When and Why Repeat Sale Items Are Preferable to Single Product Listings

Where to Sell Print Books for Maximum Sales and Minimum Restrictions

A Change of Status for eBay and How It Benefits You and Me

I’ve an update for you on that free report I’ve been promising in recent eletters. It is only a few days late, for which I apologise, but when you get my report you’ll understand why you’ve been kept waiting.

This is because I wanted to include as many money making ideas as possible from my own past experience on eBay and from selling at antiques and collectors’ fairs in the days long before eBay changed sellers’ lives for the better.

That experience spans nearly five decades – I was a very young starter! – and today you’ll learn how to identify collectibles likely to make ten or twenty pounds or much higher profits for you on eBay, while setting you back just two or three pounds, sometimes just pennies.

Now it’s time for you to begin reading the eletter… before getting your hands on my free report!

When and Why Repeat Sale Items Are Preferable to Single Product Listings

By ‘Repeat Sales Items’, I mean those suitable for multiple product listings, where sellers indicate the number of similar products in stock and eBay reduces the number available after each sale.

There are several reasons many people favour repeat sale items over single sale products like a rare antique or collectible, or an original painting or OOAK – One Of A Kind – handmade product.

They include:

– Less time spent listing products on eBay than people selling mainly solitary autographs and football programmes, one-off photographs and hand-signed letters of historical interest.

– Fewer or no unsold items to dispose of for sellers preferring multiple product listings.
To illustrate, imagine I have ten one-off items to list each day of which five are likely to sell and generate a decent profit after all sourcing, marketing and processing costs. But what should I do with those five products that didn’t sell? Do I relist them or donate them to a local charity shop?

Now look at people selling repeat sale items, the likes of skin cream, toys, picture frames, and so on. How many new product listings might they have to process each day to make a good living?

In some cases they may never have to create new product listings.

It happens where sellers research a range of new products, paying careful attention to profit achieved from each new product sourced and sold, as well as seeking ways to reduce product acquisition and selling costs and after sale problems.

The aim is to locate products that sell in high numbers, daily if possible, and present attractive profit margins and little or no negative feedback and follow up problems. When they have that product it gets listed and left to run until cancelled by the seller… if it ever does get cancelled. Choose and test market wisely and one product is all you need to make a good living on eBay.

Careful market research and test marketing should also indicate when stock has to be replenished and there should never be goods left unsold.

Also, it costs the same to list unlimited numbers of identical items in one eBay fixed price listing as it does to list a solitary item, and much less than otherwise selling at auction. In my case, with a Featured eBay shop, it costs 4p to market solitary or unlimited products in one multiple product listing compared to 13p for a single product auction listing.

The reason I don’t personally list repeat sale products? I simply love buying and selling rare antiques and collectibles.

– Potential preference in eBay search returns. eBay makes money when sellers make money and that’s why best-selling, repeat sale products with a positive track record typically rank higher in search returns than one-off items lacking sales history.

Where to Sell Print Books for Maximum Sales and Minimum Restrictions

Amazon has long been synonymous with a place to sell physical books for profit, as well as being possibly the world’s biggest seller of eBooks through Amazon Kindle. And that’s why some booksellers agree with reports claiming Amazon has no competition among online booksellers.

But that opinion is somewhat different to what numerous ecommerce writers conclude after interviewing several super-successful online booksellers. One interviewee tells how eBay is a close runner up to Amazon for book sales, with Amazon outperforming eBay for technical and academic subjects. eBay, on the other hand, fared better for this seller than Amazon for sales of historical and niche subjects, such as craftwork and art, hobbies and collecting.

Another top seller interviewed says his best results (by sales figures) come from eBay, followed by Amazon, Abebooks and Alibris.

More interesting still is that several interviewees spoke against FBA – Fulfilment by Amazon – for booksellers, all referencing overcrowding in Amazon’s warehouses and the company’s refusal to accept goods, including books, which they have in plentiful supply or are unlikely to sell fast. In both cases, sellers might pay less and sell books faster using eBay’s auction format and letting bidders determine price and stimulate sales.

A Change of Status for eBay and How It Benefits You and Me

You’ll recall past eLetters focusing on research into marketplaces most often voted best places to sell online, based on potential profits, ease of use, seller assistance and other important factors. You might also recall that eBay failed to achieve top place for any of those factors and in most cases ranked sixth or even lower. Well all of that has changed and eBay has just come out number one best place to sell online, as well as ranking high among most profitable and least expensive places to sell.

Second best place was Etsy, third Amazon, fourth was Ruby Lane. For whatever reason, Bonanza, ranked number one two years ago, managed just fifth place in the latest research.

I’m telling you this because I’m a very firm believer in selling across numerous platforms, mainly to prevent profits drying up if a sole selling partner goes out of business or a seller is expelled from the site. Another reason is that marketplaces vary in profitability, as shown by this recent research, and what might be your most profitable marketplace today might be much less profitable a few years from now.

This is what I suggest:

(i) If you have just one selling platform, consider adding another or preferably several. Base your choice on the type of product you’re selling (eBay for rare items, for example, Amazon Kindle for eBooks, Etsy for handmade goods), while also acknowledging recent seller marketplace preference research.

(ii) Choose products with multiple marketplace potential. So someone selling handmade goods can market on eBay, Etsy, Amazon, and dozens more, while another person selling rare antiques and wanting bidders to determine value is somewhat restricted to eBay and some offline auction salerooms.

(iii) Look at reasons certain marketplaces rank both high and low in seller preference research, such as providing possibly higher profits but offering abysmal seller support, and so on. Choose sites most closely matching your own requirements, even if that means restricting profits in favour of better member support.

(iv) Consider marketplaces not listed high or not listed at all in high profile research. Just because they don’t head the list doesn’t mean they won’t be your top choice. To illustrate, I have personally found eCrater a very useful add-on to otherwise selling exclusively on eBay, even though the company ranks below average in some top level research.

You can download a PDF file packed with advice about selling on eCrater from this link.

(v) Grab another excellent guide to comparing seller pros and cons at various named marketplaces. It’s in PDF one page table format and called the ‘WTSO Master Sheet’ and you can download it from www.wheretosellonline.com.

Now for that massive report I promised you, the one about identifying collectibles offering the highest profits on eBay.

Well, I said it was big, but it’s much bigger than even I expected, so I’d like you to download the first 50 ways today and all 101 next week. Download it from here!