The eBay Arbitrage Profit Secret

Transcription

Avril Harper’s
The eBay Arbitrage
Profit Secret
Disclaimer & Copyright Notice
© Avril Harper & Canonbury Publishing Ltd
All information is provided in good faith and is accurate to the best of our knowledge. This
document is for information purposes only and does not impart legal or financial advice to
readers who must consult their own legal and professional advisors before spending money or
taking action of any kind based on operating a business such as outlined in this document. No
part of this course can be copied by any means whatsoever in part or total without the express
written permission of the copyright holder. It is the reader’s responsibility to ascertain and
abide by local, national and international legal, moral and ethical issues. Every effort has been
made to accurately describe and represent this product and its profit and reliability potential.
However the author and publisher offer no guarantee that you will make money using the
ideas and principles contained in this book. Business profits vary between individuals and are
commensurate with time, effort, energy, and due diligence expended by the individual into any
business venture, including that mentioned in this book.
Published by Canonbury Publishing Ltd
Registered office: Curzon House, 24 High Street, Banstead, Surrey, SM7 2LJ
Registered in England No. 4765425 VAT Reg. Number 811 5700 64
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Contents
• Introduction.................................................................................................3
• What is arbitrage and how can you profit from it? ..............................3
•M
ake arbitrage work without you ever having to leave home .........4
•W
hy does this opportunity exist at all? ..................................................4
•M
y favourite resource for finding spelling mistakes ...........................7
• Sometimes opportunities come out of the blue ................................16
• Last minute tips ........................................................................................17
• Some other forms of Arbitrage for you to try .....................................19
• Summary . ..................................................................................................19
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Introduction:
I love eBay and I want you to as well. Right now, being as we are, in the middle of
a downturn, eBay is booming. I’ve been on eBay for 9 years and I still see it as the
best way to make a fantastic income without the need for an upfront investment
and without the usual risk. I honestly don’t think it can be beaten.
Today we are going to look at one of my favourite tricks for sourcing great
products for easy profits and it’s so easy you are going to wonder why everyone
isn’t doing it. So, let’s get stuck in.
What is arbitrage and how can you profit?
Most forms of arbitrage describe buying an item in one market and reselling it
soon afterwards, usually for profit.
Although the concept traditionally refers to reselling a product in a different
market, the term can also apply to buying something on eBay with the purpose of
reselling it – again on eBay – for an almost guaranteed profit.
This buying and reselling in the same or alternative markets is also known as
‘Flipping’, or ‘Leveraging’.
Understanding Arbitrage
These are the most common arbitrage buying and selling scenarios:
•• Buy online to resell online
•• Buy offline to resell online
•• Buy online to resell offline
•• Buy offline to resell offline.
Today you are going to learn how to profit from the first form of arbitrage on that
list – buying online to resell online. And we are going to do that by finding items
that have been listed incorrectly on eBay and which are, as a result, fetching very
low finishing prices.
This presents an opportunity for someone like you or me to buy the item for below
its market value and relist it on eBay closer to its true market value. The listing
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mistakes we will focus on today are spelling errors which result in a listing being
ignored by eBay’s search engine returns.
Make arbitrage work for you without ever
leaving your home
Doesn’t this sound brilliant? A steady stream of profit pulling products that you can
source whilst sitting on the sofa and enjoying a coffee. You won’t even have to go
and collect them once you’ve located them… they get sent direct to your house!
As I mentioned, you’re going to be looking for items failing to attract bids due to
errors, which mean they fail to respond to eBay’s search engine.
In all cases the item can be purchased below its true eBay value and relisted
immediately once corrections and improvements to the listing have been made.
As well as the FREE software I’m going to tell you about that helps you find those
spelling arbitrage opportunities, you can also look for items with no bids and close
to auction end:
A quick way to do this is by using www.no-bids.com or clicking on the ‘All Items
Ending Now’ icon found on the homepage at www.ebay.co.uk.
I know it seems obvious but things that haven’t sold may well have errors in them
and this is where you can find them.
So many items are listed with mistakes on eBay every day, presenting countless
ways for you to exploit other people’s mistakes for profit. I’ve found that keeping
a spreadsheet of items viewed, low price Best Offer opportunities, and so on is the
key to doing this well and avoiding that awful feeling when you find a gem and
then can’t remember where it is.
Why does this opportunity exist at all?
Misspelling is the most common mistake made by sellers and spotting and
exploiting spelling mistakes is easy for anyone to do – even without prior eBay
experience.
This is why spelling mistake arbitrage works so well:
i) Thousands of spelling mistakes occur daily on eBay and not always for high value
products. It is for you to decide whether to search for hundreds of incorrectly
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listed low-value products, or whether to focus on one or two items representing
potentially hundreds or thousands of pounds pure profit per sale. Focussing on
low profit items may require more legwork but it will cut competition against
you, and stops you having to compete with fellow arbitrage dealers searching for
individual high profit products.
ii) A
mazingly, some sellers make the same mistake time and again and effectively
leave themselves wide open to becoming a regular source of low price, high
profit goods for one or two lucky eBay sellers with better spelling skills.
iii) Some sellers do not realise the importance of words used in titles for their
product listings and think that, even with spelling mistakes, their listings will
still be found. In fact, according to eBay, 85% of people use keyword searches to
locate items they might want to purchase – as such misspelt titles will render a
listing virtually invisible to the majority of buyers.
iv) S ome sellers omit important keywords from their main listing title because
they’ve reserved their main keyword for the end of their title and run out of
space, for example, or because they think entering important words in the subtitle or description will flag their listings to potential buyers.
In fact, most of the time, only a product’s listing title responds to search queries,
whilst the sub-title and description are ignored.
Here’s an example showing a listing for concert tickets, it begins ‘WATCH THE
THRONE’, and notice it includes a sub-title which in this case the seller has used to
display his feedback reputation:
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That is a good use of the sub-title. But, imagine that sub-title was stuffed full of
important keywords…
Let us copy his sub-title, beginning ‘TRUSTED EBAYER’, and paste it into eBay’s main
search box:
When I click to ‘Search’ alongside the search box, the next thing I see is this:
‘Your search returned 0 items’ is proof that sub-titles do not respond to normal
eBay searches (if they did our example listing would have been retrieved).
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Sub-titles do, however, respond to search queries if the person searching ticks
the ‘Include Description’ box or, if they use ‘Advanced’ search and select the box
marked ‘Title and description.’
Let me tell you; very few people do. So, in the vast majority of cases…
If a main keyword is misspelled in the main title box, it will be ignored by almost
all search queries!
Now you see why and how these arbitrage opportunities occur – let me show you
how to find and profit from them…
My favourite resource for finding spelling
mistakes
There are lots of free software programs to help you uncover spelling mistakes
made by other sellers on eBay, I’ve tested a lot of them but to my mind, www.
FatFingers.com is the best.
To use FatFingers simply type your chosen keyword into the search box and hit
‘search’ – FatFingers will open up another window displaying an eBay search for
the most common misspellings of your keyword.
This is what the home page of FatFingers.com looks like today:
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First of all let us see what happens when I search for ‘Dachshund,’ which is not
only a popular breed of dog, and major collecting area, but also a good arbitrage
income generator.
The above image tells me that there are currently three hundred and two
misspelt listings for the keyword ‘Dachshund’. (In the search bar you will see the
misspellings as suggested by FatFingers).
TIP: Compile common misspellings for your search terms into a list for use on other
websites like Amazon and Etsy.
Let’s go through the example in more detail. First of all I use FatFingers to find
those misspelled listings:
Here
On this occasion my search at FatFingers reveals thirty-seven misspelled listings in
the ‘European’ category, but I could have chosen any one eBay site.
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I want to search through collectibles featuring Dachshunds from among those
thirty-seven misspelled items so I click ‘Animals’ top left of the previous screenshot,
just under ‘Collectables’.
The next screenshot shows what I get from that search:
There are just four options – not much to write home about – so I’ll make the
search ‘worldwide’. My worldwide search for misspelled ‘Dachshund’ items brings
eleven opportunities (and improved arbitrage potential).
It looks like this:
Very nice items, that I’m sure would interest many ‘Dachshund’ collectors!
Look at the above items and you’ll see they all feature other popular collecting
terms, namely specific makers and, in one case, another collecting interest (a
specific collecting club – Southern Dachshund Association) which is bound to have
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its own collecting enthusiasts.
So, there’s a chance to buy the item inexpensively and relist it on eBay to entice
bids from two types of collector: one for Dachshund dogs, the other for the
Southern Dachshund Association.
Here are some more specific examples I’ve just uncovered:
Let’s start with an example of a book based on the subject of female suffrage, an
incredibly popular collecting theme that can attract very high prices on eBay.
Look at the book listed top of the following illustration:
The book topping the list, with ‘Suffragette’ misspelled in its title, may not be one
of the most valuable books of all time. But it is worth a good deal more than the
person who created that listing is likely to get for failing to spot he has misspelled
a very important collecting subject.
Suffragette memorabilia always attracts a wide audience and can fetch some very
high finishing prices on eBay. I doubt if that book will sell at all on eBay from its
current listing. Which is a shame considering the book’s potential resale value on
Amazon and other book sites, as well as on eBay itself.
The next two screenshots show the same book selling elsewhere for much more
than this hapless eBay’s seller’s starting price:
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£30
There are three copies of This Was My World listed on Amazon priced at £30 or
more.
£37.43
Buy the same title on Biblio – www.biblio.com – and you’ll pay upwards of £37.00.
Next I searched for mistakes made in listings for coins produced during the reign of
Queen Victoria which can fetch very high prices on eBay.
The next illustration shows nine listings with ‘Victoria’ spelled incorrectly. Some
of those listings are from Top-Rated sellers using Buy It Now prices which almost
always means the item has been tested at auction and has not attracted buyers.
But the seller obviously hasn’t noticed his mistake and instead of relisting the items
at auction with their correct spelling, he or she has transferred them to fixed price
listings instead.
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Notice how coin number two on the above listing has failed to sell at £15, due to
its misspelling of ‘Victoria’. The next image shows a similar coin, third down on the
illustration, also with the Queen’s name misspelled.
The fact those listings have Victoria’s name misspelled and are attracting no bids,
alongside others with ‘Best Offer’ attached to their Buy It Now prices, indicates the
seller thinks his goods are unappealing to eBay buyers and has reduced his prices
for a quick sale.
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In fact, those items could easily attract bidders and buyers and high finishing
prices – if those listings were to respond to regular search returns.
To illustrate the point, the following listing shows a sixpence dated 1900 which has
failed to sell:
£25
Compare that to this listing showing a sixpence that sold for almost twice the price
asked by the seller with the problem listing.
Sold for
£18 more
than the
arb deal!
Now let’s see what happens when we move away from collectibles and look for
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spelling mistakes in titles for mass market modern items, specifically ‘laptops’. I
keyed ‘laptop’ into FatFingers and this is what I saw next:
Notice that there are more than four hundred misspellings… almost certainly a lot
of good arbitrage deals to be made!
Look at the next two screen caps showing more listings with misspellings of
‘laptop’ and decide whether you think these items would fetch higher prices with
their correct spellings. I certainly think they would:
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Now let’s look at ‘cufflinks’ (cufflinks being one of my favorite buying and selling
interests). In just one search I found a number of items selling Buy It Now with
CUFFLINKS misspelled in the title and I am almost one hundred per cent sure these
items would fetch much higher prices without a spelling mistake.
Using ‘Ending Soonest’ for one of my favorite misspelled search terms – cufflink –
brings me to this:
So many different spellings but which is correct?
Arguably words like ‘Cuff Links’ and ‘Cuff-links’ are commonly used to describe
what eBay calls ‘Cufflinks’. If you are unsure of the correct version, sort through the
appropriate category for your product to check eBay’s preferred spelling. If there is
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no category use a dictionary or check past completed eBay listings for successful
sellers’ preferences.
•• If more than one acceptable spelling exists, where possible use all in the title,
like this, for example:
Gold Titanic Ship Cufflinks / Cuff Links / Cuff-Links
It might look unprofessional to waste space on all those variations, but we are
aiming for eBay search engine recognition here, not the Nobel Prize for Literature!
•• Though not exactly misspellings, note that potential bidders can use very
different words to locate similar products. For example, the most popular
search terms for Masonic memorabilia: masonic, mason, freemason.
So, if in doubt, be sure to include other popular search terms just as we did earlier
for the various spelling alternatives of cufflinks.
Sometimes opportunities come out of the blue
The next screen cap shows two listings for watches where the keyword is actually
‘Titanium’, not ‘Titanic’ (which was the word I was originally searching for). In both
cases the seller has run out of space in his title and has failed to notice one of his
main keywords has been cut short.
This particular illustration illustrates two important points for people seeking
arbitrage deals on eBay:
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i) Sometimes you find arbitrage deals when you least expect them. In this case, as
‘Titanium’ is an important search term for people buying watches, then we have a
potential profit maker here.
ii) M
ore importantly, once you find a person making the same mistake on a regular
basis you have a source of regular arbitrage deals…
The image below shows one of those watch listings – notice how the seller has ten
items listed with the same mistake – that’s ten separate arbitrage opportunities for
the savvy seller.
TIP: As a seller you must always check your titles for important keywords and
always put your important keywords early in the title, just in case you fail to realise
you’ve cut your important keywords short!
There’s another reason you should check your title for every single listing, even
for repeat template based listings. The reason is, if you make a mistake in your
first listing and use that listing as your template for future listings, you run the risk
of running hundreds or even thousands of listings all with omissions or spelling
mistakes.
Last minute tips
•• When you find arbitrage opportunities, look at other items from the same seller.
Many will make the same mistakes throughout their listings, such as incorrectly
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spelling the same item because they’re using the same (incorrect) template for
all of their products.
This means you will find some sellers can become a regular source of arbitrage
opportunities, purely because they haven’t spotted their own mistakes.
•• Be careful about shipping costs as you will encounter eBayers charging much
more than the actual cost of delivery. These charges can eat heavily into your
profit margins. Check postage costs before bidding and also check feedback to
see if this is a common problem for buyers.
•• Also check sellers’ feedback for other popular scams that cut your profits, such
as not actually delivering your miracle find. I have had sellers say an arbitrage
find has been lost or damaged or has been posted and got lost in transit –
which in my book means they discovered their mistake and decided to keep
the product!
•• Check the arbitrage product is available to bidders from your country. All
listings give information about countries to which products are available, most
are offered ‘worldwide’, but mistakes and ambiguities are common and I have
seen a description state that items are available worldwide only to discover the
seller has eliminated specific locations from his bidding rules.
•• Try to bid as late as possible in the auction. Most sellers forget what they have
listed and just let auctions run their course, mistakes and all. But they will make
regular checks on items that actually have bids and this is the time when they
are most likely to spot their mistakes and withdraw a problem listing. Believe
me, very few sellers ever check their entire listings. So it follows that an early
bid could reveal the mistake and get the listing withdrawn and you lose a
miracle find!
•• Don’t spend too long initially on individual arbitrage opportunities, except for
those ending in the next few hours. It’s far better to check listings first and add
suitable items to the ‘Items I’m Watching’ section of your eBay account. This
way you won’t spend so long focusing on one listing and overlook another
better opportunity. The best way is to check arbitrage listings using the ‘ending
soonest’ option on the right hand side of eBay’s listings.
•• Have two separate eBay accounts, one for buying, and one for selling. This
allows you to keep your selling activities private and stops other sellers
studying your technique and accessing your main product sources. Having two
accounts also safeguards against someone making regular mistakes in their
listings and spotting you as a regular buyer, and realising and subsequently
correcting their mistake, and closing down one of your income streams.
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Some other forms of arbitrage for you to try
Once you’ve got the hang of spelling mistake arbitrage here are a few more tips to
add to your stream of products to source and sell for profit
The best way to make steady money is to literally stalk eBay looking for items
available for you to buy at less than their normal selling price on eBay. As well as
spelling mistakes these discrepancies can be due to several reasons, for example:
•• The item is poorly listed and failing to attract interest because it is listed in a
category where few potential buyers will find it.
•• The seller offers an item Buy It Now or accepts a ‘Best Offer’ at below the price
the item regularly fetches on eBay. However, to make this kind of arbitrage
work, you have to snap the item up quickly at its low price, before someone
else beats you to it, and before the seller realises his mistake and withdraws or
corrects his listing.
•• The pictures are poor and that deters people from bidding.
•• The item is highly desirable but the seller fails to describe the item properly so
only eagle eyed punters like yourself actually get to notice the listing.
•• The seller has poor feedback and bidders are deterred from buying his goods.
But you are willing to take a risk because you’re paying with PayPal and you
know you’ll get a refund if the product does not arrive or is not as described.
These and other anomalies represent opportunities to buy cheap and relist almost
right away to at least double your investment and maybe earn a great deal more.
Summary
So now you know how to find spelling mistakes in eBay listings, you have all the
information you need to make this form of arbitrage a regular feature of your
working day (if you can call doing a little research while sitting on the sofa ‘work’).
Good luck. I hope you enjoy this easy and very profitable business and please do
let me know how you get on – I’m on ec@canonburypublishing.com
Arbitrage is just one way to make a great income on eBay. Every month in eBay
Confidential we’ll alert you to a whole lot more! This really is the most exciting and
profitable time to be on eBay and I can’t wait to introduce you to it.
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The eBay Arbitrage Profit Secret

Transcription

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