Paula currently has 84 store items, with the dresses starting at $39 and ranging up to $499. This is a nice spread of prices giving a wide range of bidders a chance to buy something in their price range. However, Paula does not have any auctions running.
Please go and check out her store items, and tell your friends that are getting married to consider buying a dress on eBay. Here are some of her items:
Here Are Some Tips For Paula:
Tip #1 - If you want more visitors to your store items you have two options. A, you have a very large inventory, so no matter what, some people will find your items every day. Or B, you run a small percentage of auctions to draw traffic to your store listings.
Auctions are the most viewed thing on eBay. Semi-Popular eBay auctions can easily get 200+ individual viewers. You need to capitalize on this potential market. If you only ran 5% of your inventory as auctions (4 auctions a week), you would have a much better chance of getting people to visit your store. Just make sure that you add at least one link in your auction that says something along the lines of "Please visit my store for more beautiful wedding gowns and prom dresses." You have to invite bidders to click on your link and visit your store.Tip #2 - Add Categories to your store. The more categories the better. This is going to take some work, but it will make your store more accessible and give it a more professional front. I recommend that you take all of your listings out of "other items" and put them under new categories so that they can be found easily by potential bidders. Categories like Wedding Gowns, Prom dresses, etc...
If you are worried about an auction selling for a price you would not like to settle for, it might be a great idea for you to use a reserve price. I would not recommend this for all auctions, maybe not your $39 dresses, but I would recommend that you put at least one wedding gown up for auction a week, and make sure it starts at a ridiculously low price, maybe 99 cents. Putting a reserve price on this 99 cent auction can allow you to at least cover the cost of acquiring the item.
Tip #3 - Host your own pictures. Learning a limited amount of HTML will make your listings stand out. One of the first things you need to do is learn how to host your own pictures so that you do not need to pay eBay for this service. A great free site that provides photo hosting is photobucket.com, and hosting your pictures through this site rather than eBay will save you a lot of money in fees, while simultaneously making your auction look more professional.
Tip #4 - Find an eBay template, and break up your text. It is hard to read, and may cause a potential bidder to lose interest. An eBay template will also help you build a brand. Speaking of brands, you will also need a nice logo.
Tip #5 - Add some terms of sale. Tell your potential bidders what they are agreeing to. This will save you a little trouble in the future. Tell them how you ship, how often you ship, if you handle international bidding, what types of payment you accept, how soon you expect a payment, what your return policies are, etc... Look at some of your competition's auctions and see what they do for their terms of sale.
Praise: Paula, it is evident in your feedback that you are truly pleasing your customers. It appears that you ship very fast and offer a great product. Keep working hard, do some homework on your competition, learn some HTML or look into a site like Auctiva.com that provides some free eBay services. If you continue to improve your store, create a format for your auctions, and keep adding quality product I am sure you will be a PowerSeller in no time.
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