Running a Profitable eBay or Online Business

If you’ve been following this blog, you know how much I use WorldWideBrands’ sourcing info and Whole Sale Package. I can’t imagine running my business without it.

The last time WWB had a sale was around Labor Day. It’s now nearly Thanksgiving and waddayaknow… they’re having another sale! except this one is even better than the last time. Now instead of just having the usual $100 off on their Whole Sale Package, they have another $25 Thanksgiving discount as well Check it out here.

While I’m at it, let me also point out the FREE videos they are currently offering with very useful shipping tips and information. And then there are the Amazon Selling videos they have.  Lastly, WWB also offers free information on the fulfillment services that Amazon offers. In case you’re ready for the Big League!

Where you going to find the time to watch all these?

Tip 8: Customer Interactions

Every customer interaction is an opportunity to sell yourself or your product.
That’s true even when a customer is emailing you about an alleged defect or about a return of an item.
You have the opportunity to turn every customer interaction in to a “sellable moment”.
There are a few ways to do that.
First of all: reply as soon as you can. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. No one likes to wait on a reply, especially not when they’re already not happy about something.  The sooner you reply, the better your chances are at turning an unhappy exchange in to a happier (if not entirely happy) one.
Show empathy; show you understand the customer’s situation, even if you disagree. All that matters is what the customer thinks. Like it or not, the customers is always right and that sometimes means you‘ll simply have to take a loss on that sale. I know — it hurts. I’ve been there… more than once. In the end, if you manage to turn a bad situation in a good one, you’ve saved that customer who might eventually come back to you or even refer others. At the least, you’ve averted one customer spreading negativity.

Another thing when it comes to customer interaction is email signatures. While email signatures can have important info like your phone number, website, address and other data, it’s much more advantageous to stick a sales pitch in it. Use it to inform your reader (even non-customers) about any specials you have going on. I try to limit my pitches in any one sig file to 3. There comes a saturation point where the signature block is going to take up more space than the message body itself.

Whenever I make a purchase from a small online company (like mine, really), I’m always amazed at the sales opportunities wasted by the seller: no pocking slip, no invoice, no business card, no sales flyer… nothing!
At the very least, every order should have a packing slip with return instructions and contact info. Personally, I always throw in a business card that’s actually a discount coupon for a next order.
I also throw in a sales flyer with my current promotions. You won’t believe how much extra business that generates. I have a monthly flyer, printed in color (on a color laser printer) so it looks professional. If you don’t have a color laser printer, you can go to Staples, Kinko’s or other such business where they can print out your flyer for a fee. Beware: it gets expensive. If you have 100 printed, it can easily cost you $60 or more. I opted to invest in a color laser printer just for that purpose. Not counting the investment in the printer itself (which cost me about $200), the flyers only cost 6 cents each.

I hope you’ll understand how important it is to view every customer interaction as a sales opportunity. As an (online) entrepreneur you need to grab every opportunity you can to sell yourself to your customers.

Seems logical, right? Set up a separate area to do your shipping. Yet most sellers starting out don’t. They use the kitchen table, dining table, whatever-table. Wrong approach which will lead to shipping mix-ups. Ask me how I know…
I started out that way, I had a special table in the basement that I used for shipping, but it was cluttered, not organized effectively and generally not tidy. When you’re preparing shipping packages you need a tidy area, free of distractions. Trust me.
Be sure to only have whatever the current order is in your work area, keep all the other orders (contents, boxes, packing slips, shipping labels) away. I actually have a piece of plexiglass where I place the current packing slip, label etc and nothing else goes on there until I’m all done with that one order. You could also simply use masking tape to demarcate an area to work in.
Ask your mail carrier for a few free USPS tubs (they’re the white ones, with a high wall) so you can put ready-to-be-picked-up packages aside.
Talking about USPS… You do know that they have FREE packing boxes, right? They offer ALL kinds of free mailing materials for Priority Mail which you can order online and have delivered to your home. All for free. It doesn’t get any better than that!
Be sure you have adequate packing material like peanuts, tape and bubble wrap. You can save money by using crumpled-up newspaper instead of bubble wrap. Not as professional, but just as effective. It’ll work in a pinch.
The best source I’ve found for shipping supplies is Royalmailers.com.  Their pricing is great, but what’s more important is that their products are high quality. Envelopes and tape is one area where you don’t want to skimp. Imagine your items arriving in torn envelopes and with tape hanging from boxes because it didn’t stick…
Even when you have a neat and tidy area set up correctly, you can STILL make mistakes and mix-up orders. All I can say is: be focused on what you’re doing. You sourced your product, made your listing, made the sale, received the payment and this is the last step. Don’t screw it up. Be focused and ban all distractions. It would be a shame to mess up now and have to pay for shipping items back to you and shipping the correct items out again. Not to mention the effect it will have on your feedback.
There’s much more to shipping than meets the eye. It’s an exact job you can not afford to do wrong. Trust me. I’ve been there.

Don’t be a cheapskate: buy a domain name

It’s so cheap nowadays to get your own domain name, there’s no reason to be a cheapskate just to save a few bucks a month. You’ll look so much more professional with a website named www.Shutterbugs-R-Us.com than shutterbugs-r-us.freewebspace.com.

You can get low cost domain names through a number of providers, called “registrars”.

For my website I use 1and1.com, one of the world’s largest providers. They’re not the very cheapest, (but by no means expensive!) but they are reliable which is much more important when you’re running a business. I’ve been with them for about 4 years now and in that time they’ve had a single trouble incident when the site was not reachable. Wish my car was that reliable! Before that I had my domain name through Yahoo. Talk about a rip-off. They charge you a whole lot for next to nothing!

When you get your webspace, you will also have the opportunity to use the provider’s tools to create a website from scratch. Some of the templates you can choose from are quite snazzy and can even be used to host a web-store. And while you’re at it, also use POP3 email with Outlook or Outlook Express that comes with your domain name. Again, it looks much more professional to be sending a message to sales@shutterbug-r-us.com than shutterbugs-r-us@yahoo.com.

It’s all about first impressions. If you need help in deciding what package to get or otherwise are in the dark how to go about purchasing a domain, contact me. I’ll be glad to help out.

Reply and follow up. It can make the difference between just another inquiry sent off into email-land, or an actual sale.

Anytime someone is serious enough to send you an email (direct, through eBay’s “Ask the Seller A Question” or through your own website) looking more information or a special quote, it’s crucial that you get back to them right away. Literally, drop what you’re doing and answer that email. You won’t believe how many online merchants take DAYS to answer email or simply don’t ever even bother! I’m sure you have personal experience in that regard. I know I do. If a seller does not bother to get back to me within 24 hours, I’ll move on to someone else who does care about getting my business. If a seller treats me like that before they have my money, I don’t even want to know how they might treat me AFTER I pay them!

Answering queries within minutes is a prime way to easily set yourself apart from others.  Your prospective customer is exactly that: a prospect. The sooner you can start a conversation with that prospect, the better. It’s best to start that dialog while the question is still fresh in their mind. I can’t count the number of times I’ve made a sale simply because I replied immediately (and then later heard horror stories from my new customer about other sellers who never got back to them).

After you fire off your personalized reply (NEVER use “canned messages”!) and you don’t hear back for a day or two, send a follow up. Commercial email sometimes lands in bulk folders and the prospect might think you’re just another seller with poor communication skills. Follow up to ask if they received your reply and if they have any other questions. Explain your follow-up message by simply stating that you know much commercial email lands in bulk folders and that you want to be sure that yours didn’t go there. When I follow-up to a reply I sent off earlier, I always remove any email signature at the bottom, because it contains links to some of my sales and sometimes those cause the message to be handled like Spam. To avoid the same fate for my follow-up message, I simply remove them the second time around.

Most prospects appreciate the follow-up and will usually reply with “Got it, thanks”, or let you know they placed their order elsewhere. And that’s OK, too. If you consistently lose sales that way, it’s a sign you might need to make some changes.

Brand yourself, get a logo.

Just like livestock farmers brand their herds, you need to brand yourself as well. Figuratively speaking, that is. I don’t want you to get a nice branding iron for put a “Forked V Ranch” logo on your back.

Seriously, by branding I mean that every single customer or potential customer contact that you have, needs to have the same look and feel. That way customers will start to recognize you and your company. Get or make a unique logo and make sure your website, your blog, your paper inserts (you do insert packing slips with your items, right?), your email message signature block, literally EVERYTHING a customer might come in contact with looks and feels the same. Even if you design it yourself, if you have the same logo, the same colors, the same look and feel for everything you send out, your customers will know you’re a professional.

If you don’t have a logo, design one. If you have no artistic bone in your body, hire a graphic design firm (expensive), look online (way cheaper) or go to your local community college and talk to the graphics arts department. They’re always looking for real-world Guinea-pigs. You’d be surprised at the quality of the work some of those students can put out. And often for free.

A consistent approach to the way you look to he outside world is a great start to being taken seriously by your potential clientele. That’s not to say if you don’t have a logo that they won’t, but it just looks so much more professional (“you have your stuff together”), if you do have that solid look. Trust me. The first company I started 20 years ago was all about branding and logos.

Secure Your Sources!

Especially in times like these — where companies are here today and maybe gone tomorrow — it’s very important to have backup suppliers. If at all possible, don’t rely on just a single supplier for any one of your items. Have backup suppliers and order from them once in a while.

That’s good for two reasons. If one supplier suddenly decides to no longer carry the item you buy from them, you have the other to fall back on. And if supplier Number One gets taken out by the current economic malaise, then Number Two becomes the new Number One.

Also, having multiple sources helps on “keeping them honest”. If a supplier wants to jack up the price, you can always play one against the other and tell the one who’s raising your price that the other supplier is keeping their prices steady. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Don’t fake it, though. If you get in such a situation, and you don’t HAVE another supplier which causes you to stick with supplier One… they’ll get it and you’ve lost your credibility. Credibility is a big thing in wholesaling. It’s part of the relationship you’re building with the seller.

How do you go about finding different suppliers for the same item? Do what I did: buy a membership at WorldWideBrands. Their Whole Sale package is the best you can get. You’ll never be left wondering where to get what you want to sell. I know I never have that problem!

They’re currently running a special until the end of October where your $100 off their package.
Plus they have tons of free videos as well. Check out this one about finding wholesalers.

Play Santa Claus!

Or more precisely: play one of Santa’s helpers. I’m not suggesting you give away your merchandise. I am suggesting that when you pack, you need to OVERpack.

Like in so many situations, put yourself in the shoes of your buyer.

When you order something online and it arrives rattling around with a minuscule piece of bubble-wrap in a torn box that’s obviously been used one too many times… how would YOU feel? You’d probably not think very highly of the seller (or at least of his/her packing abilities) and moreover, you’d probably not place another order for fear that next time your item may arrive broken or worse: with ONLY the box!
(by the way, recycling boxes is the ‘right’ thing to do, but you do need to know when to retire a box!)

So, get packing and pretend to be Santa’s Helper. Pack the item as if you’re packing a “Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/pick your holiday” gift. After all, when your buyer receives the package you want them to feel GOOD about opening it. And not have them opening it with trepidation, fearing that whatever is inside might be broken.

If your item is a consumer item that has a retail box, that‘s great. It will probably have Styrofoam or some other protective material inside. All you need to do is box it in a larger box, making sure that the retail box is secure and does not slide or rattle around. Use packing peanuts, bubble wrap or even crumpled up newspaper or brown Kraft paper to secure the retail box inside. Include a packing slip (and maybe even a personal note, or a flyer about specials you have!), and seal the box with sturdy packing tape. Don’t use regular Scotch-tape. Invest $2 in a roll of good packing tape. If you do a lot of shipping, you can even buy a box of 18 rolls for less than $30. Might as well invest in a good tape-gun while you’re at it… It makes the work much easier.

And finally, make sure you put adequate postage on your package! Nothing is more aggravating for a buyer to have to pay the mailman a couple bucks in cash (or worse: have to go to the post office) just to receive the package you sent. You can bet they‘ll let you know what they think about that. You can buy inexpensive electronic scales on eBay (about $30) and directly from USPS. Of course, you prepare your shipping label electronically (looks so much more professional than a hand-written address and a bunch of  stamps!). You can process labels for free through PayPal even if the buyer did not use PayPal to pay you. Check it out https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ship-now. Or you can even go one step better and use a service like Stamps.com (they even have a 30-day free trial and give you $25 in free postage to start! Can lose with that one).

Now your package is ready to be shipped and your buyer will feel like a kid on Christmas (etc.) morning when s/he receives the package.

You probably keep track of your personal finances, your car mileage, and if you’re selling on eBay your feedback score.

However, I find that many starting (and even seasoned) sellers that I talk to never thought of keeping track of their sales performance in a spreadsheet.

Keeping track of your progress towards your goal (you do have goals, right?) is the ONLY way you can tell if you’re getting off course, getting closer to your goal or even tracking backward and it provides great foundation for tweaking your goals.

It does not need to be anything fancy or high-tech, even a simple Excel spreadsheet will work. But keep track of your progress.

In case of eBay, that means keeping tracking of the number of listings you have open, your inventory level, listings that have successfully closed and whether or not the buyer has paid and you have shipped. Keep track of your shipping costs, you listing fees and final value fees. Only when you have all that info can you really know how profitable an item is and whether or not you should continue selling it or simply let it run out and remove it from your product line-up. One of the best pieces of information that I personally get from my dashboard is sell-through rate by item. I’ve had items that I thought were decent performers, but when I really looked closely at the numbers it turned out that the sell-through rate (number of items sold as a percentage of the number listed) was less than 5%.  On a per item basis, I actually made a LOSS every time I sold one. I pulled that item immediately from my product line-up (stopped listing it) and sold the remainder in a few bulk lots.

I use a spreadsheet that I’ve developed and tweaked over a number of years.

With it I even keep track of the time of day that an item sells, so with a little data manipulation I can figure out the best times of day and days of the week when to end a certain item. If anyone would like to have a skeleton copy, of it, just drop me a line and I’ll send one, free of charge.

Now that I’ve laid out the basics of selling on eBay (and many of those lessons apply to other sites as well, including your own!), let’s continue with specific tips and tricks I’ve developed, used and borrowed form others over the years. This is where the rubber meets the road, where you can really learn from my mistakes and my experience! My goal is to have at least 2 new selling tips every week, sprinkled with some off topic posts about whatever I think might be interesting to my subscribers. Once I figure out how to segregate those posts in different tabs in WordPress I’ll do that. (Anyone care to send me a “Wordpress for Dummies” writeup on how to do that?)

So check back often, or simply subscribe to get alerted when new posts arrive.

To entice readers even more to come and check back often, I will have the occasional discount code in the posts that can be used when making purchases from the site.  With the holidays coming up, that should be a good incentive!