Every online marketer knows that building a list is the one of the most effective ways to build a potentially profitable following. The same marketer also knows that those who have already bought from them are most likely to buy from them again. We see this all the time so would you like fries with that?

So how do you combine these two well known theories and turn them into one powerful marketing and sales technique? One and a half words – eBay.

There is a strange divide between people who swear by the monster marketplace and others who shun it like an Italian motorcar. I’m a bit of both, I love Ferrari’s but I drive an Alfa. What I’m trying to get at is that you may not be experiencing the full potential of the available resource but that doesn’t mean that it does not exist.

When I first started selling on eBay I did the normal thing. I sold something, sent out a great product, got good feedback and then moved on to the next customer. I would comfortably say that the majority of the sellers do this because that’s the way you do things right? Not quite.

Lets dissect things a little more. eBay is a massive marketplace full of millions of buyers ready and willing to buy stuff. Ready and willing to buy stuff. Those are some really powerful words right there. If you put a product up for sale on eBay you are exposing it to a market that is there not just surfing for fun, but are genuine buyers. That’s the first thing to take note of but it’s nothing that we don’t know already and many hundreds of ambitious entrepreneurs have used this fact to make thousands and thousands of sales.

Secondly when people buy a product from you on eBay you are required to communicate via email to finalize the sale. Now I’m guessing that little light bulb is flashing inside your head thinking you know where I’m heading with this. Your also thinking how could you possibly have not thought of this? Well looking at eBay’s terms and conditions there is good reason why you haven’t already thought of it or dismissed it entirely:

• Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay
• Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who became aware of the item through eBay.
• Ending a listing early to sell the item at a higher price to the winning bidder
• Offering to sell an item to a bidder in a Reserve Not Met listing without going through Second Chance Offer
• Offering to sell duplicate or additional merchandise to under-bidders without going through Second Chance Offer
• Sending unsolicited (without prior permission) commercial email offers to bidders for the same or similar products that they have bid on in the past

We need to read between the lines here a bit. If you run through the text in more detail you will notice that eBay makes a specific point of mentioning that sellers are not to use details obtained within eBay to sell any listed items outside of eBay.

So you can’t go and use the details you gather from eBay to sell the listed product outside of eBay but this is also the loophole: it doesnt actually say you can’t use this information to sell non-listed or alternative products outside of eBay.

As an eBay seller, once an item is sold, what you now have are the details of people who have already bought from you in a buyers environment. That’s the marketers dream right there and the potential is enormous.

Some brief action points to consider after a sale:

1. Send your buyers a digital thank you note (as well as a physical one when you send out your product)
2. Offer them a great bonus gift if they sign-up to your mailing list for great offers.
3. Once they sign up send through the bonus
4. Over the next 7 or so days build a healthy relationship giving away excellent products and information.
5. Sell to them again.
6. Then again.

Go the normal way and you’ll come out ok. Think outside the square and do that little extra and you’ll get your Ferrari.

Its quite a broad area but one way you can make money without money online is through selling products online, more specifically in this case, through drop shipping.

I have written a previous post about the pros and cons of drop shipping but in this post I will talk more on how to get started.

A drop shipping business is basically where you sell a product, either online or offline, and after the sale is made you order with the manufacturer (or drop-shipper) and they ship the item directly to your customer. This could be your own private label product or a manufacturers however the principle is the same. You don’t see the product and you don’t hold inventory, all you do is make the sale, process the payment and then place the order with the manufacturer or drop shipper. That’s it. When done correctly its a fantastic way to make money and doesn’t involve a lot of the nuances existent in a ‘normal’ business.

One of the key features of drop shipping is that you need next to nothing to start out, especially in today’s online environment. Sites like eBay and other online marketplaces allow you to sell to thousands on potential buyers and the cost to set up is $0. Here is an example of how to do it using eBay as an example:

1. Sign up with Ebay – FREE
2. Get a Paypal account if you havn’t already got one for processing payments – (also FREE)
3. Check out eBay pulse – this will tell you what the current top searches on eBay are. This information will help you understand what is in high demand on eBay.
4. Once you are aware of what is selling, write a list down of these items and find out what people are willing to pay for them. A good way to do this is to check out other sellers in the category selling similar products and have a look at their feedback. Most of the time you can see what they sold previously and how much the item sold for. Use these sales as a guide to what the items will sell for. Write down a rough price range for each item to refer to in the next step.
5. For each item find the appropriate manufacturers and possible drop shipping companies where you can purchase the product and have it drop shipped. You can find manufacturers and drop shippers at the following places: Alibaba, Craigslist and DHgate.
6. Determine those products that you can make a profit from based on the amount they usually sell for (see step 4).
7. For the profitable products, put an advertisement up on eBay setting the minimum bid at what you need to break even or make a small profit.
8. Sell your products, take the money and then organise the shipment of the item
9. eBay will invoice you once a month (around mid-month) and will include submission fees (fee for placing an auction) and also their commission on the sales you make. Ensure you factor in these fees into your bidding reserve as they will eat into your revenue.

If you take the approach above you actually will never need to spend a cent of your money before you make money. Signing up to eBay is completely free and you will only pay the fees in bulk which most of the time is after you have sold your products so you have the money already. Once you have found the right product it is super easy to develop and automated sales process that can immediately send orders to your drop shipper as soon as your Paypal account has been credited.

You can also set up an online store selling drop shipped items. There are both positives and negatives in starting your own online store. The positives are mainly the fact you don’t need to pay insertion fees to a company like eBay and the commission fees are much much lower. Added to this with less competition (compared to eBay) you can charge a premium for your products. However the other side to this is that you need to find a way to drive traffic to your online store and your main options are paid advertising. These can be offline and online. You can use offline methods like print, flyers etc to drive traffic to your online store and also online traffic methods such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, banners ads or similar. Most of these cost money but probably not enough to turn you away from this path.

If you want to take the online store route then there are plenty of options where you can easily develop a great looking and functional e-commerce ready store. My favorite is Shopify and there is a Free Trial so you can test it out. It’s not expensive at about $24 per month for a normal sized business selling 100 units. This can be much cheaper than eBay if you get it working well. Essentially that means you can set up a free store (using the trial) and all you need to do is drive traffic to it, no inventory, no staff and no bulk orders. It shouldn’t take longer than 30 days to start making money from it so you already have money to pay their monthly fee starting from the second month. So in this example you have again effetively started with virtually no capital.

I have tried both of these and both of them worked well. I was able to charge more with my online store with Shopify however eBay sales came easier but much less profit.

Do dropshipping right and you to will realise just how little money you need to establish a great revenue stream.