| |
| |
|
Net Auctions and Auction Information |
|
|
|
Profitable Paper Piecing on eBay -- Part 2
Basic Paper Piecing Tips Here are some tips that will help you create paper piecings that will sell! Save some time by eliminating the "tracing" of patterns. Take your pattern, lay it over your cardstock and use your stylus to "trace" it onto your cardstock. You won't need a light box or copier for this and you can re-use your patterns again and again. Use the Fiskars soft-tip micro-touch ones. They have an ultra fine tip that will allow you to get into small spaces and make precision cuts. You should also try to move your paper around instead of moving the scissors. This will allow you to cut a smooth and even line. Sets that have more than one matching piece do better than a stand alone paper piecing. Even a title or matching smaller accent piece of paper helps! Other things that help are matching tags, journaling boxes, corners, borders, or stickers. Learn how to do details. Invest in a very thin tipped black pen and a white gel pen to add detail to your pieces. Use lots of shading on your paper piecings. Shade with chalk - use the teenie tiny pompoms with hemostates to hold the pompom to do your chalking and shading in small places. Take a look at some tole books to learn how to create proper shading on your sets. Practice shading techniques by taking a household object and shining a light on it. Note where the shadows and highlights are. Move the light and see how the shading changes. Make your paper piecings special or unique. Try to use the latest scrapbooking trends in new and unusual ways. Pay attention to color schemes. Invest in a color wheel and earn how to use it. Organize Your Paper Piecings Use a set of drawers, page protectors or other filing system to keep track of all of your paper piecings. Separate them by: (1) paper piecings that have been bid on/sold but not sent out You can also have them packed and ready to ship as you list You may need to combine some paper piecings for a customer that wins multiple pieces, but the packing is already done and makes shipping go faster! Setting Up An Accounting and Tracking System Having a detailed and organized accounting system is essential for a paper piecing business. Set up a three-ring binder, index card, folder, spreadsheet or file system that includes the following information for each auction: Title (you may want to place a printed copy of the paper piecing along with the information) Date Listed Spruce Up Your Auctions With Basic HTML Basic HTML is easy to learn and can really make a difference in the appearance of your auctions. Go to http://www.lissaexplains.com/html.shtml and learn some HTML information that you can use in your auction description box. You can type up a "template" using HTML in Word or WordPad and just "fill in the blanks" each time you want to list a new auction. This saves a lot of time. Advertising Your Auction Don't count on your auctions to advertise themselves! Create an email list and ask every customer if they would like to be notified when you list new auctions. Repeat customers will become some of your best customers. Keep your email addresses grouped in your address book on your computer and send using the "BCC" so that you are not revealing their email address to everyone else. When you list new auctions, just send out a short email letting them know what you have listed and include a link to your listings page. You can also send out advertisements on scrapbooking related "groups" or email lists. You can do a search on Yahoogroups.com, the MSN groups or any other email list to find scrapbooking groups. Email the list owner to find out what their policies are regarding ads. A lot of lists allow ads to be placed once a week. There are also "For Sale and Trade" message boards at scrapbooking sites that you can advertise at. I don't recommend advertising on regular message boards, though, because most of them don't allow it and it will really get everyone upset! Accepting and Pricing Custom Orders You've got QUESTIONS?"I was just asked if I could do a Custom of one of my PP's for a person that lost out on the bid. How would I charge someone for something like that?" We've got ANSWERS!You should try to charge right around the same price of the ended auction. Maybe a few dollars short of that. Only do this if you are satisfied with the ending bid price. If the price was too low, feel free to quote a higher price for your work.Be sure to make it worth your time and effort. Don't sell yourself too cheaply! Here is a form letter you can use to reply to custom requests: "Hello! Thank you so much for you interest in placing a custom order for XXXXXXX. I would be willing to make this paper piecing for you for $XXXX plus $XXX for shipping. Please note that insurance is optional and would cost an additional $XXX. Custom orders may be slightly different than the set you have seen because these items are handmade. Colors may vary slightly also, but I always attempt to get as close to the original as I can. Please be advised that I am currently allowing XXX weeks for any custom orders. You can pay for this order using PayPal, check or money order. Please respond to this email to let me know if you still want to order this set. Include your name, address and any special instructions for the paper piecing. Thanks again for your interest!" Providing Good Customer Service Working with customers through online auction sites is the same as working with any other type of customer. Do your best to provide good customer service. If somebody isn?t pleased with an item that they receive, do your best to replace the item or refund the money. You may want to offer incentive programs to repeat winners. You could offer a discount after so many wins or even offer to do a free paper piecing after the person wins X amount of your auctions. Always answer emails in a timely manner, ship items as soon as you receive payment and be polite in all of your correspondence. Copyright 2002 Antuanette Wheeler Miss Toni Gifts started out as a small pin sales site and blossomed over the last few years into a pin/bookmark combo design business. We are three women who have known each other forever. We have all been involved in scouting, scrapbooking and general arts and crafts for a LONG time. This is really a family affair because Glenda is the Mom, Toni is the daughter, and Missy is a friend for over 20 years!
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Hurricane Katrina Donations Could be Many Millions More - EBay Sellers Try in Vain to Help Yesterday I saw a mention in someone's email ezine about a kind person who had an eBay auction with the proceeds going 100% to help victims of the horrible Hurricane Katrina.It struck a chord with me because I had wanted to set up something similar, but found that the "eBay Giving Works" charity program seems to be terribly flawed for us small sellers. Mr. Rich vs. Mr. Job: How to Start a Dropship Business on eBay Mr. Asset vs. Real Estate Auction Action - Buying A Home At Auction Due in part to the popularity of the U. S. How To Stop Ebay Buyers From Sniping Your Auction For Less Than Its True Value There are many savvy eBay buyers who use automated bidding programs, which are referred to as sniping software. Sniping allows the eBay buyer to place an unseen bid in the last seconds of an eBay auction allowing them to win the ebay auction at a very low price if there was no reserve. 5 Reasons Why Playing Music On Your Auctions Is A Bummer Of An Idea There are 147 million registered users on eBay, and tens of millions of those are desperately fighting to make sales on eBay. When trying to make their auction listings as powerful as possible, many sellers use ill-advised tactics. How To List Your Items On eBay Listing your items on eBay can be very confusing if you don't know where to start. Here are a few tips on getting your items listed so that they sell. Auction Seller Guide To Success When its time to clean-up around the house, some people havea hard time deciding what to keep and what to throw out.What they need is an incentive. Effective Auction Listings - How To Create Them Once you've created the best possible title for your item, you will move on to writing your auction description. Here, you have more space to give a detailed description of the item you are selling in the body of your auction. How To Sell On Ebay: Pricing Strategy Many new Ebay sellers make one of two mistakes: eitherthey overprice items to an unsellable extreme; or theylose money on every transaction by setting low startingprices with no restrictions.In this lesson, I am going to go over which pricing strategies to use and when if you are using a ten-dayauction setup. 5 Secrets To Make A Killing on EBay Secret #1: Find a 'real' wholesale and drop ship companyDo you know what one of the biggest problem is to be successful on eBay? 'What should I sell"? I can tell you, I get many emails per day from eBay sellers, asking me what they can sell. Let me explain this more in detail. Online Auctions: 10 Secrets You Should Know Before Bidding At An Online Auction You may have heard about ebay and other online auctions.You may have participated in some of the biddings. Auction and Its Benefits An auction is basically a public sale wherein any object issold to the highest bidder. It can be defined as a process of purchasing and selling things by offering them up for bid, taking bids and selling the things out to the highest bidder. Royal Memorabilia -Smart Trading and Fake Dodging This is my second article about trading royal memorabilia on eBay and other online auctions. We're going to explore just what items are really tradable, how and where to find your stock and mention some definite pitfalls to avoid. Top Internet Businesses The internet is packed with web businesses jockeying forthe attention of regular users. Selling everything underthe sun and offering a substantial array of services, theinternet is quickly becoming the favorite of users,surpassing traditional catalog and store shopping. EBay Income Possibilities If you've ever read an article about eBay, you will have seen the kinds of incomes people make - it isn't unusual to hear of people making thousands of dollars per month on eBay.Next time you're on eBay, take a look at how many PowerSellers there are: you'll find quite a few. Seven Steps to eBay Selling Success More and more people try their luck at selling on eBay everyday. With all of that growing competition it is important that you do everything possible to make sure that you stand out from the crowd. 10 Tips to Starting a Financially Successful Ebay Business Startting Right Now Ebay is Perhaps the easiest and fastest way to start a home based online business. Here are 10 Tips to starting a Successful Ebay Business1 - Become an Ebay ShopperBuy a Few things on Ebay. Be Realistic When Selling on eBay As some of you know, I spent many years buying and selling both on and offline and several of my products are based upon my own experience in this area. I know that the vast majority of my customers and subscribers have an interest in trading whether it be on eBay or at the local market but more and more I am seeing people with completely unrealistic expectations of what they will be able to do. eBay Motors : Buy or Sell a Car on eBay Are you having trouble finding a great deal on a car in your local area? Well, join the club. Using Online Bidding at eBay Motors can be the perfect answer you've been looking for. The Down Side Of Using Dropshippers In The Ebay Auction Arena! Ok, let me just say right up front that I am not against drop-shipping! I love the concept. If you are dealing with a particular wholesale drop-shipping distributor that is serving your Ebay ambitions well, then hold onto that company with bonds of steel, for truly good drop-shippers are hard to find!Drop-Shipping sounds like the utopian business model.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
