I’ve received a couple items of feedback from my eBay mini-course, (subscribe here) this week so thought I’d publish them here. If you have any eBay questions whatsoever let me know, if I can’t help personally I’ll pass your question onto those who can…

Question 1.

As you know I am thinking about selling on EBay and have enquired about Jason James’s stuff. I just wondered why I cant learn from you. You have books on your website about EBay. Do I really need to get his stuff ? I do not have masses of stuff in my attic to sell nor do I want to spend hours going to car boot sales, which is why I bought the dropshipping book. In your opinion is this a good way of earning money on EBay ?

Sorry for all the questions but I like to know as many facts as I can before making a decision.
Thanks for all the time you spend helping me.

Cheers mate

Ron

Firstly, Jasons James - Auction Resource Network site is ideal for anyone who want to get the most of out eBay with support along the way. One of the best things about Jasons site is that he will look at your auctions & tell you where your going wrong, & how to fix them.

Even I joined personally & I find it useful after five years of selling, it’s packed with exclusive articles, ebooks, a private members forum plus a lot more - however if you just want to learn the basics of how to sell on eBay I’d also suggest the eBay formula. If this proves helpful & you have some eBay success you can always take a look later at other ebooks or Jason site to scale up your eBay sales.

Dropshipping can be a brilliant risk free way to make sales on eBay without all the hassles of holding & packaging & postint items - no more post office queues are necessary. However, it is important to do some basic research first & see what kind of profit(s) you can make on each item. So, watch a few auctions first & see how they end up. If a particular range of item seems to be selling well then start listing it straight away.

If you don’t know what dropshipping is click here for my introduction & my top ten dropshipping tips.

Question 2.

Many thanks for your infornative and very usefull messages. I am thinking of dropshipping and also selling cars from car dealers many of whom if they have a website seem only to list cars with no photo’s.

My question is a simple one. Should I say that I intend to use eBay to move their products in an initial meeting or disguise my intentions in some way?

Regards

John

Well, it’s a tricky one. However selling cars on eBay can be very profitable.

Personally I know of two people who purchase a badly listed car off eBay, get it professionally valeted & photographed properly - replace one or two parts if necessary (only small parts such as bumpers, gearknobs, even mats, etc - nothing too big!) & then relist it back on eBay. They even buy any parts they need from eBay as well. Now they’ve only been doing it about two months so we’re not talking about hundreds of cars - about two cars every three weeks is their turnover.

They’ve never failed to make less than £300 on a car & have made upto £1900 on one single car.

Also, you may have noticed that a lot of users get carried away in the excitment & bid over the cars value.

Three years ago I sold a Honda CRX, which had been written off for more than 3 times it’s value. The winning bidders even came all the way from Northern Ireland to collect the car (I’m located in the Midlands.)

The problem you’ve got that once you mention to them you will be selling on eBay, you have the risk they may try to outsmart you, thinking they can sell on eBay themselves.

So if you reveal it you really need to hype up your eBay knowledge & show them some kind of “proof” of what your capable of.

Alternatively you could offer some kind of “no sale - no fee” basis to prove to them what your capable of. Let them know that most eBay auctions end unsuccessfully, are plagued with timewasters, & you can take away all that hassle & risk.

Of course it could work in your favour. Almost everyones heard of eBay these days & they would be more comfortable dealing online now, than they would have been five or ten years ago.

Personally I’d try to hint at the venue used or at least specify it will be “sold online” or you could mention it will be though WAP services on a mobile phone - after all you can get eBay (wap version) on your mobile, but I would not reveal eBay to them unless you have to as a last resource.

So, you’ll see there are many opportunities left for us all to profit on eBay. Talk to you soon.