Dan W. Blacharski - eBays Secrets Revealed: The Insiders Guide to Advertising, Marketing, and Promoting Your eBay Store - With Little or No Mon

eBay's Secrets Revealed:

The Insider's Guide to Advertising, Marketing, and Promoting Your eBay Store

With Little or No Money

By Dan W. Blacharski

eBays Secrets Revealed: The Insiders Guide to Advertising, Marketing, and Promoting Your eBay StoreWith Little or No Money

Copyright 2007 Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc.
1210 SW 23rd Place Ocala, Florida 34471 Phone 800-814-1132 Fax 352-622-5836

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SAN Number: 268-1250

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be sent to Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc., 1210 SW 23rd Place, Ocala, Florida 34471.

ISBN-13: 978-0-910627-86-3 ISBN-10: 0-910627-86-X

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blacharski, Dan, 1959

eBays Secrets revealed: the insiders guide to advertising, marketing, and promoting your eBay store, with little or no money / Author: Dan Blacharski

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-910627-86-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-910627-86-X (alk. paper)

1. eBay (Firm) 2. Internet Auctions. I. Title.

HF5478.B53.2007

658.87--dc22

2007009076

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

A few years back we lost our beloved pet dog Bear, who was not only our best and dearest friend but also the Vice President of Sunshine here at Atlantic Publishing. He did not receive a salary but worked tirelessly 24 hours a day to please his parents.

Bear was a rescue dog who turned around and showered myself, my wife, Sherri, his grandparents Jean, Bob, and Nancy, and every person and animal he met (well, maybe not rabbits) with friendship and love. He made a lot of people smile every day.

We wanted you to know a portion of the profits of this book will be donated in Bears memory to local animal shelters, parks, conservation organizations, and other individuals and nonprofit organizations in need of assistance.

Douglas and Sherri Brown

PS: We have since adopted two more rescue dogs: first Scout, and the following year, Ginger. They were both mixed golden retrievers who needed a home.

Want to help animals and the world? Here are a dozen easy suggestions you and your family can implement today:

• Adopt and rescue a pet from a local shelter.
• Support local and no-kill animal shelters.
• Plant a tree to honor someone you love.
• Be a developer put up some birdhouses.
• Buy live, potted Christmas trees and replant them.
• Make sure you spend time with your animals each day.
• Save natural resources by recycling and buying recycled products.
• Drink tap water, or filter your own water at home.
• Whenever possible, limit your use of or do not use pesticides.
• If you eat seafood, make sustainable choices.
• Support your local farmers market.
• Get outside. Visit a park, volunteer, walk your dog, or ride your bike.

Five years ago, Atlantic Publishing signed the Green Press Initiative. These guidelines promote environmentally friendly practices, such as using recycled stock and vegetable-based inks, avoiding waste, choosing energy-efficient resources, and promoting a no-pulping policy. We now use 100-percent recycled stock on all our books. The results: in one year, switching to post-consumer recycled stock saved 24 mature trees, 5,000 gallons of water, the equivalent of the total energy used for one home in a year, and the equivalent of the greenhouse gases from one car driven for a year.

FOREWORD

By Kenneth L. Mills

Multiple eBay Power Seller Accounts

Primary Selling eBay blackknighttrader

Business Consultant

Certified Educational Specialist trained by eBay

Member of eBays Voices of the Community Program

eBay has made creating a business easy. However, designing a successful business model that can grow exponentially is the challenge. I contribute much of the success of Black Knight Trading Company to my son, Joshua Mills. His vision to define the processes and work flows required to do eBay long before we became successful have served this company well. It has allowed us to grow from a part-time hobby seller on eBay to a substantial operation with a 9,000 square-foot warehouse and seven employees. Our gross merchandise sales volume has doubled every year for the past five years.

When the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, launched eBay on Labor Day 1995, he had designed it to be self-sustaining. At the time, eBay was not his business; it was his hobby. Understanding there would be times when he would simply not be available, he had the foresight to implement procedures, processes, and flows required to keep his business going in his absence. It is important as you increase your knowledge of eBay to understand the importance of being self-sustaining and educate yourself accordingly.

As Black Knight Trading Company continues to evolve, we have keep to the principles and ideas of Pierre Omidyar and my son, Joshua. In the summer of this year we will be launching a new software program called MIA, Manage It Anywhere. It is a Web based application designed to allow any size seller full inventory control and accountability while providing a quick launch multi-channel platform to eBay and other eCommerce sites. You can contact us at for information on this exciting new product or the opportunity to become part of our beta testing team.

The ability to define the processes, work flows, and ideas only become apparent after you have a comprehensive understanding of eBay. This book, eBays Secrets Revealed is a tremendous resource in acquiring the necessary knowledge to build a profitable eBay business model. I would be curious to know how much more our income would be today had assets like this book been available when we first started selling on eBay.

eBays Secrets Revealed will most certainly be on our list of must reads for anyone attending any of our eBay Beyond the Basics classes or to companies we help with their asset recovery efforts.