How Can a Business Make a Profit Selling on eBay?

Selling on eBay can sometimes lead to losses for many businesses. In the last year, I've learned a proven recipe for making money as a small business selling computer hardware on eBay. These are the steps that can almost always guarantee sales on eBay.

 

 

Step 1: Know what you paid for your items. 

Keep an inventory. A simple spreadsheet should suffice. If you have employees, account for your time and their time in handling the items. Treat their time spent as part of the cost, but don’t over-do-it. If some products take more time to prepare, treat their time as sunk costs and move on.

 

 

 

Step 2: Terapeak.com - This is where you find out how much you should sell it for.

 

Terapeak lets you "Get eBay Data, Sell Smarter, & Increase Profits". It primarily helps you find out how much your item is worth to eBay buyers.

Terapeak is also a great tool to find out what your competitors are selling. It lets you search for sold and unsold listings in the past 7, 30, 60, 90 and 90+ days.

It's a tremendous tool for eBay sellers. Technically, if you price your items according to what buyers are paying, you're almost guaranteed a sale.

Sign up here: http://www.terapeak.com ($25 / month minimum)

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3: Use an eBay Fees Calculator.

 

http://www.rolbe.com/ebay.htm - This is where you find out how much profit you're likely to make (roughly)

If you're paying for an eBay store you need to select "Basic" stores level to get accurate fee information.

 

 

Step 4: Automate fancy listings.

 

http://www.AuctionSound.com - This is the tool you're going to use to upload "fancy" eBay listings with nice pictures.


Check out my other post on AuctionSound (http://www.itbangbang.net/2011/10/how-do-you-automate-ebay-and-craigslist.html) which also lets you upload directly to Craigslist.

 

For used equipment use stock item pictures. It makes listing easier.

 

Download pictures from Google Image Search.

 

List items in 1 day, 3 day and 7 day durations so that you can theoretically sell throughout the week.

 

 

 

Step 5: Have a ton of similar items? Need them uploaded quickly?

eBay Turbo Lister - FREE eBay Tool that lets you quickly duplicate listings.

Useful for creating dozens of duplicate items. Lets say we have 20 identical items. You can just duplicate the item 10 times in Auction Style Listing.

Fixed Price listings are usually allowed only 1 per category, therefore having 20 listings pop up versus just 1 is an instant benefit.

 

 

 

Have any comments or tips for me?

 

Leave them in the comment field below this post.

 

Happy Selling!