The eBay Partner Network has been through some changes in the last few months. The affiliate payout went from commission based on sales to pay per click with a value component. What this means to eBay affiliates is that some people have seen their income drop and other are about even at the level they were before the change. Another thing that has been taking revenue away from affiliates is Google. There are many affiliates using BANS to create their eBay stores. The BANS program allows users to create a very eBay focused site on any niche that the store owner wants to create. The problem with many BANS sites is that there is no content other then the links back to eBay auctions. The Google bots have been busy removing many BANS sites from the index. This has been a problem for awhile, but in recent months more affiliates have lost index ranking on sites that were doing well. If you were smart enough to build quality content then your site should still be in the index. The new quality based click payment structure does still offer an opportunity. If you have any BANS sites that are still listed in Google’s index make sure to add content and make it SEO friendly. If your site has fallen out of the index then you need to fix your site. If you had a site that was profitable and it has been removed from the index, clean up your site and wait to see if Google re-index that site back you into the search engine. If you are still building sites with BANS then make sure to focus on content and building a great user experience. The well built BANS sites continue to be indexed and making money for their owners. This goes for any web site you are working on make sure you build quality content rich sites with a great user experience. If manage to work hard and build a great site then you will continue to make money for many years to come with your sites.

A few post back I wrote about how I made money with a drop shipper and eBay. The company I used was Doba and by far they are the most reliable drop shipper you are going to find online. Everything you order is tracked and they provide the shipping information once the item is sent out. Many readers wrote in asking more about Doba and general tips to make money with eBay. Since this is the best time of the year to make large amounts of money with eBay you need to get going and avoid missing the holiday season. The first step you need to take is getting items to sell on eBay. Join Doba for the free trial period and start finding item to list online. Once you have listed your items online in a few days you should start to see orders coming in. Take a few days to play with the Doba interface and learn how to link your eBay store to Doba. There are many seller lessons that you can complete to understand the Doba system and the eBay market place. There are so many items to pick from the Doba suppliers that at first you might feel a little overwhelmed. Just take your time to do research and see on eBay what is selling, you can cut and paste item title to eBay and see how many are listed and if they have any bids. There are a lot of items that sell very well it’s just a matter of doing some research. The Doba drop ship program works for anyone who already is selling on eBay and needs more products to sell. There are many stay at home mom’s that are making full time wages using Doba and eBay. If you take the time to join Doba and learn how to find products and list them on eBay you will make money. The Doba Drop Shipping program has been a secret of many Power Sellers, but now I am sharing it with you.

Doba Company Details:

Doba gives you access to over 1 million products at wholesale prices that you can sell on eBay for a profit.  These products are shipped straight from the suppliers warehouse to your buyers – this is called Drop Shipping and it has become the fastest growing home based business in the US.

Join Doba For Free 14 Day Trial!

It’s been a few months since I stopped selling on eBay. It was a matter of the fee’s being higher then then the amount of money being made. With the cost of shipping and eBay fee’s I could no longer be at a profit by selling on eBay. When I was at my peak and there was less competition for the items I was selling, the money was pouring in. In the last year many sellers from Asia have started to dry up sales for my niche. Still not sure how they make money, but the Asian sellers are able to sell a product cheap and pay shipping and eBay fee’s and still manage to make money. As my sales on eBay dried up my fee’s were higher then what I was making in profit. It was not easy stop selling on eBay, but I managed to make money online in different ways. It is always better to have your eggs in a few different baskets. You never know when an income source will dry out. Without eBay I had to figure away to get rid of some slow moving stock. The first choice was Craig’s List. In a few days I was able to get rid of a good number of items and still have a profit. All in all I would say that I have lost about $500 a month by not selling on eBay. This amount is based on the period of time that my business had no competition. The lesson learned is that you need to have many sources of income online, if one fails you have a back up.

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.

Started to get new sales on eBay. It was slow as normal the first 2 weeks of January, but it seems to be getting back on track. If you have any unwanted Christmas gifts start listing. With only a little less then a month to go for Valentine’s day if you have any items that relate start listing and give your self enough time to ship and get your items to customers on time. If you run affiliate offers start ramping  your promotions Valentine’s is a great time to make extra cash. This week I am going through a lot of unwanted stuff I have at home and listing it on eBay and Craigslist. There are some items that I will garage sale in the summer, but it feels good to clean and get rid of the clutter.

The new year is here and I want 2009 to be a fantastic year for my online business. With the economy the way it is and a tough year ahead, setting goals can make a difference in what I can get done. Since there are so many things I can not change I will work with what has been good to me in the past year. One of my main sources of income is and has been eBay for a great number of years now. The thing with eBay is that you always have to deal with customer service issues. Then there is the packing and shipping. In the new year I will limit what I sell on eBay and work more on my affiliate offers. With affiliate offers you do not have to worry about customer service or shipping, some one else does it all for you. The first thing I am doing is finding out what my eBay fee’s average per month. Then I can create advertising ppc for some of my affiliate offers and see if I can beat my eBay profits. If I can start to show results with my effort then eBay will be further on the back burner and I will use eBay as a back up source of income for those odd months that my other offers are not making money. In a previous post I wrote that eBay was going downhill and I do think many sellers are not as focused on the platform. It has been difficult to compete, when so many items for sale on eBay now ship direct from China or Hong Kong. How are North American based sellers to compete on price. Last week I bought a usb bluetooth adapter for $4.35 with free shipping to Canada. The same item cost $35.00 in a local computer store. As more and more China based companies get on eBay there will be fewer and fewer sales.

Goal 2009:

More sources of income less dependency on eBay.

Just a general feel of the eBay platform is that it seems to be losing many sellers to other selling options. There are also some new rules that have placed sellers at risk of being banned from the sight or not showing up in the search results. It’s true that some changes will benefit the buyers, but it is also a very unfair system for sellers. In some cases even if a seller made a small mistake eBay does not take into account the issue and can ban a member.

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If you are an eBay seller not only must you get use to having less sales, but you need to have a back up plan in case you get banned from the site. This is why having your listings on other sites like www.ioffer.com or www.ecrater.com can be a great back up.