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Super Categories: 50% Salesman, 50% Affiliate
Skills and tools needed:
A successful Auction Runner will find that 50% of his or her time will be spent answering customer questions and other emails, so quick typing skills and a developed customer service manner will help a lot. Sales Copy writing is also necessary for the description of each product, as well.
If you chose to sell physical items, such as buying packages low and breaking them up to sell individual items higher, then you will definitely need a storage and packaging area, like a garage or unused bedroom to do all of your packaging and shipping... Which of course eats up a LOT more of your time and money in packaging and mailing the items. I don’t even recommend it unless your product is very small and very expensive. (Even then you have to deal with the insurance!)
Therefore, knowledge of informational products, including MRR products, or at the very least drop-shipping companies that you can sell for will help you tremendously.
The only tool you absolutely need is a computer with web access.
Description of an Auction Store owner:
The description of an Auction store owner is pretty self-explanatory, but we can narrow down the definition a bit here. The owner of a virtual store on an auction site, such as eBay, (there are many hundreds of auction sites, by the way, but eBay still has the majority market share) will concentrate his or her auction efforts into a store format and if possible, a single theme, so customers who buy from the store will think of it as a storefront to do business with again.
Instead of just buying a piece of software from “john_doe11534” that one time, customers will be more likely to do repeat business with “The niche software store” the next time they are thinking about that niche.
The tactic of using stores, especially when presenting the same store name across multiple auction websites, is a powerful tactic already. However, the real advantage comes in when your website, such as eBay, allows customers to subscribe to your list! Much like a newsletter, each time you post a new product to your store, your mailing list will be notified and you can expect a calculated surge of traffic.
Add this to the clear benefits of selling information products, (having no storage, packaging, insurance, nor shipping expenses) and it’s easy to see that eBay stores can really rake in the easy money. They can even be automated, so you can set-it-and-forget-it!
Lifestyle of an Auction Store owner:
For you to be most likely to succeed at running an online Auction store like ‘eBay shops,’ you will have to adhere to a somewhat strict schedule. Every morning you’ll likely check to see your current day’s sales, and start replying to your customer queries or emails involving customer support.
This can be very time consuming and the most likely reason for failure in this assembly line choice is that you can easily spend TOO much time answering these emails... I know from experience, I’ve had my share of whole days going by with nothing to show for it but customer responses… There’s simply no way to make money when that’s the only thing you are doing, so you can’t allow yourself to think of this as acceptable.
Therefore, to do this right you’re either going to have to be disciplined enough to only answer these emails during a certain time each day, or you could completely hire that task out to some kind of answering service or helpdesk. In fact, there are some creative software packages out there that allow you to have a customer support desk with an FAQs section that you can put up on your own website, cutting down on the questions you receive drastically.
The rest of your time you’ll be searching for better products to post and sell online, and of course writing the sales letter. Sales copy writing will be something you’ll find yourself getting good at, whether you like it or not.
You will, no matter what you do, be spending many hours every single day on the computer, so some discipline to at least go out and exercise once a day would serve you very well. | 
