Setting up a Business on eBay

So you will arrive at this article with some intentions of having stuff to sell on the eBay store. This might be due to a clear out of the attic or garage, or you have a valuable item you would like to get rid of, or you may have arrived here by reading our article on yard sales, and feel you are ready to get stuck into setting up a business on eBay. Whatever, this article will guide you through how to sell on eBay and how to set up a business on eBay, along with other sites that you can use to sell your stuff.

With your items gathered, you will be able to analyse what sells well and what to put on at what prices. Now anything techy sells really well. There are loads of people wanting to pick up a bargain on iPods or cell phones or old TV monitors and even assorted cable spaghetti. Other things which sell well are watches and jewellery, along with toys and games. While these sell best, pretty much anything that you would buy second hand will sell on eBay, because the target audience is so big that the chances of people viewing a certain item each day are high enough for everything to be covered and craved on the eBay store.

While that sounded very nerdy and mathematical, essentially you have a good chance with anything, just a better chance with some things than others. For example, I tried to sell a clarinet reed on eBay just to see what happened, and I didn’t sell. Not a big enough audience wanting clarinet reeds because half the population don’t even know what 1 is, let alone have a use for it!

So with your selection of items sorted, you now have the tedious task of putting everything up. First I would advise that you take a photo of everything you need to sell. A good photo means a good sale essentially, and no photo means no sale. Or there about. So get a clean piece of white or black paper (white is better because it is happier and more inviting) and slope it against a wall on a table or something so you have a nice homemade studio. Now you don’t need a fancy camera for fancy photos, it is all about the light and the background. With background sorted, make sure there is plenty of natural light and place your desired selling object in a reasonably artist manor if you can manage it, and snap away until you get a photo which looks nice. I really enjoy this process and take ages over it, but if it isn’t your thing don’t make it last too long, however this is paramount to your eBay lot’s success.

Next you need to create an eBay account if you haven’t already done so and go to the sell an item under the sell tab. I also advise at this point you set up a PayPal account if you haven’t done this either, as this will help to maximise your sale chances further. The Listing Creation form is very intuitive and just requires a little knowledge around the bidding price area. With the start bidding price, it is free to list if you start at 99 cents or less, however you may want more for your item, so you have to weight up the risks and the value of the item.

The one thing I would say is don’t go to high, but don’t go to low either. Think about how much you would want for it, then how much you would pay for the item if you were going for a bargain and take of about 10%. That is the golden rule really. Also if you have purchased the item previously with the intent of selling on eBay, then you need to make sure you know how much you paid for it in the first place to avoid loosing money.

Another handy tip is to look around and see what the same item is going for on other listings on eBay. Remember people buying on eBay go for a bargain, not to splash out lots or else they would buy the item brand new, so this is important to consider as well. Make sure you are well clued about cost and type of delivery too, or else you could end up losing money by posting it for more than you bargained for.

While this may seem a lot of information to take in at once, they are small things that you need to think about to get that perfect sale. If you are considering buying on eBay as well with the hope of reselling, look out for things which you could split or join together for more money, or collectable items which you know a lot about that are going for a bargain. It might then be worth taking these to a specialist website or dealer for the chance of a better return.

While this article largely covers eBay, there is also the option of selling on Amazon and Play.com which would be more useful for books and CDs and DVDs, as these websites, especially the latter, specialise in these items and therefore getting specialist traffic to them. You just refine your target audience by doing this. Another website to look at is online classified ad directory, Loot.com, but expect more content about these websites at a later stage.

Make a bomb on Web Businesses

Making money is all about making the most of your skills. One way I did this was by making websites. If you know how to code websites from scratch using html and php, or even just have a basic understanding of Dreamweaver, or a similar website package, and an idea which could prove successful, then you could be in with the chance of making money yourself. This may seem a daunting task, but it is the perfect way to create some extra revenue and there are many people out there who would be willing to buy it off you.

All you need is to be able to use a basic program, and a good solid business idea. Easy, right? Although it sounds it, I should warn you of some major pitfalls of this adventure. While it requires outgoing cost to start off with, it is a risky business and needs a good head and a good eye. You need to be able to time your site right as to when to sell it, and know what sites sell well.

When I say it needs no outgoing costs, I am lying a little bit. The user will want to buy the website complete with a domain name and in most cases a web hosting package. This means you need to make sure your domain name for your chosen website is available and ready to go before you put in a whole load of hard work and realise that somebody has already created a business which you are trying to sell to somebody.

People also like to see, if you are going to sell at the higher end of the market, a set of domain names which relate to the name of the site in your possession which they can save so nobody can copy their site. If you don’t understand then an example is Google. They own thousands of other web domains so that nobody can get even close to them. They even own the web domain googlesucks.com!

Next on the list in the internet business purpose. If you try and sell somebody an online store selling cakes and cookies, it will never sell, as somebody would have to make to goods to sell. What I am trying to show you is that the best subject matter for an online business which you are going to sell is always something which is virtual, like a service or a blog, or even something like a program store or a domain store.

The reason why making websites to sell on to other people is such a good money maker is because they sell for lots of money, and this is because people buy the whole package, as I have said before. Now I will explain this in a bit more detail. As you would when you buy a business in real life, an internet business has it’s own corporate identity and it’s own logos and marketing service as well, which would have to be produced to sell with the website.

The other really important thing that surrounds a business is popularity and on the world wide web this is measures in page hits. I would strongly advise, spend a couple of months developing your website and getting it to function as a business before you even attempt to sell it because the thing which will make it sell is an already established customer base, because this means an already established source of income. Everybody knows the hardest thing in the business process is setting it up and people are lazy. The more established it is, the more it will sell for, and the more worth it is for the hard work you have put into it. It is like investing: you have to wait for results. My motto in business, which I have learnt, often the hard way, is that patience is a virtue. And that really is all there is to it.

I have also written an article about making website templates to sell, which is less complicated, but a smaller return than selling web businesses, so please check that out if you like the idea of creating an income from your skills in web design. Thank you for reading and I hope this has been of help. For any further questions please contact me at peachy146@gmail.com.

Get paid to do stuff

This is as simple as it sounds. You do stuff, people pay you. Simple right? However I know there will be a lot of people going, 'I haven't got any skills that I can use to make money.' Wrong. There are always people wanting something, with the sheer amount of people and complexity of the human being it is impossible to suggest that there isn't something which you can offer soebody that nobody wants. There are so many different things that you can do to help people out. 

So your a maths genius, or a history geek. Great but what good is that knowledge doing in your head (apart from passing your exams and getting you somewhere in life, I admit that's a point). But it could be making you money. You could offer tuition in a subject for say £10 an hour, once a week and there you go, £10 of profit for you. I have an article about revenue and profit, but essentially, all the money you make on this is yours to keep because you are not paying anything to start off with. 

There are many other things which you could "teach" as well. For example, musical tuition is always a winner, people are willing to pay about £10 for a 30 minute lesson with music, and if you have the skills, then it is really easy money. I do 2 lesson a week at £8 each. So I get £16 for doing what I am good at, and what I love as well. One of my friends teaches piano for £10 a lesson. I also know somebody who charges £15 for an hours tuition of maths, to somebody who is in her class, but is struggling a bit. And she gets a box of chocolate when the student does well on an exam as a thank you. for me a free box of chocolate is enough of a bribe for anything!

There are also other things you can do, if your sat there thinking I don't really like school or work, and I am not very good at it either. Write a note saying you will wash people's cars every couple of weeks for a fiver, or mow lawns in the summer. Anything which you think is a chore, people would be willing to pay a reasonable price for somebody doing it for them. Humans are lazy, take advantage of it.

Another thing to remember when thinking about this, if your writing a note to put through people's doors or just in conversation with your neighbours, is that if you mention you are saving up for something relevant and educational, or something that will enrich you in your growing up, like a new cricket bat or a new violin, or whatever it might be, people are more than willing to part with the money out of their pockets. make sure you always add this is as it will win over anybody with enough of a leaning! I am not saying lie, but twist the truth if you have to. Obviously there is a point at which this wears off, and that is usually when you leave school and move onto university or a proper job, so do bare this in mind!

This article was just to open your mind about the possibilities of what could happen if you put your mind to it. I am not saying that you will think in your head you will do some lawn mowing, and then you will get about 16 people knocking on your door 15 minutes later asking for your service, but with a little bit of work, some free time and some hard work you can make a decent amount of money from this and remember it is all profit for you so you are quids in whatever you charge.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, then please email me at peachy146@ gmail.com.

The Money Tips Index - Updated 02/03/2012

1. Get paid to do stuff: Click here

2. Make a Bomb on Web Businesses: Click Here

Jargon Busting - Revenue and Profit

First of all I would like to clear up a few keywords. There is lots of jargon that comes with business and it's quintessential that you understand what everything means, so you can translate it back into English and use the information it comes with usefully.

The first is the difference between revenue and profit.

Now they both concern making money, but they are slightly different. Revenue is the total money which is made from a sale, while to profit is the money which is made on top of all the original payments for purchasing, manufacturing etc. For example, lets say we have just sold a bar of chocolate to somebody. Say we bought it for 30p a unit for a wholesale market and have sold it on at 50p a unit. That is a total revenue of 50p, as that is the amount of money that we have taken for that sale. OK. We had a chocolate bar, now we have a 50p coin. However we paid 30p for that originally, so not all of it is profit, so we do seller price - the bought price: 50p - 30p, and we get 20p. This is the amount of money we have made from selling the item, so that is the profit. This is one of the most simple, yet fundamental concepts which we have to understand in business, as everything requires us to be making a profit, but we can only be making a profit once all of our expenditure costs have been covered.

To break even, as it termed as, where you balance the amount you paid for a unit to the price you sell it for, we would have had to have sold the chocolate bar for 30p. we have not lost any money on the sale, and we have not made any either.

This is an important point to consider when choosing a process of making money, or when pricing up items which are to be sold. I would suggest, think of how much money you would like to make off the sale and add that onto the initial item cost, and how much you would pay for it, and then find somewhere in between. A standard guide is a mark-up price (mark-up is the price which the item is sold at) of 125% - 150% of the purchasing and manufacturing costs, but we will go into a lot more detail at some stage in the future.

So we have covered the basic principals of what this all boils down to. Making Money. I hope this has cleared the waters, rather than disturbed the silt. 

Thank you for reading. For any furthr questions please email me at peachy146@gmail.com.