential for paperwork, and it can be overwhelming to someone not properly prepared for it. Any seller that has the potential for doing a lot of international selling should take the time to properly familiarize themselves with all the paperwork involved.

Finally it’s also advisable that you do your best to keep as detailed records as possible on all transactions, forums, and any other documents involved in the selling process. This will help protect you in the future against any potential lawsuits, or legal actions taken against you. Never depend on being able to recreate these records if you need to.

With these things in mind, the world of international eBay selling and shipping can be a very friendly and lucrative place. So what do you think? Post your comments and experiences with selling internationally on eBay below.

There are three stores a seller can choose from. To decide on which store is best for you; weigh your options by listing them.

Basic Stores

The first of the options is also the cheapest at $15.95 per month. The basic store plan allows you to list up to 250 items per day, access to the important Seller Manager to organize listings, and a maximum of 5,000 emails per month. However, the Basic store plan only allows limited hours of access to Ebay phone support, and Insertion fees are the highest of the three at 20 cents each.

Premium Stores

The premium store option is very similar to the aforementioned plan. For a fee of $49.95 a month you gain more freedom and flexibility with multiple management tools. Unlike with the basic store plan, premium store owners have access to phone support 24 hours a day, in addition to chat and email support. The premium store also allows the seller to manage up to 2,500 listings a day, as well as the use of Seller Manager Pro (a $15.99 deal). Another perk of using a premium store is the allotted 7,500 emails per month and the discounted insertion fee of 5 cents.

Anchor Stores

Anchor stores are the largest of the 3 store plans and the price shows it at $299.95 a month. While this is the most expensive store, it also comes with the most benefits. The insertion fee has been reduced to a miniscule 3 cents. The seller is also able to manage a whopping 5,000 listings per day and 10,000 emails monthly, a far cry from the basic stores options.

The Best Option for YOU

Now these stores each have many good selling points. Choosing one actually might be a tough decision. To make the task easier one should weigh their goals for selling on Ebay in the first place. If you are just looking to get rid of a few of your old items that you’ve grown too old for then obviously you don’t need a store at all. For a Basic store plan, you probably have a small but dedicated flow of inventory ranging from 30-80 items a month. With a premium store you might be an individual who is looking to make a sizeable part time income from Ebay, the discount in the insertion fees would definitely matter in this case. The Anchor store assumes you are already an established seller that wants to increase an already huge following with massive amounts of new inventory to fill the needs of your online business. In the end it is up to you, the seller, to look at the values and choose the store plan that is right for your goals and inventory needs.

A Few Calculations to Get You Started

Here Are a Few Links That Might Help

eBay Desktop

eBay desktop was developed by eBay and as you would expect they made it compatible with both Windows and Mac. eBay desktop brings all of the features of eBay to your desktop which allows you to perform many tasks without an internet connection. The new and refreshing user interface is a major upside to this software and is sure to enhance the eBay buying experience. eBay desktop is free to use and download.

Garage Sale

Garage sale is possibly the most popular choice for creating and managing auctions on a Mac. It requires Mac OS X and allows you to edit, track and manage all of your auctions within one simple to use application. Similar to other eBay software Garage Sale values itself on the ability to create good looking auctions without having to navigate through eBay’s tedious process. To add to the conveinance Garage Sale integrates with iPhoto another popular tool for the Mac, and it allows you to host images off of eBay which will save you fees. Garage Sale has two pricing options, A family option for $59.99 or a Single User liscense for $34.99. Check out some of the features Garage Sale offers.

Garage Buy

Well if there is a Garage Sale, there must be a Garage Buy. This nifty peiece of eBay software is designed to allow buyers to more efficiently navigate the eBay site. If you like the usability of a Mac you will enjoy Garage Buy. You will be able to save eBay searches, track auctions and even bid on auctions right from a single interface. Garage Buy is currently free to download and is compatable with Mac OSX 10.5 and beyond.

iSale

iSale is another eBay software application that is aimed at sellers. It boasts a large user community, templates and a unique user interface that makes creating aucitons a breeze. If you are looking for Apple eBay software iSale is deffinitly worth looking into. Its free to try and can be purchased for as little as $39.95.

Auction Hunter

Auction Hunter is an application for OS X, built to make your life easier on eBay. It allows you to monitor auctions that you are interested in bidding on, or that you would like to simply observe and store for future reference. Auction Hunter can be purchased for $29.95.

eBay Addict

eBay Addict is a Mac OS X Dashboard widget that tracks all of your favorite eBay auctions for you. Simply enter the item IDs of the auctions you are interested in tracking.
eBay Addict displays the item title, the current price, and the time remaining in the auction. Item status is updated every minute or when manually refreshed.
eBay Addict supports an unlimited number of items, multiple currencies and is Freeware.

jBid Watcher

jBid watcher is a Mac compitable eBay software that allows you to monitor auctions, submit bids and snipe auctions. It supports many different currencies, drag and drop urls, a unique multisniping feature and a user friendly user interface. jBid Watcher is constantly being updated by the active community of developers and is free to use.

eBay Watcher

eBay Watcher is still a bit of a work in progress but with a little bit of work you can get it setup on your iPhone or iPod Touch. eBay watcher has a free demo that works with even numbered auctions, and two liscenses can be purchased for $10.

When looking at both of these services it is very hard to find features where they differ so I will start by listing off what they both do best. Both Auctiva and Inkfrog are great when it comes to creating an auction. Do you remember creating auctions with eBay’s list your item form? This was a long, tedious multi-page process that put most of your time into creating auctions. Arguably the best feature of these services is that they simplify this process into one single page. Allowing you to add your title, price, category, description, images etc on one compact page. Both Auctiva and Inkfrog allow you to use your own custom eBay template within the listing creator, or you can use one of the many that are supplied for free. Image hosting is also included with each service, and uploading images is a breeze. Each service will allow you to edit live listings, which by itself is worth the price of admission. Both Auctiva and Inkfrog offer the ability to add a cross promotion gallery to your auctions, this is a must have for sellers who want to show all of their auctions from within each listing. Both of these services will allow you to track your inventory, halting automatic listings from launching when inventory gets low. Lastly both Auctiva and Inkfrog will allow you to send automatic emails such as winning bidder, payment reminder and custom emails. This is a huge step towards automating your online business.

Now for some of the ways Auctiva does business that Inkfrog doesn’t. Currently Auctiva is the service to go for if you are looking for reports on your sales. This is something Inkfrog has had in the works for a while and should be released in the near future. Auctiva uses a nifty time saving feature called profiles. This allows you to create multiple combination’s of payment, shipping, about us, contact information, marketing tools(gallery), checkout options and add those to your auctions via the listing creator. You can even add your profiles to a master profile along with other information such as a template, price and category to make your auction creation that much faster. The power of Auctiva’s system definitely lies in this ability to create profiles, and master profiles which can make creating auctions a process of adding images, a description and a price and clicking save.

Inkfrog is no slouch in its auction creation process. It does not have as elegant of a profile system, but it does use profiles along with templates. While using the Inkfrog listing creator you can choose to simply save the auction to your library or save as a profile. If you choose the latter option, you will now have a profile with all of the same details ready to go for your next auction. This can be a huge time saver by letting you add your template, payment information, shipping details, post auctions rules and other reusable information to your profile for later use.

Inkfrog is known for its Globals feature. This allows you to create a global such as price, template, ebay id and a bunch more and quickly add that global to a saved or active listing. This can be a huge time saver when editing live or saved listings and provides a great way to experiment with different strategies.

Inkfrog also allows the use of multiple eBay accounts with one account. This means you can have one Inkfrog account and manage multiple eBay ids in one place. For a larger seller who sells on more than one account this was the deal maker for me, and the reason I go for Inkfrog over Auctiva.

As you can see Inkfrog and Auctiva are very similar. In my opinion they are so similar in features that it is like comparing Pepsi and Coke. They do however have a different look and feel and that may be the reason you choose one over the other. Or maybe your like me and you want to manage many accounts from one locale, in which case Inkfrog takes the bacon. In any case I recommend signing up for a free trial with both service and give them each a try. I was once strictly an Auctiva guy, then they decided to charge a percentage of my profit for their service. I quickly made the switch to Inkfrog and have been with them ever since. Auctiva has since changed their pricing to $9.95/month or $19.95/month if you want to use their web store. This is the same $9.95/month price that Inkfrog charges.

Here are the steps to getting started with Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Download the software
2. Install the software
3. Create a new account

That is really how easy it is. Creating an account can be a bit of a task so I will explain that in a bit more detail. You will want to select File->New->Account from the menu. You will then be asked what kind of account you want to setup. For email you are either going to select “Email Account” or “Gmail”. The easiest of these two is to setup a Gmail account. This only requires that you fill in your Gmail email address and the name for the account. If you choose Email account you will be prompted to fill out they type of incoming server and the incoming server name along with options such as the account name. This can be a bit more of a task so I will provide links to pages that describe this process in more detail for some of the more popular email providers. I have also added two images for your reference below.

Links to tutorials on setting up Yahoo and Hotmail in Thunderbird:
Yahoo-Setting up a Yahoo account in Thunderbird is a bit of a hassle it requires that you configure a separate piece of software called yPops
Hotmail- Hotmail does not require sperate software, you just have to follow a heck of a lot of steps

If you have either of these services and can’t get things setup I recommend that you switch to a Gmail account. Gmail and Mozilla have teamed up to make the process of adding a Gmail account to your Thunderbird software a breeze.

So what are the four expenses that we all must be aware of? They are eBay fees, PayPal fees, Shipping expense, and the cost of the product being sold. If the total of these four expenses is less than the total you earned from your auction, you have made a profit. It does not take an accountant to understand this, nor is this anything that should come as a surprise. However it is this fundamental concept that should be in your mind at all times while managing your online business.

So as an example lets say that you sold an item weighing 6 ounces for $13 with $5 shipping that you purchased for $5.60. You listed the item at a fixed price of $13 and in a category with a final value fee of 12.00%. In this ituation your expenses are as follows.

As you can see this item brought in a total profit of $7.39, which in eBay terms is usually a pretty healthy profit. It is this kind of analysis that is required to sell effectively and profitably on eBay. This type of analysis can be used to determine if a product will be profitable to sell on eBay. However it is more important to keep track of these figures to see how healthy and profitable your current business and products are.