Once you’ve got a few subscribers, it’s worth sending out a newsletter. To send store newsletters, go to My eBay, click ‘Manage My Store’, and then click ‘Email Marketing’. Once you’ve done that, click the ‘Create Email’ button, and you’re away.
All you need to do now is write an email subject and a message, choose any items you want to include in the email, and specify who you want to receive it. The subject and message can be something relatively generic, like ‘here are my latest deals’ – it’s the targeting that’s important, and eBay’s is powerful. You can choose to only send an email to people who’ve bought from you in the past, or only to people who’ve opened your email before.
It is important to note, though, that you can only send one email per week to a mailing list.The Ups and Downs.
The downside of store newsletters is this: they’re expensive. A basic, $15.95 per month store only comes with 100 emails, while $49.95 comes with 1000. Even the $499.95 anchor store only comes with 4000! Extra emails for all stores cost 1 cent each. That’s $1 per hundred extra emails. If your mailing list has a significant number of people on it, then that’ll get really expensive, really fast.
Surprisingly, though, it can often be worth it, despite the cost. It’s very rare to send out a newsletter to a mailing list of a hundred and not get at least one sale, and you’ll often get three or four, even to small lists.
Measure Your Success.Each time you send an email, eBay produces a report telling you how well that email did. You can view these reports on the ‘Email Marketing’ page by clicking the subject line of an email you sent.
This report will show how many people received your email, how many opened it, the number of clicks it generated on your items and your store, and the number of bids and Buy it Now purchases that resulted from the email. Some of the numbers might be too low, though, as many people use email software that displays email in plain text format and so stops eBay from collecting statistics. Also, you will notice that you’ll have more success if you send out emails regularly, as people will start to expect them, and react in a more open way – don’t expect the Earth from your first email.
By now, you’re probably getting pretty good at selling on eBay – isn’t it nice to have all those satisfied customers? Not to mention the money… However well you’re doing, though, there’s always room for improvement. The next email will give you ten tips for being an even better seller.
10 Tips for Being a Better Seller.
If you’ve got this far, you’ve got the basics of eBay. There are a few things left, though, that you might not have thought of trying. Quite a few of these tips go against the advice many give for eBay selling – some are a little risky and some are just odd. They’re all worth a try, though, and I’m sure you’ll find at least some you want to keep using.
2. Post without payment. Don’t even wait for payment to clear! That might sound risky, but it’ll mean that the buyers get their items more quickly – for small items, you might find it worth the occasional loss to give such quick service.
3. Post every day. Once you start shifting a high volume of items, go and post them every day – again, they’ll get there more quickly, making your customers very happy. The best way to do this is if you have items small enough to drop in a postbox.
4. Encourage an auction mentality. Don’t have a Buy it Now price, and make it very clear when it’s the last or only stock you’ll be getting in. Always refer to winning bidders as ‘winners’.5. Mention every defect your item has. Now why would you do that, you might ask? The answer is that it builds credibility: the small hit you take from the slight flaws is nothing compared to the big boost in trust you get for admitting it. People bid more when they trust the seller.
6. Say how you got the item. Don’t be afraid to go off on a tangent and give all sorts of fun details of how you got hold of what you’re selling – it gives your auction character and, again, builds trust.7. Accept odd payment methods. Sooner or later you’re going to get a buyer who wants to pay by sending cash in an envelope, or something equally unusual. Why not let them? Be flexible.
8. Don’t be afraid to sell low. Let the occasional item go for a really low price to a good buyer. You might only just break even on the item, but the person who got that bargain will be back again and again.
9. Give free shipping for a certain number of orders, or orders over a certain amount. People might buy something else they don’t want as much, just to get the free shipping. (Amazon use this strategy to great effect).
10. Ship worldwide. Take the time to investigate the prices, and be nice to international customers – imagine how much you’re expanding your market. That’s not to mention the effect of people bidding highly for items that are rare in their country.
Another way to make it easier is to be a better seller is to use some of the many third party eBay tools that are available. The next email will take a look at a selection of tools you might find useful.A Look at Third Party eBay Tools.
There are plenty of companies out there offering third party eBay tools. Most of them are web-based instead of downloadable, so you pay a monthly fee instead of just buying the software. But do you know what these sites can do for you? It can be hard to get to grips with what’s out there using a search engine, so here’s a quick rundown of the key players.
Andale (www.andale.com).Andale offer lots of small products instead of one solution that does everything: you can take your pick from a lister, image hosting, counters, analysers, a gallery, a checkout and an email manager. The price plans are a bit of a maze, but quite reasonable as long as you don’t go and use everything.
Andale’s real claim to fame is that they’ve been doing it for so long – they’re not some fly-by-night organisation, and many eBay sellers have been using their free counters for absolutely years. They also have a reputation for being very responsive to customers, and will often talk to you directly on their forums and implement any suggestions you might have for improving their software.
Vendio (www.vendio.com).Vendio offer two editions of their software, Sales Manager: a Merchandising edition and an Inventory edition. The difference between the two is that the Merchandising edition is designed to make it easier to list individual auctions, while the Inventory edition is for sellers who sell many of the same item. They offer a pay-as-you go price of 10c per auction.
They also offer software called Tickets Manager, special software for people who sell lots of tickets on eBay – an odd product to have, but useful if you happen to sell tickets. Other services offered by Vendio include web and image hosting, fancy Flash galleries of your products for your listings, and stores.
ChannelAdvisor (www.channeladvisor.com).ChannelAdvisor offer their software in three versions: Enterprise, Merchant and Pro. Enterprise and Merchant are both designed for very big businesses, though, and the chances are that the Pro version does everything you’d want. ChannelAdvisor is popular among sellers who want a solution that they know is used and trusted on a very large scale by enterprise-level customers.
It offers all the standard bulk listing and inventory features, as well as the unique feature of being able to create auctions from an Excel spreadsheet of your inventory. The cost is high, though, at $29.95 per month.