eBay Power & Profit For 2009

If you did not know this by now you will by the time you get to the end of this article that eBay "The Power House" of all online auctions has continued to be the number 1 auction site of all time.

Many have attempted to duplicate such success, but all have failed!

Many have attempted to become a successful seller on eBay but have failed!

So how does one become a success with an online auction? My first suggestion would be to not attempt to create another auction site unless you have 10's of billions of dollars lying around and a few years to loose lots of money in your attempt to compete with the auction giant.

Don't take my word for it, Yahoo's Auction service attempted to rival the giant but failed and folded it's auction service.

So what does one do?

Simply learn how to play ball with eBay using their tools and services available to eBay sellers, but first you need to know what or who you are dealing with when it comes to the eBay auction giant! So let's take a look at a little history of eBay:

EBay started business back in 1995 and was called AuctionWeb and creator Pierre Omidyar worked on his project over labor day weekend as an experiment with how equal access to information and opportunities affects the efficiency of marketplaces. EBay started to grow and by June of 1996 it topped revenues of over $10,000 with over 41,000 users and sales in excess of over $7 million.

In 1997 AuctionWeb changed it's name to the official name of eBay as we know it today. With over 40 employees, 340,000 plus users and over $95 million in sales.

In 1998 eBay goes public with 138 employees, 2.1 million users and over $740 million in sales.

In 1999 eBay now has 640 employees, 10 million users and over 2 billion in sales.

In 2000, eBay now has 1,900 employees, 22 million users and over 5 billion in sales.

As you can see in just 5 years eBay's growth was beyond compare and even today it's beyond compare with over 13,000 employees, over 220 million users, over $50 billion in sales and over 2 million daily visitors.

As you can see nothing can beat the power of eBay for selling online! No other online site can get you as much traffic like eBay does. You can not even find a physical location that can get you as much business traffic as eBay does! Every day, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 362 days a years you have access to over an average of 2 million customers every day!

So how do you use the giant of online auctions to bring success to your retail business? Learn from experience and you can avoid the many failures I faced when first starting out.

All that I share with you is what I should have done first and I too could have avoided many failures, so learn from my mistakes.

Your goal is to move into power seller status and than to move into the upper levels of power sellers and you will have access to medical insurance, financial bonuses, major discounts and much more.

You will need to understand that building this business will take time, money and a lot of time management on your part and no matter how many promises you will find on the internet of fast wealth and easy money you can make on eBay is the furthest from the truth, but with hard work, a lot of time and a little money you too can have a successful online sales business with eBay.

I will list what will make you most successful for 2009 and the future to come:

1. Your first step is to educate yourself about eBay, the rules, the regulations, how to sell, what to sell, when to sell, how to list your item, how to photograph your item, how to pack and ship your item.

Your best source of information is from eBay by simply going to eBay's seller resources, shipping center, seller education center, tools and eBay stores. Read and study all that your can on eBay's site, next take your search to Google and search out all the articles you can find along with the many e-books you can down load for free. You should allow yourself no less than 30 day's of solid study before your start out.

Be sure to read about marketing and advertising to help you with item titles and item details so that your descriptions will help sell your item.

2. You will need a paypal account since the majority of your customers will pay by paypal using credit or debit cards and even banking accounts

3. You will need some basic tools to get started in your online business such as:

a, You will need a computer. b, Internet connection. c, Printer. d, Scanner. e, Shipping scale. f, Packing supplies (You can get most of them for free by trash picking). g, A customer service phone (You can use a landline, Cell or online phone service). h, A digital camera.

4. You need product to sell, what you will be looking for is cheep, light weight and small product to sell.

My best sellers have always been items purchased from 99 cent and Dollar stores, sports cards, comic books and stamps.

I travel several larger cities on Friday and Saturday going to all the 99 cent and Dollar stores along with yard sales and auctions seeking out items that folks collect that I can easily photograph or scan, easily pack and ship and most Importantly get it cheep!

All items I list for 99c, some items may go for a loss leader and other items sell for profit, let me give you an example of sales from a few days ago:

1940 Lincoln Wheat Cent, sold for 1.00 with shipping of 49c for a total of $1.49 1909-P Lincoln Wheat Cent, sold for $1.25 with shipping of 49c for a total of $1.74 1914 Lincoln Wheat Cent, sold for 3.00 with shipping of 49c for a total of $3.49 1882 Indian Head Cent, sold for $2.35 with shipping of 49c for a total of $2.84 47 Comic books, sold for an average of $2.35 each with shipping of $1.00 each 75 Sports cards, sold for an average of $3.50 each with shipping cost of 85c each 10 Photo Frames, sold for an average of $3.75 each with shipping cost of $3.95 each

My total gross sales where $418.05, with shipping cost received of $152.21 for a total of $570.26 in funds received.

I had a total of $88.00 invested in the product sold, I listed a total of 200 items but only 136 of them sold and my listing fee's where $30.00 with a final value fee of $36.58 for a total product sale cost of $154.58. My shipping cost was $158.10. After all is said and done my day's net was $257.58.

I do this an average of 10 days per month netting me an average of over $2,500.00 per month all part time and spending an average of 100 hours in finding product, photographing, listing, selling and packing all mixed with my other freelance activities of mystery shopping, taking surveys and building web sites.

To your success, Ozark Mike