Product Development Timeframe: N/A
Product Lifecycle: 30-120 days
Website Expenses: 2-6% of every purchase
Marketing Techniques: Marketing techniques for external websites can be difficult. Links to your website are not open and obvious. E-bay bans sellers that market external sites without buying a store.
Average purchase: 0.01 – $30.00
Client List Building: Client list building on E-bay is non-Existent. Customers are not truly associated with the seller, and if you put them on a list without authorization you are spamming your customers.
Test Marketing Techniques: The Andale E-bay toolset (http://www.andale.com) is very nice, and fully functional.
Product Cloning: It is very easy to find, and clone a successful product on E-bay with the research product. Product cloning is a smart and easy way to make money fast. With the Andale tool, you can find, isolate and copy a product faster than you can sneeze.
Law of Business Diversity: Always combine businesses, so that during periods of financial stress, some business will still produce, like stocks in a portfolio. E-bay is a nice business to have because it generates steady income without much time involvement.
Cash flow Planning: You MUST plan next month’s revenue today. Your business demands you get a calendar and plant financial seeds for next month further out.
E-bay is definitely a business you can make money on while you sleep. All you have to do is create (not buy and resell) 20-40 products and sell them on E-bay. These need to be products you produce yourself that CANNOT be bought in a regular store. These products should be very cheap to produce, cheap to ship, and listed as cheaply as possible. After your initial sales you need to send out second offers. The second offers will bring additional revenue. Some examples of profitable items for sale on E-bay are:
- Information Products (Paper)
- Special Sauces and Mixes (Mostly water)
- Printing/Writing Services (Service)
- Autos (Fix broken-down cars)
- Custom Services
These are all items you can get as cheaply as possible, add a substantial markup and then resell. E-bay can be a critical part of your portfolio, but its major limitation is that E-bay products tend to sell cheap, and if your goal is to start a full-time business you have to sell 50-120 E-bay items per week to make a living at it. This is not a pleasant prospect. Your day job may be much easier than this. Now, let’s look again at the list, this time with a little “better” view:
- Information Products (Paper)
Special Sauces and Mixes (Mostly water)- Printing/Writing Services (Service)
Autos (Fix broken-down cars)- Custom Services
Bag any E-bay business that involves a supply-chain if you want to make money while you sleep. Supply-chain management is tough. When your digital binoculars sell on E-bay on Tuesday, you don’t want them sitting on a dock across the United States. Focus on services you can provide from home on a Saturday with just your local resources. E-bay global is a book written just on this particular subject. Purchasing abroad, paying duty, and dealing with people in other countries who may shaft you is not pleasant. Stick to what you know and make the system simple. KISS, “Keep It Simple” is a common phrase.
E-bay is a wonderful business that could have you living at the post office, spending hours wrapping and putting packages together or it could be a simple $1000 per month business like mine that takes 2 hours per week. It is your choice. Now let’s recap how to optimize E-bay:
- Create your own products.
- Manage your cash flow through advanced planning.
- Use the Andale tools (http://www.andale.com) to clone successful products and turn them to your advantage
- Focus on products that are in the $20 – $40 range, cheaper products require a lot of time and energy. You want your business to be worth your time.
- E-bay makes money for you 24 hours per day, with little effort if we want to optimize it.
In conclusion, E-bay is a very powerful tool if used in an optimized format, and it can be a strong contender in the business portfolio.
Phoenix Education 