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October 31st, 2008

Every Ebay seller knows Ebay selling is very competitive. You may be good at writing auction titles and catchy auction listing pages. But how do you hold the attention of your auction visitors long enough to get them excited enough to bid?

According to Sellathon CEO Wayne Yeager, the amount of time an auction visitor spends looking at an auction page is a real eye opener. ” about half of all auction visitors - 48% to be exact - spend 10 seconds or less looking at your auction.” Visit one of your ebay auction listings and assess how much a person can read in 10 seconds. Adding your seller’s voice to the auction can increase the amount of time spent by your auction visitors. Selling on ebay is competitive and you want as much of that ebay shopper’s time as you can get.

When I am training ebay sellers, they often ask for audio scripting ideas. An outstanding example of audio ramping up an auction is on one of Skip McGrath’s auctions. Skip McGrath is a well known and successful auction “how to” guru. The following is taken from one of his fire pit auctions.

“Hi, my name is Skip McGrath. My wife Karen and I have been selling on ebay for 6 years and we love it.

You are bidding on my favorite product. We discovered this fire pit grill at a Seattle garden show a couple of years ago.
We paid full retail…

It was an immediate hit with us and our neighbors

This quality, handmade fire pit is made of solid heavy gauge steel with cutouts

There is a fine mesh top..

This fire pit allows us to use our deck earlier in the spring and later in the fall..

My wife and I have spent many an evening cuddled up with a glass of wine.

I am including

I will includeif you use the buy it now price..

Bid now ..you can have a romantic..”

Skip’s audio tells the ebay visitor a little about himself (not too much). He tells a little story behind the product - how he ran across it (he adds emotion - tells you about his own excitement about the product). He tells the features and benefits of the product he is selling. He paints a picture of romance with the cuddling and wine out on the deck. He, then, tells the auction visitor the advantages of buy it now. And finally, he tells the ebay shopper to take action and BID!!!

No wonder he reports his sales on the fire pit increased by 600%.

Adding audio to your ebay auctions is as easy as picking up your phone and recording your message. By using an auction audio service, you not only increase your profits on the auction items you are selling, you add a second stream of revenue because you become an automatic affiliate. All you need are three referrals and your service becomes FREE. That will happen much more quickly than you might expect.

Take the leap. Add audio to your ebay auctions and you will take your ebay business to the next level.

Jane B. Clark trains people in buying and selling on ebay. She also advises car dealers on ebay Motors listing and marketing techniques. You can visit Jane at http://www.addauctionaudio.com or email Jane at jane@addauctionaudio.com.

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September 25th, 2008

Selling in-demand items on eBay is by far the most profitable choice you can make when doing your product sourcing. With so much competition on eBay, there’s simply not room for error or choosing to sell anything less than popular.

The problem eBay sellers face however is that the state of the market is constantly evolving. Last months best-seller may be this month’s total flop.

No matter how difficult or competitive selling on this auction giant may become, eBay will always try to make the process as painless as possible. Fortunately, eBay itself provides a number of tools that can help you identify the latest selling trends. This article will briefly explain these tools to you, show you how to access them, and evaluate their usefulness.

The first tool that eBay provides is “The Hot Items Report” (http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf) - In the words of eBay itself “Hot…Very HotSuper Hot! Discover which categories and products are on firewhere bid to item ratios are high and demand is outpacing supply.”
This is certainly an invaluable resource that will help you keep a check on the current state of the eBay marketplace and stay on top!

Second up there is the “The eBay Pulse” (http://pulse.ebay.com) - This allows you to view the most popular searches, largest stores, most watched items and more. It’s an extremely useful tool, but a word of warning - sometimes only the most unusual and intriguing items show up here, and not the ones that are in the highest demand. It may not always be a true reflection on what is really the most popular item(s) on eBay. To demonstrate this, on the day of writing several items featured in The Pulse were what you might call “get rich quick schemes,” whilst another was someone offering to have your advert tattooed on their back for all to see!

Marketplace Research

(http://pages.ebay.com/marketplace_research/index.html) is a new service that allows you to analyze data on completed auction listings. Although the service does incur a monthly charge, it may be worth a look if you’d like in-depth data and statistics already collected for you. If you’re familiar with eBay’s advanced search features you may be able to accomplish something similar to Marketplace Research on your own.

The eBay Community (http://hub.ebay.com/community) is another useful section to the site if you’re seeking out popular items. The chance to talk with other sellers, network, and discuss the latest trends may mean you can keep ahead of the pack. It’s nice for a good old elbow-rubbing session with fellow eBay nuts too. eBay is such a humongous marketplace most sellers realize it’s not a bad choice to share your success stories with potential competition, since you may pick up some tips for yourself.

Of course you can also simply keep an eye out yourself. Take a look at completed auction listings. Is the item you’re thinking of selling doing well for other people? Is this a seasonal item? How many other sellers are in this niche?

With this wide range of tools at your disposal, you’ve got a ready-made resource to search for those hot items. I’ve got dollar signs in my eyes already!

Chris Vendilli
Copyright © 2006

Chris Vendilli is the owner, founder, and CEO of The 3 Rivers Auctions Company. Chris has helped numerous people start successful online businesses mainly focusing on eBay and affiliate marketing. Chris is also an eBay Power Seller, indicating he has in depth knowledge of the way eBay works! If you’re interested in getting more information regarding eBay tips, trends, strategies, & secrets please visit Chris’s site using the link below:

http://www.3riversauctions.com

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September 16th, 2008

You might be one of the thousands of individuals who open a trading account with eBay and dream about making auction selling a full-time home-based business.

However, before that dream can become a reality, you need to do many important things while running an auction business.

One of these important things to do is to pick the right products to sell. The right products to sell are the ones that people on eBay want or will buy.

eBay tells you what people actually want and what people actually will buy in four areas of its website.

“In Demand”

One of these four areas on eBay’s site is the “In Demand” section. There is an “In Demand” link for each of the main categories on eBay. Listed in these areas are the previous month’s top ten products that people wanted and the top ten searches for each subcategory. To see the data in these areas follow the link below and when you reach the page, scroll down and click on the link “In Demand” under any of the categories shown.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/sellbycategory.html

“Hot Categories Report”

The next area containing information on finding what to sell on eBay is the “Hot Categories Report.” This report lists the “fastest growing” categories on eBay for the previous month. The explanation for what eBay considers “hot” can be hard to understand on your first reading. Nevertheless, the important thing to know is that the categories listed are the ones were buyer demand for the items under those categories are growing faster than the seller supply. This report is a PDF file so you will need Adobe

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