Introducing: Mystery Shopper

What exactly is a "Mystery Shopper" or "Secret Shopper"?

A "Mystery Shopper" or "Secret Shopper " is someone who is hired by an establishment to pose as a customer and secretly report back to owner how service was, or other details that are requested. The person is then paid for assignment and sometimes gets reimbursed for their purchase, meal or other things.

Like all ebay sellers I wanted to sell all of my items at a profit and what I found was that when I was getting to end of line items that I was ending up selling them at cost, even though items were finally selling at a profit price, because I was having to factor in ebay relisting fees etc.

So I took a moment and sat down and thought how I could deal with these items and still make money. What I ended up doing was thinking outside ebay sellers box and coming up with selling them at cost to make a fortune!.

What I mean by this was that I was going to sell items at no loss to me on ebay but then use opportunity to build a relationship with buyer that could be used to build long term profit for me. Think of it as :

A loss leader without Loss!

Let me use a couple of examples :

Scenario One

Item sells on ebay for £20 profit, buyer buys item and pays and thats end of it. Your total profit is £20.

Scenario Two

Items sells at cost, zero profit but you use sale as an opportunity to build a relationship with buyer and lock them into your business. The buyer then buys one item a month (maybe more!) for a year giving you a profit of £240 (minimum). If these are from your website not ebay your profit will be greater as you will have no fees. Over lifetime value of a customer this could mean thousands of pounds profit…

It is common knowledge that when a customer is locked into your business or product then they are more likely to repeat purchase, which is where fortune part of equation comes in. The principle can also be used when you sell at full price but as you are selling at a bargain price customer is more likely to be interested in your offer as they will put your product and value into same sentance.

What I am asking you to do is to take a critical look at what true worth of ebay actually is, is is not just in instant terms but long term possibilities far outway short term profits.