Who doesn’t like a free sample? My newest book, eBay Marketing Makeover, is out today wherever eBooks are sold and I wanted to give you a little taste of what’s inside by letting you start to read it for free. So here, without further ado, is the introduction for the book. I’ll be sharing excerpts throughout this launch week to try to start sales off strong so tune back on Wednesday for more!

-Hillary “The Whine Seller” DePiano

“A big blinking sign may lure me into your store, but if there are roaches on the floor when I walk in, I'm out of there and I'm never coming back.”

INTRODUCTION

You’re selling stuff on eBay but you want to sell more, right? You want more traffic, more buyers, more money because, duh, who doesn’t? But you’re also rather busy doing the whole selling thing which means you don’t have a whole lot of extra time on your hands. There are piles, mountains of books about marketing and promotion out there but who’s got time to read all of them? Even if you didn’t have something better to do, you’d be digging through a huge mess of info for those rare hints here and there that apply to sell on eBay.

I’ve been selling on eBay since March of 1997 myself, so I get it. That’s why this book isn’t some massive one size fits all marketing monster. It’s short, so that you can get through it quickly, and written in plain English so you don’t have to wade through buzz words and fluffed up fancy terms. It’s also the first marketing book I know of that’s designed just for eBay sellers, though if you wanted to use some of these tips for Etsy or some other marketplace, I’m not going to cry about it.

We’re about to give your eBay selling a Marketing Makeover. See, lots of sellers want more buyers to their store and they think that means sending tweets, posting to Facebook and blasting links to their listings everywhere without realizing they’re getting completely ahead of themselves. They’re busting their buns and wasting their promotional time by focusing so much on outreach that they’ve forgotten to concentrate on their store itself. A big blinking sign may lure me into your store, but if there are roaches on the floor when I walk in, I’m out of there and I’m never coming back. But when a customer likes what they see when they walk in your metaphorical door, they’re more likely to not only buy something but to come back and tell their friends. A Marketing Makeover not only increases the effect of whatever promotion you’re doing now, it also makes your job as a marketer that much easier in the future.

Everyone knows the better the product, the easier it is to sell it. Before you start casting your nets and fishing for new customers, the real secret to increasing your sales and traffic is to improve your product and sales experience first. What if you stopped thinking about new customers for a minute and took a step back to focus on the customers you already have? If you could increase the amount your existing buyers purchased and turn more of the traffic you already have into sales, you’d not only be making more money without doing anything extra, you’d also be increasing your chances of courting positive Word of Mouth. Word of Mouth, when your customers talk about your business to their friends and networks, can make or break a business and is more effective than just about any marketing effort you can do on your end. And while you can’t control what your customers say or if they say anything at all, a Marketing Makeover increases the chances that they will talk and what they say will be positive.

The best part of this is that, while the shelf life on a tweet or Facebook post is mere hours, once you rev-up your store with a Marketing Makeover, you’ll be able to reap the sales benefits of that work for as long as you’re selling with only occasional tweaks every few years. Beyond the modifications we’ll make to how you’re selling, we’ll also do a little prep-work that will make any future marketing campaigns that much easier and increase your discoverability for those buyers who are already looking for the sort of things you sell. If there’s one thing I’ve realized in my two decades of e-commerce it’s that sometimes taking a few minutes to do a little bit of prep work ahead of time can save you hours down the road.

Here’s how this books works. Once we get past this introductory stuff, what follows is a list of little things that you can do right now to spruce up your eBay selling, help buyers find you and keep your existing customers coming back. Nearly everything suggested is free, each item should take less than 30 minutes to implement and, though they may seem like little things, they will all make a difference in the Big Picture of your business.

No matter how crazy your schedule is, surely you can spare a wee little half an hour here and there, if it means more sales. Even if you only do one a day, you’ll been done in about a month. It’s tempting to skip around but I wouldn’t recommend it. Every thing’s been arranged so that you’re getting the most done in the smallest amount of time and I can’t guarantee that’ll be the case if you skip around.

Enough chatter, let’s get started…