SaleHoo

[AlliGdigital]

I've had my Ebay store going for a few months now and making some ok money . What I'm having trouble with is scaling it up , I've been posting more and the products sell really well , but only half of my Buy it now auctions close with a sale . What can I do to get more sales and drive more traffic to my auctions ? how important are keywords for G0oggIe search? I'm happy with my sales copy and I have 5 great products . Any great tips would be helpfull .

I've make a basic Blog here which may be helpful to newbs with ebay.


** Link Removed: Only Available to Registered Members**
Thanks

[richelle_salehoo]

Hi AlliGdigital,

It's great to hear that you are doing quite well :)

Remember that there isn’t one ultimate way to get traffic. To help you out, here a re a few tips that you may find helpful in generating additional traffic to your site:

• Submit your product listings to Google product search (fast and free way to get more traffic) ** Link Removed: Only Available to Registered Members**
• Optimize your site for the search engines. Traffic Travis a good free tool to help you do this ** Link Removed: Only Available to Registered Members**
• Set up a blog on your site and create some unique and interesting content. This is also an important part of search engine optimization.
• Leverage traffic from eBay, Amazon or other auction sites. Set up an account with the username the same as your business name and list a few items at attractive prices. Put your website URL in your email signature tags and insert into template eBay emails. Set up an About Me page with photos of your business, yourself and of course, your URL.
• Use Google Adwords – although this can end up being expensive if you don’t do it properly. We recommend the free training site ** Link Removed: Only Available to Registered Members** to learn more.
• Set up an email newsletter on your website. Keeping in touch with existing customers encourages repeat sales.
• Set up an affiliate program.

Hope this helps. Cheers :)

[salehoo]

Hi AlliGdigital,

Richelle has given you some excellent tips. Google can be a big traffic generator for eBay sellers, and I would strongly recommend you use the Google keyword tool and something like Terapeak to help you optimize your titles and descriptions for highly searched terms.

Also look at writing reviews & guides as well as your blog, and submitting articles to article directories containing your site URL. These things will all help you get more traffic.

The second very important thing is setting up a newsletter. For most businesses - including eBay - 25% of your customers give you most of your profit. Newsletters are the best way of building loyalty and getting these all important sales. Also look at getting fresh inventory into your store on a regular basis so there are always new things for people to come back and look at.

[raiderjake]

i read your blog, its got some very good advise on there, well done. $150 is pretty damn good, do you mind if i ask in what way do you get your products? meaning, do you buy in liquidations or dropshipping, etc.

[AlliGdigital]

Thanks so much for your helpful info . I didn't know about the Google base thing . So whats the deal , do you list your store on there or your individual items ? I'm also going to look at other ways to generate traffic , I'm working on a private sales website as we speak .

Thanks again

[AlliGdigital]

I've learned a valuable lesson today ! Don't always trust Paypal to get your money back on a transaction gone wrong . In order to step some things up I invested $5k on some new Items . The merchant procrastinated and mucked about giving me false tracking numbers and I'm sure they didn't have the goods . Before I made the transaction I called paypal to verify the merchant and they assured me its all legit . After a month of dispute paypal closed the investigation and managed to re-claim $35 and closed the case !!! After an angry phone call , they tell me they can only 100% guarantee transactions generated from Ebay. Great!!

Moral of the story is always pay by credit card as my bank didn't take too kindly to it and got the money back in one week ! I'm pretty impressed with that .

I'm copying this to my blog along with some other good advice.

Cheers

[raiderjake]

ebay owns paypal so they gaurantee your money to make ebay seem safe. outside of ebay, your screwed

[AlliGdigital]

Well I finally struck gold, or so it would seem. These 3GS 32Gb officially Unlocked 100% AU verified genuine units turned up today. I can get and move these no problem with good return but, when you start dealing volume sales of items over $1k AUD , a big problem is coming ,,, TAX! GST on this is going to kill it I think. The margins are too low but would be profitable in a fair tax system. Once projected sales reach $75K AUD "which is very close now" Ebay sends reports to the man and GST registration is required, thus 10% of sale price goes in GST !!!! It almost makes you want to stand on a street corner with a trenchcoat . BTW don't ask where I got these, its too convoluted for me to even describe, and its not the goose that lays the golden egg.
The way I feel is to get my Web storefont up and running ASAP and get away from Ebay for this sort of thing to at least get away from the feebay system and deal with the other devils SEO, Traffic and the TAXMAN !!!
Any Aussies with GST advise would be greatly appreciated, my accountant seems to roll over on the issue.
Anyway Rant over for now. Happy selling everyone

PS Does anyone think these pics with stock samples and logo look wanky on Ebay Auctions? I think it re-assures customers you actualy have stock, I've even thought of having Gum trees and stuff in the background so buyers trust they are local stock :)

[Haydee]

Hi AlliGdigital,

The picture looks good. I agree this would give some reassurance to your customers that you indeed have these products in stock.

All the best,

[jasonmc4]

Hi AlliGdigital,
How did you get an apple iphone resellers certificate? If you want to have a business that makes money for the long term don’t sell FAKES, EBay will shut you down and if it is your own web site apple will get you, it may take some time for them to catch you but they will and all of your hard earned work is gone. If you live in Australia as I do you have to pay GST get over it! it is a fact of life here, I have been in business for many years I don’t like the tax I have to pay but I find it better than the fine I will pay if I try and avoid it. Once you turn over 50k you have to register but don’t forget all of your long term business opposition have to do the same thing. Don’t forget you are able to claim the GST back from your business expenses like stock you purchased, if you purchased it from China it is fake and you are not allowed to sell it. Taxes and business expenses are a part of business there will always be people trying to avoid them but inevitably they will not last. Build a business on good honest values, it all ways takes time to build a good business but I promise you it is the only way to make money for the long term.
PS. I wish you success in business, Digital products is a very cut throat market
Cheers Jason