Sloooow Times at eBay

The sale of information products on eBay continues to be slow, very very slow, and it’s not just for me. I don’t look at sellers of physical products, so I don’t know if it’s a universal slow-down because of the economy. I suspect that’s the case, tho; it’s hard to imagine there’s some universal “don’t buy ebooks from eBay” message out there!

I have been busy with other projects, so I haven’t been exactly on top of doing what I need to do for my eBay listings. Actually, I pared my listings down to just the products that have sold in the past and kept them just in the store. I really need to relist for auction, tweak the listings, and take more care of the categories I’m putting the listings into.

Problem is, it’s hard to get motivated when I see so many sellers doing all the right things and still only making a few sales per week, for most of them, not enough or barely enough to cover their fees.

I did note a few  weeks ago that I was looking into using classified ads, and there are some excellent guides out there about that. There are a lot of sellers using the ads to collect names for their lists by giving away free reports, presumably then being able to sell to that list later. You can also give away a report or sell it for just a few dollars, but have an upsell or two.

You need to start with good information and be prepared to do the follow-up, and that’s where I’m being lazy. Ideally, you start with a very good informative book, write a condensed version that you offer for a few dollars. You then collect the email information to add the buyer to your list and send upgrade offers. You only need to sell a few of the condensed versions to make up the $10 you’re spending with eBay for the ad, and you build your list.

Whatever happened to “make money easily from your computer without doing anything”? Were they lying to me?

I am working on a couple of books to add to Kindle. I believe the best format is html, because you can add clickable links for the table of contents (especially important for something like a cookbook), so there is some work involved. Some Kindle products are getting bad reviews because the seller just slaps up the PDF without any clickable links. Scrolling through pages and pages and pages on a Kindle is not a fun thing.

I am told the Internet Selling For Newbies free CD offer is almost gone, so if you’ve been thinking about taking advantage of the offer but haven’t acted yet, now is the time.

Back to work for me. Be well.