Changes to eBay's Gallery Pictures

Now that eBay has made the Gallery pictures free, it is going to be a little harder to stand out from the crowd based on the sole fact that you have a gallery picture, while others do not. I am not saying that all people will use the gallery, but I am guessing the majority will.

However, if you want your gallery pictures to stand out, there is a step you can take to make sure your gallery picture draws the most attention.

I am sure that you have noticed that there are some gallery pictures that look larger than others. When sellers just upload regular pictures off of their camera, they are normally in a 400 x 600 pixel type format. Meaning, they are rectangular.

In order to get the largest picture available on the searches, you are going to have to crop your picture to be a square. When it is a square it will completely fill out the space that eBay provides for your gallery picture, and it will look larger than the majority of your competition!

When cropping your picture into a square, you can also put a small border around the edge to make it pop out even more than the competition.

For example, the green border stands out the most:



Also, now that everyone has a gallery picture added to their description, it might be worth it to spring for the extra subtitle to really set your auction apart from the others.

This may take extra work and money, but it will be worth it when you are getting more bids than your competition.

Good luck.

What Sells on eBay? Children's Series Books like Animorphs

Children's Series books like Animorphs are another thing to keep an eye out for while you are at Garage sales looking for items to sell on eBay. There are two reasons why these are great:

1. You can find them at most Garage sales in the Suburbs
2. You can buy them for cheap and resell them for a good profit.

When I say you can buy them for cheap, I am talking five to ten cents per book. When you find them at a garage sale, offer to buy them all for a nickel a piece. After that, you can always go a little higher depending on the series.

Here is a list of several good children's book series to look out for:

• Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, Published by Scholastic. Series includes 54 books with 10 Companion books. Books resell for about $1 per book, if series is complete, up to $2.50 per book.
• Box Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, Series includes 113 books. Re-Published by Scholastic. Newer books resell for $1 per book, Original series for much more.
• Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey, Published by Scholastic. Series includes 9 books and counting. Books sell for at least $2 a book, more if newer books are included.
• Goosebumps by R.L. Stine, Original Series includes 62 books, Goosebumps series 2000 includes 24 books. Published by Scholastic. Resell for about $1 per book.
• Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park. Series includes 27 books. These resell for about $2 per book.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of books to sell on eBay. This is only a primer. You should do some research yourself, and make sure these are actually viable options, make a list of how much you would be willing to sell per book, etc...

Unlike selling other things on eBay, it is best not to split these up into smaller lots. But to try to sell them all together. The more complete the set, the higher your price will be. If you have an almost complete set, it might be worth it to buy the missing book on Amazon.

Happy hunting.

How to be a Powerseller Part 2: Researching your eBay Competition

In my last post, How to become a Power Seller on eBay: Copy the best and Profit I told you that it was important to see what kind of things your competition is buying. Well, I just found a great tool that will let you see what items your competition has won, the percentage of auctions they have the winning bid in, and how much they have spent in the last 120 days.

All you have to do is type in their name, and you can get a better idea of how much they are willing to spend on the items they are reselling. You can also see the kinds of products they use to ship, and anything else they have bid on.

The website is http://www.goofbay.com/ebay_bid_history_tool.html

Do your homework!

How to become a Power Seller on eBay: Copy the best and Profit

Want to become a power seller on eBay? Well then, you have to do what the power sellers do! The best way way to master your eBay niche is to learn from your competition and then beat them at their own game.

So, first you need to find out who your competition is! Like all aspects of eBay, this is going to take some hard work. You are going to have to sift through lots of auctions, looking for Power Sellers who stand out in your Category.

So, here is how you learn everything about your competition:

• Do a search for the items that you are or will be selling.
• Find about 3 or 4 Power Sellers who specialize in selling these items.
• Examine their listings:
  
• How do they describe their product?
• What kind of pictures do they take?
• What are their pricing and shipping strategies?
• How are their stores set up?
• Find out what kind of things they are buying on eBay. Some may buy their inventory off of eBay. This is good stuff to know!
  
• To see what your competition is buying click on their feedback.
• Then click "Feedback as Buyer"
• Then copy the item number from the feedback and paste it into the search.
• This will give you a good idea of what their buying habits are.
• If you are really serious about selling in this niche, it is a good idea to buy a cheap product from the Power Seller with the highest feedback and see how they go about sending emails and packaging the item.
  
• Through Hammertap you can search and see how much the seller has made in the last month. You can also see what product sells the best, and how many of them they sell each month. It is a powerful tool that really helps you analyze your competition!

Study hard, and then take the best aspects of the top three or four Power sellers and combine them to make your eBay store the best. Copy their practices and reap the benefits!

How to Buy on Craigslist to Sell on eBay

There is another great money making idea I have for you. It is all about using eBay and Amazon as a source of product to resell on craigslist.

Every day on craigslist people post "wanted" adds. This gives you direct insight into what is in demand in your local market. Here is how this money making idea works:

• Search through the craigslist.com wanted adds.
• Find a high priced product that is relatively cheap to ship (electronics work well for this)
• Locate the product on Amazon or eBay to see if you can make a profit.
• If you find a product that you can resell email the person with the wanted add and tell them that you can get them the product within a certain amount of time if they can wait.
• If they are flexible, buy the item on eBay or Amazon and resell it for a profit!

I have done this a couple of times, and it has worked great. It just takes some time to search for the right product to resell to a buyer.

If you want more money making ideas, and eBay selling tips please sign up to get an email every time this blog is updated.

Advanced search techniques for eBay for buyers and sellers

There are a lot of ways to find things on eBay. Searching being the one most widely used. But the eBay search engine is actually pretty powerful, and I believe it is underutilized. Also, the better you understand search capabilities, the better you will be able to write auction titles.

If you type one phrase or word it will find all combinations of that phrase. For example if you type "abercrombie 10" you will find all items with the words abercrombie and 10.

Everybody knows that.

But if you want to search for two different brands of pants, and they fit you differently, say Gap size 2 and Old Navy size 4, you can do both in one search as so: (Gap 2, Old Navy 4) Make sure it is inside the ().

With this technique the comma signifies "or" so this is a search for "Gap 2" or "Old navy 4." There can be as many terms inside of the (), Like so: (x,y,z).

Now, if you want to search for some khakis, but do not want to find them with cargo pockets you can search like this:
Banana Republic Khakis -Cargo
This will find all Khakis but remove all items in search that have the term "cargo" in it.

If you want to remove multiple words from your search there are 2 ways to do it:
-(x,y) or -x -y

If you want to find cargo pants, but dont want to search for cargo or cargos, you can do this search "carg*" The asterisk will find all terms that begin with a "carg." This is pretty powerful because it helps you find auctions where sellers use crazy terms with recognizable roots.

All of these searches can be combined

(bcbg, bebe) (shirt*,top*) med* -halter
This long string would search for all items that have "bcbg or bebe" in the title. It will also search for anything that starts with "shirt", "shirts" included. Same with top or tops. It will also find med or medium. And the search will exclude all titles with he word halter.

With practice you will be able to pin-point the exact item or items that you want.

Once you master this, and make the perfect search to find whatever you need you eBay has an option to "save this search." Use it, it is a great tool that can save you a lot of time.

Make More Money on eBay With Second Chance Offers

One of the easiest ways to increase your eBay auction cash flow and profits is to use second chance offers. If you have more than one of the same exact item in stock, and your auction ends with a price that you are happy with, then the second chance offer is your best friend!

Using the second chance offer button allows you to email the second highest bidder and gives them the opportunity to bid on your item at their maximum bidding price. If their was a bidding war, and the price was exceptionally high, this is a great time to cash in.

Second Chance offers also allow you to move inventory faster, sell at prices you are comfortable with, and greatly increase your income. For example, when I started working with beaddevotion, we were selling about $11,000 worth of beads a month. But when I recommended that we use second chance offers for auctions that ended profitably, our sales jumped to $1,3750 in a month!

Using second chance offers will make you a lot more money! Also, when using a second chance offer, you do not have to pay the additional listing fees that comes with making a new auction. All you have to do is collect the money, and pay eBay your final value fee.

Here are some tips for maximizing the benefit of the second chance offer:

1. Make sure to only use the Second Chance Offer if your auction has ended at a price that you are very happy with. Unless you really need some cash, do not settle for less than what would be profitable for you.
   
2. Try to send out the offer as soon as possible. Bidders are fickle and will move on quickly if you do not take action.
3. Put a 1 day time limit on the offer. Creating a sense of urgency will help make sure more of your offers are acted upon.

I hope you make a lot of money! Good luck.