Grow a Business on eBay the easy way!
By Belinda Stinson

As I've returned to eBay I thought this article should be about starting your sea or tree change with an eBay business.

An eBay business can be built progressively at home and can grow as you make sales.

One of the best things about having an online business is that it can travel with you. So if you start it in the city you can take it to regional areas with you when your sea or tree change comes to fruition.

The learning curve for an eBay business can be more gentle than many other start-up opportunities - mainly because you can do it one step at a time with a minimum investment.

One of the key benefits of using a large network like eBay are the strengths offered by the network - an established community, excellent key words for search engines, website infrastructure already built and being continually improved, extensive advertising and media coverage and inbuilt competition.

There's also the community chatrooms for learning and exploring.

As you grow your eBay listings you can support them with a website. It can be quite cheap to get started with a website and using a duel strategy of eBay and a website can also give you the breathing space to develop the website slowly - giving you time to learn the skills you need and earn the income to re-invest into the business.

Another good feature of an eBay business is that you can grow it to the size that suits you - small, medium or big.

You might find that there are different times of the year or even different periods in your life for a smaller or bigger presence online and this is entirely possible with eBay.

eBay isn't the only option either, there's a range of auction sites and many of the directories like Yahoo have their own shopping facilities.

You might find that having a combination of eBay auctions and a Yahoo shop works really well. Even maybe having a website of your own as well.

It is a good idea to experiment. Give options 3 - 6 months to test out.

Keep track of your costs and sales. Some methods are more expensive than others. You'll have to test as well which avenues work as good advertising areas too then balance that with your costs.
It is a case of testing and tracking. It is no use putting the effort into running a business, buying stock and selling it online to have most or all of the sales being gobbled up by sellers fees.

For me I found having an eBay Store too expensive. It was a facility that didn't pay for itself, it cost me more money to have it going without positive returns.

I also used the About Me page facility and found it much more useful, especially as I'm allowed to link my website from it.

So I cancelled my eBay Store service and kept my About Me facility.

Now I'm back on eBay my selling costs include listing item fees, gallery fees and sales commission fees as well as the PayPal fees. It all adds up.

I realised that my first approach to eBay wasn't paying for itself so now I'm trying a different approach.

I'm not paying for the Store any more and I've built the website up in the last year so I can direct traffic to it and hopefully sell things like matching sets, earring stands and Catherine Popesco.

So I'm integrating my eBay service better into my online strategy.

The trick is to test, track and measure the results and try new things progressively so to build an online business.

I've also read a couple of books about selling on eBay so I can learn about other ideas and approaches. It is really worth doing. Just make sure you get the latest edition - check the year of publishing in the front.

Need ideas about what to sell on eBay? Go hunting. Look up things that you are interested in and see what others are doing and how they are doing it.

Say for example you like fabrics. What about getting some clothes made from interesting fabrics from the op shops, washing them so they are in good condition and cut them up into quilting squares, bundling them up in colours and textures and selling them?
To get repeat business you need to have good quality products and take that extra care.

Maybe as part of the growing initiative for the business you develop a range of patterns for the bundles of squares - say that use two or more bundles to encourage multiple sales.

How about doing up the bundles with nice ribbons. You can get great rolls of ribbon at $2 shops so they are nice and affordable. Presentation makes a big difference.

Send a note with your goodies thanking them for their custom and inviting them to return again soon.

You can also start with something easy for you and then add or change products over time.

The trick is to start and get learning your lessons. We all have to learn things when we're trying something different and if you want your business to prosper then you need to be always learning.

When you're choosing a product to test, to explore check out what categories it can be listed in (it annoys bidders to find things in the wrong category but can be good to find something different) so you can test them.

I think listing in 2 categories at the same time can be a little expensive on eBay but I'm sure it works differently for different products.

So maybe list goodies in one category first and test in a different one the next time. It’s worth thinking about.

The opportunities are there for you to build a part time business for yourself. There are many success stories of how people started on eBay with just a few hours a week to being able to go part time with their day job to then being full time with their eBay business.

It is entirely possible and it isn't brain surgery.

So go exploring. Give it a go and I'll add eBay product ideas on the blog regularly for you.

To check our eBay auction items click here - we're adding new auctions each week so check regularly. We're combining shipping for multiple auction wins and goodies from the website - keeping the postage costs down for you!

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