Auction Autopilot Blog

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!

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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.

How would you like to know, without any doubt, what sells on eBay?  What if eBay told you what they think will be the hottest sellers, in the coming season?  What if you could get a list of the items eBay was planning to feature on their front page?  Do you think you could make money on eBay, if you knew the eBay hot items, in advance?

Well, it isn’t really a question of ”if you could” make money, but rather a question of how much money you could make.  Once you know what sells on eBay, all you have to do is line up a reliable wholesale product source for the items, start selling them… and watch the balance of your PayPal account skyrocket.

Well, I’m going to let you in on a little known, but extremely valuable, eBay insider secret.  eBay actually maintains a page that tracks the market trends.  It is called “What’s Hot.”  The page lists the products eBay believes will be the hottest selling items on eBay, in numerous categories.  The list is based on eBay’s own market research, so you know it is going to be highly accurate.

Why, you might ask, would eBay publish such valuable information?  Well, the answer is really very simple.  The more eBay can help you sell, the more money eBay makes.  You see, eBay actually has a financial incentive to help you be successful.  This creates a true win-win arrangement.

Since eBay expects the eBay hot items to sell well, they feature them on the front page.  If you have items for sale in these categories, your auctions may also get featured on the front page.  If that happens, can you imagine the kind of traffic your auction could get?  Can you imagine the bidding frenzy this could create?

Let me put it in perspective for you.  According to TrafficEstimate.com, eBay receives somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000,000+ visitors PER DAY!  Okay, so what if 1/2 of 1% of those visitors saw your auction on the front page?  That would be 100,000 visitors PER DAY!  What if 1/2 of 1% of those visitors decided to bid on your auction?  That would be 500 bidders PER DAY!  Pretty crazy, huh?  Now, can you see why it might be important know what eBay believes are the eBay hot items?

The eBay hot items list also makes it easy to decide how to price your auctions.  All you have to do is click on the links and you will taken directly to the auctions in that category.  You can simply do a little spying (check out other seller’s auctions) and get all the information you need.

So, check out the eBay Hot Items list, find the top selling items on eBay… and cash in big time!

Deciding what to sell on eBay is one of the most important decisions you will make. With more than 20,000 categories and sub-categories, your choices are virtually limitless.

Most eBay sellers caught “the eBay bug” the same way. First, they began selling a few things around the house to generate some extra income. Then, when they found out how easy it was to convert “dust collectors” into cash (in only a few days), they started selling everything that wasn’t nailed down.

This works great for a while. Selling unwanted items out of your garage, or bargains that you discover at yard sales is good practice and will help you learn the basics of the online auction business. However, you will never make any serious money by selling these types of “one off” items.

The key to making big money on eBay is to sell “cookie cutter” items that can be sold over and over again. Your goal should be to find products that will sell quickly and for a healthy profit. You also want to identify products that can be sold in quantity.

Once you discover the top selling items on eBay that attract bids like bears to honey, all you have to do is relist the items each time you sell one. I like to call these “cookie cutter” products. You only have to do the work of setting up the online auction once. After that, you just click one button to relist the item and keep selling it over and over again the same way. Walmart, Home Depot, McDonald’s, Macy’s and eBay Power Sellers all use this formula.

Consumable products can be the most lucrative moneymakers of all. After the first sale, the item will be used up and your customer will need to reorder. Over time, you can build a loyal customer base that will buy from you over and over, generating a lifetime income stream. My upcoming eBook will reveal a simple automated strategy to create a huge customer list that can make you mountains of money, as often as you want.

Finding top selling items on eBay is like going fishing. If you want to catch a boatload of fish, you first need to find out where the fish are lurking and what they are biting. If you fish in a lake with no fish, or if you use unappetizing bait, you’ll never catch any fish. The trick to catching as many fish as you want is to cast the right bait into a lake full of hungry fish.

By the same token, you will never figure out how to make money on eBay if you are trying to sell an item that is in low demand to a very small group of people. If you want to make a truckload of money on eBay, the trick is to identify a product that is in high demand and put it up for auction in the right category.

Trying to find the right product could take forever, if your method was to test several different products until you found the right one. Fortunately, there is a much easier and faster way.

The best way to figure out what sells on eBay is to use a powerful software program called HammerTap.

HammerTap makes doing product research a breeze. Without this incredible tool, it would take you hours, days, weeks and months testing different products before you would be able to figure out what’s hot and what’s not. Using HammerTap, you will be able to zero in on the hottest products in mere minutes. This mega-powerful automation tool takes all the guess work out of selecting the best products (high demand and large profit margin) to sell on eBay. Just think what an advantage you will have over the majority of eBay sellers who are “flying by the seat of their pants.”

Using HammerTap is a cinch. Just type a product name into the HammerTap search box, click the “go button,” and the program will “crawl” through eBay and return a list of all the auctions matching your search term. You can even specify whether you want HammerTap to search through current online auctions, or completed auctions.

As HammerTap sifts through the millions of listings on eBay to find the ones that fit your specifications, it will display all of the matching results in an easy to read spreadsheet format. At a glance, you will know the total sales, highest price, average selling price, average number of bids, most successful categories, most successful sellers and more. HammerTap will even allow you to sort this information pretty much any way you want.

HammerTap will show you everything you need to know to decide whether the product you are considering is a winner or a dud. Just think of the time you will save… and the money you will make by quickly discovering “where the gold is hidden.” No more wasting time with products that don’t get any bids and have low profit margins.

But, that’s not all. Once you find the top selling items on eBay, you may want to check out other products that are selling in the same category, to see what kind of competition you may encounter. No problem. HammerTap can do that too.

Here’s another great reason to use HammerTap. Let’s say you want to find the most successful sellers for your product, figure out what they are doing, and then copy their techniques. Of course you wouldn’t want to plagiarize their listings. However, you can certainly use the same techniques they are using to make money on eBay. With HammerTap, you can immediately tell which sellers know what they are doing and which sellers are floundering. All you have to do is do what the savvy sellers are doing. Why reinvent the wheel? Pretty simple, really.

Can you imagine the amount of time and money this tool will save you? If you are not using HammerTap, you are either wasting time searching for the “ultimate product,” or you are losing money by selling items that do not provide the highest return possible. Take HammerTap for a free 10 day “test drive” and find out what it can do for you today.