Building and Marketing Your eBay Business - Part 3

"Do You Have What It Takes..."

By Steve Myers, Online Marketing Consultant

This article wraps up a series on building a successful eBay-based business. It poses one last important question you have to answer for yourself.

"What am I willing to give up to become a success on eBay?" I'm not very good at filling people with dreams of easy online success. It's going to take some work. You may have to give up some hobby time.

Predictable, Not Easy Success

If I told you it would be effortless to become the next eBay success story, would you believe me anyway? We'd all love to believe that success comes without having to give up free time. It's an attractive daydream that if we could just find the secret ingredient to success, everything would come together for you and I.

I can't promise you it will come easily. What I can say is that success is predictable when you follow the patterns outlined by those who have already achieved your goal.

Successful Recipes Lead to Predictable Success

It's a recipe that just works. Think about McDonalds, the largest single source of millionaires in America. Next time you visit their restaurant, take a look at the fries. Every fry is of uniform size and color. This holds true whether you visit the McDonalds close to your home or the one across the state... or the nation. Why?

Simple. McDonalds franchisees follow a proven formula. Each franchise owner must attend "Hamburger University" and learn the ins and outs of running their restaurant the "McDonalds way" before they even open their doors.

In fact, if a McDonalds franchisee varies from the proven formula, they can lose their franchise. Even if they do things better, it doesn't make any difference. Uniformity is the goal, not quality. If you open a McDonalds restaurant, you have a 90% chance of success. Compare that with the 90% failure rate of most startup businesses and you'll understand the value of using a proven recipe for success.

eBay auction research makes predicting which products will sell and how much you can expect to get for them child's play. So with a predictable process, can you go wrong? YES!

Effective Direction

Compare it to going on a trip. You buy the best maps. Maybe you even purchase a GPS navigation system. You know exactly how to get to your destination. But until you leave the driveway, all the know-how in the world won't get you any closer to your destination.

Building an eBay business works the same way. We can help you to know what to do, but you've got to take the first step... and then you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But it's going to take some effort.

Specific Sacrifices

Let's get specific. Honestly evaluate your time. How much can you give to building an eBay business? How much are you willing to devote? What are you willing to give up to make it happen?

I know I'm about to tread on sacred ground here, but bear with me. How much television do you watch in a week? How much each night? Would you be willing to give up an hour of television per night to build a better financial future for you and your family? Let's get even more specific. Which program will you give up?

To build a successful side business, I had to give up watching the news each night. Now I keep in touch a couple of times each week. In doing so, however, I realized how little of lasting value I really got out of my daily news habit compared to watching just enough to stay in touch with what happens in the world.

Maybe for you, it's a sit-com. It might be a reality tv show or a soap opera. What you choose to give up isn't the issue. It's that you're willing to commit to your goal and that you have a specific plan to reach it.

The Worst Thing That Can Happen... Nothing

So what's the worst thing that can happen by trying something new? The worst possible result is that absolutely nothing changes. Most of us have more debt than we feel comfortable with. Maybe we work at a job that can simply never pay the bills.

If you work at a traditional job, what raise do you expect to get in the next year? For many of us, we're happy if we get a 3-4% raise each year. Yet, inflation is often that high. In other words, typical raises barely keep up with the cost of living.

Ask yourself this, "Are my expenses increasing or decreasing?" For most of us, costs go up. If you have children, as they get older, their needs grow. If our incomes don't match increases in "outgo," we fight a losing battle. In short, if you do nothing different than you're doing now, chances are that somewhere in your future, you'll reach a critical point.

But I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know. The question is really what you're going to do with that knowledge. When you're ready to make the sacrifices that real life improvements require, we'll be here to help. Until then, we can only wish you success in what you're doing now.

Building a successful eBay business doesn't take a lot of money.

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