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What does it take to sell stuff on Trade Me in 2010? August 19, 2010

Posted by Michael Carney in : auctions, trade me, trademe , 2comments

This internet thingy is catching on. The latest (August 2010) Media Trends Report from Roy Morgan Research shows us that buying stuff online is now pretty widespread in New Zealand:

used-internet-for-buying

So 58% of us have used the internet  for buying things.

What sorts of things are Kiwis buying online? Again, Roy Morgan Research to the rescue:

Top Ten Products Bought Online
(within the last three months, Jan-Dec 2009)

Trade Me’s influence is clear — most of those products (largely excluding travel, which can be found on sister site TravelBug) are readily available through our favourite online auction site.

So have the dynamics of selling on Trade Me changed, now that there are more than a million and a half items regularly listed on the site?

Better, Faster, Cheaper (pick all three)

Once upon a time, sellers could get away with offering products on Trade Me that were EITHER Better OR Faster OR Cheaper. Now we need to try and deliver across all three metrics — competition in most categories is as intense on Trade Me as it is in the real world (if not more so).

And customers today are more demanding. They want perfect orders, shipped and delivered on time.

What’s a “perfect order”? According to Edward Marien of the University of Wisconsin, customers are looking for:

  1. The Right Product in the
  2. Right Quantity from the
  3. Right Source to the
  4. Right Destination in the
  5. Right Condition at the
  6. Right Time with the
  7. Right Documentation for the
  8. Right Cost.

US consumer products giant Procter & Gamble has its own definition of a perfect order: “a product that arrives on time, complete (as ordered), and billed correctly.” By P&G’s internal calculations, the company estimated that an imperfect order was costing it an average of US$200 each time.

The company found that additional costs for getting things wrong included:

Those are industrial-strength concerns, of course. The Trade Me equivalent would be:

All in all, it’s better to be an overachieving seller, delivering more than you promised.

Seven tips for improving your Trade Me sales

In many ways, though, delivering on The Perfect Order is really just about the hygiene factor — getting things right after the sale.

If you want to increase the percentage of your listings that actually sell, start with these seven tips:

  1. Always include shipping costs in your listings.
    American research shows that one in five online shoppers abandon their purchase because shipping costs aren’t shown alongside the product costs. Today’s consumer doesn’t want any hidden surprises.
  2. Tell visitors why they should shop with you
    Unless you”re offering a one-of-a-kind product that’s simply unavailable elsewhere, chances are you have competitors on Trade Me selling similar products. So don’t rely on the product attributes to do all the selling job — tell your browsers why they should choose you. Talk about things such as value for money, your excellent customer service record, the merits of your organisation (not just your product).
  3. Include Customer Reviews
    According to Nielsen’s NZ Social Media Report (July 2010), 1.92 million Kiwis now look to their fellow Internet users for opinions and information about products, services and brands. It’s not that they don’t trust sellers — they just trust their fellow consumers more. So incorporate the words of your customers into your listings, If you have really flattering feedback, feature it prominently in your listing (don’t expect visitors to check out past praise in your feedback — they won’t, they’ll just look at the percentage of positive feedbacks).
  4. Have a highly-visible, no-hassle returns policy
    For many potential buyers, a money-back-guarantee will make the difference in convincing them to go with you rather than a competitor. Yes, there is the risk that your products will be returned to you, sometimes in unsaleable condition — but if you’re delivering The Perfect Order (as defined above), your percentage of returned orders will be much lower than your percentage of increased sales achieved as a result of your returns policy.
  5. Check Out Your Competitors’ Images
    What are your competitors doing well that you might copy (and indeed improve upon)? Take a look at their listing photos — are they sharp, professional, attractive? Do they show key aspects of the product that yours don’t? If you put your photos and theirs side by side, which look more interesting, desirable, show off the product features best?
  6. X-Ray Your Competitors’ Words
    Start with their headlines. What features have they highlighted? What keywords have they used? Are they using subheads as well? Are there any headlines which sound better than yours? Then take a look at the main body of their listings. How compelling are the words they use? Are there any benefits they’ve emphasised that you’ve overlooked? Review what others are doing, and then polish up your own stuff.
  7. Use Real-Life Stories to bring your listings to life
    It’s one thing to have nice marketing copy describing a product — but it’s far more compelling to see real-life tales from other customers describing how they use the product. Once you have a base of happy customers, invite them to contribute their stories. Even if most won’t, you just might find some real gems. [Okay, you can't do this with every product, but where you can, it's worth the effort].

Tip of the Iceberg

What we’ve covered here is only part of the story of what it takes to sell effectively in 2010.

If you want to join the 15,000 or so professional sellers that Trade Me estimates conduct business on the site, you need to dig rather deeper.

Here are just some of the questions that professional sellers have asked (and found out the answers to) and most of us don’t know:

If you’d like to significantly improve your Trade Me sales performance, allow us to introduce our new course:

Course TM-1: Advanced Selling On Trade Me

This is a seven-week eCourse providing a comprehensive masterclass on selling on Trade Me. The course presumes you are already familiar with the basics of selling on Trade Me (if there are a few gaps, you can do your homework with our own TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS book).

This is an ONLINE-ONLY course — you can take part from anywhere, in your own time.

This eCourse is conducted on a web-based e-learning software platform, enabling course participants to proceed at their own pace, accessing materials online. This particular eCourse provides content in a variety of multimedia forms, including videos, slideshows, flash-based presentations and PDF files. No special software is required to participate.

Course lessons are released weekly, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables. Interaction with the course tutor is enabled through the platform software tools (with telephone backup if required).

TIMING
This eCourse started on Wednesday August 18, with the delivery to participants of Lesson One. New lessons are delivered weekly on Wednesdays.

LATE ENTRIES
Late entries are accepted within the first three weeks of course commencement (up until September 8).

COURSE CREATION AND TUTORING
This course has been created and will be tutored by Michael Carney, author of the best-selling book about buying and selling effectively on Trade Me, TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS (now in its second edition).

WHO SHOULD TAKE PART
Anyone who wants to sell as effectively and profitably as possible on Trade Me.

——————————————————————————–

The full course details are at http://trademesuccesssecrets.com/ecourses/ but here’s a sneak peek:

COURSE CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LESSON ONE: ABOUT THE BUYERS

LESSON TWO: PRODUCTS THAT SELL

LESSON THREE: TOP SELLERS & THEIR STORIES

LESSON FOUR: GETTING NOTICED

LESSON FIVE: KILLER CONTENT

LESSON SIX: HOW MUCH?

LESSON SEVEN: GETTING THINGS DONE

CONCLUSION

——————————————————————————–

INVESTMENT

This seven-part eCourse is available for $297 +GST ($334.13 total). However we offer a special highly-reduced rate:

EARLY BIRD SPECIAL: SAVE $100

Pay just $197 +GST ($221.63 including GST) if you book and pay before MIDNIGHT NEXT WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 8.

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

If you’d like to pay by credit card, here’s the link to sign up for the Early Bird Special (via international credit card processor PayPal): CLICK HERE TO PAY.

We also offer a couple of instalment options, if you’d rather not pay up front:

  1. Pay five monthly installments of $70 per month (total to pay, including GST, $350): CLICK HERE FOR THIS FIVE-MONTH PAYMENT OPTION
  2. Pay twelve monthly installments of $30 per month (total $360): CLICK HERE FOR THIS TWELVE-MONTH PAYMENT OPTION

If you would prefer to pay  by bank deposit, or require an invoice before making payment, please send an email to info@successsecrets.co.nz with your contact details.

(The service provider will be shown as Netmarketing Services Limited in your transaction and on your credit card statement)

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

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How To Create Eye-Catching Listings January 7, 2010

Posted by Michael Carney in : trade me, trademe , 6comments
Want to sell on Trade Me? There’s a bit of an art to creating headlines that grab peoples’ attention, photos that sizzle and descriptions that attract bids.
A. THE HEADLINE
David Ogilvy (1911-1999) is a legend in the advertising world.  He has often been called “The Father of Advertising.” In 1962, Time called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry.”
Mr Ogilvy had this to say about the headline: ‘Headlines, more than anything else, decide the success or failure of an advertisement.’
The same dynamic is at work on Trade Me. If the headline of your listing doesn’t stand out from its neighbours, visitors simply won’t bother to check out your item.
You have a maximum of just 50 characters — 100 if you choose to pay for a Sub-Headline as well — available to you when you create a Trade Me listing headline. That’s not a whole lot of real estate when the headline has to do up to three different jobs:
1. Attract the attention of potential buyers by using the right keywords.
2. Communicate the pricing strategy at a glance (eg, $1NR, S=R).
3. Differentiate your product listing from every other listing out there for similar products.
1. KEYWORDS
There are two ways that potential buyers find stuff on Trade Me: browsing the categories or searching for keywords. Searching is the most popular method — not surprisingly, given that in a typical week more than a million items are listed on the site. To reach searchers, headline keywords are absolutely vital. Your listing simply won’t exist for them otherwise.
What keywords should you be considering? Start with the product name, the name of the manufacturer, the model or item number, slang terms for the product, even singular and plural forms of the product name. Also look for affinity terms: if you’re selling a tent, for example, you might also consider such additional terms as ‘outdoors’ or ‘camping’, to catch the eye of those looking for other items that are in some way related to your product category. Include whatever appropriate words you believe might catch the searchers and lead them to your auction listings.
2. PRICING
In the Trade Me Success Secrets book (Chapter Eleven), we discuss various pricing strategies for your auction items. We don’t have time to go over those here, except to note that, whatever pricing option you choose, it may still be overlooked by Trade Me surfers unless you specifically feature it in the headline.
Why is that? So many listings, so little time, perhaps. Or more likely it’s because Trade Me is teeming with so many new buyers, who haven’t yet become wise to all the mysteries of the site. It’s not intuitively obvious that a $1 price tag and a little yellow flag can signal a terrific bargain.
Whatever the reason, listing the starting price strategy in the headline (if it’s a $1 No Reserve or a Start=Reserve strategy) will get your listing noticed by more potential bidders.
3. BEING DIFFERENT AND GETTING NOTICED
Keywords + Pricing — that’s fine as far as it goes, and most Trade Me sellers stop there. We want to go to the next step — standing out from the crowd. Otherwise how can we expect potential bidders to decide between:
• kelvinator Fridge Freezer
• Kelvinator Fridge / Freezer
• Kelvinator Fridge/Freezer
• Kelvinator fridge and frost-free freezer
• Frost-free Kelvinator fridge freezer
• Kelvinator fridge
• Kelvinator Fridge by Fisher & Paykel
• kelvinator fridge freezer
(And those were a sampling of the successful auctions!)
It’s time to learn a bit more about the art of the headline. It will be something of a challenge — after including keywords and abbreviated pricing you won’t have many characters left out of your 50 or 100 character total. Still, worth a try.
Eight Is Enough
Thankfully, even though online auction headline-creating is a relatively new discipline, we can draw upon a century or more of wisdom from the advertising industry, where headlines have long been crucial to making sales.
From that accumulated knowledge base, we’ve identified eight different types of effective headlines that will deliver results on Trade Me, specifically those that:
1. Promise a major benefit
2. Make an offer
3. Offer a solution to a problem
4. Give a warning
5. Flag your target customer
6. Use a testimonial
7. Make a news announcement
8. Give a guarantee
In the TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS book, we do give examples for each headline type, drawn from actual Trade Me headlines. Here, we just have time to describe the basic listing types, because now we’re onto the next component of successul auction listings:
B. PHOTOGRAPHS THAT SIZZLE
it’s still a surprise when we encounter a listing that doesn’t carry any photos. The expression ‘Russian Roulette’ springs to mind. We might be willing to bid on that widget when it’s only a few dollars, but if it costs much more than that, sorry, it’s not that we don’t trust you — but we just don’t trust you. Not with our money, anyway. No photo, no profit.
Want to earn a few more shekels from your auctions? Then allow us to guide you through the process of photo-enabling your listings. Say ‘Cheese’!
First, Take Great-Looking Photos
According to top photographers, it’s much easier for beginners to get great pictures by using natural or outdoor lighting to illuminate the product. The most suitable natural light is generally between 3pm–6pm, depending on the time of year. Set aside at least 15 minutes so you can take several pictures at the same time.
Set up a table next to a window and cover the table surface with white paper. Place your auction item on the table so that the side you wish to photograph is illuminated by the light from the window. Use a simple plain backdrop and place it behind your auction item. Suitable backdrops could be a plain bedsheet, fabric or piece of cardboard. Use a solid colour for your backdrop — an uncluttered background focuses attention on the subject, resulting in a stronger picture. (The backdrop colour should be the opposite of your item colour.)
Smooth out any folds or crinkles in the backdrop. Put your camera on a tripod facing the item you want to photograph. Move the item and the camera around until you’ve managed to capture the best possible lighting through the window. Once you’re satisfied with the camera position, make yourself a reflector (use either a sheet of white cardboard or some other card covered with aluminium foil) and place the reflector opposite the window so that it’s bouncing light on to the shadow side of your item. This will ensure that your item is properly lit. Do not use the flash. Otherwise you’re likely to end up with nasty glare, reflections and strange shadows.
If your camera allows, set the white balance to ‘cloudy’ — which will capture your image in more natural tones under these lighting conditions.
Now get up close and personal! Buyers want to see detail, so make certain your item takes up the entire frame. And (if appropriate) take a close-up of relevant sections of the item as well, to give buyers a better idea of its actual condition.
Detail is king — taking photos of any product numbers, brands or labels on your items adds substance to your offering and has the potential to increase the value of your bids.
If you provide multiple photos of your auction item you’ll normally attract more bids. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s effective enough to justify paying an extra photo fee for your product (we recommend you run some tests and see if it’s worthwhile in your chosen category).
2. Edit or process your photos
Once your photos are saved to your computer, you can often improve them with photo-editing software, which might have come bundled with your digital camera or scanner. If you don’t have such software, Windows users could try Google’s image editor, Picasa (a free download from picasa.google.com), or search for “image editor” at sites such as www.tucows.com or www.download.com. For Mac users we recommend iPhoto.
During the editing process, you should:
• Crop your image to remove unnecessary backgrounds
• Balance the contrast and brightness
• Resize your image to approximately 500 pixels wide by 400 pixels high (sometimes available as part of the Export process)
• Save or Export your edited image as a gif or jpeg file
Trade Me requires photos to be under 500 kb in file size so you may need to reduce your photos accordingly.
3. Upload your masterpieces to Trade Me
The uploading of photos takes place as part of the List An Item process. Once you’ve entered your listing title and your description and selected the various components of the auction listing, you’ll be taken to a page where you can Upload a Photo.
The photo that you upload first will be displayed alongside your headline (if you choose a Gallery listing, which of course we strongly recommend). It’s also the photo that will be displayed with your main listing. So for that first image, choose the photo that most clearly captures the essence of your product.
C. THE DESCRIPTION
There are a million ways you could write a Trade Me description and none of them is wrong — but some will be more effective than others at attracting bids and driving  sales. The essential ingredients of a successful description:
1. A compelling description of the product
2. The offer — a reason to buy this product, now
3. All the product details, features and benefits
4. The fine print — terms and conditions of the sale
5. The close — ask for the order
Wrap all these elements in a writing style that reflects your personality and you’ve got yourself a successful sale.
In a nutshell, that’s what you need to do to create effective, eye-catching listings on Trade Me.
We’re out of room and out of time now, but if you’d like to explore the topic in a whole lot more detail, may we point you to Chapter Fourteen of TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS the book, available through our Trade Me store here.

Want to sell on Trade Me? There’s a bit of an art to creating headlines that grab peoples’ attention, photos that sizzle and descriptions that attract bids. Let’s explore each element in more detail.

A. THE HEADLINE

David Ogilvy (1911-1999) is a legend in the advertising world.  He has often been called “The Father of Advertising.” In 1962, Time Magazine called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry.”

Mr Ogilvy had this to say about the headline:

‘Headlines, more than anything else, decide the success or failure of an advertisement.’

What’s true for advertising headlines is also true for listing headlines on Trade Me. If the headline of your listing doesn’t stand out from its neighbours, visitors simply won’t bother to check out your item.

You have a maximum of just 50 characters — 100 if you choose to pay for a Sub-Headline (‘sub-title’) as well — available to you when you create a Trade Me listing headline. That’s not a whole lot of real estate when the headline has to do up to three different jobs:

  1. Attract the attention of potential buyers by using the right keywords.
  2. Communicate the pricing strategy at a glance (eg, $1NR, S=R).
  3. Differentiate your product listing from every other listing out there for similar products.

1. KEYWORDS

There are two ways that potential buyers find stuff on Trade Me: browsing the categories or searching for keywords. Searching is the most popular method — not surprisingly, given that in a typical week more than a million items are listed on the site. To reach searchers, appropriate headline keywords are absolutely vital. Your listing simply won’t exist for them otherwise.

What keywords should you be considering? Start with the product name, the name of the manufacturer, the model or item number, slang terms for the product, even singular and plural forms of the product name. Also look for affinity terms: if you’re selling a tent, for example, you might also consider such additional terms as ‘outdoors’ or ‘camping’, to catch the eye of those looking for other items that are in some way related to your product category. Include whatever appropriate words you believe might catch the searchers and lead them to your auction listings. (NB: See Trade Me Success Secrets Chapter 14 for some tools to help you choose appropriate keywords).

2. PRICING

In Chapter Eleven of the Trade Me Success Secrets book, we discuss the most effective pricing strategies for your auction items. We don’t have time to go over those here, except to note that, whichever pricing option you choose, it may still be overlooked by Trade Me surfers unless you specifically feature it in the headline.

Why is that? So many listings, so little time, perhaps. Or more likely it’s because Trade Me is teeming with so many new buyers, who haven’t yet become wise to all the mysteries of the site. It’s not intuitively obvious that a $1 price tag and a little yellow flag can signal a terrific bargain.

Whatever the reason, listing the starting price strategy in the headline (eg $1NR if it’s a $1 No Reserve or S=R if it’s a Start=Reserve strategy) will help get your listing noticed by more potential bidders.

3. BEING DIFFERENT AND GETTING NOTICED

Keywords + Pricing — that’s fine as far as it goes, and most Trade Me sellers stop there. We want to go to the next step — standing out from the crowd. Otherwise how can we expect potential bidders to decide between:

(And those were a sampling of the successful auctions!)

It’s time to learn a bit more about the art of the headline. It will be something of a challenge — after including keywords and abbreviated pricing you won’t have many characters left out of your 50 or 100 character total. Still, worth a try.

Eight Is Enough

Thankfully, even though online auction headline-creating is a relatively new discipline, we can draw upon a century or more of wisdom from the advertising industry, where headlines have long been crucial to making sales.

From that accumulated knowledge base, we’ve identified eight different types of effective headlines that will deliver results on Trade Me, specifically those that:

  1. Promise a major benefit
  2. Make an offer
  3. Offer a solution to a problem
  4. Give a warning
  5. Flag your target customer
  6. Use a testimonial
  7. Make a news announcement
  8. Give a guarantee

In the TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS book, we do give examples for each headline type, drawn from actual Trade Me headlines. Here, we just have time to describe the basic listing types, because now we’re onto the next component of successful auction listings:

B. PHOTOGRAPHS THAT SIZZLE

it’s still a surprise when we encounter a listing that doesn’t carry any photos. The expression ‘Russian Roulette’ springs to mind. We might be willing to bid on that widget when it’s only a few dollars, but if it costs much more than that, sorry, it’s not that we don’t trust you — but we just don’t trust you. Not with our money, anyway. No photo, no profit.

Want to earn a few more shekels from your auctions? Then allow us to guide you through the process of photo-enabling your listings. Say ‘Cheese’!

First, Take Great-Looking Photos

According to top photographers, it’s much easier for beginners to get great pictures by using natural or outdoor lighting to illuminate the product. The most suitable natural light is generally between 3pm–6pm, depending on the time of year. Set aside at least 15 minutes so you can take several pictures at the same time.

Set up a table next to a window and cover the table surface with white paper. Place your auction item on the table so that the side you wish to photograph is illuminated by the light from the window. Use a simple plain backdrop and place it behind your auction item. Suitable backdrops could be a plain bedsheet, fabric or piece of cardboard. Use a solid colour for your backdrop — an uncluttered background focuses attention on the subject, resulting in a stronger picture. (The backdrop colour should be the opposite of your item colour.)

Smooth out any folds or crinkles in the backdrop. Put your camera on a tripod facing the item you want to photograph. Move the item and the camera around until you’ve managed to capture the best possible lighting through the window. Once you’re satisfied with the camera position, make yourself a reflector (use either a sheet of white cardboard or some other card covered with aluminium foil) and place the reflector opposite the window so that it’s bouncing light on to the shadow side of your item. This will ensure that your item is properly lit. Do not use the flash. Otherwise you’re likely to end up with nasty glare, reflections and strange shadows.

If your camera allows, set the white balance to ‘cloudy’ — which will capture your image in more natural tones under these lighting conditions.

Now get up close and personal! Buyers want to see detail, so make certain your item takes up the entire frame. And (if appropriate) take a close-up of relevant sections of the item as well, to give buyers a better idea of its actual condition.

Detail is king — taking photos of any product numbers, brands or labels on your items adds substance to your offering and has the potential to increase the value of your bids.

If you provide multiple photos of your auction item you’ll normally attract more bids. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s effective enough to justify paying the extra fee for more views of your product (we recommend you run some tests and see if it’s worthwhile in your chosen category).

Secondly, edit or process your photos

Once your photos are saved to your computer, you can often improve them with photo-editing software, which might have come bundled with your digital camera or scanner. If you don’t have such software, Windows users could try Google’s image editor, Picasa (a free download from picasa.google.com), or search for “image editor” at sites such as www.tucows.com or www.download.com. For Mac users we suggest iPhoto.

During the editing process, you should:

Trade Me requires photos to be under 500 kb in file size so you may need to reduce your photos accordingly.

Thirdly, upload your masterpieces to Trade Me

The uploading of photos takes place as part of the List An Item process. Once you’ve entered your listing title and your description and selected the various components of the auction listing, you’ll be taken to a page where you can Upload a Photo.

The photo that you upload first will be displayed alongside your headline (if you choose a Gallery listing, which we strongly recommend). It’s also the photo that will be displayed with your main listing. So for that first image, choose the photo that most clearly captures the essence of your product.

C. THE DESCRIPTION

There are a million ways you could write a Trade Me description and none of them is wrong — but some will be more effective than others at attracting bids and driving  sales. The essential ingredients of a successful description:

  1. A compelling description of the product
  2. The offer — a reason to buy this product, now
  3. All the product details, features and benefits
  4. The fine print — terms and conditions of the sale
  5. The close — ask for the order

Wrap all these elements in a writing style that reflects your personality and you’ve got yourself a successful sale.

In a nutshell, that’s what you need to do to create effective, eye-catching listings on Trade Me.

We’re out of room and out of time now, but if you’d like to explore the topic in a whole lot more detail, may we point you to Chapter Fourteen of TRADE ME SUCCESS SECRETS the book, available through our Trade Me store here.

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