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Articles in Home | Internet Business | Auctions Sort By: Title|Newest|Oldest How To Think Like An Ebay Powerseller.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So what’s a PowerSeller? PowerSellers are the people on eBay who’ve made it, recognisable by the little ‘PowerSeller’ badge next to their name. You’ve probably seen these people around – and to succeed on eBay, you want to think the way they do. How to People Get the Right to Call Themselves PowerSellers? eBay gets to decide who can be a PowerSeller and who can’t, and they have strict requirements. To get in at the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rat... How To Use Ebay To Grow Your Other Businesses.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Most of the people who make money from eBay don’t actually make all of that money on eBay. There are all sorts of ways you can use eBay to give your existing businesses a helping hand. The Supply Side. If you have any leftover stock or used items from another business you run, then why not sell them on eBay? You can make this a regular thing, using it to get rid of things that won’t sell for the premium you ask for in a shop, or items that are no longer in demand in the... 10 Sure-Fire Ways To Kill Your Ebay Business.  By : Kirsten Hawkins It’s surprisingly easy to kill your eBay business, if you’re not careful – sure, you can start over from scratch without it costing you anything, but do you really want to? Still, if you want your business to end up dead in the water, here are some simple ways to do it. Lie about an item: Say it works fine when it sometimes doesn’t work. Say it’s in perfect condition when it has a scratch. Your customers will hate you! Post whenever you feel like it: Make sure to leave ... Ebay – Part Time Or Full? How To Decide.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Going full-time as an eBay seller is living the dream: making a real income, working from home, being your own boss and all the rest of it. It’s the promise of a million scams, and it’s finally come true – at least for some. What they don’t tell you in the success stories, though, is that becoming a full-time eBay seller is by no means for everyone. You really, really ought to try it part-time before you even consider taking it up full-time, and even then, caution is advis... 10 Steps To Successful Selling On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So you want to be a successful seller with your own eBay business, do you? Here’s a simple, ten-step path to eBay enlightenment. Step 1: Identify your market. Take a while to sit and watch for what sells and what doesn’t out of the items you’re interested in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You’ll probably see the ‘sweet spots’ quite quickly – those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price. Step 2: Watch th... Is The Ebay Customer Always Right?  By : Kirsten Hawkins I can answer this question for you right now: the answer is ‘yes’. In fact, the answer is ‘YES!’ – the biggest yes you’ve ever heard. Of the course the customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, however much time or money it might cost you. A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs.... 5 Simple Steps To Posting Your First Ebay Auction.  By : Kirsten Hawkins It’s surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Here’s what you need to do. Step 1: Open an eBay seller’s account. If you’ve bought things on eBay, then you already have an account – just log in with it and click ‘Sell’ in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click ‘Create a seller’s account’. If you’ve never used eBay before, then you’ll need to open an account first using the ‘register’ link underneath the toolbar, and then click ‘... What Else Belongs On Your Ebay Shipping Box?  By : Kirsten Hawkins The quickest answer I feel I should give to this question is this: not your handwriting! Scrawling addresses on boxes with a pen is extremely amateurish, and you shouldn’t do it. Print your own labels instead. But what should you put on them? The buyer’s address: This might sound obvious, but you need to make sure the full address is there, including country and zip or postal code. Make sure you spell their name correctly, too, as they might be a little insulted if you don... The Ebay Buyer’s FAQ.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So you have a question? Has something gone very wrong and you don’t know what to do? Well, fair enough. Here are the questions that I hear all the time from buyers. Does eBay have a Customer Service Department I Can Phone? eBay are notoriously hard to contact, should you ever need to – it sometimes seems like they expect the site to run itself. You can email them, as long as you don’t have your heart set on a coherent response: go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_u... What? You Don’t Have An Ebay Store?  By : Kirsten Hawkins In fact, you might not even have heard of eBay stores. Read on to find out what you’ve been missing. eBay stores come at three levels: Basic for $15.95 per month, Featured for $49.95 per month or Anchor for $499.95 per month (yes, that is typed correctly: almost $500). The best place to start out is with Basic (you can even get a month’s free trial), but if you like what you find then you should upgrade to Featured quickly, simply because it has so many extra features. Not... Should Paypal Be Your Only Ebay Payment Option?  By : Kirsten Hawkins You may have noticed that many sellers list PayPal as the only payment option they accept – they simply can’t be bothered cashing cheques and money orders, never mind any of the other strange ways some people want to pay. Like all things in life, though, PayPal has its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a look at what PayPal can do for you, and what it can’t. The Disadvantages. PayPal is very vulnerable to fraud, and it’s you as the seller who’ll be paying the pri... 10 Tips For Increasing Your Ebay Response.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So you’ve got the buyer in front of your auction, and they’ve read the description. They’re must be interested, or they wouldn’t be looking… but just how can you push them over that line and make them leave a bid? Read on for some tips. Improve your picture: In all that description writing, you might have missed the vital importance of your item’s picture. A picture with bad lighting or an intrusive background looks amateurish and won’t make anyone want to buy from you. ... Are There Any Ebay “Secrets” That Are Worth Buying?  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you look around a little on the web, you’ll no doubt come across people trying to sell you ebooks about eBay’s ‘secrets’ for as much as $20. Here’s a sample: “Along with 400,000 other excited eBay fanatics I now make a living using the Internet and eBay. I can go days without ever speaking to a single customer, but I have a world wide customer base. My online business runs like a well oiled machine with a part-time effort!” You too can get such valuable tips as: “... Learning The Ebay “Lingo”.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Do you have trouble sometimes understanding when people talk about eBay? Don’t worry, some of the jargon is really obscure, and you can’t be expected to understand it until someone’s told you what it means. Here’s a little list of some of the most useful lingo to know, but you don’t need to memorise it – even the most common jargon is only used relatively rarely. Words. Bid: telling eBay’s system the maximum price you are prepared to pay for an item. Dutch: an auctio... An Ebay Seller’s Checklist.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Being a seller is a lot of responsibility, and sometimes you might feel like you’re not doing everything you should be. This simple checklist will help you keep on top of things. Have you found out everything you possibly could about your items? Try typing their names into a search engine – you might find out something you didn’t know. If someone else is selling the same thing as you, then always try to provide more information about it than they do. Do you monitor the ... How To Respond To An eBay Buyer’s Complaint.  By : Kirsten Hawkins At some point in your eBay selling life, one of your customers is going to send you a complaint. As long as you respond to it properly, however, it’s easy to keep a complaint from turning into a crisis. Respond Immediately and Grovellingly. Someone might complain to you directly, or they might do it through eBay. Whatever happens, you need to email them immediately. Here’s a template to use: “I have just received your complaint and I would like to say that I am very ... When Not To Use “Buy Now”.  By : Kirsten Hawkins As you get more experienced on eBay, you might be tempted to use fixed price auctions, just so you can budget better. It’s often more reassuring to know that either you will make a small profit on an item instead of having to wait and see whether it makes a big profit or a big loss. However, you should be aware that there are some times when you really shouldn’t use ‘Buy it Now’. In the Holiday Season. The market goes absolutely crazy just before the holidays – and that... How To Get Help From Ebay’s Safeharbor Team.  By : Kirsten Hawkins SafeHarbor are the eBay police department. If a buyer does something they're not supposed to, then it's SafeHarbor you should be reporting it to. Non-paying Buyers. This is the most common rule buyers break -- it's all too easy for them to just change their minds and try to get out of the auction. eBay, however, regard every auction as a contract. They will punish the buyer for you if they don't go through with their end of the deal, by giving them a ‘strike’ against th... How To Use Ebay’s “Second Chance Offer” Feature.  By : Kirsten Hawkins When someone wins your auction, you might think that’s the end of it. In fact, you can offer the item to anyone else who bid in the auction but didn’t win. Why Would I Do That? There are three reasons you might want to do this: 1. Your top bidder never paid. Unfortunately for sellers, it is all too common for buyers to win an item and then decide they don’t want it after all. Making a second chance offer lets you offer the item to a buyer with a better reputation. ... How To Dispute Unfair Ratings On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So you’ve done everything you can to keep your buyers happy – but still someone’s left you negative feedback! You don’t think it’s fair, either because you fixed the buyer’s problem, or they never gave you a fair chance to fix it. What can you do? Communicate. Tell the buyer that you don’t think that feedback was fair, and give them a list of the things you’ll do in exchange for them withdrawing it. You can offer refunds, replacements, or even to ‘compensate them for th... Is Your Ebay Income Taxable?  By : Kirsten Hawkins The income you get from selling items on eBay is just like the income you get from any other business: it is taxable, at least in theory. In practice, many get away without declaring profits from their eBay sales just because they’re hard for the government to track. If you want to be strictly within the law and legit, though, you should be paying tax. Income is Income. If you make money from it, then it’s income – and if it’s income, then it’s taxable. There is a quest... Why Adding Pictures Increases Ebay Bid Response.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Buyers really like pictures. The more pictures you have, the more they’ll feel like buying their item from you, and not from your competitor. In fact, there are plenty of buyers who will literally leave your auction within 5 seconds of arriving if they don’t find a picture there waiting for them. A little extra work on photography can pay off massively, especially if you’re working on slim profit margins. But why is it so effective? It shows you’re serious. Sellers who ... What’s Your Ebay Reputation Really Worth?  By : Kirsten Hawkins Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay – without it, you’re nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make. If you’ve ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands doesn’t require any thought or fear – it feels just like... Should You Run Auctions On Other Sites Besides Ebay?  By : Kirsten Hawkins eBay doesn’t have very many competitors, and the ones that there are remain small by comparison – that’s part of what makes eBay so powerful for niche items. If you’re selling more common things, though, you might like to list auctions on other sites besides eBay, to increase your potential customer base and avoid some of the occupational hazards of relying on eBay for all your business. But which ones are worth bothering with? Yahoo! Auctions. Yahoo Auctions wins in on... Top 10 Reasons Why Ebay Auctions Fail.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Are you finding that auction after auction fails to attract any bidders or buyers? It happens to the best of us sometimes – take a good look at these things to see if any of them could be making your bidders avoid you. The starting price was too high: People don’t want to have to make a high bid before anyone else has – you should always start your auctions low and let the bidders bid them up. The fixed price is too high: If you’re just selling with Buy it Now, then of ... An Introduction To Bidding And Buying On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Have you noticed that whenever you open a newspaper, watch the TV or have a conversation, people seem to be talking about eBay? If you’ve never used it and you’ve no idea what it’s all about, then the chances are that you’re starting to feel a little left out. But don’t worry! This email contains everything you need to know about the basics of bidding and buying on eBay. So What is eBay? eBay is an online auction website – and not just any auction site, but the biggest ... Your Rights As An Ebay Buyer.  By : Kirsten Hawkins When you buy things on eBay, you pay the seller before they send you anything. This means that you, as a buyer, are vulnerable to all sorts of problems. You might not get the items you have paid for, or they might be damaged or faulty. Luckily, you have two very important rights when you buy on eBay. The Right to Receive Your Item. Maybe the seller never sent the item, or maybe it got lost in the post. Whatever happened, you paid for the item. If it doesn’t arrive in th... Seasonal Selling On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins When you sell on eBay, it’s important to know how to take advantage of the kinds of markets you encounter in the different seasons. As a rule, the summer months are slow and the winter period is fast, but there’s more to it than that. It Depends What You’re Selling. Your sales won’t necessarily be slower in the summer than in winter – they might just be different. If you’re selling sports equipment, for example, you’ll probably find that surfing gear sells in summer whi... Using Paypal On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins PayPal and eBay were made for each other – and now that eBay own PayPal, using them together is getting even easier. What is PayPal? People with PayPal accounts can send money to each other securely online. You can deposit money in a PayPal account from a bank account or a credit card, and withdraw money to your bank account. It is the most common way of paying on eBay, as well as being in widespread use on the rest of the Internet. Opening a PayPal Account. It’s ... 10 Great Ways To Source Low Cost Products For Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So you’re having trouble finding stock cheaply enough to sell it for a good profit? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Garage sales. The chances are you’ve gone most of your life seeing ads for these and ignoring them. Start going to as many as you can. You won’t find good things at every one, but when you find one person with good stuff, make them an offer for the lot – they’ll be so happy about it that you can get a real bargain. Markets. If your area has a market,... How To Determine What’s Really Selling On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you want to make the most money you can on eBay, then you need to know what sells. But how can you find that out? The Manual Way. If you’re just starting out, you might find it easier to simply go to your category, tick ‘Completed listings’ in the left-hand menu, and then click the ‘Show items’ button. Sort them by highest price first, and there you have it: the items that sell for the highest prices. In most categories this will change often, but it’s still useful t... Ebay Auction Pricing Strategies.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If your items aren’t selling, then you might have a bad pricing strategy. There as many pricing strategies in the world as there are buyers – if you look at two businesses selling the same thing, often the only difference you’ll be able to find between them is pricing. The ‘Few Dollars More’ Strategy. Here’s something you might not have thought of. If you set your auction’s starting price to what you would usually charge for Buy it Now, while setting the Buy it Now pric... What You Can Learn From Competing Ebay Auctions.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you’ve a savvy businessperson, the chances are you’ve already taken a look at your competitors’ auctions. What you might not have realised is just how much you can learn if you know what you’re looking for. To begin with, don’t bother looking at listings that haven’t ended yet – you don’t know what’s going to happen with them. Instead, use the advanced search page to search for listings that sold. Just go to the advanced search page, type in the keywords that you know w... How Long Should Your Ebay Auction Run?  By : Kirsten Hawkins When it comes to durations, you have a wide range of choices: your auction can run for 10, 7, 5 or 3 days, or even only one day if you have a good enough feedback rating. There’s a reason why you get to choose your duration, and that’s because different durations are good for different things. To decide how long you should list your items for, all you need to do is ask yourself a few questions. Do you want to sell things quickly? If you’d rather sell now than in a few d... How To Increase Your Auction’s Visibility On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Once you’ve optimised your titles for search terms and your items have short durations to get them near the top of the results, there’s really only one sure-fire way to make your auction stand out from the crowd. Unfortunately, it involves paying eBay more money – but it can really pay off, especially for higher-priced items. In this email, I’ll take you through the various ‘listing upgrades’ eBay offer, how much they cost, and whether they’re any good. Remember that if yo... How To Report And Handle Ebay Transaction Problems.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Even when there aren’t any disputes, you might run into a few transaction problems on eBay – glitches that aren’t really anyone’s fault, but are just the result of a technical malfunction or another situation beyond the buyer or seller’s control. The number one cause of problems like this is email. Email Problems. If you use the Internet a lot, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the problems eBay can cause, and many buyers and sellers are relying on email to keep them inf... How To Use The Ebay “Checkout Service”.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Back in the ‘old days’ of eBay, getting payment for the item was entirely left up to sellers: you had to choose your payment service, sign up for it and then send links to your buyers. Now, though, eBay handle most of the complexities of payment for you with their checkout. How Do I Offer the Checkout? The checkout will be offered to your buyers automatically. When they win an item, eBay send them an email with a ‘Pay Now’ button that takes them to the checkout, and the... How To Leave Great Buyer Feedback.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So your buyer has paid on time, you’ve shipped them the item, and they’ve left you positive feedback. Everything is going great! You know that leaving your buyer some nice feedback will finish everything off, and make them glad they chose to buy from you. When you see that little feedback box, though, you might find that you have no idea what to write to make your buyer happiest. Well, here’s a guide. Don’t write “A++++++++”. Once upon a time, leaving grades on eBay buy... Increase Your Ebay Sales With A “SquareTrade” Seal.  By : Kirsten Hawkins SquareTrade are eBay’s chosen provider of dispute resolution services. If you want your buyers to have a little more confidence in you, you can get a SquareTrade seal, and put it on each one of your auctions. The chances are that you’ve seen these seals around. They show SquareTrade’s blue and green logo, along with the eBay user’s ID and the current date. This is followed by the text “SquareTrade Verified Seller, Click to Learn More”. SquareTrade is also used on sites oth... A Look At Third Party Ebay Tools.  By : Kirsten Hawkins There are plenty of companies out there offering third party eBay tools. Most of them are web-based instead of downloadable, so you pay a monthly fee instead of just buying the software. But do you know what these sites can do for you? It can be hard to get to grips with what’s out there using a search engine, so here’s a quick rundown of the key players. Andale (http://www.andale.com). Andale offer lots of small products instead of one solution that does everything: yo... 10 Tips For Being A Better Seller.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you’ve got this far, you’ve got the basics of eBay. There are a few things left, though, that you might not have thought of trying. Quite a few of these tips go against the advice many give for eBay selling – some are a little risky and some are just odd. They’re all worth a try, though, and I’m sure you’ll find at least some you want to keep using. 1. Keep more records. It might sound time consuming, but you’ll actually find it easier in the long run – less time spent ... Special Rules For Selling Software On Ebay.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Computer software is one of the biggest sellers on eBay – after all, everyone using eBay has a computer, don’t they? There can be problems, however, if you try to sell certain kinds of software that eBay doesn’t allow. Used software is a minefield, and you could end up buying something dodgy to resell without even realising it. Here are the various kinds of software that you’re not allowed to sell on eBay, and how to spot them. You should always try installing used softwar... How To Turn Ebay Returns Into Profits.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Don’t worry, getting items returned happens to everyone eventually. You can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time, and occasionally someone’s going to want to send something back to you. Turning returns into profits isn’t easy – but with a little determination, you can manage it. Don’t refund shipping charges: If followed our advice and you’re now making a decent profit on your shipping charges by using cheaper materials, then you might still be able to come out ahea... How Ebay Consignment Centers Work.  By : Kirsten Hawkins You might not ever have heard of eBay consignment centers – don’t worry, most people haven’t, as they’re a relatively new concept. The idea is that you drop off anything you want sold, and then the consignment center will sell it for you and share the profits. You Can Sell at Consignment Centers. Just find something to sell and take it to a consignment center – they’ll sell it for you on eBay, handling all the listing, description and shipping. You do, however, give ... The Myths And Magic Of Ebay Drop-Shipping Vendors.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you’ve never heard of drop shipping, then prepare to be impressed – it sounds like every eBay seller’s dream. With drop shipping, you don’t have to keep any stock at all. You simply list auctions for what your drop shipper sells, without actually seeing it yourself. Each time something sells, you let them know, and they deliver it for you – directly to the customer. They’ll charge you a near-wholesale price for the item they delivered, you charge the customer whatever p... When And How To Cancel An Ebay Auction Early.  By : Kirsten Hawkins One day, you might decide that you want to end an auction early. Before you do, though, you should consider why you want to do it: cancelling auctions upsets buyers and upsets eBay, and there might be a better to way to get what you want. I Want to Change my Listing. If you just want to revise your listing, you don’t always need to end it. For listings that have more than 12 hours left to run and haven’t received any bids, you can revise almost everything. You can remov... Understanding The Different Ebay Auction Types.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Over the years, eBay has introduced all sorts of different auction types, in an effort to give people more options when they buy and sell their things on eBay. There are many people who don’t like the idea that their item might sell for a far lower price than they intend. Equally, there are people who have hundreds of the same item and don’t want to sell them individually. This email gives you an overview of the different kinds of auctions and how to spot them. Normal Auct... You Won That Ebay Auction! Now What Do You Do?  By : Kirsten Hawkins It’s a heady feeling when you win your first eBay auction: a mixture of happiness and perhaps just a little fear. After all, there seems to be so much to do before you can actually get your item. What do you do next? The simple answer is: you send payment to the seller, as quickly as possible. The quicker you pay, the more your seller will like you, and the sooner your item will arrive. But how you go about it? That all depends on how you plan to pay. PayPal. PayPal ... How To Stop Ebay Auction Sniping.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Every day, hapless bidders get beaten to the punch by auction snipers who jump in at the last minute. I know how annoying it can be, as I once had it happen to me three times in a row on the same item! The thing is that the only people who can help the poor bidders are us, the sellers. The Problem. Bidders will bid on an item and then wait for days until it finishes, only to have someone else outbid them at the last minute. In a traditional auction at a real auction hou... Ebay Title Writing Tips.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Trying to be help your buyers find your auctions can be a truly daunting task. Most people only search eBay by title, not by description, and that means that you only have those 55 characters of the title to cover all the possible search terms. That’s not easy. In this email, I’ll give you a few pointers. Don’t bother with eBay clichés: There are plenty of eBay auction titles that say things like “Super rare camera wow look low price”. These are stupid things to put in you... Turn Your Ebay Shipping Costs Into A Profit Center.  By : Kirsten Hawkins You might think that shipping costs are simple: surely you just add up the price of your item’s postage and the price of packing materials, and charge that – right? Well, you could do that, but there are better ways to make your shipping costs work for you. Find Cheaper Materials. The key to making profit on shipping is to use the cheapest materials you can get for packing, without compromising on quality. The great thing for you is that many eBay PowerSellers have made... Taming The Ebay Search Engine.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you know what you’re doing, you can quickly find what you’re looking for on eBay – and the more you know about how buyers find you, the easier you’ll find it to be found. Here are a few golden searching rules. Be specific: If you’re searching for the first edition of the original Harry Potter book, you’ll get further searching for ‘harry potter rowling philosopher’s stone first edition’ than you will searching for ‘harry potter’. You’ll get fewer results, but the ones y... Safeharbor; Ebay’s Own Scotland Yard.  By : Kirsten Hawkins SafeHarbor are the eBay police department. If you break the rules, commit fraud or try to buy something you’re not supposed to, they’ll be after you. When You Don’t Pay. This is the most common rule buyers break – it’s all too easy to just change your mind and try to get out of the auction. eBay regards every auction as a contract, and will punish you if you don’t go through with your end of the deal. If you decide not to pay then expect to get a few nasty warning email... How To Avoid Being A Victim Of Ebay Buyer’s Fraud.  By : Kirsten Hawkins From everything you’ve heard about the risk of fraud on eBay, you might think it’s only buyers getting scammed – but you couldn’t be more wrong. Here are a few common scams that sellers fall for every day. The Rubber Cheque. This one obviously isn’t limited to eBay – it’s been going on for years in all kinds of business. It works like this: a buyer sends you a cheque that they don’t have the funds to cover and you pay it in your bank. You then send the goods right away,... How To Choose The Right Ebay Product Category.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Some people think it’s easy to choose the right eBay category, and often it is. Sometimes, though, it might not be quite clear exactly what to go for. Why is it Even Important? Plenty of people use the category system to find items, when they’re not looking for something specific. If your item is listed in the wrong category – or you’ve just given up and listed it in ‘Everything Else’ – then these people aren’t going to find your auction. Also, listing items in the w... Ebay Description Writing Tips.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Once you’ve drawn the buyers in with your title, the next thing to do is to tell them all about your item with the description. But just what should you write in your description? At its heart, your item description is an ad. Without making it too obvious, you should be writing sales copy. You’re trying to get buyers excited about your products, and that’s usually hard – but on eBay, if you have the right thing to sell and give enough details, the buyers almost excite them... How To Market Your Ebay Business.  By : Kirsten Hawkins So you want to market your eBay business? Well, you probably won’t have too much luck with traditional marketing methods – they’re just not targeted enough. The best way to do things is to pay for targeted advertising, which comes up when people search for keywords you specify: they’re looking for exactly what you’re selling, and so many of them will click on your ad. On eBay. You might not have noticed that eBay offer this kind of advertising, but they do. You can pay ... Using The Ebay Anything Points Program.  By : Kirsten Hawkins eBay Anything points are a loyalty scheme, just like you might get in a shop. The buyer earns points on their purchases, which they can then redeem for money off when they pay for items through PayPal. Buyers can also earn eBay Anything points when they use the eBay credit card, or exchange their frequent flyer miles for eBay Anything points. People think it’s really great to take frequent flyer miles they’re never going to use and get stuff on eBay for them. How to Of... Ebay Auction Starting And Ending Day Strategies.  By : Kirsten Hawkins It’s usually when auctions are about to end that they get half their bids – sometimes they even get their only bids. If you want your item to sell for a good price, then, it makes no sense to let it finish on a day and time when no-one’s going to be around to care. Selling to Business. If you’re selling business equipment and have mostly business customers, you should really aim to have your auctions finishing between 9am and 5pm on weekdays. It is worth, however, tryin... How To Use Ebay “Listing Tools”.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Listing tools automate the process of adding listings to eBay, to stop you having to go through the ‘Sell Your Item’ process every time. There is a surprising amount of choice out there when it comes to eBay listing tools, to the point where you might not know what to choose. Here’s an overview of what’s useful and what’s not. Turbo Lister. Turbo Lister is a free download from eBay, and allows you to sell on eBay without ever having to actually visit the site. You can w... Tips And Tricks For Using Ebay Search  By : John Maxim If you know what you’re doing, you can quickly find what you’re looking for on eBay. Here are a few golden rules. Be specific: If you’re searching for the first edition of the original Harry Potter book, you’ll get further searching for ‘harry potter rowling philosopher’s stone first edition’ than you will searching for ‘harry potter’. You’ll get fewer results, but the ones you do get will be far more relevant. Spell wrongly: It’s a sad fact that many of the sellers on ... Understanding Ebay's VeRO Program.  By : Kirsten Hawkins ‘VeRO’? What on Earth is that? Well, it’s a very scary eBay program that can get your auctions shut down, that’s what it is. VeRO stands for ‘Verified Rights Owner’. It is the eBay policy that deals with complaints about your auctions from companies who own copyrights, patents or trademarks on the items you are selling. Unfortunately, it is often abused to remove items from eBay that are perfectly legitimate to resell, simply because the copyright owner doesn’t want people... When To “Buy Now” And When To Bid.  By : Kirsten Hawkins You will often find yourself facing the choice of whether to pay a fixed price or keep on bidding. This choice might be presented to you in a single auction, or you might be choosing between different auctions of the different types. So should you use that ‘Buy it Now’ button or keep on trying to outbid everyone else? It’s all a question of weighing up the advantages and disadvantages. Buy it Now. - The Advantages. When you use Buy it Now, you know the asking price a... How To Turn Ebay Bidders Into Long-Term Customers.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Once someone’s bought something from you on eBay, you suddenly have all sorts of details on them. In marketing terms, this information is gold dust. If someone’s bought from you once before, then the chances are that at some point in the future they’ll want to buy a similar item, and you can take advantage of this to market to them directly. The simplest form of direct marketing is the email newsletter – and it’s one that is still oddly underused on eBay. Simply ask people... How To Use Ebay’s “Featured Gallery” Section.  By : Kirsten Hawkins The ‘featured gallery’ is a little-known and little-used eBay feature, but that’s part of its power: it is far more used by buyers than it is by sellers, which means you can pick up some new buyers by advertising there. Basically, the featured gallery works a lot like ‘Featured Plus’ for normal listings, which shows your item before all the other results. Buying a ‘Featured Gallery’ listing shows your listing at the top when someone chooses to use the picture gallery inste... How Do Dutch Auctions Work On Ebay?  By : Kirsten Hawkins A multiple-item (‘Dutch’) auction is an auction where more than one of the same item is being sold at once. There are two kinds of Dutch auctions. Without Bidding. The most common Dutch auctions are actually a combination of two auction types: they’re multiple-item fixed price auctions (Dutch Buy it Now auctions to you and me). This just means that you can offer more than one of an item at a time for a fixed price. This is very powerful if you’re selling something sm... Creating Ebay Selling Opportunities By Communicating With Your Buyer  By : Kirsten Hawkins One thing many eBay sellers neglect is to actually communicate with their buyers – not with some automated ‘suggestion’ system, but with actual person-to-person contact. If you can be friendly and sound nice, then you can make them think you’re doing them a favour while you make a few extra sales. ‘I Could Throw In…’ When you receive an order for an item that costs a lot for shipping and needs some kind of equipment, this is an ideal opportunity to make a ‘friendly’ ext... How To Use Ebay’s “Pre-Approved Buyer” Function.  By : Kirsten Hawkins For sellers who constantly have to put up with bid snipers, non-paying bidders and other anti-social, timewasting buyers, eBay’s ‘pre-approved buyer’ feature is a godsend. Pre-approving buyers lets you choose in advance who you’re going to allow to bid: not by banning people you don’t want, but by explicitly allowing people you do want. Anyone who is not on the pre-approved list will have to email you and ask you to let them bid. While that might sound great, it’s only ... The 5 Mistakes That Can Lose You Money On Ebay  By : Dave Bromley I am often asked by subscribers to UK Auctionline web site to have a look at their eBay listings. This is usually because they are not doing as well selling their items as they had hoped. When I go and look at the listing I will often find that they have made one or more of the common mistakes that deter bidders. 1. Too many negatives. Some people, especially newcomers to eBay have a very real fear of being cheated or ripped off. Because of this they apply negatives in the... The Hidden Costs Of Selling On Ebay  By : Dave Bromley There is little doubt that given the potential audience advertising on eBay can be very cost effective. Compared to other forms of advertising it is relatively inexpensive. However, many eBay users rarely bother to work out exactly what it is costing them to make a sale. There are the obvious costs such as the listing, enhancements and final value fees. Also you have to add the charges made by Paypal if that is the option of payment chosen by the buyer. But then you should... Design Tips For Ebay Templates.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Templates are the design elements that you might have noticed some sellers using on their auctions, like the borders around the edge, and the different fonts. Many sellers who are new to eBay don’t bother using them, and you might not have either – generally, a descriptive listing and a good picture will do the job just fine. If you want to really finish your auctions off and make a really good impression on your buyers though, it’s useful to have a good template. Here are... The Power Of Ebay “Store Newsletters”.  By : Kirsten Hawkins eBay Stores come with a very powerful feature: store newsletters. When buyers add your store to their favourites, you can offer them the chance to join your mailing list. You can then send highly targeted emails to people who you know were at least interested enough in your products to add the store to their favourites. How Do I Send Them? First, you need to get some people to sign up for your newsletter – this will happen with time, as people buy from you and browse yo... How To Check An Ebay Seller’s Reputation (And Why You Should Do It).  By : Kirsten Hawkins When you buy something from an eBay seller, you are giving them your money and hoping that you will get something in return. However many guarantees of safety eBay might make to you, nothing is certain: if you just give your money to scammers all the time without doing any checks then the chances are you won’t get all of that money back. That’s why you should always check the seller’s reputation, or ‘feedback rating’. This is a quick and easy-to-read summary of their hist... Tips For “Knowing Your Ebay Buyer” Before You Ship.  By : Kirsten Hawkins Before you send anything to that buyer, you might want to get to know them, especially if you’re selling them a high-ticket item that you couldn’t afford to lose. Even if the buyer has paid, the PayPal transaction could still end up being reversed, leaving you out of pocket. So how do you figure out if you can trust your buyer? Look at their feedback for others. Go to their feedback page and click ‘Left for Others’. If they leave a lot of negatives for their sellers, then ... Tips For Managing Multiple Ebay Auctions.  By : Kirsten Hawkins It can be very time-consuming to keep your auctions ticking along, especially if you have hundreds listed at a time. Don’t despair, though: there are a few things you can do to take the weight off you. Use My eBay. If you want a broad overview of where you are with your auctions, make sure you pay a visit to My eBay occasionally instead of just relying on emails. With my eBay, you can see all your auctions in a big table, and sort by things like the number of bids and t... How To Use Ebay’s “Promotional Flyer” Tool.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you have an eBay store, then you can print off promotional flyers for it for free. You might have seen ones that other sellers have sent you – they’re basically lists of items available in their eBay stores, usually bearing this default message: “Thank you for your purchase! Please visit my eBay Store for more great items and friendly, reliable customer service.” If you know what you’re doing, though, you can really make your flyer stand out from the crowd. How Do I ... How To Make More Money With Ebay’s Affiliate Program.  By : Kirsten Hawkins If you’ve been on the web for a while, the chances are that at some time or other you will have taken part in an affiliate program. They generally work by giving you a URL to send people to their site that contains your affiliate number, and then giving you a small amount for each person who comes in using your link and signs up or buys something. eBay's affiliate program follows this basic formula, but with a few twists. It pays a lot. Each user who follows your link t... How To Add Unlimited Pictures To Your Ebay Auction Listing – For Free.  By : Thomas Haselhorst I get a lot of questions from people wanting to know how to add more pictures to their auction listings. Do you know that eBay charges for additional pictures? Yes, that’s right. Pay attention when you launch your next eBay listing. Only the first picture is for free. For any additional photos you will be paying $0.15 per photo. This does not sound much but you will be surprised how these figures add up: Imagine you add 3-4 photos per listing. This will end up to an additiona... Online Auction Sites: Oh The Possibilities!  By : Noel Matthew Online auction sites are set up in such a way that they can be very profitable both for you and for the auction house itself. But, what most people do not realize is that there is a world that is beyond that of Ebay! Yes, there are many other online auction sites for you to consider. Take a look at your options and see just what they offer you before you get started bidding on the web. Let?s face it, Ebay is the largest online auction site. It has become so very successfu... Avoiding Ebay Buying Pitfalls With These Friendly Tips  By : David Riewe As with any market, trading on eBay is not without its hassles and snags. First of all, it should be duly noted that eBay is an online market/transaction facilitator. It merely becomes a means for the buyer and the seller to meet. Because of its online nature, eBay’s auction listing provides the buyers with a wide selection of goods. The buyers are also enabled to review the seller through the seller’s feedback rating. This helps the buyer decide whether or not to pur... Estimating An Item’s Value For Sale On Ebay  By : David Riewe Proper pricing of items to be listed for sale on eBay is one of the most important aspects of generating interest in one’s on-line auction listing. If the price is too high, interest will be low, and the possibility of a sale decreases. If the price is too low, the seller generates enormous traffic, yet the final bid might be too low to satisfy the seller’s need for a profit. The following steps will aid in the process of pricing an item for sale on eBay. Step... Boost E-Bay Profits With Web Audio  By : David Riewe Can you boost profits significantly by adding audio to your E-Bay auctions? According to a recent article on a net business site the answer is a definite yes. In fact, one e-book author suggested that adding audio to your auctions could potentially increase bids by as much as 22% over auctions without audio. A recent trend showing up on a lot of websites is the addition of an audio clip. The clip is a personal message by the author or the website owner encouraging you to ... How To Buy A Motorcycle On Ebay  By : David Riewe If you want to buy a motorcycle or accessories then the eBay motorcycle section is the perfect place to look. You should look for eBay motorcycle listings of interest by taking advantage of the browse and search features. You can specify the make, model, year range and even color for your search within the eBay motorcycle section. It is important to use the search functions to their maximum capability when you are looking for an item within the eBay motorcycle section. Th... Where To Find Products To Sell On Ebay  By : David Riewe One key for business success using eBay is sourcing products to sell. The first questions eBay sellers should ask themselves are: "What can I sell?" and "Where can I buy?" There are two kinds of sellers on eBay, garage sellers and business sellers. Garage sellers are people who sell products they are not going to use any more and that are usually not new. Garage sellers are not profit driven, their main objective is usually to get rid of some stuff they don't need. They w... Selling Children's Items On Ebay  By : David Riewe Selling for a profit on eBay is easy when you have kids. People are earning hundreds of dollars a month by selling kid related items. Here are some general ideas to help you get started. Kids Items You Can Sell Clothes, toys and videos are good money makers on eBay. Go to eBay and look up a "lot" of size six girl's cloths. You will find they are expensive! The average price for a lot of 20 good conditioned clothes is about $35.00. When your kids grow out of th... Payment Methods On Ebay  By : David Riewe Gone are the days when only cash (or cattle in some cases) was the only accepted mode of payment for trades. As the concept of trading evolved, so did the means of paying for items. Today’s electronic world pushes the envelop further. With the advent of online trading systems such as eBay, many new forms of payment have flourished. First of all, on eBay, the mode of payment depends on the agreement between the buyer and the seller. Most often, the seller will specify ... Paying For Items With Ebay Coupons  By : David Riewe There’s a novel idea afoot nowadays: Using electronic discount coupons to pay for items people are interested in purchasing. This only goes to show that most good marketing ideas can be adopted for the internet. Instead of cutting coupons out from newspapers or carton boxes, eBay gives out electronic copies of coupons to purchase merchandise. The coupons are fast and easy to use. Coupons are routinely sent by eBay to members who then use them to pay for items through ... Selling Real Estate On Ebay  By : David Riewe Selling real estate over the internet may sound like an awkward idea. However, the exposure the real estate receives over such a widespread media like the internet is every realtor’s dream. Can eBay be used to market real estate? The answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ eBay provides functionality that is clearly adaptable to the needs of most realtors. It provides a widespread medium of advertisement for the real estate. It is also a relatively inexpensive method of adverti... Spotting Fakes And Frauds On Ebay  By : David Riewe Fake items abound on eBay, and it takes much effort not to be duped by scammers who peddle these wares. There have been many painful stories relating how a seemingly legitimate item turned out to be either fake or defective. It is possible, however, to avoid these scams if one is careful and vigilant. Buyers should be wary of any purchase over eBay, and should take steps to ensure the authenticity of the item and to make sure the item is in reasonable condition. Be Vi... An Easy Guide To Making Money On Ebay  By : Steve Gargin One way to make money on eBay that a lot of sellers underestimate is by making money on returns. Items get returned to almost every seller eventually as it’s impossible to satisfy all of the buyers all of the time. By turning your returns into profits you can make money on eBay without simply selling your items. If you are going to make money on eBay from your returns then it is important not to refund shipping charges. You will probably make money on eBay from your shippi... Buying E-books On E-bay: E-bay The One-stop E-book Shop  By : David Riewe On September 1995, one of the most prestigious online shopping sites was founded. eBay is unique because it allows online shoppers, either as individuals or as a group, a wide variety of merchandise that they can buy, sell or trade within their community, their nation or even other with other countries. eBay's merchandise reaches to 44 million things on sale at any given time and is added with more than four million of other things to be sold everyday. Their categories in... A Seller's Dash For Cash  By : Today, eBay is considered to be one of the most lucrative auction sites available in the Internet. However, selling on eBay is not that easy, and the very first thing a seller should do is to find the ways on how he or she will get paid once the item is sold. And so, here are the different ways how a seller can be paid: 1. PayPal PayPal is the most common and convenient way of sending and receiving money based on an eBay transaction. Here, the payment for the sold i... Hot As Pancake Items To Sell On Ebay  By : In so many instances, people would always want their food hot: hot coffee, hot-of-the-grill burgers and steaks etc. That's why even on eBay people would rather go for those items that are selling like hot pancakes, so hot that they almost burn! Basically, eBay categorize these items as "hot" whenever it obtains bids more than 30. Then after, eBay would classify them as "hot items". There are a lot of items that are already considered hot on eBay, though; things vary dep... When It Pays To Be A Smart Buyer  By : When buying things from E-bay, it's the responsibility of the shopper to protect his or her identity and well being. That's why it's a must for every online shopper to keep in mind some rules on how to buy safely from E-bay so as to avoid frauds, scams, and cheaters. Here are 15 tips on how to buy safely from E-Bay: 1. The buyer should analyze the item list extensively. It's a must that the buyer understands every word written on the item list. Buyers should contemplate... Dumb With Scam  By : Everything in E-bay seemed perfect: nice shopping portal, almost complete buyer's list, and a convenient place to do shopping online. In fact, it's too good to be true. If this is the case, then it's time for the buyer's warning signal to go red alert because if things on E-bay seemed to good to be true, it probably is and may not even be worth the buyer's time and money. There are lots of frauds and scams’ going on in the Internet today and E-bay is not excused. So, it... How To Tips On Buying On Ebay  By : Buying things on eBay can be a great alternative for out-door shopping. Shopping on eBay gives the buyers a convenient way of looking for the right stuffs or things that they need. However, it is a must for every eBay shopper to take note of these important reminders before buying on eBay so as to avoid scams and fraudulent activities. Here are some tips for the buyers: 1. It is important to know the item first. The eBay management strongly suggests that a buyer shou... Making Your Item Get The Best Bid On E-bay  By : Having a worthy item does not immediately guarantee that you would receive the highest bid. Sometimes, it takes more than a great product to get the top bids in E-Bay. One of the things that you should consider is the presentation of the product. The product should be presented carefully and gracefully because buyers are often attracted to products that have presentable packages because it promises that it is also a quality product. Research is always a good thing therefo... Ebay Gift Certificates: Save By Buying Ebay Gift Certificates  By : Now that online shoppers have realized the true potential of online shopping with eBay, they offer their customers a better and easier (not to mention cheaper) way of doing their transactions with eBay. eBay Gift Certificates! But the customers and all online shoppers must always be careful about the terms and/or conditions regarding the gift certificates. Always be alert and reminded about the expiration date of the gift certificates, this way, customers can always make ... Ebay Auction Tips  By : Buying things in an auction is the most affordable way to obtain the item a person wishes to have. That is why even the Internet had provided such sites like eBay in order to provide more affordable items than what the typical market has to offer. Best of all, net auctions sites like eBay can provide a number of potential profits for the small time entrepreneurs who want to, in some or way or another, earn extra income. Through eBay, sellers do not have to build a sit... Ebay And Paypal  By : E-Bay and Paypal are two giant firms which are involved in sales transactions of customers. E-Bay is an online portal in which buyers could auction and bid items for sale. On the other hand, Paypal is the most popular online payment system used through credit cards. The teaming up of both firms is inevitable because E-Bay provides the goods to be purchased while PayPal provides the resources to be used. E-Bay has indeed grown as the number one destination of online shoppi... [1] [2] [3]	Authors Sign Up for a free account. Submit your articles. Publishers Category RSS feeds. Resources Accredited Home Schools Article Directory More Resources

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