When I began studying the experts in the Direct Marketing field, our eBay sales went up. A lot.

   Although you can devote thousands of hours to studying these techniques (and I have), there are a few fundamentals that you should know about that will help your sales.

   The best thing you will gain from this discussion is the ability to improve your sell-through rates and final selling prices. amounts. A sell-through rate is the percentage of items you list that actually sell. (Unfortunately, not every item listed on eBay sells. Far from it.) Once you learn the following extremely fundamental concepts, you'll immediately gain a competitive advantage over others who sell what you sell.

Astounding But True...

   PowerSellers usually ignore the money-making tactics of direct marketing. Even large companies often fail to follow these simple strategies when they sell their wares.

Don't Sell to Everybody

   Your eBay auction does not work like a billboard.

   A billboard is a sign that thousands of people pass by. The billboard has about 2 seconds to grab someone's attention. The odds of that happening are slim just because of the wide audience range that passes the billboard every day.

   Suppose a new video rental store used a billboard to drum up sales. Perhaps 30% of people who drive by won't even look at the billboard. Of the 70% who are left, some have their own favorite video rental store already, some never rent movies, some never watch movies. So of everybody who drives by, perhaps fewer than 10% will read your billboard with any interest at all, and most of them will forget you the moment they pass.

   Direct marketing techniques teach that you should only sell to people who have an interest in your product. Why pay for a billboard when 90% or more of everyone who passes that billboard absolutely doesn't care about - or want - what you have to offer?

   Don't put up a billboard. Instead, find out where your customers go and advertise there. Perhaps many of your potential customers read a certain magazine, such as a movie fan magazine. You should advertise in that magazine. For a new video rental store, if you feel sneaky enough, you could put fliers with your coupons on the cars of customers who are looking in your competitor's video rental stores.
The idea is, don't advertise a specific product to everybody. Advertise a specific product to specific people. And yes, this has a major impact in the way you should approach eBay sales.

eBay Already Does the Work For You

   The previous section isn't designed to make you a Direct Marketer. Instead, it's to train you to go where the action is. Otherwise, you spend a lot of resources on people who will never have an interest in what you have to sell. McDonalds and Wal-Mart have the resources to advertise to the world and build their brand recognition. You don't have the funds they do. You must work smarter. You must describe (advertise) your products only to people who already have shown an interest in your products.

   The fantastic thing about eBay is that eBay brings customers to your door. Virtually.

   You can count on the following with an almost 100% certainty: if anybody looks at your auction page, they have an interest, perhaps only slight but they have one, in what you're selling. This is a marketing dream. Don't waste the opportunity.

   How does someone get to one of your auctions? If you answered "from an eBay search" then you understand the most important concept on eBay.

   Suppose you sell camera tripods. People who click to see your latest camera tripod auction are interested in buying a tripod almost every time! Half the battle - and it's the hard half - is already done for you. They searched for "camera tripod" or "tripod" or "photo tripod" or "photography tripod" and your auction somehow made its way into their search results.

   The only other way that someone could have found your auction page was by going straight to eBay's Cameras & Photo category (available from the dropdown list on eBay's home page or from any search page) and browsing until they saw your title in a list and clicked to see your auction.

   You can put a counter at the bottom of every auction page that tells you how many visitors have been to your auction. If an auction has gone for several days without any activity and your counter shows a very low number of visitors, you should beef up your auction title because it's not attracting enough interest. Probably you didn't use enough search terms in the title to be found in a normal search for that item.

   There is generally no other way for someone to stumble onto your auctions. Your fish is already hooked. Your fish wants to bite at something or they'd be doing something better with their time than searching for tripods.

Do You See the Power eBay Hands You?

   There is nothing else like it.

   Basically, everybody who looks at your auction has a desire for something like what you're selling.

   It doesn't mean they will buy your item. You've got to do your job at selling and show a good photo or two of the product.
Your item might not be exactly what the buyer wants. That's fine. Still, you have the best opportunity possible to sell to that person on eBay who looks at your auction. You can immediately change the way you write your auctions.

   Move away from the billboard approach. When you write your auction description, write it as though you're talking to your best friend who has shown an interesting in buying what you're selling. If you write it like that, you will target your buyer perfectly in almost every case!