by Kathy Terrill | Feb 10, 2015 | eCommerce Selling Tips, Selling on eBay
Entrepreneurs will say to me, “Kathy, my ebay sales are down, what do I do?”
If they have an ebay store one of the first places I’ll look to help them increase their sales is at their ebay store categories.
As an ebay store seller ebay gives you 300 categories to use to organize your products.
The categories you chose matter. They help your customer find your items and also buy more than one item from you when they are shopping in your store.
I have found the two best ways to pick ebay store categories is first to check the ebay site and see what ebay category ebay is using with my item.
After I’ve done then I look at the large brick and mortar store websites. Macy’s is one of my favorite places to go. I had pajamas and robes to sell for the Christmas season.
On Macy’s site the way they list ladies pajamas is under the primary category Women’s Clothing. The subcategory they use is pajamas and robes. So that’s what I used!
Macy’s spends thousands of dollars researching keywords. So, being a savvy seller I take advantage of their research! If I sold fishing equipment I’d be looking at Bass Pro Shop. Get the idea?
Your ebay store categories do not show in your store until you put an item into the category. Each item can be placed in two ebay store categories, so consider that when you’re setting up your categories.
For instance back to my pajamas and robes. My ladies pink pajamas went into the pajamas and robes category and I also had a Christmas Gifts ( with a Gifts for Her sub category).
Now once your categories are set up in your manage my store you can click to alphabetize your categories or sort by which category has the most items to appear at the top.
ebay tutorial how to set up, and then organize your store categories
I chose to alphabetize my ebay store categories and I find most successful sellers I recently surveyed do the same. After I alphabetize my store categories I then manually order one or two categories by dragging them to the top of my store categories to feature that category.
For instance at Christmas and the Holiday season I drag my Christmas category to the top. After Christmas I keep my Christmas category and alphabetize it and I drag Valentines Day to the top of the list.
Here’s a short YouTube video I did to show you easily how to do this!
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuTOxw4gRLM
So, with some quick research you can pick keyword rich ebay store categories and order those categories to help shoppers find your products easily and to browse your items increasing your potential sales and the size of your sales!
Here is a link to a recording of an appearance I did on the ebay radio show on February 10th explaining all these tips in detail for you.
ebay radio show appearance I did discussing optimizing your ebay store categories!
If shoppers can’t find your items they can’t buy them!
by Kathy Terrill | Dec 31, 2014 | eCommerce News, Social Media Tips
I did some hashtag browsing this morning December 31 New Year’s Eve on twitter and found so far the most used hashtags for this year’s New Year’s Eve are.
1- #Midnight
2 -#NYE 2015
Look at your inventory and see what products would be perfect to tweet about today.
Do you have products related to parties, celebrations and New Year’s Resolutions? If so now is a great time to feature them!
New Year’s Eve is also a great time to chat with your followers using #Midnight and #NYE2015. Do they have plans? Are they staying home? Are they going out on the town?
You can also look back on 2014 and tweet favorite moments and your favorite tweets and encourage followers to share theirs!
You can even run a contest today with your followers for them to share and or vote on your best tweet of 2014!
The end of the year is always a great time to say thank you and let your followers know they are appreciated!
If you find other great #NYE hashtags on twitter today please feel free to post them below in comments!
Thank you all enjoy your #midnight and Happy #NYE2015!
I just found the 2 best hashtags for online entrepreneurs to use for New Years Eve 2015!
by Kathy Terrill | Dec 27, 2014 | eCommerce Selling Tips, Selling on eBay
Christmas is over.
Look at your business’s profit and loss.
Look at your inventory on hand.How did you as an entrepreneurial business do so far this year?
Did you do better or worse than last year? Are you on target for 4th quarter sales?
If you’re on target or way up congratulations!
If you’re down, don’t despair there’s time left to turn your 4th quarter results around.
I live in NYC which is one of the biggest retail cities in the world. Do you know what most of not all businesses are doing now? Yes, they are running sales.
Already I’ve gotten countless emails offering me deep discounts from eCommerce sites and large brick and mortar retailers.
Do you want to increase your profits and move inventory?
Do what the big brick and mortar and eCommerce sites are doing now and run a sale! Discount as deeply as you can and promote your sale on your social media sites.
After Christmas customers are looking for deals. Give them what they want and you will reap sales and profits now.
Now is the time to get busy, please your shoppers and you and your business will reap the benefit in one word, PROFIT!
What are you waiting for?!
Even if you’re 4th quarter sales are down, you can turn your business around!
by Kathy Terrill | Oct 29, 2014 | eCommerce News, eCommerce Selling Tips, Selling on eBay
According to a recent blog post from Socially Stacked over 40% of shoppers will begin their Holiday Shopping in November!
So, as a savvy entrepreneur and business owner the question is how do you get these shoppers to spend their money with you?!
The answer is offer shopping discounts!
Look at your inventory and institute discounts if customers buy more than a certain dollar amount so they have a reason to spend their money with you and not your competitor!
If you have an ebay store there is an awesome free tool available to you that will put discounts in place for you called Promotions Manager. With this tool you can offer dollars off, a discount and or buy 2 get 1 free order size discounts. You set the criteria for the discount and the inventory that is available for your customer to purchase to gain the savings. The seller controls the details of the offer. You can offer a variety of discounts to your shoppers within different categories in your ebay store and or you can do an offer for your entire store like buy more $200 merchandise ( and include all your inventory) for 10-20% off, $20 off etc.
Here is short video I did on how to easily set up a great sales discount on ebay using Promotions Manager.
So, since 40% of shoppers will start spending their money next month it’s time to get ready with great discounts to bring these customers your way so that your 4th Quarter is your best ever!
by Kathy Terrill | Oct 9, 2014 | eCommerce News, eCommerce Selling Tips, Selling on eBay
Many non professional sellers sell personal possessions and unused gifts online on the internet in the month of October to raise cash for their family’s Holiday and Christmas spending.
If you as a professional online entrepreneurial seller need a good source of low cost inventory October is a great month for you to shop on ebay, Amazon, etsy, Bonanza and Addoway to buy goods selling below their Holiday re-sell value.
This is an online version of the practice of inventory sourcing called Retail Arbitrage.
What is your area of expertise?
Do you know what sneakers, DVDs, women’s clothes, men’s clothes, children’s toys etc sell for?
Keep an eye on the various internet sales sites for when inventory is priced low and buy stock for your business to sell during the peak shopping season of Thanksgiving to New Year’s!
Remember the adage, “Buy low, sell, high”?
Well now is the time to be buying low online to sell high later!
It’s time to get shopping!
