How To Get That First Sale

There are two main possibilities here. First of all you can create some kind of special offer voucher or money off coupon specially aimed at first time customers. This will have an offer code on it which must be mentioned in order to get the discount on any merchandise available on your website. You can either do this for orders over a certain amount, or simply make it available on any order placed.

This is a real incentive for the customer to turn that initial tiny purchase from eBay into a much more lucrative sale for you via your website – which of course will incur no selling fees or final value fees.

You can make this offer time sensitive in order to encourage people to visit your website straight away, rather than leaving it until some later date (by which time they’ve probably forgotten about the offer anyway).

The second option is to use the power of the freebie to make sure your information isn’t discarded. There are lots of ways you can create freebies for your customers, ranging from a simple pamphlet to a free download, or perhaps a free product or sample which promotes the rest of your range.

We’ve covered eBooks and downloads already, and including the link to a free report or two is easily done when you send out your packing slip or invoice. Just make sure it’s in red (or highlighted in some way) so the customer won’t miss it. But tangible products also work well as freebies.

Now this method obviously means you will need to part with some cash in order to get hold of your freebies, but if you think of it as an investment into bigger profits later on, you’ll start to see why freebies and samples are a good way to build your customer base and generate more traffic to your website.

You only need to think about the free product samples you get through the mail, and the free sample displays promoted by the large food stores to see that freebies do work. If they didn’t the big companies wouldn’t use them. It’s all about removing any doubt the customer has about buying a new product.

Despite the hundreds of thousands of successful transactions that take place on eBay each and every day, there are unfortunately some that do go wrong for whatever reason. Because of this, a lot of people are nervous of parting with a lot of money when they buy stuff on eBay, just in case they get scammed. This is why our strategy of selling low priced items and not making a profit on eBay works so well – it gets past this barrier. But you then need to give people a gentle push in the direction of your website in order to place higher value orders, and this is where freebies work so well.

Here are some examples:

• if you run that wine making business we mentioned earlier, you could perhaps provide a sample of some of the corks you sell

• if you sell party bag toys, send out a sample of one of your ranges

• if you sell temporary tattoos, provide a sample of one of your best sellers

• if you sell anything and everything to do with tea making, pack a sample teabag into every package you send out

Get the idea? You can build the cost of doing this into your outgoings to reduce your tax bill, but the overall cost will be offset by the number of repeat customers you will get.

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