Need advice

jopsey

I have used e-bay over the last few years mostly to buy bits and bobs for little fella but now considering using it to earn extra income so i dont have to go back to work full time and maybe work from home around my little boy and his dads shift pattern but need advice

I have a market stall and sell a line that is very popular i have noticed that none of these items are for sale on e-bay so i think i have a good 'product'

I have staff that can deal with telephone and package items but are totally not happy about using pc thats down to me

I need advice on the following
Do I need to open a shop and what are the extra costs ,benefits or can I use my own account?

I need to make my listings look good and keep on top of the admin side is there any software that i could use ?

I have read somewhere (I think)that if your sending so many packages a day that you can get the postman to collect them from you instead of taking them post office ,if so how many is it ?

and finally am I mad for thinking this can work ,I've been self employed for 14 years and know im not going to get rich overnight just would love to be a stay at home mum and work around my little fella

jopsey

please anybody or am I asking too many questions ?

bleugh

can't help too much but

software for listings - use turbolister to do your listings offline and upload in one go

you can use your internet service provider's free webspace to upload your pictures so ebay can show them free - rather than paying 10p per picture

you can use microsoft word as a (admittedly crap) way of developing a template for your listings / pictures


don't bother with a shop for the time being, or worrying about getting RM to pick up frm your place, START SMALL, get a feel for your market for your widgets, if you can sell (say) 1 or 2 a day for good money, start seling 3 or 4 and increment untill you find the market saturation point for your widgets


for packaging, be friendly with your fellow market traders, their rubbish boxes/bubble wrap and polythene bags will be your packaging materials

make sure you accept paypal, but be careful with more expensive items and paypal

thats my lot for the mo!, good luck

waddy80

Jopsey,
Can I suggest you check out the forums in the ebay community section. There are loads of helpful people on there, that know a lot more than me!

Emmy

You could use this website to help make your listings look really good http://auctiva.com/

The rest of it sorry straight over my head