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eBay Online Strategy #4 - Organize Your eBay Business For Success - Pt 1
By Stephanie McIntyre

Now that the major decisions associated with starting your ebay business are behind you, it's time to concentrate on how to organize your business for maximum efficiency. No where is the statement "time is money" truer than with the person who works for herself.

So you want to set up your ebay business, right from the start, with systems that support you in using your time well.Right now your eBay business may not be taking up a substantial amount of your time. But as it grows your business will take over more and more of your day. The good news is that your income will be steadily increasing as the demands on your time go up.

As you work through your day look for opportunities to automate routine tasks. Pay attention to areas in which you seem to be duplicating your efforts. When I first started my ebay business, it quickly became clear to me that for any item I was going to auction, my potential profit was going down each time I had to handle the item more than once.

For example, if I was selling a pair of shoes, time was spent on the following activities:

1. - Selecting the shoes to sell
2. - Researching the item to see what it was selling for on eBay
3. - Photographing the item
4. - writing the description
5. - Storing the item somewhere while the auction ran
6. - Packing and weighing the item
7. - Shipping it

I figured that I was handling that pair of shoes a minimum of six or seven times. If you run tens or hundreds of auctions a week, it can very quickly get out of hand.

So I made up my mind to cut in half the number of times I handled an item during the auction process.I set out to touch, hold or handle each item a maximum of 3 times from item selection to shipping. I didn't realize it at the time but that was my mind's way of calling for efficiency in the new ebay business I had set up.

Once I started thinking about it, I saw how I could save myself a few steps by using an ebay Item Listing Worksheet. I developed one that allowed me to document everything about the item I was selling. I am sure that most successful ebay sellers use something similar even if they don't call it the same thing.

The use of the worksheet allowed me to write down a description of the item and use the sheet, instead of actually having to manipulate the item. The number of times when I actually had to manipulate the item was cut in half. My new list of tasks looked like this:

1. - Select the item
2. - Fill out the ebay Item Listing Worksheet
3. - Pack and weigh the item box
4. - Ship it

I encourage you to create an ebay Listing Worksheet of your own. You are welcome to go to my website and download a copy of mine, which you are free to use as long as you leave the copyright statement intact. If you develop your own worksheet it should have spaces for all pertinent information about your item, category, title, opening bid price, auction length, etc. In addition it should have fields for all of the research you need to do before listing your item. You should also have a space for shipping info like the weight and dimensions of the box you are using.By using this method you are working with a piece of paper instead of a boxed item. It will save you time by allowing you to move more quickly through the listing process. I will continue with more ways to help organize your ebay business in Part 2 of this article.

Videos providing in-depth tutorials of this series of eBay Selling Strategies are available at no cost at ebay Selling Basics [http://www.ebay-selling-basics.com]

Stephanie McIntyre has been a Platinum eBay Powerseller, an eBay Trading Assistant as well as an Educational Assistant trained by eBay. Her company, eSales Unlimited Inc. [http://www.esalesunlimited.com] maintains several sites on successful eBay selling.

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