Auction Autopilot Blog

When you first began your eBay business, I’m guessing you used the basic eBay listing form to sell your first item.   However, if you are like me, as sales increased, you soon found that you needed a more powerful auction management system.  At that point, you probably subscribed to Turbo Lister, which is fine if you are only handling small volumes of merchandise.   However, if your business grows to the point that you are shipping several items a day from sales made on multiple websites, you need to consider a full featured auction management system.

Auction management systems are not free.  However, if you are moving enough product,  they are relatively inexpensive.  The best auction management systems include the following core features.

• Source and manage your inventory
• Accept and record payments
• Make and monitor shipments
• List items for sale on multiple sales platforms

The most well known auction management systems are listed below.  All these servives are web-based, so you can use them anywhere you can access the internet.

Auctiva is designed to help sellers list and manage sales on eBay, Amazon and Yahoo!  It is best suited for small businesses.

ChannelAdvisor provides an integrated system for managing nearly every aspect of an online sales business.  You can manage relationships with multiple product sources, sales platforms and marketing strategies.  This auction manager is very popular among Power Sellers.

Infopia provides an integrated auction management system for sellers who grow beyond eBay.  It also helps you sell on Amazon, Overstock, uBid, and more.

Vendio provides an excellent platform for launching your own web store.  It allows you to market your products on Google, eBay and several other platforms.  This auction manager is very well suited for small businesses.

Zoovy provides an integrated, complete business administration platform.  If you are a heavy hitter (or aspire to be one ;), Zoovy can help you manage your sales across several platforms, including Amazon, eBay and Yahoo!

eBay also offers its own auction managers.  The one draw back of eBay’s tools is that they do not help you grow beyond eBay.  As you might imagine, they do not provide an integrated solution, which can help you sell across other websites.

Moving your auction selling business to a hosted sales management platform is a big decision.  For many of eBay’s largest sellers, it has been well worth the effort.  If your auction sales are growing to the point that your time constraints and overhead are becoming a real burden, it may be time to make the move.

Exclusive Special Offer! Learn the secret power seller techniques that get bids like crazy and explode your profits, in this FREE eBay Insider Report.

Whether you are an eBay newbie or a seasoned Power Seller, these two simple tips can keep you ahead of 90% of your online auction competition.  If you aren’t doing these two things, you can bet you aren’t making the kind money on eBay that you can.

Use Your Keywords in Your Auction Titles

This may seem obvious, but I am amazed when I see people who don’t do it.  More than 70% of eBay buyers use the eBay search feature to find the items they are looking for.  The basic search feature on eBay’s home page or listing page searchese all the auction titles for the keywords you enter.  If you haven’t used keywords that would normally be used by a buyer in your title, you could miss more than 70% of the potential buyers who are looking for your product.

If you aren’t sure what keywords to use, just do a search for items similar to yours.  Look at the keywords being used by your “competition” and decide which ones grab your attention.

You can also use a really cool tool called eBay Keywords.  eBay Keywords is a list of popular terms that people search for on eBay.  Each eBay Keyword has its own page, which allows you to view all the items eBay has for that keyword.  You can use this nifty little eBay tool to fine tune your keyword selection and ensure you are using keywords that get a lot of searches.

Spy On Other Auctions To Find The Gems

Part of your due diligence should be to keep an eye on your potential competition.  You should do periodic searches to see what other people are selling.  Click on some of the auctions and scroll down to the bottom.  Most auctions will show you hwo many people have seen the auction.  This can give you are very good indication of the popularity of the item and also how effective the title keywords are.

When you find auctions that have a significant number of views and bids, you should check out the seller’s other auctions to see what kind of products they are selling.  You can investigate their success rate and look for techniques they are using that can help you get more auction views and sell more product.  You may also discover new products you can sell, to further fatten your bottom line.

Have you ever wondered if your eBay selling expenses are too high?  Are there ways to reduce them?  Are you doing the things you need to ensure you are not paying more than you should, for your online auctions?

In the current economic slow (melt) down (the housing market falling through the floor, banks failing, companies closings, unemployment rates rising, etc.), it is more important than ever to get a handle on your expenses.   As a small business owner/entrepreneur, one of your jobs… in fact, one of the necessities of remaining in business… is keeping a close eye on your operating costs.

Now, more than ever, it is imperative that you minimize seller fees.  Keeping seller fees as low as possible may even be the difference between a profitable month and a losing month.

In recent months, eBay has made some significant changes to their fee structure and selling policies.  This has left many sellers confused and a bit frustrated.  Following are a few ideas to ensure you are not spending more than you should on eBay fees.

Launch Auction Listings at Low Prices

If you start your auction off high, you will have to pay  higher fees.  With eBay sales dropping in most categories, there is a greater potential for unsold auction items, which would result in lost fees.  If it makes sense, you should start your auction listings at $0.99.  This will ensure that you are in the lowest insertion fee category and that you have fewer unsold items.  And, don’t forget to use the longest auction durations you can, in order to give your online auctions enough time to get as many eBay bids as possible.

If you find that your auction items are still not selling, even after lowering your opening bids, or you are even losing money on your auctions, you may need to take a serious look at your business model.  It may not be sustainable, under current market conditions.  You might need to look into other types of auction items you can sell.

Change Formats to Reduce Final Value Fees

eBay has been steadily trying to make fixed-price listings more attractive to its sellers, in an attempt to compete with large online retailers, like Amazon’s Marketplace.  Fixed price listings have the following advantages.

• Very low insertion fees
• Substantially longer listing durations without surcharges
• Lower final value fees for computers and electronics

Avoid Undercharging for Shipping and Handling

The best way to make sure you are not undercharging for shipping is to buy a small shipping scale.  This will allow you to weigh your items and calculate the correct shipping costs, rather than estimate them.  You should also take into account your handling costs, which may include the cost of packing material, paper receipts, printer ink, boxes, etc.

Consider Other Payment Processing Systems

If you have a high volume, it may not be cost effective to use PayPal.  You may be better off getting your own merchant account.  PayPal works great for small sellers, to begin with.  However, their fees are high, when compared to cost of a merchant account, if your volume is high enough to justify the start up expense.

On the flip side, you should take into account that many eBay  shoppers prefer PayPal, for the convenience.  If you normally only sell small value items that are in a highly competitive market, you may not want to make the switch.  It could actually hurt you.

Track Your Fees

If you aren’t really sure where your fees are going now, you should track them on a spreadsheet or ledger, until you can get a handle on things.  In order to make the right decisions for the future, you need to know where you have been in the past and where you are right now.

If you don’t have Microsoft Excel, you can use the open source spreadsheet in OpenOffice, for free.  It works great.

A couple of tips - Obviously, you will want to track what you are paying.  However, if you use other options (fixed price rather than auction format, merchant account rather than PayPal, etc.), you should also track what you would have paid.  You should keep an eye on eBay’s fee schedule and PayPal’s table of fees.

After you have tracked your fees for a few weeks, it will become obvious where you are losing money and how you can save money.  Ensuring that you are keeping expenses to a minimum will not only help you make more money on eBay, but it will help you sleep better at night, knowing that you are not wasting money on unnecessary expenses.

Here is a cool little tool that can help you pick up some great deals on eBay, by finding auctions with virtually no competition.  It is called Typo Buddy.

Typo Buddy is a search tool that allows you to find misspelled listings on both eBay and Craigslist.  Auctions with misspelled words often get few, if any, bids.  With little or no competition from other bidders, you can easily to snag some incredible deals and pay only a fraction of the usual cost.

Here’s how it works.  Say you want to buy a Louis Vuitton wallet.  When you search for this item on eBay, you will normally have to compete with many other bidders.  However, using Typo Buddy you can find listings that has accidentally been misspelled.  Nobody else will see these listings and you will be the only bidder.  Pretty cool, huh?

Typo Buddy will look for several different kinds of misspellings or typos, including:

• Letters transposed
• Missing letters
• Letters typed twice
• Extra letters inserted by a neighboring key
• Phonetic misspellings
• Letters replaced by a neighboring key

So, how do you use it?  Typo Buddy has a simple form that allows you to type in whatever you want to find, with the correct spelling.  It then searches for typos and misspellings of the phrase you typed in.

Want to include correctly spelled auctions?  No problem.  In addition to the misspelled listings, Typo Buddy can also return listings for the correct spellings, so you can see all the auctions.

You can even save your searches and rerun them later.  This feature requires cookies.  So, good luck finding some awesome deals.

Skip McGrath made a post on his blog recently, recommending a couple of free eBay and PayPal fee calculators.  I thought I would pass them along to you and make one more recommendation.

Sometimes figuring out how much your eBay and PayPal auction fees will cost can be a little confusing.  Knowing the fees in advance is important, since it can help you decide the best (i.e. most profitable) price and format to list an item on eBay.

There are a number of free online auction fee calculators available, but many are out of date and don’t give you all the information you need.  One of the best ones available is the New Life Auctions free eBay and PayPal fee calculator.  The New Life Auctions tool will not only calculate your fees, but it will also show you how much profit you can expect to make on an item.  This handy fee calculator Includes the following features.

• Listing Format
• Auction Type
• Listing Upgrades
• eBay Picture Services
• PayPal
• Power Seller Discount

Michael Repzynski’s free eBay / PayPal Fee Calculator is another good tool.    It is a little faster than the New Life Auctions tool, but not quite as robust in its features.  However, it is still an excellent choice, if you are looking for something simple.

Doug Boudreau’s free eBay Fee Calculator is another good option.  There is also a free PayPal Fee Calculator you can use to calculate your PayPal fees.  When you check out Doug’s site, you will see that he also offers similar tools for Half.com and Amazon.com.

All of these tools have been updated to include eBay’s 2008 fee schedule.  No matter which tool you decide is best for your own needs, they can all help you get more control over your eBay and PayPal fees, ensuring you maximize your profitability.

eBay Desktop is a free software application from eBay that you can install on your own computer. It allows you to do virtually everything you can do on the eBay website and a lot more. eBay Desktop is a great alternative to the eBay website. The application uses Adobe AIR, so it will run on both Windows (XP and Vista) and Mac OS X.

Some of the best features of this snazzy desktop application include, title and description search, browsing, watching and bidding. The software even includes search feeds, item reminders and persistent filters. It automatically syncs with the eBay website in real time, so there is no need to refresh to get updated information. Your recent item cache (listings) and outbid alerts, along with other critical data, are all updated automatically.

eBay Desktop was launched in beta about a year ago. Since that time, the application has been downloaded more than 1,000,000 times and has attracted a host of raving fans.  In the following video, Alan Lewis, eBay Desktop’s project manager, explains some of the benefits of the software.

eBay Desktop does a lot more than simply recreate eBay on your computer. It makes the whole eBay experience much more interactive, efficient and engaging. The following video will give a better idea of the power of eBay Desktop.  The latest version of the software (1.0.6, as of this writing), includes a new interface, so there isn’t a direct correlation between the video and the software you install.  However, the video will give you a good idea of the power of the application and spark some ideas about how it can help you make more money on eBay.

For help with the software, you can go to the eBay Desktop Discussion Board, which is essentially a forum that allows you to learn about the application from other eBay community members. You can search the forum for answers to your questions, which may already have been posted.  Or, you can post a question.  The forum is very active, so you should be able to get quick feedback from other eBay buyers and sellers.

eBay used Adobe’s AIR technology to allow eBay Desktop to do all the cool things it does, in real time. You will need to have AIR installed on your computer, before you can run eBay Desktop. However, the eBay Desktop installer will download both the AIR environment and the application itself, making the setup a piece of cake. Check out eBay Desktop and see what it can do for you.

Today, I would like to tell you about one of the best sources I have found for finding top quality, low priced products you can sell on your eBay auctions for tremendous profits.  Finding eBay hot items at low prices is one of the keys to creating a lucrative business on eBay.  You have several choices, when it comes to acquiring eBay products at rock bottom prices.

• Drop Shippers
• Wholesalers
• Liquidators

In order to acquire your eBay products with the least expense, you must cut out all the middlemen and work directly with the manufacturer or the manufacture’s distributor.  You will need to contact several wholesale sources, in order to identify the company that can supply you with your eBay hot items at the lowest prices.

Contacting product wholesalers will take some legwork.  However, finding the right source for a hot selling product is well worth the effort.  Once you’ve discovered a reliable source, it’s like owning a gold mine.  You can take as much gold out of the mine as you want, whenever you want.

I have scoured the Internet to identify the most reputable sources for wholesale products.  This is important because most so-called wholesale product sources are really middlemen disguised as wholesalers.  They buy from the real wholesalers, mark the products up and resell them to unsuspecting buyers.  Don’t cheat yourself out of more profit by dealing with these “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

It goes without saying that the cheaper you can buy your products, the more profit you can make.  The ideal situation is to acquire your products for 25¢ on the dollar and then mark them up 100%.  This is called keystoning.  If you follow this formula, you can still sell your products at a 50% discount below regular retail prices.  What kind of income do you think you could generate if you made a 100% profit every time you gave one of your customers a 50% discount?  Obviously, the sky is the limit!

If this seems like an unlikely possibility, think again.  Savvy Ebay Power Sellers do this all the time, and you can too… if you know where to find the best deals.  One of the best sources of wholesalers, liquidators and drop shippers on the Internet is a service called Worldwide Brands.  The wholesalers in this directory represent more than 500,000 products and 1,000 brand names, so you will have plenty of great product choices, for your eBay auctions.  I highly recommend them!

New eBay sellers often neglect to put enough effort into creating exciting and informative eBay listings.  They think all they need to do is throw up any old auction and visitors will not only come, but bid.  This is just not the case.  The look and feel of your eBay auctions has nearly as much to do with the amount of bids you get, as the item itself.

Even though most eBay sellers begin as eBay buyers, many forget what it is that attracts them to one auction more than another.  Just think about the last item you bought something on eBay.  Were you able to choose between several of the same item?  If so, think about what it was that persuaded you to bid on a particular auction.  Here are some of the most important elements that influence most eBay bidders.

• Title - This should be a mini description of the item up for auction.  It should include as much pertinent information as possible.
• Description - Make sure you provide as much detail as you can.  The more information you can provide, the better your auction will perform… brand name, model, size, color, condition, year, etc.  Make sure your visitors have all the information they need to make an immediate decision.
• Photos - The more photos you can provide the better your auction will perform.  eBay bidders want details and nothing a story better than pictures.  Even a darker, off center, somewhat out of focus photo is better than no photo at all.
• Guarantee - Can you provide some sort of guarantee to the winning bidder?  If so, do it.  You will definitely get more people bidding, which will likely result in a significantly higher price.  And, as long as you have been completely truthful in your description, the likelihood that someone will return the item is very low.
• HTML - This will allow you to perform basic text formatting, like bolding titles, separating paragraphs and inserting blank lines.  Even if you only use a little bit of HTML, it can make a big difference in the look and feel of your auctions.  There are a number of basic HTML tutorials online, which you can find by doing a search.

The bottom line is that the appearance of your eBay auctions and the text you include can have a big impact on the amount of money you will make.  Remember, your eBay auctions will often be competing against several other online auctions, selling nearly the exact same item.  Spending a little extra time to make sure you include all of the elements above, will pay big dividends.

Eventually you will find yourself with a problem that will need an answer or some expert guidance about buying and selling on eBay.  Before you contact eBay directly, you may want to consider checking out the eBay Answer Center first.

The eBay Answer Center is a member-to-member forum, where eBay members can ask questions, give answers, and share information about eBay.  The Center is arranged by topic and designed for fast questions and answers, rather than discussions.  Some of the topics include Bidding, Checkout, eBay Stores, Feedback, My eBay, PayPal, Technical issues, Turbo Lister and many more.

Any registered eBay user can use the eBay Answer Center, so this is a great place to tap into the experience of some of the top eBay Power Sellers.  Each question can be answered several times, by multiple users, so you can get a lot of different perspectives.  eBay staff members also monitor and answer questions, so you know you are getting the correct information.

One of the great features of the eBay Answer Center is that you can add questions to a “watch list.”  This will allow you to see the answers to your questions on a continuous basis.  The eBay Answer Center is also searchable, so you may be able to find the answer to your question, even before asking it.

So, next time you have a question about how to sell on eBay, or any other question that requires an immediate answer, check out the eBay Answer Center.   It is a great source of free eBay secrets you won’t find on eBay’s help section or by contacting eBay directly.

Today, I am going to tell you about a technique you can use to accomplish three objectives, which are critical to “squeezing” the most money possible out of your online auctions.  I am going to show you a simple strategy you can use to:

1. Figure out the highest price your item is likely to get
2. Double the number of hits your auction receives
3. Instantly get “warm” buyers to view your auctions

Let me give you an example of how I use what I call the “Instant Page Views” strategy to accomplish these objectives.  Once you see how I do it, you will easily be able to incorporate this simple strategy into your own online auctions and make more money on eBay.

Recently, I ran an auction for a “Deni Scoop-Factory Soft Serve Automatic Ice Cream Maker + FREE Extra Speedee-Freeze Canister.”

This was a great little homemade ice cream maker.  You can check out the online auction by clicking on the link below or copying it into  your browser.

http://www.auctionautopilot.com/ebay-auctions/0303-deni-scoop.htm

I “relisted” this item because I put it up for auction once before, without selling it.  The first time I ran the online auction, I started it out with an opening bid of $0.99.  I like to start my auctions with a low opening bid to get the maximum number of people looking at them, as soon as the listings go live.  This particular online auction got a lot of attention.  By the time it was over, my counter indicated I had received 143 hits… pretty good visibility!

Before I listed the item the first time, I did some research to find out what a soft serve ice cream maker might go for.  This helped me decide to place a reserve price of $49.99 on the auction.  Whether you use a reserve, or not, you should always use a research tool to help you determine how to price your items.  HammerTap is one of the best tools available for market research.

The online auction ended with a high bid of $42.00, so my reserve price wasn’t met and I did not sell the item.  This didn’t make me particularly unhappy, since one of my goals is always to get as many hits as possible, even if I don’t sell an item the first time around.  The more hits I get, the more people are likely to see my “About Me” page, which will lead them to my website.  I’ll talk more about making money from a website in a future post.

PREVIEW:  You don’t even need to have your own website to make a ton of money with this strategy…. more later.

Since the auction didn’t end in a sale, I have relisted the item.  Now, here’s the tricky part.  Remember, I mentioned the last time I listed this item, it received 143 hits.  Well, of all the people that looked at the auction, 4 people bid on it a total of 23 times… must have been a mini bidding war going on!  Do you think any of these people might want a second chance at this item?  Of course they would.  So, being the conscientious eBayer that I am, I decided to tell each of the previous four bidders the item was available again.  Here’s the exact message I sent them:

————————– Message Start ————————

Hi,

A couple of weeks ago, you placed a bid on one of the items I was selling on Ebay.  The title was “DENI SCOOP FACTORY SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM MAKER.”  The item never sold because the reserve price was not met.  I decided to relist the item, without a reserve this time.  I thought you might be interested in bidding again, since the opening bid is more than $50.00 less than the retail price. You can check it out, along with my other auctions by clicking on the following link, or copying the link and pasting it into your browser.

http://www.auctionautopilot.com/ebay-auctions/0303-deni-scoop.htm

Please let me know if you have any questions.  Good luck bidding.

All the best,

Scott Memmott

http://www.AuctionAutopilot.com

————————– Message End ————————–

Can you see the method to my madness?  First, by listing the auction with a reserve, I ensured that the item would not sell for less than I initially thought was a fair price.  Second, since my “fair price” was higher than the market would bear, I relisted the item, with an opening bid ($39.00) close to the high bid of the previous auction ($42.00).  Third, I contacted the previous bidders to let them know the item was up for auction again, ensuring “warm” buyers would help kick off the auction with a bang.  The more interest you can generate for your online auctions right off the bat, the more success you will have.

To summarize the “Instant Page Views” strategy:

Step 1 - Do your research using a tool like HammerTap.

Step 2 - Use a low opening bid with a reserve price you deem appropriate, based on your research.

Step 3 - If your item doesn’t sell, relist it.

Step 4 - Contact everyone that placed a bid on the previous online auction for the item.

Step 4 is really the heart of the strategy.  If you do this one extra step, you will place yourself ahead of 99% of all the other eBay sellers.  It only takes a couple of minutes to send a quick “courtesy email” to your previous bidders, but it can pay big dividends.  You will instantly have “warm” buyers looking at your online auctions and they will already be primed to pay a high price.  Give it a try for yourself.