Before even graduating from ASU, Corey Kossack started an online business that raked in sales of half a million dollars last year. Kossack, a computer information systems senior, started Koss DVD - which sells DVDs, video games and books on eBay - two years ago. This year’s sales will surpass the 2005 numbers, but he doesn’t know by how much, Kossack said.

The business became more successful as he learned how to build a positive reputation and get good deals from suppliers, he added. But getting suppliers to take him seriously was tough at first.

“I learned how to ask the right questions,” Kossack said. “I had to prove myself.” Kossack also got help from his mother, Stephanie Kossack, who now helps him manage inventory and process orders.

He said he’s now living comfortably while also investing profits back in the business. Despite working 70 hours a week, Kossack said he hasn’t had trouble juggling work, school and his social life.

Everyone knows there’s been a huge PlayStation 3 dump on eBay as many techie entrepreneurs try to cash in one the short supply (2 million world wide) and high demand. Here’s the breakdown of Playstation 3’s on eBay’s Marketplace at the time of this post.

Prior to the Friday launch of the Playstation 3 over 3,533 systems were sold with an average selling price of $1,788.88. Since the debut and wide availability of the system on Friday (supply shot up on eBay) the average selling price skyrocketed to $2,618.47. From a marketer’s and even a lamens interpertation there is something fishy about the supply and demand curve of eBay’s effect on us this holiday season.

In a single month from before the system was available to being very widely available the price has doubled. On a product life cycle graph, the PS3 on eBay is in the growing phase and quickly entering the maturity stage. Within a Read the rest of this entry »

A special thanks to our reader Auction Pixie who brings us a new misspelled ebay listings search tool. The website basically lets you type in any term (product or service) listed on eBay and find listings that we misspelled by the speller. The benefits of this are that 99% of eBay buyers will not spell their searches incorrectly and therefore the misspelled auction listings will have a very low price. If no one can find the auction with a misspelled listing, then no one will be able to bid on it besides you who’ll find it with Auction Pixie.

• The buck doesn’t stop there. Auctionpixie allows for the following really useful eBay management
• Automatically leave feedback for people who leave you a positive feedback comment. Define a set of messages and we’ll do the rest; it’s easy, secure and fast.
• Store up to 10 of your most favourite feedback comments per eBay account you add. We’ll then leave a randomly picked comment for every positive feedback comment you receive.
• Get instant email notifications when someone leaves you neutral or negative feedback.

Many people are confused over how exactly Ebay operates. Perhaps because of Amazon’s almost instant popularity and Ebay’s ecommerce interace, people think there is an Ebay wharehouse somewhere that receives purchase invoices and sends it to a shipping department..wrong.

Ebay is a buyers’ market much like an auction (in most cases it is an auction) where buyers and sellers congregate and determine a fair price. The market is competitive and buyers can bid on a very low priced auction and watch the price go up as more and more buyers bid on the auction. The other option for a seller is to list a product with a “buy it now” sticker price. ÂÂ

The following five tips are for getting started with Ebay and being familar with it.

 1. You don’t have to be a registered user of Ebay to search, Read the rest of this entry »

When you get registered with Ebay and begin selling you will notice you are stuck in the rut of millions of other listings. But how can you improve your visibility without having to pay extra? It’s simple.

1. See what your competition is doing:

Don’t look at just any competition. Start with the product your trying to sell. Let’s same is a John Lennon CD. I’m sure there are thousands of John Lennon CD’s for sale on Ebay. What you have to do when researching your market on Ebay is to see which John Lennon CD is selling the best! The listing that has several bids early on in its’ cycle of 7 to 10 days. Those auctions are the ones you need to examine.

See what words they use in their title, product description, photos (are they stock or very well taken), do they provide something the others don’t, and most importantly what is the starting price of the auction.

2. The Keywords In Your Item Description Title:

Think about it like this. The large majority of Ebay buyers use its’ basic search function which returns the results with only the keywords from the item description titles. If you list an item with an item description title with very infrequently searched keywords then you may be out of luck.

Start your item description title optimization by using a keyword tracker tool. These tools are little search boxes that you can type in what you are attempting to sell Read the rest of this entry »

Making a file of your listings on ebay can be essential to success for Ebay Sellers. There are many product search engines on the internet that will actually drive traffic to your web site and provide up to the minute information regarding your products information and URLs.

When you decide to make a file (the file is an XML file), Ebay will make the file of information about your listings Read the rest of this entry »

Are you an eBay junkie? No need for rehab. It’s probably a good thing.

In many situations shopping eBay makes great sense. For example, because eBay serves as an accessible worldwide market, prices on both common and difficult to find items are likely the best available – anywhere!

No wonder so many people shop eBay first. Of course, bidding strategies and rarity versus demand always influence the final price you pay. But overall there are usually good deals available from day to day.

Be that as it may, this article will discuss using misspelled Read the rest of this entry »