Archive for July, 2008

Renegade eBay Strategy- Lessons from The Rainforest Cafe

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Luci and I were at Disney World in Florida a couple of months ago and we had a meal at ‘The Rainforest Cafe’ a themed restaurant that’s popular with families. It’s very similar to Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock Café, in that there’s nothing extraordinary about the food, but it’s a bit more fun than going to a regular restaurant chain. They’ve created an interesting environment, even if the animals are animatronic (Disney have a lot to answer for). Anyway, while standing in line I picked up a leaflet promoting their loyalty program called ‘the safari club’.

There’s no question that it was an attractive offer. For a one time fee of $15 some of the benefits include:

  • Jump to the front of the line for reservations

  • Receive a $10 gift certificate for any meal

  • 10% off entrees on any visit for up to 4 people, or a free appetizer for the table.

  • 10% off retail merchandise

  • Discounts at 6 other restaurants


To be honest, it was the first benefit that swung it for me, simply not having to stand in line for 30-45 minutes to wait for a table. I handed over my $15 and our wait time instantly evaporated, a table opened up for us, and we were whisked through to the restaurant.

What I didn’t expect was that in the three months that followed since the Florida trip, we’ve visited Rainforest Cafés in Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Orlando. Why? Because we wanted to use our $10 gift certificate and membership perks! There’s obviously a psychology behind this because we’ve never had an outstanding service or food experience at a rainforest café, it’s always been ‘so-so’. Yet having the membership somehow always prompted us to use it. The $15 initial fee is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned, subsequently the fee I’d paid never entered my head as a reason I should dine there on those other occasions.

You can learn an important lesson from this. Many many people are members of loyalty programs such as frequent flyer miles, credit card cashback, cruises, gas stations, hotels, grocery stores, book stores, etc. Why? Because they feel as though they’ll gain benefits and perhaps even be treated as special, a valued customer. Plus, it’s been noted that consumers who are enrolled in these programs tend to spend more than non-members. Certainly my own experience bears that out.

In view of all this, it’s nothing short of astonishing how few eBay sellers grasp this important concept for their eBay or online business. There are even ready-made programs like ‘My Store Rewards’ that any seller can plug themselves into in a matter of minutes, yet you’d have to look long and hard to find the tiny percentage of sellers that have taken advantage of programs like that. ‘My Store Rewards’ (which ties into PayPal) is also inexpensive. For example, if you offered your customers a 1% reward on a $100 purchase, your cost would be $1.12, with $1 going to the buyer and $0.12 cents in fees. This is a no-brainer for any eBay seller, and if you’re in a competitive market this is a MUST – it’s yet another way to separate yourself from the competition. Read more about it and sign up for your 30 day free trial at www.mystorerewards.com – I’m not affiliated with this program in any way, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to you as something that will help your eBay business grow. faster.

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Can You Compete With Google?

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Who would dare compete with Google, the biggest Internet player of them all, the giant that dominates online search?

A company called ‘Mahalo’ is doing just that. What they’ve done is simply ingenious. Their ultimate aim is to have all their search results powered by humans – in other words, a real person researches which sites provide the best information for a given search term. By comparison, Google is powered by computerized robots that trawl websites and make their best guess as to the nature and relevancy of the content. But computers often get it wrong. That’s a weakness that Mahalo has used to its advantage.

Mahalo is a Hawaiian word for ‘thank you’ and the company’s motto is ‘we’re here to help’. The obvious question is, ‘how are they getting human powered search results for so many terms?’ Actually, they’re not. While they’re going as fast as they can, they’ve been focusing their efforts on the most popular search terms that account for the largest percentage of queries, and ignoring local searches, say for a restaurant in your area.

Now, the really clever part is that Mahalo provides Google search results for queries that haven’t been indexed by one of their ‘guides’ (staff). Can you see what that means? They’ve effectively got the best of both worlds. The end user receives the more accurate human search results where they’re available, and the regular Google results if they’re not. They also get revenue from Google Adsense. From the perspective of the user, it’s a better experience than Google can provide!

There’s more….

Mahalo has about 60 employees, whereas Google has 10,000, but employees are expensive and often a hassle to maintain. So Mahalo started an initiative where they pay $10 for anyone who creates a page of search results for a search term. The payment increases by $1 for submitting more results, so the more you submit, the more you get paid. And they don’t seem to have any trouble finding takers for this deal.

“…there’s probably a chink in the armor of every large company.”

Let me ask you, before you knew this story, would you have thought it was possible to compete with Google? I suspect not, but what you’ve just read indicates that there’s probably a chink in the armor of every large company. Find that chink and you’ve found a goldmine. Can you see where this is heading?

A couple of issues ago I gave you a list of eBay’s top sellers. What did you do with that list? Why not grab it and review it again, and try to find a weakness that you can exploit in some of these sellers. If necessary, buy something from them. Review their entire process. What did they do well, and what did they not do well? Ask yourself, “what can I do better, faster, more cheaply, more friendlier, or more efficiently than them?”

Think about this classic David and Goliath situation of Mahalo vs Google. Don’t be intimidated by a big player in your marketplace. Think big, plan to succeed, and take massive action.

These days a smart, out of the box thinker with great marketing skills can definitely take on the ‘big boys’ and win. You’ve just read the proof, now it’s your turn…

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Name Your Price

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

It took me awhile to come to terms with the fact that many people are willing to pay what you and I probably consider to be outrageous sums of money for a product or service when they want the premium or very best you can offer. EVERY ONE has things they’ll ‘splurge’ on. Have you overcome that price barrier mentally? Whether or not you are comfortable with this issue, it’s a fact of life, so you can either offer premium versions and make higher profit, or you can dismiss it and do things the way you’ve always done them! Here are some examples of items I recently spotted that prove that demand exists for high priced, premium products:


William Rast Jeans - $220
Small bottle of water at Celine Dion concert $5
Apple iPhone - $600
Vacheron Constantin Swiss Watch - $1.5million
Leather bound Trivial Pursuit, Special Edition-$4400
Kopi Luwak Coffee - $600 / pound or $50 / cup

Obviously when you consider the actual price of manufacturing these products, there’s no relation to the price being charged. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in support of price gouging in any circumstances, but if you offer something special and the customer is happy to pay the premium, why not give ‘em what they want! It’s really about supply and demand, and the feeling of exclusivity that many customers want. For example, a hotel in a sleepy town might go for $45 a night, whereas a NYC hotel room will commonly cost you $300 a night. The rooms could be identical, but because of other factors the variation in price is huge. It’s understood that you pay for location.

So, is there a premium version of what you sell? If not, can you create one? Approximately 20% of customers are known to opt for the very best you can offer, regardless of price.

______________________________________________
We’re in the final stages of preparing an online community for you. At this time, we have launched an online resource directory for you, which you can access at: www.andrewlock.com/resources.html. If there’s a specific resource you’d like, let us know.

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Why Your Email Might be Misunderstood

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Every so often I’ll receive an email from a customer who misunderstood the comments in my email to them, and took them completely the wrong way. When a customer draws a wrong conclusion it can lead to all kinds of challenges.

According to ‘The Academy of Management Review’, they found that most people view the content of emails as more negative than they were intended to be. What’s more, even emails that are written as a positive message are often interpreted by the recipient as neutral.

As an example of what causes these issues, when someone rushes the process of writing an email, they often shorten sentences and remove greetings that have always been an essential part of letter writing in the past. Also, since most people aren’t very good typists, this often results in poorly prepared emails that don’t fully convey the accurate intended meaning.

With my eBay business, there’s no question that I’ve found this to be true. In fact, my experience gained in this matter led me to implement a policy whereby, if I’ve received a negative feedback (very rare, thankfully), I never contact the person via email – only via telephone. In every case, there’s been a successful resolution because (1) I took the trouble to call, and (2) the person on the other end of the phone could easily tell that I genuinely wanted to help them.

This matter deserves your urgent attention. With our increasing reliance on email it might be time to look at alternatives for certain situations. For example, a phone call is by far the best way to handle customer service challenges, but few do it.

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2 Hotels

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Last week I stayed in two hotels in the same city. Both hotels were similarly priced (not cheap) and both were well known, international brands. Beyond that, they couldn’t have been more different.

The first hotel had unfriendly check-in staff who made me feel like they were doing me a favor by letting me stay there. Then I discovered that the lights in the room were only controlled by a switch by the door, so you had to get out of bed to turn them off when you were ready to sleep! I’ll spare you the details of the countless other annoyances, but to top it all, the radio alarm clock by the bed was ridiculously complex to set, to the point where I, mister ‘techy’ himself, had to call down to the front desk to ask for instructions on how to do it!

Oh, get this. I mentioned this the next morning to two friends who were also staying at the same hotel, and they both said they had done the same thing! This begs the questions, (1) how many calls does the front desk get about the issue every day, (2) why did they choose that alarm clock in the first place, and (3) why don’t they replace all of them so that the guests don’t get frustrated, and so that the staff taking all the calls can use their time more productively?

Sounds simple enough to me, but someone obviously doesn’t ‘get it.’

Well, hotel number two couldn’t have been more different. At check-in I felt welcome and valued. The room was spotlessly clean, and the bed was extremely comfortable. Every little detail had been thought out. The bedside lamps had dimmer sliders that were easy to reach when you were in bed, and in the morning you also didn’t have to fumble around for a switch near the lamp holder, only to have to wake up to a blinding flash of 150 watts, as is normally the case.

I always like to have a glass of water by my bed as the air-conditioning tends to dry you out, and in this case a complimentary bottle of water was available, again within easy reach. Oh, I almost forgot…yes, the alarm clock was super easy to set.

I know that you’ve had an experience like this, we all have. If it isn’t a hotel it’s a restaurant, or a store, or a movie, or an item that’s been delivered by the mail.

If you’ve found yourself in a competitive marketplace, you really don’t need to innovate much to be the leader, as my example proves. For all intents and purposes the actual cost of building and equipping the two hotels was probably very similar. But the second one gave much more consideration to providing a customer experience.

Do you measure how satisfied your customers are? When was the last time you asked them for their honest, detailed feedback? (All you have to do is pick up the phone and call a few of them). Of course, all of this applies on eBay, just as it does to other selling environments. The stupidity and short-sightedness of the majority of business owners makes it easy for the rest of us to win plenty of loyal customers, who are often happy to pay MORE for the better service we can provide. Stop now, and think carefully how you can provide a better customer experience.

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A.L.O Technique - A powerful, attention grabbing headline

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

A.L.O. is a term I coined (deliberately similar in style to S.E.O.) which stands for ‘Auction Listing Optimization’. It can be defined as ANYTHING you can do within the eBay environment that increases the number of buyers, or that prompts buyers to go directly to your website. Each month I discuss an A.L.O. technique that you can implement in your eBay business…

I don’t know the exact figure, but I’m sure a survey’s been done to determine how much time the average buyer will look at an auction listing for, before deciding whether to continue reading or moving on. What I do know for sure is that the figure will be very low – probably less than 10 seconds.

So what can you do to capture the readers attention and encourage them to read on? A powerful, attention grabbing headline, and that’s the subject of this issue’s A.L.O. technique.

Famed marketer David Ogilvy wrote: “On the average, 5 times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that, unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.”

So you can see that we need to take the issue of our headline very seriously, We use it because hard data says it works. But just browse some eBay listings from a variety of categories and you’ll struggle to find a single listing that uses a headline.

What makes a good headline? Actually, there are many components so let’s review those now.

  1. It must be believable. If you make an outrageous claim, chances are you’ll lose the audience unless you immediately provide proof. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.


  1. Keep it short and to the point. Long headlines can work, but shorter headlines are easier.

  2. Make them easy to read. This sounds obvious, but use a font and line spacing that makes it easy for the buyer.

  3. Try and make an emotional connection with the reader. People buy more on emotions than anything else, so the earlier you tap into that connection, the better.

  4. State a benefit if possible. A compelling benefit gives the reader a good reason to continue reading. It’s the ‘what’s in it for me’ factor.


  1. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel by starting with a blank sheet of paper. Look at headlines from successful marketers and adapt them for your business. This is common sense, but few people do it, they prefer to struggle coming up with something completely new. There’s nothing new, it’s all been done before (and tested) so it’s much smarter to benefit from these proven headlines.

Here are some words and phrases that you can use as headline starters:

Advice… Facts You… Last Minute… Save… Amazing… Finally… Love… Secrets Of… Announcing… Free… Luxury… At Last… Growth… New… Show Me…Bargains… Hate… Breakthrough… Share…How Much… Protect… The Truth Of… Discover… How To… Rewards… Yes…

If you are not currently using a headline, this A.L.O. technique will be a big breakthrough in the effectiveness of your listing. If you’re already using headlines, well done, but the next phase is to test a variety of headlines and find which one converts the best. You’ll be amazed at how a different choice of headline can increase sales.

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Profiting From ‘Want it Now’

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Imagine if you could tap into the minds of buyers and discover what they want, but have been unable to find on eBay. Well, you can do exactly that with the ‘Want It Now’ sub-section of eBay. Any eBay member can list a request in ‘Want it Now’ for free, to let others know about an item or items they’re looking for. There’s a huge opportunity in this field that has been largely overlooked.

So how can you profit from this? It’s simple. Look for items that appear frequently, and fulfill the need.

I’ll give you an example. On one occasion I noticed that users of eBay.com were looking for a particular book, a novel that was out of print in the USA. I looked on Amazon.com and other online book sellers, but no one had the book, which is obviously why so many people had turned to eBay. However, on further investigation I found an abundance of copies available on Amazon.co.uk, the UK specific site, and since I have relatives in that country, it was easy to have them order a box of the books, which I then resold in the USA for a huge markup, because they were in such demand! People were clamoring for this book, which I’d never even heard of. My guess is that it had been featured on a national TV or radio show here in the States, which prompted the sudden interest in buyers. Incidentally, as a side note, looking out for future trends is yet another way to profit from eBay. For example, if you know the release date of a movie that has a lot of hype, you can create an information product around that movie, timed to be available even before the movie comes out.
My wife, Luci, did that with ‘The DaVinci Code’ movie. Knowing how popular the book had been, when she heard that the movie was coming out, she put together a 20 page guide entitled ‘21 DaVinci Code Myths & Facts exposed - At last, discover the secrets and truth about Dan Brown’s book and movie of Leonardo Da Vinci’. Notice how the title maximizes the use of keywords by the way – very smart. She sold that little book for $8 as a digital download, and it’s still selling today, more than a year after the movie was released! Anyway, that was a side story that I thought you might appreciate, now let’s get back to our main focus of profiting from the ‘want it now’ area of eBay. You should know that the fact that someone has posted a request in the ‘want it now’ area of eBay means they haven’t been able to find what they’re looking for on the main eBay website. If you’re one step ahead you’ll realize that to go through thousands of these posts manually is a heck of a job. It would take days to do that, and that’s not my idea of fun, so I was delighted to come across a little software utility that takes all the pain out of the process. It’s called ‘Auction Yen’ and it costs $47. I recommend that you invest in this software because it lets you tap into this little known area of eBay in a super easy way. Order online at: www.wantitnowtool.com.

Currently, you can use Auction Yen to search the ‘want it now’ section of the USA, UK, Canada and Australia eBay sites. The way it works is it looks for identical keywords that appear in numerous posts. The more posts it finds with identical keywords the better, because that indicates a lot of demand. You can search either by category (it’ll search an entire category) or you can search for specific keywords to see if there’s a demand. If you’re open to any ideas the first approach is better, whereas if you’re looking for buyers of a specific product, the second option to set a specific keyword would work better for you.

If this sounds complicated, rest assured it’s not. It’s VERY easy to use – choose a website, choose whether you want to search an entire category or by keyword, and press the ‘yenalyze’ button.

To show you that the experience I mentioned earlier was not a coincidence or ‘lucky break,’ in preparing this article I just searched again in the books category to see what would come up in Auction Yen. I found a book that 6 people were looking for called ‘In the Boss’s Bed!’ –would expect, there were no listings for apparently an in-demand romance novel. As you would expect, there were no listings for this book on any of the eBay auction sites, but a quick search on Amazon.co.uk revealed that it’s available from multiple sellers for less than $1. What’s more, the sequel, ‘Back in the Boss’s Bed’ was also available at a similar price. I’m not making this stuff up, honest!

I reckon you could make six sales of both of those books (and there’s probably even more titles) and you’d make a healthy profit – oh, and simply pass on the shipping and handling cost, everyone expects to pay that, so don’t worry about that aspect of the sale.

The other smart thing to do would be to buy more of the books at the same time and list them on eBay.com. Think about that. A lot of people don’t know that ‘Want It Now’ even exists. You can be sure that there are plenty more buyers for the book, who are just waiting for it to appear on the main eBay auction site of the country where you live.

You can get to the ‘Want It Now’ section of eBay as a link on the left hand side navigation menu on eBay.com, and you can get the ‘Auction Yen’ software at www.wantitnowtool.com. If you order it by the end of August I’m told you’ll get some nice bonuses including comprehensive tutorial videos, so grab it while the offer is there, there’s no easier way to make money than having buyers lined up telling you what they want!


HAVE A BRIGHT IDEA?
To comment on this or any other article in this newsletter, or to suggest a topic that you’d like discussed, please email us at: support@renegadeauctionseller.com. We’re always pleased to hear your suggestions and comments.

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Come On, Take Some Responsibility!

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

So, I got a comment on our blog at Renegade-eBay-Sellers.com that both amused and saddened me. A guy named ‘Fred’ commented on a podcast Andrew and I did recently about the strategy of starting items off at 99 cents. Fred said we were wrong! That was the part that completely amused me. Us wrong, come on, that’s crazy talk!

In case you don’t know, the 99 cent strategy is where you start an item out at 99 cents in order to draw attention to your auction, which means more people will be attracted to it, and subsequently all the strategies to take them off eBay to your site (hide them away) come into play - as well as starting a bidding frenzy that has the possibility of taking the auction price above your normal buy it now price! There are many other advantages to this strategy, but those are the main ones to help you understand the basics of it.

After I stopped laughing at the thought that we may be wrong ;) - I read the rest of his comment. He went on to say that he had listed a handful of items at 99 cents and in not one case did he recover his costs. Losing money is never funny, so I went into teaching mode. There are times when I do something where I knowingly lose money of the front end sale because I know what the Lifetime Customer Value is once I get the person into my sales funnel. The Lifetime Customer Value is what a person will spend over their lifetime. I offer them all kinds of helpful products I have, and a bunch of things I don’t have! What I mean by the latter is things I partner up to sell (affiliate sales). He didn’t understand that part yet and his main issue was that he ‘built it’ but ‘they’ didn’t come.

Come on! Reallllly? We are wrong because he simply threw the auction up and hoped for the best? Had he followed all the other advice we had given? Had he taken the time to study how to draw people to his auctions ? I’ll answer that for him – ‘No’ and ‘No.’

The only time I found the 99 cent strategy didn’t work for me was when I was lazy. If you are in a category that gets very little traffic then you need to take some responsibility and go get some extra buyers! Here are a couple things I am doing right now to draw in traffic to my 99 cent auctions:

Reviews & Guides

eBay allows you to write reviews and/or guides, so use it! Come up with creative ways to write guides that motivate the reader into realizing what they need to buy, and where they can buy it. Show that you know what you are talking about & be the expert in your market. Let’s imagine you sell a boring product like neckties - you could write a guide on “how to pick the right necktie for you”, or it might be “the care and maintenance of a fine silk tie”, “how to tie the top 3 most popular tie knots” or “three best ‘Power Tie’ colors for the corporate world.” Be creative! You CAN come up with something. What great advice can you give that will make the reader be appreciative and trust you enough to buy?

The key to this is to have the last sentence tell them where they need to go to find suitable ties. On eBay that’s easy – they’re already on the site, so it’s easy to direct them, and if your listing titles use the right keywords, eBay will tie your listings with the review or guide.

Your Email list

Again, this is something I’m doing right now. You have all of your customers and leads in an autoresponder series, right? Good, then try the following strategy….

I start an item for 99 cents, then the next day I send email #1 to my list of previous buyers, with a title like, “This weeks 99 cent special”. In email #1 I give them a link that takes them to the 99 cent auction. 24 hours before the auction is going to end I send email #2 that says something like, “Don’t let [product name] get away!” or “24 hours until someone gets your [Product Name]”. Be creative, and get them to open the email! Email #2 also needs to have the link to the eBay auction. Try this for a month and use different products each week. This tactic, obviously only works if you have more then one product, so we’ll call it a ‘backend’ sales generation tactic.

These are just a few of the things I’m doing right now to draw even more attention to my 99 cent auctions. The more traffic they receive, the higher the final price. Even if you feel you can’t use these strategies and tactics, use the ideas to inspire you to come up with your own ways to generate more traffic.

There are many more techniques, such as using eBay blogs in the same way I pointed out in the Reviews and Guides section, or having an eBay store that automatically gets picked up in Google’s Product Search. There are far too many ways to generate traffic to have the excuse that the 99 cent strategy doesn’t work for you or your market! Even if you’re already getting a lot of viewers and buyers for your items, these methods will still serve you well. It’s well been said that the best time to invest in more marketing is when the going is good…


Article by Jeremy Frandsen
www.Renegade-eBay-Sellers.com
www.Internet-Business-Mastery.com

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“How Well Can You Spel?”

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

There’s a lot of things that I’m not very good at, but one thing I don’t have a problem with is spelling. Having said that, because I grew up in England but have now lived in the USA for quite a few years, I’ve unwittingly developed my own ‘mid-atlantic’ vocabulary, a weird mix of words and phrases. For example, I’ll use ‘color’ rather than the British ‘colour’ but I can’t seem to break the habit of using ‘whilst’ instead of the American ‘while’. They say Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language, I’m starting to think I’m divided by a common language! I figure I get special dispensation for my unique circumstances…. Anyway, there is a point to all this.

I was exchanging contact details with someone the other day, and I noticed that they wrote down ‘Andrew Locke’ on their notepad. I politely pointed out that the spelling was incorrect, at which point the person said ‘oh, sorry’ and wrote, ‘Andrew Loch’. “Actually” I said, “it’s l-o-c-k”.

Although that was certainly an easy mistake to make, the incident reminded me that a large percentage of the population can’t spell very well (and I’m not singling out America, this applies universally). This fact presents a golden opportunity that is STILL overlooked by most people. There are two aspects to the opportunity. Firstly, armed with the knowledge that a LOT of people can’t spell, you need to include mis-spellings in your item listing titles. If someone is searching for a ‘digital camra’, and you only use the word ‘camera’ in your title, guess what? That person will probably never come across your item (unless they browse a category manually). By including common incorrect spellings, you’ll increase the number of people viewing your listing. Sneaky, eh? It’s a fantastic strategy actually. As you might expect, there are countless words that are commonly mis-spelled in this way.

The second way you can benefit from this is by searching for items that have been listed with a single mis-spelled word. In other words, taking the example from before, someone who listed an item ONLY using ‘digital camra’. Can you see what that means?

Because of the incorrect spelling, they’ll get far FEWER people coming across their listings, and as a result, their items usually sell BELOW the expected price. If the mis-spelling is particularly poor, sometimes an auction will get zero viewers as a result. If you’re looking out for that type of listing you can easily snap up a bargain and turn around and resell the item for a healthy profit.

All of this begs the question, how can you know what the most common mis-spellings are, right?

You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve done the work for you, and if you visit my special site: www.auctionachievers.com, click on the link ‘eBay misspelling tool’ on the left hand side. Then simply enter a word to search for, and you’ll instantly see a selection of common mis-spellings for that word.

As an example, I typed in the word ‘dumbell as in ‘dumb bell’, and found no less than a whopping 1275 a listings for ‘dumbell’!

A quick search of completed items also revealed sales such as ‘Box of 7 Assorted Dumbells’. How much did it go for? $1.04 (see enclosed exhibit). It should have been ‘Dumb Bells’.

Oh, and guess what? The seller is someone who should know better. My guess is they’ve outsourced their listing design to minimum wage staff, and never bothered to train them to check their spelling!

And people say this business is difficult…

Want another example?

How about a lady’s diamond ring for $24? The seller listed the item as ‘ladys dimond ring’ (see enclosed exhibit).

Think of the size of eBay and the number of transactions that are conducted daily, and it’s clear that anyone could easily create an entire profitable business around this principle.

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Renegade eBay Strategy- News Sells

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

“Hey, what’s new?” is an expression that most people hear many times a day in this country (USA). It’s actually been overused to the point where the phrase has lost its original meaning - it’s simply used as a greeting now. But of course you’ll never hear someone say, “Hey, tell me something old.” Why is that?

Around the world, it doesn’t matter what country you live in, we are all obsessed by the news. We get bored easily, so we want to know what’s new, hence the word ‘news’. The news tells us what’s new.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that we now have more sources of news than ever before – network TV, satellite TV, cable TV, conventional radio, satellite radio, the Internet, email notifications, magazines, and so on. If there were no audience, these channels wouldn’t survive very long, but of course the audience is huge, and many people still want more.

A number of my friends have a TV on in their office all day long, to monitor the news. Seems like anyone that monitors the stock market is attuned to the news at every waking hour.

I think you get the point. On a day to day basis, none of us cares too much about the past, we care about what’s happening right now.

This basic premise applies equally to our online business. Our customers want to know what’s new. They don’t care about what we did last week, last month or last year - this or that offer or promotion. They only care about what’s happening now. In short, if we don’t give our customers something NEW on a regular basis, they’re gonna’ go somewhere else. And who can blame them? Customers are a fickle bunch. That includes you and me of course, we’re no different.

So what can we offer that’s new?


he answer is simpler than you probably think. On eBay, as well as on our own website, we need to regularly add new products. When customers know that we do that, they come back, which leads to more sales. Told you it was simple. Point is, how many sellers actually do that? Very very few. When they keep the same product range for months or years, customers quickly lose interest and move on to someone else that gives ‘em what they want. Starbucks does a good job with creating news. At least every 3 months they introduce new drinks to tie in with the current season, and they make a big deal about promoting these concoctions. The new drinks are always successful because customers like trying something new, and it becomes a talking point (news).

Similarly, imagine if Disneyland was the same park as it was when it opened in the 1950’s. How many repeat visitors do you think they’d get each year? The Disney organization knows that they must keep providing something new.

If you feel your business is getting stale, invigorate it with new products or services, or even variations of existing lines. If you’re selling information products, invite customers to tell you what they’d like to see more of, and give them something new. It’s easy profits.

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