eBay Sellers: Build a Total Product Line, Not Just a Line of Products

Building an inventory is top-most on the minds of many aspiring PowerSellers. As you go about building your inventory, consider creating a total line of products. Build unity into your inventory, rather than just gathering a group of disparate items you happen to come across. For example, if you decide to sell digital cameras, look for the accessories that would be compatible with those cameras. Prepare to stock the memory sticks, batteries, and carrying cases your customers may also need.

Using this technique will allow you to expand your product offerings while staying within a product area. It will also allow you to give you customers some potentially great bargains. At a recent ASD/AMD trade show http://www.merchandisegroup.com/merchandise/index.jsp, a distributor of camera accessories showed us a beautiful camera case. The retail price was $24.99, but you could buy it through the show for under $7.00. By bundling it with your camera, you could easily offer your customer a bargain on the case and make your digital camera stand out in a market where profit margins on the cameras themselves don't allow much flexibility.

At the same show, representatives from CPD, which sells wireless accessories, showed us some examples of the bundles of accessories they created specifically for eBay sellers. That way you can decide to offer your customers a car charger and hands-free headset, or a hands-free headset with a belt-clip carrier. When talking about these packages of accessories for eBay sellers, a company representative told us, "we try to give them more so they can giver more to their customers."

A PowerSeller with more than 14,000 feedbacks told us, "the only way to distinguish yourself from other sellers is to give your customers a lifestyle. Combine your products." So, if you sell incense, consider also selling candles, bath salts, and wind chimes. That way, the people who find you will likely find more than one of your inventory items to be appealing.

Based on material from eBay PowerSeller Secrets, 2nd edition, to be published by McGraw-Hill, November 2007

by brad schepp

eBay Selling

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eBay Sellers: Build a Total Product Line, Not Just a Line of Products