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How To Work From Home Using eBay

The most convenient way of establishing your online business is by becoming a registered seller on eBay. Registering on eBay as a seller isn’t difficult and neither is listing your products on it. In fact, at any given point, eBay boasts of having thousands of registered sellers working from home, advertising their goods. However, a usual problem that many online sellers on eBay face is that of being unable to attract a decent amount of web traffic towards their merchandise. Thus, the biggest challenge in making your home-based eBay enterprise profitable is creating enough queries and eventually sales for the products you are offering. This can be achieved through a combination of the following:

1. Offering Goods That Complement Contemporary Demand Trends

This problem can be easily solved if you are able to offer goods/services that are in-sync with the current demand trend among the online shoppers. This can be easily done by using eBay in two ways:

A. What’s Hot
The site has a dedicated section titled, ‘What’s Hot’. It is listed in the ‘selling resources’ section in the form of a link. This section has a list of goods:

• towards which a high volume of enquiries have been generated
• that are being sold in great numbers by many online retailers, including those on eBay
• that have generated a lot of curiosity due to their unique features

Advantages
At the time of starting your online eBay business, you would have access to restricted merchandise. This section lists the most in-demand goods for every category. This further simplifies the process of zooming-in on goods that suite your current availability, preference and price. Other benefits include:

• eBay itself ensures that the kind of merchandise shown here is updated regularly
• Once, you know what goods are in demand, it becomes easier to operate your business from home, as you know exactly what goods need to be acquired
• You have the comfort of scrolling through this list, at your home, and for no charges, i.e. this service is free

B. eBay Pulse
Another initiative taken by eBay to help its sellers is the ‘eBay Pulse’ page. This is a slightly tweaked and a more precise format of the ‘What’s Hot’ section, i.e. the listed goods are not in accordance with demand trends or preferences tracked over a few weeks/months but on a daily basis.

2. Selling Merchandise At Prices Lower Than Your Competitors
This is perhaps the most challenging part of being a home-based seller on eBay. Prices are generally the biggest factor when it comes to a customer’s buying preference, particularly in the online mode. So how do you offer merchandise at competitive rates? This can be done by:

• Buying in bulk from wholesale traders
• Procuring goods from Start-up businesses that are desperate to launch their products
• Buying seasonal goods in the off-season and then selling them at higher prices when their demand begins to rise
• Seeking usually-neglected items such as spares from the home, office and nearby businesses who might be happy to sell-off their ‘junk’
• Teaming up with repairers/rehabilitators who are good at creating fresh-looking items from second-hand goods. This is particularly applicable to apparels and electronic items.

Affiliate: An Alternate Approach To eBay Business
Whenever the term ‘eBay business’ is used, it generates an image of products being sold by online sellers. Yes, this is the most common form of home-based business opportunity offered by eBay. However, this isn’t the only way in which eBay can be used to generate decent earnings. There is another option which doesn’t involve any sort of ‘direct’ buying. You can create an eBay business by becoming an Affiliate. That way, you don’t have to be concerned about procuring the goods.

Who Is An eBay Affiliate?
This is a simple way of creating a steady source of income from eBay. As a part of the Affiliate Program, you are supposed to only list the goods for sale and not purchase/procure them.

How To Operate An eBay Affiliate Program?
eBay gives you the liberty to launch affiliate websites. It has an entire page dedicated towards this purpose. For starting your eBay affiliate business, you need to create a personalized, content-rich site that lists items belonging to a particular genre of your choice. If an online shopper wants to purchase an item listed on your site, he/she will be directed to eBay and if an actual sale is registered, you would be awarded a commission.

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How To Drop Ship On eBay

Establishing your own drop-ship eBay business is a recommended way of earning online. It is more convenient than being an eBay seller, as the risk and the problems associated with being a merchandiser are no longer yours. A drop-shipper can be understood as a retailer who has no stocks, inventory and does not even have the need to purchase any kind of merchandise! This means that all the issues such as overhead expenses and storage of items are negated.

Finding Goods To Drop Ship
This can be simply done through a search conducted on eBay:

• Visit eBay’s Home Page > Click on ‘Advanced Search’
• A ‘Find Items’ page is shown where keywords can be entered
• Enter the kind of product you want to include in your list
• Choose the product category from ‘In this category’ drop-down
• Click (tick-mark) on all the options listed below the Category box
• Opt for results to be sorted> Choose ‘Price Highest First’ from the ‘Sort by’ drop-down
• Click on ‘Search’

This will create an instant list of the most-selling merchandise in the chosen category. Just make a list of these items. You now have to find a source for these items — a drop shipper.

Finding a Drop-shipper
There are overwhelming choices when it comes to companies that would want to have their goods drop shipped. However, differentiating a worthwhile company with a legitimate business is the challenge. The reason is simple –

1. There are many drop-shipping scams that are prevalent on the web
2. The longer the drop shipping chain, (i.e. the number of sources that handle the merchandise before it reaches the customer), the smaller would be your percentage.

Solution: The idea is to personally investigate a prospective drop-shipper, as most of the ones advertising are simply intermediaries in a long list of people who stock the goods. Each of them is basically a broker who procures goods from small distributors. Such drop-shippers cannot be relied upon for paying your percentage or delivering the goods to your customers. The idea is to get your merchandise directly from a manufacturer or an authenticated wholesaler who is ready to drop ship. Verify the market reputation of every drop-shipper that you might consider and particularly, their stocking capabilities.

Establishing A Drop-shipper
Once you have found a retailer/wholesaler/manufacturer who can be trusted as a drop shipper, mail him a proposal. It should contain your intention of listing his merchandise on eBay. Enquire about his ability to drop ship on a regular basis. If you receive a confirmation for your proposal, request him to mail over the details of his drop-shipping volumes in the last few months.

This would generally be presented in the form of an inventory-like document that would detail the kind of goods and the geographical area where the retailer has been drop shipping. This will give you a precise picture about the kind of merchandise and volumes that he is capable of delivering. When these issues are resolved, ask for what sort of percentage he is ready to offer.

Creating eBay Drop Ship Item List
The procedure is similar to listing your own products, as a ‘seller’ but you don’t have to take photographs and create the list yourself. Nearly every drop-shipper has a website or at least an online catalogue of his goods. You need to just paste the product images and create the keyword-heavy description.

How Does eBay Drop-shipping Work?
Your responsibilities include listing the products on eBay, so that online visitors can search and choose them. Every time, an interested customer wants to purchase the listed items, you have to relay the information over to the dropshipper, who will in turn, pay you a handsome commission for every recorded sale. The items and every issue associated with them is that of the manufacturer/company that has agreed to be your drop-shipper.

Perhaps, the only problem is the customer grievance that would be diverted to you and not the drop-shipper. The reason – an online customer isn’t aware of the relationship that exists between you and a drop-shipper. Hence, every time an ordered good does not reach on schedule or it is delivered in a compromised form, the customers will hold you responsible.

Posted in Dropshipping, eBay, How To, Make Money Online | No Comments »