Millions of people make money on eBay every minute of every day. This article gives some quick tips to help you become one of those people.
The key to being successful on eBay or any other such retail business is in buying low and selling high. Obviously this is easier said than done.
1. Find the right product
Find a product that is selling a lot and regularly. Research several different products in different niches. Make lists and take note of the current prices they are selling for. Once you have your products, you can expand to related products.
2. Find your supplier
This is the hardest part. Make sure to search online and offline. Check your own house, ask relatives and local garage sales or markets. Contact other sellers to see if you can buy wholesale. Many sellers source their products on eBay. You can search for wholesale or job lots.
3. Create an effective listing
This is the single biggest mistake unsuccessful sellers make on eBay. Unless your listing looks professional you will have difficulties selling. Include a good title, a long description of features, the type of warranty or guarantee offered, links to related or other products and a general FAQ. The more information you provide the better.
4. Dispatch the product
Make sure to dispatch the product promptly and to regularly update your customers. Respond to all questions as quick as you can. Good communication leaves your customers minds at rest. All this contributes to positive feedback, another vital key.
5. Open an eBay Store
Once you have successfully sold some products and completely understand eBay, consider opening a store. This will boost your sales and you can avail of cheaper rates for listing products. Customers will think of you as they would a regular store, so remember to always be professional.
Promoting your site is crucial for your success. Traffic equals revenue so you must maximise one in order to fully benefit from the latter. Every site should have a marketing plan, and this could be used as your starting point.
1. Search Engine Optimization
Add unique content regularly to your site, as much as possible really. Make sure that it is keyword optimised. Use H1, H2 Tags properly. Mention your keyword around 5 times in the text, including the first line. you wish to provide value to your visitors, and if you can do so, they will return, and other sites will link to you as a by product from this.
2. Article Writing and Publishing
Create and publish articles to the various online directories. Include links to your site and use anchor links. If there is a bio field, make sure to make this as appealing as possible. This will create back links to your site and attract traffic.
3. Affiliate Programs
Starting your own affiliate program will increase your traffic and sales. Affiliates are your personal sales team and sites like Clickbank make the whole process easy for you. They receive a commision of every sale. Some programs offer up to 100%. These programs realise the importance of generating the lead so as to up sell them at a later date.
4. Build Incoming Links
Incoming 1 way links increase your search standing with Google. Try to make as many as possible from high ranking page ranks. Use sites that are related to your niche, this will generate relevant traffic.
5. Promote your Site Offline
This costs more but there are many options. T-Shirts, pens, bill-boards and newspaper adverts are all possibilities for offline advertising.
6. Social Bookmarking
This is an easy way to increase your online exposure. There are hundreds of these sites, letting you easily create 1 way incoming links to your site.
The global recession has cost many of us our jobs. New jobs are harder to come by and so many people are turning to working from home or at least online. For the novice, this can seem very daunting. Not knowing where to start and the need for technical knowledge can make starting online difficult. We have outlined 7 ways to make money online in 2010.
1. Ebay
Opening your own eBay is one of the easist and most successful methods available. You’re products are guaranteed exposure to millions of customers worldwide. You can source products locally or online. Start by getting rid of all the junk in your house, you will be surprised at what sells. We will be releasing more information on this over the coming month.
2. Paid Surveys
There are hundreds of companies offering hourly rates to submit surveys. Many people like this work as it is easy and can be done at any time.
3. Clickbank
There are thousands of digital products available on Clickbank. Have a look through the marketplace and see what products are hot right now. Be careful though, some niches have high competition. More detailed articles to follow on this.
4. Set-up a Blog
Having a blog thats attracts thousands of visitors every day is a potential goldmine. You make money selling advertising spots or with Google Adsense. More information will follow soon on this.
5. Set-up an online store
This can augment your eBay store giving you maximum exposure online. Any products that do not sell on eBay can be listed on your main site.
6. Freelance work online
If you have a particular skill such as programming, copy writing, photography etc, you can apply for contract work. There are many websites which offer lots of opportunities to skilled individuals. You can check rentacoder.com or elance.com for more info.
7. Sell your own product
If you can create an ebook, graphics/images, website templates or even sound clips you can sell them online. Websites like Lulu help you to create your own product. Other sites like Citizen Image, Shutterstock and Spymedia allow you to sell your images.
March 13th, 2010 
Sami Kumar 
