We touched on this in the previous chapter, but now we will explore more fully how we can bring together all the different elements of this book and ensure they are working in the best possible way to bring us the best possible results.
Testing is absolutely essential if you are to squeeze the best profits out of your business. Testing allows you to improve on good results and turn them into outstanding ones, and identify bad results and see where you can make them better.
To that end, let’s take a look at how you can get started in this area, and what kind of results you can expect to get from your efforts
DON’T GO IT ALONE
This is a good piece of advice that many people don’t naturally think of. When you begin to sell items on eBay to attract a new stream of traffic to your website, it’s worthwhile surfing the internet to find a couple of forums or blogs that you can refer to on a regular basis.
Many sellers are quite willing to explore and discuss their own efforts with others, and you can learn a lot about methods of testing your results by reading what other people are already doing. Even eBay’s own forums are worth checking out, and if you can’t find any references to testing, try posting a query yourself to see if that yields any responses.
This is much easier than going it alone and having to start from the very beginning. There are bound to be sellers out there who have already tested their results and found certain ways and means of tweaking their listings to produce even better sales right from the start.
You might think that sellers would be hesitant to reveal this kind of information, but many eBay related forums are very friendly, open places where sellers are happy to share.
Just make sure you share your own experiences in return!
WHAT COLORS SHOULD YOU BE USING?
A lot of sellers make changes to their descriptions as they gain experience, and some even tweak the titles of their auctions to see whether changing a word here or there makes a difference to the overall results.
But not many people think about changing the colors they use for the graphics in their auctions or on their store’s homepage.
As far as the text goes, you are best off sticking to standard black; use bold or italics if you want to highlight something. But when you are designing your listings and thinking about how your eBay store should look, it’s worthwhile testing out a few different colors to see which combinations bring the best response.
Some eBay store sellers seem to pick the loudest, most garish colors they can get their hands on. They obviously think it will attract more attention. It does – but it usually sends people in the opposite direction straight afterwards.
Use calming, welcoming colors in your listings where possible. For example, blue is a calming color and helps to relax people. Red, on the other hand, is a more urgent color, which could work against you. However, some people may associate it with ‘stop’, and it may keep them on your pages for longer. This is why testing and experimentation is advisable until you find the right blend of elements that works for you.
DON’T JUST EXPERIMENT WITH WORDS – EXPERIMENT WITH PICTURES AS WELL
When you are selling items on eBay – especially if you are doing so to drive traffic to your own site – you need to make sure your photos or graphics are doing your product justice as well as the text.
You may well be running your business empire from your back room at home, but you don’t need to let your customers know that. If they can see your messy computer desk in the background, it not only detracts from the item you are selling, it also gives a bad impression of your business. Make sure you take good, clear and sharp pictures of any stock items, and take them against a white background. A white sheet draped over a chair is sufficient to get good results.
If you are selling e-books, ensure the graphics are professional looking. There are plenty of sellers on eBay who sell e-books, and if yours doesn’t look as good as theirs do, you will lose out on sales. Plain and simple.
MAKE GOOD USE OF THE STATS THAT COME WITH YOUR EBAY STORE
If you own an eBay store, you’ll know that you get regular information on how much traffic you are getting to your listings. They are also kind enough to inform you of where it is all coming from.
It takes time for a store to become established and start receiving hits from the search engines, but the small monthly fee you will pay to have a store does get you a ton of information which can be of huge benefit when you are testing what works and what doesn’t.
You can easily monitor how many people are finding each listing, which ones are most popular, and which ones are continually being found by the search engines. Make a note of your results and try changing the titles of your less successful listings in order to see if you can improve on them.
TESTING DIFFERENT KEYWORDS IN YOUR AUCTIONS
Keep an eye on your auction titles, as these contain the search terms that people will be looking for.
Every now and again, check the completed listings for each item you have been promoting. This will enable you to see how your sales are faring when compared with the competition. If they are selling plenty of items and you’re not, then the completed listings should tell you why.
Are they using different keywords? Do they have a different selling price? Is it higher or lower than your one? Is their description longer? Shorter? Do they have more feedback?
If you use all this information and process it carefully, you should be able to see where your own listings can be improved – which in turn will help you snag more sales, more customers… and more traffic to your pages and to your website.
REGULAR ACTIVITY EQUALS BETTER RESULTS
We have seen the benefits that a good strategy will have on your goal to drive more traffic to your website using eBay. Regular organised efforts are the best way to ensure your continued success, and this applies equally to your testing methods.
You should constantly be checking your efforts and monitoring your results; it’s much easier to keep on top of your eBay marketing strategies when you only need to make small adjustments each day. If you leave things to run naturally and only check your progress once a month, you’ll find a mountain of tasks that need completing in order to improve your results, and you are likely to become overwhelmed by them.
ANALYSING TRENDS OVER TIME
Testing isn’t just about checking your short term results. It’s also about gathering data over a longer period of time, in order to see whether there are any trends that you can come to expect from your sales and marketing efforts.
For example, eBay is typically a lot quieter in January and February, as everyone recovers from the hectic sales period in the run up to Christmas. But this may not necessarily apply if you are selling personal improvement and dieting e-books. Everyone wants to lose weight for the New Year, so you might find your own sales will increase.
The more experience you gain in promoting your business through cheap and virtually free items on eBay, the more you will know exactly how – and when – to reach the biggest audiences. Analysing data month by month will help you to promote and develop your business still further, and for better long term results.
You will also recognise how to divide up your budget so that you have more cash available to list more items during periods that you know will typically bring in plenty more sales. You will then cut back on your listings during the quieter months and devote more time to writing new e-book material to list later on.
TO CONCLUDE
This e-book has taken a long journey through the mechanics of how to use eBay in a way you may never previously have thought of. Many sellers take the time to establish a presence on eBay, but never get around to developing their own website, let alone try to link the two together to maximise their selling potential. Still others have their own website but are unsure as to how they can venture onto eBay and find more customers – some even wonder whether it’s worth it at all.
Hopefully, from the information you have read and digested in this book, you will see that it is certainly well worth the effort to take another look at eBay, and check out the almost limitless possibilities it offers for you to take your business to another level entirely.
It is always essential to keep up to date with their current rules and regulations, and you need to ensure you are always on the right side of eBay. But if you are sensible you will find that you can sidle right up to the limits of the rules… without overstepping the mark.
It may be that you already have a niche market in mind by this stage, and you know exactly how you are going to find those people on eBay and entice them over to your own website. But if your website has quite a broad appeal, you may be struggling to see how you can narrow that down a little to reach the people you are intending to find.
Here’s another little secret – you don’t have to limit yourself to one tiny niche. It may be that your website deals with wine making and beer making. That’s really two separate – but related – niches. So appeal to each one separately. Rather than get bogged down with trying to cover too much ground, start with the wine making niche and develop that over time. Eventually, with some of the tweaking, strategy making and testing we have talked about, you will have a virtual blueprint that you can lay down and follow in the future – which will make the beer making niche a lot easier to penetrate.
As always, internet marketing is a learning curve that just keeps on going. You can never know all there is to know about marketing – and doing it on eBay is no exception. You can learn from others and from yourself, and every lesson is as valuable as the last.
Never forget, though, that you should always put your customer first. You’re bound to make mistakes – everyone does – but every single one can be turned around and learned from. If a mistake is made to the detriment of your customer, make it right as soon as you can. A fast and efficient service alone will put you far ahead of much of the competition.
Now is the time to close this e-book and get to work on your plan to find fresh customers with the help of eBay. But revisit this e-book often, as it will help you to stay on track and in touch with your goals and strategies. It should guide you as you start to make your own About Me page; write your very first e-book; and begin selling small, cheap items to your niche audience.
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