However, as good as eBay is, it’s not for everyone – with restrictions on what can be sold and rising fees, a small business using eBay as a means of selling products can cost quite a bit extra, depending on sales levels. Thankfully there are a few alternatives to eBay, with some options more effective than others.

Online Auction Sites
As well as eBay, there are a host of other online auction sites. These range from small sites to ones that at least equal eBay in terms of size and users. Some of the more popular ones include Amazon Auctions, Bidz.com and Auction Addict. There are literally hundreds of online auction sites now – for an updated list just type “Online Auctions” into Google and you’ll see some of the more popular ones.

Classifieds
Another way to sell online is via classifieds. Just like you’d advertise in the newspaper, you can do the same online. The big difference here is that may of the classified sites are free of charge, which can save you quite a bit in editorial charges. Some are more popular than others, as well as being more effective. The most-used at the moment include Yahoo Classifieds and Craigslist. The latter in particular has grown quickly over the last couple of years, due in no small part that it’s free and its ability to target your own specific metropolitan area.

Social Networking Sites
The explosion in popularity of social media in the last 2-3 years has seen an unprecedented opportunity to use this new medium. Websites like Facebook and MySpace offer an instant potential customer base that runs into the hundreds of millions, and a relaxation of the rules and regulations means that these sites now allow you to post classified adverts to sell your products. And with the likes of Squidoo and Zubby.com showing that the social network phenomenon is continuing to grow, there are more opportunities springing up every day.

Niche Product Sites
If you sell products in a certain niche, there are a few sites where you can set up your own shop. For instance, if you sell craft items, you can sell on sites like Handmade Catalog . If you sell antiques or collectibles, set up a shop on Ruby Lane . These are just a couple – you can find online “malls” for these and many other product categories as well.

As well as these alternatives, there are also other ways to sell online. Obviously there’s your own website, but if this isn’t an option, you can also find details on police and government auctions. You can also just set up a simple blog and sell stuff from there, using nothing more than a PayPal account for your transactions. Whichever you decide is best for you, at least you know there are alternatives to eBay for you.

The top reasons eBay sellers fail

They don’t accept credit cards or Paypal � Not accepting Paypal is pretty much a death wish for any eBay seller. Paypal is convenient, easy, and most eBay buyers and sellers use it. If you plan on selling on eBay, sign up for free at Paypal.com.

They have low or poor feedback � Buyers are many times hesitant to buy from sellers with a low feedback rating, especially for high-priced items. If you are new to eBay, then you will begin with zero feedback. In order to get your business off the ground, you should purchase some inexpensive items in order to boost your rating. Once you have a positive rating of 10-15, you’ll be ready to start selling!

They don’t include pictures � With so many auctions to choose from, it’s no wonder the ones with no pictures get overlooked. Pictures allow your customers to see exactly what it is they are bidding on (even if they are familiar with the item).

They have poor titles/descriptions � It’s imperative that your auction title contains all the relevant keywords because that is how most eBay buyers will find you � by doing a keyword search through eBay’s auction titles. However, once a potential buyer is on your page, it will be your description that will convince them to either bid or not bid on your auction. Successful eBayers know that a product description should be 1) descriptive and detailed, yet concise and 2) grammatically correct and error free. Reread your auction page before you submit it to eBay.

They list in the wrong category � Many times, eBay buyers will find products by searching product categories. If you listed your product in the wrong category, you might miss out on some buyers! The best way to choose your product’s category is by searching for similar products on eBay and seeing what category those products are listed in. If you think there is more than one relevant category for your product, then you may want to list in multiple categories.

They charge too much for shipping � eBay provides a free shipping calculator, so buyers can quickly see if a seller is overcharging for shipping. You’ll find that most of eBay’s powersellers offer actual shipping costs, with no (or very low) handling charges built in.

They give the wrong pricing options � New sellers on eBay are sometimes hesitant to start an auction at a low price without the reserve option, so they either list a high starting price or a low price with reserve. Both of those options are mistakes. Buyers get hooked into auctions with low starting prices and then end up staying until the end. Seasoned buyers know that the reserve price is basically the same thing as a hidden high starting price, and they may be wary of sellers who use that bid option. Take a look at any of the Powersellers – they are the most successful sellers on eBay and they know what they’re doing; their auctions start low with no reserve.

They don’t respond to questions � A good way to lose a bid is to ignore potential buyers’ questions. You should answer questions as soon as possible in order to keep potential buyers interested and instill their confidence in you.

There is definitely still a wide-open playing field for sellers on eBay, but in order to succeed, you need to avoid the mistakes of those who failed before you and follow the lead of eBay’s Powersellers. Good luck!

That’s why it’s so important to master the art of taking professional auction photos.
If you’re serious about selling on eBay, you need to purchase a digital camera. The one exception would be if you’re selling an item that can be effectively scanned on a flatbed scanner, such as books, magazines, DVD’s, CD’s, etc. Most other items will be best reproduced by using a digital camera.

Finding a good digital camera is not cost prohibitive these days, as prices are rapidly coming down. I would suggest reading up on the different options on the Internet and doing some price comparisons on eBay as well as the shopping comparison sites. This will be well worth the time investment. In addition, you may want to consider purchasing a tripod, particularly if your hand is shaky when holding a camera.

I would choose a corner of a room to set up a small area for photographing your items. Move a large table into the room and use this as your base for photographing your auction items. You’re going to need to avoid shadows and glare. To do this, you can purchase a photo cube at your local camera store. These are very effective in blocking out unsightly reflections and shadows.

You should also purchase a light to use with your photo cube. Since the cube is translucent, it will diffuse any light that enters it, making it necessary to have only one light source. Visit a reputable camera dealer and let them know what you’re going to be photographing so they can help you choose the most appropriate light.

In general, the more photos you include in your auction listing, the more money your auction will generate. Here are some photo tips that will help you generate higher sales:

1. Take multiple photos from all angles. Show not only the good, but also any dents, scratches, or imperfections.

2. Always use good lighting. If you don’t have a photo cube and light available, use natural light. Avoid using the flash feature on your camera.

3. Use close up photos whenever possible. Not only do they look more appealing, but they also make the buyer feel confident that they’re seeing all of the flaws.

4. Once you have your photos, use photo editing software to make any corrections to your photos. I would suggest cropping as much of the surrounding background out of the photo as possible. This creates a more appealing picture. You can also do any necessary light or color correction using photo editing software. One free photo editing software you can use that’s available online is called Picasa.

5. Always have a simple background for your photos. The best way to do this is to use a neutral background that contrasts with your object. Avoid having any other props, distractions, or patterns in your photograph. You want the attention to be focused on the item you’re selling.

6. Consider using your ISP to host your auction photos. You can save quite a bit of money this way since eBay charges for any additional photos beyond the first one.

Now that you know the secrets of taking great photos, put them into practice and watch your bids sore to new heights.

Start Early
If you look at the most successful magazines, they always plan their big stories 8-12 weeks ahead of publication. That’s the same kind of approach you should take you’re your holiday sales on eBay. Start advertising in October for Christmas sales, January for Valentine’s Day, February for Easter, and so on. It can make all the difference.

Organize your Suppliers
If you have products that you get in bulk from suppliers, make sure they’re ready to provide you with everything you need. The last thing you want is for your popular Christmas gift to run out of stock because your supplier provided more to a competitor. Make sure you’re top of their list.

Promote Seasonal Products
This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many sales eBay stores miss out on this simple equation. If you’re a jewelry store, and you have little elf earrings, promote them at Christmas. If you’re a chocolate fountain seller, promote them for Valentine’s Day and Easter. Taking time to promote the right products at the right time can mean the difference between good sales and sky-high sales.

Use the Buy It Now option
Although eBay is known for the great deals you get from bidding, the Buy It Now option is becoming just as popular. Allowing buyers to make an instant purchase, it’s a very useful tool for holiday sales. After all, it’s like the equivalent of an “impulse buy”, and on top of that, no one wants to wait for bidding to end on a holiday gift.

Free Shipping
Okay, so it might cost you a little but the benefits of free shipping are worth it. The extra buyers will boost your sales, and combined with the Buy It Now feature, you can pretty much guarantee your eBay holiday sales success.

Use PayPal
The preferred choice of payment for the majority of eBay buyers, PayPal is easy and convenient, yet there are still sellers who prefer credit cards. While this may be easier to manage in the long run, if you want to maximize your holiday sales then offering PayPal as an option is a must. Payment is immediate, and because of that, shipping the goods can start right away. Quicker shipping will lead to more sales, especially around Christmas.

Change your Theme
Although you might have a slick and professional storefront at the minute, why not make it even more inviting during the holidays? Have Santa Claus welcoming buyers at Christmas, or the Easter Bunny at Easter. Anything that can tie your store into the holidays will make it all the more attractive for buyers, and the sales should reflect that.

Getting set up through eBay isn’t that difficult either. eBay offers a great resource called the Seller Onramp . Through telephone consulting, the Seller Onramp provides some pretty valuable information pertaining to selling strategies. The strategies teach a person how to gain many more customers and move items that are slow selling. Best of all, it’s a free service. They also offer great advice on topics like writing your listings, the best time to place an item up for bidding, and many more things you should know. Research has shown that those business owners involved in Seller Onramp move more items, gain more customers, and make more money than other eBay sellers.

You don’t have to worry, even if you’ve never visited eBay before. Their tools, such as the Merchant eCommerce Solutions Center, can help. This program shows business owners how to set up stores on eBay, how to sell efficiently and successfully, and different strategies.

Another benefit of migrating your business to eBay is the protection of PayPal payments. When someone confirms that they are going to purchase an item, the transaction can be completed through PayPal. It is a secure site where customers can feel safe entering their credit card information, and you will be sure that you will get the payment. You can even print custom shipping labels from PayPal for your eBay customers with the click of a button.

Placing your products in the right category on eBay allows your listings to reach a target market of people who are specifically searching for what you are selling. This is valuable to you as a merchant, because only people who are truly interested in purchasing the things that you have for sell will usually visit your site.

Among the many tools available to you through eBay automatic invoices, receipts and statements from eBay. You even have marketing tools – if you want to keep your customers up to date, eBay has a great option where you can send a newsletter to the people that you choose.

The greatest thing about migrating your offline business to eBay is this: with your offline store, you are closed nights, maybe weekends, holidays, etc. You also have to be there in your store to make money. With an eBay store, you are selling constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You are selling whether you are online or offline, rain or shine. The benefits are just too huge not to be taken advantage of.

If you are a new seller, my first piece of advice is to clean out your garage or attic. You need to gain some experience selling before you go off and purchase a large lot of wholesale merchandise.

Start by selling used goods, small appliances, wedding gifts you never use, old books (non-fiction one are best), used sporting goods, clothing items (that great leather jacket that doesn’t fit you any more or that pair of cowboy boots you bought on your business trip to Dallas, but never wear). The experience you gain will be invaluable, you will not risk any capital or make any investment beyond some small eBay fees.

Virtually everything is for sale on eBay. One night while watching the sport of Curling during the Winter Olympics, I though a curling stone would make an attractive doorstop and conversation piece for my office. During the commercial I went on line to eBay and found dozens of curling stones for sale. One of them now holds the door open to our billiard room.

Next turn to your hobbies and interests. Too many sellers think the only way to make a fortune is to buy hundreds of the latest hot selling items and put up dozens of auctions. The problem is that hundreds of other sellers are doing the same thing. (If you don’t believe me do a search for diet pills, or cell phone boosters) As you gain experience you can move into these markets, but this area is fraught with danger for the new seller. There are plenty of companies with enough money to import these items directly by the thousands and undersell anyone who buys through a distributor or wholesaler.

Sell something you know something about. Almost everyone collects "something." If you are knowledgeable about a collectible or an art object, then you have the ability to do the research to find the products at prices you can resell.

Once you gain experience try to focus on larger dollar items. If you only make $2.00 profit per sale, you have to close (and ship) 1000 auctions per month to make $2,000.

Another technique is to sell items in bulk. If you bought a large box of videotapes at a garage sale, separate them into categories and sell them as a lot. You will often make more money than selling them individually. This can also work for clothing. There are sellers that buy children’s clothing from garage sales, sort it by size and gender and sell it in lots. One of my neighbors does this. She will typically pay between $3 to $6 total for several pieces of clothing that she can get over $20 for on eBay. She does the same thing with closeout dealers. She will buy a pallet load of new children’s clothing, sort it by size and sell it in lots of 5 or 10 pieces. Although she might make slightly more selling the pieces individually, this way they sell quicker, the average sale is larger and she turns her inventory over many time more often than she could otherwise.

On eBay seller I know purchases large lots of the hot selling items on eBay (cell phone boosters, pocket knives, etc.) and turns around and sells them in lots of 10 or 25 to other eBayers who want to buy for resale. He recently imported 50,000 disposable cigarette lighters from Korea that he bought for about 11 cents each. He sold them on eBay in lots of 500 for 36 cents each. He made $125 on each lot less his eBay fees. I asked him who was buying the lighters and he said that most of his buyers were flea market, gas station and convenience store owners who sold the lighters over the counter for 99 cents each.

Everyone wants to sell computers, software, movies, DVD’s, digital cameras and all sorts of consumer electronics. The sad fact is that SONY, Panasonic, Canon, and others don’t sell their latest hottest products to small dealers who work out of their home. (In fact they don’t sell anything except through their master distributors.) Even the big stores have trouble getting a large allocation of really hot products.

It is possible to get into this business if you have a lot of market and product knowledge (such as you work in a computer store) and you have the contacts to buy the merchandise. The problem is that you are competing with major retailers, some who sell under their own name and others who sell under blind usernames. One way you can succeed selling consumer electronics is with overstock and closeout merchandise. Millions of dollars worth of consumer electronics, computers and software are sold by closeout dealers every week. The trick is to really know what you are buying and to be able to work on small margins and turn your inventory over often. Unfortunately it takes quite a bit of capital investment to compete in this arena.

There is also a huge market on eBay for "vintage" hi-fi equipment, cameras, old computers and computer hardware and so on. Last year I found an Akai Reel-to-reel tape deck at a garage sale for $25 and the seller threw in 10 reels of tape. I sold the deck on eBay for just under $200 and sold the 10 reels of tape separately in another auction for $30. I met one of eBay’s product managers last year at the first eBay Live event in Anaheim. She sells vintage Apple computers, parts and software. She buys almost all of it at garage sales, flea markets and thrift stores.

Drop shipping is another strategy used by new sellers. I hesitate to recommend working with drop shippers because so many of them are not very reliable.

The problem with drop shipping is that your feedback is on the line. If the drop shipper is temporarily out of stock or somehow screws up your order — it is your feedback that will suffer. When you are starting out just one or two negative feedback comments can set your back months. Also the merchandise available from most drop shippers is very common and being sold by hundreds of other sellers.

If you are really strapped for cash, you can use a drop shipper temporarily. As soon as you can afford it however, I would start buying wholesale from direct wholesalers and/or distributors. You will make more money and have greater control over your business.

When I am asked, "what should I sell," I am usually also asked what are the best selling items on eBay. I.e. hot sellers.

Here is a list of the currently hot selling items on eBay. This is not a recommendation of what to sell. Each of these product areas is fraught with its own perils.

* Diet Pills
* Nutritional Sex Enhancers
* Cell Phone Boosters
* Pheromone scents
* Glass chess sets
* Low cost jewelry
* Expensive watches and jewelry
* Heirloom jewelry
* Used toys in good condition
* New and used clothing for children and plus-sized clothing for women
* Western wear such as cowboy boots, belts, shirts, leather vests, etc.
* Software (including closed-out or last year’s software programs and games)
* Strobe pens
* Tools (power and hand tools)
* Perfume (including perfume samples and opened expensive perfumes that are at least over one-half full)
* Perfume bottles (some with or without perfume)
* Religious books and Bibles (Bibles are always a perennial seller)
* Non-fiction books on hobbies, sports, nautical subjects, history, military science, popular textbooks, and art & photography. Also books containing maps and art prints that can be broken and sold individually.
* Maps and old prints of ships, flowers, animals (horses and dogs are tops)
* Used auto parts for specialty automobiles (Porsche, BMW, MG, etc.)
* Low mileage Japanese cars and pickups
* Automotive models and car collectibles
* Signed sports collectibles

I could go on — but these are some of the best selling items on eBay today (I am sure I missed a few – it changes quite often).

If you want to know what to sell on eBay, probably the single best piece of advice I can give new sellers is to be unique and to specialize. Find a niche market, learn everything about it and work it over and over.