Nate Moller talks about what to write about when blogging consistently.

Getting Started
o EBay registration- Before you can start selling or buying on eBay you must first become a registered eBay user.
o When registering on eBay you must register as a buyer and as a seller. Both of these registrations are free just take a bit of time to complete. You will need to go to www.ebay.com and click on the register link at the top of the page and follow instructions from there.

• Pay Pal registration
o To register on pay pal go to www.paypal.com. Click on the sign up link at the top of the page. From there you will asked what kind of account you want to have on Pay Pal. Make sure to select “Premier account” From there they will ask you for a bank account. You will need to provide an account that they can have on file. Pay Pal will then need to “Verify” you account and to do this they will put two small deposits in your account. What you are required to do is go back to Pay Pal and tell them what those deposits are. Once they have the deposit amounts you will become verified.

• Buy something on eBay
o Spend some time buying something on eBay. It can be anything just buy something to get some experience on how the process works, the emails you will receive and getting started on building a feed back rating.

• Finding items around the house
o Search around your house this week and come up with at least 10 items that you can list for sell on eBay. It can be anything that you no long have a need for.

• Taking good pictures
o Taking pictures is an important part of selling an item. When people buy an item on line but specifically eBay, they are buying the picture and description of the item. They can’t pick up the item and look at it so it is extremely important to take a good picture. EBay will give you the first picture on a listing for free but they are $.15 per additional pictures. So for lower priced items make sure you have 1 GOOD picture. When you are taking pictures of the item, use a light colored background that lets the item stand out. Take several pictures of the item using only the best one.

• EBay education www.ebay.com/education

Nate Moller talks about the potential of eCommerce.

Setting up an eBay Store- Setting up a eBay store is one of the best things you can do if you plan on using eBay as a full time business. The eBay store is relatively easy to set up and has some great features to help you take you eBay business to the next level. The first thing you will need to do is go to www.ebay.com and click on the “stores” link in the upper left hand corner. Once you have clicked on that link you can then click on the link on the right that says, “Open a store”. Once you have selected on that it will give you some info on what options they have. EBay has 3 types of stores you can choose from. For most of you, you will want to select on the “basic” store. It is $15.95 per month. The others are more advance and therefore more expensive, so most of you will start with the basic store. It will allow you to list several items in a centralized location on eBay. You listing fees are substantial smaller using a store. Also when you have an eBay store it allows you to create an “about me” page. The about me page gives you several additional options from a marketing standpoint.

Store Referral Credit EBay’s store referral credit program is a new program eBay has put in place. The program basically will allow people to receive eBay store credit to there account every time a sell is made on his or her eBay store from a location outside of eBay. EBay will give you a 75% credit on your final Value Fees when your marketing efforts generate sales of your Stores Inventory format listings. This is a GREAT program you can take advantage of when you have an eBay store, especially for those of you that have a separate website. EBay does however have some requirements that have to be met.
• One of the requirements is the buyer must go to your store because of your promotion outside of eBay.

• Purchaser must buy off of the link to the promotion. Meaning, if someone clicks on your link and goes to your eBay store, but then closes the window, if they come back to buy something it bust be again off the link or eBay will not recognize that is came from a site out side of eBay.

• Item also must be sold in the Store inventory format. Sales of auction-style and regular Fixed Price format items will not earn Store Referral Credits, even though these items appear in your Store.
This can be a great program to further your online business using eBay’s promotion to eliminate some of the listing fee’s especially for those who have a separate website.

Nate Moller shares step by step tips on making your first blog post with Wordpress.

Making your auction standout.
Auction management services.

Professional looking pictures: Now that you have some experience listing items for sell on eBay. Let’s talk about ways you can improve those auction so they can stand out in the crowd. There are several things that you can do to help this and one of those is taking professional looking pictures. Spend some time taking a picture especially for a higher priced item. Remember when you buy online you are basically buying the picture and description of the item. So if you have to take 3 or 4 pictures to get a good, then go ahead and do that. Also when you sell and item that is slightly used or new you may try to find a manufactures picture to use instead of your own. You can also use programs such as www.photobucket.com to help you post pictures and make sure they look good. Also for more helpful tips use the community board on eBay. Go to www.ebay.com and click on community in the upper left hand corner. Then click on workshops/discussion forums There is always updated tutorial on different things you can do to help you auctions.

Using HTML to help your page stand out: For those of you that have HTML experience, this can really help you. There are many different things you can do to a page if you are familiar with HTML. If you aren’t familiar with HTML, there are several sites out there that have HTML cheat sheets that will help you get some of the basics down. One particular site you can use is http://www.webmonkey.com/reference/HTML_Cheatsheet this is a great resource to use to start learning some basic HTML. Also you can use the book titled HTML for dummies that is a great book that will help you start learning HTML. Another one you can use is www.htmlprimer.com this site is full of tutorials on how to use and implement HTML. You can also use predesigned templates to help your site as well. A good resource to find templates is www.desacs.com some templates are free and some have a small fee but you can use those for templates if you are interested in that. Templates still give you some customization to your eBay auction and store, without you having to know HTML.

Setting up your About Me page: Setting up an about me page on eBay can be very beneficial for you. The about me page on eBay gives you the seller an opportunity to introduce yourself to potential customers. It also gives you some other marketing opportunities. The about me page on eBay is the only place eBay will allow you to have a direct link to another website. So for those of you that have another website, outside of eBay, this gives you an opportunity to link to that site, without eBay stopping it. EBay gets a ton of traffic on a daily basis and this is one way you can use that eBay traffic to help promote your website. For those that have a website when you design your eBay stores try to use similar colors and layouts that coordinate with your website.

Ebay Services and Auction management programs: EBay has a great tool you can use that is called EBay’s Turbo Lister. You can download it at http://pages.ebay.com/TURBO_LISTER/ there are several advantages to using the turbo Lister but one of the major ones is the fact that you can list and item while you are offline. You can go to that link for a complete list of features.

Some awesome ideas about email newsletters.

Nate Moller shares simple ways to make money with your blog.

EBay Conference Call Class 3 Setting up and Auction

Setting up an auction- When setting up an auction on eBay, there are several things that you need to be aware of. EBay has several options that you can choose from when listing an item. Some of them are more valuable than other. Every auction you list comes with a listing fee that eBay charges. Those listing fees depend on several things. We will get into that a little later. The options you select when listing an item will have an impact on those listing fees. We are going to discuss several valuable strategies that you can use to make your auction successful. The listing process itself is really quite simple to do.
? To start the listing go to www.ebay.com and select on the “sell” link at the top of the screen. From there you will be asked what product you are selling and you can simply type that into the box on the screen. Make sure you select the proper category.
? Once you have selected the category you will then be asked for the item title and a description on the item. When you implement your item title make sure to get as many “keywords” in that title as you can. This will be responsible for the amount of visitors you get to your auction. Write a detailed accurate description of the item especially if it is a used item. Make sure to include things such as the size, year, shape, color etc.
? Next options you will have is your starting price, and duration of the auction. When you are just getting started selling on eBay we suggest you start your bidding at what you NEED out of the item. Start your bidding as low as you can without “giving away” the item. In regards to the duration statically the 7 day auction is the best to use, but is more important is the time your auction is ending. Make sure your auction ends at a time that is convenient for most eBay users, which is the evening. So make sure your auctions are ending in the evening, sometime between Sunday evening and Thursday evening.
? The last big challenge when you list an item on eBay that you will need to consider is the shipping. Shipping has always been and probably will always be a big “gray area” when you sell on line period, not just eBay. When you list an item from a drop shipper they will provide you the info you need to know to determine shipping. When you are selling your own items you have in the basement or an item you picked up at a garage sell, you will have to determine all the shipping. The first thing you will need to know is the weight of the item. So having some way to weigh the item is a must. Once you know the weight then you have can determine what your flat rate should be. Now because you have no way of knowing where your winning bidder is going to be located you need to select a fair flat rate. One way to choose a “fair” flat rate is to look at what other people selling the same item on eBay are charging so you can be competitive. Otherwise you can account for about 7 dollars a pound to ship an item all the way across the US. So you can us those figures to get a “fair” shipping price for eBay.

The rest of the auction should be fairly simple to complete, so as you list your first items on eBay if you have any questions make sure to give the resource line a call.

Nate Moller shares tips on how to get started blogging.