Secrets of the eBay

160 Secrets of the eBay Millionaires
Marjie and her husband have added a mini-warehouse to their home
where Marjie can work and access merchandise when she needs it. Her
husband and son help with the photography, and they gather the items
to be shipped every afternoon so Marjie can pack them up. Marjie is at
her computer many hours a day, so she’s able to answer e-mail questions
instantly. If a payment is received by 3 p.m., she promises to ship the item
that same day.
Someone at a large corporation once told me, “I don’t understand how
you people on the Internet can compete with ‘real’ stores.” She was referring
to traditional, brick-and-mortar retailers. She didn’t “get it.” PowerSellers
like Marjie Smith do. They can do better precisely because they don’t have
the overhead of running a brick-and-mortar store or the burden of having to
manage and pay employees. They can connect individually with customers
and provide customer service that can go beyond what shoppers would
receive in a “big box” store.
“Take the Good from the Good Sellers
and Make It Your Own”
You don’t need to invent the wheel when you become a PowerSeller. Marjie
Smith advises new sellers to learn by example. That’s what she did herself. She
studied the kinds of merchandise that sell well on eBay, and she learned how to
sell individual items and set up a store by learning from successful sellers.
“Take all the good qualities from all the good sellers you see—those
sellers who have high feedback and who are doing well—and make it
your own,” she says. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We stress
customer service, for instance. See what you like yourself about the last
transaction you had. What did you like about the way the seller handled the
transaction? Try to do that yourself when you are the seller.”
You may like the way a particular seller handles a sales description, but
that doesn’t mean you should copy his or her images. Buyers may recognize
the copied images and lose trust in you. It also doesn’t mean you should copy the sales
description word for word, especially when the seller whose work you are lifting is
providing personal opinions about an item that doesn’t apply to you or your item.
Let’s follow Marjie’s advice and see what we can learn about how she
sells on eBay. First, you can take a look at her feedback in the Feedback
Forum to see if there are any patterns that people appreciate. You read
comments like the ones shown in Table 8-1: