How To Use eBay As A Tool For Marketing Research To Sell Something On eBay

Virtual assistants at OBVA have been posting blogs related to market research for online business. Our previous post was about How to use Amazon as a tool for marketing research. If you are an eBay store owner, don’t worry.  eBay Assistants at would like to share about how to use eBay as a tool for marketing research.

Though the holiday season is over, each and every eBay store owner will be doing their best to stand top in the eBay business. How you as an eBay store owner, going to rank high in the competition? It’s simple. When you come to know what your target customers are looking for, you can easily sell those items and boost up your sales by knowing eBay statistics. But, how are you going to dig out to find out the best selling products, most watched items and so how to sell something on eBay?

eBay has its own best selling list

Like Amazon, eBay also has its own list, where you can find the popular searching items, best selling items and the stores based on each and every category. Here is the link to check. When you click on the category related to your business you can find a list of sub-categories. For e.g: I am clicking here on health and beauty which will act like eBay search tool.

It takes  to a sub-category list of makeup. If you are a beauty store owner and want to find the hot selling face makeup products, you can click on face under the sub category of makeup. There you can find the complete details of hot selling popular products, the most watched items, and bestsellers of these items and also the keyword people are searching for makeup.
For eg: In the below picture, you can search by the keyword makeup or brand names. You can also see the competitors for this keyword and best selling products of this category.

Check out Ebay’s hottest selling products

For every year, eBay itself releases the list of  Hottest selling products of 2011 Holiday season. We would also recommend you to do a comparative research by checking top 10 selling items in eBay. Read this blog on 5 ways to find items to sell on eBay which will give you good tips.

Thus, by completely digging out the hot selling items with various researches you can find out the niche hot selling products so that you can get huge profit out of it . Though it seems to be simple and easy, it consumes lot of your time to find out the niche products. So, if you find difficulty in doing the research delegate it to the professionals.

How to enhance your research more?

After finding out the product, you need to find out the sale through prices, best item titles, item categories etc.. You can use Terapeak for this. If you are new to Terapeak research, our post will help you know how effectively you can use Terepeak to increase your sales.   Your next job is to write simple and attracting listing.  Our post on “How top sellers write Listing Descriptions that Sell “can help you write an effective listing description for your product. And also you can advertise on eBay which can attract more customers and increase your traffic to your webstore. You can also use Social media for promoting your store. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin can be effectively used.

To get huge profit all over would certainly consume lot of time and energy. If you are new to eBay, you can count your money by smarty delegating your work to eBay professionals.  If you are an experienced seller, no worry. You too delegate your tasks to us and spend time on more development of your eBay business.  We do complete store management services for eBay/Amazon clients. Contact us today let us take care of your store!!. You can follow us on Twitter and like our Fan page. You can grab our RSS feed for our recent posts on eBay business.

5 Reasons Why Market Research Is Very Important To Sell Something On eBay And Amazon By OBVA Virtual Assistants

Online Business Virtual Assistants suggest that Internet Market Research is a must for all sellers, who aspire to become a topseller in Amazon or eBay business.If you want to become a top seller, and get more eBay starts and sell stuff on Amazon it is important that you need to conduct a market research for your business. Virtual Assistants at OBVA share the 5 reasons why market research is very important to sell something in eBay and Amazon.

Reason 1 – You don’t want to depend on any guessing when you invest lot of time and money:

When you have products to sell on Amazon and eBay the first five things you need to know before selling is:

• Who are your target customers?
• What are your niche keywords to start your business?
• What type of competition your products have in the online market?
• Who are your competitors?
• What is your target market?

This is a very important yet very time consuming process. This needs a complete marketing research analysis where you will need to filter out the keywords to get a final niche keyword which is the basement for your eBay/ Amazon business.

Reason 2 – You should know your product well:

When you come to know the demand for your products and sell stuff on Amazon and eBay you can easily increase the profit for that particular product. So, a comprehensive Internet Market Research will help you get the data you need and much demand it has in the target market, how to increase its price, where it has the demand etc. This would help you increase your selling by offering discounts or freebies and also have auctions for income.

Reason 3 – You cannot guess what price you will sell things for:

Fixing price for each and every product matters a lot to increase your sales and making huge profit as well and get more traffic to your webstore.  First thing you need to know is what price your competitors sell the product at.  So, you need to conduct a competitor research to fix the rates of your items. You need to check the overall sale though price in the whole online market to fix the profitable price. If you fail here then you may not see more profit in your business. Also, only experts can do completed perfect research to get a detailed yet accurate data. Research tools like Tarapeak, Bay Research Labs BayEstimator can help you to do this effectively. You can also Write a Winning eBay Ad to attract new customers to you.

Reason 4 – To sell cheap, you need to find good suppliers:

The first key factor in gaining profit in the market is finding the best supplier. It is very important that the voice of your store is the quality of your products. This can lead to a good  customer feedback. This can achieved only be achieved if you find a right supplier for your business. It is wise to deal with manufacturer’s authorized wholesaler so that we can be 100% certain over product’s quality. Also this would help increase our selling by reducing the product cost.  Here is a post on how to find products to sell on eBay and Amazon that might help you.

Reason 5 – You cannot ignore knowing your competitors:

In any business even it is online or offline, how can you attract more customers to your store? The answer is simple. When the quality of your product or service is better and the price you offer is less than your competitors then obviously you can get more customers. So it is important to know the competitors for each and every product so that you can out-sell your competitors. For this you need to a competitor research to find out the competitors of each and every product.

These reasons would insist the importance of market research. If you do not have time to do market research for your eBay/Amazon business, please contact us. We never work for your competitors! You can follow us on Twitter, Fanpage and G+. Grab our RSS feed for more updates.

How Professional Virtual Assistants Can Work For Your Amazon Business And eBay Business?

Amazon and eBay are the powerful online platforms for many Entrepreneurs to do business. They face many challenges in running their business. Many face the difficulty of time management as they are involved in multiple tasks.

Growing as a successful seller involves many tasks that cannot be done solely. Generally, many administrative tasks would consume the entrepreneur’s time in order to run a successful business. As an Entrepreneur, you have to manage the important tasks such as tax preparation, maintaining reports, responding customer queries, marketing, correspondence etc. Unfortunately, you cannot spend your valuable time on these items that it would impact the growth of your business.

The best solution that most of the successful business owners follow nowadays is outsourcing their tasks to qualified Virtual Administrative Assistants. Many administrative and other tasks that are unpleasant and time consuming can easily be taken over by professional virtual assistants, who can help you through the Internet and phone.

Here are 5 useful tasks that you can outsource to online virtual assistants:

Task 1: Customer Service Within Turn Around Time:

One of the toughest and time consuming tasks that many sellers spend their maximum time on is tracking of junk emails that flood their inbox.  Though responding to emails is time consuming, it is one of the important factors for a successful business. So leave this important yet time consuming task to Customer Service Experts so that they can sort your customer’s issues by responding to them promptly. Receiving good Feedback and testimonials from your customers would increase your sales by improving your store reputation. Our post on 7 Customer mistakes which can lead to negative or neutral feedback will give you the tips to avoid unwanted feedbacks.

Task 2: Content Writing And Marketing:

Leave your worries of writing effective and meaningful contents and descriptions about your product or website to Content Writers. Assign such critical and important tasks to professional virtual assistants who are experts at writing and marketing online content. Experts will write the content for you, put it on your website/blog, distribute it on social media and also post your content as articles on various article marketing sites like ezine, articlealley, articledashboard, squidoo, hubpages etc.. Content marketing can help you get more traffic to your small business and online stores like Amazon and eBay business.

Task 3: Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

SEO is important if you want to tap the potential of search engines. It helps you get relevant traffic to your site. You have to do keyword research first to get a list of less competitive and more potential keywords which are relevant for your business. For this, you may need to buy a best keyword research tool for your business. You also need to learn about how to do a complete yet effective research for your business. If you have less knowledge in doing keyword research, better hire professionals as keywords are the base for any successful online business. Next step is writing content around these keywords and optimizing your site for better traffic. SEO is unavoidable yet important. Outsource it to Professional Virtual Assistants who can increase High search engine ranking optimization for your site, so that you are free to focus on your core priorities.

Task 4: Creating And Maintaining Blogs:

Most of the business owners are not aware that creating and maintaining blog is very important to have a solid online presence. Blogging is a time consuming task and also its unavoidable if you are an online entrepreneur.  Commenting on other popular blogs also increases traffic to your store and is  one of the best part of link building techniques. You can thus outsource it to Social Media Virtual Assistants and forget about it while they work on your blog. Social media Virtual Assistants at OBVA have posted blog posts on ‘Use of Facebook for eBay/Amazon’, ‘Use of LinkedIn for eBay/Amazon, and ‘Use of Twitter for eBay/Amazon.’ and’ 6 Facebook Applications Which Can Be Used Effectively For EBay and Amazon Businesses. Grab the RSS feed so that you don’t miss out any thing.

Task 5: Managing Better Feedback:

Feedback is the mirror of your online business. Online customers can’t see you. All they can see is your customer feedback rating score. You cannot afford to ignore the relevance of timely customer service and also proper followup emails with customers who left negative/neutral feedback for your store. You can train your virtual staffs on your style of business and then they can take care of the feedback for your stores. Our post on ebay feedback revision tips will give you the steps to solve your store feedback.

Let Virtual Office Assistants take up your burdens by providing efficient service to customers through quick & effective communication, conflict resolution, complaint handling which helps you in building trustworthy relationship.  You can use the services of Virtual Assistants in almost all the tasks involved in your business. It is just a matter of understanding your business closely and then making a list of task that you can outsource successfully. If you need help, contact us today for a free consultation.

We are a team of vibrant yet experienced, creative yet professional, energetic yet insightful and highly creative yet team of virtual assistants based in India. We excel at managing your online business virtually. We are great at what we do – help your small business and online store grow. Whether you need part time, full time or project based services, we will design the program that best fits your needs. Our Virtual Office Assistant services include complete online eBay business and Amazon business Store outsourcing and customized services to online entrepreneurs and small businesses. We maintain your online presence(website, blog), Social Presence (Social Media Marketing Services), Internet Marketing Research to create database/reports, MS Office projects and customized small business solutions for your unique business. Contact us today for free consultation.

Professional Virtual Assistant at OBVA Share Top 10 Secrets That You Should Know To Become A Powerseller

To become a successful eBay powerseller you need to know what successful eBay sellers do. Here are few strategies our eBay Professional Virtual Assistants follow to help our clients become powersellers and increase their ratings and sales:

Secret 1- Powersellers Focus On Providing Quality Customer Service

The most important strategy that almost all power sellers follow is maintaining and offering quality customer service to their customers.  They strongly follow the 4 Rules For Getting A Good Customer Feedback which is a direct result of nice service. If you are trying to become a powerseller, make sure that you avoid  7 customer service mistakes that can result in a negative feedback. The powerseller clearly knows not to mix business with ego, so whenever customer is not satisfied, they simply leave ego and refund the money or reduce shipping cost or sends an unexpected gift with the package and thus builds lifetime customer relationships.

Good customer service leads to word of mouth advertisement. People a­re­ 5 ti­me­s mo­re­ li­ke­ly­ to buy from a seller recommended by their friends, relatives, etc.  When you maintain good customer service, you are indirectly Encouraging Your Customers To Share Your eBay Business. 

Secret 2- They Offer Discounts And Different Payment Options

Powersellers show value for their customers by offering discount on shipping or the actual price of multiple items, or no shipping cost for some items and different payment options. By following safest payment options in eBay, you make it easy for winning bidders to pay more for your items. Also surprising discounts or small gifts would tell your customer “You are a valuable Customer” and let them keep on coming to your store and purchase your products.

Secret 3- Research Is Always Powerful

Powersellers take their business seriously, and constantly keep themselves up to date about trends and changes going in the current market. They do internet research or buy books about online auctions, participate in eBay Message Boards / Forums, and stay tuned to the eBay Announcements Board. They are very cautious to catch hold of their level in eBay. Internet is a powerful and free tool with lot of useful information available to those who know the right way of finding and arranging the required information. You can also take the help of internet research professionals who can get you the information you need to stay ahead of your competition and deliver what your customers are in need of. Also, you can use paid tools like Terapeak to keep you ahead.

Secret 4- Look For Improvements

Becoming a powerseller is challenging and staying there is even more of a challenge. There is a constant need of improvement in your business and product line. Therefore make sure that you use all the eBay marketing tools effectively for your store. Whether it’s listing auctions, packing and shipping, getting organized, or expanding their business powersellers always keep on improving to keep hold of the same level or to achieve the next level. This is the nature of all successful powersellers.

Secret 5- Be Organized

The powersellers always follow a systematic approach in delegating their work from po­st­ing­ list­ing­s t­o­ pa­ck­a­g­ing­ a­nd shipping­ it­em­s. If they don’t follow delegating they won’t make it to the level of power seller. For e.g. whenever customers place an order, they log in their information, and while shipping an auto responder mails must be sent. Also give more priority in registering their business, maintaining accurate reports, paying taxes, etc. Following this simple strategy would go a long way for your online store.

Secret 6- Bulk Listing Your Auctions

Another strategy that powersellers follow is bulk listing their auctions through au­cti­on­ m­an­agem­en­t sof­tware. Au­cti­on­ m­an­agem­en­t softwares makes your au­cti­on­ listings very easy and at the same time helps you save time. Another important feature is they m­ak­e i­t si­m­ple to copy li­sti­ngs, m­ak­e chan­ges an­d m­an­age everythi­n­g i­n­clu­di­n­g paym­en­ts an­d f­eedb­ack­. They are powerful ti­m­esavers as they allow you­ to li­st you­r au­cti­on­s at your lei­su­re time an­d schedu­le them­ to b­e posted on­ the day an­d at the ti­m­e of­ you­r choi­ce. Another way is to hire a professional virtual assistant in a budget who can do all the ground work for you while you focus on the core areas of your business.

Secret 7- Choosing Rig­ht Pho­to­s­

Besides the remarkable advantages, online stores have a significant minus. The buyer cannot touch the product physically. But, it can be overcome by providing appropriate and high quality pictures. It would an added advantage if you provide images of the products in different angles to help the customer in taking a well informed buying decision. Nice effective photos play a crucial role in converting visitors to customers.

Secret 8- Effective Title Description

Title description is your sales pitch online. A great description should entice your bidder to bid, at the same time should provide full and complete disclosure of your item’s condition. Your item title should say what you sell and advertise your product in the responsibly. It should be attractive, concise, clear and descriptive. Our post on How top sellers write Listing Descriptions that Sell? will guide you write an effective listing description for your products. Also make sure that your photo is taken in contrast backdrop and is well cropped in order to pay more attention to your customers’ which leads to effective selling.

Secret 9- Optimized Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization of your listings helps you get more traffic to your store. Make your listings available to search engines and eBay listing sites to achieve more profit. You can do it by using the right keywords in listings and description.

Secret 10- Build A Winning Team

Power sellers delegate their work because they know and realize that they cannot wear too many hats at once. They train a winning team and always delegate the routine tasks to them. The team does all the routine work while the entrepreneur focuses on important money-making tasks of product acquisition and marketing. They hire assistants to share their work that doesn’t require their attention. If you can’t do everything at the right time, let professionals help you.

Social Media Virtual Assitants at OBVA have been writing on how effectively Twitter and Facebook applications can be used. The blog posts are ” 5 Effective Ways To Promote Your eBay and Amazon Business Using Twitter”, and 6 Facebook Applications Which Can Be Used Effectively For EBay and Amazon Businesses . You can start using them to become a powerseller. We at OBVA manage stores for Amazon and eBay sellers and are highly experienced to almost do everything your online store needs apart from tasks that need physical presence. Since we work from India, our costs are lower and due to our experience the productivity per hour is higher. Ebay Virtual Assistants at OBVAnever work for your competitor sellers. We highly recommend that you try our services for a month and experience the difference in your sales and feedback. Contact us today to delegate your store services.

Top 7 eBay Selling Lessons Shared By eBay Virtual Assistants

Many eBay sellers dream to become successful in eBay market, but very few rise to the top and succeed. The key to become a successful eBay seller is to provide quality products and sell them for a good profit margin and still survive in the competition.

eBay Virtual assistants share 7 best lessons to drive more traffic to your business and make the most out of your online store:

Lesson #1 – Include sticky title

Customers search items in terms of brand, model no, item specification, color, size etc. Make sure that you use these identifiers in your headline. Know more on how to write effective title in eBay. The hot and sticky headline drives more attention in the eBay business platform.

Lesson #2 – Make your description short and to the point

Always keep your description simple and concise. Your description should expand on your title. Mention the brand name, specifications, model #, color, size in your description. Provide information in such a way that it identifies you amongst the other competitors. Be honest, clear and true in clearly stating out the actual product condition. Honesty coupled with a well defined return policy and a nice feedback score will get you the sale.

Lesson #3 – Price your product suitably

Research eBay regularly to keep track of hot selling products. Find the prices of similar products that are being sold, which in turn helps you in pricing your item competitively. You can use effective eBay marketing tools like terapeak to find the best selling items and its competitive prices. The best tactic is to cut off another 10% off of usual price and sell them in the eBay store. If you want to become successful eBay seller, without considering price, then list your item in “Buy it now” category and punch for “Free shipping”. This is the main strategy that powersellers follow.  If you are tired of finding out the competitive prices for the products you sell, delegate your work to professional virtual assistants who are qualified in Online Market Research to find out the best competitive price for your product.

Lesson #4 – Be focused on buyers needs

Repetitions of buyers are the bloodline of successful eBay sellers. When you ask any power seller, they will tell you that the majority of their sales are made to customers who have purchased from them before.

Make your shipping faster, inform them about after shipping, and thank your customers for buying your products. Make your customers happy by giving freebies, if they purchase for next time.

Lesson #5 – Strive for high star ratings

Feedback plays a vital role in rating your products. You can receive more positive ratings when your positive feedback score is high.  Also, at times you may receive emails from your customers appreciating your products and service. Utilize that opportunity and feel free to ask them rate your service through feedbacks.This in turn will increase your positive feedback score. You can hire professionals for managing customer support for your ebay store.  If you have100% rating but have sold your item to less than 100 people, then you can fairly estimate the rate of your success in eBay selling. But, if you sell to thousands of people and have a 98% rating, then you are certainly a successful seller.

Lesson #6 – Include multiple payment options

Multiple payment options are one of the best tactics for successful eBay selling. As eBay market is focused on a wide range, eBayers use many different methods to pay for goods. By accepting more payment methods you can get attention of higher amount of customers. Use more payment options in eBay to increase your sales and post it in your listing description.

Lesson #7 – No Shipping Extortion

Make sure your shipping rates are reasonable. Listings with free or discount shipping will encourage buyers to purchase additional items from you. Add the free shipping check box when you list your item for sale. When buyers search for items, they can sort results by price plus shipping. Items with free shipping or low shipping costs will rank higher.

Follow these simple yet useful lessons provided by our trained Online Business eBay Virtual Assistants to become a top seller in eBay market.  If you would like to have more information on successful eBay selling, you can subscribe to our Ebay blog.

We at OBVA takeover complete online eBay and Amazon business store routine operations in a budget so that the store owners can focus on core areas of their business, like business planning. We are really reliable, affordable, and efficient to make your product into profit. If you need assistance in managing your eBay store, contact us. We never work for your competitors.

7 Proven eBay Selling Tips To Help You Sell Successfully On eBay

eBay Business is competitive like never before. The number of eBay sellers is always on the rise. With this high level competition, success will be with those who are willing to learn and improve the way they do eBay business. Online Business Virtual Assistants share 7 proven tips to make eBay Selling easy and profitable for you.

Ensure that you are using these 7 simple yet effective eBay selling tips to sell things on eBay successfully-

eBay Selling Tip 1- Use Quality Pictures Of Your Product

Add professional and good quality images to make your buyer look into your listings, which in turn will increase traffic to your listing page. Include freebies to attract your customers and convert this traffic into sales. You can promote the freebies, like free shipping, free product, etc on the listing image. Here is a useful resource that will help you understand the basics of eBay listing pictures. If you do not have the time to follow all instructions, simply outsource to a professionals. But, you have to ensure that you give clear guidelines to the eBay virtual assistants on your preferences on eBay listing images and if you would like to add some promos like Free Shipping, or Freebies.

eBay Selling Tip 2- Study, Explore, and Succeed – Learning Should Never Stop

eBay is a big online platform where the products and their prices changes time to time. Keep yourself updated on varying prices and hot selling products. For this you need to do an effective market research to keep updated about the hot selling items. Also, try to make use of eBay marketing tools as it can reduce your time. Paying attention on the closing auctions regularly would help you estimate the value and price of your product better. You can use tools like Terapeak to take better informed decisions on prices and titles and also what to sell and when. We at OBVA Virtual Assistant Company run regular internet research reports for our clients to help them write better listing titles, select better product portfolio to sell and also to effectively price the products. You can also subscribe to our eBay blog for regular updates on eBay selling articles and eBay news.

eBay Selling Tip 3- Your Shipping Should Be Fast, Reliable And Cost Effective

Offer the best and safest shipping method to your customers. Always ensure the orders are shipped on time. One great way to ship within 24 hours or less is to use a virtual assistant to print shipping labels during night and then morning you can immediately ship these products to customers. We at OBVA use Shipworks to print bulk shipping labels and then the products are shipped in early morning. This way we get to work 24/7 to ensure that customer’s feedback say ‘Fast Shipping’ all the time!

Regarding shipping prices, give a detailed chart on the various shipping methods and their corresponding charges, so that the customers can opt for the one that suits them. Give prior information to the customers, if the shipment is delayed due to unavoidable circumstances. If you inform them on time, chances are they won’t leave an unfavorable feedback for your store.

eBay Selling Tip 4- Focus On Writing An Effective Listing

Your listing description should be simple and effective that it should encourage your customers to share your eBay business.  Make sure that you have covered the product features, price, size, shipping cost, etc. in your listing.  Use optimized keywords in your listing so that your product is easy to search. Read our post “5 Basic Steps To Make Your eBay Listings Attractive To Your Target Market“ so that you may not miss out important things in your product listing.  If you are unable to write effective listing, you can get the help from eBay business virtual assistants to make your listings SEO optimized.

eBay Selling Tip 5- Provide Additional Payment Options

Encourage your customers by offering Safest payment options in eBay. This will help you to become an international seller, as it would attract international buyers to bid on your product which in turn would increase your sales. If the option they wanted to pay is not included in your listing, then there is a chance of losing a potential customer. Here is the link for eBay payment policy to help you choose the best payment options which are convenient for you and the buyers, both. Of all the listed payment options, Paypal is most commonly used. Also, make sure that you charge reasonable shipping costs for international buyers. Otherwise if will greatly affect your seller performance rate.

eBay Business Selling Tip 6- Get Feedback

Feedback helps you estimate your progress and competitiveness in the eBay market. A flawless feedback ratings profile gives an instant confidence boost of the prospective bidders and buyers. More bids result in higher prices and higher sales too. A clean feedback profile differentiates you from other sellers. At times, even most successful stores end up getting neutral and negative feedbacks from customers. Therefore make sure you avoid 7 customer service mistakes that can get you negative/neutral feedback.You can follow up with those unhappy customers to immediately get the feedback revised. You get time upto 60 days to do so. If you don’t have the time to manage customer service turnaround time or follow up with feedbacks, simply hire a eBay business assistant who will quickly help and assist your customers.

eBay Selling Tip 7- Be Organized And Follow Business Rules

Make sure that you follow all the business rules such as registering your business in eBay, tracking and maintaining required reports, shipping on time, reasonably charging and paying the taxes without fail. Provide superior customer service to your valuable customers that will build good reputation in the eBay platform. The more you act professionally the more you can increase your sales.

You may subscribe to our eBay blog for regular updates on eBay business tips and news. These effective tips are regularly used by Virtual Trading Assistants at Online Business Virtual Company. Using these simple tips you can improve the profit and reputation of your eBay business. By gradually promoting your eBay business to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn you can become a powerseller in eBay. If you think it is too much work for you to do alone, let us help you manage your store. We can take care of your store and your clients. Contact us today to know more about our eBay Services. Please remember, we do not work for your competitors.

Professional Virtual Assistants Share The 5 Proven Tips To Make Your eBay Auctions More Effective

The number of eBay sellers have skyrocketed over the years. Setting up an eBay store is so easy that anyone can enter this market and start participating. The only problem is that this competition can make your success more challenging. You may use SEO to promote your eBay store at Google Search. However, a smart way to become a successful eBay seller is to make your eBay auction listings standout from the crowd. eBay Virtual Assistants at OBVA share the 5 useful proven tips on how to make your listings stand out from the crowd.

Tip #1 – Maximize Bids By Effective Timing

At times a seller may be following the maximum selling tips on eBay but still he gets less sales at his store. Why? Did you know that it is very important that you must choose the right day to end your auction to get maximum bids? Some time back, there was an eBay announcement that the site has the highest traffic on Sundays. Then everyone assumed highest traffic means highest sales. But is it really true? You may have hundreds of people visiting your listings pages, but what you really want is more sales rather than just visits. The best auction day pretty much depends on your product and your selling strategy. Here is an interesting post by Steve Nye, certified ebay consultant, on this topic. It all depends on your strategy. Do you want More Volume And Less Profit OR, Less Sales and More Profit. If your strategy is higher sales, then we can assume that you can get good number of bids on Sundays as the traffic is higher. We suggest, Internet Research continuously to keep track of changing patterns as ebay is a highly fluctuating market.

Tip #2 – Offer a Return Policy

To assure your buyers that your item is faultless, you need to have a flexible return policy. Buyers always look for trustworthy ebay sellers and a buyer supportive return policy will certainly give them the confidence to hit the buy button. Always make sure that your listings page tells in details about the true condition of your product. You can have a look at the ebay Business guide, ‘How to Create a Return Policy- eBay Business Help?’ .  Our post on “5 Best Tips To Write A Profitable Return Policy For Your Ebay Business” will help you write a nice return policy.

This help section from eBay confirms that sellers with a clear return policy sell more. If you do not have a return policy so far, write one today or take help of a professional to do it for you. For general information, rules, and legal guidance on offering a return policy, check this sample eBay return policy guidelines.

Tip #3 – Start bidding at Lower Cost

If you start your bidding at $0.99 (or lower), you will definitely attract more bidders than if you start with higher amount. You also get the advantage of paying only a $0.20 insertion fee. This trick works on most of the items, not all of them. However, you can expect to see some remarkable competition at the end of the auction. Be careful not to apply very low bidding price if your item is expensive. Use your discretion while setting the lowest possible bid price.

Tip #4 – Reasonable Shipping Charges

In many cases, the buyer gets upset after they have won the bid due to high shipping cost. This can result in deserted purchases, complaints and negative feedback for your eBay store.

Charge a reasonable handling fee, but keep it in proportion to the actual shipping charges. Offer different shipping options and discounts when similar items are purchased. Clear communication of reasonable shipping & handling expenses will lead to a good transaction that benefits both the buyer and the seller and good reputation for your store. To make this easy for you, here is the eBay Business-Shipping Tool Guide on ebay.com for your reference. If you have already got negative feedback due to shipping charge, then  you can follow 4 Rules That OBVA Virtual Assistants Follow To Manage Feedback.

Tip #5 – Have a Flawless Feedback Rating

When you receive positive feedback, it tells the entire eBay community that you are trustworthy. Try to avoid the 7 customer service mistakes that can result in a negative feedback. More positive feedback leads to more sales. If you are struggling in maintaining positive feedback, our post on eBay feedback revision tips would help you manage 100% positive feedback for your eBay store. Since eBay is a online sales platform where we cannot see each other as buyer and seller, feedback is really helpful in generating trust for your store.

Positive feedback is a wonderful tool available to all eBay users that lets buyers and sellers know that you deal with them in a sincere and honest way. This results in increased sales and smarter transactions when you buy and sell. Always try to get positive feedback for almost all your transactions. OBVA eBay Trading Virtual Assistants promptly follow up each neutral/negative feedback that our client’s store receives. We offer an immediate solution to the customers and then work with them to get the feedback removed. Prompt response is very helpful for feedback management.

These simple 5 steps can be really helpful when applied to your eBay auctions. eBay Professional Virtual Assistants at OBVA Company follow these steps repeatedly for higher sales and better feedback for our clients’ stores. You can also start using Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin for marketing your eBay Auctions. Social media Virtual Assistants at OBVA have posted blog posts on ‘Use of Facebook for eBay/Amazon’, ‘Use of LinkedIn for eBay/Amazon, and ‘Use of Twitter for eBay/Amazon. We never work for your competitors. If you need help in managing your eBay store effectively please contact us. We are really reliable, affordable, and efficient when it comes to managing eBay stores.