Packing your goods

If you are going to run a profitable and professional eBay business, you will need to package and ship your goods professionally. No one likes to receive his or her “eBay treasure” in an old shoebox stuffed with your last week’s newspaper. This does not mean that you have to always use “new” supplies. Recycled boxes and packaging materials are fine as long as they are in good condition.

There are three costs involved in shipping:

• Shipping supplies
• Shipper charges
• Your time

Let’s look at each one.

Shipping supplies

Shipping supplies consist of boxes, newsprint or tissue, Styrofoam peanuts, bubble-pak and tape.

Why pay top dollar for shipping supplies when you can get them for free? Here is a source of free shipping supplies, boxes and packing materials. Visit your local gift shop or kitchen store. These merchants receive shipments on a daily basis of usually fragile items that require large amounts of bubble pak, Styrofoam peanuts and sturdy boxes.

Gift shops are deluged with shipping and packaging materials. Local laws often require them to recycle the materials rather than just throwing them away. This can be expensive. Believe me — they are happy to give it away.

Local shops can be a treasure trove of free shipping and packing materials. Other stores that receive large amounts of shipping and packaging materials include drug stores, electronics stores (such as Radio Shack) and small neighborhood hardware stores.

If you ship USPS Priority Mail, he U.S. Postal Service website offers free shipping supplies delivered (also free) direct to your home or office. Many eBay sellers use Priority Mail for shipping items less than five pounds.  Less than five pounds, Priority Mail usually works out less than UPS and it gets there faster.

The USPS will send you free boxes, envelopes, tape and labels direct to your home by priority mail. You can print out labels and select Delivery Confirmation at the web site. (This is a saving of 60 cents over doing it at the post office). Here is a link where you can order free shipping supplies with the eBay logo on the box.  http://ebaysupplies.usps.com/

It goes without saying that you should package your merchandise carefully to avoid damage. Why do I say this if it’s so obvious? Just last month my wife received a package from a Top Rated Seller containing a collectible (and expensive) flow blue plate she had purchased from his eBay Store. The plate was loose in the box. The seller had wrapped it with bubble pak, but hadn’t taped the bubble pak together. During shipping it had worked loose in the box. Fortunately, it wasn’t broken. Even people who know better often take short cuts that can result in an unhappy buyer and in some cases, negative feedback.

Shipping Charges:

As an occasional seller there isn’t much you can do about lowering shipping charges. If, however, you are a high volume eBay seller, you can negotiate rates with UPS, FedEx and FedEx Ground.  Call the companies and ask what their quantity points are to get a discount. If you work for a company that uses UPS or FedEx, they have programs whereby employees can piggyback on their company’s discounts. You open up an account with your own credit card, but your shipping rate is tied to your employer’s rate. Ask you employer to ask his/her shipping company sales rep if they offer such a program. It is good for you and the employer because it can raise his/her quantity to help get lower rates.

eBay also has a program for PowerSellers and Top-rated sellers where you can save up to 23% off UPS Ground Daily Rates. The more you ship, the bigger the discount. Learn more about UPS rate discounts.

Your Time:

Time is valuable. Time you spend making labels and wrapping packages could be better spent launching auctions, searching for new products, answering emails and so on.

The best way to save time is to have a permanent area for shipping. Invest in tape guns, paper rolls and so on. If you have to clear off the dining room table every time you want to wrap a package, this is a waste of time.

When our kids were younger, we used to hire them to do our shipping.  Now they are grown up, we hire our neighbor’s teenagers to help with the business. It is a much better use of my time to pay a teenager a few bucks an hour to wrap packages. Besides anything you pay them is a business expenses for tax purposes.

Calculating postage and making labels is another time consuming task. Take a look at Stamps.com. They have a great $100-off offer they made to my readers.  Using a service like Stamps.com is a great way to save time and money on shipping.  Here are some of the benefits:

• Get postage discounts on Priority Mail & Express Mail.
• Import orders from eBay, Amazon.com and more.
• Save up to 10% on package insurance.
• Hide the postage amount on your shipping labels.
• Ship worldwide with USPS First Class International.

The other popular service that competes with Stamps.com is Endicia, but right now this special offer trumps them.

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The Complete eBay Marketing System covers issues like shipping and much more.  This is a complete printed training manual to setting up and running a profitable eBay business.

Your first task is to select a good digital camera with all the features you will need. There are hundreds of digital cameras on the market and new models are coming out virtually every week. The trend today is towards higher and higher image quality. This is expressed in the number of pixels –or mega pixels a camera can resolve. The higher this number, the more expensive the camera.

Fortunately you do not need extreme high-resolution for your auction photography. In fact, high-resolution photos are undesirable because they take a long time to download when someone opens an auction.

eBay recommends that photo file sizes be limited to 80 kilobytes. Actually you can go up to 120 kilobytes with no problem. Sixty-four kilobytes (64kb) is the size of what is called the email setting on most digital cameras. So this is one of the first features you need to look for when buying a camera –make sure it has a low resolution or email setting.

This feature is on most digital cameras so it is not a hard option to locate. The email setting is OK for most digital photos if you are not going to crop them. When you do, you lose detail. If you are selling a product where detail is important, then you will want to shoot at a higher resolution, at least 1 or 2 Megapixels, and crop or resize the photo in your software to get down to below 80KB. Shooting at this higher resolution will preserve the detail when you crop or resize.

Here are some of the features you need in a camera for eBay auction photography and why they are important: If you are about to buy a camera, just print this out and use it as a checklist and you can’t go wrong.

• Tripod: Almost all cameras have a standard tripod screw mount in the bottom. It is very important to use a tripod when taking auction photos to avoid blurred images that occur when you handhold a camera.
• Macro Setting: Macro is the photographic term for the ability to focus very close to an object. Typically the macro feature will allow you to focus as close at 3 or 4 inches from the subject. This is important to photograph small objects or to get up close to details you may want to show such as the original manufacturer’s price tag or a maker’s mark on pottery or silver.
• White Balance Adjustment: White Balance is used to adjust a camera to account for different color temperatures of light. Almost all cameras have an automatic white balance, but you want to make sure you get one where you can manually select the white balance between daylight, fluorescent and incandescent.
• Manual Focus: The auto focus on digital cameras is often fooled. The ability to manually focus on an object or part of an object is very important.
• Exposure adjustment: The light meter in a camera can be fooled by bright backgrounds. Since we often shoot against a white background especially when using a lighting tent, you need a camera that can adjust for this exposure.
• Optical zoom: Digital cameras come with both optical zoom and digital zoom. Digital zoom is very restrictive and difficult to work with. Make sure your camera has a basic optical zoom feature. You can tell if it does by pushing the zoom button and seeing if the lens actually moves in and out. If not, they the camera is using digital zoom.
• Aperture priority setting: The ability to select a small lens opening (aperture) allows you to achieve what is called depth of field. This means that objects close to you and far away are both in focus.

Wondering what camera to buy?  Visit my Recommended Digital Camera Store for ideas.

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The eBay & Online Sellers News is the largest and oldest FREE Newsletter for eBay and Amazon Sellers and small online website sellers.

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Take perfect photos every time with an EZ Cube Digital Photo Light Tent

See all the EZ Cube Models at www.ezauctiontools.com

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• Karen was sitting in a workshop at the Amazon conference and asked if anyone knew of a research tool that would show you what goods were actually selling for on Amazon like the eBay completed search does.  Several people shouted out “Competitive Eye.”  Here is what Competitive Eye says about their service:

“We provide your competitor’s actual delivered pricing. The actual pricing that matters to you and your customers. The pricing that helps you make the most out of your marketing efforts as well as a host of online tools and reporting giving you the big picture. The big picture necessary to make the best, well informed business decisions. A complete set of tools, reporting and beneficial analysis in one easy to use package.”

• I was speaking with Stephanie Inge who is an eBay and Amazon seller and who runs the eBay Group in Dallas Tx. she turned me on to a great educational site called Wiz IQ.  Wiz IQ is a site where you can create online seminars or complete courses where people can listen in live or watch at a later time. and they have a set up where you can not only do this for free –they have a system where you can market and charge for the courses.  I plan to start using Wiz-IQ to create bonus seminars for my products.

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What is The Complete eBay Marketing System?

The Complete eBay Marketing System by Skip McGrath is a complete course for selling on eBay. Look at all you get:

You get a truly impressive 300-page step-by-step workbook packed with 6 POUNDS of information you can use, today! I will ship it to you via UPS Select and you should have it in your hands within two or three business days to most of the US.

And that is not all you get:

• Access code for my Confidential Master File of Wholesale Suppliers
• My monthly Newsletter
  
• Special Bonus Report – Wholesale Sources Within 50 Miles of Your Home
• My PowerSellers Resource Report – a $67.00 Value. The report includes valuable discount coupons and free trial offers from important third-party products and service providers.
• Video on Niche Marketing
  
• Auction Timing Report – Beat the big guys. Learn how to come up Above your competitors every time.
• Online Auction Photo Secrets – Learn how anyone can take professional looking photos for eBay listings that really sell

And, you get my No-Questions-Asked, Unconditional 100% Money Back Guarantee. You can’t lose!

Order Your Complete eBay Marketing System Now and GROW Your eBay Business!

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.

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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.