Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Preparing to Sell High Volume

Low Volume High Price or High Volume Low Price ?
You're the only person who can decide on this one.

With high price items you must spend more time preparing each sale,making a new advert up for each new listing,this can be time consuming,taking new photos,writing copy,finding the right price to sell at (pricing a product tutorial in about a week -bookmark this page and check back then) but you will not need so much admin after the sale and can give each buyer your personal attention,making them feel special.
This has got to be for high ticket price items like cars, boats, furniture,antiques etc, where the buyer cannot get the same item elsewhere.If they can you will be undercut and your margin (profit , livelihood ) will go down the tubes.

With low price items the margin is still important but what you're really bothered about is volume,sales are generally easy to get and they come thick and fast if you're selling in-demand items.You will need to sell lots of the same item over and over again,luckily your only need to make up your ads once then review them every so often, or if a problem comes up,such as someone else undercutting you on price, or providing a better product at the same price.
Make a time every so often ,weekly is about right to review what's selling in the categories your selling in and search up other people selling the same lines,eBay has generously given you a tool for this.(again another article next week,"Spying on the opposition"this ones a long winded one so It gets its own ).


Either way here are some steps to take in advance.

  1. Buy all the wrapping materials you will need in advance.Tape,boxes,bubble wrap,bags,envelopes,document enclosed slips,etc...so you're not running out when you need it.
  2. Get a payment scheme in place, you of course will accept cheques and postal orders (money orders if you're American),but I mean paypal,nochex,pppay.payhound,(there are lots) if you don't have a card accepting plan you might as well forget selling on ebay.Only about 5% of my customers pay with anything other then Paypal.
  3. Phone up the local courier firms and post office for prices of deliveries.U.K. sellers, go and see the local postmaster and ask when is best time of day to post large volumes of parcels, I don't know what I would do without the cooperation of my local posties.Once you have built a volume of sales you can get them picked up but at first its a trip down the post office once your sales items are wrapped.
  4. It may be in order to prewrap some of your goods so that a fast service can be given.My customers rave about the fact that they can buy at lunchtime from me and recieve the product next day - No one beats that! Rave feedbacks saying things like "Bought at 1pm arrived at 7Am -Great Product and Lightning Fast 10/10 " or "Excellent ebayer. Fast delivery of well packaged well priced goods. A++++" or"as described- superfast delivery - well packaged- highly recommended"(all real and from last week) are like printing your own money and taking it to the bank in wheelbarrows.
  5. START LISTING! GOOD LUCK.

Tips on listing tomorrow.

Toodlepip, Pete