Backend Sales!



Allow me to demonstrate to you an example of a strategy I employed. I noted there were a lot of eBay sellers that were peddling enormous lots of greeting cards. Remarkably, when I first checked it out, there was a batch of 1,000 greeting cards being sold, with only two days remaining in the auction. Can you guess what the top bid was?

One Dollar!

Can you believe it? The winning bid went a bit higher, but not by much. In the end, the winning bidder was able to get 1,000 greeting cards for less than a penny a piece.

There are many eBay sellers who regularly auction lots of 25 greeting cards for five dollars or more. How much profit could you lock in if you acquired 1,000 greeting cards for one dollar and then went back and sold them for five dollars per set of 25 greeting cards? $200.00, which is a twenty thousand percent return on your money! Hard to beat.

By the way, there are deals comparable to that all the time on eBay. You can uncover many of them by conducting some basic eBay market research.

But, this article is not about finding low priced products on eBay and selling them for a profit. That will be the subject of a future article. So now, back to backend sales (no pun intended).

These giant lots of greeting cards come up for sale on eBay regularly. So, I resolved to use them as a backend sale item. Here's how I did it.

I purchased an enormous batch of cards for about $0.02 a piece. I then developed an order form to market the cards for $0.20 each (you can always boost the price later). Each time I sent something I sold on one of my online auctions, I simply included a sample greeting card & envelope in addition to an order form.

When my buyer (winning bidder) received item, they were surprised and happy to find that I had included a free greeting card that they could use (nice little gift). And, they were able to see that they could order more top notch greeting cards, for only $0.20 each, in batches of 25. Since most greeting cards routinely go for $2.00 to $3.00 a piece, that represented a discount of greater than 90%. That's a pretty attractive offer.

The cool thing about this strategy is that anybody who ever buys something from me can become a lifetime customer. They might purchase greeting cards from me for far into the future. My initial "one-time" sale to them can become a lifetime profit stream, as they reorder greeting cards over and over again.

You can use the same method. The only thing you need to accomplish is identify a consumable item that people purchase, use up and purchase again. Buy the product on eBay for at a bargain price, or through a top notch wholesale source. Make up an order form that you can enclose sales. Then, sit back and let the cash roll in. Cool!

Don't forget, your backend items do not have to be greeting cards. That is just an example of something I happened to notice. You might uncover other great consumable items that are a better fit for the type of products you typically sell on eBay. What you really want is to uncover items that people will purchase over and over again.

To summarize, backend sales is just the act of selling more merchandise to buyers who recently purchased something from you. The most favorable time to follow up with a potential lifetime customer is when they are already happy with a recent purchase and they are in the "buying mood."

Don't forget, the ideal backend product should be consumable. Once you secure a new customer, you want to offer him another product that he will need to reorder from you each time he exhausts his supply. This will create lifetime buyers that can be the basis for a never ending revenue stream for you.