Selling Niche Items on Ebay

By Stephan Miller
Posted Friday, November 12, 2004

A website is great to have for residual income, for presence, to have a place called home on the internet. I admit I love it. Instead of hunting for sites to host my pictures and software for free, I have a place and it is all mine. But nothing beats eBay for instant, in your face sales.

Its like having a mall with millions of visitors a day built just for you. I mean, you could sell used vacuum cleaner bags and walk away with a bag full of money a week later if only you knew how to list your auctions with the right title, right ad, and right type of features or even no features. For examples of what can and has been sold on eBay, check out these sites.

(http://www.disturbingauctions.com)

(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebayweirdnesscollectorclub)

No features? Yes, you can make a consistent weekly income by listing auctions with no features. I have done it. You just have to find a niche and your customers will hunt for you. No extras will be necessary.

What type of products would qualify as a niche item? Lets say your hobby is scrapbooking and you have just written the perfect ebook on the subject. You know it will sell, but how do you go about selling it. You could put up a website, spend weeks submitting it to search engines, and then, maybe months later watch sales start coming in. That's great for the long term. In fact its something you should do.

But, if you want to start getting sales sooner, list it on eBay. It takes some work to do it right though. You will need to figure out what search terms your customer will be using to find your auction. Then search both the current and completed auctions to find out what your competitors are doing to get their bids. Or download a tool to do it for you.

(http://www.profit-ware.com/hotbid/)

Okay, what if the search terms you entered comes up with few searches or none. Well, this is a sign that hell just froze over. But if it does happen, can you spell "jackpot." You will need to find closely related search terms that actually will come up and use them along with your rare terms. Think about what other items your ideal customers will also be buying and mention them in the body of your ad. Don't spam though. Write your ad like you are speaking face to face to your customers and you can't go wrong.

Check out your competitors features. Did they highlight? Did they choose Bold? Did they spend the extra money and category feature the auction? I did this once on a niche product that I was selling and actually made less money than when I didn't choose to feature the item. But you will have to test your results. Why spend extra money that you don't have to?

Also, study the title of the auction and the ad itself. Remember that the default search on eBay is title only, so make sure you pack your title with keywords that you know people will be using. But don't go overboard. You can always tell when a seller is trying to spam the search engine instead of providing a descriptive title provides their customers with the information they need.

The days when you could put up a text ad and sell are over. Well, maybe not. But at least put in the extra effort and design an HTML ad. It lets your customer know that you are actually running a business and that the image your products present matter to you. Turbo Lister is great if you are just starting out. You can also find more free HTML editors on the resource page of my site.

(http://www.profit-ware.com)

Learn some ad writing techniques. If you are selling an info product or software, the mini-site model works great. It will provide your customer with all the information he or she needs to make a buying decision. Also learn hypnotic writing and NLP. I am not saying that you have to do all of this at once. Just pick up as you go along.

Just to get started, do your marketing research and list your ad and wait for sales. Yes, it will become addictive, especially after you get that first bid. You will set your homepage to your "My Ebay" page and check it every few minutes. I did.

About the Author
Stephan Miller is a ebay seller, freelance programmer, writer, and webmaster at (http://www.profit-ware.com) Home of Hotbid Auction Market Analyzer. support@profit-ware.com