When you are just getting started on your online business, you will need to set some short, intermediate, and long-term goals. A well thought-out properly organized set of goals is your road map to success. If you are going to try to make it big online, not having clear written goals will be the biggest mistake you will EVER make.

Here are some tips for setting goals. First, your goals should be challenging. They should stretch you and take you just outside your comfort zone. At the same time, they should be realistic. Your goals should inspire you and give you the drive to achieve what you can’t see right now. People with clear written goals in front of them at all times accomplish many times more than someone without any goals. One way to remember the proper characteristics of goals is by using the acronym SMART. Goals should be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Having specific goals means defining them exactly and clearly. An example of a vague goal would be, I want to get rich selling on eBay. An example of a specific goal would be, I want to make an extra $3000 passive income a month by selling on eBay. In the specifying of the goal you are giving it clear characteristics allowing it to be better understood in your mind.

Measurable. Having measurements on your goals give them a real numerical value. In the previous example, what made the goal more specific was the measurable dollar figure. Checking your goals, updating them, and measuring where you are in your journey in achieving them will help you keep going in your online business.

Attainable. While your goals should be attainable, they should also not be too easy. Your goals should be inspiring and push you out of your comfort zone. Goals must be possible, but inspire you and give you a drive and purpose.

Timely. Your goals must have a time limit to them. Set a date and time to your goals. A goal without a date is just a wish. And if you forget when you want to achieve your goal, then you’re going to miss the goal. However, once you have developed thoughtful short, intermediate, and long-term goals, set deadlines on your short-term goals. Create action steps from your goals. Prioritize the details of your short-term goals, but do not begin working on them until you are fully committed!

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, you need to check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

By far the most popular question I hear from entrepreneurs stating to sell on eBay is “what do I sell?” That is a question that if you can properly answer, you’ll have success on eBay. What’s my answer? I’ll tell you in a minute. First, I need to explain why it’s so easy to get stuck here. (Don’t worry, I’ve been there too.)

The main reason why this is such a roadblock is because eBay is a product-centered business. You need to have something to sell or you won’t be in business. You need to buy product at low cost and sell higher. It’s a simple model, and you’re probably saying “yeah, I know that.” Listen for just a minute.

The same type of people who get stuck figuring out which product to buy are the same type of people who would get stuck figuring out which stock to buy in the stock market. It’s basically the same model, right? Buy a stock low, sell it higher than what you bought it for. Buy inventory low, sell it higher than what you bought it for.

Let’s think about what makes a really successful stock trader. Successful stock traders know which stocks are going to go up. They look at what the market is doing right now. They’ll look at the current stock price and then make the decision.

A good stock trader will be someone who doesn’t just focus on one stock. Instead, they focus on the principles of how to buy a good stock. They look for the winning qualities. They then filter through the many options to find those winners. Well it works the same way with finding products to sell on eBay. You need to educate yourself. You need to figure out what the market is doing. Then you need to be able to make the call when the situation demands it.

What’s the key ingredient to find products? By far, it’s having the mindset. You need the training to see the opportunities. Once you can recognize opportunities, you’ll be prepared for them when they arrive. There are literally countless products all around you that you can sell. You just can’t see them yet. The main thing you need to do is to get yourself in that “seller’s mindset” so you can.

Maybe you still don’t know what to sell on eBay yet.

If you’re brand new to eBay, my recommendation is that you begin to sell stuff that you don’t need. There’s probably an area of your house that is too cluttered, whether it’s the attic, a closet, or the basement. Instead of having a yard sale, see if you can sell it on eBay. You’ll build your feedback ratings and be well on your way to becoming a better eBay entrepreneur.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for over 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, make sure you check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

So you’ve sold a few items on eBay. Congratulations! That alone sets you apart from the rest of the crowd. There are many people who “wish” to sell on eBay full-time but never even get their first listing up.

Maybe you’re starting to wonder, what should I do now? After you’ve sold the extra stuff around your house for a few bucks, where does the real money on eBay come from?

Well, let’s talk business. What makes a successful business? What turns a single small hamburger stand into the multi-million dollar McDonald’s chain? Answer: the money is always in the system. It’s the streamlined and repeatable process that works, every time, all the time. And the best systems work without you having to even be there. Having inventory that automatically lists and gets sold while you sleep is just one great example.

There are some amazing tools to help you create systems, and they free you from sitting in front of the computer all the time. It’s an awesome feeling waking up the next morning and seeing how much more money you got in your account. It’s almost like you get paid to sleep.

Here’s a couple more tips: Buy products that sell. Of course not everyone has the money to buy a truckload of products, but you need to get started and you can get started small. The key here is to do your research beforehand. What is already selling on eBay? Where could I buy it less than the current eBay price? What products are hot? How do I find them? Well…

Keep Your Finger On The Pulse. You can get a snapshot about what’s happening on eBay by visiting http://pulse.ebay.com. This page shows what eBay buyers are looking for in each category, with the top 10 most searched for items, the most watched items and the largest eBay stores in each category. All of this information together helps you spot the latest trends. For example, right now the largest eBay stores are selling books or music. That suggests that these categories have high demand.

The eBay Pulse is a great tool to help you start identifying what is most often searched for on eBay, and what the buyer is looking for. Type those highly searched items in to the search bar and see how much competition there is. Once you find an item that is highly searched for but has a low number of competitors, you know what you should be trying to find to sell.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for over 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, you need to check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “the devil is in the details” and that’s also true for your eBay business. Whether you’re just getting started in your eBay business or not, there are many details to take care of and many things to worry about. Some beginners worry that one of them might fall through the cracks. There’s researching, buying products, listing items, answering questions, shipping… and the list goes on.

Stressed? Instead of worrying about all of the things that could go wrong, let me tell you exactly how to kill your eBay business. That should make your life easier, right?

1. Don’t Care About Your Titles. Take some random words and put them in your title. Whatever you do, don’t include the brand name. Make it impossible for people to find your product. Better yet, don’t even bother with using up all 55 characters. Forget about spell check. Oh, and make sure you use words that people never type in like “L@@K” and “WOW”

2. Take Really Blurry Pictures, Or None At All. Don’t worry if you can’t tell what it is. Make it a mystery so your customers work to figure out what your item is. And make sure the really important details are obscured or not even in the picture. Or just don’t bother taking a picture at all.

3. Sell Junk. Have no problem listing absolute garbage. Put worthless items up on eBay and hope they sell. Put that flea market special up for $100. Oh and make sure you lie about your item. Put the broken items up on eBay claiming they are top quality. Get some knock-offs and sell them as the real thing. Don’t worry about what your customers think. Let the buyer beware, right?

4. Don’t Care About Your Description. Just say whatever you want. Make up a story. Lie about the item if you feel like it. Say it works when it doesn’t. Say it’s in perfect condition. Don’t tell give any measurements or facts about your item. Use lots of mysterious abbreviations that makes you look like you know what you’re talking about. Give them useless information, talk about your problems. Yell about Nigerian scammers.

5. Don’t Talk To Your Buyers. So you’re getting emails from people who might buy. Big deal. Talking to your customers is a huge waste of time. If your customers are asking questions, they’re probably too dumb to buy the item anyways. Don’t bother with talking to them. Let them figure it out.

6. Make Your Listings Ugly. Make your font bright yellow on white. Use 6-point font. Who cares if you can read the text, anyway? It’s not that important. Add little animations and flashing lights. Give your customer a headache. USE CAPITALS! Add some really obnoxious music that automatically plays.

7. Have Your Auctions End At Strange Hours. Why not have your item end 4am? You’re sure that everyone will stay up all night until the auction ends. They have nothing better to do anyways. Why bother figuring out the best time to end your auction?

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

So you want to sell on eBay? You want to take advantage of the $60 billion dollar marketplace, grab your piece of the pie? That’s great, but where can you find product to sell?

That’s likely the most common question that comes up for new eBay sellers. You’ve gotta have something to sell. No products, no sales. No sales, no business, right?

This is where many people get stuck, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Once you have an idea in mind of what you want to sell on eBay, you need to realize that there are one or more manufacturers looking to sell those products. Let’s say it’s WidgetX.

Perhaps you can find WidgetX in online stores, retail stores, or catalogs. No matter where you can buy it today, you don’t want to start at the retail end of the supply chain. The higher up you are on the supply chain, the better prices you are going to get. If the top of the supply chain is the manufacturer, that is where the best prices are going to be.

That’s why you need to get in touch with the manufacturer, and then find their authorized wholesalers. One of the best ways to get in touch with the manufacturer (aside from calling them directly on the phone) is to go to a trade show. Trade shows are designed to get retailers and manufacturers together. Trade shows have been where business deals have been made for years, and for you and your eBay business, this is no exception.

What you will want to do first is find out which trade show is involved for your industry. Selling garden supplies? Look online for a gardening trade show in your area. Selling consumer electronics? Check out the Consumer Electronics Show.

Getting into a trade show is a bit trickier. Make sure you have your eBay business registered and the appropriate paperwork filled out with your government. You must be able to prove that you’re a real business. If you can’t prove you’re a real business at the door, they might not let you in.

However, once you’re inside, you have access to plenty of suppliers. All around you there will be new product ideas. Network with people, get contact information and plenty of business cards. In order to have an endless supply of products to sell on eBay, all you need to do is develop some good supplier relationships.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

Many people have been pronouncing doom and gloom for the worldwide economy in recent months. With unemployment numbers as low as they have been in years, people wonder if eBay and other online venues are struggling as well. Perhaps you wonder if you can create an online business from your home.

The answer is yes. Even when times don’t look good, there are opportunities everywhere. Some say that more wealth was created during the great depression than any other time in history. That doesn’t mean that it will be easy to create wealth… but there’s no excuse why you can’t.

People ask if eBay is still a good platform to sell on. eBay has come a long way in the past 10 years and its greatest strength has always been the millions of customers that are coming to eBay – with over 2 million people visiting every day!

Most people shop on eBay because they are looking for a great deal. When the economy is down, it seems more and more people are looking for bargains than ever before. Having such a large customer base allows people like you and me the opportunity for our products to be seen and purchased extremely quickly and easily.

Another great advantage to selling on eBay in tough economic times is how flexible the platform is. For example, if you had a brick and mortar retail store, you’d have to pay rent and many other overhead costs to stay in business. Not so with eBay. With eBay, your overhead is low and the majority of your fees only occur after you sell an item.

Also, you can change your inventory selection at any time, without having to change your marketing. You can sell t-shirts the one day and golf clubs the next without hassle. This flexibility allows you to move faster and take advantage of opportunities before others even know about them.

Also when selling on eBay, you can research what things are selling well, and know what the marketplace is doing before you enter it. This gives anyone the opportunity to know their profit margins before even purchasing inventory!

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

Dealing with customers is something you cannot avoid if you want to have a business. However, all of the training tools in the world cannot prepare you for the frustration of dealing with a problematic customer. Knowing how to sell on eBay is a lot more than just creating listings and shipping out items. Those who don’t take the time to learn how to deal with customers properly can get into some unwanted trouble pretty quickly.

You have to be able to keep a cool head no matter how the customer talks to you. To see if an eBay course is complete, see if they cover dealing with customer problems. One key thing is making sure you are professional at all times when dealing with problem customers.

Some people who are just learning how to sell on eBay may think that it does not matter, as they would not want that customer back anyways. When dealing with the problem situations in the correct manner, confusion may be cleared and the customer could in fact turn out to be a return customer that no longer gives you any problems. If the customer is truly a bad customer all around then they are probably a bad customer for all of the sellers that they complete transactions with.

If you don’t want current and future customers to look upon you poorly, make sure you are cool and collected when responding. Your eBay buyers will look at your feedback. They will see how you interact with other buyers. If you leave mean or hateful feedback replies, other customers will not want to do business with you. Even though it would make you feel good, it’s not a good business strategy in the end.

So what is someone who is just learning how to sell on eBay supposed to do when they get a bad customer? Try to repair the situation. If there is no indication that this is a cycle for this buyer then see if there is something that you can do to resolve the situation. You want to put the fire out without making too much of a big deal out of it. Of course, there are always going to be those situations where things simply cannot be fixed. Keep in mind that this is not the norm, and after thousands of eBay transactions, we’ve had hardly any problems, it’s just good to be prepared.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, you need to check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

You have probably seen the advertisements on TV and on the Internet about people learning how to make money on eBay. Learning how to sell on eBay is not a get rich scheme. It requires hard work, but probably not as hard as you would have to work with a regular full time job. While you learn how to sell on eBay, don’t quit your day job immediately. This is because it is going to take a little bit of time before your eBay business is making enough money to support your household expenses.

Whether you are looking to make a couple hundred or a couple thousand each month it can be done. The more you put into it the more you will get in return. You could purchase books or courses that teach you the basics on how to make money on eBay or you could try to learn on your own. Every person is different and some learn better by hunting down all of the information on their own while others do better with programs that walk them through the steps. For me, I wasn’t able to get started on eBay until I had a mentor and a step-by step plan.

The first thing that you want to do when selling on eBay is to make sure that you are selecting the right kind of stuff to sell. This involves researching what products sell the best. However, if you’re making your first listings, just grab a few things around the house that you no longer want. These auctions will allow you to gain experience and build your customer service ratings.

Research what is selling the best by searching on eBay for the exact kind of product you have in mind. Are there a lot of people buying this type of product? Are there a million auctions for the same item with no one bidding on any of them? Or is it in high demand? By asking yourself these questions you will be able to have a better feel of what to sell. You will also be one step closer to knowing how to sell on eBay the smart way.

After you’ve found a product that you want to sell, make sure that you have an advantage over other sellers. If you’re selling the same product that 5 other people are selling, why would someone bid on yours? Often on eBay, it comes down to the price. Be smart in your pricing and your profit margins when you price your products. Be competitive but don’t be stupid.

It may take a few weeks or months before you get the hang of selling on eBay. With proper training, you can shorten that time significantly. Before you know it, you’ll be making money on eBay. You too will be another eBay success story.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for over 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, make sure you check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

At this point in time, you should be mostly sold out of selling the odds and ends that were laying around your house. If you know how to use the completed item research tool, you will need to solely rely on it when going out and hunting for deals.

Now is the time to go to the mall, outlet malls and storefronts on an inventory hunt. The ideal situation at this point is to find inventory from a store that is having a clearance sale. Stores that are already discount orientated such as outlet malls, TJ Maxx, Ross, Marshalls and Nordstrom Rack are the perfect stores to visit when sales are taking place. Take a pen and paper and as you spot deals, write them down. Take quick snapshots if you have a camera phone. At this point, you are just seeing what’s out there. Already having a good idea of eBay Pulse will give you a good idea what to start looking for in the store.

Make a list of these deals you found when you get home. Do some completed item research on eBay with each item on your list. You will be able to see which items are selling and how much they are going for. After figuring out which items are going to make you some good profits (after listing fees), you can go back to the stores and pick them up.

If you can, buy multiples of those profitable items. Relisting an item to sell more than once saves you time and makes you more money.

Is this just a waste of time? We did this and bought a pair of jeans at Marshalls for $9 and turned them around for $100 on eBay.

It doesn’t take very long to see what you can sell on eBay for a profit after a few trips to the store. If you want to take some old clearance inventory off their hands, develop some relationships with the store managers. If the items still sell well on eBay, its worth your time, and usually they are more than happy to have you clear out their old stock.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

You have probably searched through various eBay listings only to wonder just where everyone seems to get their merchandise. Some people are part time sellers who only sell things from around their house instead of having an old fashioned yard sale, but other people seem to sell stuff on eBay every day of the year. Where are they getting all of the stuff they are selling?

Apart from the stuff lying around the house and the garage, many eBay sellers go to yard sales and thrift stores to find items to sell. What they do is look for items that are cheap or marked down below their actual value. Thrift stores especially can be a great place to find brand new clothing with the tags still on.

Say for example an eBay seller finds a brand name shirt with a price tag of thirty dollars on it. They purchase the shirt for three dollars and they spend about two dollars on eBay for the listing fees for that particular auction. In the end, they only invested five dollars and that shirt could possibly sell for twenty dollars. The seller makes a profit and the buyer receives a brand new shirt at an amount that is cheaper then the price tag.

To sell stuff on eBay this way will take a little skill and time on the part of the seller. You of course will have to have an eye for the things that sell and the things that don’t. The best thing to do is to research, research, and then research some more. After enough research you will be able to find an incredible amount of stuff to sell. You might also want to consider hitting all of the yard sells in your area in order to sell stuff on eBay.

You’ve noticed that purchasing product to sell on eBay isn’t free. It can cost a bit of money to get started, just as it would be with any business. However, the investment is very much worth it.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.