Trading For Profit on eBay UK - The Newsletter from SnowysStore.co.uk - Issue 1, May 2004

Well, its finally happened. Snowy’s Store has a newsletter. While this newsletter is for the UK's eBaying community, as eBay in other countries is very similar to ours, there will be lots here for eBayers all over the world. In the future, this newsletter will help take you from novice eBayer to the stage where you can be successfully trading for profit on eBay UK. Thanks for subscribing.

Sometimes we are too busy trading on eBay to take a step back and see where we are going with our business.

Why not take a little time to think about how you want your busines to grow in the future. If you create a 'business strategy' for your ebay business you will know what your goals are and what you need to do to achieve them. You dont need anything fancy to create your strategy - just some imagination, one sheet of paper, a pen and a cup of coffee. Write down the answers to questions like 'who will be my customers', 'where will they come from?', 'how will I give them what they want?' and 'how will I grow my business?'. There are plenty of books available on writing a business plan if you want to take this further, later on.

Profitable eBay businesses develop in different ways. The following stages could be included in your strategy:-

Early days - simply buying and selling on eBay. You may have plain text auction ads to begin with. Later, learning how to use HTML, makes your ads more attractive and improves your sales;

Intermediate stage - sales levels justify opening an eBay store. A well designed ‘About Me’ page improves customer confidence and helps build business;

Become a webmaster - many of the best eBay sellers enjoy the flexibility of a free standing, e-commerce enabled website which is on the same theme as their eBay store.

So, many of the most successful eBayers will be selling on eBay and on their own website, too. The benefits of your own website include:-

So if you really want to Profit from Trading on eBay, have an eBay strategy containing your short, medium and long term goals - and if you want a website start one now! How you can do this and much more will be covered on www.SnowysStore.co.uk and in future Trading for Profit on eBay newsletters.

A couple of tips to help your busines.

1) Add your 'signature' to your emails.

Most email programmes allow you to set up a sentence or two which will appear at the bottom of every email you send out. On my emails I have the following text:-

2) When you dispatch an order to a customer.........

Why not include a simple thank you note with each order you send out. You could include a little hand written note, or you could produce something on your computer. Either way you will distinguish yourself from many other sellers and encourage repeat business.

Good luck and happy trading....

Ray

Webmaster: www.SnowysStore.co.uk