The Obvious "Secret" All World-Class eBay Sellers Obey

Home-based eBay sellers are constantly assaulted by temptations, distractions and diversions. The Tivo is full of your favorite recorded shows. Your children need some sort of assistance. The fridge beckons. A new article (or blog post!) grabs your attention. All these things take you away from your most profitable activities – which include listing, site design, promotion, PR, branding, direct mail and so forth.

Everyone talks about how “ACTION” is so important. But, beneath that little secret is the real one – “The START.” The start is crucial to action. Starting something -- anything -- is often the eBay seller’s biggest challenge. There are so many reasons not to start. But the accumulation of false starts, and start denials eventually adds up to poor performance and results. The mind that doesn’t start is the bad mind at work. It’s the same one that doesn't want to get up at 5AM. The one that goes for chocolate rather than broccoli.

If you start something.. anything.. however.. it eventually produces good stuff. A plan, process or outline that’s in place helps guarantee good stuff. Because, everyone knows that some do’ers do the wrong thing. That can be very dangerous.

There’s a science that studies “bad actions,” and it’s covered quite well in a book called Deep Survival. This is where people make rapid, “blink” decisions in survival situations and fail miserably (usually resulting in death). Fortunately eBay is a more forgiving environment. If you fail, you get tons of data that shows you where you went wrong. And you can always fix things and try again. That’s not so when you’re climbing Everest.

Now.. in the interest of starting something, I’ll clam up and let you launch that next critical action.

Fear, eBay and Jack Canfield

I read the following Jack Canfield article this morning. It’s a good general piece, but it’s also particularly useful for new eBay sellers or even eBay veterans that need new ways to make money, test products, open new markets and innovate. Part of your job as an eBay seller is to be creative. Creativity requires boldness and a healthy approach to fears. The article offers useful strategies for moving past fear and/or using it to guide your decisions and creations. I especially like the “taking a 2-year-old to the market” analogy.

Putting Fear in Its Place
by Jack Canfield

As you move forward on your journey from where you are to where you want to be, you are going to have to confront some of your fears. Fear is a just a natural part of living.

Whenever you start a new project, take on a new venture, or put yourself out there, there's usually some fear involved. Unfortunately, most people let fear stop them from taking the necessary steps to achieve their dreams.

Confronting your fears is a very necessary step in achieving success.

There is simply no other way.

Fear can be a helpful emotion, as it tells you when you need to be extra careful, keenly aware, and cautious. Fear is not an emotion that is telling you to stop. In fact, it's telling you just the opposite!

Acknowledging your feelings of fear helps you know when you are stepping out of your comfort zone. It points your awareness to areas where you could improve and grow.

Successful people also feel fear. Yet they don't let it get in the way of anything they want to do--or have to do. They understand that fear is something to be acknowledged, experienced, and taken along for the ride. They have learned, as author Susan Jeffers suggests in her must-read book, to "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway®."

(Susan Jeffers has been a friend of mine for twenty years now, and her work, which is very powerful and transformational, has helped millions of people overcome their fears and move forward to create success in their lives. I highly recommend her as a resource.)

You see, fear is more of a signal that we should stay alert and cautious. We can feel fear, but we can still move forward anyway.

Think of fear as a 2-year-old child who doesn't want to go grocery shopping with you. Because you must buy groceries, you'll just have to take the two year old with you. Fear is no different. In other words, acknowledge that fear exists but don't let it keep you from doing important tasks.

Also realize that so many of our fears are self-created. We might frighten ourselves by fantasizing negative outcomes to any activity we might peruse or experience. Luckily, because we are the ones doing the fantasizing, we are also the ones who can stop the fear and bring ourselves into a state of clarity and peace by facing the actual facts, rather than giving in to our imaginations.

If a fear is too great for you to overcome, try breaking it down into smaller challenges.

Try starting out doing the parts of the project that don't scare you so much. You need to give a speech in front of a large group? Try giving your speech in front of a small group of people who care for you. Work your way up until you are able to feel the fear but still move forward. As you do, you will build your confidence and eventually you won't feel fear surrounding those issues because you'll have done them enough to count it as a skill.

As you move toward your goal, don't attach yourself so much to the outcomes.

Keep moving toward your dream doing everything you can to create what you want, then let it go and see what shows up. Sometimes the universe will have a better idea in mind for you and present a better opportunity when you were expecting something completely different. Don't let fear keep you from moving forward. Even if the horrible outcome that you imagined happens, the universe will always provide for you another way to succeed. So be on the look out!

Trust that no matter what occurs, you are smart enough and strong enough to keep looking for, and attracting, opportunities.

If you are willing to try new experiences in spite of your fears, then more new experiences will present themselves for you to try. And the more you try, the more you are likely to succeed!

For even MORE inspiration about overcoming your fears, you can learn from this Video Clip of Me on YouTube discussing some tactics you can use right away!

© 2008 Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield, America's Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and a leading authority on Peak Performance. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

eBay Sourcing Resource - How to Reliably, Quickly Find Good Products

Online auctions are still a great way to make money online, but you have to be very careful about your pricing and you need to have reliable, genuine sources. One of the toughest challenges is finding a steady supply of high-quality, genuine goods at a cost low enough for you to turn a decent profit (after you subtract all your expenses and fees). While many sites claim to offer listings of wholesalers for eBay sellers, in reality, most of the information you will find is either out of date or untested.

It helps to have a community of peers and expert power sellers to sort through all the supplier information out there, so you can get feedback about what suppliers are reliable and who will work with small home based businesses and individual auction sellers. While you can find wholesalers in every part of the world, even just by looking in the phone book, most of them probably won't fit the bill for your average eBayer.

One option to find product sources is SaleHoo. SaleHoo describes itself as a global product sourcing community. Its updated directory has over 5,000 wholsalers and dropshippers for almost every type of goods. More than just a simple supplier list, SaleHoo has some advanced functionality. It gives you the information you want and it never makes you jump through any hoops to get the details, unlike other directories. You can organize and save favorites, and you can instantly search the SaleHoo forum database for community entries about a particular supplier. The supplier page also allows you to go straight to the whois database for more information, and it also allows you to register a complaint or leave feedback.

SaleHoo's forums are very active (over 40,000 registered members) and there is a lot of good information that is shared and posted by experienced sellers. The forums focus heavily on auction selling, so if you're just looking to get products for your own online store or shopping cart - there's not quite as much value. But overall, SaleHoo is probably worth checking out, particularly for people new to eBay selling.

Product Reviews, Social Media and New Online Buying Trends

The following comes from the Online Marketer Blog:

“Not only are 1 in 4 internet users consulting reviews before purchasing offline, but they are willing to pay more if the service is ranked as excellent. It seem that after the year of exuberance that was all about Facebook and twitter, business is finally getting around to answering the question of how social media effects ROI.

“..Users that [sic] sort the list of products by customer ratings spend 41% more than users who search with other methods like popularity or price… Emails that feature customer review content receive 50% higher clickthrough rates.”

Here’s the main article, titled Good For Consumers (And Businesses): Social Media Gets A Glimpse Of Measurable ROI.

So.. for online marketers, it’s now more critical than ever to be building review/social functions into your Web sites and product pages. Customer service performance counts bigtime, too, of course.

And, as consumers, we have to make sure we maintain clear, critical thinking when checking product reviews. I’d like to see some some numbers about the veracity and integrity of online reviews. How much of it is “bro” reviews? How much of it is genuine? Are really nasty reviews the result of competitor campaigns? That would be interesting, yet difficult to quantify.

Target Niche Audiences with Facebook Advertising

If you haven't tried advertising in Facebook yet, it might be worth a shot. Facebook is the social network site that brings friends together according to interests, existing connections, networks and groups.

You can place ads and display them to anyone on Facebook based on demographics, interests, hobbies and so forth. It's a good way to reach very targeted audiences. User information is current, updated often, and accurate.. unlike a lot of direct mail lists, which can be outdated, inaccurate and expensive.

Since Facebook doesn't tie results to exact searches, your ads are not as granularly exact as something like Google AdWords. However, you can reach really targeted audiences for very little money. If you're selling archery gear on eBay, for example, you can run ads that only display to people who list archery in their profiles.

Barbara Boser writes more about Facebook advertising pros and cons here.

Driving eBay Traffic with Link Tagging and Urchin Tracker Scripts in Google Analytics

This is an advanced tip that concerns Google Analytics and link tracking. If you don't know what those are, I'd suggest taking some time exploring Mark McLaren's site, McBuzz.com (you can ask him questions, too, of course). McBuzz has a good mix of resources concerning SEO, SEM and Google Analytics. He offers video tutorials, articles and so on.

Ok - so link tracking.. or more specifically, Urchin Tracker scripts for Google Analytics. First the why: As an eBay seller, you want to figure out exactly where your traffic is coming from and which links on your pages are getting clicked. You can do these kinds of things with regular Web pages and Google Analytics. This is especially useful in situations where you educate customers and prospects about your particular products and industry on a "normal"/outside-eBay Web site and then drive them to your listings in eBay.

There are several ways analyze traffic. This post covers just a couple (and links to an article that shows you exactly how). Google Analytics is very robust and does more than what's covered here. With GA, you can set up goal pages, track conversion success, and figure out exactly what's working on your sites.

Let's say you want to figure out who's clicking on what links in your site. Google Analytics works if you set up pages within your site as conversion goals/targets. However, if the links are external, you can't place the Urchin Tracker code into someone else's page. If that's something you'd like to track (which is often the case with eBay listings), then take a look at the following link for the solution. This is from Sulli's Google Analytics Tips and Tricks by SkiSulli. He shows you the right script to place into your pages and recommends some ways to set it up. As you'll see, he also shows you how to make this work for email or "mailto:" links. If you want to figure out how many people are clicking on your email address link (and when, how fast, etc), then this is a great solution.

You can then track all of this activity automatically from within Google Analytics. As you get a better sense for what's driving traffic to your listings, you can then tweak your pages to get better conversion rates and more business to your eBay listings and stores.

Simple, Timeless eBay Marketing Techniques

Whether you're writing for eBay listings or writing SEO copy for your Web site or writing SEM copy for a Google AdWords landing page, there are always some very simple, timeless things you need to do. Here they are in stripped down, bare bones bullets:

* Write strong headlines

* Describe benefits before features

* Use specific subheads

* Write about the reader (not about yourself or your company)

This is simple marketing copywriting 101, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves what the basic techniques are.

Strong headlines contain delicious offers, benefits and intrigue. Benefits sell the dream before the hardware that produces the dream (and the relationship between the two). Specific subheads are key because many readers scan the page and follow subhead stories before diving into specific sections of your body text. Finally, when you use the word "you" and talk directly to and about the reader, you make better connections and sell more effectively. Nobody wants to hear about the genius behind the product. They want to know how it's going to help them specifically.