Advanced eBay Training: Trading Assistant

In this advanced lesson for eBay sellers, we'll be looking at ways of expanding your business and taking it in new directions. To start off with, here's a different way to profit off eBay...

Trading Assistants

If you decide that you don't enjoy sourcing stock, but still like the buzz of selling on eBay, or you simply want to expand your business, then you might want to consider becoming a Trading Assistant. A Trading Assistant is someone who sells their expertise as an eBay seller. People with goods to sell who don't want to/ don't know how to manage their sales hire Trading Assistants to take care of all that for them.

Trading Assistants manage the inventory, place the listings on eBay, and also package and post the goods to the buyer. For this they receive a cut of the profit.

There are many rewards for working as a trading assistant: for a start, you'll be able to interact with your clients in person, which can make a nice change from sitting at a computer all day; you don't have to worry about sourcing stock, and there is enormous potential for expanding your business.

However, it's not a job for the faint-hearted. You have to be very good at making a profit most of the time in order to make this work. You'll also have to take on a new professional image dealing with clients and have excellent communication skills.

eBay has a Trading Assistant Directory in which trading assistants can advertise their services.

To be listed, you need to have sold four items or more in the past 30 days, have a feedback rating of 50 or higher, and at least 97% feedback. Because you are responsible to your clients for selling their goods, you need to consider the following factors before you become a trading assistant:

  • Are you going to charge a percentage of each sale or a flat fee?
  • Will you ship the items?
  • In what format will you sell the items? Fixed Price? Auction?
  • What if the item doesn't sell?

A word of advice from PowerSellers:

For the percentages to work out favorably, it's difficult to make a good profit on items that sell for less than $100.

It's not unheard of for misunderstandings to occur between a trading assistant and client, so one of the most important tasks on your 'to do' list should be making sure you have a strong, clearly worded contract in place that includes:

  • A clearly itemized list of eBay's pricing options, including listing enhancements.
  • A chart or table of fees so that your client is easily able to see how they add up.
  • An explanation of Final Value Fees
  • Some basic eBay operating rules
  • Important points: such as the client can't back out once the auction has been listed and so on.
  • Make sure that your area of responsibility is clearly defined, as is that of the client. You don't want to leave room to be accused of things beyond your control, nor do you want to give them room to start taking over!

A good contract and good communication is the key to being a successful trading assistant. I strongly recommend going over important points verbally with the client also.

To find customers:

  • List in the Trading Assistant directory
  • Advertise in your local paper.
  • Advertise in trade magazines, particularly for niche and collectible items.
  • Pin up flyers on community notice boards and using word of mouth (always the most effective way!). Just walking around your local town centre and personally distributing flyers or business cards is one of the best ways to get people to notice and remember you.

You'll find that you will only need between 5 and 10 good clients to fill up your time initially, depending on how you want to grow your business and how much stock each client has to sell.