Nov 1, 2009

How to Sell Your Crafts on eBay




by: James Dillehay
Artists, craftspeople and photographers are successfully selling their wares everyday on the online auction site, eBay. According to a recent analysis of eBay sales, a crafts-related item is sold every nine seconds, a scrapbook item is sold every minute, and 40 cross-stitch items sell in an hour on eBay. Sales of craft items on eBay have grown almost 60 percent in the past year, according to TheBidFloor.com. 
 
But, at the same time, many would be sellers are listing their pieces for sale on auctions and getting no bids, concluding that eBay just doesn't work. 
 
Here are some tips from James Dillehay, craft artist, eBay seller and author of the new book, "Sell Your Crafts on eBay" (Warm Snow Publishers), on how to profitably sell your wares online: 
 
1. Anyone who can type and has access to the Internet can sell on eBay. But the creative person has an advantage on eBay when she turns that creativity toward researching overlooked opportunities. 
 
For example, during the months before Christmas, more than 3,000 Christmas items are sold every 24 hours on eBay. Research methods outlined in Sell Your Crafts on eBay showed that between February 12 and March 12 of this year, 4,107 auctions with 'Christmas ornament' in the title completed successfully at an average price of $17.34. Imagine how much more money a smart crafter can make all year long knowing how to ferret out this kind of information from eBay sales. 
 
2. A word's spelling impacts an item's profitability. For example, the word 'handmade,' spelled as one word, was part of 2,233 auction titles with an average closing price of $16.29. However, auction titles that included 'hand made' as two words were found in 1,358 listings, but with an average auction closing price higher, at $27.81, or $11.52 more profit per item. 
 
3. Go to eBay.com and find the search box. Type in the word or phrase that describes your art or craft item. Then scroll down the links on the left side of the page and click on the link for "completed items." Here, you'll be able to see the demand for this type of product. Do searches for your items every two to three weeks to chart buying patterns. 
 
4. Find out how much people are willing to pay for your wares. Click on the link that says "highest price." This will give you a list of completed auctions from highest priced items to lowest priced ones. You want to know what people are willing to pay for items like yours. If you can't make and sell your product for a profit, eBay might not be your marketplace. 
 
5. Determine how much money you'll make on your product. To determine your profitability, use the cost of your materials plus the cost of your labor plus the cost of your selling price, which should be the minimum price to recover your expenses. If it takes you eight hours to make a piece of jewelry and the highest priced similar item sells on eBay for $26, you won't make a profit. 
 
6. Look at the elements of successful sellers of products that are similar to yours. Examine their winning auction titles. Observe how much detail they use to describe their item. See if the seller used any of eBay's special features such as gallery photos or a bold, featured listing. Evaluate the starting price, starting day of the week, and duration of winning auctions. 
 
For more tips on how to sell your craft items on eBay, consult a resource book like "Sell Your Crafts on eBay," by James Dillehay. It offers-more than 200 easy-to-learn tactics and tips that help sell art, craft and theme-related items for a profit on eBay and on other online auction Web sites. 
 
About the author:
James Dillehay is a 20-year crafts veteran and nationally recognized expert on craft business. Author of eight books, his articles have helped readers of Family Circle, Better Homes & Gardens, Country Almanac, Working Mothers, The Crafts Report, Sunshine Artist, and many other magazines. James serves on the advisory boards to the National Craft Association and ArtisanStreet.com For more information, see http://www.craftmarketer.com
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How to sell second-hand books on eBay





by: Stephen Webb

You’ve sold all your junk. Emptied your attic. Sold your Grandmas antiques. What’s left to sell? How can you start making a more regular and reliable part-time income?


OK, selling unused stuff that has been hanging around your house is a great way to start your eBay trading.

Like most eBay traders you then probably check out places such as car boot sales, charity shops, thrift shops, garage sales etc. Again these are great places to pick up one off items and make a good profit on eBay.



The reason that you make a good profit is because the item that you are selling is fairly unique and there will be little if any competition in the eBay market place. One of the down sides of these ‘second-hand’ items is that they are all different, it’s difficult for you to specialise in one item, and they all require different types of eBay descriptions. They also require different sized and types of packaging. In fact, dealing in these types of items can turn into a full time job, very soon the fun aspect goes out the window.



Eventually, after being on eBay for a while and studying other sellers, you see that some people are getting a high feedback by repeatedly selling the same item, usually with the “Buy It Now” option. These are things such as DVDs, CDs, Videos, virtually any type of items that you can find in normal shops.



What these people are doing is buying the items in bulk from wholesalers and reselling at a profit on eBay. However, because everyone has access to the wholesalers, you will no longer have a unique product. This means that you will have competition which means much lower profits for you. I’ve seen some “eBay Power Sellers” that sell over 30 DVDs per day at about $3 each. That sounds like a lot of work and administration for probably not a huge profit.



It would be nice if you could find an item that is somewhere in between the above to ways of selling on eBay.



Would you be interested in an item that has the following benefits?


Currently over 4000 of these items sell each week on eBay, so it’s a big market.

You can pick up the items really cheap in most towns, you’ll even find them in those garage sales and thrift shops, but you’ve been ignoring them!


The items are all roughly the same size, so you can standardise on your packaging.

The mark up profits can be phenomenal, perhaps 200% to 800%.



The item that I make a great part time income from is second-hand books. OK don’t yawn, it may sound boring, but that boredom soon goes when I buy a book for around $20 and resell it on eBay for $80.



Each second-hand book is fairly unique, like selling junk, thus there is little competition and that means I can make a good profit. The main difficulty with selling second-hand books is knowing which ones sell for the most profit. For example you don’t want to buy books for $10 that can only be resold for $15. You could study eBay on a regular basis and make notes of what books are being sold for a high price. This would take you months of research and you would still have a limited list. Alternatively you could visit http://www.books2profit.com


About the author:

Stephen Webb is a freelance author for www.books2profit.comIf you would like to know more about selling second-hand books on eBay click this link:

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