Sunday, June 14, 2015

Top Items Sold on eBay

by Skip McGrath
There are several ways to discover the top items sold on eBay. These methods are free and available right on eBay. All you have to do to access the top selling items is sign into your account and follow these instructions.

Top Items Sold on eBay

The first resource is eBay itself. Click on the link to Site Map at the bottom of any eBay page. Look in the middle column under Seller Resources and click on the link that says "What's hot." Here is what that looks like:

When you click on that link you will see a page that looks like this:

Below that is a list of the most watched items on eBay. This is another indicator of the top items sold on eBay.

The links on the left show you the popular searches. The links on the right show the largest stores on the theory that they are large because those are the products that sell. Also notice the drop down box that says "Category". If you pull down a specific category it will show you the popular searches in each category. So for example, if you are a book seller and you want to find the top selling books, it would look like this:

And right below that is a list of the hottest selling books on eBay:

Where to Buy the Top Items Sold on eBay?

This is where it becomes a little harder. One of the problems with selling top items is that they are very competitive and the margins are fairly low because of this. And you are usually up against large sellers who can buy their inventory in large quantities. So you really have to learn the wholesale system and how it works. One of my best selling books is The Wholesale Buying System. It is a printed book that comes with members-only access to my website where I list sources.
The other excellent place to find legitimate wholesale sources is WorldWide Brands. The are the only company I recommend for wholesale information. As for the large drop ship companies that advertise all over the web –I have tried most of them and it never worked for me. Basically they are middlemen and their prices are really too high to allow any profit margin on eBay. And some of those sites sell counterfeit or knockoff goods. So you will always do better when you work directly with the sources.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

How to take great product photos to sell more on eBay

eBay Photo Basics – Part One

This is the first in a series of short articles to help you sell more on eBay. Most new eBay sellers make the basic mistake of using poor photos. This is a great way to waste money on listing fees. Any experienced eBay seller will tell you that a good photo is at least 50% responsible for generating winning and profitable bids.

Take a look at some of these photos on eBay:

You can see a guitar that is selling for over $200, a pasta machine and a necklace. Would you be interested in any of these if you saw this photo?

These 3 photos exhibit three common problems.

1. Distracting background (Guitar). If the seller just removed the grass planting from the background it would have looked much better. Next he could have hung it on the wall instead of showing the floor. That would have improved the photo greatly.

2. Distracting background and poor lighting (pasta machine). Why not just set the machine on a table near a window. That would not be perfect –but much better than this seller has now. The problem with this listing is that there were several identical pasta machines selling for the same price that has perfect photos.

3. Wrong color background and Poor lighting (necklace). The necklace is actually very pretty but it is grossly under exposed and the colors get lost in the background. Again, just move the shot near a window to get more light and then use a neutral color background.

Here is a good example of a before and after shot with a distracting background. This is from a reader who asked me to review one of his auctions. The one in the before shot had no bids.

The other thing you see often on eBay is fuzzy photos. This is the result of hand-holding a camera in low light. Unless your lighting is very bright, the shutter speed on a digital camera will be very slow. So if you handhold your camera you image will not look very sharp. Here is one of my photos that I tried to handhold in poor light:

Notice how fuzzy the image is. On the right is an example of a sharp image where I used a tripod instead of handholding.

Notice how much sharper the image is. So the lesson here is use a tripod. If you don’t have one, then be sure and brace your hand holding the camera on a solid object to prevent camera shake.

The other issue sellers run into is reflections when trying to shoot a shiny object. Here is one of the most famous photos on eBay. Look closely and you will see an image of the photographer reflected in the photo. Notice what he is wearing –or should I say –not wearing !!!

The way to conquer reflections is with very soft lighting. Try shooting near a window on a cloudy day or shine a light through some white rip-stop nylon to diffuse it.

One way to solve all of these problems is with an EZ Cube fromwww.ezauctintools.com. Here are a couple of popular models.

Look for more tips in Part Two.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Guest Blogger: 7 Ways That Plus Size Fashion Is Evolving

Please welcome Betty Pamper of PamperandCurves.com to the stage!

Even a few years ago plus size fashion was a narrow prescriptive place. The sheer lack of availability of clothes in sizes over a size 14 meant that for the average plus size babe channeling the latest fashions was just an unattainable goal.

Fast forward to 2015 and it’s a totally different landscape lets just take a moment to think about how far we have come! We have rounded up seven reasons why we can say that plus size fashion is evolving! There are many other reasons, but for sake of shopping, we will keep it here!

# 1 We Can Shop at More Than One Store!

Here in the UK, until not so long ago if you were blessed with a fuller figure you could only shop at Evans, a few shops aimed at mature ladies, or join a nudist colony. Stretchy pants, ugly tunics and elasticised waistbands were the only gig in town and trying to make that look stylish was no easy task. With the online revolution and fashion retailers realising that the plus size pound is just as valuable as the regular sized one whilst its not quite an embarrassment of riches there is definitely more choice.

# 2 There’s a Riot of Color

Rather like Ford cars plus size clothes used to come in any colour as long as it was black. The old fashioned notion that black is “slimming” saw a severe neglect of the colour spectrum in threads over a size 14 leaving us chubby fashion hounds desperate for some bright hues. Now if we want to wear all the colors of the rainbow we can (and often do)!

#3 It’s Catwalk Led and Inspired

As a lover of couture, I would flick through magazines longingly looking at the coverage of London and New York fashion week or the catwalk shows in Paris, knowing that none of the trends featured would trickle down to plus size ranges. Now not only are our clothes bang on trend, but we have our own shows. Evans led the way with their breathtaking show at London fashion week last year and increasingly fat fashion is making its mark in high fashion. Sashay that booty.

#4 Its Affordable

Buying really beautiful larger clothes often felt like being held up by a masked man on a horse. Daylight robbery dressed up as retail. With so few options you just had to accept that you would always pay three times more for a pair of jeans than your smaller sisters. Now there are affordable brands who let us make impulse buys, luxuriate in fast fashion and mean we aren’t seriously broke because we need a new frock for Friday night.

#5 There Are More Natural Fabrics and Fancier Blends

Plus size clothes have always had a tendency to be made in nasty man made fabrics. There have been many a time that I have been afraid to stand too close to a naked flame, for fear of going up like a Roman candle! Soooo flammable has been my skater dresses of fashion past. Whilst we might not completely be able to escape the tyranny of elastene, we are seeing more clothes in cottons and linens and our skin love it.

#6 Skin Tight Is Quite Alright

The baggy is best approach for anything over a size 14 was the go to plus size style for years. Tunics so generous you could house a small family in them, trousers so baggy they doubled up as sleeping bags! As we have become more accepting of our curvy fine shapes, fashion is starting to realize we want to show it off. Form fitting and clingy clothes are far from being avoided and are only now being embraced. Why? Because we look good in it.

#7 We can be whoever we want to be

Every morning I wake up and still get a small surge of excitement about my plus size fashion options. Rather than being faced with the same three or four tunics and boot cut trousers I can be whoever I want to be.

Some days this is pretty, outfits so sweet it makes your teeth ache. Pastel colored confections, swing dresses and floral circle skirts. Other days I can do pared back city chic androgyny, boyfriend jackets, cigarette pants and jersey tees in grey marl and taupe.

Clothes are my story telling, they give the world all the information they need about how I am feeling on any given day and its great to be able to offer a blockbuster rather than a pamphlet. It’s wonderful to think how far plus size fashion has come and with it a limitless array of possibilities. The freedom of expression this availability of clothes had offered not just to me, but to a world of plus size women is phenomenal.

Sure there is still some way to go, but overall the landscape for curvy girls is vibrant, eclectic, and this is encouraging a whole generation of plus size women to throw themselves headfirst into fashion, like children at a ball pool! I’m holding my nose and diving in-come join me! Wheeeee!

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Sunday, June 14, 2015

Top Items Sold on eBay