If you were to ask a group of people how they could make money using eBay, they would probably all come back with similar answers – sell off their unwanted possessions, sell things for other people and take a commission on successful sales, or perhaps go the more professional route and buy stock to resell from a wholesaler. The chances are very high that none of them would think of using eBay as a springboard to achieving bigger and better things elsewhere.
Yet a small number of internet entrepreneurs are doing just that – utilising the sheer power and reach that eBay has to offer in order to build their own successful website and mailing list. And there are many advantages to using eBay in this way.
These people aren’t selling things on eBay to make money – not on eBay at least. They are using the site in perfectly legitimate ways to help them build their mailing list, which will reap them lucrative – and repetitive – rewards in the future.
If you have your own website and you want to build your own email list in the quickest time possible, you need to be looking at this gigantic auction site to help you do it. And if you are already selling on eBay and you’re thinking of expanding into your own website, then it’s time to start looking at eBay in a whole new way to make sure you get there in double quick time.
Before we get into the details of how to use eBay in this way, let’s look at why the auction site is such an attractive proposition for internet marketers who want to build an emailing list like this.
WHY EBAY?
If you stop to think about it, the answer is quite simple. There are millions of people the whole world over who – even as you are reading this – are browsing the listings on eBay, looking for items to buy.
And what specifically do they look for? They look for items relating to their hobbies, their interests and their lifestyle. If they see a product that could improve or enhance any one of those three things, they will very likely buy it.
This equates to pure gold for you as a seller. As soon as you log on to your eBay account and list an item for sale, you are tapping into a market that runs into the millions. People from countless countries all around the world will find your auction (or Buy It Now item) if you have written a good title and description that is designed to be easily found in the search results.
It’s far easier to find customers on eBay than it is to find them anywhere else online. Anyone can set up a decent website – even if they pay someone else to do it for them – but unless you can find and drive traffic to it, you won’t sell a thing. EBay is different – the traffic is already there in droves; you just need to show them the products and wait for the sales to start trickling in.
That’s an over simplified example of course, but it does illustrate the point. EBay does have many advantages over more traditional online advertising methods and they really pay dividends – and you can see the results very quickly too.
For starters, it’s pretty cheap to list an item for sale on eBay for a duration of ten days. For that time it’s available for the millions of eBay members worldwide to view and possibly buy. Your item will be listed in an appropriate category of niche buyers that already have an interest in what you’re selling.
Just think about that for a moment. No other website – whether it’s an auction site or anything else – gives you the exposure that eBay does. You could place an item for sale in an online classified advert, but it wouldn’t get a fraction of the traffic that your eBay item will. And it’s very likely to cost you a whole lot more than a ten day auction on eBay.
So… imagine for a moment that you could take advantage of just a fraction of the traffic that eBay gets, and turn it into a niche email list that would pay you dividends each and every month for years to come. That’s exactly what you’ll learn about in this e-book, and you’ll be pleased to know that once you apply the principles herein and put certain rules into practice, everything can pretty much run on autopilot. All you need to do is sit back and watch as your email list starts to grow bigger and bigger.
BEWARE OF THE RULES…
Before we go any further however, it’s important to remember that eBay has very strict rules on what you can and can’t do on their site. For example, you can’t use the site to blatantly divert traffic to your own website. However they do give you certain allowances – and it is these that we’ll be covering in detail later on in this e-book, in order to build that list of people who are ready and interested to hear about – and buy – your latest products.
We’ll be covering how to make the most of your eBay About Me page and how to make sure it’s as accessible and appealing as possible for anyone who happens to be looking at your listings. We’ll also discover what to sell on eBay that is relevant to your business (whatever it may be) and how to design and use those products to legally self promote yourself and your business.
EBay may be strict on the rules, but they still offer you a goldmine of opportunities to develop and grow your own business elsewhere on the internet – you just have to know how to use them to your best advantage.
UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF NICHE MARKETING ON EBAY
You’ll notice that the title of this e-book refers to building a “niche” targeted email list using the power of eBay. That word “niche” will pop up again and again during this e-book, and it’s important that you understand the power of it, because it can unlock serious profits for you and your business.
Some people use eBay to sell a wide variety of things – virtually anything they can get their hands on – and many of them make a good living or second income using this method. But there’s no order or logic to it. The only thing that drives them is profit. If they can get their hands on a load of kids toys one week, that’s fine. The next week it could be power tools. Whatever they can get at a good price and make a decent profit on is fine by them.
But consider how you would feel if you bought something from this person. Now they could be an excellent seller, with one hundred per cent positive feedback and a fast and efficient service. You’d be happy with your purchase of a power tool that you’d found tucked away in their hotch potch of listings and you’d both walk away happy.
But what would happen the next time you needed another power tool?
Would you go back to them because you remembered that they sold a wide range of power tools at great prices?
No.
You might go back to them because of their excellent service and efficient manner, but the chances are they’d be selling something completely different this week, and you’d have to take your business – and your money – elsewhere.
Now think about what would happen – in fact, what probably has happened – when you have a similar experience, except this time it’s with someone who has established a business that sells power tools and nothing else. If you received excellent service and an excellent power tool the first time around, the chances are high that you would remember that seller and go straight back to them the next time you need a power tool to add to your collection.
Are you beginning to see the power that niche marketing holds?
If you become known as an honest business person that specialises in a particular area of sales, you will be able to convert a far greater percentage of your customers into repeat customers than the guy who sells anything and everything, hoping to sell to everyone all at the same time. He’ll sell to a lot of people – but it’s doubtful that a lot of them will return, because they know he doesn’t specialise in what they’re looking for, and they haven’t got the time to wade through lots of his listings for dozens of things that don’t relate to what they’re after.
Repeat customers are where the real money lies in internet marketing, and in order to capitalise on this fact you need to establish a niche for yourself that you can become an expert in.
WHAT’S YOUR NICHE?
Okay, so we’ve established that in order to experience real and lasting success with your online business, you need to build a niche email list that you can promote your products to on a regular basis. If this is done correctly you can pretty much guarantee a good monetary return from every single email you send out to your list. Some internet marketers claim they expect a return of several thousand dollars every single time they recommend a product or send out an offer to one of their targeted email lists. Just think – you could soon be building a similar list for yourself. It takes time, but the destination is well worth the wait.
Your internet business will determine what your niche should be, although you might need to narrow the focus slightly in order to generate plenty of sign ups to your email list. For example, if you sell e-books on how to make money from home then your niche will be slanted towards people who want to do this themselves.
But if you sell computer software, the focus is not so easy. You might sell software to help people with their bookkeeping and tax affairs, in which case your email list might be slanted towards home business people (you could also source more products that would appeal to this market). If you sell mainly children’s computer games then you’ll want to appeal to parents, so this could be a good niche to aim at.
It’s all a matter of focus, and once you get your first email list established there’s nothing to stop you starting another one to really maximise your business profits. For starters it’s best to concentrate on building just the one though.
Always take a good look at your product range and consider what niches you could appeal to before making a firm decision on which one to target. You can then have a look on eBay and see which of these possibilities produces the best sales overall.
One final point before we move on – make sure that you have a real interest in whatever niche you pick, because then you’ll be able to write your auction listings with real enthusiasm. People can tell when you genuinely have an interest in your subject because it comes across in your writing – whether it’s on the page or on a computer screen.
You’ll also find it much easier to build that email list and generate massive amounts of traffic to your website if you establish yourself as an enthusiastic expert on your chosen niche. People will be drawn to you and your name will start to become known for all the right reasons.
So… if you’ve decided on your niche and you’re ready to earn some serious cash with the help of eBay, it’s time to explore the huge possibilities that await you.
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