Thousands of people around the world make their living by selling items on ebay. They come in all ages, male and female, from many different countries, and all enjoy the excitement of putting an item up for sale, watching the bids role in and then waiting for the money. It is a wonderful feeling when you make your first sale. I will never forget mine. I had discovered an old broken pocket watch in a box in a charity shop along with several other bits of broken watches and tangled chains and I bought the lot for $2.00. When I got home I realized the pocket watch was silver, and had a silver chain attached to it with a silver fob. Although broken, I advertised it on eBay with no reserve, no photo and a very average description. It was my first ever listing. I received several inquiries for more information such as date, hallmark, weight etc, and it eventually sold for $48. That made me a great profit of over $40. I was very lucky with that first sale. I did no research, had no idea how to write a description, no idea about how ebay worked, I knew little about starting prices, reserves, auction length or how to add photos etc. Over the next year or so I continued to wonder around car boot sales, charity and junk shops and flea markets looking for the things I thought might be bargains.
When I got home I would empty my bag and check everything out. Upon close inspection, some of the items, especially the ladies dresses and blouses, were damaged and I couldn't sell them. They went back to the charity shops. So I was maybe wasting 10 to 15 percent of my budget for stock buying because I was buying alsorts and not getting the opportunity to examine items closely to make sure they were in saleable condition. The remaining clothes I would wash and iron and photograph, then describe and list on eBay. If I spent $60 on a weekly batch of stock, I would expect to make $100 clear profit. I made sure I listed things between 8PM and 10PM so things finished at a good time when most people would be at home. All my auctions ran for 5 days, and I would start them off Sunday or Monday evening. That way they ended Friday or Saturday. Some of my auctions ended without any bids, some went well and others went for the starting price because there was just very little interest in the item. Most weeks I would only make $20 or $30 profit, and I didn't think it was worth all the time and effort I was investing. I just wasn't selling the right things. Most of the items I listed, even though they were beautiful and great condition, weren't what people wanted.
Then I found a piece of software called Auction Inspector. I stumbled across a sales page and bought it and installed it on my PC. It was very easy to use and believe me, if I can use it anyone can. This software actually connects with eBay somehow and can identify areas where there is not enough being sold to meet the demand. So for example, if you were selling Levi Skinny Jeans and wanted to see whether they would be a good seller, you would enter skinny jeans, and it would check to see how many times that phrase had been searched for, and how many items were available. It then works out a number which tells you whether it would be a good niche or not. If, for example it said that skinny jeans had a rating of 4 or 5 then that is not a great opportunity, but if it said it had a rating of 50 then that would be an excellent item to sell. So I could focus myself looking for skinny jeans, or focus on something else which I knew had more chance of selling. It's really clever how it works. It can make your computer run a bit slower if you have an old PC as it uses a lot of memory, but I just set it away, and it completes it's searches within about 10 minutes. You can read more about auction inspector here if you like.
After using this software for a few months now my weekly eBay sales have gone up to over $500. I now only buy what I am pretty sure will sell, and don't waste my time on stuff which has little chance of selling. I know I could make more, but I still have a house and a family to run. When the children are a bit older, and I have more time, I can easily see this being my main source of income, and it's mainly due to the power of this great little piece of software, auction inspector.
Lily Deshford is a successful ebayer, well on the way to making a good living from selling the right things, having found out how to identify good niches. To read more about how Lily used the revolutionary software mentioned in this article to improve her business, please click here.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lily_Deshford
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