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I have just held a 3 day firesale on eBay and the results have been fantastic with just under $9000 in sales generated, and this was with no affiliates on board. For me holding a firesale on eBay is a fantastic way to generate extra revenue and here’s why.
Side note! If you don’t know what a firesale is in the Internet Marketing world it is basically a sale where you compile a collection of your existing products or resale rights/PLR products and sell them as a package at a reduced price offering incredible value.
Firstly, when you list anything on eBay the scarcity isn’t false so it works really well. I’m sure you have seen countless times sales pages that say the price is about to rise or the product will no longer be available only to find that after the deadline ends nothing happens. Using false scarcity or urgency tactics leaves a very bitter taste with any customer and it’s unlikely they will buy from you again. It also makes this tactic less effective as most people see it as false marketing or simply ignore the urgency claims.
However, when you use this tactic on eBay it can have an incredible effect as the countdown timer on eBay can’t be tampered with. This can have an incredible affect on sales as the auction ends. Especially if you have a limited amount of items for sale.
E.G. If you have 50 items for sale people can see this isn’t false and are more likely to buy, especially if you are selling a popular item that sells well. Once you get a few sales under your belt sales will pick up as people see time is running out.
The ‘me too’ effect also works brilliantly on eBay. When you start to make sales others see this and they feel they are missing out if they don’t buy. The beauty of eBay is all sales are recorded and are there for all to see. The more you sell the more people want to buy to be part of the in crowd.
One successful firesale can get you top rated seller status. That’s right, one firesale is all it takes to achieve eBay top rated seller status, if you sell other items on eBay this is an excellent way to boost your eBay credibility. Top rated sellers pay less in listing fees and are rated higher in searches and have the credibility that comes with having the top rated seller logo shown on their listings.
You can take advantage of eBay’s huge buyer traffic. Most people browsing eBay have their credit card in hand and are ready to spend. This is the best type of traffic you can have look at your offer.
You can easily upsell more products. When your product is delivered you can include even more items such as bonus CD’s or printed material that can promote more of your products or affiliate related offers.
So what’s the best way to hold a firesale for maximum effect?
First make the offer the best you can, compile your products and make the offer irresistible. Be sure to state the individual price of each product to paint a mental picture of the price in your prospects head. If you can mentally have your prospect add up thousands of dollars worth of products they will be ready to buy when they see your final price that shows massive savings.
After you have compiled your products add even more value. This could be additional services such as consultations, telephone support, additional training, interviews, etc. Again give each item a value so the prospect paints a mental value in their head.
Once you have your listing compiled you can run 2 types of auction. A timed auction that will expire after a certain amount of time, or you can set a certain amount of items for sale and let the auction run on a ‘good till cancelled’ basis till it sells out.
Good till cancelled auctions are better if you don’t have a way of driving additional traffic to the auctions, where timed auctions are more geared towards people who can drive traffic to get things rolling and tend to suit sellers who have a mailing list or have ways to drive traffic of their own to the auction, so if you don’t have a mailing list (BTW, you should have) go for the good till cancelled listing as the costs are low and you can set it and forget it. Just set your amount and let it run till you sell out.
Always offer free shipping and ship worldwide. Offering free shipping gets you a better seller rating and instills trust in any potential customer, shipping worldwide opens your auction to a worldwide audience. Also be sure to ship any sold items promptly and always within 48 hours.
Holding a firesale on eBay isn’t hard to do and if done right can bring in fantastic results while at the same time enhance your eBay reputation, so if holding a firesale on eBay isn’t something you have thought about in the past why not give it a try. If you do I’d love you to share your results and let me know how you get on.
As always your comments and questions are welcome. Also, if you would like me to put together a series of training videos showing you exactly how to set up and run a firesale let me know by replying to this post and if enough people request it I’ll consider putting something together.
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I’ve only dipped my toe in the water so far John, but eBay is part of my New Year resolutions, and I may try this out. I like the idea of having a fixed number of items that potential customers can see is genuine, and not just part of a sales patter. 8)
Have a great New Year’s Eve, and wishing you all the best for 2011.
John
Hey John
How are you!!
I managed to sort out my website and set up a facebook account.
Once again Thanks for your feedback.
All the best for 2011.
Regards
Zahid
John, I like the idea of the firesale very much. I must say, I have not finished implementing my 36 week Master class yet but I know this could be very powerful when I’am ready for the next step into my future Internet Marketing career.
Thank you for all you do.
Mayo Best
Hi John
You really do the extra mile for your customers and students John!
I am not using ebay yet ! but after watchinhg your success you can be sure its something I will be doing in the near future!
All the best
Nick
Hello John! Very cool and Yes, I would love to know how to
put on an eBay Firesale! I am getting frustrated trying to learn it
all by myself and videos would ROCK!! (like you!) But honestly…I
think the HTML stuff is what gets me so frustrated! Makes me CRAZY!
hahaha! Take care and Thanks!! 🙂 Lisa~
Hi John, I started with your 90 PowerSeller Challenge and a
few years later created my own eBay Program. I’m happy to see that
you are still using eBay for creating some nice profits. Sense it
all started with you John and the 90 PowerSeller challenge (which
was a huge success for me) I know I will be using eBay for
fire-sales in the up coming year. Thanks again for some awesome
training and have a happy new year, Edson Buchanan
I would be interested in training videos. I had never
thought about using EBay.
Hi John, Terrific success, well done! I didn’t purchase
your firesale, but I noticed it was mainly digital products along
with consulting, so do you just burn the whole lot to DVD and add
in the personal consulting, or can you sell digital products on
ebay again now? I’d be interested in a course on how to do what you
did. Cheers Rocky BTW Happy new year
Greetings John, Great post, thank you. I am interested in
your ‘how to set up and manage a firesale on eBay” training
materials/videos. Also, how about describing the process for
creating the fully interactive DVD-ROMs you mention on your sales
page? I appreciate you mentioning the type of auction we might use
if we don’t have a list (or a small list – at that). Respectfully,
Fred S.
Hi John Thanks for sharing your results. These results have
motivated me to go and do this, because I have a worthwhile
benchmark to work towards. I would love to see videos and more
detail of how you put this firesale together. Cheers Ian McConnell
Western Australia
Hi John, Thanks for the inspiring blog post using your real
live example experienced from me as one of the guys being on your
mail list. I don’t use eBay at the moment, but I really want to
look in to the possibilies in 2011. Happy New Year, Lars
Greetings for the coming year to you and yours John. Thanks
for the inspiration.
Hi John, not doing eBay right now but the information you
give sure makes a light bulb go on in your head, great info John.
Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year. Terry Conti
Hey John
Another great product and a great offer.
I have taken up your offer, with some really great products.
I am eBay fan and will be trying out your tips.
I have some products which will be ideal for a fire sale.
Keep the great work.
All the best for 2011
Regards
Zahid
Hi John, I purchased your last firesale and wow what fantastic content as allways Even now I still find it hard to put all the pieces in the right order, so yes a video on how to, would be fantastic. keep up the good work and have a great new year.
Regards to all,
Peter Whatley
Happy New Year John, I would be very interested in videos of how to set up a firesale on eBay. I have been selling collectibles and vintage items on ebay now for 9 years. I really need to step up.
Thanks for all of the great info.
I also would be interested in learning more about setting up an eBay firesale! Thanks for your awesome blog!
Hey John,
I’ve bought a couple of your products just recently actually and I know that you deliver great products ‘YOU DA MAN’. so hopefully you will get to work soon and teach us how to do a profitable fire sale as you only know how.
Happy new year John and your family, looking forward to your fire sale product 🙂
Mike.
Hi John Congratulations on the firesale and your Affiliate
Promo Formula launch, you have had such a busy year. I see from the
comments there is another great product idea. For those commenters
wanting to know about burning a product CD, get Johns “Powersellers
challenge 3.0”, it has video tuturials showing how to do this, try
and buy it like I did on CD, as you will see how it is packaged and
presented. Happy New Year John, hope 2011 is a good one.
Paul…
Hi John I am a customer of the firesale, great products
excellent value, and service, as always. I would love some advice
on how to run a firesale on eBay, videos would be awesome Thanks
Jim Garvin
Hey John thanks for this timely post.I am just preparing a
firesale for eBay for my two premier products Plugin Auction
Profits and 12 Roads to Success plus a few other of my own ebooks
and videos so this info has come at the right time.Well done John
for showing us the way forward. Cheers Rob
Hi John, Thanks so much for the great post and for the
great offer in your fire sale. I’d love to see some training videos
from you giving greater detail as to the things you find important
in this fire sale process and some tips on setting up the ebay
sales page to look so good as yours did. Also, I’d appreciate your
reply to the above mentioned query about selling digital products
on ebay. Looking forward and always appreciate what you have to
share. Ken
Hi John, Good post and congrats on your successful Fire Sale.
Donald
Hello John,
I am happy to have contributed to your bottom line. Thanks for dealing with the credit card problem so quickly and the fast shipping. I look forward to going through the program and creating my own Fire Sale in 2011.
Thanks again.
Blaine Mitchell
Hi John Didn’t know you could sell digital products on e
bay always thought you had to change them into physical products am
I right is that still the Case? Cheers Mick
I ship the items on DVD rom Mick. For smaller items I ship them on CD rom.
John, Well done on another successful firesale. Such a
great way to leverage ebays mass of traffic and make some really
quick money – you really are the online marketing master! Congrats
again. Steve Wilkins.
Hey John I’ve been following your success in the IM world for some time now…and you know your stuff on how to my $$$$$ online…
This was a awesome post about your success with the firesale…
Seems to me you have another product in the works with the success from this firesale, I would buy a video step by step product that would show me how to set up a firesale on ebay…and so would all the people who have commented here…
So hurry up and create this video firesale on ebay product so I can start making some money as well…lol
The minute you create this product please email me first…
All The Best…
P.S. Create this video firesale on ebay product…
All The Best…
Hi Randy,
I honestly have no plans to create such a product but the demand seems to be there so I will try to get something done in the near future.
Hi John, Great result on the firesale. Common question but
do you ship the whole product on the dvd or do you put links to web
pages on it? Just interested to know the actual content of the DVD
you deliver. Thanks and have a great new year, All the best,
David
I do a little bit of both David. Most of the content is on the DVD but I also provide coupon codes to gain access to my membership sites.
Hi John, Thanks for this very useful post. Yes I would be
interested in instructions on how to create firesale on ebay.
Thanks, Gordan Bosnjak
Hi John, I only have the one product at the moment, but I would definitely be interested in a video set showing how to create an ebay firesale. Here’s to success in 2011. Dave Robus.
Hi John,
I too would appreciate videos re-eBay. I bought your firesale products due to the tremendous value in one package. Congrats on the your results: great money made!!
Best regards,
Pierre Gelinas
Hello John,
Great post and awesome content. I, too, would appreciate videos on how to do a firesale on eBay.
Again, thanks for the insight.
Kathy Williams