CHAPTER TWO ~ Making it Happen!

This step is much more interesting than the first. We are going to start shopping for products to sell for profit!

By using the Wholesale Sources contained in this package, you will be able to find sources for your products. Again, with the dropshippers, you don't need to buy the product before you sell it, but it costs a little more than buying in bulk. Some of the dropshippers charge a small fee for setting up an account with them, some do not. However, you may find a better selection at the ones who do. It's a great place to start your business, but as your capital increases, you may find yourself in search of quantity discounts from a wholesaler.

You may take a moment to browse around the wholesale sources, get a feel for what kinds of products you would like to sell. If there are any dropshippers or wholesalers that you would like to use who require you to open an account, let's take care of that now. If you are planning on making a purchase from a wholesaler, go ahead and take care of that now as well. The sooner you place your order, the sooner it will arrive.

Let's start filling your store!

This is where the action is; making your listings for your customer to see and making your items sell. We are going to learn the easiest and fastest way to make your auctions.

You can list your items on Ebay by using Ebay's standard listing form. The good news is that using it's free (other than Ebay's listing fees, of course).The problem is that it creates boring and generic ads. When you browse Ebay, it's quite obvious who does their listings this way. They do have some options however, that will allow you to make your auctions more attractive, but they do charge a fee for every listing.

Auction Tip: If you are going to be listing many items or plan on doing a lot of business, auction software is something you should be considering. There are a few great programs that will make your selling on Ebay life MUCH simpler. Turbo Lister is available from Ebay and is free. They also have a couple of others though while they do charge a small fee, the pay-back is well worth the investment.

The following instructions will use the standard Ebay auction listing creator as the reference. This will vary a little with users of auction management software but the basics are the same.

Listing your auctions from wholesalers and dropshippers the easy way:

1. Because the items you are listing were "sold" to you by an Internet site, I will assume that there was a Title, Description, and a Picture in an ad for the item on the wholesale/dropshippers web site. We are going to use these things as our template, or in there entirety for the listing. Please note that this is optional, you may write your own title, description, and take your own pictures for items from wholesalers. You obviously need to use the pictures from the dropshippers sites because you will never have had the item in your possession.
   
   
2. Click Here to open a new browser window that will take you to Ebay's listing page. It may ask for your log-in information first. We will start by filling our Ebay Store so choose "Sell in Store Inventory"
   
   
3. Now, open up your wholesale guide and navigate to the first item you will be listing for sale.
   
   
4. The first step on listing your auction is to pick a category. Choose one that is appropriate to the item you are selling.
   
   

   Auction Tip: Don't be afraid to try some alternate categories. Test the waters a little, sometimes the "appropriate" category gets cluttered with the same or similar items and by changing to a different category your sales can increase dramatically. Don't get carried away though. For example, don't list a bicycle in computer monitors. Ebay frowns on this.

   
   
5. Now, we need to enter the title. You can copy and paste the title from the wholesalers ad or create your own.
   
   

   Auction Tip: If you were a buyer, and you were searching for this particular item, what would you type into a search box? These are the words you want in your title so that people searching for it will find it. For Example: Levi/Levis 550 blue jeans/pants size 31/32 Your listing would show up in a search for "Levi jeans" as well as "Levis pants" etc. Also, when you have the room, use power words like: RARE, LIMITED EDITION, UNIQUE, ONE-OF-A-KIND, BEAUTIFUL, GREAT, UNBELIEVABLE, STUNNING, AWESOME, NEW We like to start or break up our title with ~ these ~ whenever we have extra room. For Example: RARE SPRINGSTEEN GUITAR-AWESOME! RARE SPRINGSTEEN GUITAR-AWESOME! RARE SPRINGSTEEN GUITAR-AWESOME! ~ RARE ~ Springsteen Guitar ~ AWESOME! RARE SPRINGSTEEN GUITAR-AWESOME! When your potential buyer is scrolling down a list of hundreds of items, anything that will set yours apart from the rest helps draw their eye to your ad. We suggest that you do not use all caps, they are much harder to read when you are skimming over something.

   
   
6. Subtitles are a new feature and basically allow you to get more information about your item on the main listings page. If you want to use them, use them as a short description or special things, like "30-day money back guarantee".
   
   
7. If your category uses item specifics, you will be able to choose them with pull down menus right below the subtitle entry box. Only select categories use them.
   
   
8. Now we will enter our description. Again, you can copy and paste the description from the wholesalers ad. This is the fastest way but you may want to ad to it, or alter it somehow to make it more exciting. Just copy and paste it into the box and change it any way you would like.
   
   

   Auction Tip: Use of HTML is allowed in the description so if you have knowledge of HTML, have fun! This is where auction management software really shines because it helps people with no knowledge of HTML to easily design beautiful ads.

   
   
9. The rest of the Ebay listing page will guide you through the process. Use the help topics on the right side if you don't understand a feature. Come back when you get to the pictures.
   
   
10. Pictures the easy way!
    On the web site where you found your item that you want to sell, there was a picture right? Make sure you are looking at the largest picture of the item available (some pictures get larger when you click on them, we want the larger one). Now, right click the picture and choose "save picture as......". Those of you with decent computer knowledge probably have a good feeling for the hierarchy window that pops up. Choose a location for your pictures and I suggest you make a new folder called "Ebay Pictures" or something like that. Give the picture a name that you will remember later. Those of you who are purchasing inventory from wholesalers, we highly recommend that you save any pictures of the items you want at the time of placing your order. If the wholesaler runs out of a particular item before you can list yours in your store, the picture may no longer be available on the wholesalers web site
    
    Those of you who are not quite so computer savvy are going to follow these simple directions:
    A) Right Click the picture and chose "save picture as........"
    B) Click on the little folder with the arrow on it at the top of the box that pops up until it says "desktop" in the little window to the left.
    C) Click on the folder with the star on it (we are going to make a new folder). A new folder should have appeared in the main window named "new folder"
    D) Type "Ebay Pictures" and press enter. This renamed your new folder.
    E) Now double click on the folder you just made named "Ebay Pictures". This will open that folder. The window at the top should say "Ebay Pictures"
    F) Now click "save".
    You did it! Next time you won't have to create the new folder so skip steps (C) and (D).
    
    
11. Now, on the listing page where it asks for your picture you will get the same window. Repeat steps (A), (B), and (E). This will put you in the folder that you saved your pictures in. If you can't remember the pictures name, click on the little window icon with the arrow pointing down to the right of the folder with the star on it; choose "thumbnail". This will show you a little preview of the pictures you have in your folder. Select the appropriate picture or pictures and that's it!
    
    
12. Follow the rest of the instructions from Ebay to finish your listing and then start on your next listing. Repeat these steps until you have all the items you wish to list in your Ebay Store.

You are now the proud owner of a great store full of new, quality items! Search engines like Google use a computer called a "Robot" that "Spiders" the web looking at web pages and then indexes them to appear in their searches. It can take up to 2-3 months for the robot to find your Ebay Store, so remember, business is only going to get better.

Now comes the tricky part. You need to list auctions in order to drive traffic to your Ebay store. Listing auctions costs a little more money than the store listings and they are only run for 3-10 days. They are needed however, because this is how people will find you and your great new store. We suggest you start by listing 10-20 of the items that you feel are most likely to sell. It's no fun to spend your profit on listing fees, however just because an item doesn't sell the first time you list it, don't decide to never list it again. If you sell an item once every 2-3 times you list it, you are doing great. Try changing the category or the title on an item that isn't selling as well as you think it should, sometimes this makes a world of difference. Once you find the items that are selling, continue adding more items to auction. The items that are not selling too well, just leave them in your store. After all, it is only costing you $.02 a month. Even if you only sell one every three months, you're still making a profit on it and the work has already been done anyway. Listing items in an auction is done the same way as listing in your store except you choose "Sell item at online Auction" or "Sell at a Fixed Price" instead of "Sell in Store Inventory".

When you get your store running smoothly and your auctions are all set up and doing well, you can open a new account and a new store targeting a different line of products. Because of how easy it is to run a dropshipping Ebay Store, you can easily handle 2-3 stores. So when your ready, just start back over at Chapter One.

Congratulations, you are now on your way to independent freedom!

We'd love to hear from you with any feedback or questions you may have. Do you know of something we missed and should be added to this guide? You may contact the author directly here.

Good luck on your endeavors!