7 Steps to Easier eBay Shipping

7 Steps to Easier eBay Shipping

by: John Lenaghan

If you’re like me, you probably hate packing and shipping the things you sell on eBay.

Don’t get me wrong, I love selling on eBay. I just don’t like the shipping part. I find it monotonous to hunt for boxes, wrap the items, drive back and forth from the post office, and all the other steps involved in shipping.

Then thereกs the waiting for the buyer to receive the item. Has it arrived yet? Did it get damaged in shipping?

It took me a lot of trial and error to figure them out, but the following 7 steps will help make your job easier when it comes to shipping, as well as get rid of the stress of waiting for the item to be delivered to the buyer.

1. Professional Wrapping

When you wrap your item(s), wrap it professionally in nice, clean tissue paper. If breakable, be sure the item is wrapped with bubble wrap as well. Include a business card with your website information, name, address, or a printed statement showing the item(s) name, item(s) number, price paid, and a small handwritten note thanking the buyer for their purchase.

2. Insurance

Insurance is usually a good idea but in general, it should be an optional feature, with the decision left to the buyer. Remember two important things about insurance. First, insurance is VERY inexpensive. Therefore, in your description, you should state how much insurance would cost and recommend it. Second, you should also state in the description that if insurance is not purchased, you are not responsible for lost or damaged items.

3. Weighing

In order to provide accurate details and help in determining shipping costs, you need to know exact weights. The best option, which will save you many unnecessary trips to the post office, is to purchase a inexpensive quality scale for weighing your packages.

4. Postage

Instead of always running out of stamps or having to run to the post office to ship a smaller item, fill out the information located at stamps.com where you can print stamps directly from your home computer.

5. Post Office Freebies

If you use the Priority Mail option through your post office, they will provide all your supplies for free. This includes boxes, labels, and tape. Best of all, they deliver all these supplies directly to your door. Get them at your local post office or go to USPS.com request mailing supplies.

6. ShipTo Locations

Be sure to consider where you will ship to carefully. You will have buyers from around the world but you can limit where you will ship. Some people prefer to ship to the US, Canada, and European countries while others ship anywhere. The option is completely yours but keep in mind that there are some differences in how you wrap the package, the currency exchanges, and communication barriers between you and the buyer.

7. Delivery Confirmation

Unfortunately, some buyers will try to say they paid for an item but never received the auction item(s). When shipping, you should consider using delivery confirmation. This service is generally inexpensive and can end up saving you a ton, especially if the item(s) is higher priced.

Do yourself a favor and put these tips into action youกll save yourself both time and hassles. Use the time you save to get more listings up, and watch your eBay income grow.

About The Author

John Lenaghan offers success tips for eBay and other online auctions at the Online Auction Advisor website. Visit http://www.onlineauctionadvisor.com for more ways to improve your buying and selling on eBay.

This article was posted on September 08

by John Lenaghan

5 SureFire Ways to Make More Money on eBay

5 SureFire Ways to Make More Money on eBay

by: John Lenaghan

Have you ever dealt with a salesperson or a waiter who gave you unbelievably good service? How about someone who didn’t seem to care about you one bit?

Which of those people would you go back to the next time you needed to make another purchase or eat another meal?

Iกm willing to bet you would go back to the business or person who gave you great service. Have you ever considered that this same principle applies to your eBay sales?

One of the easiest ways to get more sales on eBay is to make every buyer think กWow, Iกve never had such a good experience buying on eBay!ก

Once someone has bought from you and had a good experience, they’re much more likely to buy from you again. They already know they can trust you, you ship quickly, your descriptions are clear and honest, and all the other things buyers wonder about when dealing with an unknown seller.

Use the following 5 tips and watch your repeat business go through the roof…

1. Quick Response

When you have an item listed on eBay and a potential buyer contacts you with a question, respond quickly. Itกs important, and actually critical to your success to check your email several times a day. Answering a question quickly could be the difference between you getting the sale or the buyer going elsewhere.

2. Accurate Listings

When you list your items on eBay, write an accurate description. You don’t have to write long paragraphs or rambling information, but provide exact measurements, colors, condition, etc. Be honest and precise when it comes to your description.

3. Buyer Contact

Once your items have sold, be responsive to the buyer. Contact them as quickly as possible after the auction has ended, thank them for their purchase and provide the required information for payment.

4. Sending Items

In your description, provide accurate details regarding shipment. Make sure the items are sent within the time you stated. In many cases, people purchase something for a specific purpose and if you don’t ship it when stated, not only do you mess up their schedule but you have probably lost a customer and opened the door for negative feedback.

5. Shipping & Handling

You should always charge actual shipping costs, or at most a little extra to cover the cost of your shipping materials. There are a number of shipping calculators that can be added to your description so people can calculate their own shipping. Another option is to state that you will provide actual shipping at the end of the auction, based on the destination. Overcharging your customers for shipping and handling is frowned upon and will often result in unhappy customers.

Itกs always a good idea to include a thankyou note with every item that you ship. It can be on a business card or something larger, whatever you prefer.

Of course your thankyou note will also include the address to your eBay listings and a friendly reminder for your customer to check back regularly for more of your great deals and exceptional customer service…

About The Author

John Lenaghan offers success tips for eBay and other online auctions at the Online Auction Advisor website. Visit http://www.onlineauctionadvisor.com for more ways to improve your buying or selling on eBay.

This article was posted on August 31

by John Lenaghan

Taking Paypal on eBay

Taking Paypal on eBay

by: Terry Gibbs

Accepting Paypal as a payment method might increase your selling prices and your profits. This depends on what you are selling. I sell collectibles to collectors. My clients are like junkies. They will buy regardless of the payment options, so not offering Paypal won’t make much difference in the final selling prices.

If you sell items with high competition, accepting Paypal will make your auctions more attractive. This also holds true for impulse buys. Plus, you can get paid instantly through Paypal.

Hereกs a few suggestions for increasing your profits by accepting Paypal:

1. Select accept Paypal in the auction listing process to get the Paypal logo into your auction. You can put in the auction description that you accept Paypal, but unless you use the Paypal logo some buyers will miss this Payment choice. Many buyers look specifically for the logo and expect to find it in certain areas of the auction listing.

2. If you only accept bank account transfers, and do not accept credit card payments through paypal be sure to mention this in your auction description and the payment types area. Even after you mention this, you will get credit card payments from some Paypal users. This causes confusion with buyers.

3. One problem that may come up is your shipping schedule. I ship once a week. Some eBay buyers feel that I should drop everything and go to the post office as soon as they send me money through Paypal. This used to cause problems.

Now when a buyer sends me money, I quickly email him and tell him when to expect his item. Because I ship on Thursday or Friday, I can tell them their item will be delivered by the next Tuesday, if not earlier. Instead of telling the buyer I will ship the item on Friday, I tell them to expect it on Monday. This changes the buyerกs focus from when I will ship to when they will get the item.

One last thing before I finish up. I recommend eBay sellers use guarantees. If you take a credit card through Paypal, and later refund the buyerกs money, you will be out the Paypal fees if the refund is done more than 30 days after the initial transaction. You need to require your buyer to return the item quickly.

About The Author

Terry Gibbs is a collector/dealer of old toys and trains, and teaches others how to buy and sell antiques and collectibles. Gibbs is the author of two best selling eBay books ‘the Auction Revolution,ก and ‘the Complete Guide To eBay Consignment Sales.ก He has also written numerous other books about buying and selling antiques and collectibles. Learn more at his website: http://www.news.iwantcollectibles.com.

This article was posted on March 22

by Terry Gibbs

Better Than Sliced Bread… Drop Shipping, The New H

Better Than Sliced Bread… Drop Shipping, The New Home Business Craze

by: Tony Keeler

Many of you will probably remember the days when the only way to start a successful home business was to join some sort of multilevel marketing program or sell makeup at parties. In those days, people would have to buy a membership in the ‘program’ along with an inventory of sample products that they would then sell to friends and coworkers at ‘parties.’ Most people were not very successful at this and made very little money and usually alienated their friends and family. In the 1990’s however, all of that changed for the better with the advent of the Internet and a retail delivery method called wholesale drop shipping.
Wholesale drop shipping is when a wholesale distributor or manufacturer agrees to send out single unit products to customers for a retailer. Many will also even include the retailers name on the invoice so that the customer is never even aware that they got it from anyone else but the retailer. This, along with the Internet has changed the whole dynamics of home businesses in America, making it easier and more cost effective to start your own business.
Home business owners are now able to launch a business without purchasing any inventory up front and are able to open a ‘store’ without ever having to find a place to setup shop. Millions of Americans have setup ecommerce sites on the internet selling everything from Personal Computers to lawn care equipment all using wholesale drop shipping. As a matter of fact, according to eBay over forty thousand people make their full time living on their auction site alone; many of these are using drop shipping as their main method of product fulfillment.
The only problem for today’s small business owner is how to find wholesalers to drop ship. In general wholesale distributors don’t make it a habit of getting out there and advertising; obviously the whole reason they are in wholesale and not retail is to get away from doing all of that work. So it makes it very difficult for someone who has little or no business experience to make contacts with distributors when they aren’t even sure where to start looking.
To help out those small business owners I’d like to offer some advice for finding wholesale distributors:

Look for trade organizations and magazines to help you make contacts. Many trade organizations out their produce some sort of listings of their members, many of whom may drop ship.
Contact manufacturers. People don’t realize that if you call the manufacturer they will provide you with a list of their distributors; so if you are looking for a particular product, ask the manufacturer. The down side of this route is that they may have hundreds of distributors that you may have to contact before you find one that is willing to drop ship.
Find wholesale chat rooms and message boards. There are many message boards on the Internet today that are devoted to a wide range of discussions. You may find boards on wholesale, distribution, supply chain, etc. All of these may lead you in the direction of a wholesale distributor.

However, if you want to get up and running fast, or just don’t have the time to go on a search for wholesale distributors much less ones that drop ship, then the way to go is drop ship directories. These are usually pay services that search out drop shippers for you then give you access to their contacts; there are many of these on the Internet today, and many are very good. As with anything on the Internet you must be very careful of the scams out there. Many drop ship directories will end up giving you an outdated list of wholesalers, or when you contact them you will find that they are a true wholesale distributor but they do not drop ship.
Here are some pieces of advice when looking for a quality drop ship directory:

Stay away from the cheap ones! Obviously with everything else in this world you will get what you pay for. If you find one out their for three dollars, you probably are not going to get a good product. In general the one’s that offer the best information are charging $60 or more for a six month membership.
Look for one’s that will do specialty searches! If you get into a drop ship directory and find that they do not have any products that you would like to sell, or think you can sell, then make sure they will go out and find it for you. If they do not do specialty searches then you will end up being stuck with whatever listings they have no matter what.
Find one with a Satisfaction Guarantee! There are several drop ship directories out there that offer a guarantee that all of their listings are true drop shippers, but in my opinion this is not enough. If you get into their directory and find that they have five hundred listings for widget suppliers and they are all real wholesalers you are out your money and only have access to one product. Make sure they guarantee your satisfaction with their product no matter what, especially if you are going to shell out seventy dollars of your hard earned money.
Look for ones that are going to help you out as well, not just give you a list. Do they offer articles and help material on starting your business or are all they just going to give you listings and nothing else.

However you choose to find wholesale drop shipping, keep in mind that as with anything else in this world knowledge is power. Try and find out as much as you can before you jump in to get your feet wet. It will make your startup smoother and help you get the profitability stage much faster.

About The Author

Tony Keeler is the founder and publisher of The Drop Ship Connection – www.dropshipconnection.com The web’s only drop ship directory with a step by step guide for the home business owner. He is also the owner of MAR Services which publishes these great sites:

2DollarSoftware – www.2dollarsoftware.com marketing, advertising, and internet software.
DingleHopper.com – www.dinglehopper.com Funny Name, Cool Products.

[email protected]

This article was posted on June 11, 2004

by Tony Keeler

Drop Shipping Your Way to Increased Sales & Profit

Drop Shipping Your Way to Increased Sales & Profits…

by: Thom Reece

Drop shipping, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is a system whereby you promote the products of a particular manufacturer, take orders directly, and the manufacturer/source handles all the inventory and fulfillment functions for you.

In a nutshell, here is the dropship system:

==> You generate and accept the order.

==> You take your profits out of the sale price.

==> You forward the order and the wholesale cost to the drop shipper.

==> The source factory ships directly to your customer.

The benefits of this arrangement are probably obvious:

No inventory cost to you.

* Substantially higher profits to you over what most regular affiliate programs allow.

* The ability to quickly setup inexpensive, highly targeted, niche or minisites to test and promote diverse products.

This process has been around for years and has been responsible for many highly successful mail order dealer relationships in the past. Many of the top catalogers and other direct response marketers, have been using this system to increase profits for decades. If you have ever ordered a high priced item from a mail order catalog and been told that the product was being shipped from the factory… then you have experienced drop shipping first hand.

Drop shipping is, I believe, a virgin untapped storehouse of profits for todays internet marketer.

Online directories exist which reveal essential contact information for drop shippers of over 2,000,000 products and 4,000 brands. Most legitimate drop ship sources will require that you have a state tax reseller number in order to approve you to sell their products and give you the wholesale pricing you are looking for.

Beware of any drop ship source which requires you to pay a fee in order to become a dropship dealer… or requires a membership. These are generally organizations which make their money selling กdrop ship licensesก… and are, for the most part, scams. Legitimate drop shippers and factory sources never charge you any fees other than the actual shipping costs of the products you sell.

Another caveat… always make sure that you have a written agreement with the source factory that you own the customer! The factory or drop ship source should agree in writing not to solicit your customers in any form. This is very important to you. Your customer list is one of your most important assets. If the factory you are dealing with balks at this request… use another source who will agree.

Almost every conceivable type of product is available from a drop shipper willing to ship products in single units under your companies name. Pick your interest area… electronics, consumer products, agricultural & industrial products, office equipment & supplies, hobby gear, recreational / sporting goods, clothing, furniture, etc. The list of available products from drop shippers is almost endless.

The products actual source is invisible to the consumer. The seller (you) is able to build a database of customers that he/she owns and controls (by agreement with the manufacturer) and has all the direct marketing advantages that accompany that arrangement… while eliminating the need for maintaining expensive inventory.

This arrangement offers maximum flexibility and cost savings for the seller. If a product does not sell well online you can pull the advertising (web page or minisite) instantly with very little cost to you outside of the actual time it took to build and test the web marketing effort. Or, since this type of page/minisite is so inexpensive to maintain and host… you can simply leave the pages online and take whatever orders trickle through… while you move on to the testing and promotion of new drop ship products.

The manufacturer benefits from this relationship by gaining a legion of active marketers promoting their products… at little or no cost (other than those small costs involved with supporting the marketer with online marketing materials like product images, sales materials, etc).

As a marketer you are looking for several key components in developing the dropship relationship with a source factory or distributor:

* High Quality Products

* Blanket Product Liability Insurance (if applicable)

* A clear guarantee and return policy

* High Quality Marketing Materials … product images (gifs, jpegs, etc.), selling copy, other suitable web graphics, etc.

* A Customer Service Department that will work with you to develop the best selling situation for you.

If you are a manufacturer seeking to expand distribution (or an inventor with a new product ) you will find the willingness to drop ship in single units will give you a strong competitive edge while you carve out increased market share at little cost.

If you are an online marketer interested in offering high profit products to your niche market (your website visitors) without incurring high frontend development or inventory costs… then drop shipping is for you.

Internet marketers are uniquely positioned to take profitable advantage of the drop ship arrangement and should give this system a serious look.

(c) Copyright 2005 Thom Reece All rights reserved

About The Author

Thom Reece is the CEO of OnLine Marketing Group, a direct response marketing agency with headquarters in Hawaii. He is the creator of the Online Marketing Resource Center [ http://www.ecomprofits.com ] & the major portal for the network marketing industry MaxxMLM.com [http://www.MaxxMLM.com ]. Thom can be reached by email at: thomATecomprofits.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 13

by Thom Reece