3 Ways to Make More Money on Ebay

Making money on Ebay is fairly simple. Here are the basics, 1) you post an auction for a product or service that people want, 2) people who want your product or service place bids in the amount of money they are willing to purchase the item/service for and 3) the person with the highest bid at the end of the auction WINS! Now that’s simple. Some of the finer points to the equation above include finding the right product or service to offer and then finding the people who actually want what you have found. My biggest successes on Ebay, limited as they may be, have come when I have done just that. So there you have it!

Success on Ebay = Right product + People who want it.

Now that really is easy.

For now we’re going to presuppose that you have found a great product or service. Let’s focus on finding the people who want what you have for sale. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars spent daily on Ebay. This translates into hundreds of thousands of people bidding on and buying these items. The skill you must master in order to get the maximum number of bids (i.e. money) for your item is how to find these people. This essentially comes down to marketing your auction. Here are three zero cost marketing strategies that work in driving people to your Ebay auctions.

1. Want Ads

This strategy is the simplest of them all. Here’s the deal…you are looking for people who want what you have. Want ads are people telling you what they want. The internet has a treasure chest full of people placing want ads hoping someone has what they want. The next time you’re on Craigslist (www.craigslist.org) go to the “for sale” section. At the bottom of that section is a link called “Wanted.” Click on that link. Once that page is pulled up type in what you have for sale and see if anyone in that city is looking for it. No hits? Trying typing the misspelling of the item. Selling a Motorola Razr cell phone? Type in Razr first…nothing? Try Razor or try Motorola cell phone.

Once you have found someone that is looking for what you are selling send them an email explaining that you have listed an item on Ebay just like what they are looking for. Describe the item, give the opening asking amount and then give them the Ebay item number so they can find it. Then go find the next person. Other want ads that are useful include the Thriftnickle (http://www.thriftynickelads.com), Nickads (http://www.nickads.com) or Kijji (http://www.kijiji.com). These are just a few of the many the net offers to you. When using the above sites look for the search box and type in the word “Want” or “Wanted.” This will separate the want ads from the selling ads.

2 Chat Rooms

This one is a little bit trickier. First if you don’t chat you must find a chat platform to use. Yahoo messenger (http://messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php) or MSN’s IM (http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=MSNTDLINK) are two common ones to use. Once you have downloaded the software and established an account, user id and password and have explored the world of chatting you’ll begin to get a feel for what rooms are available to discuss such a topic. You have to be very careful in the chat rooms not to violate their codes of etiquette. This could find you booted out of the room. After you have found a couple of rooms that you are comfortable in ask a question such as, “does anyone know anybody that might be interested in buying a 1904 widget? I’ve just listed one on ebay (ebay item number 1234567789) for $0.45. I did this once with an auction for a Texas Instrument Calculator that I had listed. As soon as I asked the question one guy said, “Why would anybody want to buy a piece of crap like that anyways?” Several others chimed in along the same vein. But then one person sent me a private message asking for more information. He was a high school student preparing for college and needed a graphing calculator. He eventually was the highest bidder.

3. Usenet Groups

This is another strategy that takes some setting up in order to drive people to your auction. We’ll discuss this one a bit more tomorrow.