Category Archives: Meet Up

One drop of water at a time fills the lake

From Guest Writer Marcia Glenn

Sunday Morning Musing with Coffee: One Drop of Rain of Water at a Time Fills the Lake

Some of you are brand new to selling on Ebay and some are old pros. All of us need to keep up with new technology and new ideas that work, whether we like it or not. If you want to grow and be successful.

You can continue to do it the same way you have always done it (if you have done it in the past) and that is fine with me as long as it is fine with you. But I do ask you, please, don’t complain that you are not getting any sales, that your sales THIS year are not as good as LAST year.

I know mine are not. As are most people’s. However mine are improving week by week and I look forward to 2015 as a great year to be an online seller. What am I doing different than those who are not doing as well as I am?

1. I have a business Facebook page that talks about my business. My goal is to post at least once a week, twice or 3 times would be better if I can do it. I have a note on my computer telling me to do this. I have notes in front of me, screaming at me to do this.

What do I post? Things that relate to getting a sale but in a disguised way. I talk about the history of Haviland Limoges dinnerware and make it interesting but short. Then I refer the readers to my Haviland Limoge that I have for sale. Same for smoking jackets, coffee mugs, jewelry, ANYTHING that I am selling that I have more than 1 of.

Cannot write? Yes you can. Everyone can write. You just have to start and practice. Use Wikipedia, other research places. Take no more than 15 minutes to research and write it. Think of it as a blog.

2. I own Oceanbeachtreasures.com. www.oceanbeachtreasures.com. Cost me $15 a YEAR. What is there? Absolutely nothing!! It is a link to get people to ebay. Try it. Why do I have it? Because every single time I use it (in my thank you letters, on my Facebook page, on my Twitter page, it goes out into the universe and the search engines pick it up and remember it.

It is a clickable link in my email correspondence no matter what kind it is. People click links.

It is easy to do, easy to buy and well worth the 1.3 dollars a MONTH that I pay to have it.

I own Glassconfusion.com. There is nothing there right now (again as I rework my ideas about what that business will be in the future) but soon there will be a new website that will point people to not only me on Ebay but me on Amazon, Etsy and Alibris book site. It is part of my 2015 future.

Don’t think you have to build a website. You do not. All you have to do is buy the domain name which would be the name of your store. Then you just easily change where the link (your domain name) goes to. You just change it to stores.ebay.com/yourstorefrontpage, whatever that is.

For this to work you must have a store. To have a store on Ebay you must pay Ebay more money each month to “own” a store. Think of it as rent.

3. I have a store on ebay. Premium Store for me, you can start with Basic store. The store lets me build my business MY WAY. I can link people to it, I can link listings to store pages, I can Facebook, Twitter and blog about my store. MY STORE.

Let me tell you this loud and clear, without a store you will not succeed. It is the number 1 on my list of must haves to be successful. Number 1. No matter how well you shop, how well you sell, how well you list, take pictures, anything. Without a store to showcase your items, well…just get it. The page on Ebay that explains the stores, what they cost per month, how many listings you can have “free” of listing fees is:http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/subscriptions.html

Stop giving yourself reasons NOT to have a $16 a month store. Just stop it. Stop arguing with me that you do not need it and in the next breathe tell me that your sales suck. One of the reasons they suck is you do not have a store. This way of selling is a business. You have costs as a business. This is one of them. When I had a brick and mortar store my rent was NOT $16 a month.

4. Do you have business cards made up for your business? I do. They go into every package I send out. It is a cheap and pretty way for people to remember me. This year I will get some that are magnets. Everyone likes magnets for the fridge. They will like mine as well. I also have a nice thank you paper written and printed 2 to a page on pretty colored paper. It goes with the business card attached into each box of things I sell. It matters.

I also send out a Thank YOU letter by email using the real email address found normally either on the email given to me by ebay or at paypal. Some have commented it is a waste of time to do this. Some are feverantly against doing this. Not me. I think of it as a handshake after the deal, a way to honestly THANK THEM for buying from me.

Maybe it goes into spam folder on their end, maybe not. I don’t really care. I send it out anyway. It is not only a heartfelt thanks but it once again gets my name into their minds so maybe, just maybe they will remember me in the future.

I also give the feedback immediately. I do not play the feedback game, the “I won’t leave feedback until THEY leave Feedback”. I leave it because they have done exactly what I want them to do, they bought from me and paid me money in a timely manner. What else do I want them to do??? Handstands? Bake me a cake? Introduce me to Mark Harmon?

5. Networking. When I was a real store I had groups and meetings I attended where I spoke to people and they always knew my name and my business. I do this online as well. How many times in COST have I said I am Marcia Glenn, Glass Confusion and Ocean Beach Treasures? Is it because I like to hear myself type? Hell no, the more I can cram that down your throats (gently) the more you will remember it, the more you will remember the types of things I sell. The more you will check out my store and maybe spend some money on my sites.

Many of you at COST have purchased from me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, truly. But first before you could buy from me, you had to know where to go to purchase my items and you had to have Glass Confusion and Ocean Beach Treasures stick into your mind.

Who are you? Why are you not shouting it to me? I cannot find you if you don’t tell me who you are and what your store name is…..shy just does not cut it if you want to be successful. Get over shyness. Be proud of who you are, what you do.

I network in a very few Facebook groups. I do not have the time to go and chat but I do my best to help in the 2 groups I belong to and I know if I help I will reap. I stay away from Social Groups on Facebook, I stay away from groups that are negative and poorly run. Again my time online is for work not play. I value it and I schedule it out and I work the hours that I need to work online.

When (if) you had an office job or any job that took you away from your home and family to somewhere else, you had certain rules to work by. Working on personal things was not to be done at work. While you were friendly to those around you, you did not hang out by the coffee pot watching football games, you did not spend hour shopping online, reading books, knitting or the million of other things that do in your own social time at home.

The same goes for this type of job. YOU are home now. So is the television, the books, the knitting, all the things that you do for fun. I have to plan out my days/week each week. There are times I schedule for walking, with friends, appointments that need to be made, volunteer work that I have signed up for.

I must also schedule in work time. During work time I work. List, pictures, paperwork, research, sell, box, ship, source, organize, store. I can do this NOW in my bunny slippers with “Staying Alive” blasting on the computer, this could be frowned upon at the city water desk or anywhere else “out there” that I could work at instead of here.

You have trade offs. The successful selling people on Ebay never forgot that while this can be fun it is also a job. Act like it is a job. More people come online to try and make a living selling on Ebay every single day. More competition. But I feel that more and more people drop out of Ebay every single day as they never understood that this is a JOB and they did not teach themselves how to do it correctly, thus they failed. It all evens out in the end.

Don’t fail. Do the work needed. Do the learning needed. Get better at everything you do. Understand how to write a title, do the research, pictures that sell your item. Customer Service that is the best it can be. Do this right.

One drop at a time fills the lakes and the rivers and the oceans. Your business is the same. Every single thing you do to enhance it, every single time you talk about it, every single time you promote it on Twitter and Facebook and your own website, every single time you showcase your business it is like a new drop of water entering YOUR pond, stream, lake and ocean.

It all fills you up. Your business plans from last year or 2 years ago needs to be revised. Start doing different things that will fill up your business.

It works.

Now that your are full of turkey, football, waiting in line to buy something in a big box store that you really did not need or did not need to waste the hours to save a bit of money, NOW that all that frenzy is over it is time to buckle down and start building some frenzy of your own!!

Have a great week, stay warm and dry and keep listing and promoting and shipping. Christmas is 25 days away, remember that January will be good as well with the Ebay gift cards as well as the Amazon gift cards if you sell on that site too.