How to Start eBay Business? Beginner’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business – Step by Step Guide – Part 4
Beginner’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business – Step by Step Guide – Part 4
Higher margins we’re importing, and often you do, but if you run out of money, and you can no longer import any more items, then your business has hit the glass ceiling. You can’t get anymore. Whereas dropshipping you can just keep listing more items, more and more and more, but if you run out of money, and you’re not willing to invest any more money in inventory then you can’t grow your business anymore with importing.
But with dropshipping, there’s no limit. So dropshipping is a whole nighttime thing.
Dropshipping is a whole nighttime thing
It takes a whole lot to do it, but if you want to know any more about dropshipping, there’s a free workshop there. You can do it. All right, so private labeling. Does anyone here private label now? A couple of people, awesome, so what private labeling is is simply this: you put a label on a product.
Now a lot of people out there are teaching to, the way to do private labeling is that you go and do all this research, find a product, go and order thousands of them, fill up a container, mortgage your house to pay for the container, ship it to Australia, and pray that the thing sales.
I highly recommend you consider taking a top selling import item that you already have
Instead of doing that I highly recommend you consider taking a top selling import item that you already have or a drop ships item you already have and then buy one from your local Australian supplier, peel the label off, put your own label on it, and photograph it and sell it.
If it sells well, you do it again, and again and again and again, until you’ve proved it. Then you go and buy a quantity. Now if you’re really stuck with the name, just peel it off and resale it. It was already one of your hot selling items already, so you’re not going to get stung. You can just sell it. All its going to do is cost you the cost of shipping, and it’s a much better way to do private labeling.
With private labeling you’ve got to come up with a good name which is easy when you know how
Now with private labeling you’ve got to come up with a good name which is easy when you know how. What country is that name from? That’s what most people think. Is that word in the German dictionary? No. Now what you can do instead of trying to come up with a name, cause a name has to give two things. It’s got to give a feeling of quality and trust. So whatever name you come up with, you must get it surveyed. So you get a half dozen of your family and friends, say guys, “I need your honest opinion, does this name give the feeling of quality and trust, yes or not?” If it does, awesome. If it doesn’t, change it.
Convert an Australian name or an English name to German or European
If you can’t come up with your own name that gives a feeling of quality and trust all you do is you go and convert an Australian name or an English name to German or European. And if it’s got two dots above one of the letters, all the better. I know this sounds stupid. It sounds crazy, but you have split tested this over and over and over and over again, and it comes up all the time, if you get a good European name, it’ll out sell things. I’m not going to go down all the tests we’ve done. We’ve done exhaustive testing with this, and it’s proved it over and over.
Go online, look up German dictionary thesauruses, Swedish, just scroll through
Now you can also go online, look up German dictionary thesauruses, Swedish, just scroll through, and the awesome thing about this, when you get a name and then you go and find if it’s a dot com or url available for it. There normally always is. ‘Cause no one’s come up with a name like they exist. It could mean do– If you translate it, it might mean dogs breakfast. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. There’s a quick way of doing it. So that’s how you get your private label. So then you private label your top selling, proven items. I’m just going to touch on optimization tonight. ‘Cause we’re running out of time, so tonight is a beginner, but I just want to give a little quick, cause a lot of people go, “Well what the hell is it, optimization?”
What is Optimization
And the optimization is, this is how you take your business to the next level. This is how you get it to your seven digits and beyond is optimization. Does it work? Well this is one of the example, this is one of the people I coach. As you can see here, he sold one item, 138 sold in 24 hours, and this is one of his items, just one item. Does optimization work? Well, there you go. So the way, to understand, and I think it’s more like the next event we’ll do is optimization ’cause it is, takes a whole night. If you understand how Cassini works, which is eBay’s search engine, everything about optimization operates under these four rules. How to Start eBay Business
Four core values that drive eBay’s development and tweaking of the eBay search engine
There’s four core values that drive eBay’s development and tweaking of the eBay search engine. And this is it: relevance. So when people search for something, they get a relevant answer. And that’s exactly how Google succeeded where all the other, Altavista and Dogpile, and all those other search engines failed. Because see you would go to those old search engines, how often did you get the right answer? You searched for something, and you get something totally different. Whereas you go to Google, they give you a relevant answer.
They want to give you, they want to make sure that what you’ve listed is in the right category
So, they want to give you, they want to make sure that what you’ve listed is in the right category, you got the right title for it et cetera. So when someone searches for it, they’re getting the relevant item. If you could, someone searches for your item, they continually see a listing but they don’t click on it, eBay Cassini, which is eBay’s search engine, quickly realizes there’s something wrong here, and it’ll just put your listing down. Just like with a website, if something searches something and Google brings up a website and no one clicks on it, it’s obviously irrelevant, so it will just fall down the search results.
The first thing they want to see is relevancy
So the first thing they want to see is relevancy. Next thing is value. Now value doesn’t mean like we saw on some of the other slides. You don’t have to be the cheapest, but you certainly got to be in the money. You don’t want to be way off the pace, but I want to make sure that you are delivering reasonable value. It doesn’t have to be the cheapest. Trust. So they want to look at are you doing things like offering a 30 day return, you know compared to your competitors.
Is your account in good standing?
Is your account in good standing? Have you been verified? Is your phone number listed in your eBay and your Paypal account et cetera. Convenience, where are you located? How to Start eBay Business
So if someone wants to buy something in say Melbourne and you’re item is in Melbourne and your competitors got theirs listed in Italy, obviously your listing’s going to appear way over there’s. ‘Cause eBay wants to get it to the buyer as quick as possible. So convenience, are you offering express as well as just a standard shipping option? Do you have one day handling time and two day handling time, three day handling time?
Ebay is looking at all these factors ’cause they want to get the item to the customer as quick as possible
So ebay is looking at all these factors ’cause they want to get the item to the customer as quick as possible. So it’s weighing up all these factors to show which item goes higher than the others. Cassini is shopper orientated. When I used to start going to the, originally the events like the ebay events 20 odd years ago, everyone there hugged each other and cuddled each other, and it was a big happy family of eBay sellers. And then gradually that changed. Ebay kind of got the impression, everyone got the impression that eBay didn’t give a care about the sellers, and they only care about buyers.
EBay didn’t give a care about the sellers, and they only care about buyers
And that was the case, but most people don’t realize that if we don’t have buyers then none of us can exist. So it’s fine by me that they do focus on the buyers not the sellers, and this is unfortunately the way it is. But don’t eBay is a public company with shareholders, and all they really do care about is the shareholders.
And that’s a great thing to understand because when eBay comes up and says these grandiose things they’re going, they’re going to change this and they’re going to, everyone has got those listing that don’t comply, they’re going to shut ’em all down. No they’re not. Because eBay is not going to shut down 30% of it’s listings cause that means the shares will plummet. That will never ever happen.
Whole company is driven by dividends
‘Cause the whole company is driven by dividends. The shareholders don’t get their dividends ’cause someone said they’re going to shut down 30% of the eBay listings. It’s never going to happen. So, that was a bit of a sidetrack. Yep
– [Student] The comes from the buyers being backed by the
– That’s one of the factors.
– [Student] How relevant is that
– Feedback is–
– [Student] You’re not going to have that when you first start.
– Cassini has what’s called a fair game policy, so any one that is brand new gets a listing promoted higher.
With optimization there’s 124 factors
– [Student] Oh, that’s useful. With optimization there’s 124 factors. Keywords are one of them, so just hang in there. We’ll get to more of it as you’ll see. So let’s see, what I’m going to show you now is a way to potentially increase your sales by a factor of 16. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you do this and your sales are going to multiply by 16.
16 times Rule
That is not the point. I’m just going to show you how these factors can take an un-optimized listing and increase its sales by 16. I’m not saying it’s going to happen to every one of your listings. So this is called the 16 times Rule, how to potentially increase sales by 16 for non-optimized listing. The first thing is the title. The title for the newbies in the room is, the first field of your list on eBay, you got 80 characters where you write what the thing is. Ebay, PowerPoint, LogiTech, PowerPoint, Point and give presentation tool, that’s your title.
Put relevant keywords in there
If you put relevant keywords in there, you get more traffic. If you leave out the word LogiTech or Powerpoint, whatever, you’re going to get less traffic. So it’s important to put relevant keywords in there. Don’t put in cheap, bargain, look at this, the, and, or.
No one searches for this stuff. You got to put in relevant keywords. The more relevant keywords, the more traffic you get. Sorry. Yeah, ’cause it’s Logitech, so you always put the brand name in there. So your title, if you put relevant keywords in there, you can potentially get twice the traffic to your listing by putting relevant keywords in there. How to Start eBay Business
The next thing is your image
The next thing is your image. So on eBay you’re allowed to upload 12 images. Image number one is called your gallery image. If you put on there in that gallery certain aspects about the item, which I’ll get to in a minute, ’cause everyone on eBay has got certain itches they want scratched. If you can scratch those itches by putting that in the image, you can dramatically increase what’s called your click through rate, or CTR as it’s known in the industry, which means people click on your listing and go inside the listing. So what happens here, you get twice the traffic going ’cause of your title, twice the traffic going to your listing, so that’s two times two is four. We’ve now got four times the traffic going to your listing, just by optimizing these two elements.
Next thing is your description
Next thing is your description. I talked about listing templates. Again, if you improve your listing template, make it look professional which is just like you open up a Chinese restaurant, if you don’t fit it out, you just go and get a couple of plastic tables and chairs and bunnings and throw ’em in there, and you had a concrete floor and concrete walls, and the guy next door opens up a Chinese restaurant, spends quarter of a million dollars fitting it out. Which one can you sell the most expensive food? Sorry?
Spelling is a factor
Spelling is a factor yeah, but Yeah, exactly the second. So it’s the same deal. But where it will cost you maybe a hundred grand, maybe 200 grand, maybe 300 grand to fit out a good looking restaurant, it will cost you less than $100 to get a professional looking eBay listing template. So if you can do that, you’ve now got two. Two times two is four. Four times two is eight. You’ve now got eight times the sales for that one eBay listing. [Student] As far as the templates…
The templates are any better than others
– Yeah. [Student] With, you know you, as far as the templates are any better than others? Do you recommend any look or feel?
– There’s 124 factors so yeah I can’t go through all those tonight. We’re going to have to do a whole optimization ’cause we’re running, I’m running out of time tonight so I can’t. Yeah, ’cause tonight’s just supposed to be beginners, and I can’t go through a whole, the next one we will. We’ll go through a whole advance. So now we got two times two times, is it eight times two is 16?
The impression to sale ratio is a huge one
Now the impression to sale ratio is a huge one. This is what turbo charges your listings or gets them into what we call the jet stream. So what happens here is that if eBay realizes that for the amount of time someone does a search and sees your listing and buys it, it pushes you higher up the search results. How to Start eBay Business
It’s exactly how places the hot selling items
It’s exactly how places like Kohl’s or Woolworth’s at the end of there aisles is the most expensive piece of real estate, and that’s where they put the Kit Kat’s or the hot selling items. Cause they know every time someone walks past the end of the aisle and there’s a Kit Kat there, they know x amount of people are going to reach in there and grab it. They walk past, that’s an impression. If you’re talking about stick their arm in there and grab it, it’s a sale.
Ebay works exactly the same way
Ebay works exactly the same way. If they do it impression and it gets more sales than the competitors, your listing gets put up to the top of the search results. Now its on page one. You get a lot more sales. This is how you turbo charge your results. Well here you got 138 sales in 24 hours. This is the same deal. You just get it up the top.
Two times two time two is 16
So two times two time two is 16. So this here on an eBay listing is your title. Your title, if it’s got 60 characters or more, you’ll get 1.5 times the sales. Lot of people don’t populate that. They don’t put 80 characters. They only put 40. In the old days, we were allowed 55. See every relevant keyword equals more traffic, but just like Google, eBay puts the most weight on the first 30 characters. How to Start eBay Business
For dropshipping, use the same first 30 characters
For dropshipping, use the same first 30 characters, that should be 50 or so. That’s an error, but yeah for dropshipping it’s 50 characters. So CAPS or no caps is always a question. Normally always like this, first letter in Caps. There are exceptions to the rule. If you sell for instance things in the weight gain industry, they like to be yelled at. So if you sell things like protein powder, dumb bells, all that kind of stuff, caps works best. So how do you find the top keywords. How to Start eBay Business
EBay Auto Suggestion Tool which also known as the Search Box
There’s many ways, and the first way is the eBay Auto Suggestion Tool which also known as the Search Box. If you go to eBay, type in the word solar, it will show you all the other hot key words that come after it, so will Google. And this is straight from the horses mouth of course. This is straight from eBay. So also item specifics should be populated. Down here, brand name, UPCK, et cetera. This is just a blob with the item specifics. This should all be populated as well. How to Start eBay Business
Careful with item specifics
And this can be a little bit careful with item specifics because the item specifics mean you can suddenly be competing with another seller that you do not want to compete with. Cause if you are now competing, if you have the same codes on your items, specifics, which is this section here or here, you could be selling or competing with this seller, and you’ve all of a sudden got 50 product ratings to start this person because eBay realizes it’s the exact same product. That might be a good thing. It might be a bad thing. Just be aware of it. How to Start eBay Business
Unique identifiers for SEO, SEO for those who don’t know is Search Engine Optimization
So unique identifiers for SEO, SEO for those who don’t know is Search Engine Optimization. Use Part numbers, Brand Names, UPC’s, EAN’s, European Article Numbers, ISBN’s which is books, MPN Manufacturers Part Numbers, and you add them all to the item specifics. But just be careful and think about do I want to do this or not. The Gallery Image, it’s image one, like I mentioned before we can now plug 12 images to eBay, and this is image one.
If you put on here the same, when people look on eBay to buy something they’ve got itches they want scratched
And If you put on here the same, when people look on eBay to buy something they’ve got itches they want scratched. If you can scratch their itches, they’ll click on your listings. And if they click, that’s called, a see the arrow, click through rate, that dramatically improves your sales ’cause they go into your listing. How to Start eBay Business
You got to fair chance of selling them. So if you put on here those things, it’s a big good thing. Now you might be thinking, “Oh my God, how on Earth do I do that?” Well its actually very simple. I’ll show you in a second, wrong slide. First before we get to that, you add three benefits of you the seller.
Three benefits of you the seller
Three benefits of you, so once you’ve chosen your name you get a professional logo made. It’s somewhere like five which puts you at $5. So you add your logo, which makes you look professional. You also add an Australia flag, so people realize they’re getting it from you, not someone in China. You also put on something else about you. People want everything yesterday. Human beings being human beings, might take 6 months to decide to buy something, but when they do decide, they want it yesterday. So you put something that gives the feeling of speed, like Fastway Couriers or something like that. You know add three benefits of you the seller.
Ask yourself why should they buy from you
Ask yourself why should they buy from you. What are your top three answers? And normally come up with that is you’re fast, you’re Australian, et cetera. And so what are the top three benefits of the product? What is the itches they want scratched? And that’s those things should be in the item. What’s the top three benefits that are going to change that persons life when they own this item? And you put those in there. I’ll give you some examples.
The “so what” principle
And you convert those features using the “so what” principle. As an example of the so what principle, take a car. Let’s say it’s got the words MPI on the back it. Let’s say you did some research. It stands for multi-point fuel injection. So what? So you always say “so what.” Whenever you reading your own ad copy or you’re reading anyone else’s ad copy, you always say to yourself “so what.” MPI, so what, multi point fuel injection, so what? They discover you get 25% more power and 20% better fuel economy. Okay, now you got me interested. That’s what should be there.
It’s converting features to benefits
So it’s converting features to benefits. So those top 3 life changing benefits should be in your galleries for whatever your selling. You can easily double the click through rate for your listing by doing this, easily double it. So some example here. These are gallery images as you can see here, 24mm thick frame. It’s got a save you pad. The size of it. It’s got a bonus hoop. This is the sort of stuff you put in there. This is what I was saying. You’re probably thinking, “Well how do I do this?”
Use a program called Canva
What you do is you use a program called Canva. It’s free. And the awesome thing about it is because it’s free, you can get your VA’s to do it as well. If you want to know how to use Canva, it’s really simple. Here’s a short video for free showing how to do it. There’s plenty other videos out there on how to do it. It’s free. In the old days we used to buy all our VA’s licenses for PhotoShop. It used to cost us a fortune. Now we don’t. We just use Canva. All right so eBay Listing Templates I mentioned earlier. This is an example of a listing template. You can get these done from $25. You shouldn’t be spending any more than $100.
EBay listing templates must be visually pleasing, must be mobile responsive
So eBay listing templates must be visually pleasing, must be mobile responsive. Over 70% as in 7-0, 70% of your sales are going to be coming from mobile. So it must work on a mobile device. Do not get, be very careful about finding some free templates on the internet which you can download for free which is like 10 years old. I can guarantee you it’s not mobile responsive. It must work on a 24 inch monitor and a 5.5 inch IPhone. So a visually pleasing template can multiply your sales by two. So, and I mentioned the impression to sale ratio. I’ve laid down that to take it into the jet stream.
Next thing I want to quickly talk about is sponsored listings
Next thing I want to quickly talk about cause we’re running out of time is sponsored listings. Optimization is 124 things we can do to improve our sales. Like everything in life, 80/20 rule comes into play. Out of those 124 elements we can improve, you get 80% of the result from only 20% of them. Sponsored listing is one of those ones that is a needle mover. And what sponsored listing is is you pay a fee to have your listing put up higher by eBay in the search results. And that fee can vary from 1% to 20, but you don’t hardly ever see them that high. So you can pay a certain amount.
Whatever amount they show, you generally don’t get billed that amount
Now whatever amount they show, you generally don’t get billed that amount. So of every 10 sales, they might charge you say 40% of those, not for every single one, and that dramatically changes the maths equation on it. You’ll end up budgeting for 40% to 50%, but if you do take sponsored listings, I’ve seen so many times people sales of an item increase by 30% and beyond. So it’s very much, it just basically puts you right, now if you haven’t optimized your listing, you’re not going to go onto page one. If you’re on page 20, it won’t take you to page one. But if you’re on page 3, you’ll get to page one.
First step is always optimize first, always optimize these things, and then sponsor
So your first step is always optimize first, always optimize these things, and then sponsor. So sponsored listings, there’s a link here that shows how to do the sponsored listings if you want to do it. I highly recommend it. And I’ve done that, and the great thing about it, unlike Google advertisements et cetera, you only get billed when it sells. If it doesn’t sell, you pay nothing. So if the item doesn’t sell, you pay zero. There’s not much advertising on the planet that’s like that. Most advertising on the planet you pay irrespective of whether it sells or not. How to Start eBay Business
EBay will normally only charge you around 40% of your sales
So eBay will normally only charge you around 40% of your sales. So summary of how to build a $1 million plus business is research product, list, optimize, tune, automate, and then repeat. So before we wrap it up, I’ll just take a couple of, a few questions ’cause we are running out of time. If anyone’s got some questions. Yeah? [Student] How do you find local to be printed? Go to neilwaterhouse where it says drop. There’s a whole course on how to find local, how to find suppliers.
– [Student] Go to
– Yeah there’s that link I had which is neilwaterhouse.com/drop, and it’s all on there. [Student] To summarize basically in your presentation your saying that dropshipping the best in comparison to–
Dropshipping is the best
– For me, but everyone’s different. I’ve been importing as well for 30 years, so it’s just I think it is, but some people like used products.
– [Student] Would you do it on your website?
– Oh yeah, totally, 100%, do it on eBay and Amazon. All right. I’m being signaled from the back, so we’re going to have to wrap it up, so unfortunately we’re running out of time. I’ve gone through a lot of stuff tonight, but it is all about baby steps, so just one little step at a time gets you there.
It really is all about baby steps, and of course version one is better than version none
It really is all about baby steps, and of course version one is better than version none. Cause a lot of people get hung up about, you know one of my coaches down at Sullivan, he told me a long time ago that 80% good enough is good enough. If you do 80%, you can 10x your business, so if you’re a procrastinator, which I can be, 80% is good enough.
So and like I mentioned before, to win the game, you just need to stay in the game long enough to win the game, so thank you guys. You’ve been awesome tonight. I hope you got a lot out of this, and here’s a link to download the slides, and thank you very much. Thank you.
To watch “Beginner’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business – Step by Step Guide Part 1” see
To watch “Beginner’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business – Step by Step Guide Part 2” see
To watch “Beginner’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business – Step by Step Guide Part 3” see
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