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Selling Niche Items on Ebay
Author: Stephan Miller
A website is great to have for residual income, for
presence, to have a place called home on the internet. I
admit I love it. Instead of hunting for sites to host my
pictures and software for free, I have a place and it is all
mine. But nothing beats eBay for instant, in your face
sales.
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Its like having a mall with millions of visitors a day built
just for you. I mean, you could sell used vacuum cleaner
bags and walk away with a bag full of money a week later if
only you knew how to list your auctions with the right
title, right ad, and right type of features or even no
features. For examples of what can and has been sold on
eBay, check out these sites.
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http://www.disturbingauctions.com
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebayweirdnesscollectorclub
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No features? Yes, you can make a consistent weekly income by
listing auctions with no features. I have done it. You just
have to find a niche and your customers will hunt for you.
No extras will be necessary.
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What type of products would qualify as a niche item? Lets
say your hobby is scrapbooking and you have just written the
perfect ebook on the subject. You know it will sell, but how
do you go about selling it. You could put up a website,
spend weeks submitting it to search engines, and then, maybe
months later watch sales start coming in. That's great for
the long term. In fact its something you should do.
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But, if you want to start getting sales sooner, list it on
eBay. It takes some work to do it right though. You will
need to figure out what search terms your customer will be
using to find your auction. Then search both the current and
completed auctions to find out what your competitors are
doing to get their bids. Or download a tool to do it for
you.
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http://www.profit-ware.com/hotbid/
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Okay, what if the search terms you entered comes up with few
searches or none. Well, this is a sign that hell just froze
over. But if it does happen, can you spell "jackpot." You
will need to find closely related search terms that actually
will come up and use them along with your rare terms. Think
about what other items your ideal customers will also be
buying and mention them in the body of your ad. Don't spam
though. Write your ad like you are speaking face to face to
your customers and you can't go wrong.
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Check out your competitors features. Did they highlight? Did
they choose Bold? Did they spend the extra money and
category feature the auction? I did this once on a niche
product that I was selling and actually made less money than
when I didn't choose to feature the item. But you will have
to test your results. Why spend extra money that you don't
have to?
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Also, study the title of the auction and the ad itself.
Remember that the default search on eBay is title only, so
make sure you pack your title with keywords that you know
people will be using. But don't go overboard. You can always
tell when a seller is trying to spam the search engine
instead of providing a descriptive title provides their
customers with the information they need.
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The days when you could put up a text ad and sell are over.
Well, maybe not. But at least put in the extra effort and
design an HTML ad. It lets your customer know that you are
actually running a business and that the image your products
present matter to you. Turbo Lister is great if you are just
starting out. You can also find more free HTML editors on
the resource page of my site.
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http://www.profit-ware.com
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Learn some ad writing techniques. If you are selling an info
product or software, the mini-site model works great. It
will provide your customer with all the information he or
she needs to make a buying decision. Also learn hypnotic
writing and NLP. I am not saying that you have to do all of
this at once. Just pick up as you go along.
**
Just to get started, do your marketing research and list
your ad and wait for sales. Yes, it will become addictive,
especially after you get that first bid. You will set your
homepage to your "My Ebay" page and check it every few
minutes. I did.
Stephan Miller is a ebay seller, freelance programmer,
writer, and webmaster at
http://www.profit-ware.com
Home of Hotbid Auction Market Analyzer.
Buy Hotbid this Month and get 25% off and ten free bonuses
including "Killer Minisites" and "Automated Ebay
Sales."
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