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The Ultimate Dropshipping Report

by Avril Harper

The Ultimate Guide to Becoming an eBay Trading Assistant

by Avril Harper

How to Use Modern Day, High Quality, Top Notch, Ready-Made Articles from the Public Domain to Promote ClickBank Products as an Affiliate

by Avril Harper

"Another Recession On the Way? If So, Don’t Worry, Because Recessions Present Unique Trading Opportunities for Savvy eBay Sellers!" 

© Avril Harper, Chartered CMIPD, Dip PM

Most people think talk of recession is bad news for everyone, buyers and sellers, when in fact the last recession presented some very profitable opportunities for countless eBay sellers, including me! And many eBayers I've known over the years also boast buying and selling success stories they may otherwise not have encountered.

There are opportunities for most business owners to survive and even thrive in a recession, by focussing on cheaper products for people made recently unemployed, for example, as well as by cutting their own business overheads and that way generate a larger profit margin on everything they sell.

Thankfully, any potential new recession is still months away and that’s why I don’t want to write thousands of words telling our readers how to react should a new economic downturn take place.

Instead, I want to focus on why you shouldn’t be deterred from doing business in a sluggish economy, and why some opportunities become even more profitable during tough economic times.

To prove it here’s my favourite statement as to why recession doesn’t always spell disaster for business owners. It’s from the Baltimore Sun and it’s a few years old now but as true as ever it was:

“Even when times are hard, people are buying… you just need to win more of a smaller pie.” (Source: www.baltimoresun.com)

These tips will help you go for that smaller pie or even get to keep the whole pie for yourself:

* During the last recession many eBayers discovered reduced buying competition at boot sales and flea markets, offline auction salerooms and even on eBay itself. That’s because a majority of business owners hang onto their cash during a recession, to pay bills and repay debts, which they do mainly by cutting back on stock acquisition. So fewer buyers at boot sales and such, also from wholesalers and through the ‘For Sale’ columns in national and local newspapers, meant reduced prices for the rest of us. In turn, reduced prices when you’re buying stock means even bigger profit margins when those items resell on eBay.

* Some businesses do fail in a recession, sometimes big time, and that brings plentiful opportunities for buying the entire contents of some business premises for a tiny fraction of market value. So someone with plenty of storage space could buy huge volumes of quality stock for less than a quarter - sometimes much less - of its resell value on eBay and make incredible profits in very short time. In good economic times, as well as bad, you can make a great income buying stock from failed ventures and reselling it on eBay. And that’s a good reason to look for bankruptcy and liquidation auctions and sales listed in the classified advertisements of most local newspapers, usually at the weekend.

* Some businesses sell profitably all year round, year after year, and more so in a recession, such as pawnbrokers and money lenders, for example, as well as Pound Shops and market traders. That’s because in recessionary times people are having to pawn valuable items to make money to live on, and they’re borrowing for much the same reasons, and that is why pawn brokers and money lenders flourish.

But we don’t want to make money from other people’s misery, we want to help them hang on to their possessions, and avoid borrowing more money than they can afford to repay, and we do that by copying the principles of Pound Shops and market stalls by aiming to sell quality goods at a fraction of the prices charged in most high street shops.

A really good PowerSeller friend tells me she made thousands of pounds every week during the last recession, purely by purchasing low price quality goods from local Pound Shops and reselling them on eBay for two or three pounds profit per sale. And she travelled the entire country looking for new stuff to add to her rapidly growing eBay Shop.

Are you, like I once was, wondering why eBay buyers don’t go purchase direct from Pound Shops?

If so, wonder no more, because many people gladly pay more on eBay for items they can purchase at Pound Shops, for the following reasons and more:

- Time and money saved travelling into town and parking the car to visit their local Pound Shops.

- Pound Shops tend to buy goods by working directly and exclusively with importers and business liquidation companies, sometimes manufacturers and wholesalers too. When that happens stock tends to be sold to one or two Pound Shops locally, meaning some goods are unavailable outside a ten or twenty mile radius of their original source. So by selling them on eBay my friend was actually targeting a massive audience for items unavailable in most parts of the UK.

It’s Pound Shops I consider present the best and least risky proposition on eBay, and where a tiny one hundred pounds investment gives access to one hundred products for you to list and test market on eBay.

Start by listing those items at auction to see how much people are prepared to pay for them, then use your most profitable test prices in your Buy It Now listings where you can offer hundreds of units of the same product in every listing for the same price as listing just one.

Alternatively, continue using auction listings and benefit from sending Second Chance Offers to everyone bidding enough to make a handsome profit for you. Continue listing products that make profits and downloading others that don’t, and use all the money you make to obtain and test new products on eBay.

Then ‘Rinse and Repeat’ as the Americans say, meaning do it all over again, until your £100 investment turns into a fabulous and rapidly growing source of income for life.

Now I’m not telling you all of this to make you feel better, or to fill a few pages of this newsletter, because I have run several ventures through three recessions and I’ve found eBay the most recession-proof business of all. This is why:

* More people buy second hand during a recession than will purchase used goods in a flourishing economy. And eBay, being the world’s largest marketplace for second-hand goods, is where many of those people will buy.

* A few firms going out of business can lead to high unemployment locally and even less money to spend on the high street. And that is when high street retailers face reduced profits and sometimes business failure. eBay sellers, on the other hand, targeting national and international buyers, remain largely unaffected by local economic trends.

That’s because, being a worldwide marketplace eBay gives sellers many millions of potential buyers compared to the population of most UK towns and villages. So if, for example, ten per cent of people cut their spending, locally that could be disastrous, on eBay the impact would be far less noticeable, if at all.

More Ways to Thrive in a Recession

* Become a pro-active seller, go looking for people with money to spend instead of waiting for buyers to find you. On eBay you do it by promoting your listings, not just through eBay’s search engine, but by writing articles about your products and directing people to visit your eBay shop, and placing compliments slips in outgoing packages inviting buyers to your regular discount sales.

* Promote products across a wide price range, including budget goods for victims of recession, and high price items for people who always have money to spend. So alongside gifts and household items priced two or three pounds each, list rare antiques and pricey collectibles, for example, or designer clothing and up market cars. You don’t have to purchase or pay up front for those high price products, however, instead look for firms willing to let you sell their goods on commission or as a trading assistant on eBay.

* Liquidate some of your long standing stock. Use the cash to buy new products for your business and that way you avoid wasting money listing items that won’t sell and use it instead to test new products that might sell several times daily.

* Diversify and plough back part of your profits into testing products outside your usual range. That way, if your regular products stop selling, the new ones should keep your head above water until the good times return.

* Look for arbitrage deals on eBay, where you buy items offered below market value by eBayers desperate for cash, and you relist those items on eBay at closer to retail value.

* Antiques and collectibles tend to continue selling, even in a recession, although profit margins may decline the deeper the downturn becomes. But remember what was said earlier about antiques and collectibles sometimes attracting fewer bidders at offline auction in a poor economic climate and you’ll see price drops on eBay can be matched by correspondingly lower acquisition prices. And that can help stabilise profit margins.

* Be more careful testing new and existing products during a recession because now, more than ever, it’s important not to be swamped with goods that don’t sell and which are tying up space in your attic or garage and leaving you short of cash for buying and testing new product lines.

* When profits decline try uploading a correspondingly increased number of product listings. For example, if profits dip over one hundred regular listings, then work out how many extra listings will recoup the shortfall. So say you normally make £1,000 from every one hundred listings and your income over the same number of listings drops to £800. Now you take the shortfall, in this case £200 and work out how many sales (at £8 profit) will compensate for that decline. The answer - roughly - is 25 (200 divided by 8) and that’s the number of extra listings that should bring your income back up to par.

Above all, remember you can survive a recession, you can do it in style, and eBay is one of the best places to start!

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