At the present time three of the most sought after items on eBay are Tickle Me Elmo, the Sony PlayStation 3, and the Nintendo Wii. People are doing crazy things and paying crazy amounts of money to get their hands on these items. As a result they appear on every list of hot sellers and numerous eBay experts are recommending them as a sure way to eBay riches. All three of these things have one important thing in common with nearly every product that finds its way onto a hot seller list.

It is next to impossible to find a source you can regularly buy the product at a price you can make a legitimate profit with. The average seller simply just cannot do it.

Now compare that with the product a young woman who I helped get started on eBay about seven months ago sells. It’s a product she makes herself at home. All the materials she needs can be purchased in one store and she can buy material for only one product or 500 or more products in one trip to that store.

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Over the next week I’m going to post a series of seven simple ebay tips that will provide readers with some simple ideas that can help eBay sellers focus on and grow their eBay business. None of these eBay tips require that you spend any money but, if applied to your eBay business, are sure to give your business a boost for the upcoming new year. The first tip is……

Setting Goals

Do you know where your eBay business is heading? To be more specific….

What do you want to accomplish with your eBay business over the next year? What about the next three years?

There’s an old saying that if you don’t know where you are going, you will never get there. The same holds true with your eBay business. Without goals your business is going nowhere.

Your goal may be something as simple as to list five items a day or something as grandiose as to earn a $250,000 durng the next year. What they currently are is not the important thing. What’s important is that you know what they are and that you be daily working to achieve them.

For some additional help with setting your eBay goals here’s some additional reading:

• Building A Strong Foundation For Your eBay Business - Part I
• Building A Strong Foundation For Your eBay Business - Part II
• Building A Strong Foundation For Your eBay Business - Part III

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Tom Murphy has listed links to several articles about what tools eBay sellers use for Week 2 of Carnival Of eBay Sellers. Stop on over and peruse this weeks articles. And, like last week, leave a comment while you’re there to let Tom know his work isn’t wasted.

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Links from my RSS reader to a few interesting tips and articles that may help improve the way you do business on eBay from the last month.

• Tom Murphy writes about QuickThumbnail, a neat little image resizing tool you may find useful
• Skip McGrath writes about how to make more money on eBay during the hot holiday season
• Trevor Ginn writes about starting low and ending high in eBay auctions
• Trevor Ginn writes about search engine optimization for eBay stores in an Auctionbytes article

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If you’ve been selling on eBay for very long you’ve probably come across a few services, tools, and utilities that you use to make listing and selling easier. I use several of them, but here are three of my favorites that I can’t imagine being without.

MarketWorks Auction Management Service

When I first started selling on eBay I used eBay’s own listing tools. It took me three weeks to realize there had to be a faster/easier way. I went looking for something that would streamline the process, and after stints with two other auction management services, I ended up with MarketWorks sometime in 1999. I’ve been using them ever since.

I originally started using MarketWorks because in 1999 they offered several time saving features I needed that weren’t offered by other management services. Today most, if not all, of those features are available with several other auction management services, but because of MarketWorks’ reliability it would take a lot for me to begin looking for a different service.

MarketWorks offers a lot of features that many eBay sellers may not use and as a result may not be for you. However, I recommend that anyone seriously selling on eBay give serious consideration to using one of the available online auction management services.

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This is a few hours early, but if you’re from the US I wanted to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

In about an hour, I’ll be picking up one of my granddaughters and we’ll be making the four hour drive to the Minneapolis/St.Paul area where we will spend Thanksgiving with my oldest son and his significant other. Since both Mike and Lisa are excellent cooks I plan to eat way too much turkey and the go-withs tomorrow and then relax in front of the TV watching a football game or two.

If you don’t live in the US, I invite you to join those of us who do and take a few minutes and reflect upon everything you have to be thankful for.

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PayPal is conducting a promotion to encourage online shoppers to use PayPal when doing their Christmas shopping online.

You can receive a $20 cash rebate directly from PayPal simply by registering by November 22 and then making a single online payment of $50 USD or more using your PayPal account.

Your purchase must meet the following requirements to qualify for this offer:

• Purchases must be made on eBay.com, eBay.ca or on merchants’ sites in the US or Canada.
• eBay.com and eBay.ca purchases must be made through the eBay checkout flow via the eBay website and must not be made through the PayPal send money tab.
• Purchases must be made between 11/23/06 12:01 PST and 12/31/06 11:59 PST.

The following transactions are excluded from this Cash Rebate offer:

• Send Money transactions
• Payments to Personal Accounts
• eBay payments made to Personal accounts
• Donations
• Text to Buy
• Payments for services

The Cash Rebate will be deposited into the participants’ PayPal accounts within 6 to 8 weeks after 12/31/06. Limit one registration and one $20 rebate per person and/or PayPal Account. Offer available for a limited time. Offer is limited to US and Canada registered users. PayPal conversion rates apply. PayPal account must be in good standing prior to and throughout the offer period to qualify.

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Tom Murphy has decided to shoulder the load to get what is probably the first blog carnival for eBay sellers ever off the ground and running at his PGA Auctions Blog.

If you’re not familiar with what a blog carnival is, Tom provides a definition from Wikipedia in the first edition of the Carnival which is:

“A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.”

This could turn into a treasure chest of ideas for eBay sellers so why not stop in at the Carnival Of eBay Sellers and take a look. While you’re there be sure to leave a comment so Tom knows his time and effort isn’t for nothing.

Better yet, if you blog about eBay, join in and help make it a success.

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