This is the time of the year people start having garage sales. If you sell on eBay this is the best source for merchandise. Many great bargains to be found. The other thing I like about garage sales is that I find books and cd’s that I wanted to buy, but not at full price. Last year I scored a good number of books that would have cost $30.00 for about $1.00 each. Look around and find out when people in your area are having garage sales you never know what you are going to find.

The last few months have been the worst since I started eBay. The sales I have been making have been for items with small margins. The good stuff just is not selling. When it come to paying my eBay fee’s at the end of the month it seems I pay more in fee’s then what I make in profit. What I might do is start moving more items into my eBay store and just keep a few active listings. This means that I can no longer count on eBay as a source of income. The affiliate programs I set up are going to be my main source of income. If anyone is in the same boat leave a comment, would like to know if others are having this problem. There are many free sites that I can target for extra sales. The free classified sections also do well. The problem with eBay is all the merchandise that you get stuck with if it does not sell. In the last few years I have managed to do better with my selection of products. If I can’t sell this stuff on eBay then I will have a garage sale in the summer to clear out some items and get back some money. In the past I have done well with garage sales as I have some unique items that people do not tend to find when they go bargain hunting. Well it looks like me and eBay might be parting ways for awhile. Sad to see the relationship end this way.

The first online business that I had online that made any real amount of money was eBay. With just a few items to list and some effort I went on to become a Power Seller. If only I had more information and training I would have been an eBay rock star. Well forward a few years and the economy as it is. The move to an online business is the only choice some are facing. If you want to survive then learning properly how to make money with eBay is a must.

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Yesterday I found an email from eBay in regards to a new PPC platform that they were setting up on their site. Well boy was I excited, to reach the eBay buyers was a dream come true for any affiliate marketer. Well it did not work out the way I planned. After setting up my new account for the program and being promised $20.00 in credit to get started I set  up my first campaign. Well after all that trouble it seems the PPC campaign can only link back to my own eBay sale or store items for sale. Looking at this it seems eBay double dipping again. They are asking me to list and item and pay fees, and then pay again to have the listing show up in other areas of their site. Well I erased the campaign that I was working on and will have to revist this eBay site another day. It might work for some items I sell on eBay so I am not going to say that overall it’s that bad of an idea, but I do wish they would allow to advertise off site and conect to url’s from my other affiliate landing pages.

With all the other business I have online I let my Power Seller status slip on eBay. When eBay was my only online business I used to update and find new items to sell all day long. There were no other distractions. Then I went on to starting site for affiliate marketing and my Power Seller status was removed since I was not maintaining the $1,000 a month that eBay requires Power Sellers to maintain. Well forward to now and it’s time to redo the eBay business. With eBay you need to keep listing new item and re listing best sellers to gain more sales and get the Power Seller status. This week I am going to make a plan and by next week I should be able to put some action into getting back the Power Seller icon on my account. It will take hard work as you need to get $1000 a month in sales for a few months before eBay sends you the little email with the invite to the program.

There are some great books on Power Selling and the benefits to sales once you gain the status. Being a Power Sellers brings trust to the platform.  The buyers on eBay will want your goods even if they cost more, because they now trust you.

Three Weeks to eBay Profits: Go from Beginner to Successful Seller in Less than a Month

eBay PowerSeller Secrets: Insider Tips from eBay’s Most Successful Sellers (2nd Edition) (v. 2)

There are also some training programs for eBay sellers. Don’t discount eBay they are still a very powerful online market place and many people make full time incomes from selling on eBay.

Auction Work At Home

If you are a seller on eBay then you should do everything you can to promote other offers to your customers. As per eBay rules you can not promote other offers outside eBay on the eBay site. What you can do is once you have a customer you can promote offers to them when you prepare your packages. This can be as simple as inserting a flyer with a link to another web site you have. The best use of this method is to try to cross promote offers that are somehow related to what you sold on eBay. If you can do this you will increase the number sales to your related site or offer.

Simple tools to use:

Buy some cheap business card paper, you can even buy these at the dollar stores. Then print out what information you want your customer to take action on.

You can also buy stickers or other promotional stationary that can be cost effective to lead your eBay customer to your other offers.

If you get their email you can also ask them if it is alright to send them related information when you have a new offers. This is a great way to start building a marketing list.

Customers do not mind this type of promotion and you can use it to start gaining extra sales.

With eBay you do not need to just sell customers the products you list,you can also use eBay to gain new sales for your other offers. Take advantage of this type of advertising as it costs next to nothing.

Today I was looking for any books by PT Barnum, yes the circus guy. As a business man there is a lot to study from Barnum’s writing. I will post more about Barnum in a future post, now back to my eBay story.  In the listings I found some one selling a PT Barnum book and contacted the seller to find out how much it would cost to ship to Canada. The seller wrote back and said it was a pdf ebook and was selling it for $2.99 which is cheap except this is a free ebook anyone can download from public domain ebook sites. After getting the reply I did a search and download my copy for free. I am not sure what this seller is doing is right since this is a free work that anyone can download. The it can also be a smart way to make some extra money. There are many people who are buying ebook readers and are willing to pay for ebooks to add to their reader. If you are looking for a product to sell on eBay then you might want to try a few ebooks and see how it goes. Most free ebooks are in the public domain and are very old, but I guess some people might search for them as I did.

The last few weeks have seen many of my sales on eBay not be credited in paypal. The transactions were showing as claim payment which for the life of me I had no idea why this was happening. After using the live chat feature with two eBay customers service agents I now understand the problem. It seems on some of the auction that I re-list, the paypal address was an old email address I was using on eBay a few years ago. I am not sure how this address was showing up as the main payment email. It was causing the problem, so after about an hour of going into every listing and making sure that the right email was there I thought I had the problem fixed. Then I got a new sale, the sale is showing a print ship label which in eBay talk meant that the payment cleared paypal and I can ship the item. Wrong, the system is showing ship payment and did not post the funds to my account. Now what this means is if I did not have a second income for my affiliate business I would be very screwed until eBay is able to fix my problem. It’s been a good run with eBay, but as a seller I am not happy with their service and might have to find other ways to sell online. With Craigslist and other sites for free, it might be a good time to try new things and end the frustration.

The last few days I have been stuck in a eBay Paypal glitch on one of my eBay accounts. At the end of January eBay changed the my eBay page which caused the glitch. What is happening is that when some one pays me for an item in my eBay it is asking me to claim the funds from Paypal. when I click through and try to collect the funds there is nothing showing the sale in Paypal. After about five sales sitting there in this state, I contacted eBay. It seems they do not know what the problem is and it is only causing a problem on one of my accounts.

I was told to change my Paypal email address in eBay to another email address I use for Paypal. So far I am not sure if this fixed the problem since I have not had a sale to test the reps theory. If anyone else is having this problem please leave a comment.

Since this is a short month, I have been trying to make as much money as I can at the start of the month. This way if the end of the moth tanks then I have enough to cover the expenses for the month. This is a great way to actually work your online business. Try to start the month as strong as possible and then you do not have to stress it so much at the end of the month. Get cracking and make as much as you can this month.