[burkoboy]

What % of your auction winners fail to send money?

When I put 100 on, 100% get bid on, the problem comes when a person wins more then one. Although it cuts some hassle out of shipping the shirt, etc, it also cuts out on how much you make, because you make an addition $4 per shirt on shipping, and to get people to bid you offer cheaper shipping on more items won. I would say that out of 100 shirts that successfully sell on ebay, <5 are not paid for. Then, all you simply do is contact ebay, and after about 2 weeks you get your money back for the auction.

What % of your auction winners send only some of the money?

I write in my auctions I only accept paypal, so it's pretty much impossible for someone to only send "some" of the money.

Per 100 shirts sold, how many hours do you spend on the following activities:
- packaging each shirt
- dropping the package off at the post office
- answering emails, dealing with fraud, etc.

1) Packing the shirts. The biggest thing is writing the persons address on the envelopes. You can order a stamp that has your address and just stamp your return address on. That's what I did. what I've tried in the past, is copy and paste the peoples addresses onto a work document, print that out, then cut up the addresses and tape them on to the envelopes, but I feel that takes longer then just simply writing them

2) The post office can be a bitch sometimes. Make sure you find a hole in the wall post office that doesn't have a lot of people go to it. And make sure you go between the hours of like 10-11, or 2-4, since most people who work go before work/during lunch/after work before 5. Also, something I never did because I thought paypal was cheating me, was paypal has an automated postal system, where you enter the weight/dimensions, and you can pay for a shipping label that prints out and you can tape to your package then just drop them off. Again, I tried this but liked just getting the people at the post office to do it.

3) To be honest, I would read emails but rarely ever answer them. A lot of times it was completely useless to waste time answering emails. Example: Someone would win a shirt, and immediately email me asking when their shipment was going out, when they can expect it etc. If you are selling one thing, or a few things, I would answer this, but with the volume I am doing I don't answer it, or simply just say "it's going out tomorrow."

Most of the time its pretty simple. Someone wins your auction, you click send invoice, ebay will flag the people you've already sent invoices to, they pay through paypal, you get an email with their address, specific color/size, and you're done.

And again, fraud wasn't too much of a hassle. If you are that worried, in your auction description just put "Bidders must have 10 positive feedback in order to bid" etc.

What can you do to automate any of the above?
anyway to automate I explained when answering the question.

Do you sell only to Americans or do you do international sales as well?

Only americans, because I have no idea how much to charge for shipping to other countries, if someone from canada accidently wins, I just tag on like $5 to shipping costs.

Will it be difficult for people who have no ebay rating whatsoever to sell things? If so, what kind of strategies can they use to bump their rating up as quick as possible?

No, I started from scratch. At first, business as slow, and you won't see as high of prices, but once you hit that 30+ positive mark, your auction prices climb and climb.

I think the most difficult part here is finding goods at a deep enough discount in bulk volumes that will sell in a timely fashion. What kind of strategies do you use to find these goods? As you mentioned if shirts aren't selling, then the market is probably over saturated.

The biggest part of my secret is obtaining these shirts. I'm not going to release the price I get them at right now, even though most of you think the post from my blog is accurate it's not. And believe me, the profit margin is huge, better then any other investment out there, and again, believe me, at first I was hesitant because there is A LOT of polo shirts on ebay, I mean A LOT, but the shirts sold every single time.







Oh, and I'm in columbus right now. I will be back in Cincinnati prolly around 2pm est tomorrow, will take pictures with my lacoste shirts, and have a 2+2 sign in it if you guys are really that worried about this post lol, my digital camera is something I needed to pick up in columbus anyway as I am planning to list a bunch of watches on ebay, and need the camera to take pictures.