Part – II Few Non-eBay Ways To Promote Your eBay Store And Sell Something On EBay

Social media is a medium where millions of people from different lifestyles come together, discuss and share information about the recent happenings and issues. You can share information about anything on social media sites. Since people are largely influenced by Social Media conversations, why not make it’s  best use for your eBay business and to sell something on eBay? Using Social Media you can position yourself as the expert in your field. Social Media marketing being inexpensive, is available for any type of business, no matter how small the marketing budget is. OBVA eBay and Social media virtual assistants have been writing a series of blog posts on how Social Media can be used effectively to get more traffic to your eBay store. In our previous post we shared “Few Non-eBay ways such as Facebook, Twitter, Google plus which would help eBay sellers to promote their eBay business. In this post we would discuss how LinkedIn, Pinterest and email marketing can help your eBay business.

Linked In

Linkedin is an influential B – 2 – B networking site.  With more than 55 million members, its  certainly a place where any business owner wants to be. With LinkedIn marketing, one has to be very careful not to spam updates. It’s a very professional site and no spam will be entertained by its members. You may create a company profile on LinkedIn and use its company updates feature to roll out important announcements and news about your business. Linkedin would work best, if you are into selling of professional products, stationary, etc.  The following image shows how an eBay seller has promoted store’s listings.

To know about how you can use LinkedIn for your eBay business, you may read our post on “5 Ways eBay Sellers Can Use LinkedIn For Business and also 5 Linkedin Applications That Can Be Used For EBay And Amazon Business. If you type eBay sellers in the search section you can find many eBay sellers with whom you can connect, share and learn.

Pinterest

Pinterest is described as an online pinboard where you can organize and share the things you love. As a seller you love your eBay business and why not pin it in this growing social media site. You can create a listing with good images and pin it  on your pinboard, and then other members can pin it further. Pinterest on a whole can be divided into 3 categories – Pins, Boards and People. You can do a quick search of the word “eBay” can produce a large number of results and you can see the boards and join the one which matches your interest. If your product is really good, you may find your customer promoting this item on pinterest!

To use pinterest to promote your listing, the best way would be to add your product item listing with some design changes, like FREE Shipping, the price, etc. and add the image to pinterest. Link this image to your eBay listing page for that item. The following image shows how an eBay seller has used pinterest to promote his store’s listings.

You can also read our blog on “How Pinterest Can Help Your eBay/Amazon Online Business”. Start pining now.

Email marketing

Email provides an effective way for eBay sellers to encourage repeat sales. Good customer service, item descriptions, concise terms of sale, and prompt shipping are the backbones of a successful eBay business. With an email marketing campaign, you can send customers about the updates of new products and store promotions. This process is very simple with eBay’s new Email Marketing Program “eBay Stores: Promote Your Store”. By building email marketing lists through your eBay shop you can over time build up a legitimate list of subscribers who have opted in to receive your emails.

a)Build a list for email marketing: First make a list of your customers who come to your store to buy things. Then rename the mailing list of your eBay shop so that customers can sign up. To encourage people to sign up to your email marketing make sure that you have links prominently displayed in your eBay shop as well as your blog. Make sure that your customers opt-in to your email list.

b)Include link of listings in emails:  Include the listing link of your eBay store to the emails which you are going to send out to the customers. This would make sure that the customers are not searching for the item which you are offering in your listing. When you have your automated signature written at the end of the mails make sure that you add your eBay store link, this would ensure that your eBay business gets some good advertisement.

c)Use newsletters: If you are a powerseller at eBay  who adds new auctions on a weekly basis, then consider distributing a weekly newsletter and for low volume seller sending a monthly newsletter would be fine. Offering  free shipping for any particular item, some sales promotion like buy one get one free, or save 10 to 20% or something interesting, promoting your product, etc all these  can be effectively done by using newletters.

Last but not the least a great method for attracting buyers is to include a special offer only available to email marketing subscribers. This would make sure that your customers  encouraged to sign up.

Start using these non ebay ways to promote your store. If you have any questions drop me an email.  You can follow us on Twitter, like our Fanpage and grab our rss feed for recent updates.

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.

One More Solid Reason To Add More Listings This November – By OBVA eBay Experts

Like every year, eBay holiday offers are being rolled out. The offers are innovative, and focused at helping sellers encash more sales during the holidays. It is upto you how much you can make best use of the offers.

Recently, there was an announcement by Todd Lutwak, Vice President of Seller Experience recently  “One day only! On November 29, list up to 1,000 items Auction-style for free. Add Buy It Now for free, too!  This one-day only promotion applies to all sellers. If you have missed out this offer, you missed out something, but remember to stay tuned for more upcoming offers. If you really want to make the most of this holiday season , you have to stay tuned to the latest news and updates so that you can make the most out of this holiday offers. Here are some useful  Holiday Selling Tips That No Seller Will Share With You!

To start with, you should be prepared for more offers to come. How to get started?

Track your listing time:

You can create your listings at your convenience and control the time they start and end. eBay gives sellers the option of listing items for 1,3 or other days as per your choice. Any auction listing will end the same time the day it is supposed to end. When you list your items,  remember to apply the best listing ending time as per visitors traffic.

Optimize your listing endings smartly:

Your BIN listings and auction listings must end during a time when there are more visitors at eBay.  There is a general assumption that auctions that end on Sunday will have more bids. You can read “How to make your ebay auctions more effective” to know more on auction timings. Also, if your auction listings live for longer, you will get more bids. So, more chances of getting a good selling price for your product.

Your listing must be properly optimized for look, feel and SEO:

Start thinking as a potential customer and try and figure out how they are going to be searching for your item or your store. If you want your store or listing to show up when the customers search for it, make it keyword optimized. The right keyword can earn you first page in search and if you want it to be done in a professional way give the task to internet research experts who can give you good results. eBay tool  “eBay Research Labs BayEstimator” can be used here or the perfectly optimized eBay title. Here is a post  by eBay virtual assistants which gives “The Steps To Get High Search Engine Ranking Optimization For Your eBay Listings“.

Distribute the listing well using Social Media:

Recently Facebook introduced Tagging of photos for Fanpage. This means that you can create a listing, add your product image on your fan page and then tag those pictures with your fan page. You can use social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin to promote your listings. Here are some of posts that can guide you. ‘Use of Facebook for eBay/Amazon’, ‘Use of LinkedIn for eBay/Amazon, and ‘Use of Twitter for eBay/Amazon.’ And also there are some of the applications that can be used to promote your eBay business such as 6 Facebook Applications Which Can Be Used for eBay/Amazon Business and 5 Twitter Applications That Can Be Used for eBay/Amazon Business. If you choose to automate your listings, then “Turbo Lister – Top eBay Marketing Tool “is a good tool to start with. However, it is always wise to have a person look through the listings done automatically, to review any errors, etc.

To create an effective listing you may need professionals help so delegate it to eBay virtual assistants who are experts in creating it for you. You should  have a team in place for all regular activities so that customers are taken care of in the busy season. A few negative feedbacks may spoil your chances of faring well during holiday season. So, why take a chance? Delegate your routine store tasks to professionals who can work with minimum supervision, so that you can focus on more sales this year end. Happy Holiday Selling to you!

5 Top Reasons Why You Must Outsource Your Amazon And eBay Store – By OBVA Virtual Assistants

Starting an Amazon or eBay business not only needs you to invest lot of time and energy, but also needs some skills.. Every seller puts his best effort to succeed in online business, then why most of them fail? Common reasons are, more unwanted feedbacks, more irate customers and less business due to the negative feedback left by customers even when you have done your best to make them happy. It is just that they had to wait a bit longer, than they expected, as you were busy doing other stuff, like listing, research, etc. After all, every task is important and it is equally important that each task is done on time. Therefore, it is smart to delegate your responsibilities to dedicated experts. Virtual Assistants at OBVAshare the 5 Top Reasons Why You Must Outsource Your Amazon And eBay Store to experts-

Reason #1 : You May Not Have Time To Do Regular Market Research On Your Own – And Market Research Is Unavoidable

Market research is the base for any successful online business. It is required both during the initial planning phase and also for ongoing learning. Once you come with the products to sell, you need to know what would be the niche keywords for your business, who are your competitors, your target customers and how is the competitionfor your product. This is a detailed process and the result will highly impact your business either positively or negatively. If you find the right keywords then with no doubt you can rank high in the competition. On the adversary if the keywords you choose are not right then your business will be a complete loss. What if your business turns out to be a failure due to wrong marketing? The best way is to delegate your product research to Internet research professionals who can find out niche keywords for your products, their competitors, sale through prices etc. so that you have facts and figures at your finger tips, that help you take right decisions.

Reason #2 – A Professional Can Write SEO Optimized Listings Faster And Better

This is the second phase. SEO plays a prominent role in making your listings visible to the target market. Writing search engine optimized listing will certainly increase your site traffic. So when you sell hundreds or thousands of products then you need to write effective keyword rich item title, description that should be clear, concise, informative and self explanatory. If you are not an experienced SEO expert, then it’s wise to delegate the product listing writing to SEO experts who can write SEO listings for your products to get more business for you.

Reason #3- Dedicated Professionals For Customer Service Which Avoids Late Reply And Negative Feedback

Many new eBay/Amazon businesses rise up or rank well soon in the competition.  The question is “Does it maintain its consistency?” When you see many successful Amazon sellers or eBay power sellers they work very hard to strive in the competition. How do they finally succeed? They always work hard to maintain their DSR rating and feedback.  Their target is to keep their customers happy. So if their customers are not satisfied they would soon work on a better solution to keep them happy which is the best tactic for any successful business. Also, when any customer comes to your store, only your store feedback will help them decide to become a buyer or just a visitor. What you want them to be? Just a visitor or a lead? If you have less experience in maintaining 100% positive feedback, delegate your store customer service to customer service professionals who can promptly solve your customer’s concerns and keep them happy and satisfied because in online business, feedback makes all the difference.

Reason #4 – Better Marketing Because Marketing Needs Time Commitment And Experience

Marketing helps you considerably boost your sales. You need to create your business profile in major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc.. Your customers should be informed about regular product updates, new products and offers, etc. Therefore, you need to commit yourself in spending part of your time daily in marketing your site. Do you have the time to do this? The best way is to delegate your site marketing to social media virtual assistants. for promoting the listings on social media, and they can help you with other forms of marketing too.

Reason #5- You can balance life better!

We all earn to make our life better!. But when you put all the burden on yourself to make your business a successful one, then you will find no peace even though you may be  making good money.  If you see any successful business owner, they  spend their time only in developing the core areas of their business. What about their other tasks? They simply delegate routine tasks to professional virtual assistants. If you never tried out delegating before, drop us an email  to schedule a call on how we can help you.

List Of Killer Posts On eBay Marketing Tools – By eBay Virtual Assistants

eBay Virtual Assistants at OBVA have been working on different posts that can provide  great help to sellers on eBay. eBay name is familiar to all who sell or buy online.  You can get nearly anything you need or want at prices better than you can find in traditional brick-and-mortar or even other online stores. So every one wants to get more products from eBay in cheap rates. And now holiday season is nearing every seller would like to grab the opportunity and do great sales.

Here are some of the eBay marketing tools that can be used effectively to increase the sales during this holiday season and also get good feedback rating.

1.      Part 1 – Turbo Lister – Top eBay Marketing Tool

Turbolister  is a tool that can be used offline to prepare as many items for sale as you want. You can add items into it whenever you are free and can upload them all in one batch. When you know which time the listing gets more bid, you can plan your listings accordingly.

2.      Part 2 – Terapeak – Top eBay Marketing Tool

Terapeak is widely used by established sellers alike who want be on top of all eBay Market data. This tool is a must for any eBay seller looking to collect valuable insights into what’s selling, who’s selling it, and for for how much?

3.     Part 3 – eBay Listing Analytics – Top eBay Marketing Tool

eBay listing analytics helps you review the performance of each and every item of your store.  This can be done either by entering the keyword or the item number. You can also review the performance of your listings in a particular category.

4.      Part 4 – Selling Manager-Top eBay Marketing Tool

Selling Manager is an online sales management tool for managing your eBay listings. It is an effective tool especially for new, small and medium sized eBay sellers. After your listings are created manually or using a bulk listing tool like Turbo Lister you can manage and track your listings using Selling Manager.

5.      Part 5 –Blackthorne Basic– Top eBayMarketing Tool

Blackthorne is similar to Turbolister. i.e it is also an offline tool that can be downloaded in the computer. Blackthorne Basic is an effective bulk listing tool that can also be used in post auction management, tracking auction listings, tracking emails and manage feedbacks.

6.      Part 6 – Bay Research Labs BayEstimator

BayEstimator is the most popular tool within the eBay Research Labs. BayEstimator helps you in writing optimized title for your product. Hence, by writing an effective item title, when your potential customer search for the item related to your business, your store will be listed in the search result thus increasing your traffic and sales, (if you have written a wonderful and effective eBay listing too )

7.      Part 7 – Here is A Top eBay Marketing Tool “Deal Finder”

According to eBay Deal Finder is “To truly find the best deals, we built Deal Finder to compare the current selling price of an item on eBay to the lowest price we can find for the same item”.

Above are some of the effective marketing tools that can be used to increase sales. And also you can go through “How to Increase Sales with eBay Markdown Manager” – Shared By eBay Virtual Assistants Of OBVA” to increase sales and become top seller in eBay. eBay Virtual assistants use these tools to increase sales and increase traffic to their customer’s stores.  Some of the tools are easy to learn and access  making it easy for anyone to learn and use them effectively.. For more updates on eBay grab our RSS feed . You can also like our Fanpage and follow us on Twitter.

Part 2: Little Known Smart Ways To Revise Negative/Neutral Feedback – eBay Feedback Revision Tip Series By EBay Virtual Assistants

If you notice common selling tactics of  top eBay sellers or power sellers, you will  notice that they have a flawless feedback score.  How do they manage to get 100% feedback or 99% feedback? Their customers never face issues? Packages don’t get delayed? They never come across customer emails who are unhappy with their product/service?  Well, as you know, it is impossible to answer all questions as YES.

The truth is  even the best sellers have to face unhappy customers once in a while, like other newbies. But what they do differently is, they work on the feedback left by their dissatisfied customers immediately and work to offer them a feasible solution. So, if you want to become a successful seller on eBay with a 100% feedback, you will have to simply follow the eBay feedback revision tips shared by eBay expert Virtual Assistants at OBVA Inc. We have experience in helping many eBay client stores maintain a successful track record all the way to 100% feedback ratings and high sales month after month. In our last post, we wrote about the most common reasons “Why Customers Leave Negative Feedback Or Neutral Feedback on eBay.” Now we are going to write how to get them removed to get back to your 100% feedback score.

eBay Feedback Revision Tip 1 – Work On A Solution Immediately – Preferably Within 24 hours

Whenever your customer leaves negative or neutral feedback, respond to them immediately saying that you are working on their feedback to solve their issue. This would make them feel confident about your store that you are there to take care of their issues. Try to offer them immediate solution. Let us take an example of item not received in time. In this situation request your customer to wait for stipulated time frame to receive the item.  After the time frame is over, do email them asking if they have received their item. They will surely respond you to let you know the fact. If they didn’t receive it, confirm their mailing address once again which may be reason for lost and promptly send the replacement.

Now if you request them to remove the feedback, they will surely revise the feedback. Work out on a solution that is feasible for both the parties. Customers are nice to you if you are nice to them. After all, they are very much like you and me, humans!

 eBay Feedback Revision Tip 2 -Send Regular Reminders

In this busy world, your customers are busy with their day to day life, just like you and me. Therefore, they may not have the time to bother about the ebay feedback revision. So, it is important that you send regular reminders.

Send friendly reminder emails to your customers for the feedback to be revised. Do not harass them by sending too many emails. Good customer service will half way solve the problem of unwanted feedbacks. So make sure you avoid 7 customer service mistakes that can result in a negative feedback. You can also follow the 4 Rules That OBVA eBay Virtual Assistants Follow To Maintain Positive Feedback.

eBay Revision Tip 3 – Deliver What You Promised

Once your customer has revised the feedback, do deliver what you promised them. If they left a feedback commenting that they did not receive the product and then you promised a replacement, send that replacement immediately. However, in cases where feedback was revised by a simple humble request, do not forget to sincerely thank the customer for being nice to you. In simple words, acknowledge their help!

We all know the saying “Prevention is better than Cure”. Hence it is wise to avoid unwanted feedback that may arise due to poor customer service, over exaggerating the item quality when it is not actually met, delay in product delivery, unclear return policy, unclear item description etc.. Make sure you do your best to be transparent while writing your listings, title, description and also have clearly arranged return policy, refund/replacement policy, shipping policy to ensure that customers have access to information that matters. If you do not have time to do all that is required, then hire eBay virtual assistants who can work with dedication for your eBay store and help you make it a success!

Let us connect to learn together. Here is the link to friend us on  Facebook and Twitter. Let us learn together and do better eBay business. Grab our RSS feed for more updates on holiday selling tips.

If you need assistance to manage your eBay/Amazon store, please contact us.

Part 1: Who Else Wants To Know The Reasons Why Customers Leave Negative Feedback On eBay – eBay Feedback Revision Series By eBay Virtual Assistants

We are approaching holiday season, and now it is time for lot of eBay business. Do you want to be prepared with 100% feedback score for better sales? If yes, please read on while we discuss the most common reasons why customers leave a feedback on you. Are you thinking how we know the reasons? Well, because we are a team of eBay virtual assistants working on client stores for years now. We work regularly on feedback management and we therefore know, what can lead your store to a unwanted feedback. Once you know the reasons, you can work on how to avoid these at the first place. If you have already got lot of negative feedbacks, our next post will discuss ways how you can get the feedback removed.

Now let us see the Top 4 reasons that may lead to negative/neutral feedback for your eBay store. If you check any eBay store, mostly negative feedback would be left due to unclear return policy procedures, shipping issues, unclear item descriptions, and poor communication with customers. Here are the reasons in details -

Reason #1: Unclear Return Policy

Customers prefer to buy from an online store that accept return if the product is not satisfying. Therefore, you must have a return policy in place. If you do not have a return policy in place, here is our article on “5 tips on how to write return policy.” If you need help, contact us.

Reason #2: Issues in Shipping

When there is a delay in shipping, it would be good if your customers are pre informed about the reasons and issues in delays. This would certainly build a healthy business relationship with your customers. You can also send emails to customers with the shipping information as soon as the item is shipped with a clear expected delivery date.

Also do not forget to mention where you ship from. When customers do not get necessary information, they may get irritated or upset when items dont arrive by their expected date. So, let them know what will be the expected date approximately.

Make sure that you have a clearly defined “DO NOT SHIP COUNTRY LIST” in case you do not ship to certain countries for shipping difficulties. If you do not have clear information on this, you might get orders from these countries and then end up getting a feedback for unexpected order cancellation. Shipping information NEEDS to be clearly defined as maximum feedback are due to ‘Still not received”, “received very late”, etc. If you are busy with other things and do not have to ship the same day, hire experts who can print the labels for you on time and then you can just put the products in packages and ship out.

Shipping on time is very important.

Reason #3: Unclear Item Description

We can say from our experience, 25% of feedback result due to product not clearly or honestly described in Item Description. Here is a useful post by us on “ How eBay Topsellers write listing descriptions that sell” So make sure you describe everything about the item clearly, shortly and honestly. If something is not mentioned due to reasons like color or size or warranty and if customers come back due to that particular issue admit the mistake and offer her an immediate solution for her problem. Simple efforts can make a big difference. By following “3 Tips To Convert Your New Customers To Repeat Customers” you can ensure that your customers stick to your store for long.

Reason #4: Poor Communication With Your Customers

Friendly and polite emails can make your customers feel better immediately. Whenever you respond, write pleasing and polite emails to comfort your customers. Respond to your customers promptly. Maintain a TAT or time frame to respond every query. Also, avoid 7 customer service mistakes that can result in a negative feedback. This way, your buyers won’t get disappointed as their queries and issues are promptly solved. Remember there is no big advertisement than your customer’s satisfaction. So do your best to solve customer’s queries.

Our next post will be on “Little Known Smart Ways To Remove Negative/Neutral Feedback”. Make sure you grab our RSS feed for updates. We would love to be connected with you on Facebook and Twitter and share more news and updates with you regularly. If you are too busy managing your store, it is wise to delegate to eBay Virtual Assistants for better business.If you need assistance in managing your store, please contact us. We never work for your competitors.

Part 7 – Here is A Top eBay Marketing Tool “Deal Finder” – By eBay Virtual Assistants At OBVA

eBay Virtual Assistants at OBVA are sharing the best of eBay marketing tools like Turbo Lister, Terapeak, eBay listing analytics, Selling Manager,BayEstimator, Bay Research Labs BayEstimator, based on what we use for our client store.

Today the tool we have chosen is eBay’s Deal Finder

What is Deal Finder:

Every savvy shopper does a little comparison while shopping. To make sure that  holiday season to be a great one sellers can start using the tool eBay Deal Finder . According to eBay Deal Finder is “To truly find the best deals, we built Deal Finder to compare the current selling price of an item on eBay to the lowest price we can find for the same item”.

Features of Deal Finder:

We can just set the price limit and then search for the item you want using categories and keywords. Not all items found on eBay.com are displayed in Deal Finder. For an item to be displayed in Deal Finder it must meet the keyword and category constraints as well as have zero bids, no reserve price, less than four hours left, free or fixed rate shipping and a total price that is below the selected criteria. Make sure that you choose the right keywords of your store. If you have any difficulty in doing it delegate the task to professionals. eBay will display items that meet your criteria, with those closing soonest at the top.

Sellers can find this tool very helpful for sourcing bargain items that have been overlooked for some reason. Any seller’s items can appear on Deal Finder. The only requirement is that the item meets the keyword and category.

The opportunity to buy items cheaply and resell them for a profit is huge. You can also find out about wholesale lots which is much cheaper. Just type ‘wholesale’ or ‘lot’ into the search bar and get the answers. Its that simple.

Limitations:

There are few limitation for this tool. Such as

• No Shipping Prices are included while searching.
• Doesn’t include Third Party Sellers rates.
• Sometimes, the eBay Deal finder does comparisons on products that are not exactly the same.

Deal Finder is very efficient at what it does do. It will be interesting to see whether eBay makes further changes to it in the future. Have you started using this tool? Then we would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with Deal Finder. You can join us in our  Facebook Fan Page, Follow us on Twitter or leave some comments on how this tool has helped you. We appreciate your feedback.

Part 3 – eBay Listing Analytics – Top eBay Marketing Tool Series Post By eBay Virtual Assistants At OBVA

eBay Expert Virtual Assistants at OBVA have been sharing posts on series of eBay marketing tools for effective selling on eBay. Today, we are going to share a powerful tool, eBay Listing Analytics.

For every business, it is important to review performance regularly so that the business manager is aware of where the business is heading too! Is the sales trend going upwards Or downwards? Which areas need improvement? Which products are selling more and which aren’t? eBay listing analytics answers most of the questions relating to your business performance review…

What is eBay Listing Analytics?

eBay listing analytics helps you review the performance of each and every item of your store.  This can be done either by entering the keyword or the item number. You can also review the performance of your listings in a particular category. Thus by reviewing each of your items, you can keep the guesswork out of your work, when you have got access to accurate statistics.  Using this tool, you can also check the performance of both your auction listings and buy it now listings.

By reviewing the performance of each and every item, you can take better decisions on listing your new products and re-listing your existing products on the basis of their performance. Using  eBay research tool – Terapeak, you get data on the hot selling items on eBay for different categories. If you are selling an item which is a best seller, but then your store is selling very less number of the same product, you will know that there is something wrong with your listing. Then you can research for effective keywords, and change your listing accordingly. So, eBay listing analytics will tell you where you need to improve and Terapeak will tell you HOW?

You can also take other effective steps to increase sales of  items (that need attention) by -

-> Reducing the cost of the item

-> Offering discounts/freebies

-> Reducing shipping cost or offer free shipping

-> Extending the offer period for discounts

Advantages of using Listing Analytics in eBay selling

1. It is a free tool and easy to use.
2. If you are medium enterprise eBay store owner selling in huge volume, you can download the listing metrics in a spread sheet and analyze the data for better business planning.

How to Use eBay Listing Analytics? Easy 3 Steps

Step 1- Go to the Application tab of My eBay
Step 2- Hit the activate button of Listing Analytics and check the subscription box
Step 3 -Listing Analytics for your store will be activated then

It is free, it is powerful. So, it is smart to follow these 3 steps to activate eBay Listing Analytics today for your store. Reviewing the performance metrics of your store can certainly help you increase the sales volume, if you can take apt steps based on what you learn about your listing. Knowledge is powerful, and it is very much needed if you think progressive for your store… If you are too busy doing everything on your own, delegate to eBay expert VA. We at OBVA help eBay stores sell better. Here is the performance reports from our eBay/Amazon clients. We take care of lot of routine tasks including remote shipping  label printing, managing disputes and claims, feedback, customer service, taking inventory reports, sending invoice, refunds and replacement, internet research for product, price and competitor, etc…

If you need  assistance in successful eBay selling, please contact us. We never work for your competitors! Connect with us through RSS feeds, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and we will keep in touch for better learning for better eBay business.

Part 2 – Terapeak – Top eBay Marketing Tool Series Post By eBay Virtual Assistants At OBVA

eBay is an auction world where millions of items are auctioned and sold online every minute. eBay certified Virtual Assistants have been working on eBay stores to helping clients manage stores more efficiently by offering complete package of eBay specialized services that include Ebay & Amazon Store Outsourcing Services, Virtual Assistant Blog Content Services, CardScan Expert .

During the course of managing eBay businesses, we use numerous tools that help us make eBay business better. We are currently writing a series of posts of “Effective marketing tools that help sell successfully in eBay.” Our last post was Part 1-  Turbo Lister -Marketing tool for eBay. In today’s post, we would like to introduce the second effective tool that you can use for better marketing of your store. Its …. Terapeak -Marketing tool for eBay.. Terapeak is a well known tool, however, to our surprise, many eBay sellers seem to be unaware of it. Therefore, we have included this powerful eBay Market Research tool in our blog post…

What is Terapeak?

Terapeak is a market research and management software, and is very popular and used by Top eBay sellers who want to dominate in sales and become a power seller. To be a successful seller you need to have information more than a normal seller. Here is where Terapeak comes in. Its information goes upto one year and includes the following: item sales prices, item sell through rate, item titles, item categories. If you are new to eBay selling and don’t  know which products to sell, or the prices to sell items at, then Terapeak is the right one for you. Terapeak is widely used by established sellers alike who want be on top of all eBay Market data. This tool is a must for any eBay seller looking to collect valuable insights into what’s selling, who’s selling it, and for for how much? There are four main categories of data provided by Terapeak that include- – What’s Hot, Category Research, Seller Research & Product Research. These features can be used for effective marketing research.

Features of Terapeak:

• You can find out the average starting price for your product. You can determine the end price of an item and find out the kind of profit the item can give you. Obviously, to know the profit margin, you have to conduct Internet Market Research to find out suppliers and the cost price. We conduct regular selling price-cost price research for our eBay clients.
• Its information goes back Only 365 days…in increments of 90 days and includes the following: item sales prices, item sell through rate, item titles, item categories
• You can determine the sale-ability of any item i.e. if the product can sell well or not.
• Research can be done at various time limits like 7, 30 and 90 day range to get a better history of the item.
• The tool will let you know what day, time of the day, and the exact keyword phrases that produced the best results for the product listing.
• Terapeak will let you know what is best type of listing for your product- a bid, buy it now, or store items? With this tool you can find out all the listings during a specific period and the sell through rate. What else can you ask for?

Few limitations:

It is a paid tool. Yes, there is a free version, but its only for 14 days and you cannot dig as deep in the data as you would want to. Paid version is worth the money if you have access to expertise who has experience using Terapeak or if you yourself have the time to research regularly and understand the reports.With paid version you get a product heat map which help you the hottest categories to sell by bids, total sales, bids per list and much more.

With Terapeak you have the advantage over the average seller because you have information they don’t, information that could prove very valuable and get more traffic to your store and convert eBay traffic to your customer.. We at OBVA are committed in providing whole range of customized services for eBay store owners. The services offered by us are Internet Marketing Research, eBay admin support, Amazon admin support, Social Media Marketing, Blogging, and Internet marketing support. You can grab our RSS feeds to learn more and more about  selling successfully on eBay. You can connect with us on Facebook and Twitter today!