Online auctions like Ebay are providing a good income for many people who choose to work at home and earn some extra money. Here are some tips to ensure your success.

Work out a business plan, nothing flash, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you've spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget.

Deciding what to sell can be difficult when you are totally new to all this. The most important of these is to always sell what you know about or what you enjoy selling. If you try to sell something that you just don't know anything about then you'll never complete a good auction description and sell it for a good price. Once you have a list, do some research on ebay and find out how popular these items are and what they have sold for. If this is encouraging, try to find some suppliers you can buy some from, but start small, you don't want a garage full of stock that you can't sell.

Watch the competition. Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.

Never compromise on the quality of customer service, and ask your buyers to give you feedback. If the items that you sell are everything that you said they would be, and you offer great customer service, you can expect wonderful feedback-and this feedback will help a great deal in your future auctions.

So often auctions have very little product information, the seller just makes no effort, don't be like this. Do some research online and provide as much detail ans you would like if you were the buyer.

Pictures. It's worth taking the time to photograph your items, especially if you have a digital camera. If you get serious about eBay but don't have a camera, then you will probably want to invest in one at some point and maybe even a small light box, this will greatly enhance the quality of your pictures.

Potentials buyers may be put off by high shipping prices. Don't sell the item for a low price, and then increase the shipping cost to compensate. Find the lowest shipping prices available, and consider paying for the shipping yourself if it won't cut into your profits too much. Do not charge handling fees.

Package items correctly. Your wrapping should be professional for the best impression: use appropriately sized envelopes or parcels, wrap the item in bubble wrap to stop it from getting damaged, and print labels instead of hand-writing addresses.

Ship promptly with items packaged securely to avoid shipment damage. Show that you care about the item enough to have it arrive in the same condition it was in the description which induced the bidder to purchase it.

Email buyers. Send a brief email when transactions go through thanking then for buying, and then follow this up with a note thanking them for the payment and letting them know when they can expect delivery. You will be surprised how many problems you will avoid just by communicating this way.

Automate: Once you start making money, invest in some software that can help make the listing process easier and faster, this will free up your time to focus on customer service or finding new products.

Never give up: Even when it looks like it's all going wrong, don't stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you'll almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.