Ebay - Off to a slow start

I have been selling items on eBay since 2002. I have actually bought much more than I have sold, but I do sell more now than I did in the beginning. When I started out, I did what most people do I guess. I went through the house looking for things I didn't use anymore that I thought someone else might get some use out of.

I sold some outdated computer hardware and software, a few books and even some old clothes. I had a box full of old cassette tapes from the eighties and nineties that sold pretty quick. But all these things were just one shot sales. I knew I had to find something that I could sell over and over again. The answer was information. This is nothing new to the old pros out there, but it took me a while to come to that conclusion.

Ebooks were what I was looking for. I could sell them over and over again. I could deliver them by email or download so I didn't have to worry about shipping. Once the market got saturated with a particular ebook, you just moved on to another one.

Ebooks were in great abundance and you could find one for just about any subject that you could imagine. And even if you couldn't find one on a particular subject, you could always write one yourself. As an example, I have been selling a particular ebook on Google AdSense over the past few months and have sold about 50 copies ranging in price from $1.99 to $9.99 each. I know this is not a lot, but this is just one ebook. There are literally tens of thousands of different ebooks that you can obtain resale rights to and sell on eBay or your own website. If you get four or five ebooks and keep them posted to eBay on a regular basis, you can make a small but steady income. It is all a numbers game.

Some people find it really difficult to decide what to sell on eBay, but I believe that information products are the way to go. Information products can take several forms. They can be ebooks, websites, graphic images, software or even databases of specialized information. Finding these information products to sell can be difficult at times, but there are plenty of people on eBay selling these types of products with resale rights.

One of the most recent trends lately has been for someone to sell the master resale rights and rebrand rights to a whole collection of software and ebooks. I have purchased several of these in the last few months and have easily made my money back in a very short period of time. The key is to find products that you can rebrand with your own name and website address so that you can establish your own identity. You really need to set up your own website and brand your products with your own information.

One of the most important things you can do is to create your own mailing list of customers and prospects. On your webpage, you should have a means of collecting your visitors name and email address. An easy way to do this is to offer them something for free in exchange for their contact information. You can give them an ebook or a free membership to your site or something like that. Most people don't mind giving you their name and email if they get something in return. Once you have their contact information, you should add it to your autoresponder. If you don't know what an autoresponder is, there are lots of places to read about them on the web.

An autoresponder is basically a script that runs on a website that sends follow up emails to a list of people on a regular basis. The script can run on your own website or you can subscribe to any of the autoresponder services out there. Many of them are free. The purpose of the autoresponder is to provide a means for you to stay in contact with your customers and prospects. Timing is everything. Someone may not be ready to buy something from you today, but they might be next week or next month. If you capture their contact information, you can follow up with them days or weeks later at a time when they may be ready to buy. If you don't get their contact information now, you may have lost them forever.

Well I guess that's enough for now. More to come.