This transcript is derived from the information contained in the audio CD version of the recorded live teleseminar (Click Here To Claim Your CD)
Note: This CD is unique in that it functions both as an audio CD (so you can put it in ANY car/home player), and as a MP3 CD so you listen on your computer and copy to your MP3 player.
Changes and additions have been made in the transcribed text to better suit and fit the printed format.
Suggestion:
You’ll notice that as you read this training, you’ll find many hyperlinks that will lead you to various websites,
products, and even videos. It is recommended that you print out this entire document to read. Then as you read the printout and come across sites that you want to visit, circle them so you can easily go find them again when you return to your computer.
REMEMBER: You must be connected to the internet for these links to work.If you have not already printed out your workpage, then please do that now. You should keep the worksheet separate from the rest of the manual. That will allow you to identify, record, and remember the main points as you progress.
We're going to cover a lot of ground, starting from zero. We're going to start from the very beginning, but rapidly will progress up to be sure that we cover a lot of ground. We'll get the beginners, the intermediate, and even touching into the advanced.
For two years I've wanted to do this project. I wanted to put a presentation together to show the big picture of eBay and what you can accomplish. Also, at the same time I wanted to give a lot of point-by-point, precise ways that you can get started with eBay and do very well with it. That’s the approach we're going to take with this training.
The reason for the worksheet is try to get you to focus and to remember the main points both now and then after we finish. I'm going to recommend that if you can, close your door or lock your door so nobody’s going to bother you. Turn off the radio or TV and focus in on the sheet.
In this training you will see q w e … used in different areas.How many businesses do you know that you can start without having to lease a building, buy a lot of equipment, pay a franchise fee, bring on a lot of employees, and all the overhead that normally comes with a brick and mortar type store?
With eBay, it’s very limited.In fact, very little equipment is needed. That’s the second point.
The third point: very little learning, or studying.
The fourth point: There's a short learning curve.
The fifth point: There are no worries about getting traffic. eBay handles that.
That is a big problem that people have. A lot of people will come to me and say:
“Mike, I went and made my own Web site or I paid somebody a lot of money to make this beautiful Web site. I got it set up. I found product to sell, but I'm not selling anything. I'm not making any money.”
What’s the reason?They're not getting any traffic. See, that’s what eBay does for you. One of the most difficult things anybody on the Internet has for a problem is how to get traffic to the Web site. That’s what eBay does for you.
Actually, eBay does it for a quite reasonable cost. If anybody has tried to do a Google AdWords campaign or pay per click or regular advertising or any type of newspaper advertising, you know it’s very expensive to get attention.
That’s what eBay does. They bring the traffic to you. That is why it’s one of the easiest ways to get started.It’s not only traffic as in raw traffic, but it’s very targeted traffic.
When somebody goes to eBay, typically they are not randomly looking at auctions!
No.. they are looking for something in particular. They know what they're looking for, and if you're the person on eBay selling it, then you have a very good chance that you're going to have a new customer and that you're going to sell your product.
TARGETED TRAFFIC LIKE THAT IS EXTREMELY VALUABLE!Another eBay advantage (over Google Adwords) is that people use Google for researching, while they use eBay when they want to buy! Traffic of buyers is much better than traffic of researchers!
Imagine that you owned a business like a bakery or a hair salon or a barbershop or some kind of restaurant. How many businesses are you able to do that: to start and stop it on a dime?
There are many reasons that you might want to do that. You might simply want to go on vacation. You might be sick that day or your family might be sick. You might have a family emergency that requires your attention.
An eBay business can be turned on and off like a light switch and really not be affected. When you're ready to go back online, just start selling once again. That’s a tremendous flexibility that you can have.
Another benefit (and the second point on the workpage) is that you can grow it at your own pace.Now myself, I started part-time on eBay while I still worked my regular full-time job. As I made this big, long three-and-a-half hour commute each day, I kept thinking, “Man, Mike, you could make a lot of money selling full-time on eBay.”
Finally the commute got to the point where I said, “I just can't do this anymore. I'm going to make my full-time eBay business work.”That’s a wonderful thing. Not many businesses allow you to start slow and build it gradually at your own pace. Normally when you start a business you have to hit the ground running because you have a large investment that you need to recoup very quickly.
That’s another advantage of having an eBay business.Now some people reading this have zero eBay experience. They haven’t sold; they haven’t bought. We're even going to cover the basics of doing that.
Many reading this are familiar with the basics. They’ve probably bought a lot; they’ve sold a lot. That’s good experience to have.
The first thing that you want to do in getting started on eBay is you want to go sign up for eBay. There are some good courses right on eBay’s Web site on the basics. They have some online videos that will show you the basics of buying and selling.
That’s the first thing you want to do is go through and look at those videos so you can learn the basics.Also what you need to do is sign up for Paypal. For those who are not familiar with PayPal, it is the number one way of paying for items on eBay. PayPal is a way of transferring money from person to person via e-mail. It’s the quickest way to purchase items or have somebody buy items from you.
In my business where I've sold over 15,000 items at this point, about 85% of my business is through PayPal. About another 10% is through a credit card. Another 5% is checks or money orders. You can see how major PayPal is. PayPal is now owned by eBay so they keep entrenching it deeper and deeper as a payment service. If you're going to do anything with eBay buying or selling, you must, must, must, must, must have a Paypal account.
The next thing you might say is, “Okay, I'm ready to start. I want to start selling.”Most people just want to jump in and start selling. I'm going to explain to you why you do not want to do that.
The way that you rate whether or not to trust a seller (or buyer) is by the eBay feedback system. (See box on next page)
Think of this yourself. Although you are reading this because you want to be an eBay seller, you're probably still an eBay buyer.
So, when you're looking for an item to buy and you see that somebody has a zero feedback, does that give you a comfortable feeling?
Do you want to go and buy that item from this person? Probably not.Actually, you're probably more likely to NOT buy the item from them. Chances are you will search for someone else having better feedback who is selling the item you want.
In fact, you'll probably even pay more for somebody who has a good feedback rating. Why? Because you feel secure. It’s the same for you in the role of eBay seller. If you're going to be selling at a zero, you're not going to be getting as much money for the item that you could if you had a better feedback score.
Is Paypal Evil?Some readers might have a negative attitude about Paypal. This might be based on some individual’s experiences that you have heard or read online.
It’s true that if you go to Google.com and search on Paypal you will find a bunch of Paypal Hate sites. It’s also true that Paypal has goofed things up on occasion and still does.
If one of these goof-ups involved you then being upset is understandable.But think about this. Paypal has over 123,000,000 members. Let’s say they process 1,000,000 transactions each day.
Even if they are 99.999% perfect, they’ll still mess up ONE THOUSAND times a day.
Remember… No one is perfect!So don’t sweat it. Even if you think Paypal is evil, they are a necessary evil if you want to make money on eBay!
Quite simply, if you don’t accept Paypal payments in your eBay business, you are shooting yourself in the foot and will be making it MUCH harder to succeed as an eBay seller.
If you don’t have a Paypal account, then click here to set one up.Some people will think, “What I'll do to get my feedback up and to get practice is to start selling all the junk that I have around the house.”
eBay’s Feedback System
eBay was designed with a feedback system that members can use to get a sense of how secure they can feel buying (or selling) with another member.
Everyone who joins eBay has a feedback score. In each transaction, the buyer and seller can give the other person either:
• POSITIVE which gains you one point
• NEUTRAL which doesn’t change your score
• NEGATIVE which lowers your score by one point
(Note: You do not join eBay as a buyer or a seller. When you join you can do both and your feedback score reflects your rating as both a buyer and seller)
Below is a random snapshot of an actual eBay auction
Above you can see that the eBay members name is “etechtronix_direct”. Their feedback is 3166 and they are a powerseller. They joined eBay back in July 2002, so that also helps instill confidence.
Although not perfect, the eBay feedback system does keep bad auction experiences to a minimum.Now, I have nothing against selling your junk around your house, but not at this stage of the game. What you want to do at this stage of the game is you want to start getting your feedback up first.
Here’s the problem: some people think that they have stuff around the house that they could just sell like an old VCR, old DVDs, old CDs, old comic books, things like this. They say, “I don’t care if I get a dollar or two for it because it’s going to give me my experience.”
What you need to consider - and we're going to focus a lot on this later on - is the value of an hour of your life, the value of your time. So you might sell a VCR for a dollar and then what you do is - it took you maybe an hour to take a picture, to write an ad, maybe a half an hour to find the old box and your packing peanuts, do the label and get it to UPS or the post office. You probably lost money and had to spend valuable time!
This is a fairly poor way of building up your feedback. So don’t in the beginning sell junky items. You're probably better off just throwing them away.
What happens is that they attract the attention of some lunatic who hunts for low priced items. The type of person who wants everything (and more) for as close to free as possible. Unless they ‘stick it to you’, they’re not happy!
Believe me, this type of customer is not very pleasant to deal with. They’ll waste your time, rob your sanity, and quite often hit you with a negative feedback. I know several family members and friends almost gave up on eBay because they had to deal with a negative left by a wacko who bought a $1.00 item!
Do yourself a favor. Don’t sell low price items when just starting out.Here’s the cool way to build your feedback. How you want to do this to get your feedback score somewhere between 50 to 101. Those are kind of like magical numbers, we'll say, where people feel comfortable. When a potential buyer sees somebody that has 50 or they see over 100, they think, “Okay, this person’s legit, it looks like I can trust them.”
Now, they're not going to feel the same way compared to 5,000 but you get the point. Think of it from the buyer’s viewpoint. If you're looking to buy an item, you see somebody who has a 50 or over 100, you're going to say, “Oh, okay, that’s cool.”
The way to do that is getting your early feedback by buying, not selling.Here’s what you do: you go to eBay and type in the word “e-book.” There are a lot of people selling knowledge products or e-books. An e-book is an electronic book. It’s digitally delivered so they don’t have to mail it to you.
Type in “e-book;” press enter. On the right-hand column, you'll see those who have free shipping. What you want to do is you want to find people who are selling an e-book for like 60, 70, or 80 cents with free shipping. What it allows you to do is to buy a positive feedback for less than a buck.
Of course, if there are items you need to get, go ahead and do that. You might need to buy labels, toner or ink for your printer, DVD blanks, CD blanks, whatever you need. You're probably going to find it cheaper on eBay than Staples or Office Max. Buy that stuff, too. If you want to buy yourself a CD, fine.
For the purpose of building up your feedback really quick, a great trick is to buy your way; buy e-books; buy information products.If you're interested in a topic, great. If not, that’s not the point of it.
Here’s something you want to remember: you want to make sure you only do one unique transaction per eBay seller.
For example, if you were to come to me and buy something and I give you your feedback, that’s great. If you come and buy something from me a second time, I give another feedback. It won't go towards your score. It will count toward the number of feedbacks, but it won't make your score go up.
Your score will only go up once per unique transaction. Feedback is either positive, negative, or neutral. So if you are focusing on building your feedback, make sure that you only buy one item from each unique person.
Another way of helping your customer to trust you is by being a bonded seller through BuySafe. I use this service in all of my auctions. What BuySafe does is offer a bonding service for sellers.
Here’s how it works…
When looking at an item for sale on eBay, and you see the BuySafe insignia like shown to the left, it tells a potential buyer that they are protected for this transaction.
Even if the seller goes bankrupt, the buyer cannot get ripped off!The seller pays a very small fee for each bonded auction.
The service doesn’t cost the buyer a single penny! It’s been proven to dramatically raise the selling price of auction items.
Remember! People will pay MORE for an item if they feel secure!
Let’s move onto the next point. This is something I never hear anybody talk about. Anybody that teaches someone to have a business, especially an online business, this is very important stuff: goal time, setting goals for us.
You want to ask yourself some questions:
1. “How much time am I willing to dedicate to building my business?”
2. “How much money do I need or want to make?”
3. “What kind of lifestyle do I want?”
4. “How do I feel about having one or more employees?”
First of all, how much time each week are you willing to dedicate your business? You have to know what’s realistic. If you're single, you have one situation. If you're married, that’s another. You have kids, it’s another. Your health, etc... All these different things affect how much time you are willing and able to dedicate to your business.
Some say, “I want to make $10,000 a month and work just two hours a day.”That’s not going to happen. You need to know how much time you can REALISTICALLY dedicate to your business.
You might be someone who is looking to work short term because you're looking to make enough money to go on vacation.
Somebody else might want to dump their full-time job because it’s driving them nuts and make a full-time business out of it.
Only you know which of the above defines you. But, that’s something you need to know ahead of time.
You need to answer questions like:
• How much money do you need to make or want to make?
• What kind of lifestyle do you want?
• Do you want to work 40 hours a week or do you only want to work two or
I'll tell you when I first started out in my eBay business, I was working 15 hours a day for a long period of time. Getting this thing started from scratch by myself was a lot of work. I knew my goal in the FUTURE wasn’t to work that much. Now I work about full-time during the week with about 95% of my time being focused on teaching others. My office manager care of almost my entire systemized eBay business.
That’s something you need to know: what kind of lifestyle do you want? Do you like working? Some people really, really enjoy working. I'm one of them. I love my work. I look forward to waking up in the morning and going to work. I love the challenges that come with it. I love the e-mails that I get, the people I get to help. I get to hear back on how they’ve benefited.
I love working. I’d be bored to death if I wasn’t working. But maybe you're not like that. Maybe you'd rather set things up so you don’t have to work so much.The last question: How do you feel about having one or more employees is very, very important.
• Figure out what to sell on eBay.
•Source it, purchase it, and manage inventory of product.
• Research more products to sell.
• Write the auction ads for eBay.
•Answer emails with questions from potential buyers, and other customer service tasks.
• You need to box and ship the items.
• Etc…
What I've seen too often in the eBay world of people that are doing very well on eBay, actually - if you're on this line and you're selling good on eBay, then you're probably going to be nodding your head in a minute with this - is it’s a lot of work.
It’s a lot of work to have an eBay business. You have to wear a lot of hats.
As you can see in the box above, there is a lot involved in selling on eBay. Having an employee(s) can greatly help in handling these tasks.
A lot of people have an aversion to employees. I don’t understand why. A lot of people who sell on eBay or have internet based businesses will say, “No, no. I can do it all myself. I don’t want the hassle of workers! If you feel that way, you need to give some thought about it.
eBay Selling Is A Busy BusinessThere are a lot of time consuming repetitive manual tasks that are a necessity. It is quite easy to have your day (and night) consumed by all these tasks, especially when you are responsible for all of them.
If you want to grow your business and make a lot of money from eBay selling while having an enjoyable lifestyle you can’t do it alone!Think of getting one employee to delegate the work that you shouldn’t be doing.
Your main focus as an eBay seller should be:
1) Find product to sell;
2) Plan the forward growth of the company. This includes branching out to having your own website and getting involved with other internet marketing besides eBay.
• You shouldn’t be boxing/shipping product.
• You shouldn’t be taking pictures.
• You shouldn’t be writing auction ads.
Just Starting Out?
When starting out, you can spend a lot of time (and money) assembling the tools that you need to start your computer based business.
You should be getting other people to do the other stuff. Give some thought about that. Even right now.
We’re constantly evaluating and testing free and paid tools and services. Be sure to check out the resources section at the bottom of this ebook.
When you meet people, when you hear situations of people that are maybe sick of their job or they got laid off or they got downsized, think about that.
Each week we publish Fun Freebie Friday where we highlight such beneficial items. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter so that you don’t miss out on these tools.
Ask yourself: “Will this person be a good candidate for an employee for me?”I've had and continue to have a number of employees. My office manager Jocelyn has been with me for over four years now. She handles my entire eBay operation and much of the PlatinumPowerSeller.com business tasks too.
I would have gone insane a long time ago if I did not have my employees. I also outsource a lot of things, but that’s a topic for another day.It seems to me that the overall main focus for Internet marketing / eBay marketing or any at-home business is solely making a lot of money. That’s the goal. People think: “I want to make money. I don’t care how. I just want to make a LOT of money with the least amount of effort possible!”
Listen, wanting to make a lot of money is not a goal.How many rich, happy celebrities or rich lottery winners do you know?
Quite often, more money just helps them to get into more expensive problems. Money in itself is not happiness. A lot of people do some very painful and hurtful things because of the love of money.
As the Good Book says, ‘…they hurt themselves and give themselves many wounds.’Can you p