• Welcome from Brian McGregor 
• Inspirational Quote of the Day
• News and Views
• Out of the Mouths of Children
• Are You an eBay Automaton?
• Become an eBay Spymaster
• A Gift from Me to You
• Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently available
• Back to Newsletter Archive

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Hello and welcome.

A particularly warm welcome to you if you're a new subscriber. It's good to have you as part of the family taking my eBay auction newsletter.

Is it just me, or do you wonder where the summer went?

It feels like we've hardly had a summer season.

I remember spring. We definitely had a spring. But a summer??

Ah well, we can all look forward to autumn and winter now.

I don't really understand this global warming thing, but it doesn't seem to have reached the north east coast of England. It's pretty cold up here, and it's only just autumn.

All this discussion about the seasons reminds me how quickly time flies. It seems like only last week that I was planning my business for 2006. And now 2006 is nearly over. Just 65 shopping days to Christmas!

However, we can all be thankful that we're involved with eBay. Why? Well, what eBay gives us is the opportunity to make money every single day of the year.

It doesn't matter what season we're in, eBay never closes.

And, eBay keeps getting bigger. More people are joining every day. The last time I checked eBay's numbers, 109,000 people were joining eBay EVERY DAY. It's quite amazing, isn't it?

The potential market for whatever you're selling on eBay just keeps on growing and growing.

There's no doubt that eBay keeps on delivering.

Plus, eBay have a great resource available about Christmas. This tells you the products they predict will be in high demand but short supply during the holiday period. You can see this potentially valuable information here.

My own plan is to run more auctions in the last three months of 2006. eBay truly is a numbers game - the more opportunities you give eBay members to find your items, the more you will sell. Why not run a few more yourself, especially using the inside information from eBay about Christmas?

I look forward to speaking with you again.

1. Another Warning

I recently received the following email from Geoff, a reader of the Newsletter:

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Hi Brian, we have spoken on this subject previously, but it appears that the devils are being craftier. One guy in particular whose selling stuff of interest to me has a Feedback rating of 10, with 100% claimed. Which I suspected was bogus.

As you know my method is to select from the feedback list, the item number of a suspect seller`s most recent purchases, often finding the item listing can be garbage. (In other words self created to make it plausible). This can only be done with items in the ebayer`s feedback which are in blue, presumably indicative of a recent purchase, which when a specific item listing becomes time expired, reverts to black and is no longer accessible to my prying eyes. I assume this would tie in with the listing being available only for a set number of days, after end of auction.

The other option is to search through the Feedback left by the ebayer that the suspect ebayer has claimed to have purchased from, only to find in the case of the under-mentioned that the ebayer from whom he is claiming to have made a purchase, has in fact not given feedback for this claimed purchase. I have inspected the first three claimed purchases for this guy, they all give no record of giving feedback to:

Member Profile: dvd-kingz (10)

There are many eBay sellers who specialise in children's items. No wonder, it can be a highly lucrative category. And, if you have children, it's one in which you can get started quite easily.

Children's clothes, toys and videos are good money makers on eBay.

For example, look up a "lot" of, say, size six girl's clothes. The average price seems to be around £20 for a lot of 20 items of clothes in good condition.

So, when your kids grow out of their clothes, don't throw them out. I would bundle them, preferably into bundles of six items or more, and sell them on eBay.

The reason why you would offer them in lots as opposed to single items is because lots sell better. The exception to this would be unique or high priced items. In children's clothes, for example, a hand embroidered dress that you had made for your child would make more money as a single item than bundled up within a lot.

The next children's items we'll consider are toys. Search the garage, the store room and the toy box. Any toys which your children have grown out of could be turned into cash on eBay. Branded toys in good condition will usually do well.

In terms of new toys, it's not unusual for desirable items to sell for a premium on eBay. One source you might consider is to buy hot items in October at Toys-R-Us or other toy stores, and sell them on eBay in the run up to Christmas. Busy people are often willing to pay extra for the convenience of getting the items delivered to their home.

So try and anticipate the in-demand toys, buy them early and cash in on eBay.

Children's videos and DVDs can also be good money makers. Again, bundling works well for these items. With 3 in a bundle you should be able to make £5 - £10 per bundle. If you have sufficient to make bigger bundles, then you can make more per auction. In terms of branding, Disney movies in hard cases can go for higher amounts.

Another perhaps surprising way in which to make money from toys concerns the giveaways from McDonalds, Burger King and the like. Some kids meals toys sell well. They almost become collectibles. So don't throw these freebies out, try them on eBay.

Baby items is also a thriving market place on eBay.

Used baby items can be very profitable. Baby items cost a lot of money, especially in their first year, and any "gently" used items can be good sellers on eBay.

So be thankful for your children. They are a true blessing, although they can also challenge your patience. At least you might be able to make a nice profit from their leftover items!

OK, I know the title of this article needs an explanation.

If you sell digital products on eBay, then it's you I'm talking to. You might be selling ebooks, software, digital music, e-magazines or other digital products. My question for you is, how automated is your eBay delivery process?

Let me explain…

You sell ebooks on eBay, and you want to be as efficient as you can be so your buyers can download their purchases quickly. There two ways of achieving this. One way is practical and the other isn't.

The impractical way is to sit at your computer all day long waiting for an eBay Item Sold email. As soon as you get the email, and assuming that your buyer has paid through PayPal, you can manually respond to your customer using their name and other personal details.

However, since sales on eBay are not easily predictable, you could find yourself waiting all day for those sales emails. Sods law says that an eBay Item Sold email will arrive the instant you leave your PC to eat dinner, or go to the shops, or do the garden etc.

The alternative and practical solution is to use a software package to automate the delivery of digital products from your eBay sales.

When looking for such a software system here are some of the important criteria for you to consider:

1. The digital product can be instantly downloaded after payment without you having to do anything.

2. In your automated emails, you always address your buyers by name thanks to the automatic capturing of their contact details.

3. The digital delivery system works 24x7 whether or not your PC is switched on.

4. Ensure your feedback is packed with really positive comments from happy buyers who received their product within seconds of their payment.

5. Automatically include an upsell offer in the email to your auction buyer.

6. Incorporates several levels of security to ensure the correct payment is received before delivery details are fired off.

7. Works with all eBay auction types - Buy it Now auctions, regular auctions, Best Offer, store items and Second Chance auctions.

8. Unlimited number of products.

9. Reports can be produced of digital sales made showing which eBay listings are the most profitable and which are the least effective.

10. Easy to use for none technical people - like me!

The system I use is called My Digital Dispatch. I thoroughly recommend it if you're selling digital products on eBay.

You can find out about My Digital Dispatch here.

In many business sectors, it is commonplace to take notice of what the competition is doing. There's lots to learn. And there's many a product been launched to take advantage of perceived weaknesses in the competition's offerings.

The same is true on eBay. Your competitors can unwittingly provide you with highly useful and useable intelligence. There's no doubt in my mind, it can pay to spy on your competitors. They may just supply you with an idea that you can use to convert losing listings into profitable auctions. And it's all legal.

The key to begin spying on your competitors is to use eBay's Advanced Search facility.

You're only interested in completed auctions, and the easiest way to do this is via the Advanced Search page. There's no point at looking at auctions which haven't finished. There's no way anyone can know how they're going to end.

Go instead to the Advanced Search page, the link is under eBay's Search box. Key in keywords that you know will home in on your competitors' listings. Make sure you tick 'Completed listings only' and set the minimum number of bids to 1. Also, if you set it to sort the results by 'Price: highest first', this will produce a list with the highest selling items first. Ignore any results in the list which are in red, as this means they didn't sell.

Analyse the list and look at the following:

1. Auction Titles
For items which are similar to yours, what words do the top sellers have in their titles. Equally important, what words do they omit which you might use. In fact, if your titles bear no resemblance to your successful competitors, it may be time for you to have a major revision.

2. Auction Descriptions
Top sellers will nearly always create original descriptions. They rarely copy and paste from other websites. They go to the trouble of generating a unique description, even though the product may be similar or identical to that of other sellers, because they know this is more effective.

3. Auction Descriptions Writing Style
There is a debate about whether descriptions should be written in a conversational style or in a more business like manner. The clue is to see how your competing top sellers do it. They are experts in their market, and it would pay you to follow their style of auction description prose.

4. Pictures
It virtually goes without saying that top sellers use quality pictures on their auctions. And with items of significant cost, they will probably use several pictures in order to convey the best impression they can to prospective bidders. Make sure you do likewise.

5. Auction Timing
Top sellers know when it is best to start and end their auctions. Examine what they do in terms of timing and, unless there are any practical reasons why not, schedule your listings to similar timings.

6. Buy it Now Pricing
If your competitors sell using Buy it Now auctions, it's worth seeing what kind of price they've managed to achieve recently. If you're selling similar or identical items, you can undercut them with your Buy it Now prices.

Now I'm not advocating here that you copy a competitor word for word, or steal their images. I'm just suggesting that you can tweak your own auctions based upon the knowledge and experience of sellers who already have some of the keys to selling successfully in your market.

If you're ready to start, just head on over to eBay's Advanced Search page.

In the UK it's here.
In the USA it's here.

This is probably the biggest value gift I have ever offered.

This time, I'm giving you £280 ($529) worth of software products. In all, there are 18 software products, many of which you will find useful in your own internet business activities.

Best of all, however, you get Master Resell Rights to every product.

This means you can sell any of the products from websites and on eBay, and keep all the money you make! And to enable you to do this, each software product comes with a readymade sales page.

If you would like to get hold of the 18 products, click here for your free software.

There is absolutely no catch.

Nothing surprises me when it comes to internet auctions. Amuse yourself with some of these beauties.

Don't bite off more than you chew!

I can't wait for the Postman

Wow, this takes me back to childhood days

Are you feeling peckish?

Do you like Ginger Nuts?

Disclaimer - I have no association with any of the sellers of the above items.