The Smurfs Are Back! New Smurf Movie 2009

The word on the street is that there is going to be a new Smurf Movie in 2009. Rumor has it, it may be part of a trilogy. The Smurf Movie may also be in 3D (though it is unlikely the characters will be).

Well, I know what you are asking, "Why are you bringing up the Smurf Movie? What do Smurfs have to do with eBay?"

Well eBay friends I will tell you. This post is a trend watch, and I am guessing that The Smurfs will be the hot new trend.

I am assuming this will be similar to the Transformer trend of the past. I am sure there will be a lot of marketing to promote the New Smurf movie in the next year, so now is the time for you to take action.

I recommend that while you are out at garage sales, or if you see any cool smurf items on the internet, or have any at home, that you hang on to them until the movie comes out.

I Sense a high demand for smurf items on the horizon, so keep your eyes peeled and get ready to jump on the Smurf Movie Bandwagon.

How to get more people to find your eBay Auction

When doing a search on Google for an item, it is quite common to get eBay auctions to pop up in your search results. If you want to get your eBay Auction found on Google or other search engines, I recommend that you follow some of eBay's search term guidelines.

Use Keywords - Pick three to five keywords that relate closely to your item. Ask yourself what words people are likely to use in a search engine when looking for what you're selling. Once you have these keywords, use them appropriately in your listing title and item description.

Take Care with Titles - Your listing title is a key factor in natural search. Include the most important keywords or keyword phrases in your listing title.

Get the Most Out of Your Item Description - Your item's description is the most valuable tool for creating search engine-friendly listings. While your primary goal is to describe the item you are selling to your eBay audience, here are several ways to use your description to its fullest:

• Create Good Content: Describe your item the best you can and in as much detail as possible You should include approximately 200 words of visible text in your description, with the most important keyword phrases comprising 5 to 7% of the total. (In 200 words of text, you'll want to use your keywords 10 to 14 times.) Note that search engines only read a certain amount of information per page, so overdoing your description with non-relevant information isn't a good strategy.
• Avoid Keyword Spamming: Do not overuse keywords in an item description as it can reduce the effectiveness of content. Moreover, keyword spamming is a violation of eBay policy as well as an irritation to prospective buyers.
• Avoid Hidden Text: Do not add invisible copy; search engines will not read it.
• Vary Font Strength: Use bold headers and use a font size of 12 or 14 maximum.
• Include Links: Add links to other products, to your eBay Store, and so on. The words that are linked should be relevant to the destination. For example, "Visit my Store" or "See other items" are more effective than "Click here."
• Use Image Alt Tags: These are keywords associated with the images you use in your listing. If you do your own HTML, be sure to include alt tags. This provides yet another opportunity to optimize keywords or keyword phrases that both describe the image and are consistent with your content.

Source: Search Optimization

Get Repeat Business on eBay with Free Business Cards

If you want to get repeat business on eBay, have buyers bid on multiple items, and raise the average selling price and sell through rate of your eBay auctions, then you are going to need to implement some changes into your business.

One of the easiest things you can do to increase repeat business is to put a business card in with every package you send out.

I recommend making a business card with your eBay user ID on it, as well as your store's web page. This is a great way to get customers to easily remember you.

In order to get extra repeat business you might want to offer a coupon code that gives them a shipping discount on their next purchase.

Take control of your business card and get more repeat eBay customers. I use VistaPrint’s pre-designed templates to make easy and professional business cards. You can make them online in minutes, and if you go to their site right now you can get 250 full-color business cards for FREE!

Free eBay Consultation: heroptionsforyou

Dear Readers,
I am sorry that I have been neglecting my Free eBay Consultations. I promise I will work harder to make sure that I get to review at least two eBay Sellers auctions and stores per week. This may mean that it will take your store several weeks to get featured on the eBay Selling Guide, and Auction Help. However, if you would like to speed up this process and get your free eBay consultation in 72 hours, you can donate any amount to the eBay Selling Guide.
eMail me for more info.

Today's consultation will feature a store that sells men's and women's clothing, non-fiction books, and children's toys. It is run by Michelle, who seems to be...

Click here to Read The Complete eBay Consultation at Auction Help

Three Free Products You Can Sell on eBay

Want something for free that you can sell on eBay? Well, you came to the right spot! I have been doing some research on items that you can get for free and sell on eBay. Today I have three free things that you can find on the internet and sell on eBay.

These are not going to make you a lot of extra money. But, if placed in your store, they will easily add some extra money to your PayPal account.

For all of these items I recommend running a week long 1 cent auction with text and links that refer the customer to your store to buy the item now. This way you will get a lot of traffic to your store items because bidders will be interested in your cheap auctions.

Here is the list of three things you can get for free and sell on eBay.

Coupons: Selling Coupons on eBay is very easy. Although, since it is easy a lot of people do it, and this results in a relatively low selling price. I am not going to do all of the work for you, but I suggest you look at fatwallet.com for the coupons (there are sooo many!), and then research eBay to see what kinds of coupons sell best.

Tips for selling coupons on eBay:

• Make sure that the coupons do not expire before your auction does (obvious?)
• Save the coupon as an image or PDF, and then email it, or have the bidder download it when they win. Do not just point to the actual site where you found it.

For the next two items, you can get a little higher selling price, but you are going to have to be able to download the items on demand, burn them onto a CD and ship them to your customer. The deal with these next products is that since they are free in the first place, you can only sell them on CD. Here you are providing a service for people who have slow internet connection and do not want to try to download huge files. Also, some people just do not know any better.

MP3 Audio Books: Selling MP3 Audio Books on eBay is a simple enough task. The majority of your time will be spent on downloading books that look like they sell well on eBay and then creating nice store listings for them. I say store because you are going to have to list a lot in order to sell a few every day.

Where to find Free Audio Books to Sell on eBay:
There are several sites where you can download free MP3 audio books to sell on eBay. A couple of them are: Free Classic Audio Books, and LibriVox.

Tips to Sell MP3 Audio Books on eBay

• If you have a DVD burner, that is great. I recommend that you get creative with your audio book package. I would try to sell individual titles as well as compilations by author or genre. For example, you could list something like "Alcott, Little Men, Little Women Audio Book Package."
• As with selling anything on eBay, you need to do some homework, find out what sells, and how to go about marketing it.
• To see what kind of audio books sell best I suggest that you use hammertap, it is a great program which lets you know what the top keywords are, and what sells best on eBay in every category.

Open Source Software : My last tip is to sell open source software on eBay. Selling free software is a great way to make some extra cash in your eBay store. There are a lot of different free programs that you can download, burn to a disc, and then sell. The best place to find a comprehensive list of these items is at Free Software Directory. I recommend selling a variety of different things from this site, such as image, video, and audio editing software. I also recommend trying to sell an alternative operating system like Linux, as well as the MS Works alternative, OpenOffice.

Tips for selling Open Source Software on eBay:

• Make sure you read the copyright information on each item before you attempt to sell it. I know that it is ok to sell OpenOffice on CD, but I am unsure about many of the others.
• It is a good idea to bundle software if you can fit it all on one CD, or DVD. Sell a photo editing program with OpenOffice, and maybe a website editor.
  

Now, if you are really serious about selling any of these free items on eBay it is going to take some effort to stand out. Since they are free, you are going to have to do some work to your auctions and images to make them really stand out. I recommend that you read the following posts to help make your auctions stand out:

How to Write an Ebay Auction Description that sells
importance of Pictures in eBay Auctions

Building an eBay Brand - Consistency is Key

While doing my free eBay consultations I have noticed a pattern: many eBay sellers are not building a brand through consistency. I have seen a lot of sellers not using logos in their stores, or at the top of their auctions. Even more importantly, I have noticed a lack in auction template consistency. If you want a free logo, please just sign up here, and write "free logo" in the notes section.

The best thing you can do to brand your eBay store is to have ONE auction template. There are lots of places to find a free generic template on Google, or you can have someone build one for you.

The most important thing is that you use the same eBay template in all of your auctions. This is will save you time in listing, as you will not always have to add or edit all of your terms of sale.

The other benefit of using a template is that whenever someone goes to your auction it will look like all of your other auctions! This will make you look more professional, and will result in more repeat business, and more bidders buying multiple items.

Free eBay Consultation: rgilbert15

Ron Gilbert signed up several days ago to have his free eBay consultation, but I have been putting it off because he appears to be on top of his game. Ron is a PowerSeller, has 4100+ Positive Feedback, and has 700+ items listed in his store. He is someone you should really be looking to as a great example of niche eBay selling.

I urge you to check out Ron's store and several of his auctions. His user name is...

Click here to Read The Complete eBay Consultation at Auction Help

Free eBay Consultation: mom2nick4ever

Nicolette left a note for me saying that she has only had a store for about a month. But let me tell you, this store is pretty far ahead of the curve. I recommend that you check it out! She mostly sells children's clothing, but also has some women's clothing scattered throughout.

Nicolette's eBay user name is mom2nick4ever, and her store is called Wish Upon a Child's Star.

The first suggestion that I would make is that Nicolette changes...

Click here to Read The Complete eBay Consultation at Auction Help

Free eBay Consultation: indiansteps

This free eBay consultation is supposed to serve two purposes. First of all, it is supposed to act as a case study in eBay selling. I am hoping that you will learn what types of things to do in your auctions and stores, as well as what sort of things you should try to avoid. Secondly, this free consultation is supposed to help the sellers by giving them personalized instruction on how they might improve or alter their selling techniques.

If you are interested in a free eBay consultation, please submit your information here.

Now it is time to get down to business. The second eBay seller I am going to give some tips to is Denise. She operates under the user name indiansteps, and her store is called: Denise's Bargain Bin.

Denise sells a variety of clothing and accessories for men, women, and babies. The majority of her items are gently used. Please check...

Click here to Read The Complete eBay Consultation at Auction Help

Free eBay Consultation, Tips and traffic for your store.

I plan on starting a new feature on the blog where I do some free eBay auction/store consultation.

This is a feature completely unique to this blog. Nobody else on the internet is doing something like this for free. So, tell your friends and neighbors.

I will be providing free personalized tips to optimize your store and auctions as well as some positive reinforcement. In conjunction with this free service, I will post a link to your store, and maybe even some of your auctions so you can get more traffic (and maybe bids).

All you have to do is sign up Here!