Are There Any eBay "Secrets" That Are Worth Buying?
If you look around a little on the web, you'll no doubt come across people trying to sell you ebooks about eBay's 'secrets' for as much as $20. Here's a sample:

"Along with 400,000 other excited eBay fanatics I now make a living using the Internet and eBay. I can go days without ever speaking to a single customer, but I have a world wide customer base. My online business runs like a well oiled machine with a part-time effort!"

You too can get such valuable tips as:
"All you need to do is write a list of questions other people would pay to get the answers to, give that list to a friend, have the friend call you on the phone and ask you those questions, record the call, have the recording transcribed, and edit the transcription! Presto - you've just created a 'meaty' ebook fast!"

So What Do These Books Contain?
Don't be deceived by the slick sales copy and promises of 'automatic sales machines' and unique sales strategies. Most of these 'winning money-making strategies' boil down to the same thing. Follow their advice, and you'll be writing long, old-fashioned sales copy in an effort to sell shoddily-written downloadable ebooks to gullible souls, either directly through eBay or by trying to redirect people through your About Me page to your website.

The theory is that the rubbish ebooks will sell themselves, and you won't have to do a thing. Here's a question to ask yourself: if these 'secrets' work so well, then why aren't the ebooks authors spending every hour they have putting them into practice, instead of trying to sell you ebooks? If these secrets were so valuable, then why would they give them away for that price, or any price? Out of charity? Yeah, right.

Here's the reality: trying to sell ebooks on eBay or anywhere else is very likely to get you nowhere, and fast. The bottom fell out of the ebook market a long time ago - in fact, it's doubtful whether it ever had a bottom to begin with. The ebooks are an effort to get to you sign up for all sorts of services, making money for the ebooks' writers each time. In short, the only way to profit from 'secrets of eBay' ebooks is to be selling them, not buying them - and do you really want to become a con artist?

If you'd like to take a look at one of these ebooks, try searching for the name and picking through results. The chances are you'll find an excerpt or review - and if it's not by someone trying to sell you the ebook then it won't be a favourable view. The fact that most ebooks you buy for $20 come with unlimited resale rights should tip you off if nothing else does.

It's All Out There for Free.
You can almost any information that someone might be trying to sell you in an ebook for free using a search engine, if you take the time. Ebooks aren't worth the paper they're not printed on.

If you'd like a real way to make more money, look out for our next email: we'll show you how and when to use eBay's powerful 'Second Chance Offer' feature.

How to Use eBay's "Second Chance Offer" Feature.
When someone wins your auction, you might think that's the end of it. In fact, you can offer the item to anyone else who bid in the auction but didn't win.

Why Would I Do That?
There are three reasons you might want to do this:

1. Your top bidder never paid. Unfortunately for sellers, it is all too common for buyers to win an item and then decide they don't want it after all. Making a second chance offer lets you offer the item to a buyer with a better reputation.

2. You have another one. If you have another item just like the one you just sold then you might as well sell it to another bidder - after all, you know they're interested and what they're willing to pay.

3. A buyer emails you directly to ask. If they got 'sniped' at the last second, or just weren't around when the auction ended, then a buyer might email you to ask if you'll sell them one for however many dollars. You might as well make them an offer - it's a free sale.

So How Do You Make a Second Chance Offer?
Well, it's easy really. The easiest place to send a second chance offer from is the My eBay screen - simply go to the Selling page and click 'Make a Second Chance Offer'. eBay should also provide a link for you to make a second chance offer in the email you will receive after the sale of an item is completed, or you report a non-paying buyer.

What Happens Next?
The buyer can choose to either accept or reject your offer. If they decline, that's the end of it, and you pay nothing for making the offer. If they accept, then things work exactly the same way they would if they'd won the auction - you pay a final value fee, they pay you, and you can leave feedback for each other as normal.

Making a second chance offer on all your auctions can be a great way to make extra sales. You will probably find that about 50% of the buyers you make offers to will take them up, and you save the effort of relisting the item and paying another insertion fee.

The only disadvantage is the time that it might take you to send so many second chance offers, but the chances are it will be time well spent. If you find that it doesn't work for your particular kind of items, though, don't keep pushing it - just re-list the item and let people bid again. It might be that the buyers for your items just aren't the negotiating type - or perhaps they hope that the next one will sell for less.

By now, you're probably starting to make a success of your eBay business - I hope you've enjoyed it so far! But the chances are you still want a few more strategies to increase your profits. Well, in the next email, we'll take a look at what you can discover from taking a good look at your competitors' auctions.

What You Can Learn from Competing eBay Auctions.
If you've a savvy businessperson, the chances are you've already taken a look at your competitors' auctions. What you might not have realised is just how much you can learn if you know what you're looking for.

To begin with, don't bother looking at listings that haven't ended yet - you don't know what's going to happen with them. Instead, use the advanced search page to search for listings that sold. Just go to the advanced search page, type in the keywords that you know will find your competitors' items, tick 'Completed listings only' and set the minimum number of bids to 1. Set it to sort by 'Price: highest first'.

This will show you auctions competing with yours that have recently finished, starting with the ones that sold for the most (ignore any with prices in red - they didn't sell). Go through and take a look, paying special attention to the following points:

Titles. What information do the top sellers of your item put in their titles, and what do they leave out? If your titles are very different to theirs, it might be time for a rethink.

Descriptions. You'll probably notice that the highest sellers haven't just copied text from the company's website or an Amazon.com review - they've gone to the trouble of writing a little about the item, and about themselves. Learn from their example.

Pictures. I can almost guarantee you that the listing will have very nice pictures - not catalogue quality, but good enough to see what you're getting. With items of any significant cost, you'll probably find more than one photo from different angles.

Style. Is it written conversationally, or in terse businesslike language? The way you should write entirely depends on what the market seems to like - and the market seems to like what the top sellers wrote.

Time. It's pretty easy to ignore this as a factor without meaning to, but pay attention to when the top selling items' auctions began and ended. This might give you a few clues about the best to catch buyers who will bid highly on your item, and then you can schedule your items accordingly.

Price. If your competitors are selling using Buy it Now, you can see what the maximum is that they've managed to sell for recently, and set your own Buy it Now price slightly below that.

Shipping. Look around to see the sweet spot for shipping. If you can figure out a way to get your shipping costs lower than the highest sellers, then this is a great opportunity to differentiate yourself in the market.

Once you see what works, you can start to emulate your competitors - of course you can't just copy them completely, but you can structure your auction similarly and make sure it includes the same information.

If you want your items to do even better, then start stocking the items in your category that are the most in-demand. We'll show you how to tell what's selling and what's not in our next email.

How to Determine What's Really Selling on eBay.
If you want to make the most money you can on eBay, then you need to know what sells. But how can you find that out?

The Manual Way.
If you're just starting out, you might find it easier to simply go to your category, tick 'Completed listings' in the left-hand menu, and then click the 'Show items' button. Sort them by highest price first, and there you have it: the items that sell for the highest prices. In most categories this will change often, but it's still useful to know - if you think you can get an item quickly for less than the kind of prices it is selling for, then go for it.

eBay's search interface can be slow and hard to use, however, and you're unlikely to discover everything you could learn this way. There's more than one way to do things, though.

The Statistical Way.
If you'd prefer to do a little hardcore statistical analysis to determine what's selling and what not, then don't worry - you can do that too.

eBay make all their market data available to third-party developers through what's called a 'programming interface' - this basically means that you have a wide choice of programs that can take market statistics from eBay and analyse them for you. Type 'ebay analysis' into a search engine for a long list.

In my opinion, some of the best eBay statistics tools out there are made by Andale (www.andale.com). Andale are one of the oldest and most established sellers of services for eBay. However, their solution is web-based, and you may prefer to buy a piece of software that you can install on your computer, such as AuctionIntelligence.

These automated programs will almost do everything for you, and come with help and tutorials. You should be aware, however, that eBay charge them for the data, which means that they will never give you their programs for free.

Keep Your Finger on Pulse.
If you want a quick, big-picture snapshot of what people are looking to buy on eBay, then go to eBay Pulse. This is the page where eBay list the top 10 most searched for words, and the top 5 largest eBay stores.

Looking at it, it's easy to spot current trends. For example, right now all of the top stores are selling media items, either books or music. That suggests that these are good things to be selling, at least if you want to shift volume. Right now the word 'ipod' is at number 4, and 'ipod mini' is at number 6 - there are a heck of a lot of people out there looking for a cheap iPod or iPod mini. If you could find a good supplier for them then you could make a lot of money.

If you're having trouble finding suppliers, though, don't worry: there's more than one way to get hold of things to sell on eBay. The next email will give you a few tips.

10 Great Ways to Source Low Cost Products for eBay.
So you're having trouble finding stock cheaply enough to sell it for a good profit? Well, you've come to the right place.

Garage sales. The chances are you've gone most of your life seeing ads for these and ignoring them. Start going to as many as you can. You won't find good things at every one, but when you find one person with good stuff, make them an offer for the lot - they'll be so happy about it that you can get a real bargain.

Markets. If your area has a market, then go there and look around for anything good. You could buy it there if it's cheap enough, or try to make friends with the market traders and find out who their suppliers are.

Pawn shops. Pawn shops don't usually know what to do with the junk they accumulate (unless it's jewellery, of course). Generally, they put their stock out on the shelves haphazardly, hoping that someday someone with a little money will just happen to come in, search around and buy wildly obscure things. Get them to offer you a discount for bulk.

Real auctions. Go to a real auction, as the chances are that you can resell things for more than they will sell them. After all, they only have a few hundred people in that room - you have a few million to sell to!

Local newspapers. Place an ad in the local paper that reads "I pay cash for [your item type]", with your phone number. If you can afford it, make it a big display ad, so it'll be noticed.

Ad boards. Get one of those little ads in the grocery store.

Friends. Ask your friends if they have anything they'd like to sell you, and ask them to spread the word to their friends.

Become known. Give out business cards, mention to people what you do. The chances are that you'll come across someone who'll say "Oh, really? I've got a load of [item] I don't want".

Shops. This might be a little surprising, but some real shops even sell things more cheaply than they sell on eBay. Take a look around your local deep discounter, and pay special attention to any shop that takes trade-ins from customers. The chances are they take a loss on trade-ins as a promotion, and are dying to get rid of that stock.

And finally: eBay! When you're looking at the completed items view, you'll notice the massive range of prices that items can sell for on eBay. Try taking the highest-priced item and searching for it on its own, then sort by lowest price first: I can almost guarantee that you'll see an auction for the same item where it sold for almost nothing. The trick is to find these flawed auctions before they close, win them using a bid sniping service, and then turn around and resell the item.

After all that trouble, though, when do sell the item you might find that a buyer leaves you a feedback rating you just don't think is fair. The next page will show you what to do about it.

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