Freedom for You and Me

You might be one of the thousands of individuals who open a trading account with eBay and dream about making auction selling a full-time home-based business.

However’ before that dream can become a reality’ you need to do many important things while running an auction business.

One of these important things to do is to pick the right products to sell. The right products to sell are the ones that people on eBay want or will buy.

eBay tells you what people actually want and what people actually will buy in four areas of its website.

“In Demand”

One of these four areas on eBay’s site is the “In Demand” section. There is an “In Demand” link for each of the main categories on eBay. Listed in these areas are the previous month’s top ten products that people wanted and the top ten searches for each subcategory. To see the data in these areas follow the link below and when you reach the page’ scroll down and click on the link “In Demand” under any of the categories shown.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/sellbycategory.html

“Hot Categories Report”

The next area containing information on finding what to sell on eBay is the “Hot Categories Report.” This report lists the “fastest growing” categories on eBay for the previous month. The explanation for what eBay considers “hot” can be hard to understand on your first reading. Nevertheless’ the important thing to know is that the categories listed are the ones were buyer demand for the items under those categories are growing faster than the seller supply. This report is a PDF file so you will need Adobe Reader to open it. Here is the link:

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf

“eBay Pulse”

“eBay Pulse” is another area where you can figure out what people are looking for on “The World’s Online Marketplace.” It contains a category’s daily snapshot of the ten most popular searches and the stores with the most active listings. A subsection on “eBay Pulse’” known as “Most Watched Items’” reveals the ten auctions that are getting the most attention. Visit this page and select a category to study from the drop-down menu.

http://pulse.ebay.com

“Merchandising Calendar”

The last area with information on what to sell on eBay is the “Merchandising Calendar.” Here’ eBay shows you the categories they will promote on their homepage each month. This is where eBay “tells” you what to sell. You can ignore their calendar and sell anything you choose’ but wouldn’t it be easier to make sales if you took advantage of eBay’s promotional influence? Look at this page and use the calendar as a guide in planning your inventory and listings.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/calendar.html

Last Thoughts

Now that you have the links to data that tells you what people will buy on eBay’ you can look forward to listing these items and making sales. The next step is finding the wholesale or drop-ship sources that carry those items that are “In Demand.” That is when you will be one-step closer to achieving your goal of making a living from eBay.

(c) Leroy Chan - All Rights reserved

Discover the “Insider Tricks” to making money on eBay. Visit Leroy Chan’s site’ eBay Auction Seller Money Making Reports to receive a free 12-part auction selling course.

For many people’ their first experience of working online involves selling products on eBay. This was how I got started back in 1998 and I know countless other people that have done the same.

However’ it is important to remember that eBay is not the ‘be all and end all’ - there is a much bigger online world out there. My reason for mentioning this is that I have spoken to three people this week who each make a decent full or part-time income on eBay but who are fed up with it and looking to move in other directions.

Having sold on eBay myself’ I can understand why sellers do get tired/bored/frustrated with the auction site - it is highly competitive and it takes an incredible amount of hard work to succeed. In addition’ it is normally the case that the more successful you become’ the harder you have to work. Listing auctions’ handling customer enquiries’ packing’ shipping’ sourcing/buying stock’ keeping up with feedback’ monitoring the competition - selling on eBay is a tough job and it is no wonder that after working in this way for a few years’ many people wish they were back in the land of the employed!!

Don’t get me wrong’ there is good money to be made on eBay for anyone willing to put the effort in and many people enjoy trading on this huge auction site. But it isn’t for everyone.

Having spoken to numerous eBay sellers in the past’ it seems to me that of the ones that don’t enjoy working on eBay’ the particular task that they enjoy the least is the packing and shipping of products. Funnily enough’ this is exactly the bit of trading that I grew to dislike too.

I (and the sellers I have spoken to) didn’t have a problem with creating sales descriptions’ dealing with emails’ collecting payment (naturally!) and the other administrative tasks involved in running an online business. But wrapping things up and taking them to the post office is something completely different and for me and many others that’s where it all started to fall apart

As I said at the beginning of this article’ if you are getting fed up of doing the eBay ‘thing’ or if you just don’t fancy the idea to start with’ there is a wealth of alternative opportunities available online. My own solution was to get rid of the one aspect of eBay trading that I didn’t enjoy - the packing and shipping - and start to produce and sell digital products which could be delivered to the customer automatically. I still have to write sales pages and build websites’ I still have to deal with emails etc but I don’t have to handle any physical products (neither do I have to deal with payment collection because that too can be handled automatically by software).

Of course my products are very relevant to eBay sellers and indeed’ there are numerous individuals and companies out there that have made a fortune off the back of eBay without ever having sold a single product on the auction site. I am sure that there are numerous other problems that eBay users have that could be solved with a new piece of software or a particular service and if the idea takes off’ there are 135 million registered users on eBay to market to!

eBay provides a wonderful opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people but it isn’t for everyone and if you find yourself frustrated/bored with the same old routine everyday’ start to look for something outside of the eBay world.

Copyright 2005 Richard Grady

Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts)’ visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html

Janette Oke is a Christian writer whose books about life’ love’ values and faith have a huge following among women today. Each of her Christian books for adults falls into one of six different series she wrote. These are:</p><p><ul><li>Women Of The West <li>Love Comes Softly <li>Canadian West Saga <li>Season Of The Heart <li>A Prairie Legacy <li>Song Of Acadia (the books in this series were written with T. Davis Dunn)</li></ul></p><p>While they show up at FOL and AAUW book sales’ they are most often found at garage sales. They won’t find them at every garage or yard sale you visit’ but spend a morning on the yard sale circuit and you should come home with several of her book and not have paid more than $.50 for any of them.</p><p>You will find a lot of these on eBay but nearly all are sold as single titles and that’s a big mistake. In order to make the cash register ring for you with her books you should buy them individually or in groups’ hold them until you have a complete series’ and then sell the series as one auction.</p><p>All information and pricing is for soft-cover editions which are by far the most common.</p><p><b>Here’s a list of the books that make up each series:</b></p><p><b>Women Of The West Series (12 books)</b></p><p><ul><li>The Calling Of Emily Evans * <li>Julia’s Last Hope <li>A Woman Named Damarus <li>Roses For Mama * <li>They Called Her Mrs. Doc <li>Measure Of A Heart <li>A Bride For Donnigan <li>Heart Of The Wilderness * <li>The Bluebird and The Sparrow * <li>A Gown Of Spanish Lace * <li>Too Long A Stranger <li>Dreams Of Change *</li></ul></p><p>* These six titles were re-written’ with the same titles’ for young girls (age 10 - 14) and published as the Janette Oke Classics For Girls Series. When buying these six titles be sure to check which series the book actually belongs to.</p><p>I’ve never found the Classics For Girls series to be a big seller and pass them up when I see them. You can try them if you’d like to though.</p><p><b>Love Comes Softly Series (8 books)</b></p><p><ul><li>Love Comes Softly <li>Loves Enduring Promise <li>Loves Long Journey <li>Loves Abiding Joy <li>Loves Unending Legacy <li>Loves Unfolding Dream <li>Love Takes Wing <li>Love Finds A Home</li></ul></p><p><b>Canada West Series (6 books)</b></p><p><ul><li>When Calls The Heart <li>When Breaks The Dawn <li>When Comes The Spring <li>When Hope Springs New <li>Beyond The Gathering Storm <li>When Tomorrow Comes</li></ul></p><p><b>Season Of The Heart Series (4 books)</b></p><p><ul><li>Springs Gentle Promise <li>Once Upon A Summer <li>Winds Of Autumn <li>Winter Is Not Forever</li></ul></p><p><b>A Prairie Legacy Series (4 books)</b></p><p><ul><li>The Tender Years <li>A Searching Heart <li>A Quiet Strength <li>Like Gold Refined</li></ul></p><p><b>Song Of Acadia Series (5 books)</b></p><p><ul><li>The Meeting Place <li>The Sacred Shore <li>The Birthright <li>The Distant Beacon <li>The Beloved Land</li></ul></p><p>This last series continues under the name Heirs Of Acadia’ but Janette Oke was no longer one of the authors and it isn’t nearly as popular. It’s the Janette Oke name that sells these books.</p><p>Mrs. Oke also wrote a series of 12 early readers for children called <b>Janette Oke’s Animal Friends Series</b>. It’s also a good seller when sold as a complete series. It’s made up of the following titles:</p><p><ul><li>The Impatient Turtle <li>The Prodigal Cat <li>Spunky’s Dairy <li>This Little Pig <li>New Kid In Town <li>Ducktails <li>Prairie Dog Town <li>Trouble In A Fur Coat <li>Maury Had A Little Lamb <li>Pordy’s Prickly Problem <li>A Cote Of Many Colors <li>Who’s New At The Zoo</li></ul></p><p>Here’s some pricing information for each series from the last several months. The prices shown are the averages each series sold for.</p><p><ul><li>Women Of The West - $36.78 <li>Love Comes Softly - $42.17 <li>Canadian West Saga - $13.19 <li>Season Of The Heart - $12.03 <li>A Prairie Legacy - $14.38 <li>Song Of Acadia - $37.14 <li>Animal Friends - $38.63</li></ul></p><p>As you can see some series are more popular than others’ but as long as you don’t spend more then .50 each per book you will make money with any of them. Just list complete series’ start them at $9.95 and let the bidders run them up.</p><p>Each of these series was also sold as a boxed set. If you find a set with it’s box it will usually add a premium to the the final price.</p><p>Gary Hendrickson has been making his living selling on eBay for more than six years. He’s the author of two eBay related ebooks’ has a blog for eBay sellers’ and is the owner of ColdItems.Com. Did you find this article helpful? If so’ this is the kind of information you will find each week inside Gary’s ColdItems.Com.</p><p><a target="_new" href="http://colditems.com">ColdItems.Com</a> <a target="_new" href="http://theauctionrebel.typepad.com">The Auction Rebel Blog</a>

There is an art to picking profitable products. It’s not just what you want to sell but rather what will sell. Unless you pick a product in demand in the marketplace’ you will fail. A fundamental principle of the capitalist system is "supply and demand". It represents a delicate balancing act between "what people want" and how much of "it" is available.

Every Christmas’ we see one toy that everyone wants. One year is "talking Elmo" and the next year it’s something else. But’ it never fails to occur. Because everyone wants "it"’ so "it" is in high demand. If the supply of the product isn’t sufficient to meet the customer demand’ prices soar’ as do profits for the people selling them.

You could hope you pick one of those products and make a lot of money in one season’ or you can be smart and have a profitable business all year round. How? Understand trends in our society and how they help you predict the products which are or will be in demand’ now and in the future.

Current Trends In American Society

By reading and watching current news’ we should be able to spot trends. These trends will have an impact upon people and therefore’ the products they need or want. For instance’ some current trends in the United States are as follows:

- Americans are fatter than prior generations (particularly children)

- Baby Boomers (a very large potential market) are getting older. Many are in the 50s or 60s.

- More and more people purchase online from the security and comfort of their own home

- Americans are more security conscious since 9/11

- Travel by car or recreational vehicle is up over previous years

- Diabetes is making major inroads into the general population

These are just some of the trends impacting our culture now. We need to take those identified trends and make some assumptions about them. With these assumptions come product decisions’ profitable product decisions.

Using a Trend to Pick Profitable Products

Let’s choose the Baby Boomer trends upon which to focus. We know that the Baby Boomer Generation represents a large’ and very wealth’ segment of the current American society. If we choose to focus upon this group of consumers’ we know we have a large potential audience. More importantly’ we know we have an audience who can pay.

Determining the products we will offer starts with making some assumptions about our targeted market. What does that mean for the Baby Boomers? We need to take what we know about that market segment and then make some assumption based upon that knowledge. Let’s try.

What We Know: What We Can Assume:

We know they are getting older. We can assume they don’t like that. We know they are fatter than prior We can assume they don’t like that generations. and want to do something about it.

Let’s just look at those two trends and how they help us choose products. If this generation is fatter than the last generation’ we can assume larger size clothes are needed right now. Is that true? At eBay’ plus size women’s clothing sold for a total of $90′903.37 in the last 30 days! There’s a profitable product selection for the present.

If we assume they are fatter and don’t like it’ they must want to do something about it. What might they do? Exercise or diet. What does this mean for possible products? Exercise equipment or diet pills. Is this true? At eBay’ exercise equipment sold for a total of $1′125′144.50 in the last 30 days and weight loss pills sold a total of $130′795.34 in the last 30 days! Two more profitable’ "in-demand"’ products at eBay’ right now.

Choosing the right product for a profitable business does not have to be difficult. Just follow the four easy steps; analyze’ assume’ test’ and choose. You simply have to read and watch the world. Look at leading news articles and magazine stories. What appears to be uppermost in the minds of potential consumers? What assumptions can you make about the trend? What product(s) does that translate to? Sell that product and you will earn money. Continue to follow those four steps and you will be profitable for a long time.

Michele Schermerhorn has over 30 years experience in the business world and over 12 years running her own successful online businesses. She is President of Online Business Institute Inc. (http://www.obinstitute.com). Online Business Institute Inc. exists to "Create Successful Online Business Owners One Person At A Time". They run regularly scheduled free online seminars.