Make Money on eBay - Low Sales Prices Can Lead to Trouble!
by Bob Hamilton
One of the biggest mistakes that we made when we first started on eBay was to establish
a thriving business that was based on low-cost products. We thought we were going to make
money on eBay with these low-cost products. Yet along with low-cost came low-profit from
each sale. Yes, there was a profit. Even with high volume, that profit just wasn't enough.
Since we have two households to support, we need a fairly high monthly income. To
achieve that level of sales, we had to sell MANY, MANY, MANY of these items! Talk about
hard work for low income! Yes, you can make money on eBay with low-cost products, but the
amount of work required is tremendous.
We soon found options that allowed us to continue with our current regular customers
and our chosen market niche. These new strategies included bundling the products that we
sold. We also added higher-cost products to our offerings. Finally, we expanded the
higher-ticket offerings in our eBay store.
o Bundling Products We began to bundle our products. Rather than selling only one at a
time, we began to sell groups of identical products. We also found that we could
successfully group like products. Finally we found that we could take complimentary
products and group them together into a single auction. While we didn't get higher
individual prices with this strategy, by grouping products, we greatly simplified our
total time for a higher return!
o Higher Ticker, Higher Profit Products We added higher ticket and thus higher profit
products. These new products were still within the same market niche. They were also very
complementary to our low-cost products. Thus our existing buyers were able to make the
transition and began purchasing them. This strategy again helped to provide higher profit
per item sold. It also significantly reduced the time require to make that higher profit level.
o eBay Store We added a large number of higher ticket items to our eBay store. As
buyers found these new items in our eBay store, more and more sale began to occur. Soon
the sales of these items began to help to offset sales of the lower profit items.
o Establish Minimum price level All new products that we add to the eBay sales mix are
required to have a target auction sales price-level of at least $10.00. Even this may be
too low. However, by implementing the tactics outline in this article in combination with
this requirement we have been able to greatly increase our average sale and our average
profit per sale. We test and make sure that we can achieve that target before adding large
numbers of an item to our inventory.
o There are many other strategies that could be used, including totally eliminating the
low-cost items from sales.
Starting our eBay business with low-cost, lower profit items impacted the speed of our
business growth. Don't make the same mistake. Be sure that you make money on eBay by
never selling low-cost items. Establish a minimum target sales price level for all items
that you purchase for resell.
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