Who Is My Customer ?

As an eBay Consultant one of the topics that I spend time talking with a client is Who is my customer ? Today I was sitting with a client and talking with a PR Consultant about a project my client is about to launch and some of the first words he said was “Who is your customer ? ” and I had to smile as this confirmed what I had been saying to my clients.

In business we very often like to think we can sell products to all people, now while some companies can manage this the companies who fine tune their market are very often the market leaders. For example Tiffany’s sell high end items, they do not sell the £4.99 items, yes they could do but their brand and market says high end.

You need to look at your business and write down who your ideal customer is, for example :

• Male, female or both
• Age range
• Income range
• Hobbies
• Work
• Music they listen to
• Where they go on holiday
• And so on.

The more you know about your ideal customer the better you can market to them, and the better you can market to them the more sales you will make. And as you get to know you customer better, you can target the adverts and newsletters you sent to them. And as I mentioned before if you are selling  £1,000 items, you do not want to be sending out newsletters about 99p gadgets. And the same goes that if you are selling 99p gadgets you do not want to be marketing £1,000 gadgets to these customers. Yes of course you will make the odd sale, but it will be rare.

Please spend the next few weeks thinking “Who is my customer” and then market to them, by using the language they use, and you will soon see a increase in sales.

How To Keep Track Of Your eBay Items

As my eBay business is starting to grow and I am selling more items of my own and also introducing some drop-shipping into my Trading Assistant mix it got me thinking how can I keep track of where the different items are around by eBay room and which items belong to which drop-shipping client. At the moment I am working with three drop-shipping clients, but this could increase over the coming months.

It then struck me for my own items label the shelves and boxes and files where the items are with a series of letters and numbers, and then when I list an item at the bottom of the listing just a SKU and put in the ID. Thus when an item sells, I know where to look for it. Well that is the idea and for now I believe this system should work.

I will use the same process for my Drop-shipping Trading Assistant clients but just use the initials of their company, this will help me know who to place the order with.

And for my Trading Assistant clients whose products I handle use a combination of the name and where the item is stored in my eBay room.

If people have a different plan or idea on how to manage where items are please leave a comment below.

Have Royal Mail Priced Themselves Out Of The Market Place ?

Today when I took some last minute parcels up to our local post office I was have a chat with the girl who works there. It was 5.15pm and the Post Office was empty. Our past goes just after 5.30pm. Anyway back to the chat we were having, and I asked her the question, do you think the post office is pricing themselves out of the market place. She laughed and said not really they still offer good rates and are cheaper than all the carriers. I agreed with her to a point, but then pointed out some facts thats she did not know.

One of the parcels I was sending wieghed in at just over 2KG and with the Recorded Delivery fee cost me just under £12.00. Now if I had sent this through Parcel2go.com the same parcel with full tracking not just when it had been signed for would have cost me £7.50. A full £4.50 cheaper, plus they pick up from my home.

So why did I not use them today. Well the main reason was the person did not place the order till after 12 noon and I had missed the Yodel (DHL) cut off point, plus they wanted the item on Saturday if possible. If that had not been the case would have emailed the customer and told them due to the Bank Holiday they would receive the item on Wednesday.

For some of the lighter items Royal Mail is still the best offer around but once the parcel gets to be over 750g then it may be a good idea to start to look around at what the other parcel delivery companies are offer. Apart from picking the items up from your home or business (no more going out in the rain and cold and standing in a queue), you get a full tracking service right from the time you place your order to the time the parcel is delivered so you can see where it is in the country or world. This is a big advantage as both seller and buyer can see where the items are.

So have Royal Mail priced themselves out of the market place for online sellers, for the small items such as CD’s and Dvd’s I do not really think so yet, but for the heavier items over 750g I do believe there are more cost effective ways of sending your items out. But you will need to sit down and do some costings. If you are a small seller then use a company such as parcel2go.com as they have very good rates with all the leading carrier companies out there and then as your business grows and you start to send out hundreds of parcels a week it may be better to go to a carrier direct, but again look around and do those costings. Know your weights and know those prices and if you can send a parcel a cheaper way then do it, and if we all did this then maybe Royal Mail will rethink their prices…………..well we can hope.

eBay For Charity

Do you have a favourite Charity that you like to support, but during these hard times you have had to cut back on giving to ? This is happening all over the UK (and the rest of the world). But how would you like to carry on giving to your favourite charity without it costing you anything extra. Or how would you like to support a charity when you sell items on eBay. Well you can through a program run by eBay called giving works. In fact there are several ways you can help your favourite charity, and we will cover these in several articles.

Today I want to talk about how you can sell the items you are already selling and give some of the proceeds to a charity. To start with you just list your item as normal, and as you work down the listing you will see a tick that says something like give to a charity, you can either choose the eBay chosen charity, or look down the list till you see your favourite charity. Now you choose how much you wish to donate, this can be anything between 10% – 100% of the final sales price.

When the listing goes live your buyers will see a banner like this telling them of the chosen charity and the percentage going to the charity.

It has also been shown that the sellers who list their items as a charity listing get more viewers and a high sales price, this makes everyone happy. Once the item sells the seller gets their percentage and the charity is sent theirs. (There is a £1.00 minimum donation.) So let’s say you sell an item and say that you wanted 30% to go to your charity and your item sells for £100.00, you get £70.00 and your charity gets £30.00. Sounds so simple and it is, eBay handles everything.

But it gets even better eBay gives you back a percentage of your basic listing fees and final fees. They do this on a like for like format. Say for example you give 30% to a charity then at the end of the month when you are sent an invoice eBay will deduct 30% of the basic fees and final fees from that one item. They will do this for each item you sell using the eBay for Charity (Mission Fish) format.

So go on and give it a go, you have nothing to lose and just think each time you sell something it will go to a charity and make someone somewhere in the world better off.