Make your own Website

It is easy to make your own website. In the early days of website creation it was easy to create a website using Notepad or some other simple text editor. All you needed to know were a few tags. Paragraphs were marked by <p> and headings were opened with variations on <H1> and closed with variations on </H1>. While these tags are still part of website creation, they are basic building block, not the whole structure.

If you want to make your own website, you can buy an expensive program but the learning curve will be high. You can use programs you already have such as MS Word – or of course, that old standby, Notepad. You can also find free website programs online and try them.

What I did when I wanted to make my own website, way back in the early days of website creation I used to look at the page source for websites I liked and use that as a guide to making a site that had the same kind of colors or same kind of layout.

Regardless of what approach you take, there are steps that you need to take before you begin making your own website. The first step is to have a plan. To have a software program to create a website and no plan is like having a word-processing program and expecting that will write a novel for you. In both cases, yes the programs will help you but they will not do the work for you. You need to have an idea of what you want your site to be all about.

Here are some basics hints for having a good solid plan for your website:

Create a simple home page that leads to your topics pages.
It is better to have 10 really good topic (or content) pages than 100 junk pages
Keep each page short so people don’t have to scroll down to read
Make sure each page has a button that takes you back to the home page
Use good navigation so that people can find their way around the site
Keep your website focused – if it is about making money, then don’t get into talking about your hobbies
Use small fast-loading photos

The bottom line is that people will spend about six seconds before they fly away from your site. If they like what they see they will give you a few more seconds. If you offer them interesting information, they might even come back

Internet Web Site Design Tips

In the old days internet web site design was a mystery to many people. Then over the last 10 years or so programs came out that allowed just about anyone to create a web site with minimal background in web site design.

There is a catch though. Software might allow you to be able to do your own internet web site design. You will be able to create tables and headings and insert graphics and type in text. You will also be able to color the background and the text. You might even be able to install special efforts such as mouse over and fade ins.

But if you don’t know the rules of good internet web site design, your efforts are wasted. You can stay up all night for a week working on your site but if it is not efficient, appealing, and useful, you might as well have slept or watched television for a week. Actually it’s even worse than that. You might have done damage to your business by having an amateurish web site design.

Here are some basic guidelines for a good internet web site design because you only have one chance to make a good first impression.

Rule #1. Keep it simple. Look at Google. How much more plain could a site be. However, if you are offering information, you might need more on your page than Google has. Do not jam a lot of stuff on one page. People don’t like to scroll down several times and they don’t like to be overwhelmed by too many links and images.

Rule #2. Make it easy to navigate. Don’t change the design from page to page so that people have to look around to find out how to get to the next page and don’t hide the links in tiny print at the bottom on the page.

Rule #3. Be careful with color. Get a color wheel – there are some online that you can check out for free – and choose colors that are complementary. Also, be very careful about the contrast between the background and the text. No one is going to struggle to see your words and if they do, they will be frustrated.

Rule #4. Content is king. It’s a worn out old phrase but if you have not managed to drive people away with a cluttered unreadable site, then you are halfway home. But now that they are willing to look at your site, what will they read? Make sure you have lots of interesting content.

These are four basic rules that will allow you to get the best that you can out of your web site.

4 Effective Tips on Choosing a Web Builder

Hiring someone to build your websites costs considerably more than building it yourself. But it can be a good way to quickly get your site online and start doing business, especially if the site you intend to build is relatively complex or you need to implement an ecommerce solution. Obviously, if you decide to hire a web builder, then you will want to make sure that the website designer specializes in the skills you require.

Templates and design options take all of the work out of designing your own website. There are many website builders on the internet that will allow you, for free, to simply pick and choose different templates, fonts, and colors and have your web page basically created for you. All you have to do is upload your information and pictures and in just a few minutes you will have a well designed and fully functioning website.

There are now more and more websites that are popping up just for he sake of advertisements. You need to have a site that can wheedle out from the multitude of sites that can have the same niche as yours. Having a professionally done website will set your site apart and people would take your site more seriously than the others, thus providing more traffic and more revenues.

Generally speaking, you need to consider two things to hire a web builder: what you want and what a web builder can give you. This should always be your guide in choosing. Aside from that you can break down those guides and have these four tips that can effectively help you to choose the right website builder for you and your needs.

1) Assess your priorities. To create an online store with product database needs years of experience and expertise from a web developer. You don’t have to know to do these things whether you want them and how much money you have to spend on them.

2) Next, think ahead a little bit. Do you have the knowledge to host your own web server, or would you like someone else to worry about that? Can you maintain the site once it’s built, or will you need help? Web developers offer a variety of long term service and support options, including web hosting and maintenance agreements.

3) Do your homework before you approach a web builder firm. Many websites include links to the companies that built them. If a particular site catches your attention, find out who created it. As a rule, you’ll want to deal with firms that have a local office. Even though the web is an international medium, you don’t want to pursue a long distance relationship with a web builder.

4) Once you’ve selected a few design candidates, check their work and their references carefully. Don’t judge a web builder just on the size or importance of its clients, decide whether a firm has experience creating the kind of site that you need.

Essentially, the website builder you choose must be someone you can personally work with. If you feel a little strain and some problems in communicating with them your ideas, they are not the right one for you. Communication is the key, you need to be on the level with each other and understand each other well.

Using Easy and Affordable Online Website Builder

Over the years, the internet has proven to be an effective solution that transforms the way we do business. It doesn’t matter if you are selling a product or a service. The Internet can help you in reaching markets that had otherwise been unreachable in the past.

Before, many businesses especially start ups as well as small to mid size businesses, having a website that includes the usual E-commerce capabilities is just not in their budget.

Constructing merchant accounts and secure servers can get quite costly. Building a website may also mean encountering errors and severe time consumptions. Which is why, you must hire or use an online website builder. But what is an online website builder? Is there any affordable online website builder out there?

Well, an online website builder is an organization or software that can help you build your own web sites. It is also true that you can find a lot of online website builders, which offers affordable prices for guiding you in building your own website.

An affordable online website builder can guide you step-by-step through every aspect of setting up your own web site. One good thing about an affordable online website builder is that it guides your imagination and creativity without making you expenses higher.

It may sound impossible, but you may find an affordable online website builder that can help you create your own web site within minutes. It can also help you create professionally designed web sites that can astound your potential customers or web surfers.

An online website builder can also help you in controlling how each page is laid out and what elements on it look like. An online website builder can provide its users with options about color scheme, page layout, kinds of pages you want. They can give you with different codes that will help you make your web pages snappier or more captivating.

You can also use an online website builder without any time-consuming classes. With the help of an affordable online website builder you can create a website even if you don’t have any knowledge about HTML. You can create websites without programming skills and web site designing skills.

An online website builder can provide you with graphic design and website building solutions to improve the capabilities of your sites. You pick the look you want and the features you want; pick some pictures, write some text, and that's it.

If you are building an e commerce website, an online website builder can also help you automate billing, invoice handling, accounting, and report generation tools to make your web sites easier to manage and handle sales.

An online website builder usually has options that can help you in expanding your web site and present a business-like appearance to your potential clients.

These affordable online website builder options usually include shopping cart, ecommerce, secure server certificates, business email, and subscriber management.

It’s a good thing that the Internet offers easy ways of finding an affordable online website builder. All you have to do is to use a reliable online search engine and put the word “web site builder”, then presto, you’ll have a wide list of online website builders. With all these, what can you ask for? Go ahead and build yourself a website.

The Importance of Building a Professional Web Site

There are various requirements in building a professional web site. The best part of building a web site is that everything you need is available for free in the internet. There is no need for any huge amount of money to spend on expensive software packages and programming manuals. Plus, there are loads of simple tutorials to guide and assist novice web designers.

Nevertheless, some basic knowledge are required like computer skills, access to a personal computer, internet access, a free HTML editor which is an important web page construction tool and of course a place on the internet to publish the web site.

Building a professional web site offer countless benefits provided of course that goals are set and are clearly defined. The goals set would be the focus of the content as well as the design of the web site. More and more people are building personal web sites to promote business, social, cultural and other objectives which they deem is significant not only to themselves but also to others.

Skills and knowledge of web page development can help and assist in developing careers and business. Most of the businesses today have taken part of their operation online not only to provide their business with additional exposure but also to share corporate information with other businesses. The used of the internet in communication has become a valuable tool for most business owners as well as entrepreneurs.

Building a professional web site is also a way of generating additional income. This additional income is the result of publishing interesting pages that entice a large number of visitors to purchase goods or services or even buy an advertising space on the web site.

Nonetheless, it seems that some web owners have not really fully comprehend the benefits that may be derived from building a professional web site since there are a huge number of poorly designed web sites which just seems to congest the internet with meaningless information that does not contain any clear objectives.

Building a professional web site is very important in providing a business with a good image. Knowing exactly the purpose and the objective of the web site will enable visitors to appreciate the web site. Mood is also an important factor to be considered in building a professional web site. The mood depends on the theme of the web site and should be maintained all throughout the site.

Textual content is also a part in building a professional web site. The content of the web site must be able to add value and should provide visitors with relevant information to entice them to visit again the site. The contents are also written based on the objectives of the web site. Likewise, never forget to double check the spelling as well as the grammar since there are no rooms for flaws in building a professional web site.

Creating contents for a professional web site is very much different from writing for example for a newspaper. The difference lies on the application of multimedia capabilities. Graphics, music, video and photos may also be included on the web site to make it even more interesting. However it is important not to overdo it or else the web site will no longer be effective in retaining the interest of visitors. Aside from that, using too much graphics may slows down the downloading time and when this happens web visitors are likely to leave and never to return again.

The Benefits and Advantages of Using an Online Website Builder

Building and creating your own website is not as easy as it seems. Aside from the all-important knowledge about web designing and programming, you will need some website building tools and utilities. If you want to have a well crafted professional looking site then you will need to know much more than the basics of website building.

To create a high impact web designs with the most user-friendly features and easy accessibility for your visitors, you will have to spend a lot of time studying and learning how to incorporate these features to your site. For some people, this would not be advisable, that is why they turn to an online website builder.

Why?

Because this saves a lot of time in having to learn about web designing and web building. Also, you can still give it a personal touch by being a part of the creative process. An online website builder gathers information first from you about what kind of site you want and what it is for. Ideas are exchanged until you get the perfect website for your purposes. An online website builder allows you to create a website, with the help of experienced professionals, through the Internet.

There are many benefits a person can get from using an online website builder.

An online website builder will help you create an impressive website complete with animations and effects, all shown in an attractive and eye-catching layout presentation. You can do this without the necessity of upfront face-to-face meetings and discussions. The website has every information you need and all you need to do is choose from there the designs and features you want.

Here are some of the basic reasons why the an online website builder can be very beneficial for you:

1) An online website builder is easy to use with interactive and fully functional web site building tools and applications.

2) It is designed to help you create an impressive and quality website within minutes; no matter how novice you are in the field of web designing.

3) There is no more need for you to learn coding or programming languages. Why bother when the online website builder tool offered available on their site can help you create your most-coveted web site in an instant.

4) Every penny is worth the pay once you get your professional looking site online.

An online website builder is the tool any budding webmaster needs for a fast and easy website building project.

Take note though, before you can go all out in building your custom website – it is vital that you consider first the 3 essential aspects of website building:

1) Do you know how your website will look like? 2) Do you have the tools and materials needed to make your website? And lastly, 3) Professional help for those “just in case” situations.

Having an idea of how you want your website to look is the first step to creating the web site you want – from homepage down to site page functionalities. Even if you do not have any idea as to how you will turn your website ideas into realization, as long as you know what it is that you want for your site, then you are on the right track.

Next are the tools and materials necessary for creating your website. This is very important especially if you want your site to be customized according to your business. And third, a professional help ready at hand in case you get lost within your designing project. Take heart once this happens since, even the most experienced web designer does make mistakes once in a while. Once you did also, it would be great if online help is immediately available to extend a helping hand.

Learn to Make your Own Websites the EASY and FUN Way!

Why bother with designers and programmers who charge way too much just for creating a website when you can make your own website. With all the right tools, expert assistance nearby that will rescue you when the occasion calls for it, the willingness to learn new things such as how to create a website – a little creativity and ingenuity can go a long way.

There are lots of websites that feature online building, design and launching of your sites on the web. They feature custom domain names, customized websites tailored for personal or business use (complete with shopping carts and ecommerce traffic solutions) and acquiring of legal visitor information once they log in to your sites. While there are also web development companies that promise to handle all the details involved in website creation – from design and development down to launching on the web. But the catch is: you have to hire them for the job.

Well, here is the good news: would you believe if you find a website that lets you build, and would even assist you, in building professionally designed websites in minutes? Yeah, sounds too good to be true huh?

Actually, it really is true.

Tic Tac Websites offer you more than what you have bargained for with their easy online website builder that lets even novices and beginners like you to build your very own, fully functional websites. Their online website builder has all the advanced and easy-to-use features that will help you to be on your way to creating the kind of website you wanted without necessarily having to feel burdened with the price.

The Following are Some of the Key Pointers Why You should Go for Tic Tac Websites:

1) Predefined web site templates and designs that you can also customize to fit your needs. The site’s website builder comes equipped with editing and customizing features that enables you to choose from more than a thousand designs at their database.
2) Appropriate page layouts created by the real pros in website building that lets you just drag-and-drop your images to where they should be; helping you to create that elegant and professionally designed website you will be proud to show off.
3) User-friendly interface designed for a hassle-free experience, which will surely be loved by the learner in you.
4) And, programming tools that lets you use your own photos and images.

Likewise, there will be no need for you to make additional purchases for needed software, no need to learn codes and programming languages, and no need to see your expenses escalate to a soaring amount.

Whoever said that you need to learn programming languages, html coding, domain registry and other whatnot-essentials in website creation, surely have not heard of the website-making tools available online like the ones featured in Tic Tac Websites for newbie’s and learners alike.

Basically, all that you need is to be creative and imaginative as you can be, having an image or vision of what you want your website to look like is definitely a step nearer to transforming it to reality. Likewise, openness to experimentation and willingness to learn are plus factors too since without these, you will look at the activity of making your own website as – a task. And a hard one at that too. Once you have this, go all out with it; and with the help of website builder software, you will be amazed with the results.

With Tic Tac websites, you will learn to make your own website the easy and fun way.

What a Personal Web Page Template Can Offer You

A personal web site is a web site that contains personal contents. These personal contents must exhibit personal thoughts, ideas, interests, hobbies, family, friends, feelings or about anything which the web owner feel so strongly about. However, creating a personal web site is not at all easy especially for those who have very limited knowledge when it comes to web development. Aside from that, great creativity is required in order to come up with a web site that is interesting enough to entice people to regularly visit the site.

A personal web site seldom advertises or offers a business. It mostly includes an online diary, self-written books, poems, pictures of family and pets as well as containing pages about certain personal favorite topics such as sports and hobbies. It may also include a page that provides advices and help to other people with topics concerning health, love, beauty and many more.

Why start a personal web site?

There are so many reasons why more and more people are launching their own personal sites. Some of them make use of their personal sites to create extra money by advertising companies as well as other businesses on their personal sites. Aside from that, personal web sites are also avenues for sharing hobbies with other people that may have a similar interest with that of the web owner.

A personal web site is also an excellent way of sharing some of your treasured family photos with other people. Most of the individuals that share family photos are those that want to share their joy with other people. It is also an ideal method of keeping in touch with some of your relatives from across the miles.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that once private information are divulged online there will always be the risk that a search engine will be able to pick up the site. When this happen everyone that is connected online may be able to view and access your site. To prevent such from happening it would be best to restrict any access to some of your personal information that is of course if you prefer to restrict access.

The problem is, not everyone has the necessary skills to make or create their own personal website. The solution? Personal web page templates that are available in a multitude of online web page building sites that are abounding in the internet.

For those individuals who do not have the knowledge as well as the creativity but still wants to have a web site of their own anyway, a personal web page template is an excellent option. There are so many providers online that offer downloadable personal web page templates either for free or for sale. These downloadable personal web page templates are available in various designs to suit diverse customers.

The personal web page templates possess attractive designs as well as some neat and elegant layouts that reflect professionalism and vitality. Aside from that, downloadable personal web page templates save time and effort since it eliminates unnecessary hassles involved in web development.

Moreover, adding some personal text may also customize these downloadable personal web page templates. By simply following the easy to use customization guide online that usually comes with any personal template download; any individual may have their very own unique web site that would effectively reflect their personality.

Plus there’s more…

These personal web page templates may also be upgraded to meet the latest development and advancement in today’s technology. And the good news is, this updates are easy and affordable. All one has to do is to choose from among the selections of professionally designed personal web page templates and viola! You will have a new and improved personal web page.

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So You Want to be an eBay Seller

The No Regrets Method of Getting Started with eBay

If you think eBay might be a good place to make some extra cash, then you’re right. With 157 million shoppers, and 100,000 new users each day, eBay is a hot market. It is an excellent place for potential sellers of all experience levels to quickly and inexpensively set up shop. The user-friendly environment makes it a great place for the budding entrepreneur to learn the ropes while taking very little financial risk.

This report will provide tips and warnings of potential pitfalls that will assist you in setting up your account, listing your first auctions, filling orders, and following up with your new customers so they come back and buy from you again. Following these instructions will lay a solid foundation for the long-term success of your new eBay venture.

Setting up Your Seller Account

There are two important things you should consider prior to setting up your eBay seller account. The first is what email address you will use, and the second is what your User ID will be.

You should avoid using a free email address for your account if at all possible. The best solution is to use an email address on your own domain, the second best solution is one with your internet service provider (ISP), and the final and lest favorable solution is to use a free email address such as hotmail, yahoo mail, or gmail. I recommend using separate email addresses on the same domain for your eBay and PayPal accounts (we’ll talk about PayPal later). This will help you keep your auction and payment communications separate.

You should think carefully about your User ID prior to registering with eBay. You are going to want to “brand” yourself in a way that your customers remember and recognize you. Your eBay User ID is an important element of the branding process. You are free to change your User ID later, however this is not advisable if you can avoid it. Changing your User ID may result in your customers not being able to find your auctions later.

When selecting your brand or User ID, you should consider what you will be selling and what image you want to present to your customers. If you already have another business that your eBay business will tie into, then you will want your eBay User ID to reflect that. In that case your ID should probably be your existing business name, or an abbreviated version of it.

If you will be selling primarily collectibles, then your eBay User ID should reflect that in some way. If your focus is cheap items in general, then your ID should emphasize cheap (my first eBay User ID was 99_cent_guy, and all of my auctions started at 99 cents). If you’re going to specialize in college textbooks, then your ID should indicate that in some way. Ensuring that your User ID reflects what you sell will assist greatly in ensuring that existing and potential customers are able to find you when they want to purchase what you are selling.

The use of website addresses (URLs) and email addresses in eBay User IDs is prohibited. I have personally found a way around this by using an asterisk before and after the URL (*www.yourgreatestyear.com*), however doing this could result in eBay requiring a change to the User ID.

Setting up a PayPal Account

The more payment options you offer potential customers, the more sales you will make. PayPal is the standard method of electronic payment on eBay, and many eBay’ers use PayPal accounts as their “mad money” accounts. If you don’t offer PayPal as a payment option, you will never make a sale to these people. PayPal is also the easiest way for you to accept credit cards and electronic checks as payment for your auctions. PayPal and eBay have tracking mechanisms that interact with each other in a way that makes managing sales, payments, and shipping a breeze.

You should set up a PayPal account as soon as possible, because the verification process may take a few days. At a minimum you should offer check, money order, and PayPal as payment options on all of your auctions. (However, you shouldn’t accept checks from foreign bidders.) You can set up a PayPal account at www.PayPal.com.

Deciding What You’ll Sell

While the online garage sale approach can be profitable, you are likely to have more success on eBay if you specialize in a particular type of product. Your customers will learn to associate your specialty with your User ID, and will remember you when they are shopping for those types of products again.

You should start by exploring your areas of personal interest. What are you an expert at, and what do you enjoy doing in your spare time? Simply answering those two questions is often enough to identify a niche that could be a goldmine for you. After answering those questions, conduct a search of both active and completed auctions to see what related products are in demand and bringing a price that will adequately pay for your time.

It is important to note that if a lot of products in your chosen specialty are going unsold, or are selling at well below their value, then you need to find a different specialty. Spend as much time on this as necessary. Diving into a market blind could result in a big investment with little return and a lot of unsold items collecting dust in your garage.

If you’re having trouble identifying a niche, just take a look around your house. Do you have lots of old books or record albums? Look them up on eBay and see what they’re selling for. Go ahead and auction some to test the waters. Do you have old collectibles, Christmas ornaments, or china boxed up and in storage? Dig it out and research it on eBay. You may have thousands of dollars in your attic and not even know it. And exploring what you have in your house could reveal a hot product that you might otherwise not have thought of.

Are there products manufactured in your area that you can buy wholesale and pick up locally? By not having to pay freight, you may be able to undercut competing sellers. Explore everything you can think of and research it fully against what is selling and what it’s selling for before diving in head first. This will save you a lot of money and frustration later.

Building a Reputation

Your biggest obstacle to selling at the outset is going to be that you have no transaction history on eBay. Buyers have no reason to trust you. And the best indicator of whether or not they should trust you to deliver what you promise is your feedback rating.

This is how eBay describes feedback ratings:

Feedback ratings are used to determine each member's feedback score. A positive rating adds 1 to the score, a negative rating decreases it by 1, and a neutral rating has no impact. The higher the feedback score, the more positive ratings they've received from members. However, a member can increase or decrease another member's score by only 1 no matter how many transactions they share.

There are two ways to quickly build feedback while you are establishing your new eBay business. One is to make purchases, and the other is to sell inexpensive things that bidders are willing to risk a couple of dollars on. You should achieve a feedback rating of no less than 25 before listing items in your specialty (unless you can sell some cheap items in that niche). Doing so will bring more bids and higher selling prices when you list those items.

When exploring eBay for bargains to build your feedback, you might think about picking up some business or success books. These are tax deductible for you as a business owner. One book that every business owner should read at least once a year is “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. You should be able to pick it up for five or six dollars, including shipping. Be wary of shipping costs while bidding, by the way. Always decide the most you are willing to pay for an item prior to bidding, subtract the shipping cost, and bid no higher than the difference between those two figures. You might also look for some books about selling on eBay, or a recent edition of “Taxes for Dummies.” If you haven’t received feedback by the time you receive your item in the mail, first leave feedback for the seller, then send them an email informing them that you received the item, posted feedback for them, and ask them to post feedback for you as well.

Another quick way to build feedback is by bidding on penny auctions that have no shipping fees associated with them. These are usually placed by sellers trying to recruit bidders into a business opportunity. Listing these types of auctions is against eBay’s policies, and many will be closed before the auction ends. However you should be able to gain at least a couple of feedbacks a week by bidding on them. Use the advance search feature to ferret them out. Search for the terms “no shipping,” “free shipping,” “free auction” or something similar in the auction description, and only search auctions that are between one and three cents. Sort the results to display the auctions ending soonest, and bid on the ones ending in the next couple of days. Make sure you don’t win more than one from the same seller, as only the first feedback from each member will count in your rating.

We also mentioned selling some cheap items that bidders will be willing to risk a couple of bucks on. Small paperback books or other items around your house that are inexpensive to ship work well for this. Mark the shipping up by about a dollar more than it will actually cost to ship your item, and start the bidding at a penny. Even if the item only sells for a penny, you will probably break even on the auction after you pay your eBay and PayPal fees. Remember, this is about building feedback, and not about making money (yet).

Your Auction Listings

The best way to learn about the best way to list your auctions is by analyzing auction listings for items that are the same or similar to what you are selling. Try searching eBay for completed auctions of exactly the same item you are selling, sort the list by price (descending), and study the listings for the items that sold for the highest price. Observe the similarities between the words in the auction title, similarities in the auction descriptions, what categories the auctions were listed in, how pictures were used, whether or not there were gallery pictures, the shipping costs, and what day of the week and times the auctions were listed and closed. Analyzing this information will give you the best information on how to get the highest price for your item.

When listing an item, you should try to put yourself in the mind of your customer. Think about what search terms your customer would use when looking for your product. Those terms should be used in your auction title and description.

Auctions for items such as collectibles, clothing, and jewelry should always include pictures. Again, observe completed actions for similar items to see how pictures were used in the most successful auctions. Items such as office supplies or paperback novels do not necessarily need an accompanying picture, though it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Ensure you are charging an appropriate amount for shipping. You will lose money by undercharging, and you will lose bidders by overcharging. For expensive items, you should require insurance, and include that cost in your shipping price. Marking your shipping up by a dollar or a dollar fifty will help defray the cost of your shipping supplies and auction fees.

Pricing your items can be tricky. You don’t want an item to sell for less than you paid for it, but by starting the bid too high the item may end up actually selling for less than if you had started the bidding lower. If you are selling an item that has resulted in a sale in nearly all of the completed auctions for that item, then you are safe in starting the bidding low. Demand is high, so you item is very likely to sell. Starting the bidding low will draw more bidders. More people bidding against each other on your auction will ultimately drive the price higher. If you want to make a quick sale, you can often use the Buy It Now feature, and price Buy It Now at a couple of dollars less than the average completed auction price of like items.

Don’t buy features such as bold, highlight, or border. The extra cost of these items is generally more than the feature will increase the selling price of your item. After you are more experience, you may want to try featured auctions, but it is expensive so use it with caution.

After you gain some experience you will also want to try using html in your auctions, the free listing software Turbo Lister, or a third party auction manager.

Shipping Your Items

You should always use quality packing materials to ensure the item reaches your customer undamaged, and you should also ship the item promptly to ensure the customer is satisfied and will purchase from you again.

Always charge for insurance on items you think will sell for more than $50. Don’t give the bidder the choice of whether they want to insure. Just charge for it in the shipping and make it a requirement. If you are shipping via UPS, your item is automatically insured for $100 at no additional cost.

Become intimately familiar with different methods of shipping, the associated costs, and the speed at which the shipping method will get the item to your customer. Becoming an expert in shipping methods will save you a lot of money, time and grief. It will also result in happy customers.

Include some kind of promotional material with every shipment. This can be a flyer for your eBay business with your User ID displayed prominently, it can be a brochure and order form for items related to what you shipped, or it can be promotional material for another related business you may own. You can even include promotional material for someone else’s business, and charge them to include it the packages you ship.

There is no need to ship daily. Set a schedule of two or three shipping days a week, and stick to that. Shipping every day will wasted valuable time that can be used for other tasks.

Following up With Your Customers

At a minimum, you should send three emails to every customer. The first is to congratulate them on winning the auction, and instructing them on how to make payment. The second communication is to let them know their item has been shipped, how it was shipped (USPS, UPS, Fed-Ex), and to remind them to look at your other auctions. The third email should be sent several days after you expect they should have received their item. Thank them for purchasing from you, tell them you want to ensure they received their item, tell them you have left them positive feedback, request that they leave feedback for you, and remind them again to look at your other auctions.

You should also capture the contact information of every customer and use it for further follow-ups. Capture every piece of information you have access to: name, email, physical address, and phone number. Send all of your customers an occasional email reminding them that they purchased from you before, and that you have more items up for auction. You can even include links to your current auctions in the email. Once or twice a year, send them a postcard. This will put you well ahead of your competition.

You are now armed with the information you need to get started on eBay. You will learn much more by actually doing this than by simply reading about it, so go ahead and get started. You have all the information you need to successfully sell on eBay.

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