Ever wondered how PowerSellers can possibly make tens of thousands of dollars every month? It will come as no surprise to learn that one of the reasons PowerSellers make more sales is because they hold the secrets to making great eBay listings. So today we are talking you through the tips that really put the ‘pow’ in PowerSeller!

PowerSellers know that to make sales, you have to perfect two key aspects of a listing:

1. The item title

2. The listing description

Read on as we unleash the secrets of writing fabulous item titles and informative listing descriptions.

Unlocking the door to more sales with great keywords

An item title is so important to your selling success because it is the first ever glimpse buyers will get of you and your listing, which means writing perfect item titles is key to making you sell like a PowerSeller.

A great listing title will: rank highly in search results, evoke interest in buyers, tell buyers important information about the item being sold, and most importantly, get buyers to click the link to enter your listing. This is without a doubt, the most important step in making a sale! Once you get the buyer inside your auction, you have done 60% of the work.

Write like a PowerSeller: Tapping into the buyer’s psyche

So how do PowerSellers decide what to put in their item titles? Well they start out by asking themselves "what would I search for if I were a buyer looking for the item I’m selling?" For example, if I was selling a pair of hiking boots, I would consider what a buyer would search for when they hit the eBay home page. I would probably start by searching for "womens hiking boots size 8". For these keywords, I am given over 100 results, therefore I really need to refine what I am looking for, so I will enter the preferred brand name and condition of the boots, so my new search phrase will be "womens hiking boots size 8 HI TEC used"( don’t worry about grammar, most PowerSellers consider it a waste of characters). This narrows down my search to a much more manageable 5 listings which I can take a good look at.

So by using the above method, in less than 2 minutes I have found some of the best keywords to use in my item title and I have checked out what my competitors are using for theirs.

However, my new item title keywords only make up 39 of the 55 characters I can use, so what else should I be putting in my title? You might think that using words like "reliable" or "strong" might be a good idea. Well, you would be wrong! All PowerSellers know that adjectives (they are the ones that you use to describe something) do nothing to help you make sales. This is simply because no one ever searches for words like "super", "sexy", "great", "latest" so this sends your listing down to the bottom of eBay search results.

Instead, what most PowerSellers would use their remaining characters for would be to promote buying that particular pair. The best way to do this? Free shipping! Not only does this entice buyers (after all, no one likes paying for shipping) it also helps your listing to rank better in search results. Perfect!

So now with my item title sorted: "Womens Hiking Boots Size 8 Used HI TEC Free Shipping" It’s time for me to move on to perfecting my item description.

Writing desirable descriptions

Like I mentioned earlier, by getting a buyer to take a look inside your listing, you are over the major hurdle of getting them to find your listing. Your next challenge is to give them plenty of information about the item, ’sell it’ in such a way that makes the buyer think that they need or want the item and get them to click that all important "Buy It Now"button.

Here are some key ideas to keep in mind when you write your item description:

• The goal here is to convince the buyer to buy the item, and to inform about the item as much as possible.

• Be honest in your description. If there is damage to the item or the packaging, say so. If it is 5 years old, make this clear too. Giving accurate and honest descriptions helps buyers to make informed decisions and reduces the likelihood of you receiving bad feedback or having to deal with returns when items are not as described.

• Give away as much information as possible. This means pushing the features and benefits of the item you are selling, e.g for hiking boots, a feature might be strong tread on the soles, where the benefit would be less risk of injury from slipping over. Really get into the details in your description. How strong are the laces? What color are they? What are the boots made of? Are they waterproof? Listing all this information is crucial to showing buyers the worth of your item, and will also be a big help to you as you will get less buyers asking you questions about the auction, saving you time.

• Remember you are writing for an online audience with a notoriously short attention span. This doesn’t mean that you should necessarily cut down the amount of content, it simply means you must present it in such a way that it looks like a whole lot less! You can do this by bullet pointing information, by creating a list of FAQ’s, by keeping sentences and paragraphs short and snappy, and by creating plenty of ‘white space’ in your listing. This means you will have plenty of spaces in between paragraphs, as opposed to large chunks of text which most readers will simply skim over.

Bonus PowerSeller Tip: Make the most of your eBay About Me page. An About Me page can be used to help buyers get to know you and establish trust. The best About Me pages are so fabulously charming and charismatic that buyers are convinced that you are the right person to buy from. For more tips and ideas on About Me pages, check out the eBay About Me Page Discussion Board.

While it might seem like a lot of busy work, the above tips can really help you to increase your sales. You don’t have to do it all at once, how about starting out by optimizing your key words? Then perhaps next week, you take a closer look at your item descriptions. We would love to hear the results of your changes so make sure you let us know how you get on by leaving a comment below.

MOQ is an acronym which stands for minimum order quantity, and refers to the minimum amount that can be ordered from a supplier. For example, if a supplier advertises a MOQ of 1,000 units, you must be able to purchase at least 1,000 units to be able to deal with that supplier. MOQ’s will either be quoted in dollars or in units. Sometimes MOQ is also referred to as MQO, or minimum quantity order.

Why suppliers have MOQs

Wholesale suppliers usually operate on very low profit margins which means they rely heavily on bulk-buying customers to make a profit. Although new business owners can sometimes find the large investment necessary to meet the MOQ difficult, ultimately it’s necessary to get the best wholesale prices available.

Some suppliers do not have a MOQ, which is very useful for new sellers who can only afford to buy say, 100 units; but often this means that you end up paying more per item than someone who buys 1,000 units, for example.

How MOQ’s affect online retailers

MOQ’s can affect new online retailers by preventing them from being able to deal with certain suppliers and distributors that only deal with large companies with physical stores. This may mean they have to use smaller and sometimes less economical suppliers who do not set large MOQ’s, but who have to charge a higher price per unit to make a profit themselves.

For this reason, new online retailers who are looking at using distributors with low to no MOQs should consider selling items with little to no competition. Retailers who want to sell competitive items, but can only afford to purchase small quantities at a time, will soon be drowned out by larger retailers who can afford to buy in bulk.

If you are anything like us, you’ll love all the online tools that are available to make our lives as online sellers easier and more streamlined. The SaleHoo team love finding new tools, resources and sites that enrich our online selling (we know, geeky, huh?) and we want to share all the great online tools out there with you, our loyal members, so read on as we review the best online tools and resources!

Google Insights for Search

Google Insights for Search allows you to compare search volume patterns across specific categories, geographic locations, and seasons or times of the year.

How it can help you: Google Insights for Search can tell you what people are currently searching for. This can help online sellers immensely when they are looking for new item niches. For example, if I want to get into selling camping equipment, I would search for camping equipment in the ‘Shopping’ category. The results tell me that people is Australian searchers are the biggest searches for camping equipment when they shop online, which means that it may be a good idea for me to sell camping equipment on eBay.com.au.

Business.gov

The official business link to the U.S Government

How it can help you: US-based sellers will find this site very handy when it comes to finding out about permits (for importing, for example), licensing, and taxation.  

You can also find out answers to commonly and not-so-commonly asked questions, and information on how to (legally) start a business and how other government agencies can help you. The community forums are also very informative with plenty of business owners and government experts online and available to answer your questions.

Power Sellers Unite Auction Site Watch

Power Sellers Unite Auction Site Watch monitors the number of listings on various auction sites.

How it can help you: The statistics are updated multiple times per day and therefore provide us online sellers with real- time data on which sites are getting hot, which means it is great for those looking for eBay alternatives!

Rolbe’s eBay Fee Calculator

A super easy to use calculator which crunches the numbers and instantly tells you how much it will cost you to sell your item on eBay.

How it can help you: This clever little calculator can help you out when it comes time to see how viable a new item you are looking into selling will be. It’s always important for sellers to calculate these costs before they go bulk buying any new items, as listing fees can sometimes mean the difference between making a profit or a loss, especially for sellers interested in highly competitive products like consumer electronics.

PhotoBucket.com

Allows you to store your item photos digitally.

How it can help you: By storing your items photo’s digitally, you can have them available to you from anywhere you log on, all over the world. Not only that, but Photo Bucket has some great tools for helping you organize your images, which can help by saving you the item and frustration involved with retrieving photos for listings.

Square Trade

These guys are revolutionizing the warranty industry by offering warranties on all items (yes, including second hand ones!) at a fraction of the cost – with their warranties being up to 70% less than some in-store warranty packages.

How it can help you: This is such an exciting tool for eBay buyers and sellers – they even have special rates for us! By using Square Trade, you can offer all your buyers a warranty on electronic items like TV’s, cameras, kettles, computers and laptops, mp3 players, refrigerators and washing machines and much more!

This means buyers will have so much more confidence in buying from you – so you will rake in more sales! Best of all, sellers can actually earn money by offering Square Trade warranties. Wondering how that could possibly work? Allow me to explain: You begin by simply clicking the link to activate Square Trade then you log onto eBay and enable the Square Trade feature. Easy! Square Trade then trawls through your listings and when it sees listings which are eligible for a warranty, it automatically attaches a banner to the listing, showing all potential buyers that they can easily get a warranty from you for the item.

When they buyer bids on your auction or uses the Buy It Now feature, they will have the option of investing in a warranty from Square Trade.

Square Trade will pay you from 10-40% of the price of the warranty – so make sure you outline the benefits for your buyers in your listing description. There are no obligations, contracts or costs involved, meaning there is no risk for you either!

Auction Sniper

You know how sometimes when you are buying on eBay and your bid is the highest right up until the very end of the auction, and while you are sitting pretty and thinking you have this one in the bag, then suddenly, some guy pops out of nowhere and buys your beloved item at the very last second?! You are left feeling utterly deflated, and without the buzz of winning the great item that you just lost.

Well, rest assured that there is a solution! Auction Sniper dramatically increases your chances of winning by automatically bidding for you – you simply tell Auction Sniper what you want to buy and how much you want to pay, and leave the bidding up to them! You can start out by getting a free trial and if you like what you see, you can continue using Auction Sniper by paying them 1% of the final value (minimum of US$0.25c and a maximum of US$9.95).

How it can help you: Sellers can benefit from Auction Sniper by being able to snap up arbitrage items to re sell on eBay without having to stay up til 4am to wait for the auction to finish or without having to sit anxiously, waiting to place your bid in the final seconds before the auction finishes.

Auction Bloopers

Another great tool to help you pick up arbitrage items to re-sell on eBay and make a nice little profit – Auction Bloopers helps you find bargains by searching for products you are looking that contain misspelled keywords. How does it work? You type the correct spelling of an item you are looking for then Auction Bloopers will show you eBay listings with misspellings.

How it can help you: The beauty of this is that, as we all know, listings with misspellings do not show up in search results which means your will have little to no competition when it comes time to bid so you will get access to bargains which you can re sell on eBay (with the correct spelling, of course!) and make a great profit!

My Friendly Fox

My Friendly Fox offers a simple but very useful add-on for Firefox web browsers which adds eBay tools to your toolbar.How it can help you: eBay sellers can use this toolbar to access their listings, product price comparisons, and consumer reviews. Best of all, it offers quick access to and real-time updates on your auctions, saving you time checking and rechecking to see how your listings are going.

Rolbe’s PayPal Fee Calculator

The same people who bought us the eBay fee calculator have also made this handy little tool which allows you to calculate PayPal fees before you list.

How it can help you:  With Rolbe’s PayPal Calculator, you’ll never underestimate your PayPal fees again – meaning you can list your items for much more accurate prices and get the best price possible every time.

So there you have it, our favorite online tools and resources all exposed and available for you to make the most of today!

Do you know something we don’t know? If you have a favorite online tool you like to use which we haven’t listed here, tell us all about it by leaving a comment below.

DVDs have long been a popular seller for online traders and recently, with the economy in tatters, people have been staying in more and more and it seems that DVDs are the world’s preferred time-killer, not to mention money saver. If you can get four people on the couch watching a movie at home for $10, you are much better off that if you pay $12 per head at the cinema!

5 Good Reasons to Sell DVDS:

1. They are easy to store, and even a big bulk lot can fit in your home – you won’t need to pay for a storage unit.
2. They are easy to ship and are so small that you can do a big bulk load without having to hire a shipping container or a truck, meaning you will get a better price from your supplier.
3. They are a low-involvement item. This means that buyers don’t have to think too hard about whether they need it, like it, or whether it will suit them like they would if buying something like clothing or shoes, which means you will sell more of them.
4. They are cheap and low-risk to send out to buyers so you will have less damaged returns and hassles dealing with shipping insurance claims.
5. There are plenty of DVD niches – more on this later!

Hot Tip: DVDs without cases are much, much cheaper to ship than ones with cases (often less than half the cost) so if you can, find a local supplier of cheap DVD cases and have your DVD supplier send out the discs and cover sleeves, then make them up yourself as you sell them.

Important Things to Know About Sourcing Wholesale DVDs

You will be operating on very low profit margins.

Expect to make no more than a few dollars max per DVD – you will need to sell in high volumes to really make a profit. Increase your profits by offering multi-buy discounts, combined shipping and by increasing your shipping costs a little. This will help to boost your profits, but only if you increase it by a small amount which still keeps you competitive with other DVD sellers. Work on the JND (just noticeable difference) principle, also known as the differential threshold. This theory tells us that consumers will only notice a difference in price or quantity when it is over 20%. Have you ever walked into a store with a 15% discount? I don’t think so, however, if the discount was 20%, you’d be much more likely to shop there. Did you notice when Coca Cola cans were reduced in quantity? Unlikely. This is because product owners know how much they can cut the quantity down by before too many people will notice.

You can use the JND principal to your advantage by increasing your shipping costs by up to 20%. For example, if the cost of shipping is $2.40, you could increase this cost by 20% ($0.48c) and charge $2.88 for shipping. This example works well because it still keeps the cost under $3 which some buyers might be out off by, and also because $2.88 is a specific price (as opposed to $2.50) and is more believable to buyers who will assume you are giving them the best price possible.

While $0.48c might not seem like a lot, it is certainly worth it when you will be selling 100+ DVDs per week (which you should be aiming to work up to) as you will be adding an extra $48 to your profits!

You may encounter counterfeits

Fake, pirated, bootlegged, counterfeited, whatever you want to call them, unlicensed DVDs mean trouble and should be avoided. If you are caught selling pirated DVDs you could be sued and face massive consequences. Beyond that, the worst pirated DVDs are often of inferior quality; the sound may be out of sync so when people talk, their mouths move but the audio comes 1 second later – very frustrating for watchers, or, even worse, they may have been recorded in a theater using a handy cam. This means you can often see people walking around in the theater or hear them munching on pop corn. Any buyers to have to endure this will not be happy and will surely report the seller they purchased from.
The best way to spot a fake DVD is by the price. If a supplier you are looking into is significantly cheaper than other suppliers, they are probably selling fakes… either that or they are simply don’t like making money!

If you do suspect a supplier could be selling fakes, ask them which regions the DVD will work in. If the buyer responds by boasting that their DVDs are Region Free, Region 0 or All Region, they are more than likely selling fakes.

More generally, if you are buying from an Asian supplier, you are likely to be dealing with a pirate dealer. Unfortunately, this is true 99% of the time.

It’s very difficult to get the latest DVDs.

It takes time for new release DVDs to trickle down to the suppliers that you are likely to be dealing with. In the first 6-8 weeks of a movie being released, they are only sold by a distributer who will sell to huge sellers like nation-wide chain stores. These stores will not make a lot of profit from these DVDs but must sell them to keep up with trends and their competition. They rely on people coming to their stores to buy these DVDs then picking up a few more things while they are there (and who ever goes to Wal-Mart without buying at least two extras?). For this reason, it is important for you to find a niche market to appeal to – it’s the best way for you to make money in selling DVDs.

Selling DVDs is competitive

You will need to work hard to stand out from your competition. Give buyers a great buying experience with great customer service and plenty of communication, and aim to offer a wide range of DVDs to encourage them to keep coming back. Email past-buyers regularly and keep them up-to-date with your listings, store or website. Let them know when new titles come in and send out lists of the top 5 best-selling DVDs for that month (people love those lists and it will help to increase your sales).

Hot Storage Tip: Store your DVDs in alphabetical order. This will help you out a great deal when you go to retrieve them and send them out. Categorizing them by genre isn’t always a great idea as some DVDs will apply to two or three genres which can cost you time when you try to find them to ship which may cause frustrating delays for you and your buyer.

DVD Niche Ideas

Kids Educational DVDs: The Wiggles on DVD is popular on eBay, even better on eBay.com.au. Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer are other big sellers.
Work out DVDs: Pole dancing DVDs have a massive 81% success rate on eBay (we can only assume that 81% of them are being used for fitness-purposes!).
Music DVDs: Michael Jackson DVDs are still selling well (70% of all listed since his death have sold on eBay)  and will probably be big for a while and will certainly be a popular Christmas gift this year.
Classic Movies: The Sound of Music, The Best Years of our Lives, and The Seventh Veil are all great sellers.

Classic Movies Hot Tip: Whenever you can, source Special Editions of classic movies. Collectors love these and will pay a lot for them, with some fetching up to US$70 on eBay!

Where to Source Wholesale DVDs

• SaleHoo has some excellent verified wholesale DVD suppliers – join now to access.
• Talk with local video stores and buy their ex-rentals from them. You can negotiate yourself a great deal and sell the DVDs on yourself.
• Consider drop shipping DVDs titles that are more abstract and will appeal to a narrower audience – they will find you eventually!

Hot Tip: Go beyond eBay. Amazon.com, while slightly more expensive for sellers than eBay, is becoming very popular among buyers – especially those looking for books and DVDs. Having your own site, or at least an eBay store will help to legitimize you as a seller and also make you look more professional.