The Best ways to stand out selling on eBay, Bonanzle or anywhere else online

November 8, 11:37 AMAuctions and Antiques ExaminerWalt AuctionWally

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                    Brand yourself

This article is not a "how to" sell online piece. There is plenty of that kind of content out there from myself and other authors if you wish to learn the ins and outs of eBay or other online selling platforms.

This is for those of you who are already selling online and want to know how to increase sales. 

These days with all the competition you have facing you as a seller you really need to do some things to stand out and stay ahead of the pack, or at least keep up with the pack.

Here are my best tips for doing just that.

• Sell unique items or common items on unique terms: Back in the day, there were a lot of people making money with drop shipping. Now there are so many people doing it, it's virtually impossible to carve our a niche with any product line unless you stand out. But if you sell unique items such as antiques, collectibles or other hard to find items, your sell through rate will go up. The rub is of course, they're hard to find.
• Sell on your own site: Don't be intimidated by this concept, and please, don't go out and get ripped off by someone who charges $3000.00 to set up a website for you. Start with the basics. For the sake of time, I won't go into the zillions of great reasons to have your own website, but if you delve into the Web presence of nearly all successful sellers, you'll see that they all have their own sites.  Even if you only start a blog and mention that you have a product line, you must have your own site these days.
• Brand yourself: You'll notice my name online is AuctionWally. That's my brand. Branding yourself is the #1 way to stand out online. People can copy your products, services, sell in the same places and even steal your ideas, but no one can steal your brand. That is you. No matter what kind of bumps you hit, you'll always have your brand, no one can take it away from you. Building a good brand is money in the bank. Your brand should be something that defines you, is easy for people to remember, is easy to spell and preferably will work in a URL.
• Link Love: If you have a blog, linking to other relevant sites will give your readers more resources to dig through. They'll appreciate it and  come back. But not only that, when you start linking to sites that provide good quality content a funny thing happens, those sites and their readers start linking to you! This is word of mouth on steroids!
• Read and listen to the experts: I've been selling for more than 25 years, I'm an expert in the antiques and auction world, but  I follow about 15 different blogs, 20 different podcasts and I learn something new from every post. It's easy to think you don't have time to study or follow the gurus in the business, the truth is, if you respect your time, you need to constantly be learning. Podcasts are especially useful if your busy. Because a podcast is completely portable, you can listen to them when doing eBay shipping, driving, exercising and other activities.
• Take part in the conversation: Become part of the community of social selling networks and contribute when you have value to add to the conversation. Most of these venues allow you to link back to your own site, and people will visit it if you have something smart to say. If you don't have a lot of time for this, I suggest you at least get up and running on Twitter, the social texting network. You only have 140 characters to get a quick, concise shout out. 
• Get a house list together:  If you don't have this  basic tool  at your disposal, are you really in business? A house list is a simple contact list of people who have done business with you in the past and new people who have requested information about your product or service. There are no better prospects for doing business than the contacts on your house list.
• Sell multi-channel - You've really got to sell in at least 2 places these days if your spending more than 10 hours a week selling online. I'd suggest eBay and Bonanzle make a great combo. I know you know what eBay is, let me explain a bit about Bonanzle. Bonanzle.com is a selling platform that's so easy to sell on, you can list an item in 60 seconds! You get a booth to set yourself up in, and a realtime chat tool to use in your booth. People can buy from you in realtime as they visit your booth, or place an order at any time. It's a set price platform, not an auction venue. I'm set up there as AuctionWally because I'm a firm believer in branding, so I use the same selling ID every place I sell. Bonanzle is no eBay, but a lot of business is being done there, there are no listing fees and the back end fees are much lower than eBay's.
• Get a business logo:  This follows the philosphy of branding yourself. These days it's cheap and easy to have a graphic designer whip up a unique and attractive logo for you if you can't do it yourself. Feel free to contact me for recommended graphic designers.
• Pay attention on the weekend: This is by far, the busiest time on the Internet, mind your store and your emails closely on the weekend.
• Get a good feedreader and learn how to use it:  The possibilities are endless when you enter something like Craigslist "wanted" posts into your Google Reader, or any other feedreader. Nearly all important content on the Internet has a feed these days, and it's no wonder, it's an extremely effective and simple tool that will save you a lot of time.
• Pay once in a while: A lot of people give an awful lot out for free on the Internet, but the law of Karma applies. Once in a while, support one of the folks that give so much by hitting the donate button on their site or by actually purchasing one of their premium products. If you like what they give away, your bound to LOVE what they sell. It keeps them in business and it helps to increase productivity and the quality which benefits all of us. This is all part of the "Value Added First" marketing mentality that works so well. Who safer to buy from than some who's content you already know you like?  The Internet content producer you donate to may have lost their full time job last week, or may be a stay-at-home mom who produces quality content between meals. These are people just like you and me with faith that their hard work will pay off some day. Support your community!

Thanks for reading,

AW

                   What's it Worth?

 Test your antiques knowledge: Can you guess how much the sterling silver candy dish to the right is worth? Click on the link below to see how close you came!