AuctionCUT - Auction and eBay Forum

auctionent · Member Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 28

If you ask many sellers what the major drawbacks to selling on eBay are then many would say the packaging and shipping of items. Who really wants to get up early in the morning before work to drop off a package at the post office? Or, to come home and have to rush to the post office in the freezing cold? Many sellers are now resorting to selling eBooks but that market is becoming over crowded and it’s very difficult to make any real money selling eBooks on eBay. In this article I reveal innovative products or services you can sell on eBay without packaging or shipping and it’s NOT eBooks.

Innovative Idea #1 – Sell Domain Names

Domain names can be bought for under $10 and if you manage to choose one that is in demand then you could go and sell it on eBay for $20 or more. You can easily locate these domains just by testing. It requires very little effort and sometimes you stumble upon hidden gems that you could go and sell on eBay for four figures!

Innovative Idea #2 – Sell Your Writing Services

The demand for eBooks and articles has never been greater. Many people want these written for them and if you have expert knowledge in a particular niche you could write eBooks on that subject for the highest bidder.

Innovative Idea #3 – Sell Your Graphic Design Ability

On the same lines as selling your writing services, you could sell your graphic design ability or web design skills. You could design eCovers, banners or websites to the highest bidder. You could learn these skills in just a few days and all you really need is a copy of Photoshop and maybe some action scripts.

Innovative Idea #5 – Sell Linking Space or Advertising Space on Your Website or in Your Newsletter

Perhaps the method that requires the least effort is selling linking space or advertising space. If you have a website with high amounts of traffic or a high Google page rank, then you could sell links or space on your website for adverts. A one way link is very important in terms of search engine ranking and your link could greatly benefit your buyer. You could charge perhaps $10 for a link for one month. After the sale you could then ask the buyer if they would like to buy the link on a monthly basis and they can pay you $10 every month. This is great for residual income.

Similarly, you could sell advertising space in your newsletter or ezine. If you have a large subscription base then you could charge a lot of money for this. For even more money, you could charge buyers for a solo ad to your subscribers. You could promote their product in one of your newsletters and you could easily charge 10c for every subscriber you have.

Innovative Idea #6 – Sell Software

There have been many software products which have taken eBay by storm over the last few months. Some sellers make thousands of dollars per week selling software that they have created or have had created for them. You can hire software developers from websites such as elance.com or rentacoder.com to develop the product and then you sell it. The software should speed up a process or take over from a manual task that needs doing or assist the user in some way, whether it be helping them research better or create things quicker.

Innovative Idea #7 – Sell Keyword Lists

One person I know has a lot of success creating keyword lists and selling them on eBay. The beautiful thing is you can use software to create keyword lists in seconds and then sell them to your buyers.

Innovative Idea #8 – Sell Websites

It’s not hard to build websites nowadays and there are many that you could build. You could build one with the primary source of income being adsense and affiliate sales and you could build another purely for sales of products. You can build these types of sites in under a day or hire someone else to do them for you and then sell them for $20 - $30 on eBay.

Innovative Idea #9 – Sell Your Manual Services and Skills

There are many things you could do for this innovative idea. Firstly, you could manually submit people’s articles to article directories, you could post on their blog, you could submit their site to directories or you could do the whole site promotion for them.

Innovative Idea #10 – Sell Website and Auction Templates

You could design and sell templates to your auction buyers, particularly auction templates. This is an area that few people are currently exploiting and you could easily take advantage of this gap in the market.

Innovative Idea #11 – Sell Wholesale and Dropshipping Lists

This method has proved to be very profitable for me when selling on eBay. It’s simple to set up wholesale lists aswell. Firstly, you need to join a wholesaler’s directory. Once you have joined, decide on a topic to base your wholesale list. For example, DVD’s or clothes etc. Once you have decided, compile all the wholesale sources from that directory related to the category you chose into a Microsoft Word document.

Let’s say for your wholesale list subject you chose DVD’s. Many sellers would be inclined to list their item with the auction title “The Ultimate DVD Wholesale List 2006”. But that method doesn’t work. Very few people search for the keyword, DVD, and even if that keyword was searched regularly, you would still be up against HUGE competition. You need to focus your marketing!

Choose a high profile newly released movie and include that in your auction title. For example, “The Da Vinci Code at Wholesale Prices” Many buyers wil be looking to buy that product and would be desperate to find a way to save money somewhere along the lines. You could also put the auction title “The Da Vinci Code – 80% Off” but only if you have numerical data to prove it.

Constantly change the auction title to keep up with the new movies and use the eBay pulse to determine which movies are searched for the most.

Always feature your wholesale list auction and play around with different auction titles.

Once you have one wholesale list ready for sale, you can move onto creating another one.

There are a few ideas for products you could sell for higher prices than eBooks and without the packaging or shipping. Admittedly, some do require a little work but it’s something different. Make sure you don’t sell too low though if it takes effort to perform the service.

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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 02 Aug 2005 Posts: 717

An excellent post. Thxs Auctionent

auctionent · Member Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 28

Wow, thanks Mark, I didn't expect to make the stickies with my first post Smile

Thanks a lot

modric · Contributor Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 12

Hey, auctionent, did you try to sell any services you mentioned by yourself? Did it work?
There is a good collection of services listed in your article. I know that they are all traded on some big webmaster-related forums and I know that the business goes smooth...

auctionent · Member Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 28

Hey

I have sold many of the services myself. I've most successfully sold wholesale lists. I create niche wholesale lists and then sell them on eBay.

I also used to sell resale rights software and auction and website templates. I'll be writing an eBook about creating and selling wholesale lists in the next few months and also about a unique way of making money giving away free websites.

Of the other ideas, I have not yet sold them. I will be selling linking space on my site soon and have always looked at selling domain names. I do know some sellers who are very successful selling domain names however and another seller who makes a fair bit of money selling keywords.

Thanks, James

sgllocal · Contributor Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 12

also lets not forget ebooks. these can make you a nice living on the net and ebay. i know a few sellers who are doing well out of it. and the best bit is there r no trips to the post office to post them and its all run automated. ebooks are the way forward if you know how.

i sell ebooks on sites and ebay and do well from it.

auctionent · Member Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 28

Hi Sgllocal

The purpose of the article was because of the over crowding of the eBay eBook market. There are still ways to make money selling eBooks however, but not on the front-end. Here's another article I've written about how to maximise your eBay eBook profits on the backend.

Squeeze an Extra $8 From Every eBay eBook Sale

Yes, it may not sound possible but it is. You can squeeze an average of an extra $8 from every single one of your eBay eBook sales completely legally, on auto-pilot and it benefits you and your customer. Here’s how you do it.

So, you’ve sold an eBook on eBay and you now need a way of your customer to be able to download or somehow receive their purchase. The majority of sellers would send them an e-mail with the product as an attachment but that leads to a high number of failed e-mail sends and could result in negative feedback. Other sellers would send them an e-mail with a link to a direct download page such as www.yourwebsite.com/ebook.zip. But that starts the download automatically and that leaves no potential for backend income. To really maximise the power of this method requires two steps.

Firstly, the thank you e-mail. You need to e-mail your buyer after their purchase thanking them and directing them to the download page, but not just the download page. You can also direct them to the home page of your website, to products for sale on your website, to your other eBay auctions and to products you are an affiliate of. Don’t include links to all of these in one e-mail. You should mix and match between customers. This way your buyers are directed to pages where they could potentially spend more money and put more money in your back pocket. At the end of the e-mail include a link to a download page where they can download their purchase, but do not send them to a direct download. Send them to an actual webpage where they have to click to start the download.

You can automate this entire process using My Digital Dispatch

http://www.auction-enterprise.com/mydd.html

Why should I send them to a webpage, wouldn’t it be more simple to just send them to the direct download?

Maybe, but it wouldn’t be one tenth as profitable because if you follow these steps on what to put on the download page then you will see the money roll in.

On your download page you should put a link to download the product most obviously.

Secondly, a form where they can sign up to your newsletter. Many say that a subscriber is worth approximately $1 per month to the list owner.

You can start building your mailing list using aWeber Communications

Thirdly, include Adsense ads. These could be in the form of Google Adsense or Yahoo Ads. If anyone clicks on these adverts then you as the website owner will earn a small fee. This could be anywhere from a couple of cents to a couple of dollars.

Fourthly, include a link to a product that your customer may also be interested in. This could be a product you have written yourself, a product you are reselling or an affiliate product. Make sure it is similar to the original eBook you sold on eBay as you know the customer is interested in this subject. The customer has been pre-qualified and this enables you to achieve a higher visitor to sales conversion rate.

Click the link to see a real life version of a highly profitable download page.

http://www.auction-enterprise.com/subscribers.html

In my experience this technique normally produces an extra $8 for me for every visitor however it is hard to monitor the success. I hope you are now creating your download pages and are excited by the potential profits you could be earning on complete auto-pilot.

sgllocal · Contributor Joined: 27 Oct 2006 Posts: 12

yeh i know all the above and was just saying lol tht ebooks still work. i personally use ebay for their digital delivery system. no need to buy software tht does it if ebay now do it.. i have seen and heard of mydd but i prefer the ebay way with a plug of another site in the winnign emails and thank you emails. i also use about me page too plug other things and tht works to

k700 · Power Member Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Posts: 146

auctionent · Member Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 28

Thanks K700

I've written a lot more eBay guides and you can check them out at http://www.auction-enterprise.com/articles.html

Sorry for the messy site design. I'm in the process of designing a more professionl and tidy one.

PS. Hope this is not considered SPAM.

Thanks, James

sausage · Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 2:54 pm Post subject:

Excellent post. Thank you.

Wink

expitlad · Power Member Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 103

Hi Auctionent

Very useful info on your site....
Thanks

FreelanceWriter · Contributor Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 12 Location: Canada

Wow! I wasn't expecting an article like that. It's great! I've been using ebay for about 2 years now and know a lot of stuff about it, but this article gave me more information.

adeel-chowdhry · Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:55 am Post subject:

Most ebayer sell the same old crappy ebooks.

I have found tons of sellers making over $2k selling ebooks. You can simply find them and duplicate their business.

ADEEL CHOWDHRY

kwazycool · Contributor Joined: 06 Jun 2007 Posts: 5

Great article! I never knew you could sell this kinda stuff on ebay! My mind is definetly boggling with massive selling ideas..woohoo!