By : Nidhi Gupta

Making money isn’t an easy thing to do these days. Many people want to turn their unused items into extra money, and eBay fills that need. Selling on Ebay does require some effort but is no means that hard. Here are some basic steps you need to learn to start your own eBay business.

These tips are for the beginners who would like to earn some money on eBay. The necessary components to have your own online store are really not that demanding. All you need to start is a computer, Internet access, a digital camera, and of course, products to sell.

You can sell used or like new items you find at garage sales, in your garage and so on. You can sell new items that you find at discount prices from liquidators, dollar stores, store closings and clearance sales. You may be even luckier if you can find a supplier who will make you a deal.

Skills for the Online Business World

Skills for Marketing

You can develop marketing skills as you educate yourself on how to sell various items on eBay. Reading some marketing books and articles to help yourself learn how to sell things is a good idea, but you can also learn from observing other successful entrepreneurs online. Take time to read and plan out your strategy. You will thank yourself later for taking this effort now.

Getting Organized

You need to maintain good records of your sales, and not just for tax purposes. You need to be able to keep track of which buyers have paid, which have received their items, and so on. Setting up a spreadsheet with all the pertinent information should help keep your business under control. You can also take advantage of third party payment systems online. There are options to choose from; however, they charge for about one percent of the item price as a fee. The small fee is nothing compared with your clients purchasing your items with ease.

The Basics of HTML

To ensure that your auction is eye-catching and appealing, you will want to know some basic HTML skills. There are a lot of easy and basic tutorials offered online. You can begin by searching for html tutorials, and then you can choose which one you like for your convenience.

Getting Started on eBay

Start by choosing a certain type of product to specialize in (for example, toys, clothes, etc.). That way, you can become an authority in those products and how to sell them effectively. You may decide to expand your product line at a later date.

Setting up an account is easy. Register an eBay user ID and you’re on your way. Make sure to read the eBay selling rules thoroughly and check out all the tips eBay offers along the way.

To start, put up only a few items and don’t saturate your auctions with too many of the exact same item. The primary goal is to sell your item at the highest price. If you are selling five of the same items, it may be more difficult for you to get a high price. Test out various selling methods and find out what works best for your particular items.

Ideas for Online Marketing

Promote your business with your own personal website. Your site can be a webpage just to promote your eBay business, or it can be an online store that links to your auctions. It gives you a more credible presence on the Internet and gives your clients a better sense of who you are. Create a mailing list. Mail out an informative newsletter on a regular basis to your subscribers. Don’t forget to promote your auctions in the newsletter too.

Other Auction Sites

Don’t limit your business to eBay. EBay is only one of the many auction sites available, but it is by far the largest. However, eBay’s fees can prove to be expensive after awhile. It may be more cost effective to sell your items on other auction sites, and you may face less competition, particularly if you are selling items at a fixed price. Other auction sites might be a more lucrative opportunity for you to buy items to sell for higher prices elsewhere.

All you need is some motivation and patience to watch your hard-earned money grow through on eBay business.

Keep in mind, though, you may also have fewer buyers for your products and may have a lower selling price. You will need to determine which is the most efficient way to sell your items.

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By: Admin

The San Jose, California-based Internet auction giant eBay has bought StumbleUpon, which is a social website that helps people discover and share content online, for $75m (£38m). StumbleUpon is a web browser toolbar for users to share website favorites and rate them. It is a website that recommends other websites. And eBay connects hundreds of millions of people around the world every day through commerce, delivering fun, engaging and trusted online experiences.

StumbleUpon was founded in 2001 by three Canadian software engineers in Calgary. It is free for users and generates revenue through advertising, although users may pay an annual fee to avoid seeing any adverts. On this search engine, users get search results that are based on their profiles, which give them more relevant results than a regular search engine. StumbleUpon helps people find Web sites, videos, products, people and other online information based on their personal interest. It already has 2.3 million users and is adding more rapidly.

By the means of this deal eBay will get access to almost 2.5 million registered users, who recommend sites to each other. On the top of that, eBay’s Michael Buhr will become its general manager and StumbleUpon’s founders and managers will become eBay employees and work together to enhance the user experience, evolve its unique product and grow the community.

Driven by word-of-mouth, the StumbleUpon community has grown 150 percent year over year and delivers approximately five million new recommendations a day to its large, highly engaged user base.

eBay is likely to integrate StumbleUpon’s recommendation service into its auctions and sales as a way to surface less-trafficked items that may be of interest to shoppers with esoteric tastes. And according to eBay this acquisition is not going to have a material impact on its financial guidance issued with its first quarter earnings release this past April.

eBay acquired online ticket vendor StubHub Inc. In February, and has previously acquired transaction facilitator PayPal and VOIP vendor Skype.

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By : Nidhi Gupta

If you’re selling on eBay, most likely you’re currently using the services of PayPal (or have used them in the past) to process your transactions for you.

Afterall, eBay owns PayPal, so its’ services are custom tailored to make doing business on the world’s largest auction site a breeze, right?

Maybe. It just depends on who you ask.

PayPal has its Advantages and Disadvantages. Let’s take a look at what PayPal can do for you, and what it can’t.

The Disadvantages.

• PayPal is very vulnerable to fraud, and it’s you as the seller who’ll be paying the price when it happens. What’s more, they do take a percentage from every transaction that you could be keeping if your buyers were paying by cheque.

• You might also have noticed that PayPal comes from the eBay school of customer service, enjoying such pastimes as hiding their phone number and only ever sending out automated responses to emailed queries.

• PayPal has an unusual number of campaigners against it, most of the people who’ve had their accounts frozen and had to chase PayPal for months for thousands of dollars. Some of these people have filed a class action lawsuit against PayPal, claiming damages for lost business and they won. This alone should make you cautious about using PayPal.

The Advantages.

• PayPal is quick and easy for buyers to use, and is certainly a more secure and reassuring way to accept credit cards than signing up for your own merchant account. You’ll probably also find that it’s cheaper for you.

• That’s before you even consider that eBay buyers are more eager to buy from someone who accepts PayPal, as it saves them all sorts of hassle with posting payment and then waiting around. PayPal lets you give speedier customer service.

But Should You Use It Exclusively?

It’s really a matter of customer service. Some of your potential customers might not have or want a PayPal account. Not everyone loves electronic payments. Some fear them. So a good rule of “options” is a smart one. The more options a customer has available to them to pay for their item, the better the chance of meeting the demand and therefore increasing sales.

Keep in mind that some buyers come to eBay because it is one of the few places on the Internet where many sellers will accept payment by more traditional methods.

Question is… do you want these people as customers, or don’t you?

You might notice that some people are aware of the issues of PayPal and refuse to use it, but still want to pay electronically.

For these rare cases, it’s worth opening an account at a well known PayPal rival that has a better reputation. The current favorite seems to be NoChex (www.nochex.com), a U.K. based company, which offers free chargeback protection.

NoChex is quite a lot better than PayPal by most standards, but just doesn’t have the same market penetration or convenience of use on eBay. Still, there’s nothing stopping you from accepting both, just as long as you make it clear that you do on your auctions.

Tip: if you find that you really prefer NoChex to PayPal, then you could offer your buyers a discount for paying through NoChex.

You may also want to check out a U.S. based company called ProPay at www.propay.com.

They have been approved by eBay and have been getting good reviews.

Google has introduced it’s own merchant system called “googlebase”.

Finally, if you’ve been looking for a more traditional merchant account, without many of the fees associated with them, an alternative solution is at www.free-merchant.com. They claim their cart-system “integrates easily with your e-Bay auction!”

There you have it, a few alternative solutions to PayPal. Keep your options open as a seller and your buyer may thank you with a winning bid!

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