You are probably very used to buying and selling physical goods, like books, games, bikes, cars etc. on eBay, but did you know that there are also a huge number of people on eBay selling services, where no physical object actually changes hands?
Millions of dollars of services are bought on eBay and it’s a great place for you to get work at a social media manager. It’s a great way of getting immediate cash flow through listing services for sale between $20 – $100, but more importantly each business who purchases one of your service packages from eBay has a very good chance of becoming a long term client of yours that can provide you with high paying jobs for years to come.
Let’s take a look at an example of a social media service that another member has posted on eBay and is already successfully making money from:
We can see that this person has posted a service on eBay to create custom Facebook Timeline covers for business. This is a very simple service that you could easily replicate and provide. In our Facebook training section, we have a pack of Timeline cover templates that you can use and easily edit and customize for businesses in 5 minutes or less.
This person is charging $35 per Timeline cover in their eBay listing and we can see that they have already sold 3 of these services, so they have made $105. Not too bad for a service that would only take them 5 – 10 minutes to customize and deliver each custom order.
However that isn’t even the best part here. Offering your services on eBay is a great way to make some immediate sales and bring in some cash, as we can see from this person’s service on eBay here making $105. However the real value of offering these services on eBay is that for each person who purchases your service, you gain a new client who has already hired you, been happy with your work and trusts you.
This makes it very likely that they will want to hire you again for other social media projects and services in future. By listing your services on eBay you are essentially being paid to get put in touch with businesses who will want to hire you again and again!
Of course you aren’t limited to selling custom Facebook timeline covers on eBay, you can sell any social media management service that you want to offer! Here are some ideas of other services that you could offer:
- I will get your business Facebook Fanpage 100 real likes
- I will get you an additional 200 Twitter followers
- I will create a 1 minute marketing video for your business and upload it to YouTube (you can use a free video creation service like Animoto)
- I will setup your business with a Linkedin/Google+/Facebook/Twitter account
- I will post to your Facebook and Twitter account 3 times a week for 1 month
- etc. etc. etc.
There really is no limit to the amount of different fun and interesting social media services that you can offer here, pick the ones that you enjoy doing the most. After you have gone through the Advanced Social Media Manager Training in this members area you should have some great ideas for the services you can offer.
Whatever service you decide to offer try and keep the price as low as you can, because remember the money that you are going to get up front for providing the service is only half of the equation (albeit a very nice part). What you are really looking to do is build up a collection of satisfied customers that you can up-sell to your other social media marketing services.
There are a few things that you need to be aware of when posting services to eBay:
- Be very clear about what you’re selling. This is often a big problem for service sellers, who often fail to get the title right by using ambiguous titles that don’t tell buyers what they’re purchasing or bidding on before compounding the problem with descriptions that don’t make this clear either. Before posting a listing for intangible goods, ask yourself what, exactly, are you offering to deliver or to do, where will you deliver or do this, for how long, and precisely what is included so that you can be clear about this to your buyer.
- Don’t lead with personal hype. There is a place in your listing for bullet lists of your personal qualifications and accolades, but it’s not at the beginning, where this can turn into a soup of superlatives that leave your buyer wondering what’s actually on offer and why they should care whether or not you’re so great. At most, include one brief and very general statement of qualifications to start your description or listing before spending the next several paragraphs on the actual product you’re offering (your time, your service, etc.) rather than talking about yourself.
- Be very clear about what you’re NOT selling. Service sellers often get themselves into trouble by not clearly spelling out what’s excluded from the sale, leading to disputes later on when buyers expect more than the seller was prepared to deliver. In your item description, use disclaimers to spell out those things that might commonly be desired by buyers but that you don’t want to include in this sale.
- Be very clear about terms. There is a space in the listing form to answer this question, but it’s also important to spell it out. Under what conditions will you give your buyers a refund? Under what conditions won’t you give them a refund? If you offer a “satisfaction guarantee” of some kind, who gets to determine when the terms of this guarantee are met and what are you willing you do to attempt to ensure that they are met? Particularly if your labor time or other similar open-ended resources are on the hook, it’s important not to open yourself to an ongoing commitment to what you thought was the price of a small, one-time job.
- Include multiple great photos. Don’t make the mistake of imagining that since no physical goods are on offer, no photos are needed for a sale. In fact, quite the opposite is true; since you’re selling something abstract and “imaginary” it’s tougher to get buyers to pony up the cash without giving them a clear picture to keep in mind while they do it. If you’re selling yourself in some way (your time, your expertise, your speaking, your consulting, your labor) get a professional to take glowing, inspiring pictures of you doing what you do and include these in your listings, along with descriptions, if possible.
- Ensure that you’re abiding by eBay rules. To ensure that eBay doesn’t remove your listing, be sure that you’re clear on eBay’s policies related to intangible goods and services, including policies on digitally delivered goods, compilation and informational items, and listings with “no items” attached to them. Service sellers are particularly vulnerable to inadvertent rules violations in this area, particularly those that want to sell boutique services. To sell intangible items on eBay, you have to be sure that you don’t violate anyone else’s claims (copyright or IP claims, for example, of the sort protected by VeRO) and that your buyer is able to determine in some way whether or not you have delivered what you promised.
- eBay specifically forbids the use of item listings simply as ways to direct customers to your “real” business that isn’t on eBay, and if you do this in your item listing (whether by links, in your description, or in any other way), eBay will pull your listings and may eventually suspend your account. You want to use up-sell customers that you find on eBay to your other services, but wait until after you have done the first job and make sure you contact them outside of eBay about your other services.
As long as you keep these few things in mind you will be able to get tons of new clients for your social media services, so get out there, implement this strategy and start making some money!
Social Media Proposal Document
You can use your social media proposal document to help you craft the message or proposal that you will use in your initial contact with businesses and you can also use it as a sales tool to help get repeat business from each client. After you complete the initial job for them, you can send them the proposal document to help convert them into monthly clients who send you regular payments to provide ongoing social media management services for them. For more information on how to make the best use of the social media proposal document go to the Advanced Training 12 – Social Media Proposal Document. To download the document itself, click the link below.
