Home

Contact Us

Author Guidelines

Terms of Service

New Member?

Author Login

	E-mail this article
	Report this article
	Publish this article

5 Essential Resources for Turning in eBay Profit

ne of the benefits of being an eBay seller is the possibility of deciding on the size of your business. If you want to be more than a one time seller on eBay and turn in real profit, you will be happy to know that there are many quality tools which will support you in this endeavor. Here is some detailed information on each of the most suitable tools for your eBay success.

1. Have a website
I have always recommended having a website to compliment your eBay listings. Registering a domain and getting web hosting is an easy and inexpensive tool. I use GoDaddy for my domain registrations and 1and1 for my web hosting. Other companies for hosting I recommend are Hostgator and DotEasy. One additional company that offers domain registration, hosting, and software for you to easily design your own site is CityMax.
One thing is sure: there are a ton of companies that offer domain registration and web hosting. The most important thing is to find a company that is reliable. If the company is not on top of things and their web servers go down, no one can find your site, meaning no one can buy anything from you. All the companies I've mentioned above I have found to be reliable, easy to contact, and easy to work with, which is a guarantee for eBay success.

2. Use a shopping cart program.
Once you have your website, you are going to need a shopping cart program for people to place their orders in. My tools of choice for being successful on eBay are either 1ShoppingCart or AShop. With 1ShoppingCart, they host the software and you just "fill-in-the-blanks" to get your cart set up. 1ShoppingCart is a hosted solution that runs on their computers, while you pay a monthly fee for the service. It does MUCH more then just shopping cart chores though.
It also includes a complete multi-tier affiliate system so you can get others to help sell your products, subscriber and newsletter tools, and much much more. If you would like to have more control over your shopping cart, then use AShop, which you purchase once and have it installed on your own web server. I've been using this for over 3 years and have been very happy with their software. Both are very good solutions for running a successful business on eBay!

3. Set up an email list.
After that, you need a way of keeping track of your visitors and their contact information. Your email list is one of the most valuable things of your business and it will probably determine your eBay success or failure. You NEED to be collecting the names of your visitors and customers. A great service to do that is through Aweber. Additionally, if you want to host everything on your own site, you may do so with AutoResponsePlus, although it is for the more technically advanced. I actually use both of these.

4. Take advantage of SEO.
You can build your eBay success even further by placing Google Adsense ads on your website. By far, the Adsense experts are Joel Comm and Michael Cheney. Joel publishes an e-book explaining exactly how to do it. If you learn better by watching videos, Michael is the man for you. Finally, as a way to make sure your website is listed in the search engines and places near the top of the list, check out SEO Elite, an amazing tool for search engine optimization. You cannot honestly expect to be successful in your eBay business without using SEO.

5. Give away business cards.
If you want to be successful on eBay, you must allow your customers to find you again. So make sure you place business cards in EVERY package you mail out. They don't have to be the typical name, address, phone and email business cards. You can include a "thank you," along with a reference to your eBay store or eBay user ID. In fact, by going to VistaPrint you can get these business cards for FREE together with some other great advertising items.

Achieving success on eBay is not easy, but it is not very difficult either. Making money on eBay requires knowledge of both the marketplace and the buyers, so invest your time and efforts to use these powerful tools while you examine the marketplace. Just give them a try and see the difference. To your eBay success!


About the AuthorMike Enos is the founder of PlatinumPowerSeller.com, the top-ranking eBay sellers' training website in the world. Mike has been teaching real people how to make real money on eBay since 2001. Sign up for his informative free Make Money on eBay Newsletter here!