I used to have a regular 9 to 5 job before I started my eBay business. I have never looked back since. Selling on eBay has given me some great things.

I was able to be own my boss, work the hours that I wanted to, have financial, work less for more money.

The only thing I wished was that I was able to take the leap earlier. I could have called myself an entrepreneur much sooner. But I am thankful that for where I am now.

In this hub I'll be going over some of the steps I took to become and eBay powerseller. I'll be discussing how to avoid some of the silly mistakes that can kill a newbie eBay seller. Hope you enjoy it.

If you are interested to know what I used to learn the complete process of how to start an eBay business to become an eBay powerseller, check out selling on eBay squidoo lens.

I absolutely love getting Google Traffic. There's nothing quite like getting free traffic. With Google you are not only getting free traffic, but you are also getting free, targeted traffic.

In this case, it's even more targeted than the traffic you get from eBay. When people go to eBay directly, people tend to be more of the browsing variety. They might buy something, but many of them just want to kill a couple hours going from page to page, looking to see what's selling. It's the internet's version of the mall.

But when it comes to Google, most people just want the item now. That's why they are searching for it there. They want to be taken straight to it.

That's the beauty of Google Base Store Connector. It's free software that uploads all of your listings in your eBay store straight to Google. All your listings get indexed within Google and depending on the search term that an internet user searches for, you'll get a link straight to your listing on eBay from Google.

You can download Google Base Store Connector here.

You're going to need a PayPal account if you are planning to sell on eBay. The company has now made it a requirement that you at least offer PayPal as one of the payment options for buyers.

For those that don't know, eBay owns PayPal so this could be the reason why they are making PayPal a "mandatory" option for eBay sellers. But that's the rules and we have to follow them.

You can open an account with PayPal by going to paypal.com. It's fast and easy.

In all reality though, Paypal is by far the easiest option for sellers. It's instant. you've got your payment and the buyer doesn't have to send you a check or money order. You can even print out your USPS shipping labels straight from eBay so the buyer can technically buy your product, pay for it, and have it sent all on the same day.

I know if you have never sold on eBay it can feel like "ok, what exactly am I supposed to sell?"

Just start off the same way 99.9% of other people did on eBay. They sold all the stuff that's in their house. Go to your garage. I'm sure there you are practically overflowing with useless garbage that you don't need. The amazing thing about eBay is that someone is willing to pay money for what's considered useless garbage to you.

This is basically how eBay was bult. It's the perfect way to get used to the idea of listinh, packing, dealing with buyers. It's perfect because you're not pressured because it's not quite a business and you get the idea what the day to day routine would be when you start your real business.

If you're selling something that a hundred other people are selling on eBay, it can be hard to stick out in the midst of the masses but there are a couple of things you can with the title.

For starters, you'll notice that most other sellers either use ALL CAPS or just type regularly when the make a listing. For instance let's use an example of a John Grisham First Edition Book of the Firm. Most people will list the title like this:

The Firm by John Grisham First Edition Book

or

THE FIRM BY JOHN GRISHAM FIRST EDITION BOOK

This does nothing to make your listing stick out.

To give it a little more punch try mixing the CAPS so you accent the words you want to key in on. For example:

THE FIRM by John Grisham FIRST EDITION Book

You see how that keys in on the words that people want to see. It highlights your listing a little bit more than the others.

Another way to go is to throw in some adjectives and punctuation if you can fit it in the title. Remember use every possible space that eBay gives on the tite. For example use something like:

Rare! THE FIRM by John Grisham 1ST ED COLLECTORS ITEM!

Try something along those lines. You'll have to play around with it, until you get used to it. But the key thing is to make it different.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to listing an item on eBay. One is write A LOT about it. Write paragraphs and inject your personality into the listing. The other school of thought is just to be direct and tell them about the product. My personal opinion is the latter works best.

I say it works best for a couple of different reasons. First off when you have a full fledged eBay business, You're not going to be in the mood to write big long paragraphs about individual products a few thousand times. TRUST ME it gets tedious in a hurry.

The other reason why I like this method better is because it works. You've got to remember about the society we are in. We are an impatient group of people. It's sad but its true. Think about how many listings on eBay a buyer (or browser) must go through in an hour? It's got to be at least a few hundred. So, do you think that people are going to waste time reading a bunch of paragraphs about the product you're selling? NOPE!! because chances are there are other people selling that very same product, so why would they waste their time reading all that?

OK, so how would i actually list an item? Well, I'll use the example of the previous post with the First John Grisham Book "The Firm"

• The Firm
• FIRST EDITION

• Written by John Grisham

• Published by "name of publisher"
• Copyright "copyright year"
• "# of pages"
• Hardcover
• Book is in excellent used condition (or whatever condition it may be)
• No markings or tears on the pages
• Binding is strong

This should give you some idea how to list. You notice that I use bullets. There is very good reason for it. It's fast and easy to read. People can scroll through the entire listing quickly and easily from top to bottom. There is no reading involved. There aren't even sentences. Also, people are used to reading bullets. It's easy on the eyes.

Also you'll notice, that I bolded and put ALL CAPS on the FIRST EDITION part. It's simple reason for it. If there is something that makes your product unique, make it stick out more.

To see the exact step by step process I used to learn how to make money on eBay, make sure to check out my squidoo lens.

Well to my frustration and to eBay as well, there is one thing I notice bout sellers responding to e-mail: A good majority of sellers don't do it well. Either, they never respond or it takes them days to do so.

Now frankly, I don't really care if they are losing a sale over it. It doesn't affect me. But what happens is that people eventually stop coming to ebay because of this. Many people who have been scammed on eBay or been treated with poor customer service don't come back especially, if its their first transaction ever on eBay. Now something like this does affect me. That's a potential buyer who may never come back to eBay and see my store because they think all sellers treat their customers like this.

Listen, if you want have a successful eBay business ANSWER EMAILS. Not later or when you feel like it. This may work with your personal email or your yahoo email, but this is a business and should be treated as such.

Here is the kind of emails that I normally get:

Question about shipping cost to another country?

Question about combining shipping?

Specifics about a product?

Best offer questions?

Email from angry customer (it happens to everybody)

You think I answer any of these questions when I feel like it. NOPE!! I answer it the moment I see it on my messages screen. I suggest you do the same.

Look at the first three questions. These are all BUY questions. Every one of them. They are basically saying "if you answer me, I'll buy from you". So why on earth would you wait to answer these questions?

Not only are answering these questions quickly respectful to the potential buyer, but it doesn't give them any time to change their minds. It's like if someone walked onto a car lot, and said "I WILL BUY A CAR TODAY" and one of the car salesmen saying, "ok gimme 30 minutes, I'm at lunch." You see where I am getting at.

Now, let's talk about angry emails from customers. It happens to the best of us don't get angry. Just answer that email as fast as humanly possible. This is a guaranteed way to calm down the customer. Think about it from their perspective. They are probably thinking that the seller is going to just put off the email, because lets face it that's what normally happens when we send a complaint to a company. You either never hear back from them or it takes forever to get a respond. Don't be like one of those companies.

At the very least, the buyer will think that you care about their problem, being as that you answered so quickly.

So my point in all this, is whenever you get a work related eBay email. STOP WHATEVER IT IS YOU"RE DOING AND ANSWER THE EMAIL. I guarantee you success if you follow that instruction to the letter.

I can't even begin to tell you how many sales I get are tied into my email responses.

For whatever reason, I think some people don't quite understand that you NEED good photos of the product you are selling on eBay.

There was a time when it made no difference if the photos you took we're good or that you didn't even put photos on your listings. There was also a time when you could have probably sold a clothespin on eBay for $20.00. Times change and we must roll with the punches.

Evidently some sellers didn't get the memo. Sometimes. judging by the photos taken on eBay listings, it looks like the seller was heavily medicated when he snapped the picture. What makes it worse is that they previewed it and said "ah, that's good enough."

Taking good photos does 3 things that are important:

It makes you look like a professional. you know those catalogs, you get in the mail from target, Wal-Mart, etc... You ever look at the photos? They look good. It makes you want to go out and buy the item doesn't it? Now what would happen if those products were shot on polaroids in some dark basement. It obviously doesn't look as good and its a reflection on the company. I'm not saying you have to hire a word class photographer to take pictures of your products. Just make them look pleasant to the eye.

You provide the potential buyer with the closest alternative to touching the product. Everytime you buy something in the mall, don't you normally physically touch it first, whether it be clothes, a cellphone, etc.. You don't have to, but it definitely reconfirms your buying decision. Good photos are as close as the potential buyer is going to get to physically touching the product.

It increases sales (duh). This is obviously the most important thing. There is no real way of me knowing in actual figures the way excellent photos help my sales. But I can say this: I am constantly getting emails about how beautiful my products look. To be honest, I could make dog food look beautiful compared to the horrible photographs that you see on eBay.

It isn't hard to do. Anybody can do it.

I've noticed more and more people using the royalty photos on their eBay listings than taking the time to take real photos.

For those that don't know what royalty photos are, they are basically just the same photo that the manufacturer's and retail stores use. What people do is just copy those photos and put them on their eBay listing.

So for instance, if somebody was selling an XBOX 360, they would use the same photo that Microsoft or Wal-Mart uses on their websites.

It's not really that big of a deal, but I do encourage more people to take photos of the actual items you're selling.

For one thing, it makes your listing stick out a little. Think about all the people that are seeing the same exact photo over and over of the item. It becomes white noise after a while.

Also, people like to see the actual item they are getting. They want to know that what they are looking at is going to be theirs. If they can see that, they know that you time to take the photo and they can see with their own eyes the condition its in.

Again, this isn't exactly a big deal, just something that I've noticed in all my time on eBay.

Remember at all times this is a business. Keep saying that to yourself if you ever come across a customer that you'd wish would be thrown into a volcano.

The fun thing to say people like this is to "stick it where the sun don't shine", but that's not going to help your business at all. Find out what the problem is and try to show some empathy.

As always, answer the email as quickly as possible. Use phrases like "I'm sorry to hear about", " I apologize this has happened, or "it wasn't my intent to decieve you". Something like that. It just shows empathy and it calms down the buyer.

You never know what might eventually happen. That buyer could tell some of his friends about you and how helpful you were with the problem. It could actually lead to new customers.

It's kind of tricky deciding on what kind of refund policy to have for your eBay business. It really depends on the niche you're in, what kind of products you sell, the cost of shipping, etc..... But to give you an idea, this is what I use.

I do not offer refunds on products that are lost or damaged during shipment. I will NOT pay for the mistakes of the USPS. I offer shipping insurance on ALL of my listings. If the buyer doesn't purchase insurance, they run that risk, not me. I know this may sound harsh but I refuse to take a loss on $600 product just because the post office treats the package like a basketball. Insurance heals all wounds.

I only refund the purchase price (not shipping) if a buyer gets the item and they change their mind. "I don't want it anymore" is not a reasonable excuse that deserves a full refund. In a case like this, I'll give them a refund for the purchase price but not for the shipping, because that costs me out of pocket.

If something is my fault, and I will gladly offer full reimbursement including shipping. For instance, if I state that a bowl has no cracks, and when they receive it there is a small crack on the rim of the bowl, then Ithey can ship it back to me and I'll give them full reimbursement.

I know reading about refund policies isn't exactly thrilling, but it's a necessary part of running an eBay business. I suggest you come up with one that is easy for potential buyers to read so there is no cofusion later on.

This should be pretty obvious but for any sale, you should be shipping the next business day. I only say this because many people don't. Again, if eBay is just hobby for you that's fine. But if you plan on making a full time income then it has to be done.

You should state that on all your listings, if you don't already. You'd be quite surprised how much that will help your business. People have gotten used to being treated poorly by some eBay sellers. If they see that, then they can feel a lot more confident in buying.

And not only, is it great for the buyer, its great for you. If the buyer gets their package delivered quickly, you can rest assure that you're going to get postive feedback stating how quick the shipping. If you do it enough times, you'll build quite a nice reputation.