Is owning an eBay Drop Shop in your future?

Many Trading Assistants dream to one day grow their hobby or part-time gig into a full time retail business or "eBay Drop Shop". Running this kind of business requires a lot of research and planning to be successful. The TA must prepared to work hard and long hours and this is defineatly not a "Get Rich Quick" type of business.

There are several paths to owning a Drop Shop. Some use their own experience and expand upon it to start the retail business. Others buy into a franchise and utilize their business expertise and resources. Each method has its pros and cons.

Many factors must be analyised before making the jump. Here are just a few things to think about if you are considering owning an eBay Drop Off store.

Cash Reserves - Most businesses fail within their first year due to a lack of funding. You should have enough cash to float the business for at least 6 months to a year.

Location, Location, Location - Finding the right location for your business is critical. You want to get the most exposure as possible. Your signage should be large enough for everyone to see. Other factors you should consider is parking, safety & rent amounts. Keep in mind that the better the location usually equals higher rent.

Employees - No matter how well you know this business you cannot run it efficiently alone. You will need to consider highering employees if you want some kind of a personal life. Consider hiring part-time help (moms w/children in school are perfect for this business). Hiring family is also usually cheaper and more trust worthy alternative.

Advertising - Don't under estimate the amount of money needed to market your business. There are many options available that cost very little to alot. Tracking the results of your marketing efforts will help you streamline your efforts and in return getting more bang for the buck. eBay also has a program for retail "drop-offs" known as the Trading Post program. Click Here to read more about it.

There are many other things that need to be worked out before you start any business. Always consult with your local professionals (i.e. attorney & accountant) to ensure your business is setup correctly. Spending a little money upfront can save you a lot of money down the road!

Get FREE website hosting and domain from Microsoft

I just found out about this Nifty Little Offer from Microsoft. Now you can get a FREE domain name and website hosting from Microsoft. This offer is from their Microsoft Office Live site and the basic version will remain free even after the beta ends.

Now you have no excuse to not have a website! Enjoy.

Advertise your Trading Assistant Business in every eBay Listing

Are you registered eBay Trading Assistant? If so, then tell everyone who looks at your auctions that you are! I have received many questions about the TA business over the years from fellow eBayers who were just looking at my listings. A couple even became my clients.

eBay was nice enough to create a special TA logo with a hyperlink to your TA profile page that you can use in your listings. The problem is that their instructions are a little cryptic and are not interactive. To solve this problem, I created a tutorial on our TA.BIZ Website that guides you step by step on how to do this. Click Here to view the tutorial.

eBay Sellers: Spoof Protection for your buyers and reputation!

Over the last year or so, phishing and spoof emails have reached an epidemic level. These emails are made to look like they are coming from legitimate companies (i.e. eBay & PayPal) and they almost look legit with standard formatting and logos. The problem is they are being sent by criminals looking to hijack your account, purchase merchandise, steal your identity and/or drain your bank accounts.

Many financial institutions & eBay have done a commendable job alerting the general public of this threat. In regards to eBay, most of these emails are targeting bidders and buyers. As a seller you may not think this affects you, but it does and there are some things you can to help.

The biggest spoof scam on eBay nowadays is fake “Second Chance Offers”. Sellers of high-ticket items are generally the targets of this scam. I have seen as many as 3-4 bidders on one of my auctions receiving these fake offers. This creates confusion, frustration and general distrust that is targeted at the seller even though they didn’t send the emails. Here are some tips to prevent this.

If you know your auction item is going to sell for several hundred dollars or more then protect your bidder’s identities by making your auction private. This can be done when creating the listing. You can find it in eBay’s “Sell Your Item” page on Step 3 under Private Listing. Once the item is listed on eBay and you receive bids, only the seller can see the ID’s of the bidders. The listing will show the number of bids and it will state that it is private (see picture below). Making an auction private will also prevent other members from sending fraudulent emails to your bidders.



You should state somewhere in your listing a disclaimer as to why the auction was made private. This disclaimer also helps alleviate any confusion or thoughts of shill bidding. This the disclaimer I use in my auctions…

"This auction was made private to protect our bidders from spamming and fake offers from other members."

Be proactive and protect your bidders and your reputation! Sell Smarter.

Our Trading Assistant Biz Website is now Online!

Our TradingAssistants.Biz website in now up and running. We still have alot more features to add but I wanted to highlight a few that are available now.

• Getting Started: This section is an article that is perfect for newbies who are gathering information on how to start their eBay Trading Assistant Business.
  
• Tutorials: We currently have one tutorial online that shows you a quick and easy way to add the TA logo to your listings.
  
• Links: We created 3 seperate links pages: 1) eBay.com reference pages 2) Featured Trading Assistant Links 3) Free eBay Utility Sites. Be sure to check out how to get your TA website listed on our Featured TA Links Page for free!
  
• Book Store: Find great books for sale to help make you a better eBay seller and build your eBay consignment business.

Stay tuned for more great things to come...