The best way to find what will be popular and what will be in high demand is to ask your kids and grandkids They already know what will be hot. Once you figure this out, you can often find these products at wholesale clubs such as Costco and Sam’s Club –and even stores like Wal-Mart. You would be amazed how many savvy eBay sellers pay full retail and can still mark hot costumes up and make money on eBay.

Besides costumes, other products can include Halloween related candy dishes, decorations, CD’s, and DVD’s. Find the unique, one-of-a-kind merchandise and the popular items because that’s what people look for.

The Halloween selling season on eBay starts earlier than you think. Setting up your Halloween auctions too late will miss the peak selling weeks. Make sure you start listing around the 25^th of September. If you offer overnight or second day air shipping, you will want to make sure you end your auction no later than the 28^th of October. If you don’t offer this service you should end your auctions around the 24^th of October. You need to remember that Halloween is on a Saturday in 2009 so you can’t use UPS for that last-day delivery.

Halloween is a fun time of year for both adults and children. If you can find the hot and unique items to list on eBay, you can have some fun and make some quick profits. Halloween is one of those holidays where you want to list early and list often. Shorter, more frequent auctions (3 & 5 day) will allow you to maximize your sales.

1. Offer free shipping and build the cost into your starting price

2. Offer calculated shipping and charge buyers the actual shipping cost

3. Pre-calculate a fixed shipping price

 (Shipping Tip: If you are shipping via Priority mail, check out the weight and see if there is a flat rate offered through the post office. This can often save you money)

Buyers really like free shipping and when they do pay additional for shipping they want to know the cost before they bid. In general you will get more bids with free or fixed cost shipping than with calculated shipping.

Whenever I use fixed shipping, I pre-calculate the shipping cost half-way across the country. For example I live in Washington State, so I pre-calculate shipping costs to St. Louis. Now when I ship further than St. Louis I lose a little on shipping, but when I ship west of St. Louis I make a little. So over time it averages out.

One question that comes up a lot with shipping is multiple purchase discounts. If buyers purchase more than one item from you, should you offer a discount? Of course the choice is yours to make, but it may not be a bad idea. You want to make sure you don’t end up paying for the shipping. If it’s possible to ship the items together, you can offer a discount. If you can get a weight discount when you ship multiple shipments, then you can consider it.

The main thing to remember when it comes to shipping is you don’t want to have to pay out of your profits. If this happens you are not charging enough. Check out your options and Always be very clear about shipping and handling in your description –because buyers often miss the eBay shipping cost statement that appears near your current bid or buy price.

Free Shipping Supplies

Check with your local gift shop, kitchen store or radio shack. They often have good quality used boxes and packing material they have to pay to have recycled. They will often gladly give these to you for free.

________________________

The Complete eBay Marketing System – Learn how to start and run a professional eBay business with a printed business manual written by an eBay seller who sells on eBay every day.

The Back to School season traditionally started last week, but this year it has gotten off to a slow start, however, I expect this to start picking up going into the week before Labor Day. Even if you don’t sell back to school items, you should see some increase in traffic as those people who are shopping for back to school items are also online buying other stuff.

Speaking of back to school items, I found a great product recently that I have just started selling on eBay. It’s called the Brite Strike Self-Defense Strobe, Flashlight & Alarm.  This is a great self-defense product for seniors, joggers and college students. I am seeing a lot of parents and grandparents buying these for their daughters who are going off to college.

I saw an article in the San Francisco Chronicle Online edition this week about finding the best time and day to end an auction. Theoretically you want to end an auction when the most number of people are on eBay. Conventional wisdom and some data mining has indicated that Sunday and Monday evening between 5PM and 8PM (Pacific time) is the best time to end an auction.

If you sell on eBay, picking the best time is very important for two reasons:

1. eBay’s search engine in the default Best Match mode gives auctions ending soonest the best exposure.
2. You want this exposure to occur when there are the highest number of people on eBay.

Now, obviously you wouldn’t want to end an auction at 2AM or on Sunday morning at 8AM when everyone is sleeping in or having a leisurely breakfast and watching Sunday Morning but eBay Prime Time may not be the best time.

For the past few weeks I have been experimenting with listing on different days and times and the results have been surprising. Yes it does turn out that Sunday or Monday is often the best day, but often the second best day results in higher selling prices.  I have also been cross checking my data with the HammerTap research tool and it revealed some more surprises –and even some answers.

I am working on a large article for the next issue of my newsletter. (You can read the current issue and subscribe here). I will present my data and discuss some of the reasons this is happening. But take my word for it –the conventional wisdom could be very wrong. In the meantime, if you are not using a research tool such as HammerTap, then you should sign up for a free trial right away and check your products to learn the best time and day to end your listings. You may have some surprises too.

See Also

• How To Start and Run an eBay Consignment Business has been revised and updated for 2009.
  Learn how any eBay seller can enter this low risk highly profitable eBay business with almost no investment

It is no secret that lots of people are making money selling their products, services and affiliate links on social marketing sites. But figuring out how they work is frankly a learning curve and they can be confusing. For example, Twitter is probably the easiest one to master, but that took me weeks to learn how to do it properly. This morning I just finished reading a 58 page book by Allan Hogan called The Ultimate Social Media Marketing Textbook.

Don’t let the word “textbook” scare you –there is nothing boring or technical about this book. Allen takes you through the simple steps to set up and understand sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTude, DIGG, LinkedIn and even Flickr.

The book is organized around a series of Icons. The Icons guide you through the steps:

• Auction Icon: The action icon is used to denote information that prompts you to action. Whether its from guiding you through registration at a site, or from providing actual assignments to “try it out”, the action icon will lead you to greater social media involvement and success.
• Hot tip Icon: Information regarding best practice tips is identified by the hot tip icon.
• Money Icon: Maybe it’s through affiliate links on your blog, or maybe through empowering others to share and promote your business, the money symbol will guide you through concepts and practices that are potentially lucrative.
• Warning Icon: The warning symbol denotes an area of practices to avoid. Learn from the costly mistakes of others and avoid the pitfalls of bad judgment by paying attention to the information around these icons.
• Idea Icon: Finally, the idea bulb is used to help illuminate instances of powerful traffic attracting practices. Get insiders secrets by practicing the insights available around this icon.

If you have products to sell, Allen shows you how to use social marketing to expand and grow your sales. If you don’t have a product to sell, he shows you how to use social marketing to make money with affiliate programs or ClickBank. If you are one of my readers who bought the ClickBank Code from the recommendation in my newsletter (you can read the article here), this book would be a perfect companion. You can set up niche marketing social media sites and use ClickBank niche products to generate extra income.

So check out The Ultimate Social Media Marketing Textbook.  It comes with a money-back guarantee if you are not happy and it will open your eyes to the power and the techniques of social marketing.

The book comes with three free bonuses including a 20-minute phone consultation with a social media expert to help you and answer your questions.

See Also

• Ten, Little Known, Highly Profitable, eBay Niche Market Businesses Anyone Can Do
  A step-by-step guide to selling and sourcing in ten, low cost, low risk eBay niche markets.

I have been publishing my free eBay tips for the past 6 years. As you can imagine with all of the changes on eBay and the services provided by third parties, these need to be updated frequently. The truth is that I have been a bit lazy and it has been a while since I updated the tips page, but this morning it is good to go.

You can read the tips online here: http://www.skipmcgrath.com/auction_sr/77-tips-tools-selling-ebay.shtml

If you would like to read them later or print them out, scroll to the bottom of the page. There is a link to a PDF file so you can save the document to your computer.

It looks like I will have to change the tips again soon. eBay is coming out with some major announcements next week. They will be rolling out the trusted seller program and changes to rules for shipping, insurance, changes to the power seller program and its looking like many of the optional selling features may be going away. So watch this blog and be sure and sign up for my newsletter to get the latest news and stratergies for coping with the many changes sure to come.

You can subscribe to this blog by clicking on the logo to your home page near the top of this page. You can subscribe to my twice-monthly free newsletter at this link: http://www.skipmcgrath.com/newsletters/

See Also

• Learn how to make money as an eBay Trading Assistant selling on consignment
  Complete eBay Consignment Manual with forms, contracts, and advertising. Everything you need to get started.

I have been selling the EZ Cube Photo Studios on my website (www.ezauctiontools.com) and on eBay for the past 4 years.  The EZ Cube is an inexpensive and impressive photo solution that allows anyone to take excellent product photos for your eBay listings and websites. The EZ Cube is inexpensive compared to most professional photo equipment. It is also high quality and long lasting.

But in today’s economic environment some folks just can’t afford an EZ Cube.

I often surf photo sites and today I tried typing in the phrase "cheap photo studio."  As you can imagine the results contained a lot of junk, but there were two excellent and cheap solutions.  So if any of you are looking for a way to improve your product photos and can’t afford one of my EZ Cubes, visit these two sites for a really cheap solution.

DIY Photography is a fabulous blog where the author shows dozens of ways to take great photos using handmade stuff from around the house instead of extensive studio equipment.  Here is the link to his Cheap Photo Studio. Be sure and explore some of the links in his blog to other photo solutions as well.

The other place I found is The Strobist. Here is the link to his studio you can build with a cardboard box and some white paper.

And, here is a link to my 20 Inch EZ Cube Light Tent on eBay.  I also sell them at www.ezauctiontools.com.

I hope everyone has a Happy 4th of July Holiday.

Skip McGrath

See Also

• Need to make extra money? Try the Clickbank Code.
  I have tried several Clickbank programs and frankly most of them are just not doable. But this one really works. I was able to generate over $140 my first two days and I am just getting started.

I have been working with the folks at netSpray in Austin Texas to help them introduce their new service to eBay and online sellers. netSpray is a new service that allows you to create widgets and place them on online classified and social media sites.

This is a really cool service. It is quick and easy to learn –about 10 minutes tops from signing up to starting to sell. NO listing fees and NO final value fees.

I have written two free eBooks that are available to anyone who tries the service:

• 7 Secrets to Selling Online
• Using Twitter and netSpray to Generate Online Profits

Here is the link to get your free copies: http://www.netspray.com/SkipMcGrath/sellingSecrets.html

See Also

• Learn How To Make Money With Your Digital Camera
  You don’t need to be a pro t sell your photos online. This report shows how anyone can make extra money with their digital camera

Last week I did a recorded interview with eBay Titanium Power Seller, Ron Saxton. We spoke about how he runs his eBay business, the state of eBay today, other online venues such as Amazon and we even discussed the eBay consignment business.

You can listen to the entire interview from a link on our FREE Auction Resources Page.  While you are there, take a look at the many free and low-cost eBay tools and resources for sellers. 

Unless you are a regular reader, you may not be familiar with all of the free information on our website.  Here are just a few of the links we have to help eBay and other online sellers:

• Auction Resources
• 77 Tips for Selling on eBay
• eBay News
• State Sales Tax Info (How and Where to get a sales tax number)
• Info to Help eBay Sellers Build Their Own Website
• How To Market Your Website

Look for the next issue of The eBay Sellers News early next week.

Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Skip_McGrath

See Also

• Learn how to make good money selling used books on eBay, Amazon and The Internet
  Everything you need to get into this low risk, low cost and highly profitable eBay business

eBay and ProPay announced their deal for eBay sellers that will take effect next week. Starting next week, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium eBay Power Sellers can sign up for ProPay and integrate ProPay into their eBay business much like they now do with PayPal.

The rates will be similar to PayPal: 30-cent transaction fee plus 2.7% for Silver Power Sellers and 2.4% for Gold and Platinum. eBay Titanium Power Sellers will be given special rates (Why am I not surprised?). Bronze Power Sellers will be “invited” to join the program sometime next year.

Rather than rewrite all the details, if you want to understand the ProPay (ProPal?) deal, Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes has done her usual thorough and excellent analysis of the eBay and ProPay announcement. There is some important information in her report, so please click here to read the whole story.

I am going to confine myself to some observations.

Disadvantages

• The rates  are about the same so there is no cost advantage
• You now have two services to deal with instead of just one
• We already have a merchant CC account as many larger sellers do and their rates are about the same as ProPal, plus I get a machine for procession offline or telephone transactions

Advantages

• One advantage I see to joining ProPal is to help the occasional buyer out who does not have a PayPal account or those who have a PayPal account and don’t want to use it for some reason. We get a lot of this around Christmas. A wife wants to buy something for her hubby and doesn’t want him to see it on the PayPal account.
• When you have an unhappy customer they have to sue the credit card charge back system. This is slightly better –and a little more in your favor than PayPal. If you sell the type of goods subject to a lot of returns this could be a big advantage, but for most sellers like us, it doesn’t add up to much.

Stay tuned for more. eBay said they are currently working with several other payment processors and will announce those in January. For me, I am going to take a pass for now and see how this all plays out. If I have leaned one thing being on eBay, don’t rush into new services until they have had some time to percolate on the site.  Jumping right into ProPay now, would be like taking a cake out of the oven five minutes before it’s finished baking. It will still be a little soft and mushy in the middle.  I also want to see what the other services will be and how PayPal integrates with PayMeLater whom they just purchased.

Until next time

Skip McGrath

See Also

• Could the Best Online Business Actually be an Off Line Business
  Free membership site lets you take a look at a new business concept using your online skills to help offline businesses
• The Complete eBay Marketing System – Revised and updated September 2008
  Complete eBay training course by Skip McGrath, an eBay Power Seller who sells on eBay every day. Printed Manuals and CDs.