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claim to offer listings of wholesalers for eBay sellers, in reality, most of the information you will find is either out of date or untested.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.

Conversational Writing and eBay Descriptions - Marketing Mojo

We talk a lot about conversational voice and tone in these pages. Conversational style engages and persuades people. That's the gist of it.

A lot of businesses still shy away from this type of writing in their Web sites, eBay listings and marketing collateral.

I came across validation for the conversational approach in another book (which is great, by the way). It's called Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas On Presentation Design and Delivery.

Here's a quote from the book (p. 83):

"When you are in a conversation with someone you are naturally more engaged because you have an obligation to participate. You are involved. Formal speech and formal writing devoid of any emotion whatsoever is extremely difficult to stay with for more than a few minutes. Your conscious mind has to remind you to "stay away, this is important!" But someone who speaks in a natural, human, conversational style is far easier to stay engaged with."

I urge you, as always, to write with conversational tone and style. That means speaking as if in a one-on-one conversation, adding emotion, using imagery, and communicating as you would with a friend.

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.

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.

Darple, eBay and Bidding Without Fear - Good Model for eBay Sellers

Darple is an eBay-like Web site that allows bidding on multiple items.. without buying multiple items. When you win an item, your other bids for similar items are automatically withdrawn. It's pretty cool. My local paper wrote an article about it this morning. eBay should be doing this. They'd get a lot more activity, and pricing would reach realistic levels quickly because serious buyers would be able to rapidly place bids without worrying about ordering multiple items. As a buyer, you wouldn't have to spend so much time surfing eBay itself and mulling over choices. You'd just search, bid and wait for everything to shake out.

Do you think a feature like this would boost or erode pricing levels on eBay? That's the most interesting question, I think.

Please comment below and let me know what you think. Thanks.

eBay Radio Interview: Sell Mo Better by Cultivating Loyal, Enthusiastic, Super-Satisfied Customers

eBay Radio had me on last week to discuss customer satisfaction and retention topics. Here's the link to the interview with Griff.

That Friday, myself and Janelle Elms held an eBay Community Workshop on the same topic, but we covered much more than was allowed on the 8 minute eBay Radio Segment. It's called eBay Customer Satisfaction and Retention (brilliant!). There's tons of new info and insight.


Thanks & Enjoy!
Phil

50 eBay Seller Tips - Advice, Pointers, Insights

I stumbled across some useful tips while surfing the eBay community discussion boards today. Some are obvious, but there are quite a few that are intriguing. Good reinforcement and review, plus some I haven't thought about. Check out the comments, too. People added some tips (and some junk, too).