The nice people at Harriman house have given me a copy of How to have a Baby on eBay: Your One Stop Shopping Guide to Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond by Wiz Wharton.

This book is an interesting combination of shopping guide (the full range of baby stuff from monitors to pushchairs) and a guide to buying and selling on eBay.  On the whole I think that it works.  A lot of the time people need a reason to start using eBay, and this books gives concrete examples of how buying stuff on eBay can really cut of the cost of a new addition to the family.

Where I would criticise this books is that it limits itself to eBay.  eBay is not always the cheapest place to buy items online, and I think that it would have been good to point that out.  When I am searching for an item online, I check eBay first  but also the shopping comparision engines and amazon to try and get the best deal.

I have just read The eBay Business Handbook by Robert Pugh.  This book is a good introduction to starting a business on eBay and is ideal for someone who knows absolutely nothing about eBay.  The book provides a step by step guide to selling on eBay from setting up an account through to completing the auction and sending off the items.

This book is clearly aimed at sole traders who are looking to start small scale business on eBay.  Robert Pugh himself trades on eBay under the name Mollybol. To the novice, eBay can seem complicated and this book is a clearly written guide to all those thorny issues such as accepting payment and dealing with feedback.  The book also provides a brief guides to the steps required to set up your own business such as registering self employed and sorting out national insurance.  From experience, I know that it is not always obvious what actions are required and so this is valuable information.

Where I think this book is weak is on how to run an eBay business.  The book only very briefly touches on how to acquire stock and how to analyse eBay categories to establish a good market entry point. What would have been useful would be examples of how to calculate your profits given purchase cost, eBay and PayPal fees.

For these reasons it would not be much use to a business which is already selling on eBay and wishing to up their game.  For more advanced advice on eBay I would recommend Scott Wingo’s eBay Strategies

I have just finished reading two "new" books on eBay ("new" as they are second editions).  Both provide a good introduction to selling on eBay and touch on other topics such as multi channel online marketing.

Make Serious Money on eBay UK 

Dan Wilson was until recently the community manager for eBay UK, giving him an insiders view of the industry.  His guide to eBay is highly readable and comprensive guide to buying and selling on eBay.  It also covers the basics of selling on eBay as a business and has some useful advice on setting up a business e.g. registering as self employed etc.

The new edition had section on developments such as eBay express and also expanded content on on selling online in general.  

Dan writes clearly and with authority and I think his book is an excellent for new and intermediate eBay sellers. If I have one gripe about the book is that I have been slightly misquoted on page 255.  I think that selling on multiple channels is an excellent idea, I just don’t think that any other auction site except eBay are worth bothering with.  To make things clear, I would not wipe my arse with Tazbar and CQout.   

eBay the Smart Way 

Joseph Sinclair’s book is similarly comprehensive, but reads more like a software manual than Dan’s more chatty book.  However, eBay the smart way is a longer and more comprehensive book, with much more advice on areas such as bidding strategy and using photo editing software to create compelling photos. 

Similarly to Dan’s book, eBay the smart way also includes advice on setting up a business and expanding beyond eBay.  Worth a read,  but a bit dry. 

I have created an amazon list of the best eBay related books. Click here to see the list

eBay strategies is a book aimed at the advanced eBay seller and makes no excuses for assuming comprehensive knowledge of the working of eBay such as the feedback and listing formats. Like all advanced books about eBay, this book has to tread the line between targeted eBay advice (useful) and basic business advice (less useful). Whist there are a large number of books on starting a basic business (5 Ps, porters forces etc) there are few books which give insightful advice on how to run a success eBay business. This book largely succeeds in getting the balance right and is a recommended read for any eBay business looking to raise their game. My only criticism is that some of it strategies are not really strategies at all, but simply best practise. Is knowing the metrics relevant to your business a strategy or merely good book keeping?

Strategy One: Know your eBay Vital Signs. This is an excellent introduction of how to measure the sales success of your eBay business. The chapter covers metrics such as the commonly used conversion rate, gross merchandising volume and average selling price and then moves onto other potentially interesting metrics such as take rate and Buy it now rate.

Strategy Two: Set Strategic Goals. Here Scott recommends that you set clear goals for your eBay business. Excellent advice, but I am not sure that having a strategy counts as a strategy.

Strategy Three: Understand and Leverage eBay’s Sweet spots. This covers you choice of product. This can be broadly divided into two areas, what to sell and when to sell it. The eBay platform is better for selling some products than other and before purchasing stock it is important to investigate the market for products on eBay. Other factors such as seasonality and product lifecycle are considered. eBay’s strengths are at the beginning (demand outstripping supply) and end (liquidation) stage of the product lifecycle. Make you understand where your products lie.

Strategy Four: Understand the Price Velocity Curve. Simply put, this is to understand that as you push more products onto the marketplace, the price drops. It is often said that eBay is a wide but not very deep market, i.e. prices quickly tail off as supply increases. Strategies five and six deal with ways of shifting more stock whilst maintaining price.

Strategy Five: The Perception of Scarcity Strategy. In a nutshell, if you have a volume of items to sell, only list a limited number of items at any one time to give the impression that supply is limited. List one auction and a limited number of BIN items, replacing the BIN as they are sold.

Strategy Six: Use second chance offers. To sell more items without increasing the number of listing (and giving the impression supply is not limited), make extensive use of second chance offers.

Strategy Seven: Optimise your eBay search results. Again, not really a strategy, but sensible advice nonetheless. When listing your items, ensure that the keywords in your titles correspond to popular search terms. For popular search terms consult eBay pulse.

Strategy Eight: Build your eBay brand. As someone from channeladvisor said to me once, you would not go to an important business meeting wearing a pair of jeans. As with any sales channel it is important to build a professional looking presence with consistent branding. It is possible to do almost anything with the eBay interface which you can do with a website as HTML can be used in the eBay auction template, shop front and custom pages. For examples of good eBay shops, follow these links:
eBay strategies is a book aimed at the advanced eBay seller and makes no excuses for assuming comprehensive knowledge of the working of eBay such as the feedback and listing formats. Like all advanced books about eBay, this book has to tread the line between targeted eBay advice (useful) and basic business advice (less useful). Whist there are a large number of books on starting a basic business (5 Ps, porters forces etc) there are few books which give insightful advice on how to run a success eBay business. This book largely succeeds in getting the balance right and is a recommended read for any eBay business looking to raise their game. My only criticism is that some of it strategies are not really strategies at all, but simply best practise. Is knowing the metrics relevant to your business a strategy or merely good book keeping?

Strategy One: Know your eBay Vital Signs. This is an excellent introduction of how to measure the sales success of your eBay business. The chapter covers metrics such as the commonly used conversion rate, gross merchandising volume and average selling price and then moves onto other potentially interesting metrics such as take rate and Buy it now rate.

Strategy Two: Set Strategic Goals. Here Scott recommends that you set clear goals for your eBay business. Excellent advice, but I am not sure that having a strategy counts as a strategy.

Strategy Three: Understand and Leverage eBay’s Sweet spots. This covers you choice of product. This can be broadly divided into two areas, what to sell and when to sell it. The eBay platform is better for selling some products than other and before purchasing stock it is important to investigate the market for products on eBay. Other factors such as seasonality and product lifecycle are considered. eBay’s strengths are at the beginning (demand outstripping supply) and end (liquidation) stage of the product lifecycle. Make you understand where your products lie.

Strategy Four: Understand the Price Velocity Curve. Simply put, this is to understand that as you push more products onto the marketplace, the price drops. It is often said that eBay is a wide but not very deep market, i.e. prices quickly tail off as supply increases. Strategies five and six deal with ways of shifting more stock whilst maintaining price.

Strategy Five: The Perception of Scarcity Strategy. In a nutshell, if you have a volume of items to sell, only list a limited number of items at any one time to give the impression that supply is limited. List one auction and a limited number of BIN items, replacing the BIN as they are sold.

Strategy Six: Use second chance offers. To sell more items without increasing the number of listing (and giving the impression supply is not limited), make extensive use of second chance offers.

Strategy Seven: Optimise your eBay search results. Again, not really a strategy, but sensible advice nonetheless. When listing your items, ensure that the keywords in your titles correspond to popular search terms. For popular search terms consult eBay pulse.

Strategy Eight: Build your eBay brand. As someone from channeladvisor said to me once, you would not go to an important business meeting wearing a pair of jeans. As with any sales channel it is important to build a professional looking presence with consistent branding. It is possible to do almost anything with the eBay interface which you can do with a website as HTML can be used in the eBay auction template, shop front and custom pages. For examples of good eBay shops, follow these links:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/auctioning4u

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/primestop

Strategy Nine: explore other channels. eBay is an excellent channel but not the only online channel available. To build your business it is important to look at other channels such as your own ecommerce website, amazon, shopping comparison channels and search engines to reach more customers.

Strategy Ten: Use an eBay dashboard. These dashboards can be found on Wingo’s blog. A dashboard is a summary of your sales and sales metrics, compiled in a spreadsheet. A good idea, but you could only call it a strategy if you can call using a accounting package a strategy.

I think that this book is a very interesting read, particularly useful for the many people for whom eBay is their first foray into selling online. Scott writes with authority (and so he should as he is CEO of channeladvisor, a leading channel management software provider) and manages to make, what could be a dry subject, interesting and engaging.

Strategy Nine: explore other channels. eBay is an excellent channel but not the only online channel available. To build your business it is important to look at other channels such as your own ecommerce website, amazon, shopping comparison channels and search engines to reach more customers.

Strategy Ten: Use an eBay dashboard. These dashboards can be found on Wingo’s blog. A dashboard is a summary of your sales and sales metrics, compiled in a spreadsheet. A good idea, but you could only call it a strategy if you can call using a accounting package a strategy.

I think that this book is a very interesting read, particularly useful for the many people for whom eBay is their first foray into selling online. Scott writes with authority (and so he should as he is CEO of channeladvisor, a leading channel management software provider) and manages to make, what could be a dry subject, interesting and engaging.

Ina Steiner is the editor of one of the best sites about online auctions – Auctionbytes.com. This, her first book on eBay How to turn eBay Data into Dollars, is a combination of advice on data analysis, software reviews and advanced eBay strategies. The book is in a good guide on how to collect and analyse eBay data, but is less strong on how to apply what you have learned. The books is divided into three parts, The joys and pitfalls of eBay data, Using data tools and Putting eBay data to work.

The joys and pitfalls of eBay data covers the kind of metrics which you should be gathering from you eBay sales such as average selling price, sell through rate and visitor tracking data. It them moves onto the problems which can be encountered with eBay data, for example the fact the same item can have many different titles or that items with the same title can vary in listing quality. These subtle or not so subtle variations lead to varying prices which can make your data less consistant. Before drawing any conclusions it is therefore important to clean your data set to ensure that you are analysing the items you want to be analysing.

Part II of the book looks at the tools which are available to analyse eBay data. Ina starts off with the most simple of data analysis techniques, the eBay completed items search, a very useful for getting a rough picture of the market value of liquid items. Also useful and free (to eBay shop subscribers at least) is the eBay sales report, which give the user a quick snapshot of their sales metrics by category and format, buyer information and eBay fee breakdown. Another freebee to shop subscribers is the eBay store traffic report which gives the paths and keyword used to find items. Unfortuately these figures are on a shop wide basis and it is not possible to view reports of individual items.

I have to confess I did not read the second section of this book too carefully as most of the products are not available in the UK. A product that I will be looking into in more detail in future is Sellathon. This product overcomes the limititation of the eBay traffic reports allowing the user to track traffic on a per item basis working like a web analytics tool specifically for eBay. This is an excellent tool for tracking the effectiveness of your promotions, search engine optimisation and effectiveness of your custom pages. You can also analyse your conversion rate of browsers into bidders, something which is mostly overlooked on eBay.

The third part of the book is all about putting the data to work and improving your eBay sales. Whilst the suggestions are all sound, not enough is done to give real life example or to illustrate the suggestions and show how to use the data to hone your sales techniques. For advice on how to analyse your eBay business and implement auction strategies, I would recommend Scott Wingo’s book eBay Strategies.

That said, in the plethoria of eBay books available I think that this is one of the more informative and definitely worth a read.