eBay Changes: Meet the Seller

Are you ready for the new changes at eBay? Here is an example of one of them: Meet the Seller.

It appears that if you have a low star rating for shipping time, shipping price, item as described, or communication eBay will warn your potential bidders.

With this new auction format in the works, bidders will no longer have to click the feedback button to read your feedback. EBay will point out all of your faults for you.

If you sell on eBay, and you have less than a 4.5 on any star rating, I really suggest that you try to find out what the problem is and fix it. Otherwise, this type of change will obviously make your bidders think twice about buying an item from you.

The Importance of reporting Non-Paying Bidders

It is very important that all sellers with non-paying bidders file non-paying bidder alerts and final value fee credits 10 days later if payment is still not received.

Filing the FVFC has better results than leaving negative feedback - a buyer with three FVFC filed from three different sellers is suspended (usually) from using E Bay. Leaving negative feedback only gets a buyer suspended when their feedback number gets into the negatives (usually -3, but sometimes even that doesn't occur).

It is also important to file for the correct reason - that the buyer didn't pay. If they don't pay, don't file "mutually agreed to cancel the transaction" - that does NOT place a black mark against the buyer and allows the buyer to continue doing the same thing to other sellers.

If you review a buyers feedback and see they have more than three negatives for non-payment, you can assume that not all of the sellers file or know to file the FVFC.

Sellers must help each other by filing these forms to get these habitual non-payers off of E Bay.

Please read and use this link to file NPB's and FVFC on all non-paying bidders:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/bidders_nonpaying.html

Additionally, you will have your re-listing fees refunded as well if you file the NPB and FVFC, relist and the item sells.

Until E Bay starts restricting bidders with NPB's from bidding on other items, the only way we can help each other as sellers is to file the FVFC's to get these buyers suspended.

eBay News and Information: Links for Feb 24

LA Times: Ex-CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, is looking into what it takes to run for Governor of California. She reportedly has enough capital to finance her own campaign.

Newsday: eBay Strike is extended until March 9th. Some sellers and fewer buyers will prolong their boycott an extra week. Although eBay says, "There hasn't been any marked change in our daily listing volume, and we monitor that pretty closely."

Forbes: Experts at Wharton consider what Donahoe, the new CEO, should try to accomplish with eBay. One recommendation is that "eBay needs to better integrate its auctions with the fixed-price shopping convenience offered at sites like Amazon.com."

Online Auction Blog: Provides some examples of what PayPal scams look like, and how you can avoid them.

ByIndia.com: an Indian Internet search engine and social media site is now available on eBay. Starting bid is US $500,000.00. If you want a website ranked in the top 100 on Alexia in India, today is your lucky day!

How to get more people to find your eBay Auction

When doing a search on Google for an item, it is quite common to get eBay auctions to pop up in your search results. If you want to get your eBay Auction found on Google or other search engines, I recommend that you follow some of eBay's search term guidelines.

Use Keywords - Pick three to five keywords that relate closely to your item. Ask yourself what words people are likely to use in a search engine when looking for what you're selling. Once you have these keywords, use them appropriately in your listing title and item description.

Take Care with Titles - Your listing title is a key factor in natural search. Include the most important keywords or keyword phrases in your listing title.

Get the Most Out of Your Item Description - Your item's description is the most valuable tool for creating search engine-friendly listings. While your primary goal is to describe the item you are selling to your eBay audience, here are several ways to use your description to its fullest:

• Create Good Content: Describe your item the best you can and in as much detail as possible You should include approximately 200 words of visible text in your description, with the most important keyword phrases comprising 5 to 7% of the total. (In 200 words of text, you'll want to use your keywords 10 to 14 times.) Note that search engines only read a certain amount of information per page, so overdoing your description with non-relevant information isn't a good strategy.
• Avoid Keyword Spamming: Do not overuse keywords in an item description as it can reduce the effectiveness of content. Moreover, keyword spamming is a violation of eBay policy as well as an irritation to prospective buyers.
• Avoid Hidden Text: Do not add invisible copy; search engines will not read it.
• Vary Font Strength: Use bold headers and use a font size of 12 or 14 maximum.
• Include Links: Add links to other products, to your eBay Store, and so on. The words that are linked should be relevant to the destination. For example, "Visit my Store" or "See other items" are more effective than "Click here."
• Use Image Alt Tags: These are keywords associated with the images you use in your listing. If you do your own HTML, be sure to include alt tags. This provides yet another opportunity to optimize keywords or keyword phrases that both describe the image and are consistent with your content.

Source: Search Optimization

Get Repeat Business on eBay with Free Business Cards

If you want to get repeat business on eBay, have buyers bid on multiple items, and raise the average selling price and sell through rate of your eBay auctions, then you are going to need to implement some changes into your business.

One of the easiest things you can do to increase repeat business is to put a business card in with every package you send out.

I recommend making a business card with your eBay user ID on it, as well as your store's web page. This is a great way to get customers to easily remember you.

In order to get extra repeat business you might want to offer a coupon code that gives them a shipping discount on their next purchase.

Take control of your business card and get more repeat eBay customers. I use VistaPrint’s pre-designed templates to make easy and professional business cards. You can make them online in minutes, and if you go to their site right now you can get 250 full-color business cards for FREE!

Free eBay Consultation: heroptionsforyou

Dear Readers,
I am sorry that I have been neglecting my Free eBay Consultations. I promise I will work harder to make sure that I get to review at least two eBay Sellers auctions and stores per week. This may mean that it will take your store several weeks to get featured on the eBay Selling Guide, and Auction Help. However, if you would like to speed up this process and get your free eBay consultation in 72 hours, you can donate any amount to the eBay Selling Guide.
eMail me for more info.

Today's consultation will feature a store that sells men's and women's clothing, non-fiction books, and children's toys. It is run by Michelle, who seems to be...

Click here to Read The Complete eBay Consultation at Auction Help

Get Higher Auction Prices With Good Ad Copy

Do you want to get higher prices on your eBay listings? Do you feel that your items are selling for less than they should? Well it is time for you to work on your Ad Copy (Advertisement Copywriting).

Writing good ad copy is a process that takes time. You may have to restructure your auctions, and re-think how you write your descriptions. But, if you want higher auction prices and a larger sell through rate, it will be worth it to learn some basics of copywriting.

The first thing you need to do when copywriting is know who your audience is. Identify your target audience and then address their needs. When you are writing to your bidders you need to make your ad as personal as possible. Use pronouns like I and you, drop the we. Even if your ad reaches hundreds of people, you need the bidder to imagine that you are giving them one on one attention.

Secondly, you need to analyze your product/service, it helps to make a list. What features does your product have? Make a list and try to describe it thoroughly. For every feature that you come up with, try to think of a benefit that it will give your buyer.

Next, you need to take your list of features and benefits and use them in a ad copy formula. You need to structure your ad copy in your eBay auction, and there are two popular ways to do so. The first method is called AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). The second is PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution). These are they basic formulas for writing ad copy, and are pretty self explanatory.

When writing ad copy for your eBay auctions make sure to really sell the product. Grab the readers interest and make them want the product because of all of its great features. Use the bidders desire as a tool to get them to buy the item, tell them how it will make their life better, and how it will solve their problems. And lastly, use a call of action. Tell the bidder to buy it now in order to get this great product.

The last part is so important I will write it again. When writing good ad copy for your eBay auctions you need to tell the bidder to bid or buy your item now. Make it seem urgent, tell them they will not find a better deal anywhere else, tell them not to miss out on this unique product. You need to tell the bidder to buy the item, or else they will go elsewhere, and you will lose a lot of bids.

Three Free Products You Can Sell on eBay

Want something for free that you can sell on eBay? Well, you came to the right spot! I have been doing some research on items that you can get for free and sell on eBay. Today I have three free things that you can find on the internet and sell on eBay.

These are not going to make you a lot of extra money. But, if placed in your store, they will easily add some extra money to your PayPal account.

For all of these items I recommend running a week long 1 cent auction with text and links that refer the customer to your store to buy the item now. This way you will get a lot of traffic to your store items because bidders will be interested in your cheap auctions.

Here is the list of three things you can get for free and sell on eBay.

Coupons: Selling Coupons on eBay is very easy. Although, since it is easy a lot of people do it, and this results in a relatively low selling price. I am not going to do all of the work for you, but I suggest you look at fatwallet.com for the coupons (there are sooo many!), and then research eBay to see what kinds of coupons sell best.

Tips for selling coupons on eBay:

• Make sure that the coupons do not expire before your auction does (obvious?)
• Save the coupon as an image or PDF, and then email it, or have the bidder download it when they win. Do not just point to the actual site where you found it.

For the next two items, you can get a little higher selling price, but you are going to have to be able to download the items on demand, burn them onto a CD and ship them to your customer. The deal with these next products is that since they are free in the first place, you can only sell them on CD. Here you are providing a service for people who have slow internet connection and do not want to try to download huge files. Also, some people just do not know any better.

MP3 Audio Books: Selling MP3 Audio Books on eBay is a simple enough task. The majority of your time will be spent on downloading books that look like they sell well on eBay and then creating nice store listings for them. I say store because you are going to have to list a lot in order to sell a few every day.

Where to find Free Audio Books to Sell on eBay:
There are several sites where you can download free MP3 audio books to sell on eBay. A couple of them are: Free Classic Audio Books, and LibriVox.

Tips to Sell MP3 Audio Books on eBay

• If you have a DVD burner, that is great. I recommend that you get creative with your audio book package. I would try to sell individual titles as well as compilations by author or genre. For example, you could list something like "Alcott, Little Men, Little Women Audio Book Package."
• As with selling anything on eBay, you need to do some homework, find out what sells, and how to go about marketing it.
• To see what kind of audio books sell best I suggest that you use hammertap, it is a great program which lets you know what the top keywords are, and what sells best on eBay in every category.

Open Source Software : My last tip is to sell open source software on eBay. Selling free software is a great way to make some extra cash in your eBay store. There are a lot of different free programs that you can download, burn to a disc, and then sell. The best place to find a comprehensive list of these items is at Free Software Directory. I recommend selling a variety of different things from this site, such as image, video, and audio editing software. I also recommend trying to sell an alternative operating system like Linux, as well as the MS Works alternative, OpenOffice.

Tips for selling Open Source Software on eBay:

• Make sure you read the copyright information on each item before you attempt to sell it. I know that it is ok to sell OpenOffice on CD, but I am unsure about many of the others.
• It is a good idea to bundle software if you can fit it all on one CD, or DVD. Sell a photo editing program with OpenOffice, and maybe a website editor.
  

Now, if you are really serious about selling any of these free items on eBay it is going to take some effort to stand out. Since they are free, you are going to have to do some work to your auctions and images to make them really stand out. I recommend that you read the following posts to help make your auctions stand out:

How to Write an Ebay Auction Description that sells
importance of Pictures in eBay Auctions

USPS To Raise Prices in May

The USPS has created a yearly "Price Adjusting" Ritual. The USPS just announced that it is going to raise its prices on May 12. The price of a First Class Stamp is going to be raised to 42 cents.

But it does not stop there. The USPS will be "adjusting" all of their prices. Though they have not announced the rate increase for Priority or Express mail yet.

Here is a taste of some of the changes they are making now:

• Large envelope, 2 ounces, $1, up 3 cents.
• Certified mail, $2.70, up 5 cents.
• First-class international letter to Canada or Mexico, 72 cents, up 3 cents.
• First-class international letter to other countries, 94 cents, up 4 cents.

Let's hope that these increases are not as high as they were last year.

Good luck eBay Sellers, the Feedback and Fee Changes combined with raised shipping fees are not going to help anyone. Hopefully your transition into June will not be too bumpy.

Building an eBay Brand - Consistency is Key

While doing my free eBay consultations I have noticed a pattern: many eBay sellers are not building a brand through consistency. I have seen a lot of sellers not using logos in their stores, or at the top of their auctions. Even more importantly, I have noticed a lack in auction template consistency. If you want a free logo, please just sign up here, and write "free logo" in the notes section.

The best thing you can do to brand your eBay store is to have ONE auction template. There are lots of places to find a free generic template on Google, or you can have someone build one for you.

The most important thing is that you use the same eBay template in all of your auctions. This is will save you time in listing, as you will not always have to add or edit all of your terms of sale.

The other benefit of using a template is that whenever someone goes to your auction it will look like all of your other auctions! This will make you look more professional, and will result in more repeat business, and more bidders buying multiple items.