Sorry, I'm not sure of all the business lingo but what is cold calling?

 

 

Carry the REAL thing

Oh, "cold calling" is when you call people to buy???  Sheeeshh, I've never heard of this term before..where the heck have I been?  Under a rock, probably.

 

If you want to do that then you're better off selling locally or through Craigslist or something because there would be no point in selling online if you want to call people and buy your stuff.  Is that practice still alive??

Carry the REAL thing

I do cold calling for my offline business. Not sure how it would work for an ebay store.

 

Think about ways to getting more traffic.

 

1. make a signature under your name with link to ebay store and post helpful posts in boards.
2. Do same as above on online bulliten boards not on ebay that are visited by people with same interests as what you sell.
3. targeted Google adz
4. facebook page and targeted facebook adz
5. make a video channel of your items optimized for your product and linked to your ebay pages.
6. Press releases
7. Article marketing
8. Pinterest
9. Pincredible

So many ideas...so little time! If you do all of the above, you can build a nice list to market to on a consistant basis.

 

For $5 on fiver dot com you can get a whole lot of traffic for very little money!

 

Michael J... If you're talking, you're not listening....If you're not listening, you're not learning.

Very bad idea.  First off if they are on the Do Not Call Registry it is probably illegal.  Its also a huge waste of time.  And you will very likely tick people off.

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The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has limits. Youtube Channel

The USPS is starting a new service - neighborhood bulk mailings.  Basically it looks/sounds like bulk mailing, but on a much smaller, much more affordable scale.

 

Mailed pieces have to attract attention quickly, provide sufficient information that the reader continues to read, and provide multiple methods for the reader to follow up with the business that sent out the mailing.

 

For example, a consignment shop may send out a flyer offering 1/2 your first month's fees when you provide product for 3 months.  For an eBay shop, that might mean that you put some rules into place -- no more than 10 items up for sale per client at one time... so they don't dump everything on you the first month, get the cheap rates, then leave you high and dry with no additional stock for the next two months.

 

Or maybe offer a rebate of 1/2 your average monthly fees based on your first three months of consigned item business.  Meaning if they bring in 50 items, then 20 items, then 30 items, you will be averaging sales of 100 items over 3 months (33 items per month) and rebating 1/2 of the average consignment fee based on those 100 items sold.

 

Working with averages helps avoid the dump-then-nothing, where they get a lot of stuff listed/sold for nearly no profits to you, and then they supply nothing additional to offset that discounted month.  If you use a three month average, it a) balances out those peaks and valleys, and b) it helps create the habit of "what do we take to the eBay shop this week?".

 

Cold calling can be annoying - I don't even answer my phone if my callerID can't find a name for that number, or if the number is blocked.  Those calls go to voicemail, which I check when it's convenient to me, and which I can erase quickly if I don't care to hear more.

 

Just a few ideas from the sun-baked mind of a Memphis transplant who misses his upper-midwest mellow summers. 

 

-Bob.

V.46 Trading Assistant/Consignment sales, since 1997!
See my About Me page for more details on the best tools for desktop automation for eBay!

I'm not sure cold calling would be an effective eBay selling strategy. I saw you are selling some purses.

Who are you you going to call to sell those items? How will you convince anyone to buy from you, over the phone, products they can easily buy themselves online or at a store.

Cold calling is good for B2B services/some products. Like another poster said, if you plan on calling consumers, better check the Do Not Call list.