Earlier this week, I had the extreme privilege of being interviewed by Dan Miller, author of 48 Days to the Work You Love, No More Dreaded Mondays, and co-author of
International shipping opens up a whole new world
There’s a whole world of buyers waiting for you when you offer your items for international sale. I shied away from selling internationally for a few years, just because I was afraid of what might happen.
When I took the leap, I realized that I had missed out on dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of sales because I let fear control me. Don’t let that happen to you! Over the past several months, I’ve sold more items outside the US than in — the market is there.
Start out by offering just one or two items available to international bidders. See how they go. Get your feet wet and then decide if it is right for you.
Ebay does a great job of making the process simple. The customs forms are mostly filled out with listing data. All you need to do is print, sign, date, and ship!
Stop waiting and go international!
How much is it worth?: Check the completed listings
The best way to determine whether something is worth selling or not is to check Ebay’s Completed Listings. You can determine how popular an item is based on how many listings there are, how many of them completed successfully, and what the average selling price was.
You can see the completed listings by signing in to your Ebay account and searching for your item. Then check the “Completed Listings” box to see recently ended listings.
You’ll see the actual results of recent listings. Now, take some time and look at the successful listings and see if there’s anything that looks like it might help get that sale and possibly raise the price. There might be good sales copy. There might be crystal clear, high-resolution images. Maybe it sold because free shipping was offered.
Next, take a look at some of the listings that weren’t successful. Was it missing a detailed description? Were questions left unanswered? Does the seller have poor feedback?
You can learn a ton just by paying attention to history. Give it a try!
Margin will make you or break you
Buy low, sell high, right? The only way to make money in business is to bring in more then goes out.
Before you decide to sell something, you need to figure out whether you can make money on it or not. How much did the product cost to acquire? How much will it cost to ship? How much will it cost to package it? How long will it take to write the listing, take pictures, and drop it in the mail?
You may not know all of this from the start, but pay attention and make sure you’re not spending so much time that you’re earning 12 cents per hour. You’re worth more than that.
Choose your items wisely and make sure you can earn what you’re worth.
