How to focus on one particular market or category of items. This is where you will build your business. If you want to go into that category and have a dominating market presence, there are a few things that you absolutely must do:
1. Market Research
Completed item listings is the first place you will start doing your research. You will need to find out:
- What items are selling?
- How much these items are selling for. What is the average selling price?
- Who are the top sellers in your market?
- What techniques or strategies are they using to sell their items?
Once you have done your research, you will have a great knowledge base to start from. You can decide what items to sell, how much you can afford to pay for them, and what are the best listing strategies for selling the most products in your market. Doing some in depth research of your competition is always the first place to start before enter any market. Don’t waste your time finding product sources and listing items if you do not know 100% that you will be able to make good profits in the market.
2. Find multiple product sources
The biggest problem when people started selling on eBay was keeping enough product in stock. If you have one supplier and if he didn’t have a certain product in stock, then you to stop selling it. This is the wrong way to go about doing business on eBay. You must locate multiple product suppliers. eBay Powersellers don’t just have a list of wholesale suppliers, they now how to find suppliers. That knowledge is extremely powerful.
3. List your auction with competitive pricing strategies
Many new eBay sellers incorrectly assume that they must have the lowest price in order to compete in any market. This is completely untrue. Price is not the determining factor in dominating a market. So when you are pricing your items, you want to make sure that your price is low, but not so low that you aren’t making enough profit. I like to try to make a 30% more profit on any item I buy; meaning that if I buy an item for $20, I want to sell it for at least $26. Your margins will differ greatly from market to market and sometimes you can offset lower margins by selling more volume.
4. Work hard for the best reputation in the market.
This is the true key to market domination. Many sellers are willing to pay more to buy an item from a reputable seller than someone they do not know and trust. I personally would rather pay 10-15% more to buy from a seller with 780 positive feedbacks and 100% of them positive, than to buy from someone with 12 feedbacks and 2 negatives. In order to generate the best reputation, you will need to keep your feedback as close to perfect as possible. You do this by having excellent customer service. Answer all questions as quickly as possible, ship quickly, and handle all complaints quickly and courteously.