A lot of the tricks that I’ll discuss work best if you have a lot of similar items, but you can make things easier on yourself by downloading and installing the free Turbo Lister 2. (This is for Windows only. Here are some choices for Mac.) Turbo Lister 2 is an application that lets you compose your auctions outside of eBay’s web interface, which by itself is a huge time-saver. It’s gotten pretty powerful, and I know that I haven’t exercised all that it can do.

After you’ve installed Turbo Lister 2, it’s pretty easy to get down to business on the listing process:

•Look at what you need to sell and group like items together. “Like items” means items that are likely to fall in the same eBay category. This will streamline getting images of the items and putting the listings together.
•Determine what eBay category best matches that group of items. If I can’t find the category easily, I cheat and do a search for the items I’m going to list. The current sellers will have found the right categories.
•Get images of all of these items. If they’re similar, there should be a way to take pictures of the items assembly-line style. Once you get the right lighting and aspect for one, just rinse and repeat. For magazines, books, or other similar thin objects, a scanner works very well. For some items like CDs or DVDs, pre-filled information may be available through Turbo Lister 2, so there may be no need to take pictures unless the item is special or in a condition that you want to point out for some reason so that you have accurate descriptions. If you have several items that are exactly the same, you may be able to get by with one picture unless they’re in different conditions.
•If you have a store, set up the store category for these items if you haven’t already. In My eBay, click on Manage My Store on the left sidebar. On that screen, under Store Design, click on Store Categories. Click the Add Category button on the right side of the screen, and add away.
•Fire up Turbo Lister 2 and select New -> Item in the main menu. Now you’ll do a listing for one of your items. Your new store categories should show up if you have a store. The Store Categories box is on the left side, just above the Pictures and Description section in the Edit Item screen. If not, then Canceling this screen and going to Tools -> Check for program updates should fetch the new categories. The parts that I fill in this first time around:
◦Title. Use up as many characters as you can with terms that people will be likely to search on. The default search mode for listings is title only, so getting the most important words in the title will help draw more hits on your listing.
◦Subtitle. I pass this one over, but you’re welcome to add one for a fee if you want.
◦Category. This is the eBay category for the item.
◦Item specifics. This area may or may not come up based on the eBay category. I fill these in as much as possible.
◦Store category. This is the category I just added for the items.
◦Description Builder. I put in text about the item and mention the condition. If it’s a magazine I try to highlight some of the key features of that issue. I also add that I will combine shipping. I choose a counter for the item. I add one picture of the item (more than one costs extra). You can crop your pictures right in Turbo Lister 2. And that’s about it! I haven’t added a slew of terms and conditions and things have worked out all right. I tend to think that a lot of rules scares off buyers.
◦Selling format and price information. I choose the format (Store Inventory, good until cancelled), set the starting price, and choose whether I want to accept offers or not.
◦Listing upgrades. I throw in the gallery picture for store inventory because it’s a penny a month. It will likely be free soon.
◦Shipping options. I select the shipping options I want to offer. This has not been a problem but I suppose it could be if the country’s restrictions were such that I couldn’t deliver.
◦Sales tax. Please pay attention to this one. If you are authorized in your state to charge sales tax, click on the Shipping Options button, and then click on the Sales Tax tab. Enter the appropriate sales tax information (state, percentage, and whether to charge on shipping or not), and check the “Save for future listings” at the bottom. If you don’t do this last step, the tax information will apply only to this listing, and will not apply to others unless you go through this step each time. I found this out the hard way because someone in my state bought an item, and sales tax wasn’t applied. I had to eat it.
◦Payment Methods, Buyer Communication, and Instructions and Policies. Change as you like.
◦Finally, click Save.
•Now, here’s where the streamlining takes place. Click on the listing you just made, and type Ctrl-D, or select Edit -> Duplicate. Now you can create several separate listings with the information you just entered. Just repeat the steps in the previous item for each of your related items, except start by clicking on the duplicated listing rather than New -> Item. Most of the information will be filled in for you, and you only need to change what’s different, like the title, the item specifics, the picture, part of the description, and maybe the price or shipping options.
•Once all of your listings are done, do a quick sanity check and then highlight the listings and click the Add to Upload button right above the listings. Then click on the Waiting to Upload option on the left sidebar, and upload your items!
I’m pretty sure that there are even faster ways to do what I just did, but this way is straightforward and saves time without needing to go through a big learning curve. As I learn new Turbo Lister 2 tricks, I’ll share!

The time-consuming parts of selling on eBay aren’t the actual selling, but the preparation of the listings, answering customer questions, packing and shipping the items, and keeping records. Minimizing these time-consuming parts help to maximize the revenue per hour that you earn through selling on eBay. As you get used to the process, you’ll undoubtedly find your own streamlining processes that work best for your products. It’s to your advantage as a seller to seek out these time-saving tricks so that you can move the most product with your eBay Stores in your limited time.

Part 4 of this series on making money with an eBay store gave some thoughts about how to obtain your product at the right price, because, after all, it’s hard to make up on volume what you’re losing on each unit. If you don’t have something to sell, then an eBay Store probably isn’t a good way to make money.

But let’s assume that you know that you need a store, you’re all set up with your business’s registration, and you know where to get your product. You’re all set to sell, except for one thing. You don’t have a store!

I could do a step-by-step “click here, now click here” instruction sheet for signing up for an eBay store with diagrams and lots of severe hand-holding, but I won’t because I don’t think you’ll need, or even want, help with this part. EBay leads you through the process of signing up for a store very clearly, and any additional instructions from me would just slow you down, frankly. I’ll share a couple of decisions I made during the sign-up process below if you want, but otherwise I’ll hand the explaining over to eBay and you can open an eBay Store!

I chose the Basic Store option, which was $15.95 per month (and still is at the moment). The more expensive packages give you more space for your images and pages, snazzier analytics packages, more marketing e-mails, more branding opportunity, and more promotion on eBay itself. Of these benefits, the biggest one in my opinion is the higher traffic — your store gets promoted on eBay more and your items show up in the search results more frequently. I found that my items still got sold even with the Basic Store, and unless you really have a need for the extra features, it’s perfectly fine to start with the Basic Store and upgrade later if you find it lacking.

When I chose the name for my store, Back Mags Plus, I wanted something that would indicate what I planned to sell as a staple, and also allow for other products. (Hence the “Plus.”) This is a one-time decision that’s more or less permanent, so I suggest that you think carefully about what you want to name your store. You’ll definitely want it to indicate what you sell. It doesn’t have to be your business name, but if your business name describes what you sell well, then that’s certainly a good choice.

Are you all signed up? Congratulations!

(If not, you can open an eBay Store here!)

After your store is set up, you can access the store’s control panel by logging into eBay, going to your My eBay area, and clicking on the “Manage My Store” link in the left sidebar under My Subscriptions.

Again, it’s probably easier for you to poke around and play with things than for me to give you step-by-step instructions. As a start, though, here are a few pointers:

•The default design of the store is fine. Really. My store is basically the default design, and stuff sells out of it regularly if the price is right. You don’t have to accept the default design, but it will serve you just fine as a start.
•Download Turbo Lister. You may already have some experience with it if you’ve listed a lot of auctions. It’s way easier to use Turbo Lister with a store than to use the web forms. And the price is hard to beat. (It’s free!) I’ll talk about the tricks and tips I’ve developed for using Turbo Lister in a later post in the series.
•Just because you have 300 categories available doesn’t mean that you have to use them all. Some stores do a whole lot of business with fewer than a dozen categories. It all depends on what you’re selling. I have less than a dozen because that’s all I need.
•Review the terms and conditions before throwing up a lot of external links on the pages. Actually, think carefully about what you want to put on those pages. (I haven’t used any of them on mine, yet.) EBay’s pretty strict about how you can advertise stuff outside of eBay, so be sure you’re compliant.
•If you don’t have a lot of “store policies” to put up on a page, don’t worry about it for now. I have almost no posted policies at the moment. I’ve just started to explain why I ship magazine only by Priority Mail, but that’s about it. If I were selling a thousand items per month, I’d probably add some expectations or terms and conditions. If you encourage open communication with your customers, describe your items accurately, and fulfill them quickly, this covers a lot of ground by itself and most people will be delighted. Some people won’t be, but that’s part of the business, and sometimes there’s very little that can be done with some customers.
•If you haven’t added a PayPal account for your business, do it. You can have one personal and one business PayPal account per person. It’s much cleaner to have a business-only PayPal account that is connected to your business checking account that you set up — especially if the IRS wants to look at your business more closely.
•If everything’s in place, list! That’s why you got the store!
Next I’ll post on how to streamline your listing process.

Part 3 of this series on making money with an eBay store elaborated on telling the appropriate governing bodies about your business, and setting up some of the appropriate financial avenues for managing the business’s money.

I made an assumption here. The assumption I made was that you actually have a source for “product” — the stuff you’re going to sell — and that you can obtain it cheaply enough that you can sell it in an eBay Store so that it’s worth your while. After all, an eBay Store is a store, so you’re selling product. And if you’re losing money on each unit, it’s really hard to make up that loss on volume. So you have to be able to acquire whatever you want to sell at low enough cost so you can make money on the sale.

This requires research. Presumably if you’re pondering a store, you’ve already done this, but if not, this is a very important activity!

A local comic book and collectibles dealer graciously shared some advice with me. (He used to have an eBay Store, but it looks like it’s closed now.) He asked me how much money I’d be making on sales. I started out by saying, “Well, I guess this would cost here, and fees would be about this …” and he stopped me and said, “You can’t guess. You’ve got to know.” Those words stuck with me. Or, from real estate investor John Schaub, you make your profit when you buy. Either way, this means three things:

1.Knowing what you can sell your product for
2.Knowing what the transaction and labor costs are
3.Using these numbers to determine what you need to buy the product for to profit
What will your stuff go for on eBay?

This is actually pretty easy to answer. You check on eBay to see what your stuff will go for on eBay!

•Go to eBay and do a search for the item you want to sell. I’m assuming there’s some kind of demand for the item, as evidenced by people selling the item. If there are none, then either (a) you’ve hit on a totally untapped niche on eBay, (b) you’re not allowed to sell the item on eBay, or (c) it’s really difficult, or impossible, to make money selling that item on eBay. Further research on your part is required at this point.
•Go to the left sidebar and check the “Completed listings” box under the Search Options heading, and then click the “Show Items” button beneath the column of checkboxes. You may need to log in again to see the listings.
•Sort these listings by price. The items with a green price in boldface type sold. The items with a red price didn’t. If you sorted with the highest price first, most likely you’ll see red prices at the top, and more and more green prices as you scroll down. The green prices, plus the appropriate shipping charges, represent the range of prices that eBay buyers were willing to accept recently for the items you want to sell.
•Double check the condition of the sold items. New items in the package will usually command a higher price than used items, regardless of how lightly used.
OK, I have a range of prices that the items sold for. What next?

The final selling price plus what you charge for shipping and handling is your income for the item. In order to turn a profit, what you sell the item for must be less than the sum of the following:

•What you paid to obtain the item (cost of goods sold). Ultimately, you make your profit when you buy.
•EBay listing fees and final value fees. EBay‘s fee structure is different for auctions than it is for store items. You’ll want to figure it out both ways so that you can sell either way.
•PayPal fees. These are similar to merchant account fees, the fees that you’re assessed to process credit card transactions.
•Packing material costs. Depending on what you’re selling, you may be able to get free packing materials from your favorite delivery service free of charge. For example, USPS gives free boxes, envelopes, and labels for Priority Mail and Express Mail. If you want to offer cheaper shipping options, then these free packing materials cannot be used, in which case it costs you. In addition, you may need bubble wrap, paper, and tape.
•Transportation to mail items. If there’s enough volume you may be able to schedule a pickup, but this may cost.
•Shipping costs. What it costs you to get the item from Point A to Point B.
•Taxes. Sales tax if applicable, as well as any local, state, and federal income taxes.
•A prorated amount for you other costs of business, like licensing fees, advertising, commissions, eBay Store costs, etc.
•An allowance for returns, lost items, and other mishaps that will eat into your profits.
Did you calculate — not guess! — all of these contributions? Did you get a positive answer? If so, this is good. There’s a chance that this could be worth your while.

Isn’t the bottom line the bottom line?

Having the income larger than the expenses is good. But it’s also important how long it took you to earn that money! If your total cost is $9.95 per item out the door and you’re clearing only $10.00 for each item, you’d better have a really huge volume or else you’re working for about 37 cents an hour! You might as well work alongside the teenagers at the grocery store, because you’ll make a lot more. It’s not worth your while to sell at such a small margin.

So what is worth your while? That’s something you’ll need to answer for yourself. Making money is better than losing money, for sure, but if you can make more money elsewhere, or if the money you are making really is insignificant, then you have to ask whether it’s really worth it or not to sell. This profit threshold can be lower if you enjoy the activities associated with obtaining, listing, and shipping the products. If you enjoy going to yard sales anyway, you might not mind making only $5 an hour because you’d be doing it anyway, and now you’re getting paid.

Your time cost per item goes way up if you’re obtaining the items one at a time. But if your profit is $500 per item, you can afford to spend 10 hours on that one item and still be making $50/hour. If you have smaller items ($5 items) your initial time cost is high the first time you sell them, because you haven’t listed the items, taken pictures of them, etc. It drops dramatically if you buy a bunch of the same kind of item, because you only need to go through construction of the auction once. (Plus, you can sell up to 100 identical items in an eBay Store for one listing fee!)

Here’s a list of activites that consume your time during the money-making process:

•Obtaining the items. This might be traveling to a dealer to purchase inventory, or hunting flea markets, yard sales, and the like. It may be less time-intensive, like picking up the phone and getting merchandise delivered. Or there could be none, if people bring the items directly to you!
•Listing the items for sale. Photographing or scanning the items, writing up the listings, and answering questions from prospective buyers.
•Packaging the items. This could be quite labor intensive (for fragile collectibles) less labor intensive (putting a magazine back issue in a Priority Mail envelope) or none (the buyer clicks on a link to download your electronic product).
•Shipping the items. You may need to get the item to the post office, or not.
•Tracking and bookkeeping the items. The recordkeeping part of running a business.
So if you spent 10 hours obtaining a pallet of multimeters, 30 hours listing them, 10 hours packing them, 15 hours shipping them, and 5 hours with bookkeeping, and profited $1,400, you made $50/hour selling those multimeters.

How do I obtain product at the right price?

That was the title of the post, and you were probably wondering when I was going to reveal the secret formula for obtaining things below retail.

Well, there is no secret formula, mainly because I don’t know where you live, what’s around you, or what you want to sell! All I can really do is offer some suggestions. Some of them may be great for certain kinds of items and horrible for other items. Some of them may work great in Illinois but lousy in Idaho. Here are some ways to obtain merchandise that will work in some situations:

•Auctions. Liquidations are good places to get goods at decent prices. Sometimes the selling price will be fantastic, and other times it will be high. It’s a function of how many bidders are competing for the goods. These items are usually sold as-is with no warranties. The variety of items you can buy at auction is large.
•Flea markets, antique shops, and yard sales. A good portion of the items in antique shops may have been purchased at auction, but if the dealer doesn’t know what they really have, there’s a chance to make a lot of money if you know what it will go for on eBay. Yard sales may allow a better chance of getting a fantastic deal on something depending on the situation.
•Drop-shipping companies. This isn’t really obtaining the item at all. It’s selling for another company and making the profit on the difference between the price they charge you and what you charge the customer. It’s a very clean business to operate (no inventory) but it’s also very dependent on the availability of the merchandise and the stability of the prices. (I’m involved in a partnership that sells paintball gear among other things, and we use a drop-shipping method.)
•Wholesale distributors. This involves buying in quantity to get discounts. There may be a process to go through to become a qualified seller, and there may be a minimum initial order that’s prohibitive. This works if you are selling a high-demand product and can move a lot of volume.
•From your own efforts. Nothing says that you can’t make your own products! There needs to be a market for them, of course, and there’s additional time that needs to be factored in to your time cost (as well as any material costs). Products that do well here are products that can be made once and sold again and again with little or no additional construction effort. For example, quilt patterns. You construct the pattern once, and print it out many times, or have people download it many times. It may take three hours to make a pattern or 100 hours to assemble a decent e-book, but once it’s made, it’s made.
•Consignment. This is another decent way to get merchandise at the right price. EBay itself can be described in part as a really big consignment shop. People are willing to pay others to sell their stuff on eBay. Some of the magazines in my eBay Store are consigned. I don’t make money obtaining the item and reselling it; I make money through an additional commission that I charge.
•EBay. If you buy large enough on eBay at a good enough price, you can put them right back up on eBay and make money. EBay is both your source and your store. Buying a personal collection of 500 DVDs for $2.50 per DVD may have enough worth $10 plus shipping that you can make a few hundred on it selling them right back on eBay.
•Anyplace else you can find! There are opportunities to pick up product to resell right in your area. A nice e-book by The Product Hunter (aff) gives instruction on how to go about finding these sources. These sources are found off the beaten path (the really good ones, anyway). Folks who have already found them are very reluctant about volunteering their sources, because they’ll just make a competitor if they tell you where they get their stuff! It’s their competitive advantage. So going this route takes time to build relationships and learn the ropes well enough to separate the wheat from the chaff and not get taken for a ride. But getting through this successfully will reward you with your own competitive advantage.
In the next part I’ll talk about the mechanics of setting up an eBay Store.

In the Introduction I mentioned some of the good things about starting a side business, especially the peace of mind that mastery of one’s financial life can bring. One avenue I’ve started to take is my eBay store. If you don’t know whether you actually need or want an eBay store for your side business, check out Part 2.

Now, since it’s not a side hobby or a side money-laundering operation, but instead a side business, there is some prep work to do before selling stuff, and other maintenance work aside from selling stuff that needs to be done. In this post I’ll share what I should have done sooner to start up the business that my eBay Store falls under (as well as another business I’m involved in) so that things will run more smoothly for you.

Letting the appropriate powers-that-be know about your side business before you open for business

The key word here is before. Trust me! It makes your business run so much more smoothly at the beginning if you get registered at federal, state, and local levels before you start selling. This was one big mistake I made with a partnership I’m involved in. When it came time to file our first year’s taxes, I realized a week before that we were actually a partnership and that we needed to file pass-through returns instead of just claiming profits and losses on our 1040 Schedule Cs. It was months before that one piece actually got sorted out. That, and we should have registered for sales and use tax from the day we began, so we were paying penalties on months of filing we didn’t do. So, again, trust me when I say you want to get your ducks in a row with the governing bodies before you open your doors.

•What type of business entity will you form? (NOTE: This is not personalized business advice in any way. Please consult an attorney to address your specific needs.) If it’s just you, a sole proprietorship may be fine. If you’re doing this with someone else, a partnership of some kind is necessary. General partnerships are the easier, and cheaper, ones to set up, but any loss or liability that the partnership suffers passes through to the general partners’ finances, which can be devastating. A limited partnership or limited liability company (LLC) is more expensive to set up and a little more work to maintain, but under some circumstances it can shield your personal assets, like your house, if something catastrophic happens.
•Get an employer identification number (EIN). A sole proprietorship does not need one; the EIN is the sole proprietor’s SSN. Otherwise, a new business generally needs one to identify itself for federal tax purposes. This IRS link explains when a new business needs an EIN and how to apply for one online.
•Register with your state’s or commonwealth’s corporation commission. The state you do business in probably wants to tax your net profits so that it can keep the roads paved and keep the state police employed so that you don’t drive too fast on those nicely paved roads. This means applying to do business in the state, paying the appropriate licensing fees, and registering to pay the appropriate taxes for your business. Most states worth their salt will have some publications that help you through the procedure or at least point you to someone who might be able to point you in the right direction. Virginia’s guide for new businesses is here. Live in Maryland, Texas, or Idaho? No problem — they have resources too. Live in one of the other forty-six states? Just google “doing business in ” and I bet that you’ll get a good link on the first page. (Be sure to substitute “” with … well … your state.)
•Register with your city or county government. Government at this level assesses more taxes, and more importantly, gives the thumbs-up or thumbs-down on your business venture. There are zoning considerations to address. You may be able to run a home-based business, but not store your merchandise there. You may be able to have customers come directly to your residence, or you might not. If you’re a partnership or corporation, you may have to register a fictitious name form with your local government (we did). That fictitious name has to be unique, so you need to have it registered with the state. But registering with the state before going to the local level means that you haven’t had your business approved at the local level yet. There is the chance that you could do one of these steps and have to start over again because of a road-block in the other step. Fun, fun, fun. It happens, though. Oh, and the local government may assess license fees based on your income, and get other fees if you want to have signage or other business-type accoutrements. Since there are 1.7 gazillion local governments in the US, a good place to start for you would be your local Chamber of Commerce, which you can find in the phone book.
Above all, if you don’t know, ask. The folks I’ve talked to with questions are generally willing to help once I make it clear that I want to do things correctly or that I want to fix things, which I’ve had to do a few times. This includes people at the local level, at the state level — and especially the IRS.

Starting off on the right financial foot

I doubt there are many businesspeople who enjoy bookkeeping — unless, of course, you are a bookkeeper. Keeping good records and the right records from the start also makes things run a lot more smoothly. After three years in business with a friend, we’re just starting to get this down. Tax time still has an element of “tracks time” because we’re tracking down things. At our local Costco at the concession stand, there’s a sign that says “C.A.Y.G.” I asked one of the employees what that meant, and it means “Clean As You Go.” For the business owner it probably should be “R.A.Y.G.” or “Record As You Go.”

Here are the big things to set up ASAP after you’re all registered and ready to open your doors:

•Get a business checking account. A personal checking account like you might have at your credit union or bank is not good enough. In fact, if the CEO of our credit union found out that people were using a personal account for business, even if it was used only for business, he’d close it. A checking account explcitly designated as a business account at a local bank is extremely important. There may be no interest paid on money in the account, but for getting the money out fast and being able to talk to a person about your account, it’s hard to beat. Money can be transferred into and out of the account easily enough, either to PayPal or a high-yield business account like the ING Business Savings Account.
•Get a business PayPal account. Since eBay owns PayPal, best get set up there, because eBay Stores thrive on PayPal payments. They live and breathe on PayPal payments. Link the PayPal account to your business account (and maybe to a high-yield business savings account) so that you can shuffle money out to either place. One tip here: I don’t recommend keeping a lot of money in your PayPal account. Not necessarily because it can get hacked (though it can) but because if there’s a complaint against your account, the assets are frozen in it. It seems to be easier to get PayPal to freeze your assets than your bank, so if you get payments, withdraw them to your checking account or your savings account.
•Get a business credit card? Going into debt in a business is just as bad as going into debt personally, so I don’t know if I’d do an across-the-board recommendation to get a business credit card. Aside from the prospect of going into debt, there are a couple of advantages. First, you can pay for stuff instantly through PayPal merchants (or eBay sellers) that accept credit card payments. Paying instantly without a credit card requires you to have a PayPal balance, which I don’t recommend, and transferring money in from another account takes a few days. Second, some of these cards have nice sign-up bonuses and will waive the first year’s annual fee. The Discover® Business Card is a good one. (The Business Gold Rewards Card has an annual fee that is waived for the first year; the Discover® Business Card has no annual fee.)
•Learn about how to keep records for tax purposes. The IRS is helpful here. It tells you how to keep records so that they’ll believe you if you’re audited. It also tells you about all of the business deductions you can take. The Small Business and Self-Employed One-Stop Resource page is here.
•Organize your office and set up your system. Folders for receipts, invoices, tax forms, employment forms. For online businesses like eBay Stores, printing out invoices, packing slips, etc., gives an extra measure of security and robustness to recordkeeping. If your hard drive crashes with all of your records, and your backup crashes, too, you’re not high and dry.
•Get small business software? There’s nothing wrong with getting software for recordkeeping, but a free spreadsheet application like the Calc application in OpenOffice.org will work, too. You can play around with this yourself, but some financial software comes with a lot of bells and whistles that might distract you from the real purpose of the software, which is to record what you bring in and what you spend as you go. If OO isn’t enough, then by all means go for Quicken Home & Business 2007.
A good start to your business, but not the end

This post only scratched the surface, and again, I can’t possibly give advice that applies directly to your situation. Learning about filing requirements, recordkeeping, and business finance is an ongoing process. Laws change, especially tax laws. It’s generally up to business owners to keep up with the changes. There are all kinds of books on starting a business available, and a bunch are specific to eBay businesses.

In the Introduction I mentioned some of the fruits of starting a side business, especially the feeling of empowerment over one’s financial life that it can bring. One avenue I’ve started to take is my eBay store. Now, there are as many ways to start up a side business as there are businesspeople, and an eBay Store might not even be appropriate for you. So …

What is an eBay Store, anyway?

Basically, eBay Stores are just what they say: they’re stores on eBay. The fact that they’re stores implies that things are sold in them. With very few exceptions, just about anything can be sold in an eBay Store that can be sold in a regular store, plus a lot of non-material, but nonetheless valuable, things that aren’t normally sold in a regular store.

The fact that they’re stores, though, differentiates them from other forms of business that do not involve selling things, such as affiliate marketing, some service businesses, or internet publishing. An eBay Store has to have something to sell. This may seem like a silly point to make, but if you don’t have something to sell or have an idea what you want to sell, you should nail this down before thinking about signing up for an eBay store.

EBay Store items are listed (offered for sale in the store) in either a “Buy It Now” format or a “Buy It Now or Make Offer” format. “Buy It Now” basically translates to a price tag: “Here’s the price at which I’ll sell the item.” “Buy It Now or Make Offer” translates to a price tag with wiggle room: “Here’s the price at which I’ll sell the item now, but I’ll entertain lower offers, and if I accept your offer, you’ll buy it from me.” These are only two of a number of ways that items can sold on eBay. EBay Store items can be “sent to auction” to draw attention to them and to draw more traffic to the rest of the Store’s items. (I’ll talk about why this is a good idea to do in another part of the series.)

It’s not necessary to have an eBay Store to sell items in the Buy It Now format or Buy It Now or Make Offer format. So what’s the benefit to having an eBay Store if I don’t need it to sell items in fixed price format?

Do I need an eBay Store?

Assuming you have stuff to sell (it is a store, right?), then the short answer is that it depends on how much you’re selling and how regularly you’re selling it. To quantify this, I’ll explain the differences in the fee structures for selling without an eBay store and selling with one.

•Selling without an eBay Store. There is no subscription fee to sell without an eBay Store. You can sell one item a year and pay just for the listing fee, the final value fee, and any PayPal fees for that one item. The listing fees currently start at 20 cents for up to seven days (going up to $4.80 if the starting price is over $500), and the final value fee is currently at most 5.25% of the selling price. There is at least an additional five cents for Buy It Now listings.
•Selling with an eBay Store. There is a subscription fee for the Store that’s at least $15.95 per month. This is a flat fee, independent of the number of items in the Store. The listing fees are less, starting at 5 cents per thirty days (10 cents per 30 days for items with prices over $25). Some of the upgrade fees are dirt cheap, like gallery pictures for a penny per thirty days. The final value fees are higher, though, and are currently not more than 10% of the selling price. A good chunk of the final value fees can be refunded if the traffic resulting in the sale was driven to eBay from outside the site. (This will be discussed in a later part.)
Given these costs of doing business on eBay, a couple of conclusions can be drawn:

•If you’re an occasional seller, you probably do not want an eBay Store. The monthly subscription fee will eat you alive if you don’t have a lot of items to sell.
•If you have a lot of items to sell, and expect to sell year-round, an eBay Store is probably a good way to go. The sales volume will justify the Store subscription fee, and the listing fees are less than without the Store.
•If you have means to drive traffic to your store, an eBay Store is almost certainly worth a look because the final value fees from the sales due to the referred traffic will be mostly refunded, greatly reducing the cost of selling the items in the Store.
Now, notice that I said “probably a good way to go” and “almost certainly worth a look” because nothing is a sure thing. Having an eBay Store or not is mainly a decision of how much and how often you’ll be selling. But even if you have enough goods to sell year round, this will not make you money unless you can sell the items profitably on eBay! I perhaps assumed that (a) you have something to sell and (b) you obtained the product at a good enough price that you can sell it for profit. What sells profitably at a convention show, a brick-and-mortar store, or a flea market may not sell profitably on eBay because there are other costs of doing business on eBay that are not present at convention shows, brick-and-mortar stores, or flea markets. Here are some of the costs:

•Your store subscription fee. At least $15.95/month.
•Listing fees and final value fees. These can consume 15% or more of the selling price. For big-ticket items, the final-value fees can be substantial.
•PayPal fees. The financial transfer service owned by eBay charges fees for business accounts that consume another few percent of the total transaction.
•Shipping. This is either absorbed in the price or passed on to the buyer, but a buyer will factor this in as part of the purchase price.
•Packing materials. These can be free from the delivery services depending on how you ship the items, but they may not be, either.
So if you have enough to sell year round, and you can obtain the product(s) cheaply enough to sell the items at a decent net profit including all of the eBay-related fees, then starting up an eBay Store should be given some serious thought.

The next part will talk about aspects of setting up a business in general, and I’ll share what I did to put the framework in place for Back Mags Plus.

According to Stanley and Danko’s The Millionaire Next Door, self-employed individuals, which comprise 20% of the workforce, comprise two-thirds of the country’s millionaires. Getting a side business going during “spare time” is a great step toward a nice side income, less dependence on a daily commute, more time with one’s family, and a bright retirement.

If you can spot deals or if you like to bring goods to people who want them, then starting up a side business through eBay Stores may be a good match. I’ve started one called Back Mags Plus. It’s been pretty successful for the items I’ve put in so far. I had been finding back issues of magazines — “plus” other items! — for good prices at thrift stores, auctions, yard sales, and other places, and had been listing them on eBay, but the auction format by itself was hit or miss. Listing a bunch of magazines at a price lower than what a similar bunch of magazines just sold for didn’t always guarantee a sale in the seven days the auction was up.

So the magazines weren’t selling as fast as I was accumulating them. They were displacing other possessions in our modest home. They were also displacing our peace of mind. I had enough of them that I could justify the setup cost and open an eBay Store, and then it was just a matter of getting the products in there, which I’ve partially done.

I’ve found out first-hand some of the advantages of this selling method:

•Instant audience for your goods. With few exceptions, if you’re looking for something, you can find it on eBay. Those unusual items that people have hanging around and can’t get rid of at a yard sale will probably find an audience on eBay.
•Powerful free listing tools. Turbo Lister is quite good, and it’s being improved all the time. Turbo Lister takes a lot of the repetitiveness out of listing auctions and store items. And it’s free!
•A reasonable fee structure if you have enough to sell. It does cost money to run an eBay store but so does listing individual auctions. With enough items, the store format becomes cheaper than listing items individually.
•Instant cross-promotion when you do list auctions. There’s a link to all of your other items in your store when you list an item for auction.
So what I plan to do is to put together a bunch of posts on how to make money with your own eBay Store. I’ll share what I’ve learned along the way so that you can learn from my mistakes and learn from what has worked well for me so far. Some of the articles will focus on the specifics of the kinds of products that are in my store, but there will be enough general content that you can apply to whatever you want to sell. I have a few ideas on what I’ll talk about, but I know others will come up as this develops!

Here’s what has transpired in the series thus far:

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: What is it and do I need one?

Part 3: Starting and minding your business

Part 4: Obtaining product at the right price

Part 5: Setting up your store

Part 6: Streamlining your listing process

Of course, causing your website to appear at the top of the search engines is a lot easier said than done.

Quality, not quantity

If you simply acquire as many links as you can, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will help your site. Quality links are what will cause you to have high rankings. It is not an easy feat to be able to identify what makes one link more valuable than another. One way that will help is listening to the advice of online marketing experts.

The value of targeted anchor text

When you go after links on sites, targeted anchor text is essential. However, you shouldn’t use the same text everywhere. You should use a few different phrases and the correct name of your website.

Be mindful of inbound and outbound links

Search engines look at the site where your link appears and how much benefit your site will achieve. A website with a large number of inbound links conveys more credibility about your site. On the other side, if your site is connected to a site that has a lot of low-quality outbound links, your site will not be considered very valuable.

Focus on site relevance

It is important to concentrate on pursuing links in relevant places and to take note of how those places have been optimized. Links that are connected to relevant and optimized pages hold much more value.

Online marketing experts notice what is not obvious

Try to check sites in non-obvious ways. For example, in any given search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a website URL and it will tell you if the site has been indexed and when the search engine last scanned it (or crawled it). What does that mean?

If a website has not been crawled in a month to a month and a half, you shouldn’t put a link there. Additionally, some domains are more valuable than others. Links from “.edu” domains are more credible than links from “.com.” Links from “.info” are even less credible. You should consider all of these factors when trying to evaluate the worth of a site as you are building your links.

How important is social networking for link building?

Social networking for link building is very important. You need to try to get links into places where social networking occurs. As they stand alone, the links may not hold much value; however, search engines today are looking more and more at the “active web” in determining site credibility.

Even though it can take up a lot of time, getting involved in social media sites and forums and getting people who own blogs to post your articles with your linked anchor text included can have a lot of value. Remember, however, that you should only post relevant information.

Are the links that you are receiving clean?

When you get a link on a site, do you check the source code of the page? Is there any additional information in the “href” tag on the link? Is a redirect code being used by the site? If any of these things are present, don’t use the link. It is of no value to you.

It is not an easy thing to work with online experts when you have a very tight budget and are trying to increase your search engine rankings. Unlike what it was, the web is no longer a “do-it-yourself” place.

It is definitely not easy to judge good-quality link building with the web applications and social media networks that exist today. It is possible for you to succeed at this but it is highly recommended that you listen to what online experts are recommending as effective strategies. Quality link building takes a great deal of effort and time. Make sure that you use them wisely.

• Give Services or Products Away
• Make it Easy
• Offer Rewards
• Keep it Interesting
• Be Controversial
• Create Your Own Buzz

Give Services or Products Away

On this site I am giving you quite a few tips that can help you start your viral marketing campaign. People love FREE stuff. It is quite possibly the most powerful word that people respond to. The idea is that you attract people’s attention with free services or products then begin to sell them the entire package. Even in a worst-case scenario when you can’t convert a consumer into a sale, you are still providing the consumer with a service for free which will in turn give you positive feedback. Companies often have a hard time figuring out what services or products to give away. Think about all the questions you get in a day. Are their any similarities? Put together lists of frequently asked questions and actually provide good answers that they can take away and use.

Make it Easy

Make it easy for people to receive your free gifts. If they have to click 3 times and fill out a form most likely they will not go through all the trouble. Over 70 percent of Internet viewers search at work and many companies have firewalls that do not permit downloads from unknown sources. Some companies will attach a file to an email for people that inquire about their company. This can be a great tactic for implementing an effective viral marketing strategy if approached properly. Make your free gifts easily accessible and only allow minimal restrictions. Signing up for a free newsletter is a great way to get user email addresses and keep them updated on your business. Each newsletter you send out can include free helpful information and encourage them to pass along the information to their friends.

Offer Rewards

Once you make your free services easy to obtain, reward users for passing along the information. If you receive a new client from a referral, reward the referral so that they will continue to spread your message. Many companies offer a finder’s fee for new clients that come from referrers. This can generate incredible word of mouth. In this day and age every other person is interested in the Internet and wants to know how to gain exposure. If you can keep people happy they will definitely spread the word and help make your viral marketing campaign a success.

Keep it Interesting

Nobody wants useless crap, they want something they can use and that’s going to benefit them. If you spend your time giving away nonsense it will negatively affect your business. It will be more worthwhile to think about what people really want then to waste your time putting together material that is going to give you no return. If you’re having trouble figuring out what your customers need, visit online forums for ideas. See what people in your industry are talking about and what questions are being asked. Use these ideas to develop a viral marketing strategy that targets the interests or needs of your market.

Be Controversial

Controversy stems gossip. People love to gossip, so if you can find a way to harness some decent gossip, the marketing takes care of itself. You don’t need to be rude or try to personally hurt anyone but often when you present your opinion in a strong voice there’s a good chance that someone will disagree. Hollywood spends a lot of marketing dollars on who’s doing what. In turn they create a great deal of buzz. This is one of the most effective and simple viral marketing tools.

Create Your Own Buzz

Once you have established your free services and have worked to get the word out, it’s time to keep people involved. Create your own blog where you can talk about all the new and exciting things that are happening in your company. This is also a very good platform to exercise your controversial opinion. Blogging is a great way to keep interested viewers involved and keep them returning to your site. When users begin to return to your site, you build a community. Make sure you keep up with your community and comments. It is very important to make sure you have a voice when someone is responding to your blog. If they post a comment that has a few questions and you never check your blog or comment back, then you’re missing the whole point. Stay involved to maintain the momentum of your viral marketing campaign.

These are just a few helpful viral marketing tools that can easily help you when implementing an effective viral marketing strategy