I Married an eBay Maniac

® 800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA I Married an eBay ® Maniac Associate Publisher Greg Wiegand...

Author: Jayne Perry

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®

800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA

I Married an eBay ® Maniac

Associate Publisher Greg Wiegand

Copyright ® 2006 by Que Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. International Standard Book Number: 0-7897-3562-8 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006922245 Printed in the United States of America First Printing: May 2006 09

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Acquisitions Editor Michelle Newcomb Development Editor Laura Norman Managing Editor Charlotte Clapp Project Editor Andy Beaster Copy Editor Bart Reed

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Contents at a Glance Introduction

Part I: 1 2

Part II: 3 4 5

Part III: 6 7 8 9

Part IV: 10 11

Part V: 12

In the Beginning… It’s After Midnight and He’s Still on eBay! I Didn’t Know He Was an eBay Maniac at First, 9 What eBay Is All About, 23

Dividing, Conquering, and Having Fun with eBay I Wanted to Begin Slowly but eBay Grabbed Me Fast, 47 The Perils of a Home-Based eBay Business, 55 Finding Inventory to Sell is Easier Than You Think, 73

eBay’s Nitty-Gritty—Writing Listings and Making Sales Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item, 93 How Descriptions Drive Sales, 107 Once the Auction Begins, There’s No Time to Rest, 129 It Seems We’re Always Selling, 147

Whew! The Auction Ended, Now What? We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends, 169 Don’t Skimp When You Ship, 191

Our eBay Future… It’s After Midnight and I’m Still on eBay!

Where Will All Our eBay Activity Lead?, 211 Index, 219

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Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Preview of I Married an eBay Maniac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part 1: In the Beginning…It’s After Midnight and He’s Still on eBay! Part 2: Dividing, Conquering, and Having Fun with eBay . . . . . . . . Part 3: eBay’s Nitty-Gritty—Writing Listings and Making Sales . . . . Part 4: Whew! The Auction Ended, Now What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part 5: Our eBay Future…It’s After Midnight and I’m Still on eBay! . Notes and Interruptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Time to Help Your eBay Maniac Is Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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I

In the Beginning… It’s After Midnight and He’s Still on eBay!

1

I Didn’t Know He Was an eBay Maniac at First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 How It All Began . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 My Husband’s Plunge into eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 A Cleaner House Was Nice—An Empty House Was Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 I Got Dragged into eBay Kicking and Screaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 After I Won My First Auction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 The Instant Buying and Selling Advantage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Separate Goals, Separate Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 eBay: The Amazing Machine That Turned 10 Cents into $100 . . . . . . . . . .18 He Needed My Help More Than He Realized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 A Recap to Keep You Sane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 What eBay Is All About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 The World’s Largest Garage Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 How Do Auctions Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Buy It Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Getting Started on eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Registering a New Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Your eBay ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 Signing In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

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Getting Familiar with eBay’s Primary Areas . . . . Your “My eBay” Page Is Your Command Center Searching on eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Buying Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Selling Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You’re Ready to Become an eBay Maniac . . . . . .

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II

Dividing, Conquering, and Having Fun with eBay

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I Wanted to Begin Slowly but eBay Grabbed Me Fast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 You Can Work Together Virtually Trouble-Free . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 The Approach You Use Can Determine How Open Your eBay Maniac Is to Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 You Don’t Need the Details, Just the Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Turn Space into Your eBay Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 If Space Is a Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Your Business Might Outgrow Your Home’s Living Area . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 As Your Sales Grow, So Will Your Shipping Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 eBay’s Still a Numbers Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 eBay Never Promised You a Rose Garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 The Perils of a Home-Based eBay Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 An eBay Business Is Better Than a Storefront Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 The Unforeseen Problem: How Do We Organize What We Haven’t Sold Yet? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 Storing Your eBay Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Selling Like Items at the Same Time Helps You Organize and Increases Your Profits Too . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59

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Dealing with Information Overload: Keeping Track of Your Listings, Sales, Shipments, and Sanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 The After-Sale Email and Invoice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Plan Your Auction Timing to Avoid Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61 Always Monitor the Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61 Other Ways to Manage Auctions Are Out There . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Options Outside of eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 Handling Complaints, Questions, and Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 The Obvious Answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Can You Take Criticism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 —v—

I Married an eBay Maniac

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Sometimes, You’ll Need to Get Away from It All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Schedule Listings to Start Near Your Vacation’s End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 The eBay Message System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70 Do You Still Want to eBay? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Finding Inventory to Sell Is Easier Than You Think . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Never Run Out of Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Family and Friends Might Mock You Until They Need Extra Cash . . . . . .74 Your Tasks When You Sell on Consignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Separate Shipping from the Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 Be Selective, Not a Sucker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Your Clients Will Enjoy Watching the Auctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 Plan for Possible Liability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 eBay Motors May Be an Exception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Wholesaling Perils and Profits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 Selling Mostly Unique Items Poses Unique Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83 Advertising for Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 The eBay Shirt Trick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 Become a Trading Assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 The Typical Problem Is Too Much Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 Recordkeeping Tips for Selling Other People’s Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 Enough Talk, Let’s List! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90

III eBay’s Nitty-Gritty—Writing Listings and Making Sales 6

Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 Good Tools Help You List Auctions Faster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 About eBay’s Listing Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94 Third-party Tools Are Also Helpful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96 The Importance of Your Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96 A Few Marketing Secrets Result in a Big Profit Boost for You . . . . . . . . . . .97 Don’t Sell to Everybody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 eBay Does Some of Your Work For You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 How Buyers Locate Your Auction Helps Your Selling Strategy . . . . . . . .100 The More You Tell, the More You Sell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Lead with the Biggest Benefit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101

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Contents

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A Bad Listing and a Good Listing Compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 Write Listings Together for a While . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 You’ll Soon Master Copywriting Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 How Descriptions Drive Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Searching Is the Key to Titles That Get Bids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 Use Overture to Flood Your Titles with Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 Time for Overture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Overture Tells You Exactly What Keywords to Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 Dig Deeper with Overture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 Forgetting the Obvious Is a Common Mistake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 Write Listings That Talk to Your Buyers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 Your Buyer’s Favorite Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 When in Doubt Leave the Humor Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 Sell the Sizzle and Not the Steak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 ”Always Be Closing, Always Be Closing” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118 Another Powerful Selling Technique: Paint a Mental Picture . . . . . . . . . . .118 Is All This Coercion? No, Selling Is Your Obligatory Duty . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 The Most Powerful Wealth-Building Sentence You Can Put In Your Auctions Is… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 How Do You Want to Be Perceived: Big or Small? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125 Clear, Close, and Detailed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 Some of the Top eBayer’s Photography Tips and Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . .126 You Now Will Do More Than Compete—You Can Dominate . . . . . . . . . . . .128 Once the Auction Begins, There’s No Time to Rest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 Once an Auction Is Listed, Bidders Will Have Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 Quick Replies Build Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 Messages versus Emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 Changing a Listed Auction: What Is and Is Not Allowed . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133 Is a Promotion Worth the Cost? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 Some Errors Are Too Major to Ignore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 The Easiest Time to Sell Something to Someone Is Right After They’ve Purchased Something from You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138

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9

Cross-promoting Your Auctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 Setting Up Your Own Cross-promotion Product List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141 Making Cross-promotions More Automated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142 Determining Cross-promotion Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144 Managing Auctions Keeps You Busy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 It Seems We’re Always Selling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Your About Me Page Should Create Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Either Have a Plan or Leave Your About Me Page Blank . . . . . . . . . . . .148 Your About Me Page Is Free Real Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148 You Can Always Share About Your Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .152 An eBay-Intensive About Me Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .152 An Informational About Me Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153 A Combination Is Wonderful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154 Use eBay Keywords to Promote Your Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 Any Seller Can Use eBay Banner Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Banner Ads Are Targeted Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158 You Only Pay When Somebody Clicks Your Ad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158 The eBay Banner Ad Process Uses Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158 Putting It All Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159 eBay Keyword-Based Banner Ads Do Bring Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163 Your Emails Can Sell in Their Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164 Once an Auction Ends, More Work Is Needed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165

IV Whew! The Auction Ended, Now What? 10

We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Sending End-of-Auction Invoices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Customize eBay’s End-of-Auction Email to Show You’re on the Ball . . . .170 You Can Send an Email in Addition to the End-of-Auction eBay Notices . .172 A Good Problem to Have: One Buyer Wins Multiple Items . . . . . . . . . . . . .173 Not Everybody Will Do As You Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174 You Can’t Always Mail Items Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 eBay Helps Somewhat with Multiple Wins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 Combined Shipping Is Why We Once Received Two Negative Feedbacks . .176 Follow-ups to Feedback Have Hidden Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180

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Contents

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The Best Part: Getting Paid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .182 PayPal Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .182 Paper-based Payments Can Be a Hassle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .182 What to Do When Someone Doesn’t Pay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184 The Buyer Disappears the Moment the Auction Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184 PayPal Takes the Money Back from You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187 Payment Received, It’s Time to Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 Don’t Skimp When You Ship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191 Shipping Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191 Fast Shipping Equates to Repeat Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192 Weight Is Everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192 You Can Charge Flat Shipping Fees or Weight-Based Fees . . . . . . . . . .193 Don’t Wrap an Item for Mailing Too Early . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196 Using the Post Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197 Print Postage from Home with Stamps.com, Endicia.com, PayPal, and the Post Office Websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199 Things Are So Much Easier When You Use Online Postage . . . . . . . . . .200 International Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .201 Make Sure Your Items Arrive Intact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203 Shipping Success Depends on Your Tools and Supplies . . . . . . . . . . . .204 Should You Mail Every Day? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .206 You’ve Completed the Transaction! Time to List Something Else . . . . . . . .207

V

Our eBay Future… It’s After Midnight and I’m Still on eBay!

12

Where Will All Our eBay Activity Lead? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 When Should You Expand? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 100 Weekly Auctions Is Our Limit Without Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 Why Not Make This a Full-time Job? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 The Kids Can and Should Join In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213 Tax-Advantaged Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213 Make It a Family Affair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213 A Home eBay Business Is Freeing and Not Constraining . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215 eBay Is Little More Than a Decade Old But Still a Baby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .216 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219

— ix —

About the Author (and the Maniac) Jayne Perry went from eBay novice to pro when she helped propel her husband’s eBay mania into a full-time home business. They soon reached an upper-tier PowerSeller rating with almost 4,000 positive feedbacks, the frequent-flier tier of eBay sellers. They eventually hired two part-time employees who come to work in the Perry’s very rural Oklahoma home where they run their family eBay business. With the help of Jayne’s insight, they maximized their income. Her husband, Greg Perry, whose primary career includes authoring more than 75 books about computers, has sold on eBay since 1999 and is now an eBay Education Specialist trained by eBay. Together, they now both write and teach others how to excel at eBay. With Jayne’s help, they’ve learned ways to minimize the time they spend on eBay so the rest of their priorities remain top priorities and so they have time to devote to their family life. Their two white, fluffy Bichon Frise dogs, Casper and Mozart, are thrilled that Jayne and Greg set aside time away from eBay to spend with them.

—x—

Dedication Without my eBay Maniac, this book couldn’t exist. He patiently brought me kicking and screaming into his world of computers. He thrilled with each skill I mastered. He waited lovingly as I honed my eBay bidding skills and rejoiced the first time I wanted to sell something. As our eBay selling began to grow with both of us now working it, he listened to my complaints and tried each idea I had to make things run smoother at home. I am thankful every day of my life that God brought you to me, Greg. I love you.

Acknowledgments Obviously the eBay Maniac in my life, my husband Greg, was the impetus for me writing this book. Even so, the book could not be possible with the dedication of the editors at Que Publishing. Laura Norman developed my book with care, precision, and depth beyond anything I expected. The text you now hold is readable and tells my story primarily because of Laura’s diligence; she knows when to edit, she knows when to change, and most important she knows my vision of this book and she made that vision happen. Michelle Newcomb has been a part of our lives ever since she edited my husband’s first book many years ago. Every one of our projects that Michelle’s been involved with has been successful. That cannot be coincidence. It must be because Michelle knows how to make books successful. Patti Rich began as a customer of one of my husband’s books and turned into a longdistance friend who offered timely and helpful eBay advice long before this book began. Patti is an eBay pro (her eBay ID is RichieRich-Colorado) and her technical editing assistance for this book was right on the mark. Patti is one of those technical editors every author dreams of; she comments on what needs commenting but she doesn’t try to rewrite the book for the author. She respects the author’s goals, and for that we will forever be grateful that this book is accurate due to her eyes. Behind the scenes, an entire crew of editing and non-editing staff works on books. Although I haven’t met or talked with most of you, I am grateful to those who had a big hand with this book. Primarily, I wish to express my sincerest thanks to Andy Beaster, Bart Reed, Heather Waye Arle, Aaron Black, and Bronkella Publishing.

— xi —

We Want to Hear from You! As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your opinion and want to know what we’re doing right, what we could do better, what areas you’d like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you’re willing to pass our way. As an associate publisher for Que Publishing, I welcome your comments. You can email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn’t like about this book—as well as what we can do to make our books better. Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book. We do have a User Services group, however, where I will forward specific technical questions related to the book. When you write, please be sure to include this book’s title and author as well as your name, email address, and phone number. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book. Email: [email protected] Mail:

Greg Wiegand Associate Publisher Que Publishing 800 East 96th Street Indianapolis, IN 46240 USA

For more information about this book or another Que title, visit our website at www.quepublishing.com. Type the ISBN (excluding hyphens) or the title of a book in the Search field to find the page you’re looking for.

— xii —

Introduction W

hether you’re an eBay novice or an eBay pro, there’s something here for

you.

I’m assuming that many people who read this book are new to eBay. Obviously from the title, you might have a husband or wife who is obsessed with eBay and you want to learn more about it. This is the place for you. You are not alone in this world. There is help for you and for your spouse! Other readers might have used eBay for a while but would like to learn ways to make eBay work better for them. They have heard of the tips and techniques taught here that dramatically improve an individual’s or family’s eBay income. They want to know how to take their sales to the next-highest level and beyond. By the time you finish this book, you will learn several things that aren’t addressed elsewhere: • How to get closer to your eBay Maniac husband or wife while still letting them spend too much time on eBay • How to help your spouse make more money so you have more money to spend • How to turn your eBay Maniac’s solo eBay activities into a family affair that brings your whole family, including the young ones, into the mix and increases the fun you have together • How to make your family’s auctions run smoother


• How to run an eBay business in your home without that eBay business pushing the kids and grandmother out into the street • How to divide eBay-related tasks between you and your spouse to achieve the best results and the happiest family workers • How to keep eBay from taking over your lives If you’re not buying or selling on eBay but you know someone who is, you’ll now have the answers you’ve been looking for. You’ll learn what eBay is all about, and if there’s an eBay Maniac in your life somewhere—whether they’re a spouse, relative, friend, or sibling—you’ll be catching up to them in no time. Not only that, you’ll be able to help boost their eBay business with the techniques you learn in these pages.

A Preview of I Married an eBay Maniac A roadmap helps you get to where you want to be faster. Here is such a roadmap for I Married an eBay Maniac. This chapter-by-chapter preview will show what’s in store for you throughout the book.

Part 1: In the Beginning…It’s After Midnight and He’s Still on eBay! Chapter 1, “I Didn’t Know He Was an eBay Maniac at First,” explains my pre-eBay days (and late nights) waiting while my eBay Maniac “listed just one more auction.” I was not even an eBay novice; I knew absolutely nothing about eBay—that is, until I made my first purchase. I was hooked and wanted to know more. Fortunately, my eBay Maniac was open to my learning more. Eventually I became an integral part of our home-based eBay sales. I relate my story in hopes that others who have eBay Maniacs no longer feel as helpless and as hopeless as I did. You’ll see that not only can you learn eBay, but you can bring help to the table that your eBay Maniac never knew about. You can dramatically improve your family’s eBay business, and you’ll see how simple that is to do. Chapter 2, “What eBay Is All About,” takes you through a quick overview of eBay. This bird’s-eye view describes how to search, buy, and sell on eBay in nontechnical language. The goal of Chapter 2 is to make you comfortable in the eBay environment. You’ll still need your eBay Maniac to fill in some of the details as you go along, but this overview will introduce you to eBay and help make you more comfortable with the idea that you can become an integral part of your eBay Maniac’s sales.

—2—

Introduction

Part 2: Dividing, Conquering, and Having Fun with eBay Chapter 3, “I Wanted to Begin Slowly but eBay Grabbed Me Fast,” explains the process I went through early on. I was hesitant to begin, and a little afraid that eBay wasn’t for me. If that describes you, then you came to the right place to see that you will be an eBay pro in no time. Here you’ll learn ways to organize your eBay workspace. The organization will allow your eBay Maniac to sell more efficiently, and you’ll be a hero. Chapter 4, “The Perils of a Home-Based Business,” shows you some of the challenges that eBay poses. eBay is a wonderful way for buyers and sellers to come together, but knowing what’s in store up front lets you jump into your family eBay sales with both eyes open so that you’ll be equipped to handle the challenges that you’ll face. Chapter 5, “Finding Inventory to Sell Is Easier Than You Think,” explains what to do after you sell all your extra household items. Finding more things to sell isn’t difficult at all. In fact, one of the challenges you’ll likely face is finding the time to sell everything you have and that others give you to sell for them. This chapter explores gentle ways to approach others to let them know you and your eBay Maniac will sell their goods on consignment. You’ll never run out of inventory!

Part 3: eBay’s Nitty-Gritty—Writing Listings and Making Sales Chapter 6, “Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item,” shows you the right way and the wrong way to write auction listings. You’ll learn to spot and correct problems in your own listings. You’ll see why the title is vital for getting high sales, and you’ll learn how to craft a title that gets results. Then you’ll begin learning ways to improve every auction you and your eBay Maniac list to get the highest sales possible. Chapter 7, “How Descriptions Drive Sales,” offers a miniature course on how to write an auction description that dramatically boosts your family’s eBay sales. As a matter of fact, some of the most powerful eBay selling strategies ever devised are uncovered here. By implementing them, your eBay Maniac will be thrilled at the explosive sales your family’s auctions generate. Chapter 8, “Once the Auction Begins, There’s No Time to Rest,” explains what you do after you list an item. You don’t just wait for a week for the auction to end and spend the money! (I doubt you thought it was that simple anyway.) During an auction’s duration you will be managing questions from bidders and finding new ways to cross-promote your auctions so that one auction helps fuel sales for other items you’re selling.

—3—


Chapter 9, “It Seems We’re Always Selling,” describes strategies you and your eBay Maniac can implement to promote your auctions. It doesn’t take radio and television advertising to tell others about your eBay sales. Actually, just a few simple techniques will put your auctions in front of others to tempt them with your wares.

Part 4: Whew! The Auction Ended, Now What? Chapter 10, “We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends,” describes the post-sale process you’ll go through once an auction ends. From contacting the winning bidder, to collecting the money (that’s the fun part!), to shipping the item, selling on eBay is not a difficult task, but certainly the post-auction work can be more stressful than the pre-auction work if you don’t know how to approach things properly. You should be able to streamline some simple techniques that make things go smoothly after each sale. Here is where you’ll earn your positive feedback score so that other eBayers learn that you follow through with the promises you make. Chapter 11, “Don’t Skimp When You Ship,” explains one of the most critical aspects of eBay: mailing the items to your winning bidders. If you’re like I was, wrapping and mailing were the two tasks I wanted to avoid. I was most fearful that the china my eBay Maniac was selling for a friend of the family wouldn’t make it unbroken to the buyers. I soon learned that shipping can be a challenge, but not a huge one. Millions of sellers all over the world ship hundreds of millions of items every single day. If they can do it, you can also! eBay and other websites such as Stamps.com and even the U.S. postal service will help you package and ship your items safely and promptly.

Part 5: Our eBay Future…It’s After Midnight and I’m Still on eBay! Chapter 12, “Where Will All Our eBay Activity Lead?” examines where we are headed in our own family eBay business, and that pertains to you because you too will want to know what lies in store for your family eBay business as you and your eBay Maniac grow your sales into a lucrative income. One of the most important elements in this chapter shows you ways to bring your entire family into the business—from the youngest to the oldest. eBay truly can be a family affair, and a profitable one at that.

—4—

Introduction

Notes and Interruptions Throughout this book I’ll be telling you how I successfully went from an eBay novice to being an eBay Maniac myself. Fortunately, my own eBay Maniac helped me quite a bit along the way, as yours will too. To speed things along, however, you have the advantage of my training (and your eBay education never stops if you want to remain successful) condensed into this book. Along the way, I will insert some notes. These notes will add more insight into whatever I’m discussing at the time. When you run across a note such as this one, you’ll find that it goes into a little more depth or clarifies some issue being discussed. I’m not the only one who will interrupt this book sometimes. My own eBay Maniac will also toss in his two-cents’ worth in his own sidebar.

Maniac

terrupts In

I’ll Interrupt from Time to Time

Although Jayne’s the primary talker in our family, I’ll sometimes jump into the discussion with these Maniac Interrupts sidebars. Typically, I’ll be giving you some extra technical help that you might want to use. Often I’ll just be giving more explanation as to how to implement a concept that Jayne is discussing. For instance, I might mention that FrontPage could come in handy if you want to develop fancier auction listings. You could implement all of Jayne’s techniques and strategies without any of my help. My interruptions might help guide you to a specific source where you can find a more detailed explanation about a topic if you need more coverage.

Website As many popular computer books have these days, this book also has its own website. Just hop over to www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com and you’ll find resources that will help make your eBay journey more profitable. I’ll provide a Q&A section where you can ask my eBay Maniac and me questions and we’ll do our best to answer them. We’ll tell you what and how we do to get past whatever problems you might be having and we welcome comments about this book. We strive to be better and with your help we can be. You can write us anytime at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to answer. —5—


If this book is accurate it’s due to the Editors who made that happen. If errors still creep into the final edition they are my fault alone. We’re providing an errata page on the book’s web site and we hope it remains empty. It’s the nature of the book-wiring business, however, that we’ll learn of corrections that need to be known. We’ll put them on the book’s site at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/errata.

The Time to Help Your eBay Maniac Is Now If you’ve decided you’ve been an eBay Widow or Widower too long, here’s the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Don’t pause another moment. Turn the page and begin turning you and your eBay Maniac’s eBay sales into one of the most exciting—and profitable— ventures the two of you have ever tried together.

—6—

Part I In the Beginning…It’s After Midnight and He’s Still on eBay! 1

I Didn’t Know He Was an eBay Maniac at First . . . . . . . . . .9

2

What eBay Is All About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

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1

I Didn’t Know He Was an eBay Maniac at First

M

y name is Jayne, and I’m married to an eBay Maniac. Unfortunately, there’s no 12-step program for that. I know I’m not alone; there are eBay maniacs all over the world who have patient (or sometimes, not-so-patient) spouses like me who are waiting in the wings wondering whether to join in—or join a support group. I am one of those spouses. I am the wife of my husband. He is an eBay Maniac.

How It All Began There was no way I could know that my husband, Greg, was an eBay Maniac when I married him. eBay didn’t exist when we married. Actually, the Internet didn’t exist. Things change. In early September of 1995, Pierre Omidyar wrote a computer program for a new website he called Auction Web. Pierre first sold a broken laser pointer on Auction Web that brought more than $5. Later, he sold his girlfriend’s Pez dispenser collectibles. When others began listing items and selling them successfully also, he knew he was on to something. Unlike other eCommerce sites that were, by that time, plastered all over the Internet, Auction Web never took possession of anything bought or sold. Auction Web had no inventory. Pierre generally never saw a Pez dispenser that was bought. Instead of Auction Web keeping an inventory of Pez products, buyers and sellers would handle the transaction outside of Auction Web once the auction ended. Auction Web made its revenue from the transaction fee that the seller paid after an auction ended. Once the basic site was set up, Pierre quickly realized there was no reason to stick with handling only collectibles. So users began buying and selling other things—a lot of other things.


Pierre used to own a consulting business called Echo Bay. He tried to use that for his auction site’s name, www.EchoBay.com, but he found that Internet domain name was taken. Therefore, he shortened it to eBay, which was available. The name eBay sounds sort of dumb. It will never take off. It took off.

My Husband’s Plunge into eBay In April of 1999, my husband joined eBay. He said he was “already late to the game.” Many of our friends were talking about it. They would tell us about deals they got “on eBay.” My husband was intrigued by all the talk. eBay was growing like crazy and he didn’t want to miss out. He jumped into the foray. When my husband began selling some of his “extra things,” I noticed he spent more and more time on eBay. He had always spent too much time on his computers. Yes, plural computers; our house has always had multiple computers ever since we were married. But, a new pattern began: • He would sell his older computer equipment that he didn’t want anymore, which he quickly replaced with new equipment bought on eBay. • He would sell books that he didn’t want anymore, which he then quickly replaced with new books he bought on eBay. • He would sell records, tapes, and CDs that he didn’t want anymore, which he then quickly replaced with new CDs he bought on eBay. In spite of this pattern, I must admit that he sold more than he bought. By that I mean he might sell 10 books but replace them with only one or two new titles. I slowly began to see the clutter in his office lessen, and I was grateful. I wasn’t sure what this eBay was all about, but if it meant less mess, I was happy. If you know absolutely nothing about eBay, don’t fret! We’re here to help you. Once I tell you my story about how I went from an eBay widow to an eBay Maniac here, Chapter 2, “What eBay Is All About,” gives you a complete overview of how eBay works. I’ll walk you through the auction process, from start to finish. You don’t need a comprehensive how-to because someone else in your household already knows the details, but you do need to know the basics of what eBay is all about. Then you’ll be ready to help your eBay Maniac go farther than you ever thought possible, and you’ll grow your home-based eBay business into something both of you will enjoy.

— 10 —

Chapter One I Didn’t Know He Was an eBay Maniac at First

Maniac

terrupts In

I Had to Make Up for Lost Time

I’d heard about eBay for a couple of years before I jumped in. eBay was well-established in 1999 and was beginning to make an impact on the world economy in a big way. Now your yard-sale items were being looked at not just from people in your neighborhood but from the other side of the globe. I figured I was too late to really be able to sell anything. I like to be early, not late. I figured the prices were stable and no good deals could be found by buyers and no good prices could be received by sellers. Fortunately, I was wrong.

In the scheme of things, 1999 was still very early. As I write this, eBay is still in its infancy and probably will be for many years. Deals still abound all over eBay, both for buyers and for sellers.

A Cleaner House Was Nice—An Empty House Was Not He couldn’t stop talking about eBay and his sales. He would tell me how his feedback rating was getting higher every week, as though that was something impressive. When I asked why this feedback rating was so important to him, he told me that buyers and sellers rate you when you do business with them. The better that others rate you, the higher your feedback rating is and the more people want to do business with you. I was always in a quandary. He was finally willing to carry on long conversations with me. What wife wouldn’t like that? That’s exactly what I wanted more of. The only problem was that every sentence had the word eBay in it. I should have seen it coming. Perhaps in the back of my mind I knew it was going to happen. Still, it took me back. That fateful day when he said, “Honey, I’m about out of the things I want to sell. What kinds of things do you have lying around the house you no longer need?” (He always seems to ask that question with one slightly hopeful eye glancing toward my china cabinet.) I liked the fact that the clutter was lessening around his office. I was glad to have a chance to get rid of a few things I no longer wanted. As I would suggest a few of my things he could sell, he kept finding even more things of mine to sell. As I would suggest a few things that belong to both of us that he could sell, he kept finding even more things of ours to sell.

— 11 —


On his eBay shelves (where he puts things he’s about to sell) I began seeing my things that I had not approved for sale. This was just short of a declaration of war on his part. If it wasn’t nailed down, he was ready to auction it off. I began to worry about how long our pets would last around here. Pets? I was worried he would try to sell me!

Man iac

terrupts In

She Now Agrees That Protecting Your Feedback Is Important As you’ll see throughout this book, your eBay feedback is the number-one indicator that you are a good or poor eBayer.

Our feedback record, shown in Figure 1.1, isn’t too shabby, but it’s because we strive for pleased buyers. We treat each buyer as we’d like to be treated, whether an auction goes smoothly or not. One reason for our good feedback track record is Jayne. She protects it more than I do and makes sure that our buyers are happy they participated in an auction with us.

Figure 1.1

Buyers and sellers use the eBay feedback system to develop trust among one another, even though they are strangers.

— 12 —


I Got Dragged into eBay Kicking and Screaming Our marriage is great, and we consider all our things to be “ours.” Having said that, there are certainly some items that only I use and want, and some that only he uses and wants. In that respect, these are “my” things and “his” things. I made it clear that if he wanted to sell anything of mine, I had the first and last right of refusal. He acquiesced. One day I told him that I was looking for a CD that had just been released. He said, “Buy it on eBay!” The diagnosis eBay Maniac was now official. Until then, he never suggested ways for me to spend money. eBay was the last thing I wanted to do. It meant I had to take time to learn all about this eBay thing. I was still fairly new to computers, although I had begun doing some email, Internet surfing, and light word processing. I went to eBay and searched it to see if the CD I wanted was there. I doubted it would be. I was wrong. It was there, many times over. More than 100 of them were selling! My husband showed me how to log into his eBay account and make my first bid. My husband told me to put my maximum bid in place, the highest amount I wanted to pay for that CD, taking shipping costs into consideration. Because I was a little hesitant to trust all this, I decided that my maximum bid would be about half of what I could buy the CD for in a store. If you’ll keep this a secret, I’ll tell you something: I really got hooked after I placed my first bid! I watched that auction for the next couple of days as it neared its completion. There were other bidders, but my bid was highest. I won the CD! I won the CD for less than half of what I could purchase it at a retail store locally. I didn’t have to pay sales tax but I did pay a reasonable shipping charge.

Man iac

terrupts In

eBay Uses Proxy Bidding

When you place a bid, you might buy the item for less than your bid. eBay’s bidding system is by proxy. This means eBay adjusts your bid as needed to ensure that you only pay the minimum you have to in order to win something. Say you bid $10 on something that currently has only a $1 bid, eBay will change your bid to $1.10, and you’ll be listed as the current high bidder. If others come in and bid higher than $1.10, eBay keeps raising your bid at the preset increments, keeping you the highest bidder automatically until someone bids higher than $10. Figure 1.2 shows the bid-entry screen.

— 13 —


So entering the maximum you want to pay when you enter your initial bid ensures that maximum amount is the highest you’ll pay. If you can win with a lower bid, eBay will make sure that happens. If someone outbids your maximum, you’ll no longer be the high bidder, but eBay will alert you if this occurs and you’ll have the opportunity to raise your maximum bid if the auction has not yet closed. This works both ways. If you place a bid that is higher than the current bid, you might instantly be outbid if the current high bidder has placed a bid higher than yours. Also, if you place a bid fairly early in the auction, you’re showing an interest in the item and that might drive up the price early. We’ll explore these bidding strategies throughout the remainder of this book.

Figure 1.2

Through eBay’s proxy bidding system, you might very well win an item for less than your bid.

After I Won My First Auction To get the CD as quickly as possible, I told my husband I’d put a check in the mail right then. He told me he already paid for it. “What? How did you do that?” He explained that — 14 —


80% or more of all buyers and sellers use www.PayPal.com, an online payment system that eBay now owns. Figure 1.3 shows PayPal’s home page, where can you go to find out more about this service. Once you fund a PayPal account, or link your PayPal account to a checking account or credit card, you can make or receive instant payments after an auction ends. I was a little hesitant to accept this PayPal thing fully at first. I was glad, however, that my CD was paid for already and that the seller didn’t have to wait for my check before sending the CD. I told my husband I’d let him worry about the risk of this “instant online payment” called PayPal.

Figure 1.3

Man iac

terrupts In

PayPal.com, now owned by eBay, is the largest online payment system in the world.

PayPal’s Safety

PayPal has a huge number of systems in place to ensure payment integrity and to reduce fraud. Remember also that eBay owns PayPal and it’s in eBay’s best interest to keep fraud off its site and out of the PayPal payment system. At the time of this writing, we’ve sold more than 4,500 items on eBay between us. (Our eBay Auction Catalog is at www.BidMentor.com and my eBay ID is BidMentor.) In my eBay history, only two auctions turned out to be to fraudulent PayPal user payments. PayPal

— 15 —


requested information proving that we’d sent the item in the exact manner PayPal requires (called using a confirmed mailing address). We sent the information. PayPal quickly responded that the matter was over and that we could keep the funds. PayPal took the loss as they will always do in that situation. Giving your credit card to an unknown waiter in a restaurant is far less secure than using PayPal, and the opportunity for fraud and theft is far higher than with PayPal.

Within an hour or two of paying through PayPal, we received an email from the seller telling us that my CD had been shipped, and the email contained the postal delivery confirmation information so I could see it had shipped and was on its way. What a wonderful thing eBay is! I told Greg that I couldn’t wait to see what else I could buy. He got a funny look on his face as he realized what he’d just created, but it was too late to halt this unstoppable force. We’d found our individual niches! My husband was good at selling on eBay, and I got very good at buying. He was called an eBay PowerSeller (the frequent flier–like tier for eBay sellers) and was proud of it. If only they had a PowerBuyer status, I’d have something to brag about too! On this book’s website, www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com, I’ve included a series of free reports you can read that go into more detail when and if you ever want more information. Click Free Reports and select “What It Really Means to Be a PowerSeller and How to Become One” to learn about PowerSeller benefits and how to reach PowerSeller status if your eBay Maniac isn’t quite there.

The Instant Buying and Selling Advantage We live in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere is east-central Oklahoma. Our little township’s downtown has one building. I am not making this up. We live on 20 acres of virgin woodland. When we moved here in March of 2000, the only cleared area was where they had recently built our house. To get here includes driving on dirt roads. Our closest neighbors are tens of acres away. Given this background, I assume it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that we have very few shopping options close to us. In addition, the concept of a garage sale or a yard sale — 16 —


simply isn’t in the cards for us. In one day, the amount of traffic in front of our house might number fewer than 10 vehicles. You can imagine how eBay changes everything for people who live in rural areas as we do. In the past, living in the country was difficult because anything you needed was miles and miles away. Now, whatever we need is delivered right to our doorstep, and whatever we wish to sell is mailed and our buyers pay the shipping costs. I believe it’s the instantaneous bringing together of buyers and sellers around the world that makes eBay so much fun. With PayPal, if someone from Germany buys something from us this evening at 7:30, they can pay for it by 7:31 and we can ship the item to them tomorrow. Even if they don’t have a PayPal account, mailing items internationally is no longer the burden it used to be, especially for items not considered “freight” shipments (freight shipments include items such as heavy cargo or items that require a pallet).

Separate Goals, Separate Accounts When my eBay purchases began totaling more than his sales, my husband had a serious sit-down with me. You would have thought Tony Soprano had called the meeting. It turns out that the idea is to have more inflow than outgo! I had no problem with that. My husband just needed to sell more and things would be fine. Seriously though, I realized that I could pitch in and help sell as well as buy. As long as I helped to defray some of my buying expenses, not only could I purchase more but perhaps we could share this eBay work and turn it into a family affair. I decided to help where I could. I wasn’t sure he would want help. He is very independent, and when it comes to his work, he likes to do things his way and by himself. Surprisingly, he said there were a number of things I could help with. He asked if I’d be willing to help wrap and mail things that he sold. That left him with more time to write auction listings. He said we could increase the number of auctions we list each week if he could write more listings and do less wrapping and mailing. eBay lets you have as many accounts as you want. Each account has its own eBay ID. Some sellers have multiple accounts. If you sell a lot of kitchen items and you sell a lot of crafts, for example, you might want one eBay ID where you sell the kitchen items and one where you sell crafts. This “niche technique” lets your repeat buyers find you more easily and locate things to buy faster.

— 17 —


One of the first things we did was open a second eBay account for me. We primarily use my eBay account to buy things. Separating the accounts into buying and selling accounts accomplishes these purposes: • It helps us track our use better. By keeping two eBay accounts, we can get reporting information related to our business side of eBay (the selling side), and the buying auction details don’t get in our way. • We often sell for others (called consignment selling). Our friends and family learned that our experience enables us to get far higher prices than they generally can. (Selling other people’s items has the added bonus of keeping my husband’s mitts off my things that I don’t want sold.) • He rarely looks at my account and always asks to do so when he wants to buy something there. That way, I can buy gifts for him in my account that he doesn’t know about. (I can also buy gifts for myself that he doesn’t always know about.) We even have a third eBay account already. We’ve started very slowly buying and selling out of that account. We don’t work it too much, just enough to keep the feedback current. This way, another account will be waiting in the wings with good feedback if the day comes when we need to transfer some buying or selling into that account. For any husband and wife situation, we strongly recommend an account for each of you. If you want to keep one for selling and one for buying from the start, that works great, as we’ve done. You might want to keep one as your primary account for most activities. Once you start to grow a family eBay business, however, the extra account(s) will come in handy.

eBay: The Amazing Machine That Turned 10 Cents into $100 About the time I began helping my husband with his selling, I offered to help Greg’s mother clean out the cupboards above her oven. When I got up there and saw all the things in that cabinet, I was taken aback. It was obvious to me there were things there that had been put in that cabinet when they first moved into the house 30 years earlier. Most of those things hadn’t seen the light of day until I pulled them out. One such item was an unopened packet of Funny Face powdered drink mix. These cost a dime when I was a kid. I don’t believe they’ve been sold for many years.

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When I saw the drink packet, I saved it to show Greg how long things had been in the cabinet. When I saw him, I greeted him with a “You won’t believe what I found today!” and presented him the drink mix packet. “Cool,” he said, “let’s put it up on eBay!” I should have known what his response would be. It was his response to everything! After all, he is an eBay Maniac. I told him nobody in the world would look at an auction for a 10-cent pack of drink mix from the 1960s. My curiosity was piqued, however, so later I searched eBay for anything related to these Funny Face items. I found some. I found a lot. I couldn’t believe it—a packet somewhat like the one I found had sold for over $20! I decided research was called for. I scoured the Internet for information on the drink mix and was able to determine when this specific packet was produced. I wrote up a description, Greg added to it, we took pictures, and we got that drink mix listed. I was thrilled when we got our first bid, because until then I still doubted that anyone would even look at the auction. www.Google.com is great for researching the background history of products and brands. I watched with growing excitement as the 10-cent packet of drink mix slowly crept up. There was real interest in this outdated packet of powder that I had nearly thrown away. The auction ended with a winning bid that surpassed $100. My life changed. I suppose my husband might say that was the day he saw I’d become an eBay Maniac too.

He Needed My Help More Than He Realized You should have seen the way he was doing things. Completely, absolutely, certainly all wrong. I needed to step in to help save my husband…from himself. (eBay Maniacs rarely know when they need help.) For one thing, he wasn’t always wrapping items as carefully as he should. We didn’t have adequate packaging materials. I told him about this. He said he was trying to save costs by using what we had and that everything he mailed was packaged securely enough. I had to admit that his buyers’ feedback always said he wrapped well, but I thought more could be done to ensure that what we mailed was received in the same condition as we described in the auction.

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I insisted that we change the way we mail things. New wrapping materials were needed for most of the things we sent. My husband actually agreed to this, perhaps because with me helping him wrap, the wrapping wouldn’t take so much of his time and he could concentrate on getting more listings posted and bring in more sales. I’ll tell you all about how we ship in Chapter 11, “Don’t Skimp When You Ship.” There, you’ll find all sorts of ways to make shipping far easier and to reduce costs as you do so. If you plan to pitch in and help your better half with eBay, you’ll find other ways to make a home-based business run smoother. I think my eBay Maniac doesn’t see the forest for the trees sometimes. For example, one problem we had early on was the slow intrusion of eBay into our home’s living areas. Mailing supplies, eBay items to sell, sold eBay items to package, wrapped eBay items to mail—all that becomes clutter when you have to live with it every day. Without organization, my husband was doing far more work than he had to. He often got confused on which items he had listed and which he had not. Whether he had mailed something truly became a nightmare and often required searching for the buyer’s payment before we knew for sure an item was paid for. Having said all this, although my husband may have been a cluttered eBay Maniac, I must admit he was doing a good job. Fortunately, he could do better, and I saw ways that it was possible. Some things seemed obvious, such as a better way to determine who had paid and who had not. Although he could keep a separate record on his computer or in a logbook, an easier way to tell was whether he’d left feedback for the buyer or not. With rare exception (for brand-new buyers and buyers with questionable feedback), we always leave feedback the moment we receive payment. Whether paid with PayPal, check, money order, or cash, we post feedback the moment payment arrives. That’s the best way we have to determine who has paid (as I said, there are exceptions, but few enough of them to confuse things). So if we ever have a question as to the payment status of an item, we can go online and check that item’s feedback. If we left feedback, we can ship the item because the buyer has paid. Several feedback strategies exist, and Chapter 10, “We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends,” explores many of those strategies. Some sellers prefer to delay feedback a while longer than we do. There are pros and cons to each strategy, and you’ll undoubtedly want to confer with your eBay Maniac to find out what has worked for them so far.

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Although my husband typically shipped items within 24 hours after receiving payment, it was getting harder to do with his one-man operation. With my help, we easily got items wrapped and shipped within that 24-hour timeframe most of the time. We never promise a 24-hour turnaround after payment because circumstances arise where it takes an extra day. Typically, our buyers are pleasantly surprised with how fast they receive items they purchase from us. Make your buyers happy! Over 10% of our buyers are repeat customers and we work to increase that percentage. All throughout this book I’ll tell you when we do things correctly, as I just did when I said our buyers are pleased with our fast shipping. I don’t tell you those things to brag. I tell you those things to let you know when something works well and to encourage you to make that result your goal too. We’re always just one sale away from negative feedback, and we keep that in mind every day.

A Recap to Keep You Sane Perhaps now you don’t feel so alone. You can see hope on the horizon for you and for your eBay Maniac. Not only can you learn to live in peace, but before long, you’ll lend a hand. Even better, your eBay Maniac’s sales will improve with what you learn here. That will stun your eBay Maniac. If your eBay Maniac is like mine, they think they know the best way to do things. That’s not always true. Before diving further into specific ways you can help your eBay Maniac and grow a family eBay business together, you need to understand the auction process. Chapter 2 does not start at the beginning and teach you every little detail about eBay from the ground up. It would do you little good if it did (plus it would take far more than a chapter). Your eBay Maniac knows all the details. But that’s the problem—your eBay Maniac often can’t see the forest for the trees. What you need at this point is a basic understanding of the eBay process so you can start helping your eBay Maniac implement some moneysaving and money-making ideas. This will take your family’s eBay sales to their highest levels. So, go ahead and jump right into Chapter 2 to get a clearer picture of what this eBay thing is all about.

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2

What eBay Is All About

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ou must crawl before walking, and walk before running. This chapter takes you through eBay’s primary areas, explaining from a bird’s-eye view what eBay is all about. This won’t be a take-you-by-the-hand eBay 101 course. You don’t need that. Your eBay Maniac has the details down. You need something else. If you’re brand new to eBay, or only briefly familiar with parts of eBay (perhaps you’ve bought but never sold anything without your maniac doing the work for you), you’ll get a good feel for the whole eBay experience here. You will learn how to register a new eBay ID in case you want to work on eBay without using your eBay Maniac’s ID. Once you finish this overview, the rest of the book will be far less foreign—and so will eBay.

The World’s Largest Garage Sale Keep in mind that eBay is nothing more than a website where millions of people have things for sale to millions of people who are there to buy. eBay is worldwide. eBay and its sister company PayPal help buffer you from many problems international transactions used to create, by converting dollar amounts when you’re ready to pay.

How Do Auctions Work? eBay isn’t just an auction site. Many items are sold at a fixed price. The majority of eBay sales break down into these types: • Auction—The highest bidder wins the item. Sellers set an initial minimum bid and people begin bidding at that minimum bid. We use this type of auction for most of the things we sell, and you probably will too.


• Auction with reserve—The highest bidder wins the item. Sellers set an initial minimum bid and place a reserve price on the auction. Bidding doesn’t technically begin until someone bids at least the reserve amount. This is confusing, and typically buyers despise reserve auctions. In over 4,500 auctions we have never required a reserve. To better understand how a reserve auction works, suppose you wanted to sell a piece of fine jewelry. You might set a minimum bid of 99 cents but a reserve price of $99. Only when a bidder finally bids at least $99 will the bidding begin; otherwise, lower bidders get a message telling them the reserve isn’t yet met so their bids don’t count. The idea is to generate interest with a low minimum bid (which is visible to all) but protect the lowest amount you’ll sell the item for with the reserve (which bidders don’t see). An auction with a reserve costs more to list than an auction without a reserve, and it typically gets far fewer bidders. Once bidders realize their starting bid didn’t reach the reserve price, they typically move on to another auction. • Dutch auction—In this type of auction, more than one identical item is for sale on the same auction page. The highest bidder might not have to pay the highest bid. If you sold six identical items in a Dutch auction, the top six bidders end up paying the sixth highest bid. If 150 people bid, only the top six win. If six people bid, they all win the item at the price of the lowest of the six bidders. A single Dutch auction is easier than multiple auctions but typically doesn’t bring you as much income as a regular auction when it’s all over. • Fixed-price sale—The seller prices an item at a fixed price and buyers either pay that price or look elsewhere. During the initial writing of this book, eBay announced plans for eBay Express. eBay Express will be a sister site to eBay. All eBay items that are sold at fixed price will also be sold on the eBay Express website. The idea for eBay Express is that buyers who want something right away without waiting for an auction to end can go there and see this subset of eBay items for sale. By clicking the Buy It Now button, those buyers will purchase the items they want. This keeps such shoppers from having to wade through auction listings when they want to make an immediate purchase.

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Dutch Auctions Have Their Place

Dutch auctions are nice for staple items. If you sell the same low-priced item over and over, you’ll save listing fees by putting them all in one Dutch auction. The drawback is that you’ll often receive less per item because the lowest winning bidder determines the price.

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Chapter Two What eBay Is All About

Dutch auctions reveal that many of the same items are available, so your buyers don’t get the sense of scarcity. They are less likely to bid higher in a Dutch auction with six items than six separate auctions of the same item. Perhaps a more profitable strategy when you have multiple items is to use eBay’s secondchance offer, which you can send to the bidders who didn’t win. eBay doesn’t charge you listing fees if your second-highest bidder buys an item through a second-chance offer you send. That bidder pays whatever their highest bid was when the auction ended.

Buy It Now All kinds of auction combinations are possible. When you first begin learning about eBay, it might seem as though so many selling combinations do nothing but add complexity. In reality, they all make sense, and your eBay Maniac will help clarify which is which as you get more involved. Generally, keep in mind that eBay offers fixed-price listings for buyers who might want to pay a little more than using an auction format, but by not using an auction they don’t risk losing out to a higher bidder. Those who want a better deal are more willing to risk the auction format. Figure 2.1 shows an auction with a Buy It Now feature. This is a hybrid of the auction/fixed-price listing. With a Buy It Now in your auction, someone will be able to buy the item at the Buy It Now price and they’ll be the “winner” of the auction. But if someone places a bid before someone else clicks the Buy It Now button, the Buy It Now feature disappears and the auction continues as normal. In Figure 2.1, if someone clicks Buy It Now before someone else bids, they can buy the digital calipers for $21.99. But if someone places a 99-cent bid first, the Buy It Now feature goes away and the auction continues to its conclusion. For such an auction, you might place a Buy It Now price slightly higher than you expect the highest bid to be. Someone wanting the item right now will pay that if they see your auction. eBay charges extra (from a quarter to $4.80 at the time of this writing) if you use Buy It Now in your auctions.

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I Married an eBay Maniac A buyer can “buy it now” for $21.99 The bidding can start at 99 cents

Figure 2.1

Some auctions are hybrid auctions with a fixed-price Buy It Now feature that goes away once the auction gets a bid.

If an item has high value but we suspect there will be a small number of bidders due to a limited interested buying audience, we would use the fixed-price listing instead of a normal auction to ensure us that we get its full value. In this case, we might set the fixed price at slightly below its perceived value to entice a buyer to click the Buy It Now button. If, however, we think we’ll get a lot of bids, we’d rather a bidding war start and let the bidding determine the final price. Although this chapter provides an overview that gets you up to speed fast, if you want a very basic text on how to understand all of eBay’s basics, Michael Miller’s Absolute Beginner’s Guide to eBay, Third Edition (ISBN 07-89734-311) takes you by the hand and shows you step-by-step all the fundamental details.

Getting Started on eBay What’s probably already obvious is how to get to eBay’s web page. Just open your web browser and browse to www.ebay.com to display eBay’s home page, shown in Figure 2.2. — 26 —

Chapter Two What eBay Is All About Click to sign in

Figure 2.2

It all begins at eBay’s home page.

eBay’s site changes constantly. eBay adds new features, changes the way bids and sales are made, and the format of eBay’s changes is always in flux. That makes eBay fun and always new. It also means your screens probably won’t look exactly like our screens here. That’s okay. The general nature of eBay’s layout rarely changes dramatically.

Registering a New Account If your eBay Maniac is paranoid about you using the primary account to learn more about eBay, or you just want an account of your own, the left side of the Sign In screen has a Register button. Click that button to sign up for a new eBay account. Before you sign in, make sure to protect your online auction activity by reading the special report on eBay security on this book’s website at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/eBaySecurity.htm.

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eBay will want to know your name, address, telephone number, birthday, and email address. Yes, eBay will use that information, but it’s information that eBay truly does need. For example, eBay gives your address to anyone you sell to so they’ll know where to send payment if they mail a check. That is reasonable. If you really don’t want your personal address known, even in this limited capacity, use your work address or a post office box. As you walk through eBay’s registration process, keep in mind your eBay Maniac already went through the process for each account your eBay Maniac has. If you get stuck on a particular issue your eBay Maniac will know how to answer your question.

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Use Your Own Address Unless Circumstances Truly Warrant Using Another

Unless there’s a compelling reason to keep your home address a secret, it does help to use your home address and not a post office box. For one thing, sellers who ship via FedEx or UPS usually won’t be able to mail to a post office box. In addition, in order to pay with PayPal in the most secure form possible that all buyers will accept and trust, you must confirm your mailing address with PayPal. That means you must use the same address on your eBay and PayPal accounts as the one your credit card statements come to. PayPal cannot easily confirm an address without this. Unless you get a credit card statement at work or a second address, you won’t be able to confirm your mailing address for PayPal if you don’t use your home address. By the way, not all of your bidders have to know where you are, only the auction winner. eBay auctions usually show the seller’s location, but you can make it generic, such as In the Midwest for Quick Coastal Shipping, when you list auctions instead of selecting your actual town and state.

Once you tell eBay who you are, you’ll click to agree to eBay’s terms at the bottom of the registration screen. Complete the new account registration process by following the instructions given on the screen. The following sections provide some details regarding the information you are asked for while registering.

Your eBay ID If you’re creating a new eBay account, you’ll need to make up an ID during the registration process. That’s the name all eBayers will know you by (unless you transact business with them and share your real names through the payment process). Make up — 28 —


something easy for you to remember, easy to type, and something unique. There are hundreds of millions of registered users now, so good luck on coming up with something unique! You can do it, but be creative. And yes, all the good IDs are probably taken already. If you try one and it’s taken, eBay offers a few close examples, but you probably won’t like them much. If you choose an ID someone else has, eBay will keep prompting you until you pick a unique one. Type a password for your ID. A combination of letters and numbers, preferably eight or more characters, is good. If three yellow bars appear to the right of your password, you’ve picked a good one according to eBay. With fewer than three bars, keep trying because a good password is important. Continue through the sign up screens until you have your new account. eBay will send you an email that you must reply to in order to confirm that your email address is valid. When you first begin using your new eBay account, you’ll have a feedback score of zero. If you want to begin building your feedback rating, you should buy some things. The section “A Buying Overview,” later in this chapter, takes you on an eBay shopping tour. Chapter 10, “We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends,” delves deeper into strategies to maintain a high positive feedback rating and discusses feedback strategies that will benefit you as both a buyer and seller.

Signing In Although you don’t have to sign into eBay and tell them who you are, it helps when you want to look at some auctions. You cannot search for very many items before eBay asks you to sign in. Once eBay knows it’s you, eBay supplies lots of information that will be relevant to your own eBay experience. I know you’ve been told to keep your personal data safe. eBay is safe. So unless you or your maniac signed onto eBay recently, eBay might not know who you are. So the first thing you should do is sign into eBay. Click where eBay tells you to Sign In. eBay might require that you once more click a Sign In button. Figure 2.3 shows the screen where you sign into your account. If you or your eBay Maniac recently used eBay on that computer, eBay will recognize you and sign you in automatically. You’ll see a message that looks something like, Hello BidMentor! (Not you? Sign in). If you want to sign into a different account from the one shown, click the Sign in link and sign in.

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I Married an eBay Maniac Your password won’t be visible as you type it Type your eBay ID here

Secures what you type

Figure 2.3

Once you sign into eBay, eBay provides specific information that you will find valuable.

Here’s something neat to know: the small padlock at the bottom of your web browser (or elsewhere on the screen, depending on your browser) indicates you’re working on a secure website that will encrypt your data as it moves from your computer to eBay. When you enter password information on any website, make it a habit to look for that padlock. It helps ensure that what you type won’t be grabbed by a snooper somewhere. Virtually all authentic websites that require you to sign in will have the padlock.

Getting Familiar with eBay’s Primary Areas Because many of you are new to eBay, or only have a cursory knowledge of it, I want to spend a few moments telling you what it’s really all about. I won’t go into fancy computer terminology. That stuff’s for geeks, like my husband, who write books about computers.

Your “My eBay” Page Is Your Command Center Your “My eBay” page, such as the one shown in Figure 2.4, acts as your personal command and control center for eBay. Every eBay account has a My eBay page. To get there, — 30 —


you click the My eBay button at the top of almost any eBay page (as long as you are logged into your eBay account). Choose other areas to manage Always takes you to this page

Figure 2.4

You manage your eBay activities on your My eBay page.

eBay gives you the freedom to customize your My eBay page. If you’re selling a lot of items, you might want to see a list of your sales appear before you see a list of items you’re bidding on. If you buy a lot, perhaps you’ll want the first group of items to be the auctions on which you’ve placed bids. The Customize Display link at the right of the screen allows you to control your My eBay page. Hardly anybody agrees on the best way to customize the My eBay page because we all work eBay in different ways. Once you begin helping your eBay Maniac, you will probably want to customize your primary eBay account’s My eBay page. Don’t! Acquiesce to your eBay Maniac here. Believe me, you’re going to have so much ammo from this book to help your maniac in other ways that wanting to rearrange your maniac’s primary My eBay page isn’t worth fighting over at this point. Your eBay Maniac does probably know what is best because they have been managing their primary eBay account for a while.

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Get Your Mitts Off My Account’s My eBay Page

She’s right, your eBay Maniac does at this point know what is best for their account’s My eBay page. We eBay Maniacs have been at this a while and we know the information that’s most important to the work we’re doing. Your eBay Maniac has probably already customized their account’s My eBay page to display the most helpful items first.

Searching on eBay You’ll search eBay more than you do anything else. As a buyer, before you buy you’ll want to search eBay to find what you’re looking for. You might want to find the best quality of an item, such as “new, in a box” (often designated with the abbreviation NIB in an auction title), or you might want to find the lowest starting bid, or you might want to get the item quickly so you’ll look for one you can buy immediately with a Buy It Now (BIN) option. As a seller, before you list an item for sale, you’ll want to search eBay to see what items similar to yours sell for. You can search current auctions to see what your competition is and the prices that most others use to begin their auctions. You’ll also search completed auctions to see what the item sold for in the past. Of course, you’ll make adjustments depending on the quality of what you’re selling versus the condition of the items that others sold. As Figure 2.5 shows, at the top of each eBay page is a Search button with a text box where you type a description of the item you want to search for. Once you enter the search text, click the Search button. eBay returns a list of auctions that match your search terms best. Depending on how many results there are, eBay returns multiple search result pages or only a few (possibly none if nothing currently for sale matches your search text). eBay normally lists the search results with the auctions ending soonest at the top of the list. You can click the Sort by option to see the search results list in a different order, such as by the lowest current price.

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Chapter Two What eBay Is All About Type of item to search for

Figure 2.5

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eBay’s Search feature is the one you’ll use most.

eBay Only Searches Auction Titles Unless You Specify Titles and Auction Descriptions

By default, eBay searches auction titles only and not the auction listing descriptions. If a seller didn’t predict what you would search for, an item might not appear in your search results but could still be for sale. Suppose you search for iPod case. If someone is selling the very case you want but the auction title says Protect your iPod with this! then that auction wouldn’t appear in your search for an iPod case. If, however, you searched both titles and descriptions, that auction probably would show up in the results because the description would contain the word case. You’ll learn a lot about writing top-selling auction titles by searching. That’s why most experts recommend you buy a few things before selling so that you can learn what works and what doesn’t. Unlike most newcomers, you have an advantage! Your eBay Maniac has figured out a lot of this and will be helping you with picky details when you need the help. So right now, just sit back and get a good feel for eBay.

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If no search results appear, you may have misspelled something, so look at the search text once again to be sure. Perhaps the item is rare and nobody else is currently selling it. That happens, but not too often given eBay’s size, so try some other search words before you give up.

Sifting Through the Results Figure 2.6 shows a search results page. Some results will have a picture (called a gallery picture), some will appear in boldface, some will have a border around them, and some will just show the auction titles. Each special option costs the seller an additional amount to list their item, but their purpose is to make that auction stand apart in the search results from the rest of the crowd. A gallery picture Click to search descriptions also

Displays advanced search options

Click the listing to see a picture Click any title to see that auction No picture available of item Click to see completed auctions

Figure 2.6

Once the results of your search appear, you can select options to refine your search further.

Some search results that you find without pictures will show a small icon of a camera, meaning the auction has a picture of the item but the seller didn’t choose to pay extra — 34 —


for a gallery picture to appear in the search results. You can still see the picture by clicking on the listing. A listing title without a picture or camera means the seller didn’t take a picture of the item being sold. See, you’re already getting a feel for what works as a seller too. You are more likely to trust someone who shows you an actual picture of what you’re about to bid on. You want to see what you’re getting, right? Also, the gallery picture means you can get a glimpse of the item right from the search result page, so you’re more likely to look at auctions with gallery pictures than auctions with a camera icon indicating you must click the auction to see the picture. That is why the gallery picture is generally always a good idea to pay extra for when you sell something.

Narrowing the Search Results to Get Just What You’re Looking For On the left side of the search results page is a list of options you can select to narrow your search further. Notice you can click the Search title and description option if you didn’t get enough hits (successful search results) the first time. You can click the Completed listings option also to see what that item sold for in the recent past. You can also click the option labeled Buy It Now items in case you don’t want to bid but are willing to consider paying what a seller is asking in a fixed-price Buy It Now listing. Many ways exist to narrow your search. If you enclose your search phrase (or any part of it) in quotes, eBay searches for that exact order of words. A search for iPod “black case” only locates auctions whose title contains the word iPod and the exact phrase black case. Other words might also be in the title, but those have to appear. If, however, you searched for iPod black case (without the quotes), the words black and case don’t have to appear together and you’ll get more hits, such as from titles like New iPod leather case in black. eBay’s advanced search options give you plenty of ways to search. You can search for exact phrases, exclude certain words from the results, search based on price and location (for large items you might want to search only in your general vicinity to simplify delivery of the item), and limit the search to specific sellers.

A Buying Overview Suppose you were looking for a book to read. If you didn’t care for the condition (as long as all the pages are there), you would probably search for one with the lowest bid, or one that is ending soon that is low priced. If you wanted a collectible rare first edition, you would search for the one in the best condition that falls within a price range you’re willing to pay.

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If you wanted a book to give to a friend as a gift, you would search for one in the best condition, preferably in new condition as long as the price was within your range. You’ll likely look for a fixed-price auction or an auction that doesn’t have any bids yet with a Buy It Now (BIN) option because you want to get the book quickly and not wait to see if your high bid wins it. In each case, you want to buy only from a seller who has a good feedback rating. Perhaps you’ll want to buy from a seller whose feedback rating is 25 or even higher because that seller has been through several auctions and might be more reliable than a seller who just signed up and hasn’t developed any feedback yet. So the first step in buying anything is searching for that item. Reread the preceding section on searching if you need help getting started.

Bidding on Auctions (Proxy Bidding) Once you find a listing that interests you, read the auction to determine the payment methods the seller accepts. Depending on the seller, you can usually pay using one or more of the following methods: • PayPal, the eBay-owned online payment system (see Chapter 1, “I Didn’t Know He Was an eBay Maniac at First,” for an overview) that accepts credit cards and checking account payments; your eBay Maniac probably has a PayPal account set up because of its popularity among buyers. • Check. • Money order. • Cash (eBay frowns on this and you’re risking your money when you send cash, but I know of very few sellers who reject cash). • A credit card through a merchant account (meaning the seller will accept a credit card payment, either online or over the telephone). With international sellers, you may have to mail funds in the seller’s own country’s denomination, such as Pounds for Great Britain or Euros for Greece. Make sure you are willing to abide by whatever payment methods and payment terms the seller discusses in the auction. If the seller wants you to pay in a manner you don’t want to, go back to the search page and find an item sold by a more lenient seller. If you like what you read about the auction and decide you want to bid, you’ll click the Place Bid button. The Place a Bid screen is shown in Figure 2.7.

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Chapter Two What eBay Is All About Click to place bid Type your highest bid here

Figure 2.7 You can place the highest amount you’re willing to pay as your bid, and eBay will only bid you up as high as needed to win the item, but not more than your maximum bid. Suppose the starting bid was $3.99 but you’re willing to pay as much as $20 for the item. You can place a $20 bid and if you’re the only bidder, eBay uses only $3.99 as your starting bid. You’ll win the item for only $3.99 if it ends without another bidder. If others begin bidding, eBay keeps raising your bid up to your $20 limit, keeping you the high bidder, unless someone else bids higher than $20. As you learned in Chapter 1, this is how eBay’s proxy bidding system works; eBay bids for you only as much as needed to win until your highest bid is outbid by someone else. Depending on your My eBay preferences, eBay sends you an email when you place your bid to confirm that you’ve bid. eBay will also send you an email when you win an item, or when someone outbids you. You can change any of these email-receiving preferences to your liking on your My eBay page.

Buying a Fixed Price Item If you locate an item with a Buy It Now (BIN) option, the item is yours if you’re willing to pay the amount the seller wants. Click the Buy It Now button, and eBay sends you to a web page where you review the purchase and confirm you want to buy the item. — 37 —


Take your purchases seriously because eBay and your seller will. If you bid and win or click Buy It Now to purchase something, you’ve entered into a contract that is binding for both you and your seller.

After You Win the Item After you win an item, it’s time to pay for it. Some sellers will send you an email with an invoice, in addition to eBay’s standard winning email notice. Some sellers don’t send anything. eBay’s winning notification email often contains all the information you need to pay, so some sellers choose not to contact you unless you ask them a question. If the seller accepts PayPal payments, one or both of those emails will have a PayPal button or link that you can click to pay with PayPal right away. If you prefer to send a check or money order, assuming the auction’s selling terms include check or money order payment, then you’ll send your payment to the address listed in the email. A few days later, the item arrives. If the item matches the description, you will leave positive feedback for your seller. Your eBay Maniac will help you with details such as this when you’re ready to do it. As you might expect, you can leave feedback for auctions you’ve completed on your My eBay page from the Feedback link. Hopefully, the seller will have already left you feedback when you paid, but they don’t all do that, especially for brand-new buyers with low feedback. Once you post positive feedback, your seller will almost certainly do the same right away. If you don’t receive the item or it’s not what you paid for, write the seller and describe the problem. Most reputable sellers are thrilled to make it right if there’s a problem. Ask your eBay Maniac as they may have some other ideas of what to do. If you are unable to resolve the problem with the seller directly, both eBay and PayPal offer ways you can collect. The section “What to Do When Someone Doesn’t Pay” in Chapter 10, “We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends,” explains how you can put pressure on the buyer to collect. If you never get paid, you can also ask eBay to refund some of your listing fees, which is also explained in Chapter 10.

A Selling Overview This is where the money is! In this section, I’ll give you an overview of selling so you can get a feel for the process. But keep in mind, this entire book is aimed at teaching you how to sell better, more profitably, and more productively. At the same time, the skills you learn here will boost your eBay Maniac’s sales and auction techniques so that you can put your eBay Maniac’s sales into high gear and make this a family affair. — 38 —


Remember to search for what you’re about to sell. By looking at how others sell the item, you’ll get a better idea of what will work best for your situation.

Always Take a Picture Make sure the item is clean and in sellable condition. Now you’ll take a digital picture of the item. You might need to take several pictures depending on the item and whether or not different angles are necessary. For an antique clock, for example, most buyers will want to see the front, back, and a close-up of the face. For a video game, the back of the game case won’t necessarily help sell the game unless the back of the case has a special feature or is damaged and your description doesn’t describe the damage well enough without a photo. If you only sell books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, and other flat items, a scanner works better than a digital camera in most instances. If you don’t have a digital camera…get one now. eBay has hundreds up for sale. A 3-megapixel or better camera will do nicely. Surely if your eBay Maniac has been selling there’s a digital camera somewhere in your house. You can download digital camera pictures straight into a computer to upload for eBay auctions. With a filmbased camera, you would have to develop the film and scan the picture. A picture is worth a thousand words. So your picture is important. Be sure the lighting and coloring is nice and other things don’t clutter the background. Chapter 6, “Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item,” describes more about taking pictures that help sell your items.

Writing the Auction Listing Now you or your eBay Maniac need to list the item for sale on eBay. This involves writing a title that includes the kinds of words most buyers would search for when looking for your item. eBay gives you only 55 characters, and these are the most important characters in your entire auction. Don’t worry about grammar in the title; instead, worry about spelling the words correctly and using only keywords, model numbers, age (such as New), and other title words and phrases that make it very simple for someone to locate your auction in a search. Once you write the title, the description comes next. Your eBay Maniac probably has their own favorite way of entering the description, and this is probably one place where you should join in and not buck the trend. Your maniac probably has their own favorite method for creating a listing description. Whether they use a program such as FrontPage or an auction template, the text is really what is most important. Leave the details up to your eBay Maniac for now. — 39 —


The description is where you can really sell your product—list the features, describe the quality, explain how you ship, describe your payment terms, and anything else you want your buyer to know about the item. Much of the rest of this book devotes itself to tips and techniques on how to create an effective auction listing that sells better than others, so you’ll get plenty of details on this as you read on.

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The More You Tell, the Less Work You’ll Do Later

Suppose you forget to explain how you’ll ship that 400-pound cast iron antique cook stove you’re selling on eBay. If so, an interested bidder will ask you how you plan to ship the stove. And then another bidder will ask. And then another. And another. And if you don’t answer their questions, they will go elsewhere and bid. A quick response to questions is vital to get high sales, but even better is to anticipate questions and answer them in your auction. This dramatically cuts down on your work and helps your buyers make better decisions. When you answer a question, click the option labeled Post this question and response on my listing. By choosing to put the question and answer at the bottom of the auction when you answer the question, other bidders will be able to see that and it’s likely they won’t ask the same question.

About Durations and eBay Time All auctions are either 1-day, 3-day, 5-day, 7-day, or (for an extra charge) 10-day auctions. If you put up a 7-day auction at 5:56 p.m. your time, in exactly 7 days at 5:56 p.m. the auction will end. (A Buy It Now option would shorten that if someone buys the item before it gets a bid.) The majority of auctions run 7 days. Which auction duration is best? Your research gives you hints. If your item routinely sells in 3 days for as much as it does in 7 days, create a 3-day auction. Your eBay Maniac should already have a good idea which durations work best for the things you sell and will advise you accordingly. Take the advice. All eBay references to time are Pacific Standard Time. Time your auctions to end when you think the most people interested in your item will be on eBay. If you’re selling business-related products, you might want to time them to end during the day, when both the East and the West Coast will be at work. For DVDs, you might want them to end at night when people are not at work. Friday and Saturday evenings are often considered the worst time to end auctions because many people are occupied in other activities then. — 40 —


The most important thing to consider is your buyer and the time and day when your buyer is likely to be on eBay. Given that eBay is an international auction site, there’s no way to time your auctions that will be convenient for everybody on eBay.

The Fun Is Getting Bids Use your My eBay page to monitor your auctions. There you will see how many bidders you have, the amount currently being bid on your items, and how many people are watching your items. When someone is interested in an auction, they can put a watch on that auction. The watch tells eBay of their interest. eBay then adds it to their personal watch list, a list of auctions they’re currently interested in that they can view from their My eBay page. Of course, you can do this too when you think you might want to buy something but aren’t ready to place a bid. Don’t get discouraged if your bids start slowly. Depending on many factors, most bids come in toward the end of an auction. Bidders don’t always like to show their hand to other bidders by placing bids early. That’s why the watch list is probably more valuable to you the first few days of an auction than the number of bids. If several people are watching an item but haven’t bid, they are likely biding their time until closer to the end, when they can come in a grab the auction for a low bid (called sniping). Although sniping is sometimes an effective buying strategy, it often turns into a highbid battle close to the end of an auction. Due to the nature of auctions (and greed), that battle often turns profitable for you when they all realize others want what they want.

Once the Auction Ends Eventually, the high bid wins the item. eBay sends a winning notification to the winner as well as to you. Your eBay Maniac probably has a procedure in place for what happens at this point. Here are two possibilities: • Ignore the auction and let the buyer pay you. This isn’t the best business practice. Some buyers, however, make this happen because they pay before you’ve had a chance to send an invoice. That’s why PayPal is so handy. The moment someone wins, if the seller accepts PayPal, the buyer can click the Pay Now button and send payment within seconds of the auction concluding. • Send an invoice to your winning buyer. You can set up eBay (through My eBay) to send your buyer an invoice that you can somewhat customize to show the total due and payment terms. My maniac and I like to send our own email the moment — 41 —


an auction ends because we have more control over what we say than we do from the canned eBay invoices. The drawback is that we have to be in front of the computer when the auction finishes or we won’t send the invoice in a timely manner. Trust me, you don’t want to ignore your buyers after an auction finishes. Unless they pay immediately, get an invoice to the winner. This helps to show that you are prompt and that you care about the sale. If you won’t be around, you’ll certainly want to set up your My eBay page to send an invoice automatically so your buyer isn’t left in limbo. That might result in negative feedback, which won’t help your eBay business. Your buyer might have a question about payment or may ask if you’ll consider shipping a certain way that you didn’t list in your auction. Try to be accommodating. The sooner you reply and the more you work with the buyer, the sooner you’ll get paid and the more likely the buyer will praise you with positive feedback.

Once You Get Paid Ship the item! Getting the item out your doors quickly does all this: • Reduces clutter in your eBay storage room and makes room for the next item you want to list • Marks another item off your to-do list • Makes you feel better (see, eBay’s great for your health) • Makes your buyer happy • Helps get you positive feedback so bidders trust you in the future Once you ship, it helps to send your buyer an email thanking them for the purchase, and giving them the tracking number or delivery confirmation number of their packages. If you ship the item without any kind of tracking, you’re taking a risk because you won’t know when—or if—the item arrives and your buyer won’t have any assurance that the package is on its way. If you purchase postage through PayPal or use a website devoted to mailing, such as Stamps.com, your buyers will receive an email when you ship so you don’t have to send the notification email yourself. But sending a more personal email in addition is always nice, especially if the item is expensive.

— 42 —


Chapter 11, “Don’t Skimp When You Ship,” discuses ways you can make shipping a far simpler task than you might think. Also, this book’s website at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com contains several helpful items related to shipping that you’ll want to check out.

It’s Best to Give and Receive Feedback When a buyer pays us, we leave feedback. There are a few exceptions to this rule. If the buyer is a new eBayer, we wait on the feedback until we’re assured of payment. That is, if the new buyer pays with a check or money order, we wait for either to clear. (Yes, money orders are routinely forged; they’re not “good as cash” as they once were.) If the buyer paid late, and only then after we’d made several attempts to get payment, we will not leave positive feedback unless the buyer first leaves it for us. Even if the buyer is new to eBay, if they pay with PayPal and they have a confirmed PayPal mailing address, we go ahead and leave feedback immediately and ship the item. Because the buyer has a confirmed PayPal mailing address, all sellers are assured that this buyer has been thoroughly verified by PayPal, and even if the buyer proves to be a fraud, PayPal still pays the seller and takes the loss. No matter what the feedback rating is of your buyers, if they pay with PayPal and the PayPal payment shows a confirmed mailing address, you can safely ship the item. Some sellers never leave feedback first. With the exceptions just listed, we always do. Your buyers have done their jobs in good faith when they pay you. You should reward them with positive feedback. Is there a chance the buyer will still leave you negative feedback? Sure. But if you do everything else properly and ship the item quickly, the chances of negative feedback are extremely rare.

You’re Ready to Become an eBay Maniac There’s the overview of eBay. It’s simple. Get an account, search, buy, and sell. That’s eBay! The goal here was to take the mystery out of eBay. You still have lots of details to fill in, but you have an advantage that other eBay newcomers don’t have: you live with an eBay Maniac! Your eBay Maniac will handle the details or show you how they work. Don’t get bogged down at this point. Your maniac understands what to do. Think of it as your job now to leverage what your eBay Maniac knows and to take your maniac farther. Will helping your eBay Maniac sell more things for more money make everybody happy? You bet. — 43 —


Part II Dividing, Conquering, and Having Fun with eBay 3

I Wanted to Begin Slowly but eBay Grabbed Me Fast . . . .47

4

The Perils of a Home-Based eBay Business . . . . . . . . . . .55

5

Finding Inventory to Sell is Easier Than You Think . . . . .73


3

I Wanted to Begin Slowly but eBay Grabbed Me Fast

I

went from being an eBay skeptic to being an eBay Maniac in 60 seconds…well, it seems so now looking back. I really got into it and I began helping my husband. He likes to do things “his way,” but still he seemed to appreciate what I brought to the proverbial table. Only it wasn’t just proverbial—I really was at the table the first few days. I’ve worked at our mailing table wrapping hundreds of items that needed to be shipped. I suppose it isn’t the most elegant job I do, but it makes both of us happy. He is able to concentrate on writing new listings and now lists far more items after I began lending my hands. Helping your eBay Maniac spouse can be an extreme pleasure. And profitable.

You Can Work Together Virtually Trouble-Free Here we’ll begin to explore how we work together. Our model won’t be exactly right for your situation because everybody sells and buys on eBay differently. In spite of the differences between your eBay sales and ours, I know we can short-cut some of your path to working eBay together successfully. One of the first things to determine is where your individual strengths lie. As my eBay Maniac and I began working together, we slowly learned our individual eBay strengths (in addition to him being good at selling and me being good at buying). My eBay Maniac enjoys details more than I do. He likes to work on the accounting side of things, for example. He prefers business and numbers. In addition, he’s a far better salesperson than I ever will be. Once he began eBaying, my eBay Maniac began studying all he could about selling and marketing. One of the areas that helped him the most was learning about the concepts behind


direct marketing. He’s great at writing auction descriptions, and some of the lessons he learned from studying selling (which I will teach you!) dramatically improved our sales. I’m better at high-level organization than Greg is. I saw the eBay business encroaching on our home life. I couldn’t have eBay continue to clutter up our living area. I must confess that it still does from time to time, but our dedicated eBay storage and shipping area has made life much better as we began increasing our eBay sales load. To him, it was just stuff that he had listed, but to me, it was stuff that I had to walk around. I saw eBay as taking over the household and taking over his time. I knew there were better ways to set things up to run more smoothly. I knew that organization was the first key to our true success, and I set out to organize the business. Keep in mind that he had sold many items before I ever saw my first eBay web page. He knew all about how to list, how to monitor sales, and how to buy. I had to be careful in my approach. I decided I wanted to be a part of this business, not only to bring a different perspective, but I thought I could also help bring higher profits as well.

The Approach You Use Can Determine How Open Your eBay Maniac Is to Change When we began doing this together, I was always hesitant to make suggestions. My eBay Maniac was hesitant to change things. He had a point because he was a successful seller before I entered the picture. Every time I suggested something new, my maniac’s first response was no. I would try to understand why my eBay Maniac did the things he did. When I would suggest something, I’d try to tie it to the results he was currently getting and explain how those results might be better if we made a simple change. For example, setting aside an area just for eBay would help him locate items faster, make fewer mistakes, and generally sell more efficiently and make more money. It was the “make more money” that really worked well! Once I’d suggest something, he would mull it over and typically realize it might help make eBay simpler or more profitable. Sometimes he would tell me why something I wanted to do would not work, and it made sense when he would explain it. We worked through all these situations, just as we would any other issue in our lives—getting the car repaired, buying new carpet, or washing dishes—it’s all give and take and commitment to working together.

You Don’t Need the Details, Just the Techniques Throughout this book you will often learn concepts that might make sense to you but that you might not be able to implement on your own. For example, we will show you — 48 —

Chapter Three I Wanted to Begin Slowly but eBay Grabbed Me Fast

ways to list auctions more quickly through the use of third-party tools that are available to you. We will not walk you through every step of those tools, and we won’t walk you through every step of many things, because that’s not what you need. Your eBay Maniac has the details down. In a way, I’m bringing to you in this book what I brought to my eBay Maniac’s business. I’m providing an outsider’s insight that you can leverage for your own household’s eBay business. You can hone these techniques and, with your own eBay Maniac, you will be able to implement the ones that will benefit your business the most. Don’t sweat the actual details of how to implement any of these techniques for now because the details are simple and they are your maniac’s strength at this point. If you see weaknesses in yourself that need to be strengths in order to be a successful eBay seller, know that you can learn all the skills you need. Play up your strengths to your maniac and they will help you learn how to fill in the weak spots. This book will help too. For example, I was a lousy salesperson, and my eBay Maniac taught me a lot about how to sell on eBay. I will pass along those eBay selling skills to you. You will soon see, as I did, that many of the suggestions this book provides, as well as any insights you come up with yourself as you go along, will dramatically improve your household eBay business’s work flow and profits, as well as save you and your eBay Maniac time and effort. That means you’ll have more time together when you’re not working, and that’s always nice.

Turn Space into Your eBay Room One of the primary problems of running successful eBay sales out of a home is the eBay encroachment into the home. If you do absolutely nothing else, you must dedicate an area to eBay sales. If there is any way possible, use that area for eBay and nothing else. You will find that you and your eBay Maniac work far better once you dedicate and organize an area just for eBay. You don’t need any special eBay skills to turn space into an eBay room. That’s why this is a great place for you to begin helping your eBay Maniac. Once successful at creating a dedicated eBay space, or an entire room if you have it, you will have already brought a big help to your eBay Maniac without ever having to know one computer keystroke related to eBay. It’s a great place to begin lending a hand. This can be difficult in a busy and full household. But not having a dedicated area can cause all kinds of unforeseen problems. My husband began selling in his office upstairs. It’s a fairly small room with a storage room off to the side that we converted from attic storage. Initially, it was fine. But for as few as 15 or more items sold each week, trouble began to happen. — 49 —


He would often move a stack of his work “just for a moment” on top of a wrapped eBay box that was ready to go in the mail and then a week or 10 days later, when the buyer wondered where the package was, we’d find it under the stack. By the way, when that happened, we would often refund the buyer half the shipping fee and upgrade the mailing rate when feasible. For example, instead of mailing the box via Media rate if it was a DVD, we would mail it via the much faster Priority rate. So our buyer ended up paying less, and we’d explain what happened when we mailed the package. Every buyer was understanding when it happened. Fortunately, it only occurred a few times before we learned our lesson and set aside a space dedicated to eBay buying and selling. So dedicate an area, if possible an entire room (or garage), to eBay once you begin selling several items each week. This keeps your eBay business separate from the rest of your life and reduces the chances of clutter or space sharing complicating your eBay buying and selling.

If Space Is a Problem The majority of readers won’t have an entire room to devote to eBay. We don’t either; we devoted about half a storage room to eBay. Even in large homes, we realize that half a room might still be too costly for your situation. There are plenty of things you can do to help the space situation, until your sales grow so high you add onto your home or buy a bigger one. (That’s a nice problem to look forward to.) If your eBay Maniac currently combines the eBay area with an area of the home used for something entirely different, you need to begin dropping hints right away, as I did, that things need to change. One of the best ways to approach this is to talk to your eBay Maniac about how much more money is possible if you two could find a way to devote more space just to eBay. Be willing to give up some of your own space first, and your maniac will be more open to the idea. Once your eBay Maniac sees how well a devoted space works, you both will quickly find ways to grow the space larger as your eBay sales boom. Consider these eBay space tips: • Dedicate a corner of a room to eBay. Try to make it a corner in the room where your computer is located, or very nearby. • If the weather temperature permits and you have extra room in your garage, consider making a place there for your eBay sales area. You won’t worry about the clutter when company comes to visit. You can run a network cable to your garage for Internet access, or better, set up a wireless signal to the garage so you can work from a laptop while keeping your desktop computer in your home office area. — 50 —


• If nothing else, find a bookcase or a cabinet that you can put against a wall in the proximity of your computer and make yourselves a promise: you will never use that bookcase or cabinet for anything except items related to eBay. You might even need to go a step further and promise that only items in active and completed auctions can sit there. That way, you’ll always be able to locate what you need and you’ll always be looking over your current inventory to see what needs to be shipped. Your dedicated eBay space is even more important when you begin working as a team. Develop techniques or a labeling system so both of you will know which items are ready to list, which items are listed, and which items have sold. We sell a lot of rare and used books, and we try to arrange the books that have been listed alphabetically by title so when we’re ready to mail them we can locate a title more easily. You may need to develop a procedure that you move or remove an item under specific conditions, such as you’re ready to wrap something to mail. When you remove an item from its designated eBay location to inspect it, always put the item back where you got it. Your bidders won’t get their questions answered as fast if you aren’t able to locate the item.

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Organization Is the Key It’s true. A cluttered work area is a confused work area. Although when I write books I do my best work among a cluttered area of books and papers scattered all around me, when it comes to a business such as eBay, clutter can be costly indeed.

Right before the time my wife began helping me, I was doing too much. Two times I swapped books and sent each one to the wrong buyer. That’s a total of four books mailed to the wrong buyers. There is absolutely no excuse for this. I had to send money to each buyer so they could ship the book to each other. That is a hassle that no buyer should have put up with. I was fortunate in every case. I had understanding buyers. I also bribed them some by sending an extra $5 for their time in addition to the postage costs. It was the least I could do, and it was the right thing to do. Although these situations worked out, I could not afford the money or worry and it couldn’t happen again.

I blame my mistaken shipments on my clutter. Thanks to Jayne, our eBay area is much better organized now. Our current accuracy is directly related to that organized work area.

— 51 —


Your Business Might Outgrow Your Home’s Living Area Growth can make your eBay sales too large to handle in one part of your home, and that means far more profits when it does. Although a home-based business offers tremendous advantages, it’s difficult to share living space with a business. Getting the business out of the house doesn’t necessarily mean that you rent downtown office space. That defeats the purpose of a home-based business. Consider the possibility of adding on a room to your home for your business. A much less expensive option is to put up an outdoor building in your backyard and run electricity to it. Sure, whatever you do along these lines is going to cost money. Keep in mind that if you run your eBay business properly—that is, report your income on your taxes—you can also report your expenses, which greatly help to offset profits, especially in your eBay business’s early years.

As Your Sales Grow, So Will Your Shipping Area It’s a fact that the more space you can devote solely to eBay, the more you can sell. The lack of clutter and the luxury of not constantly moving other things around speeds up your eBay work. As you look for ways to devote more space to your eBay work, keep in mind that shipping chores grow in proportion to your eBay sales. About the time you solve your eBay space problem, a new one will crop up: you’ll need more and more space devoted to shipping supplies, and space will be needed to wrap the items you ship. Chapter 11, “Don’t Skimp When You Ship,” discusses some of the things you’ll need in your shipping area, even if your sales are not considered extraordinary. Depending on what you sell, even 20 mailed items per week will require a lot of space devoted to supplies and wrapping. For now, keep shipping in mind as you work out setting up your eBay area.

eBay’s Still a Numbers Game In spite of the fact that after reading this book you’re going to be armed to the teeth with powerful tips and techniques that will help you and your eBay Maniac leave your competition in the dust, keep in mind that your maniac is an expert. If your eBay Maniac has had some—or a lot—of success on eBay, your maniac is going to show you more about what works given the items your family sells than you’ll gain from this book. Each eBay business differs, and your maniac knows your family’s eBay sales better than anybody else. — 52 —


One thing you will offer are new ideas that your maniac hasn’t thought of or hasn’t had time to try because they have been too busy doing everything. With you helping out, your eBay Maniac, along with you, will have time to test new ideas, experiment with new eBay software tools that are available, and study other books to learn what others have written about (see this book’s website at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/ Maniac for a biased list of resources every eBayer needs to read). You and your eBay Maniac will find new ways to sell items and will learn ways to decrease your costs as you sell. Always work on improving your performance. Keep good records and try to beat last year’s sales each month. Even a slight cost savings in shipping will dramatically add to your profit margin over hundreds and thousands of auctions. So keep a constant eye out for ways to improve. This book is your first step. Having said that, eBay is in many respects a numbers game. The more items you list, the more you will sell. Let’s say you figure out a system that might save you a nickel on everything you sell. That’s great, and you should work on doing that, but don’t sacrifice time you would spend listing and managing your current auctions. One auction that brings you only $20 in profit is worth 400 of those nickels.

eBay Never Promised You a Rose Garden An in-home eBay business has its problems. This chapter discussed a few of them, such as the space issue, but there are more. The next chapter discusses some of the other problems you’ll face. Having said that, you already have an eBay business in your home, so even though problems come with the territory, it’s not like you can decide not to do eBay…it’s already being done there! Learning about problems now, however, makes you better able to handle those problems when they arise. And knowing about solutions will really impress your eBay Maniac and make your maniac even happier that you decided to join in.

— 53 —


4

The Perils of a Home-Based eBay Business

W

ithout your help, your eBay Maniac has already sold a bunch of items. You can be certain that your maniac wants to sell a lot more! That’s why your eBay Maniac will welcome you as a partner when you bring powerful techniques to the table that improve your family’s sales. I don’t want you going into this with your eyes half open, however. By that, I mean I want you to know what awaits you, both the advantages and the problems. Most aspects of eBay are fabulous, but home-based eBay sales can bring unexpected frustrations. By better understanding those frustrations now, you won’t be blind-sided by them later. You’ll be far better able to handle what comes your way, both the good and the bad.

An eBay Business Is Better Than a Storefront Business You are about to join your eBay Maniac in your home-based eBay business. It is a business. I can’t stress that enough. If your family sells one item a week, it’s a business in the eyes of the IRS, so you need to view it as a business also. Viewing your sales as a business opens doors for you, though. When you think in business terms, you can begin to see ways around huge problems that you will turn into minor inconveniences. Even outlays to purchase some equipment, such as an electronic stapler for boxes, to help your business run more smoothly becomes an acceptable investment once you view it as a goal to produce higher sales (or ease of fulfilling your sales) in the future.


The best thing about going into business on eBay is that it offers tremendous advantages over a traditional storefront. A traditional storefront is often called a bricks-and-mortar business due to the physical building. An Internet-based business is often called a clicks-and-mortar business because much of the activity is done through mouse and keyboard clicking, and the physical building (your home in this case) is less important to the online business model than a traditional one. For a bricks-and-mortar business, your retail store has to be ready (and meet massive regulatory requirements as a business) for customers to walk through the door at any time. Consider some of the advantages of an eBay business over a traditional bricks-and-mortar store: • You have a global presence and not just a neighborhood presence. It’s about as simple for a New Zealander to buy something from you as it is for a New Yorker. • Your start-up costs are negligible compared to those of a traditional business. Sure, your computer hardware and software cost money, your utilities cost money, some of your wrapping and mailing materials cost money, your Internet connection costs money, but those are all expenses you’d have if you started a traditional business as well. The extra expenses of a traditional business include the massive outlay of funds for renting (or buying) the storefront and preparing it for full customer access. Not only are your start-up costs lower, but your daily operating costs are lower too. You’ll pay far more to run a standalone business than you will pay extra over your normal household expenses that support your eBay sales. • Your start-up time is completely negligible. If neither you nor your eBay Maniac were selling on eBay yet, in less than an hour you could be signed up and listing items for sale. Try going into a new bricks-and-mortar business in under an hour! Keep all this in mind as you enter your eBay Maniac’s world of selling. The odds of success are already vastly in your favor, whereas the odds of success in a traditional startup business are only about 20% or less. Most start-ups go out of business within 3 years. Most people who started selling extra household stuff on eBay 6 years ago are still working eBay today. As this and subsequent chapters explore the challenges that you face on eBay, you’ll learn that those challenges are massively simpler than running almost any other kind of business in the world.

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Chapter Four The Perils of a Home-Based eBay Business

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Death and Taxes

The two constants for everyone are death and taxes. The Eternal Revenue Service usually gets more than its share; that’s why your taxes last longer than your life when they pillage your family with estate taxes. Life or death, the Infernal Revenue Service’s hands are in your pocket. There’s a loophole, though. A perfectly legal loophole that is obligatory on your part to take advantage of. All expenses directly and indirectly related to your eBay business are usually deductible from any income you make. This isn’t a tax advice book, and you didn’t get it to learn about taxes. We know eBay, not tax advice, except where it applies directly to us—and we don’t know that much even then. This book’s website contains some unbiased references that will greatly help you with your tax-related questions. One of the best things you can do is to begin now setting up your eBay procedures to include expense and income reporting. The resources at this book’s website, www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com, will guide you in that endeavor.

The Unforeseen Problem: How Do We Organize What We Haven’t Sold Yet? When you sell on eBay, things pile up. You can get frustrated. You can ignore it like my husband is able to do. His favorite phrase when I talk about all the piles of stuff is, “Face piles of trials with smiles.” I cannot ignore the piles. If you followed my advice in the previous chapter about setting aside an eBay area, you’re already ahead of the game. In working with your eBay Maniac to create a dedicated work area for eBay, you have helped to separate eBay from your personal life and you’ve made your eBay life more functional for both of you. Once you have your eBay area, you need to understand ways to make that area more productive. The following sections help you organize that eBay area so the items there will be where you need them to be when you need them.

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Storing Your eBay Inventory Your eBay inventory generally falls into four categories: • Unsold items that you want to sell • Items you’ve listed for sale but whose auctions haven’t ended • Items that you’ve sold but not mailed yet • Items you’ve listed but did not sell If your dedicated eBay area is large enough, you’ll be able to keep the items you’ve not yet listed there too. Even if you have room for these items, try to separate them from the more critical listed and sold sets of items. Doing so makes it much simpler to locate what you need when you need it. If, however, you don’t have the luxury of a large eBay space (and few of us do), you will need to find another spot for your items waiting to be listed. Surprisingly, you don’t need to store your to-be-listed items close to your primary eBay area necessarily. Sure, it helps a lot if you have the room to do so. But the items you haven’t listed are far less of a priority than those you’ve listed and those you’ve sold that await wrapping and mailing. So if you must store unsold items elsewhere, even if it’s in the garage or in clean attic storage, that’s acceptable. Actually, it’s not just acceptable; it’s far better than clumping the unsold items in the same spot as those you’ve listed and sold. The items that didn’t sell are the easiest to handle. Remove them from your eBay area immediately. As soon as we see that an item didn’t sell, we remove it from our eBay area and immediately put it in the Goodwill box we keep going, or we put the didn’tsell item in a box with the owner’s name if it’s a consignment item we’re selling for somebody else. Every once in a while, we might try to relist an item that didn’t sell at a later time. For example, if it’s a seasonal item such as a cold-weather coat and we’re at the end or past winter, we might hold the coat and relist it when it’s in season once again. Sometimes we might relist an item that didn’t sell and try a lower starting bid or a different title. Here is where your eBay searching skills come in handy. If an item doesn’t sell for you but has recently sold well for others, you should probably relist it, perhaps with some slight changes to your title and description. The only exception is if we think its lack of selling was a fluke, or perhaps due to too high of an opening bid, in which case we’ll relist the item with a lower starting bid. If you don’t remove the unsold items, they will begin to clutter and confuse the listed and

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sold area. Make it your goal to keep only what is currently listed, or sold, together and keep all other items out of that area.

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My Original eBay Space and Our eBay Space Now When I was doing all the eBay selling, I didn’t organize anything. I didn’t have time. I was selling too much.

Problems began happening due to my lack of time for organization. I didn’t have time to get organized! Of course, as you no doubt understand, if I got better organized I would have more time because my accuracy would improve and the time to move from one task to another would decrease. But eBay snuck up on me as it does many people, and I was smothered in all my eBay stuff. But I kept listing and selling. Jayne made eBay a far better experience with her suggestions, sometimes strong suggestions, for getting things more organized, keeping the eBay storage area less cluttered, and organizing the shipping area far better than before. The clutter still occurs, but it’s more of an organized clutter. For example, the clutter in our mailing area is generally all related to mailing supplies, boxes, tape, and so on. Keeping things better separated makes eBay a far easier activity to engage in.

Selling Like Items at the Same Time Helps You Organize and Increases Your Profits Too When you’re ready to list more things to sell, you will make a trip to your to-be-listed inventory and grab the items you need to sell. Then you transfer them to your computer area so you can get pictures and write up the auctions. Here’s a great tip for picking which items you’ll list next. Even if everything you sell is unique, often items relate to one another somehow. When we list rare books, we try to list them in groups of subjects that relate to each other if possible. For example, we often sell books about the Civil War. If we have 30 books to sell and seven of them are related to the Civil War, we always make sure we list the Civil War books on the same day. We can pull them out of our to-be-listed inventory in a batch. Then, in each Civil War book auction, we will reference the other Civil War books we’re selling and promise our bidders reduced combined shipping charges if they win more than one book. Buyers end up bidding on several of the Civil War books and often win several because they know they’ll benefit from lower shipping costs when we can mail several instead of one at a time. — 59 —


The items you sell don’t even have to relate as directly as the Civil War book example. For instance, you might have a mixer and a set of wooden spoons for sale. In both of those auctions, tell your bidders that you have other kitchen-related items for sale currently and you’ll discount combined shipping if they win more than one auction.

Dealing with Information Overload: Keeping Track of Your Listings, Sales, Shipments, and Sanity This is where the rubber meets the road. The more you help your eBay Maniac, the faster you can list items, and the more eBay sales your family will make. A new problem will raise its head fairly soon after that, if it hasn’t already for your eBay Maniac, and that is how you stay on top of your eBay activity.

The After-Sale Email and Invoice When something sells, you must handle the sale. Newcomers to eBay are often uninformed about the importance of staying in contact with the buyer from the auction’s close until the purchased item is mailed. The best thing to do is acknowledge the sale with an email that thanks the bidder and offers an invoice. If you use Microsoft Outlook, PayPal offers an Outlook add-in that inserts a PayPal payment button in emails so your buyers can click the button in your emails and pay quickly, assuming they want to pay with PayPal (this is available at www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/payment_wizard_intro). The PayPal email is a great idea, but in reality we’ve found it to be cumbersome for the following reasons: • People have been (properly) trained not to click links and buttons in emails because of virus and spam problems that plague our Inboxes these days. Therefore, buyers will be hesitant to click your button. • Some people’s email is set up to receive only text, so the button may not work properly. • The PayPal button takes a minute or more for you to set up, which means extra time on your part. • The email that eBay mails your high bidders already has a similar link to pay with, so your email’s button is redundant. In spite of the fact that eBay’s after-auction invoice includes the same basic information as our after-sale email to our winning bidders, we still send an email to every buyer as close to the auction’s end as possible. We don’t use the PayPal button feature for the — 60 —


reasons just listed, except in rare instances when our buyer has made a special request, such as a mailing class upgrade from Parcel Post to Priority, for instance, and eBay’s invoice won’t reflect that price change.

Plan Your Auction Timing to Avoid Problems When you list an item, always be thinking ahead. Where will you be when the auction ends? Will you be in town or on a trip? Is it a time when company will be staying with you? Is it around someone’s graduation or wedding? If you don’t consider what your schedule will be like around the auction’s conclusion, you might time an auction to end when you won’t be around to handle the invoicing and mailing for a few days. By not mailing promptly, you risk getting a negative feedback rating. Try to list items when you can be close by after the auction ends to send the after-auction email. If you can’t be around when your auctions end, it’s okay. eBayers understand that you’re not at your computer 24/7. We had one buyer tell us he was surprised to get our email right after the auction ended because he rarely gets such emails. I think endof-auction emails are more common now than then. We believe they are always a good practice.

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Reducing Buyer’s Remorse Buyer’s remorse is a common phenomenon that occurs right after someone buys something. They immediately begin to second-guess their purchase decision.

By contacting your buyers as soon after the auction ends as possible, you help reduce or eliminate buyer’s remorse. By thanking them for their winning bid and repeating all your generous payment options, as well as ensuring them that you’ll ship quickly and wrap their item carefully, buyers will feel much better about doing business with you.

You’ll be less of a stranger to them. People like to do business with helpful and friendly people.

Always Monitor the Details Without adequate recordkeeping, you can easily get lost in the auction activity. The after-sale email is only the start. From day to day, you need a way to know what has been listed, what has sold, what has been mailed, what has been paid for, what needs feedback, and what items are long overdue for payment. — 61 —


Your eBay Maniac probably has some way to handle all these kinds of details. You need to find out how your maniac does it. Then the two of you can determine whether that method is acceptable if you were to help double your eBay sales. If your eBay Maniac is careful with those details, probably little more is needed on your part. But keep your eyes open for better ways to keep these kinds of details current. Any kind of accounting method you use to track all your auction details is going to have some error because there will be a few times you fail to update the status of a payment or something else and the records won’t be fully accurate. Therefore, it’s vital that you stay on top of the details and keep your records as up to date as possible, no matter which system you use to manage your auctions. Although it’s fairly primitive, the following system works well for us: we use eBay feedback to determine who has paid and who hasn’t paid. (For knowing who we’ve mailed to, we use Stamps.com, a wonderful way to keep track of your mailing activity that you’ll learn about in Chapter 11, “Don’t Skimp When You Ship.”) Here is our policy: the moment we receive payment, we leave feedback for the item. This works for most things. When we need to wait for a check or money order to clear, or when someone with low eBay feedback pays with an unconfirmed PayPal mailing address, we don’t leave feedback. Those are our exceptions to this system, and they occur only rarely. Also, when we have trouble getting paid for something, but finally we do get paid, we don’t leave feedback until the buyer leaves it for us. Slow payers sometimes (not always) hold a grudge when you follow up weeks later to ask where the payment is. Therefore, other than the exceptions, which are rare enough that one of us can track those, if we have not left feedback for an auction then we assume the buyer hasn’t paid for that item yet. We can quickly see all unpaid items by going to eBay’s Feedback Forum (see Figure 4.1) and clicking the Leave Feedback link. You can click this link even if you don’t want to leave feedback right now. The items that you have not left feedback for will appear. As long as you are diligent about leaving feedback the moment someone pays, this is a surprisingly simple and accurate way to keep tabs on what has yet to be paid for. If the feedback shows an auction date that is a few weeks old, you need to send an email asking where the payment is, or send that buyer an unpaid auction notice. Chapter 10, “We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends,” explores some collection procedures you can use to get money from slow payers.

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Figure 4.1

The Feedback Forum is a surprisingly simple way that you can keep track of who has paid.

Other Ways to Manage Auctions Are Out There Your My eBay page is the most obvious tool available to you to track all the details of all your auctions. When you display your My eBay page and scroll to the section called “Items I’ve Sold,” icons on the right side of the screen indicate if the buyer has checked out and paid, if you’ve shipped, if you’ve left feedback, and if the buyer has left you feedback. Figure 4.2 shows a section of sold items from a My eBay page. If an icon is not dark blue but is grayed out, such as the dollar sign icon, which normally indicates payment, then that part of the transaction is not yet complete (in this case, the buyer has not paid). If the icon is dark blue and clear, then that part of the transaction is complete. Sometimes the icons will mislead you, however. For example, if a buyer responds to an invoice to let you know they’re paying with a check or money order, the auction status changes to Paid, even though you haven’t received the money yet. Therefore, it’s not wise to rely on your My eBay page for determining who has paid, but for other details such as whether you’ve shipped an item yet; it’s an option that you can use to find the status of a completed auction.

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I Married an eBay Maniac Click any icon to sort Click to change the status

Figure 4.2 Your My eBay page can show all the details you need quick access to. (Note: We’ve blurred out some of the IDs in the figure to keep the buyers’ IDs protected.) This page shows you, on one screen, the status of all your sold auctions—assuming the information is all up to date. You can click any of the icons at the top of the column to sort the data by that icon. Therefore, if you click the dollar sign icon, which indicates payment status, all the unpaid actions will list first, and those buyers who have paid will fall together beneath those who haven’t paid to give you a quick snapshot of the status of all your sold auctions. Some buyers will never leave you feedback. Don’t worry about it. You can send a friendly email asking for it, but don’t send more than one because it isn’t worth the effort. When you first begin you want feedback to build your score, but buying and selling lots of items is a surer way to build a higher feedback score than begging someone to leave feedback. The problem with using My eBay for tracking all these kinds of details is the amount of manual activity you must do to keep it updated. If everybody wins just one item from you, and if everyone pays with PayPal, and if you use eBay to create a mailing label for every auction item you ship, then using My eBay to track auctions would be fine

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because you would never have to manually update all these status flags (the options that the icons represent). Obviously, the real eBay auction world doesn’t work that way. Some people mail their payment to you and you have to update the payment status when that occurs. To change the payment status, you need to click the drop-down list under the Action column and select Mark As Payment Received. Once you do, the payment status flag’s icon changes to reflect the payment. If a buyer wins multiple items and pays for them all at once, even with PayPal, eBay may or may not know to update all the items’ payment status flag. Therefore, you’ll need to make sure every item that every buyer pays for is properly flagged. Unless you use eBay to print shipping labels, you will need to change the shipping status after you mail an item to a buyer. Even if you use eBay to print shipping labels, eBay doesn’t always update the shipping status correctly if a buyer wins multiple items.

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A Larger eBay Business Requires Better Details

If you eventually hire employees to help in your eBay business, you surely will need to be more diligent on details. If nothing else, you will have to make sure that at every step of the auction process the My eBay status flags are kept accurate and up to date. That way, the person (or people) pulling inventory and wrapping your items for shipping will know that the item is paid for and ready to be shipped. The person who handles overdue payments will be able to determine who needs a follow-up email and who deserves an unpaid item notice from eBay. It’s our assumption here that you’re not to that stage yet. At times, we’ve sold more than 200 items in a week and we haven’t had the need yet to be that picky about the My eBay flags. There are times, yes, when a more accurate accounting of those status flags would have helped us, but not at the expense of maintaining them.

Options Outside of eBay Once you master eBay as well as your eBay Maniac, the two of you should explore the various third-party tools that are available to help you with your recordkeeping and bookkeeping. eBay lists the providers of software tools that it recognizes officially on its Developers Program page at http://developer.ebay.com/programs/certifiedprovider/ (see

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Figure 4.3). Click the Non-technical providers link to scroll through websites that offer several tools that might be just right for the way you and your eBay Maniac want to keep track of things. Click to see Providers

Figure 4.3

eBay officially recognizes several vendors of software available to help you manage and grow your eBay business.

It’s good that you learn the various ways to keep track of your auction details, but remember your eBay Maniac probably has a system in place for tracking listings, payments, and shipments. Since you’re new to eBay, your job is to look at your maniac’s current strategies and tools and then research other options to see if there’s a more efficient way to do the job. Many of the software tools you find in eBay’s certified provider list will let you sign up for a free 30-day trial. You’ll be able to try the software before you commit to a purchase. Even better, many of the products are completely free of charge and help not only with recordkeeping but other aspects of eBay as well.

Handling Complaints, Questions, and Requests No matter how nice or how mean a question you get is, the number-one rule for responding is: respond quickly. — 66 —


Quick response can turn problems into solutions and angry buyers into happy, repeat customers. Even a “No, we just can’t do that at this time” in response to an unusual and excessive request, possibly accompanied with a reason for why you cannot, often makes your denial gentler and more understandable to the requester.

The Obvious Answer Your eBay Maniac will agree that the following type of question is common: “How much is shipping to Canada?” (or any other country). This is even when your auction states at least twice in the listing that shipping to the country in question is $8.70. It’s astounding how many times we’ve been asked questions that are clearly answered in our auction listing. Here is another one that never ceases to amaze us: “Do you combine shipping charges if we win multiple items?” At the time of this writing, and for the past 18 months, every auction listing we’ve ever posted says that we combine and reduce shipping when anyone wins multiple items. That’s not all. Every auction we’ve listed in the past 18 months has said that in five places throughout the auction! It’s one of the eBay seller’s albatrosses. Typically, my eBay Maniac will respond with something such as, “Yes, as our auction states, the shipping charge for Canada is $8.70. Thank you for your interest in our auction.” If you ignore such questions, your bidders might go elsewhere thinking you don’t ship to their country or that you don’t offer shipping discounts. They might conclude you are an unresponsive seller. If you get very many of these kinds of questions, your patience will be tried. Yet, you must answer them politely and promptly. Although Greg’s response could be construed as slightly sarcastic (he doesn’t have to imply that their question is already answered), it is friendly and it does help teach new eBayers, gently, to read auctions more carefully.

Can You Take Criticism? Your bidders as well as those who choose not to bid will sometimes complain about the things you do. Some are funny, some make you angry (again, you must show patience), and some you will learn from. In selling a personal home library for a friend of ours, she told us in advance that she had cut off some of the inside dust jacket flap prices. This is a big no-no in the world of book collecting. The value of the book can decrease anywhere from 10% to 40%, depending on the title and rarity of the book. Some books are book club editions that bring very little money, and the price on the inside dust jacket is often replaced with the words Book Club Edition. So collectors are wary of buying any book with a clipped — 67 —


dust jacket flap because it might be difficult to tell whether they are getting a true first edition of the book or a cheap book club printing of the same book. Therefore, the value drops. Some of our auctions had this to say when we’d sell such a book: “Sadly, a well-meaning (but wrong) family member cut the original price from inside the dust jacket flap.” We received a complaint from someone who had looked at our auctions telling us: “You have too much time on your hands if you take the time and space to write about your poor family member who cut the price out of the book. Nobody cares. Don’t air your family grievances on eBay like that! You waste our time using eBay as a platform for tattling on your family!” She didn’t realize that such information (the clipped dust jacket flap) is one of the most important aspects to note about buying used books. She also didn’t know that it was that very lady who clipped the dust jacket who told us we could say she did it. Greg looks back on this with grief because he didn’t use tact when responding. He replied: “If you have time to write eBayers about what they say in their listings, it seems to me that YOU are the one with too much time on your hands.” Don’t do that. Greg says that he never would respond that way anymore.

Sometimes, You’ll Need to Get Away from It All In spite of the income and, yes, the fun, you’ll have times when you want to get away from eBay. So how do you leave your business? Fortunately, you can always time auctions around your vacations, as mentioned earlier in this chapter. It you’re going to be gone 5 or 6 days, don’t start your auctions to end during the time you’ll be gone. Even if you don’t list auctions that end during your absence, you still need to be available for questions about the auctions that will end once you return home. Of course, you might opt to get away from eBay completely and not list at all while you’re out of town. That is sometimes useful but also difficult too because of the income loss. If you have buyers who routinely buy from you, you don’t want them to think that you’re absence means you no longer sell. We always like to keep some auctions going for that very reason; our repeat buyers know we haven’t stopped selling.

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Repeat buyers are vital to your eBay business. At the time of this writing, our primary eBay ID, BidMentor, has 4,629 feedbacks, but of those only 3,374 are from unique buyers. That means that 1,255, or almost 28% of our sales, have come from repeat buyers. This is especially telling given that we don’t sell staple items or the same goods over and over. Almost every item we sell is unique from all other items we’ve sold. Just because you aren’t listing anything due to vacation doesn’t mean the questions from buyers will stop. If someone bought something from you before your vacation and hasn’t received it in a timely manner, that buyer will want to know if you shipped the item. That is the kind of question you really need to respond to quickly before the buyer gives you negative feedback. Therefore, it’s difficult to get away completely. While you travel, always take a laptop or be able to check your email and messages online in an Internet cafe or at your hotel to be sure that you are able to respond within 24 hours or so of any question. An eBay store is an area of eBay you can set up, for an extra monthly fee, where all of your items are showcased. It works a lot like your own website and only your items appear in the listing. One advantage of an eBay store is that you can indicate vacation time in your store’s preference settings, and eBay puts your store on hold for that time. All store listings are held until your stated return date, at which time eBay will start up the store listings once again. Your buyers will be told that it’s only due to your vacation that the store is temporarily on hold until your return. Chapter 9, “It Seems We’re Always Selling,” explains more of the benefits of using an eBay store as opposed to selling through the normal eBay auction and fixed-price listings.

Schedule Listings to Start Near Your Vacation’s End For an added fee (10 cents as of the time I write this), eBay allows you to create a scheduled listing. That is where you go through the normal motions of listing an item for sale but the auction doesn’t actually start until a specific date and time that you set at the time you list the item. We use this feature to post several auctions that begin about 2 days before we’re scheduled to return home. That way, we don’t get home to a huge batch of auctions to handle that are over about the time we get there. In addition, it means that the auctions we did list have had time to generate a few bids and interest. That way we hit the ground running when we get home.

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The section “Good Tools Help You List Auctions Faster” in Chapter 6, “Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item,” discusses several third-party tools that help you manage and post auctions more easily than using eBay alone. Some, such as Mpire, which is what we use, will allow you to schedule auctions to start at a later time without the 10-cent fee that eBay currently charges to do so.

The eBay Message System Staying in contact with your auctions, even when away, means that you must have Internet access where you travel. Fortunately, all over the world, getting that access is easier every day. Taking along your laptop will be the simplest way, but libraries across America will allow you to use their Internet computers and Internet cafes all around the globe provide you with access and computers when you need to check your email and auctions. Remember that you need to stay up with your auction business even if you have no auctions active when traveling. Perhaps a buyer has waited several weeks for an item you sent and hasn’t received it. If the buyer asks you about the shipment and you don’t respond for several days because you’re on vacation, the buyer is likely to post negative feedback and start claiming a refund. Email isn’t the only way buyers will be contacting you. You should understand that much communication between buyers and sellers is now done through eBay’s message system. However, I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that many eBayers dislike eBay’s message system. eBay slowly began phasing in its own message system to replace email-based communications between buyers and sellers in 2004. Now, the buyer’s email address only appears on the completed auction listing for a short time before eBay removes it. You as the seller are the only one who can see the email while it’s there. The problem is, invariably you will want to ask a buyer a question or send your buyer a note a day or two after eBay removes the email address. eBay says the removal of the email addresses is for security reasons. In its place eBay implemented its own message system. If you want to ask a buyer something (or any eBayer), instead of sending the buyer an email you now click the Contact the Buyer button and the message box shown in Figure 4.4 appears. If the email address is removed from the completed auction page for security reasons, then why does eBay even show the email for a few days? It’s only visible to the seller of that item. Does leaving it up longer tempt the seller to somehow violate the buyer’s security? Of course not!

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Figure 4.4

You now use eBay’s message system to ask questions and send messages to other eBayers.

And it’s true that spam filters now filter out many emails that are valid. You will find yourself sending email that never gets delivered to some of your buyers because their email system incorrectly flagged your email as spam and either deleted the email or sent it into a black hole somewhere and the buyer never sees it. The buyer’s email is always listed in your end-of-auction email, but that’s not always easy to find. If you use Microsoft Outlook to manage your email—a robust program in general—you’ll quickly discover one of Outlook’s drawbacks: extremely sluggish, slow search results appear when you’re performing a search for an email that contains a specific auction number. In spite of some of the advantages of the message system, skeptics claim it’s so eBay can monitor all activity and messages that occur between buyers and sellers. eBay does not want buyers and sellers making side deals as in, “If you cancel this auction now, I’ll pay you cash and you save on eBay fees that way.” It makes sense that eBay frowns on this (and might kick you off eBay if you do it). eBay deserves its pay for bringing buyers and sellers together. Yet, easy access to my buyers is important. It appears that the complaints about lack of emails, and eBay’s obvious steering in subtle ways to direct all communication between buyers and sellers through its message system, implies the message system is here to — 71 —


stay. One can only hope that eBay continues to allow us to exchange email addresses, at least in the end-of-auction notices that we each get.

Do You Still Want to eBay? The question remains, Do you still want to eBay? (Another you might ask after reading that question is, Why do you verb your nouns?) You’ve seen only some of the problems that face almost all eBayers. Yet, in reality the problems are small. The only general problem area I didn’t cover here is the problem of collecting for unpaid auctions and, worse, finding that an item you shipped already was paid for with fraudulent funds somehow and you don’t get the money after all. (You’ll read about that in Chapter 9, “It Seems We’re Always Selling.”) In spite of the problems, consider the problems you don’t have that the bricks-and-mortar stores have. You don’t incur the cost of in-store theft, you don’t have the extra cost of added insurance for your building (although you should cover your inventory and equipment), the cost of the building upkeep, and all the other hassles that go along with a traditional business. An eBay business can truly be a pleasure. Help your eBay Maniac make it a more profitable pleasure, and you’ll be worrying more often about what to do when you and your maniac take all those extra vacations you used to be unable to afford.

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5

Finding Inventory to Sell Is Easier Than You Think

e

Bay has grown so large that it has its own annual convention. eBay Live brings together people from all over the globe, primarily sellers but also buyers (most are both). These eBayers want to learn more about how to maximize their eBay income and minimize their costs. One of the top questions asked at eBay Live is, “How do I get more inventory to sell?” It’s a good question. If eBay can make you money when you sell something—and it can—then the more things you sell, the more money you should make. Once you run out of your excess household items, where do you go for more inventory? The answer is more easily answered than most people realize. Once people begin successfully selling their extra household items on eBay, they often get hooked and look around for other things to sell. This chapter explores some of the ways we’ve found to locate extra inventory, and most of these techniques will work for you also.

Never Run Out of Inventory When my eBay Maniac started selling on eBay, he began by selling his extra things. Then he tried to sell mine. Fortunately, much of what we now sell together belongs to other people. We sell on consignment. That means other people give us their extra items to sell. We sell them, keep a percentage for our time, and give them a check for the remaining amount. If the items don’t sell, we return them and the owners pay the fees we’re out. We don’t charge our own fee if the items don’t sell. You don’t have to follow our consignment pricing plan. You can charge a fixed fee for every item that you list, whether it sells or not, plus a percentage of the


final auction amount. Your charge is based on your own needs and desires. You can charge something different for different clients if that works best for you. Some clients might have smaller items that don’t always sell, and you may want to ensure that you get paid whether the item sells or not. A fixed fee isn’t against eBay rules or the law; your fees are contractual between you and the owners of what you sell. I devote the majority of this chapter to consignment selling because you will probably find consignment selling to be the easiest way to add to your selling inventory. At the same time, you must understand the problems that come with the benefits. My eBay Maniac was selling other peoples items long before I entered the business. That consignment business is now about 85% of all our eBay sales. The obvious benefit of consignment selling is that as long as you have family and friends, you’ll have things to sell. I’ll give you lots of tips throughout this chapter on how to “prime the pump” so to speak, and when you do your family and friends will rush to search through their closets for valuables you can sell for them. In spite of our best intentions, we invariably take longer than planned to list most of the consignment items we accept. Life gets in the way. Even when they’re friends and family, don’t make promises that you’ll sell the items quickly. Always play down how fast you can get their items listed. If you sell them quickly, they’ll be happily surprised, and if you’re slow, they won’t be disappointed.

Family and Friends Might Mock You Until They Need Extra Cash Here’s the way it works with us. You might find the same phenomenon. Friends and family hear we sell on eBay. At first they laugh at us. We let them because we can afford it! Eventually, perhaps a few days, weeks, or even months later, a strange transformation takes place. Those same people will ask our opinion about whether or not something might sell on eBay. We immediately reply with, “eBay is probably the very best place to sell that, given that eBay has a worldwide audience as opposed to a yard sale, which has a small number of potential buyers.” (Practice this until you know every word and you can say it as though it is natural!) You will have hooked your fish. Now reel them in. They will want to know if you have time to sell their item. Tell them you’re behind but you would be happy to take it home and list it when you can. They will be thrilled. You will now have inventory—a lot of inventory—because they will think of several other — 74 —

Chapter Five Finding Inventory to Sell Is Easier Than You Think

things as their mind races to count the money they will make and the extra room they will have. Should you limit your consignments to family and friends? I would strongly suggest the answer is yes when you and your eBay Maniac first begin consignment selling. You need a few understanding clients while you iron out the kinks you will run across. Once you’re comfortable selling several items for several people, you’ll be better prepared to take your consignment business into the world to sell for clients you’ve yet to meet.

Your Tasks When You Sell on Consignment Go into your consignments with eyes wide open. I was shocked when my eBay Maniac told me what’s required to sell your aunt’s Elvis Presley limited edition, silver-rimmed salad plate, #454321 out of only 17 million produced: • Pick up the item or have the owner bring it to you. • Take one or more pictures. • Use software to prepare the picture for efficient online viewing. • Write the auction listing. • Post the auction. • Answer questions throughout the auction’s duration. • Answer the owner’s questions about how much money they’ve made as the auction progresses. • Handle end-of-auction emails and invoicing. • Collect payment. • Wrap and mail item. • Post feedback. • Compute the owner’s income, less all eBay and PayPal fees. • Pay the owner the net income less your hard-earned percentage or fixed fee. If the owners completely trust you (assume they don’t), you can just pay them. You will keep things more professional, more accurate, and less anxious if you document where every cent of the sale went. (The documentation is a must when tax time rolls around.) An auction’s costs are comprised of the auction listing fees, the final auction fees (based on the final selling value), the PayPal fees (if the buyer paid with PayPal) including PayPal’s extra charge if an international buyer paid with PayPal, and your fee. — 75 —


About the only thing the owner should do is prepare the item for sale by cleaning it up and repairing any damage if they have the skills to make the repair. It helps if the owner writes a few notes about the item if it’s something you are unfamiliar with, especially when it comes to how old the item is, where purchased (such as in a foreign country), and other details that might help you write a more interesting auction listing.

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Take Possession of Anything and Everything You Sell

When anybody wants you to sell something, always take possession of the item before you post the auction on eBay. Your description will be far more accurate when you look at the item and then write the listing. Never trust the owners, even reliable ones, to write an item’s description of its condition and features. When you have the item in your possession, you will see all the good and bad points, and you’ll write the auction accordingly. Your eBay reputation, made clear to the world through eBay’s feedback system, is on the line. That means your income is on the line too. Throughout the auction process, interested bidders will ask questions. The only way to answer with full accuracy is if you inspect the item yourself, and the only way to do that is to have it in your possession. Taking possession is also the only way to ensure that the item is still around when the auction ends; the owner can’t sell it to someone else when you have it.

Separate Shipping from the Sale Keep shipping out of the consignment equation. Don’t share the cost of shipping and don’t share any handling fees you might charge with shipping. To combine shipping with the sale makes your bookkeeping more troublesome and you’ll almost certainly lose money by the time you get what’s left of the shipping profit. In addition, you probably don’t even have a shipping profit by the time you take into account all your mailing supply costs and time to wrap and mail. Your shipping requirements, such as those shown in Figure 5.1, are in reality a side deal made between you and your bidders. We charge enough to cover our fees plus a little extra for the packaging materials and time. The items’ original owner supplies the item, but you supply the shipping service. Therefore, you should get paid for that service, and you get paid through whatever deal you make with the buyer (through the shipping costs you listed in the auction).

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Figure 5.1 Your shipping charges and policies are between you and your bidders; they have nothing to do with your consignment agreement between you and the item’s owner.

Be Selective, Not a Sucker Learn to say no. Don’t take products on consignment that will earn you just a few bucks at most. You must consider the time involved to sell something. Sure, one cannot always predict what an item will sell for, but if you hone your research skills, you’ll often be able to learn what similar items sold for in the past. You can actually increase your consignment profits by selling fewer items if you selectively refuse the low-priced items. You have more time to devote to the higherprofit items, and you’ll get more of them listed because you aren’t wasting time with low-priced junk. My eBay Maniac and I always make it clear to our consignment clients that we need to control the option of listing or not listing an item and selling it must be based on our discretion. Explain to your client that you don’t charge a fee if the item doesn’t sell but that they still must pay the listing fees if the item doesn’t sell. There are several ways to structure a consignment deal. We only do them where the owner pays all listing fees, whether an item sells or not, but they only pay us a percentage if the item sells. You — 77 —


should also research other trading assistants in your area to see what types of fee structures they charge for their services to make sure you are competitive. When you go to pick up items for sale, you might want to take everything the owner wants you to take or be selective at that time. Probably the primary deciding factor is how much room you have at home to store the unsold items while you decide which of them you want to sell. If space is a premium, you’ll need to be selective in what you take. We always ask that the owner make us a list of all items we get from them to sell. The owners should also keep a copy. This helps eliminate misunderstandings later. You shouldn’t make the list yourself. You should also have all your fees and policies in writing and leave a copy with the owner so there’s no misunderstanding in that area either.

Your Clients Will Enjoy Watching the Auctions When selling for family and friends, we typically offer to list one to three items initially. If we can choose these items from a large assortment of items they want us to sell, so much the better. If you sell much on consignment, you may want to use the same trick my eBay Maniac uses. He wants the owners of the things we sell to be able to track their items’ auction progress even if they don’t have eBay accounts. Therefore, our primary website’s home page is nothing more than a redirect to our auction listings. If you type www.BidMentor.com, you won’t see our web page. Instead, you’ll see a listing of every one of our eBay auctions. Depending on the time of year and our schedule, the list might produce 200 or more items or as few as five, but it’s always current. We call this our Auction Catalog. It’s just a page that performs an eBay search of our current auctions, but the term Auction Catalog is a good name to refer to it by around our consignment clients, and they know exactly what we’re talking about when we use the term. As Figure 5.2 shows, such a list shows the number of current bids, the current bid price, and the time left in the auction. Also, because we always sell with a search Gallery picture upgrade (see Chapter 2, “What eBay Is All About”), the item’s owner can view a picture of the item to more quickly locate it as opposed to items we’re selling for other people.

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Figure 5.2

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By using a website to redirect to your auction listings, your consignment owners can easily track what you’re selling for them.

The Mechanism for Our Web Page Auction Listing If you want a one-stop web address that shows every auction you’re currently running, such as you see at ours when you go to www.BidMentor.com, the process is relatively simple.

If you are a little web savvy you can do it the way we do. We simply perform an eBay search of our ID and we save the URL (the web address) of the search results. (You can modify eBay’s search options until you produce exactly the search you want to perform. For example, you might want the list to appear with your highest-priced items appearing first.) We then use FrontPage to create a web page redirect of our home page. In other words, we edited index.htm to redirect to the search URL on eBay. If all of that sounds like gibberish, you need to hire someone who can do this for you. If you have a web address, it will take your computer person about 5 minutes to do this. If not, your computer person will need to help you register for your own web space, which is your website’s primary name, such as BidMentor.com. You also need hosted web space, which is disk space provided to you for a fee to hold the web pages you create. A good computer person ought to be able to do all this in a couple of hours or less for you. Once it’s set up, you won’t have to change anything unless you wish to change the kind of search performed through your Auction Catalog.

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Plan for Possible Liability In addition to a list of goods you take home to sell, you must begin to think about your liability risk. Liability is possible when selling items for other people. One of the first things to consider is breakage. What happens if you break something before you sell and mail it? If you sell anything for people you don’t know (and possibly even for those you do know), you must get a simple contract or consignment agreement written up by a competent legal professional. The contract will outline your responsibilities, the owner’s responsibilities, your commission, and other parameters of the deal. Probably your legal counsel will advise you to check your insurance policy to ensure that consigned items are insured against theft and fire when stored at your home. When it comes to breakage, here is what I suggest. The best time to discuss this with the owner is when they first approach you with a serious request to sell their items. They will be excited about the prospect of the money and the empty closet space and will be less concerned about what you’re about to lay on them. Make it clear that you will take every caution possible to protect their items and manage them with the utmost care. Yet, accidents happen. They need to understand that you cannot be held liable if you break something while it’s in your care. If you have a contract, this should be made clear in the contract as well.

eBay Motors May Be an Exception Although we insist that we take possession of anything and everything we sell before we list on consignment, my eBay Maniac told me that we needed to modify that policy for one item someone asked him to sell. That exception was for a local used car dealership that wanted us to list one of their vehicles on eBay. eBay Motors, the section eBay devotes to anything and everything related to motors, is currently the largest used car dealership in the world. Figure 5.3 shows the eBay Motors home page. You’ll go to the eBay Motors section when you click the eBay Motors link on eBay’s homepage. Neither my eBay Maniac nor I are extremely knowledgeable about used cars. Obviously, our dealership knows far more about this vehicle than we ever could. In that case, it made sense that we take the pictures and inspect the car but rely on them to give us details about the car and to keep it on their lot as opposed to parking it in front of our house. We listed the dealership’s phone number and email address on the auction page itself and directed all questions there.

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Figure 5.3

eBay Motors sells so many cars, it’s earned the title Largest Used Car Dealership on Earth.

We are close friends to the owners of this family-owned, small dealership. We know them well enough to know they would not sell the car while we had it listed. Actually, we didn’t even care if they did that as long as they told us about the sale before the auction ended with a winning bidder. Toward the end of the auction we would call them just to make sure the auction should go to its conclusion. Our selling for a car dealer added another bonus. The transfer of vehicles, with all the title work, isn’t something we’re familiar with ourselves. We knew that if a deal was struck for the car, we would not have to worry with any legal transfer; the dealership is all set up for that, plus they can help the buyer with getting credit and so forth. We could never have agreed to this plan where we didn’t get the car on our property if we didn’t know the dealership owners so well. We knew we could trust them to be fair and honest with any interested bidders because it was their business that was also on the line. If we didn’t know them, as little as we know about cars, we would not have taken on this assignment.

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eBay Motors Works Differently from Other eBay Auctions A consignment situation works differently on eBay Motors because eBay Motors works differently from other kinds of eBay auctions. Most people don’t let car

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auctions go to their auction’s conclusion. Instead, most car auctions end because the seller takes down the auction once a buyer comes to inspect the car and make a purchase, hopefully before the auction ends. This is one of the few times eBay doesn’t care if you deal outside of the auction and cancel the auction before the auction would normally end. eBay Motor’s fee schedule is not based on the final auction price as most auction fees are. eBay gets paid for car auctions when listed and gets a bonus if the car gets at least one bid. That’s where eBay’s fees stop, so eBay doesn’t care what kind of side deal the car buyers and sellers make once the auction is listed.

Wholesaling Perils and Profits You’ll have an unlimited supply of goods to sell if you locate a wholesaler who will sell you discounted items that you can mark up and resell on eBay. Check with your tax advisor because you’ll almost certainly need a resale license and be set up as a formal small business before you will be able to get into wholesaling. Most wholesalers won’t talk to you until you can produce a resale license number, and some even require a formal letter of request printed on your company’s official stationary. When you enter the business of wholesaling, begin testing several products until you find some that sell well. Even better, locate a niche line that you’re somewhat knowledgeable about that contains a series of related products. Suppose you sell MP3 players; you could offer batteries, headsets, car chargers, and carrying cases too. Expect losses at first until you find the right niche and low-cost goods that you can resell for a reliable profit. This book’s website at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com lists several wholesale resources for you to learn more about what is required to be a reseller of wholesale products as well as a biased selection of books that we feel are the best to prepare you for your wholesale career if you choose to go the wholesale route. Currently, we don’t use wholesalers, although we know several eBayers who do. We have so much inventory we haven’t had time to go look for a wholesaler who can load us up with even more things to sell, but if you are having difficulty locating inventory or want to expand your business, wholesale merchandise is certainly something to consider. — 82 —


The advantage of wholesaling, besides the fact that you have an unlimited amount of goods available to sell, is that you’ll be selling the same item repeatedly. As you do so, you should test different titles and auction descriptions to determine which is most effective for each item you sell. To do this, take one of your resell item listings and record its average selling price. Use this as your control listing, the one you’ll measure all others against. Change the auction title by adding or changing words in the title that might attract more buyers the next time you list the item. Perhaps start at a different minimum bid. Perhaps adjust the shipping charges. Adjust anything about the auction you want to adjust but only change one thing at a time and list that auction three or four times. Average the sales over those auctions. If the average sale price is more than your control auction, then the modified listing becomes your new control against which all subsequent changes will be compared. Continue this way until you have a powerful auction page that you can count on for maximum income, and do this for each item you sell.

Selling Mostly Unique Items Poses Unique Problems When you sell unique items, which is what you’ll typically do if you sell on consignment, it’s difficult to test your listings. You’ve only got one of each thing to sell. Although your profit percentage (called profit margin) on wholesale items will be lower generally than unique consigned items, you do less work to sell and then relist wholesale items. My eBay Maniac refers to an inventory of unique items as an inefficient inventory. He refers to an inventory of several similar, or identical, products as an efficient inventory. An inefficient inventory is far more troublesome to manage. An inefficient inventory means unique pictures, unique descriptions, unique mailing situations, and unique listings. An inefficient inventory is what we specialize in. Yet, the profit margin on unique items that have little competition is generally higher than wholesale items. Sometimes we yearn for the simpler wholesale item that we can click a button on our My eBay page to relist, but generally we know that we’re paid a premium for handling a more inefficient inventory. You will often have more competition for your products if you resell wholesale items. You might even compete against yourself! How do you sell 10,000 iPod first-generation armband holders for example? If you do find yourself having to write a different auction listing for every item you sell, begin to spot consistencies. No matter how inefficient your inventory is, some things are — 83 —


the same across all your auctions. For example, your shipping policy is basically the same, your payment policy, and whatever information about yourself will be the same. You can store this information in a Word document (or better, in a web page program such as FrontPage if you are somewhat savvy in that area) and then copy and paste that static information each time you list another item. Some auction tools will aid you in repeating text that rarely changes by automatically inserting the text. We use Mpire (I’ll tell you why Mpire works best for us at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/Mpire if you want more details). Mpire is a website that helps us build auctions and automatically includes our standard text, called boilerplate text, every time we list an item to sale. Without such a tool, an inefficient inventory item is far more time-consuming to list. The section “Good Tools Help You List Auctions Faster” in the next chapter explains more about such tools that will aid your eBay business.

Advertising for Items Perhaps you and your eBay Maniac are new to town and have few family members close by. You’re about to run out of things to sell around your house and you need inventory to continue selling on eBay. You can always advertise. One of the best ways is first to determine what you’re good at selling. Typically, this means some area you’re knowledgeable in. Perhaps either you or your maniac have a collectible vintage record collection. If so, then you know what other collectors look for and you might be good at selling vintage records. Post signs around town and list in your classified newspaper section. State in your ad’s headline, “We pay cash for old records.” You’ve probably seen signs such as these. If so, you can bet the folks on the other end of that sign are using eBay, and possibly other online and retail outlets, to sell what they buy at a decent markup.

The eBay Shirt Trick You can buy clothes on eBay. Of course, you already knew that. What you may not know is that eBay sells shirts, jackets, ties, pins, buttons, and hats that all have eBay logos and sayings about eBay on them. This eBay wear, found at www.TheEbayShop.com, provides you and your family with instant walking advertising of your consignment business. Just go grocery shopping with one of eBay shirts on some time and you might get 5 to 15 people stop you and talk about eBay! That’s wonderful and is a great way to mingle with others, but what you’re after especially are the ones who stop you and say, “Do you work for eBay?” or “Why do you wear an eBay shirt, did you buy that on eBay?”

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(These are two typical questions that we’re often asked when wearing eBay logo clothing.) Our standard answer to those kinds of questions is, “We have found that we can make other people a lot of money when they let us sell their extra things on eBay.” If you say this naturally and positively, you are going to find people who will follow up with something along these lines: “I’ve been trying to get rid of some things, such as some of my mother’s antiques and jewelry. Do you think they would sell on eBay? Would you be able to sell them for me?” You then go into high gear, telling them how wonderful eBay is, how you and your spouse have been selling for a while, and tout your success stories about how happy others are when you sell for them. Be sure to drop the line, “You know, eBay is known as the World’s Largest Garage Sale.” If you get business cards printed inexpensively telling about your consignment business, now would be a good time to hand one to the interested prospect!

Become a Trading Assistant eBay offers the Trading Assistant program for experienced eBayers who want to sell items for other people on a consignment basis. You can learn more the Trading Assistant program at http://pages.ebay.com/tradingassistants. A Trading Assistant is anyone who wants to sell for others as long as they meet these criteria: • Have sold at least 10 items in the past 90 days. • Have a feedback score of 100 or higher. • Have a 97% feedback rating or higher. • Have an eBay account in good standing. (That’s eBay codetalk that means they don’t owe eBay a bunch of money!) The criteria is an attempt by eBay to allow sellers to become Trading Assistants only if they have enough recent selling experience to demonstrate they’re capable of handling the sale process adequately. When someone wants to sell on eBay but doesn’t understand enough about eBay to sell, or doesn’t have the time to do it, that person can go to the Trading Assistant eBay area and search for a Trading Assistant in their area. By finding one in their area, if one exists, they can drop off the items for sale or sometimes a Trading Assistant will agree

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to pick up the items to sell. eBay allows Trading Assistants to charge whatever fees they deem are necessary. Your agreement can differ for each person you sell for. I don’t recommend that you become a Trading Assistant too soon. You take on more implied liability when you sell for strangers. Personally, I don’t feel comfortable meeting at a stranger’s home to pick up things to sell, although my eBay Maniac doesn’t mind doing that. eBay’s Trading Assistant program is wildly successful, so don’t let some of the problems stop you from becoming a Trading Assistant if it seems right for you. But I’d say do so only after you’ve exhausted all your own excess items, your family’s excess items, and your friends’ excess items. Then you might want to venture into the Trading Assistant area and read more about it.

The Typical Problem Is Too Much Inventory What many eBayers learn once they begin selling several items for other people is exactly the opposite of the problem they expected: instead of not enough items to sell, they find they have far too many. Their eBay sales grow faster than they can keep up with. This should be viewed as a good problem. This is a problem you can solve by adding resources to your home eBay business. One way to help reduce this problem is to bring on new employees. First, make this a family affair and hire some of your kids. Your tax accountant will offer several tax advantages for doing so, and the education you’re giving your kids is more valuable than the tax benefits. You also might have to do what I did: put the brakes on your selling until you sell your current inventory. (I think my eBay Maniac would store items in the shower stall if I let him.) After I had learned about eBay enough to get a handle on how things worked, I asked my eBay Maniac if he would slow down acquiring new things. Our eBay area wouldn’t hold much more without overflowing back into our non-eBay living space. The primary reason was so many friends had so many items they asked us to sell, and my eBay Maniac kept going after those items every time someone told him they were ready. He did realize that we were getting behind and he decided to accept fewer consignment items for a while until we sold down what we had. Chapter 13, “Where Will All Our eBay Activity Lead?,” explores several ways your entire family, from the some of the youngest to the oldest, can participate and help grow your eBay business and bring you closer than ever.

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Recordkeeping Tips for Selling Other People’s Items Once you begin selling for others, a new problem will creep into your eBay business. Soon you’ll be asking each other, “Is that purple flower vase Gloria’s or Michelle’s?” In other words, your new problem is how to keep separate your clients’ auctions and how to keep separate income and expense records for each of them. One thing we’ve found that we must do is insert a code into each auction listing that tells us who the item belongs to. We keep a list of names numbered from 1 to however many clients we work with. At the bottom of an auction, in very small print, we’ll put the number that represents who the item is for. Another helpful technique we’ve found is to group client’s items together for the week. In other words, this afternoon we might list several items for Client A and not list any for Clients B or C. By maintaining this routine, we can better track what belongs to whom by the group of auctions an item appears in. Also, the clients are better able to follow their listings when they view our Auction Catalog (see the section earlier in this chapter called “Be Selective, Not a Sucker”) because their items appear together as they scroll through the Auction Catalog and are not scattered between other items they don’t recognize. In addition, you must keep an accounting record of all sales for each client and determine how much each auction costs. At the end of the month, you need to create a statement for each consignment client. I suggest you stick with paying your clients on a calendar monthly basis. Our clients know that they don’t get their statements and checks at the beginning of the month for the previous month. We aren’t able to do our monthly consignment payments until close to the end of the month because we don’t pay our clients until we get paid. This is a very standard practice and one you should definitely have in place, if your maniac doesn’t already. My eBay Maniac created a simple Excel worksheet and for several years has used it to keep track of our consignment auctions. To use Excel is relatively simple but can be time-consuming if you list lots of auctions. Just getting the eBay data from eBay to Excel involves these steps: you must go your My eBay page, click the Seller Account link, display the monthly statement of eBay fees for the month you want to account for, click the Item # column to sort the fees by item listed that month, and then download the statement that eBay produces into something called a comma-separated values file that Excel can read. This file ends with the .CSV filename extension, and Excel has no trouble reading such files. Once you load the file into Excel, you just have raw data, as Figure 5.4 shows. — 87 —


Figure 5.4

When you download eBay data into an Excel worksheet, the data comes into Excel unformatted.

The data is each auction’s listing fees and selling price, as well as payments you may have made to eBay to pay for your selling fees. The data is a start but only shows eBay’s fees and each auction’s final selling price if the item sold. No final selling price appears if the item didn’t sell. First you’ll need to scroll through the worksheet and delete all items that do not belong to the consignment client you’re working on at the time. (If you sold each client’s things together in batches as previously recommended, their items will naturally fall together in groups throughout your worksheet, and this helps you filter out the ones that don’t belong.) You need to add columns that compute the gross profit of each auction, then add a column to deduct PayPal fees if the buyer paid with PayPal, then add a column to compute your commission, and finally add totals to each column so you can come to a final tally of what you made and what you owe your consignment client. This book’s website, www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com, in its Resources section, has the worksheet we use for our consignment clients. You’ll spot it when you click the Resources link and scroll through the list. You can download the worksheet and detailed instructions on how to convert eBay’s CSV invoice file to this consignment worksheet. Feel free to use and adapt the worksheet to your particular situation. Be warned, as this section describes, it’s a somewhat tedious route, but when you first begin selling for clients, it will come in handy until your business grows to a point where you’ll be ready and able to pay for additional resources that will automate the consignment records for you. — 88 —


And you have to do this for each client. Sound like fun? It isn’t. If you or your eBay Maniac possesses basic Excel skills, using such a worksheet will be simpler than it will be if you’ve never used Excel. For some, there might be better ways, however. These better ways still require your involvement to determine which auctions belong to which client, but much of the bookkeeping is done by someone else. To do this, you subscribe to an auction management service such as the one we use, Mpire (www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/Mpire), which we’ve found to have the simplest consignment management tools that automate all the income and expense reporting. With an auction management company such as Mpire, you first set up your client commission schedules and payment requirements. You can easily change, add, and delete client records as your business grows and changes. The best part of a system such as Mpire is that at any point in time you can click a button and see exactly what you owe whom.

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We Stuck with Excel Perhaps Too Long

For the past 2 years or more, each month I dreaded doing the Excel shuffle—creating, editing, and finagling a worksheet for each of our consignment clients. Sometimes the imported CSV file would have more than 2,500 lines of data, and I would have to format, calculate, add fee tables, and spend a lot of time figuring out what we owed each consignment client each month. I should have moved to an auction management system such as Mpire long before we did. Having said that, I’m thankful that I did the work by hand (if you consider using Excel in this manner “by hand”). I learned a lot about what we needed in an auction management system. Being fairly adept in Excel I found ways to speed up the work over time. But using the worksheet approach still took valuable time away from my other eBay activities. When you first begin, you should use a notebook (if you don’t know Excel) or Excel (worth the effort to learn the fundamentals) to do your consignment accounting manually for a while. You will run across things you want to change about your consignment business, and you’ll determine what you need as your consignment business grows. Once your business grows to the point where the Excel method is too time-consuming, you then will be ready to take better advantage of a system such as Mpire. The small monthly fee involved with using such an auction management service will be worth far more to you due to the time you’ll save over doing it the old way.

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Enough Talk, Let’s List! You now are well-grounded and know what to expect when you join your eBay Maniac. As a matter of fact, you are already armed with enough tips and advice that you are going to bring to your family eBay business a lot of immediate financial benefit when you join in, assuming you haven’t already jumped in before you finished this chapter. The next chapter begins a new part of the book that is targeted to specific tasks. For example, in the next chapter you will learn far more about how to write effective eBay titles and listings that get results. If your eBay Maniac has read the plethora of eBay books out there, you will be learning about ways to make eBay work better than have ever appeared in print before now. Do you want you and your eBay Maniac to leave all your competitors in the dust? Turn the page!

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Part III eBay’s Nitty-Gritty—Writing Listings and Making Sales 6

Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item . . . . . . . . . . . . .93

7

How Descriptions Drive Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107

8

Once the Auction Begins, There’s No Time to Rest . . . . .129

9

It Seems We’re Always Selling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147


6

Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item

T

he more auctions you list, the more money you should make. That’s why it’s important to learn ways to post auctions quicker. This chapter covers some of the tools that are available that help you create listings faster. We’ve learned that it won’t benefit you much if you list quickly but don’t describe your items well. The text in your listings is where the rubber meets the road. We’ve discovered that two people can sell identical items in identical conditions and yet one seller dramatically outsells the other. Feedback has some impact on whether buyers trust you enough to bid on your items, but what really sells things are your listings. Therefore, once you learn some of the tools available to help you and your eBay Maniac list more easily, you’ll have more time to devote to writing descriptions that get the highest bids possible.

Good Tools Help You List Auctions Faster The more I learned about eBay, the more I learned about the power of multiple auctions. Before I began helping, my eBay Maniac would sometimes only list five or so items in a week’s time. Depending on the time of year and how eclectic those items were, all five might end unsold without bids. When we can work together and list 50 or more items in a week, it lessens the pinch we feel when five or so get no bids. With so many items listed, we’re sure to get several of them sold, especially if some of them aren’t related and appeal to different kinds of buyers. So once I began helping, we made it a goal to list more auctions each week than my eBay Maniac could do alone. We found that eBay and other companies provide tools that enable sellers to become more efficient and effective. As you become more efficient, you will be able to post listings faster and with less trouble. This means you will have more auctions going at one time. As you become


more effective, your auctions generate more numerous and higher bids, so you make more money on each item you sell. Just by lending my novice help to my eBay Maniac, our home eBay business grew because we could, together, post more listings. I handled wrapping and mailing and some picture-taking, while he wrote and listed the auctions. What really allows us to post a lot more items, though, are the tools we’ve come across over the years that shortcut some of our routine tasks. We still look at any new tools that become available because we’re always wanting ways to make eBay easier and faster.

About eBay’s Listing Tools These listing tools are generally software-based, often websites you interact with to develop better listings, auction management software, and after-sale support practices. Your eBay Maniac has probably researched some of these tools and may be using one or more of them already. If not, you should explore what’s available because some will certainly help you work better than you already do. If you decide not to use any of the tools available to sellers, you should still visit these sites regularly. New seller tools are made available and competition among them keeps the prices low on those that are fee-based, so you might find something later that doesn’t exist now. eBay’s selling tools are located at http://pages.ebay.com/sell/tools.html. Figure 6.1 shows the Welcome screen that appears when you surf to this page. Although some of eBay’s tools are free, eBay usually lets you try any of the fee-based tools for 30 days free to see if you will benefit from their use. Here’s a list of some of the more popular eBay tools: • Turbo Lister—A program you download from eBay to your computer that enables you to create and manage auction listings even when you’re not logged into the Internet. One of its best features is being able to upload all your auctions in a single batch and request that they all begin 2 minutes apart, 5 minutes apart, or whatever timeframe you request apart from each other. If you sell complementary items such as speakers for stereos that you also sell, you don’t want such auctions to end at the same time; instead, you want to space them apart so that a buyer has time to win more than one item. The best part of Turbo Lister is that it’s free. • Selling Manager (and Selling Manager Pro)—The Selling Manager tools act as beefed-up My eBay pages that provide sales management software. Selling Manager allows you to quickly relist items, track your eBay activities and sales levels, print invoices and shipping labels, and automate many customer emails and — 94 —

Chapter Six Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item

feedback tasks that would otherwise consume your time if you aren’t using such an automated service now.

Figure 6.1

eBay offers several free and fee-based selling tools that will make your eBay home business more efficient and more effective.

• File Exchange—Enables high-volume sellers to generate hundreds or thousands of listings in a worksheet or database format, manage those listings offline, and then upload the listings all at once. • Picture Manager—A picture-hosting service where you can upload your auction photographs. If your eBay Maniac has a website or hosted web space already, you won’t need to use Picture Manager. Otherwise, you need a way to hold your auction pictures online, whether through eBay’s Picture Manager or a third-party tool. eBay hosts one picture per auction for free. This means you can store one picture per auction on eBay’s site. A button appears on the Sell Your Item form that enables you to upload the auction’s picture from your computer to eBay. You have to have a way to display your photo on the Internet, and this is perhaps the simplest way. If you routinely use only one picture per auction, you don’t need to subscribe to Picture Manager or any third-party picture-hosting service. Some auctions require multiple pictures, however, and unless you use Picture Manager or another picture-hosting service of some kind, eBay’s fees for adding multiple pictures to an auction are too costly to do routinely.

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• Accounting Assistant—Transfers your eBay and PayPal data to accounting software such as QuickBooks.

Third-party Tools Are Also Helpful Although eBay’s tools are superb, they will not necessarily be the best available for you. You and your eBay Maniac should keep an eye open for other tools that might help your specific needs. eBay’s Solutions Directory at http://solutions.ebay.com/ contains listings of hundreds of companies offering free and fee-based tools that might help your eBay business. Most of these services allow you to use their full service for at least 30 days as a free trial. We’ve used just about all the major ones and have found Mpire to be the one that works best for our family eBay business (www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/Mpire). You should try Mpire and several others to see which one is the best service for you as your business grows. On the Solutions Directory site, you’ll find services that include such categories as auction listing and inventory management, photograph-hosting space, email control, afterauction checkout routines, shipping services, and research assistance software to help you better determine starting auction bids and time durations.

The Importance of Your Description Auction listings can be so well-written that bidders won’t be able to help themselves; they’ll have to bid! Okay, perhaps that’s slight hyperbole, but consider the wording of popular catalogs such as Land’s End. When you read a description of one of their standard T-shirts, for example, you feel as though the President of Land’s End is your best friend sitting next to you telling you about this magnificently woven garment. Whether you buy the shirt or not, you still enjoy the experience. You aren’t pressured; instead the item’s description makes you so familiar and cozy with the product that as you read the description, you picture yourself wearing the shirt and getting attention from others because it’s on your back. Now that’s the way to sell a T-shirt! As you and your eBay Maniac sell in the coming years, always be on the lookout at ads you see and listings that pique your interest. Try to discern why one ad might interest you when another doesn’t. The smart eBay sellers know they’re constantly learning new ways to sell, and the smart eBay sellers are typically rewarded with more income to pay for that education.

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A Few Marketing Secrets Result in a Big Profit Boost for You My eBay Maniac began studying direct marketing tactics and our sales went up when he began implementing some of what he learned. Although you can devote thousands of hours to studying these techniques (and my maniac has), there are a few fundamentals you should know that will help your sales. These are simple fundamentals, as I’ve learned to use them in short order without a lot of study. Some seem so obvious (once you learn them) that you’ll wonder why everybody doesn’t apply them. In addition to impressing buyers, your eBay Maniac will be impressed! The best thing you will gain from the following discussion is the ability to improve your sell-through rates and final selling prices. A sell-through rate is the percentage of items you list that actually sell. (Unfortunately, not every item listed on eBay sells. Far from it.) Once you learn the following extremely fundamental concepts and teach them to your eBay Maniac, you will immediately gain a competitive advantage over others who sell what you sell.

Don’t Sell to Everybody Your eBay auction does not work like a billboard. Yet, too many sellers act as though it does. A billboard is a sign that thousands of people pass by. The billboard has about 2 seconds to grab someone’s attention. The odds of that happening are slim just because of the wide audience range that passes the billboard every day. I’ve learned from my eBay Maniac that the best sales are made when an audience is approached who has a leaning toward wanting the item you’re selling. This is called targeted marking according to my eBay Maniac, but who cares what it’s called? Hey, if it works, I like it. Suppose a new video rental store uses a billboard to drum up sales. Perhaps 30% of people who drive by won’t even look at the billboard. Of the 70% who are left, some have their own favorite video rental store already, some never rent movies, and some never watch movies. So of everybody who drives by, perhaps fewer than 10% will read the billboard with any interest at all, and most of them will forget about the store the moment they pass.

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Targeted marketing techniques teach that you should only market to people who have an interest in your product. Why pay for a billboard when 90% or more of everyone who passes that billboard absolutely doesn’t care about—or want—what you have to offer? Instead of putting up a billboard, the new video rental store should find out where its customers go and advertise there. Perhaps many of its potential customers read a certain magazine, such as a movie fan magazine. The store should advertise in that magazine. The idea is, don’t advertise a specific product to everybody. Advertise a specific product to specific people. And yes, this has a major impact in the way you should approach eBay sales. www.eBay.com does work like a billboard in one respect. I guess this is why so many people create auctions that do far more poorly than they should. eBay is the world’s largest yard sale, and millions of buyers are looking for millions of different items. One thing I’ve learned is not to write our listings for everybody. I should write them only for someone interested in that specific product.

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eBay Categories

Perhaps you’ve already noticed that eBay separates items into categories, as Figure 6.2 shows. Some categories are Antiques, Art, Books, Health & Beauty, Home & Garden, Musical Instruments, and Sporting Goods. Each of the primary categories is broken down further into subcategories. So Musical Instruments contains subcategories such as Brass, Percussion, and Woodwind. Those often break down even further. Buyers sometimes prefer to shop by category. For example, if you’re looking for a trombone, you can search for the word Trombone, but you’ll get lots of hits that aren’t for the instrument itself. You’ll get results for trombone sheet music, trombone stands, trombone audio CDs, and trombone cases in addition to trombones. Although you could narrow your search, you could go directly to the Trombone category by clicking Musical Instruments and then under the Brass section clicking Trombone. You’ll be taken to a listing of current trombones for sale that you can now browse. As a seller, you’ll pick a category and subcategory when you list an item for sale. Buyers browsing through that category will see your item. So you need to sell in the category that best fits whatever you sell. In spite of the importance of selling in the proper category, most buyers arrive at auctions through the search feature. This helps ensure that your auction lookers are targeted for the items you’re selling.

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Categories

Figure 6.2

Make sure you list items in their proper categories so that buyers can browse by category and locate what you’re selling.

eBay Does Some of Your Work For You I’m not really trying to turn you into a direct marketer. I’m not one, and I’m no expert. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much effort to use the fantastic techniques the people in direct marketing teach. By the way, direct marketing refers to a way to market directly to a target audience. From that description, you can see why my eBay Maniac and I feel it’s so important. To market your items effectively simply means you need to go where the action is—that is, where your buyers are. Otherwise, you spend a lot of resources on people who will never have an interest in what you have to sell. McDonalds and Wal-Mart have the resources to advertise to the world and build their brand recognition. You don’t have the funds they do, so you must work smarter. You must describe (advertise) your products only to people who already have shown an interest in your products.

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The fantastic thing about eBay is that eBay does a lot to bring customers to your door. Virtually. Now that you understand the reason that targeted marketing is important, you’ll more appreciate why eBay is so effective. Even better, you and your eBay Maniac will be able to leverage these techniques to boost your profits.

How Buyers Locate Your Auction Helps Your Selling Strategy You can count on the following with an almost 100% certainty: if anybody looks at your auction page, they have an interest in what you’re selling—perhaps only a slight interest, but they have one. This is a marketing dream. As my eBay Maniac has taught me, that’s an opportunity one shouldn’t waste. How does someone get to one of your auctions? If you answered, “from an eBay search,” then you understood the most important concept from earlier chapters—especially the section “A Searching Overview” in Chapter 2, “What eBay Is All About.” Of course, you might also get lookers from category browsing, although they won’t be as numerous as those who arrive from a search. Here’s the bottom-line reason that eBay benefits you by bringing you a targeted audience who is already interested in what you sell: suppose you sell camera tripods. People who click to see your latest camera tripod auction are interested in buying a tripod almost every time! Half the battle—and it’s the hard half—is already done for you. They arrived there most likely by searching for “camera tripod” or “tripod” or “photo tripod” or “photography tripod,” and your auction somehow made its way into their search results. Other than luck, there is basically no way for someone to stumble onto your auctions randomly; if they’re looking at your auction, they are almost always doing so as the result of a title or category search. Your fish is already hooked. Your fish wants to bite at something or they’d be doing something better with their time than searching for tripods. If you’ve pleased buyers in the past, they may have stored your eBay ID in their Favorite Sellers list. That’s wonderful because it means they trust you. It also means every week eBay sends them an email with some of your items displayed. Bidders add sellers to their Favorite Sellers list by clicking the Add to Favorite Sellers link atop any seller’s auction page.

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Do You See the Power eBay Hands You? There is nothing else like it. Basically, everybody who looks at your auction has a desire for something like what you’re selling.

It doesn’t mean they will buy your item. You’ve got to do your job at selling and show a good photo or two of the product. Your item might not be exactly what the buyer wants. That’s fine. Still, you have the best opportunity possible to sell to any person on eBay who looks at your auction. You can immediately change the way you and your eBay Maniac write auctions. Move away from the billboard approach. The following section tells you how.

The More You Tell, the More You Sell It’s time to put all this marketing background into direct action. Oh, this is good; you will notice a remarkable sales improvement once you and your eBay Maniac implement this single section of the book. I stare in amazement sometimes at the bids we get when we’re selling exactly what others sell. Remember the Land’s End T-shirt example from earlier in this chapter? If you write your description properly, your buyers will want to bid on your auction. (Always be truthful and believe what you write.) Armed with the knowledge that people looking at your auctions have some level of interest already, you need to move into selling mode immediately in your description. This does not mean that you become the cliché used-car dealer. It means you work smartly to get high sales. First of all, you now have time to describe the item. A billboard has time for perhaps five words that will hardly ever get read. How much of an ad can you convey that way? In an eBay auction, you can use 5,000 or more words to describe your item (okay, maybe 5,000 is a little too much in most cases) and most lookers will at least read some of what you write. Remember many of them will have an interest automatically because of how they got to your auction page. Many will read everything you say.

Lead with the Biggest Benefit When I first began writing descriptions for our auctions, my eBay Maniac would rewrite some of them. While doing so, he would say, “Always lead with the biggest benefit.” I now find that second-nature, as you will too in time. — 101 —


Prioritize the benefits of your item and put the most useful and sought-after benefits at the top of the listing. You then follow with the lesser benefits, the specs, the condition, and so on. Use several sections to break up the text but tell everything you can about the item. Tell how the item benefits the buyer. Tell the item’s strengths. If the item is in good shape, state that early. List some important technical specifications if it’s something electronic or something whose specs are vital to a buyer. Use some of the space to teach your buyer something. If you’re selling a juicing machine, explain that your juicer has a slower motor that leaves more vitamins and enzymes in the juice that faster motors will burn up. If you’re selling a juicer with one of the faster motors, then explain how your juicer’s juice will be ready more quickly than other juicers with less clean-up. You must always be honest. Tout the benefits but list any drawbacks the item has. Otherwise, your buyer will regret getting a surprise along with the item in the mail. Chapter 7, “How Descriptions Drive Sales,” revisits this topic and dives deeper into auction-writing techniques. For now, just remember that you cannot really tell too much.

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Get Information from Your Auction Counters

You can put a counter at the bottom of every auction page that tells you how many visitors have been to your auction. Your eBay Maniac can show you how to do this (you request the counter on one of the Sell Your Item pages when you create a listing). If an auction has gone for several days without any activity and your counter shows a very low number of visitors, you should beef up your auction title because it’s not attracting enough interest. Probably you didn’t use enough search terms in the title to be found in a normal search for that item.

A Bad Listing and a Good Listing Compared Consider the effectiveness of the following title and auction description:

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Case study #1 Title: L@@k! A Fantastic Trackball! Scroll to PC Success!!! Description: Here’s a trackball (see picture) that replaces your mouse. I’ve used one like it for a year and I love it! If you’ve never used a trackball but have always used a mouse, throw away that mouse forever! I love the fact I am not limited to using it as a USB mouse but that I can use this as a wireless mouse.

Compare an auction with that title and description to one that goes something like this:

Case study #2 Title: Kingman New Trackball USB or Wireless 2-inch Track Ball Description: If your mouse gets lost on a busy desktop, place your bid right now for this Kingman trackball. Mouse users who try a trackball never want to go back to their old mouse. This trackball solves the problem of desktop space. The base never moves like a mouse. Instead, you roll the ball atop the trackball to move your computer’s cursor. With a 12-foot cable, this trackball gives you plenty of room to work. Great with a PC or Mac computer and offers you the option of being wireless if you don’t have a spare USB port. Even if you do have a spare port, the wireless option clears yet another thing from your desk. Place a bid and relieve your wrist. We felt as though we were getting wrist burn, or worse, carpal tunnel, from moving that mouse year after year. The 2-inch ball atop this trackball means we can move the cursor from one edge of our screen to the other edge without lifting our finger from the ball. And oh, it rolls so smoothly. Using our computer was beginning to be a chore with that mouse because of the way our wrist began to feel. That chore is once again a pleasure. The default setting for this trackball is initially right-handed. In Windows, you can reprogram the left and right buttons to make it simple to use left-handed if you prefer. No installation disk comes with this mouse because most of today’s operating systems (Windows XP, Mac OS/Tiger, Linux) recognize the trackball automatically. If you use an older operating system, you will have to go to Kingman’s Web address listed on the box to download drivers you will need to make it work. Style: The base is 4 inches square. Four buttons surround the mouse, two of which you can configure to start any program, launch a Web page, or perform just about any other task your computer can do. Condition: This is a new trackball, still in its original box. My wife and I both ordered one of these last week for our home computer because we’d discussed the benefits of the trackball over the mouse. Neither of us realized the other placed the order so we have two but need only one. We could return it, but we’d have to pay a restocking fee and also pay shipping. Our mistake is your gain so place your bid now before someone else gets this. Shipping: We typically ship within 24 hours of receiving your payment. We accept PayPal, checks, and money orders. We ship internationally and our rates are listed at the bottom of this auction.

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Both sets of titles and descriptions are for the same item. Perhaps the picture for both is virtually the same. But which gains the bidders’ trust? Which answers all of the bidder’s questions? Which is going to sell better? The error that the majority of sellers make is they don’t tell enough about what they’re selling. Your buyers are at your auction because they have an interest in what you’re selling. Don’t let them down. Give them more than they expect. You will not bore them with too much text! (Unless the text is boring; be sure to write as though you’re telling a story to keep their interest.) Here are the problems with the first listing: • The title wastes valuable space on fancy letters that do not grab the bidders’ interest but instead do the opposite. It looks like spam, and such listings turn off more buyers than they attract. • The title doesn’t say anything about the trackball except that it’s a trackball! Is it USB or just wireless? How large is it? Who makes it? • In this case, the description is worse than the picture by itself. Who cares if the seller likes it or how long they’ve used it? The number one aspect of every buyer in the world is that they only care about themselves, not you. It’s nothing personal, but they don’t care if you like what you’re selling. In this case, they need to know why they will like the trackball. Unless you’re a certified expert in the field who can demonstrate credibility as a tester or user of your product, keep your own feelings to yourself—unless you can wrap how you’ve used the product into a benefit for the buyer. • The description says nothing about the manufacturer. Is it some knock-off brand? Does the seller ship to Canada? Is this a new trackball? The title says PC, so does that mean it won’t work with a Mac computer? Without answers to such questions, a potential buyer will likely look somewhere else. “How does this help me work together with my eBay Maniac?” you’re probably asking right now. Have a little more patience. Not only is the discussion in this chapter giving you one of the most powerful ways to launch your life as an eBayer with an extremely powerful boost to your success rate, you’re getting ready to see how bringing this skill to the table early will cement your eBay relationship with your better half. Here are the advantages of the second listing: • The title uses 55 characters, the maximum number of characters allowed for your eBay title. Now that’s good use of valuable real estate! — 104 —


• The title is crammed full of keywords. The manufacturer, the computer connection, and the condition (new), all appear in this title. This auction will appear in just about any search performed for this item. Is the title a complete sentence with good grammar? No, and it doesn’t have to be. The title’s sole purpose is to be found in eBay searches. The description is where you write the prose. • The seller used a neat trick here. Show this to your eBay Maniac in case it’s new to both of you. She used both “trackball” and “track ball” in the title. Depending on the item, if you have room to do this, your listing will appear in far more search results. Some buyers looking for a trackball will almost certainly use two separate words, track and ball, occasionally when searching on eBay. This seller’s title guarantees it appears either way. • The description is long. Amateur sellers, even ones who’ve struggled to sell on eBay for years, might say it’s too long. After all, it’s just a trackball and who has time to write such a listing? I assure you that my husband and I have time because we make so much more money with these kinds of listings than we would otherwise. Even though it’s long, it reads almost like a story. The description begins with powerful benefits offered by a trackball over a mouse. The text is broken down into easy-to-read sections with subheadings to make it even easier to read. • A drawback for some bidders, the fact that the mouse is right-handed by default, is addressed in the auction and the solution is provided. Also, buyers with older operating systems know they will have to do a little more work than others to locate the proper drivers to make the trackball work. That’s fine, because they’re used to doing that by now if they’ve bought programs or added hardware recently. This listing addresses that problem and discusses the solution. • The shipping terms and the payments accepted are discussed. There’s hardly a question that a buyer might have that this description doesn’t answer.

Write Listings Together for a While Write two separate listings now that you both understand the power of the tell-to-sell technique and then compare and combine your notes to create the most powerful auction listing on eBay for that item. At least save some of your more expensive items so you can write their listings together. At our home, we use a similar technique for creating many of our listings. For the items I’m best at describing and that I know more about, I’ll write up the listing. Once I’m done, I’ll pass it over to Greg for him to review and edit. He will create the auction and then I’ll take a final look at it in case errors crept into the mix during the process. On

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the items he knows the most about, he will create the auction and then I’ll review it and tell him about possible improvements or errors. If you can convince your eBay Maniac the importance of the previous sections—and you will be able to because it has such a strong ring of truth to it—you will see immediate results in your sales. Your eBay Maniac will be truly impressed by what you’ve brought to the table. You will enjoy this experience even if the last thing in the world either of you thought were that you were salespeople.

You’ll Soon Master Copywriting Skills This is early in your eBay career and already I’m going into great depth on how to write an auction listing. I must gently say, Get used to it! Much of this book will continue along these lines. If the auction listing is the meat and potatoes for the eBay seller, and it is, then it’s the one skill that separates the highly successful eBayers from all the rest. Why should you join your eBay Maniac in mediocre eBay sales if you can skyrocket those same sales with just a little more wisdom in auction descriptions? A successful eBay family offers a tremendous chance at being a happy eBay family. This book’s website, www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com, lists several resources and free reports that will improve your selling skills related to the direct marketing principles described here. A person who writes sales literature and ads for a living is known as a copywriter. Copywriters who specialize in direct marketing are some of the highest paid in the business. Successful eBay sellers become good copywriters from their on-the-jobtraining. The next chapter continues this discussion and reveals techniques that will dramatically increase your sales when you and your eBay Maniac implement them.

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7

How Descriptions Drive Sales

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hapter 6, “Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item,” described ways to improve your auction listings. With that chapter alone, you will help propel your maniac’s selling to previously unseen heights. I told you this marketing stuff was simple, and you saw that it really is. Yet, one section, one chapter, even one book isn’t enough to teach you everything about writing effective auctions that really sell. Remember, your auction titles and listings are the cornerstone of eBay selling. No matter what else you do correctly, if you don’t write good auction titles and listings, you won’t do as well selling on eBay as your competitors. My eBay Maniac keeps saying, “Most of our competition haven’t a clue about selling.” That does sound a little pompous, but it’s a statement based in quite a bit of truth. It’s not difficult to leverage what you learn here, added to what you and your eBay Maniac will research elsewhere, to transform you into an extremely profitable pair of eBay Maniacs. Make it your goal to become a lifelong student, seeking to learn more and more about writing effective titles and listings. The time you spend is your tuition that subsequent higher sales will more than pay for. Now that you have a personal stake in your eBay business, studying effective listing descriptions and honing your skills will directly materialize into financial rewards.


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Titles and Listings Always remember the two golden rules of eBay listings: 1. Your auction title’s only goal is to be found in searches.

2. Your auction listing’s only goal is to sell the item to the bidder who found your item through an eBay search.

Searching Is the Key to Titles That Get Bids By now, you know how important it is to search for an item before you sell it. Your search results will provide valuable information to help you sell your item better. Make sure you search on completed auctions to learn what happened at the end of other auctions. If you search on current auctions, you won’t find end-of-auction keys that otherwise would teach you the best ways to list your item. I actually know more about searching than my eBay Maniac, even though he understood more about eBay long before I began helping. The reason is because I loved to shop on eBay. (I still do!) I learned that to get the best price I had to hone my search skills to locate items. Sometimes a seller might misspell a critical term (for example, if you’re looking for a PlayStation, be sure to search for terms such as PalyStation and PlaytSation). An auction with a misspelled title won’t appear in most searches and hardly gets bids, which can result in a great deal for you if you can locate it. Under the Search button is a link labeled Advanced Search. When you click that link, you’ll find the search options shown in Figure 7.1. The advanced search enables you to limit searches to specific categories, search descriptions and titles (as opposed to titles alone), and it even has another link labeled advanced search that adds even more search options. With this second-tier advanced search, you can limit searches to specific sellers and price ranges. When searching to do research on an item you’re getting ready to sell, always click the option labeled Completed Listings Only. The search results will appear only for auctions that have ended.

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Chapter Seven How Descriptions Drive Sales

Figure 7.1

An advanced search provides several options you use to narrow your search results.

Here’s a list of the things you’ll learn from auctions that completed in the past: • An appropriate minimum bid price—If you set your item’s minimum bid higher than most people who successfully sold the same item in the past, you will get fewer bids. • Whether the item is worth selling—If several sellers tried unsuccessfully to sell the item, it may not be worth your time and effort and eBay insertion fees to list. Then again, scan the auctions that didn’t sell—perhaps they didn’t provide good pictures (or no pictures at all, which is a ghastly eBay mistake), perhaps the other items were in bad condition, or perhaps they are in other countries where they routinely ended at 4:00 in the morning and failed to get enough bids from those bidding in the Americas. • How long you should list the item—If 3-day auctions generally received the same level of bids as 7-day auctions, you’ll want to make your listing a 3-day auction. The act of selling inventory as quickly as possible is called inventory turnover, and the faster you turn over your inventory by getting products sold and shipped, the faster your income arrives—and the faster the clutter leaves your home!

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• Shipping charges—If other sellers routinely charge $5 or more on top of actual shipping charges, then you can also. I’d recommend discounting that some, however, to beat your competitors when possible. A high shipping charge can be fully legitimate for many items, though, so don’t skimp. If an item requires extra packing, extra postal charges (such as signature confirmation or certification), or extra time to wrap due to its fragility or size, your buyer will expect extra handling fees on top of the actual postal charge. In addition to this list of things you learn from searching for the item you’re about to sell, one is more important than any of them: you’ll learn what works and doesn’t work well for auction titles and listings. With this and information you received in Chapter 6, you should be more than convinced of the importance of the pre-sell search. It’s important to stress this again, hence my coverage here. I’m about to step up your ability to write titles that get found in eBay search results by a factor of 3 to 10 times over what you’ll glean from studying search results alone! That is quite a promise to make and one I’m confident in making due to the power of techniques covered in the sections that follow.

Use Overture to Flood Your Titles with Keywords Although you were an eBay newbie just seven chapters ago, you’ve come a long way already! Your eBay Maniac will be filling in some of the details, but you’re getting wonderful exposure to powerful auction techniques that will grow your eBay home business. You and your eBay Maniac are probably working together already, and when you teach your maniac some of the techniques found on the next few pages, your maniac will be thrilled that you’re there. Throughout Chapter 6 you saw the reason that an auction title’s only goal is to get found through an eBay search. More than 90% of all buyers locate items by first searching for them (it’s far closer to 100% than 90% of buyers). Some find items by browsing categories, but most don’t locate items primarily through category browsing; the search box is the most common way that eBayers shop eBay. Given that the search is so important, and given that most searches are made on auction titles only (and not descriptions also, which requires eBayers to click an extra option when searching), your title must be loaded with keywords that buyers are searching for. You know from the section “A Bad Listing and a Good Listing Compared” in Chapter 6 that you’re not to focus on grammar in your titles; instead, focus on filling it with keywords that make your auction appear in as many search results as possible.

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I’m about to give you one of the most powerful ways to determine which keywords you should put in your auction titles. You must promise me to keep this a secret because this one, single technique—and it’s so little used by other sellers—will often make the difference between a listing that goes unsold and one that generates far higher bids than any similar item on eBay. You don’t want your competitors to know about this one!

Time for Overture A web-based company called Overture was purchased by Yahoo!, who then renamed the products Yahoo! Search Marketing, but most eBayers still call the site Overture by habit. The name Overture still appears on many of the site’s pages at the time of this writing. On the Overture site is a page labeled Keyword Selector Tool. When you go to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, you’ll see the simple screen shown in Figure 7.2.

Figure 7.2

Let Yahoo’s free Overture Keyword Selector Tool tell you which keywords are the best for your auction title.

This free tool holds the key to improving your titles. Here is the way the Keyword Selector Tool works: suppose you have a video camera to sell. It’s made by JVC. Perhaps you look at the manual’s long list of features but have no idea which work best in the auction’s title. All the features sound good, but you only have 55 characters to work with in an eBay title. — 111 —


You perform a search of completed JVC video camera auctions and are inundated with page after page of results, with high and low bids, with different auction durations and shipping charges. When you’re researching an item to sell, too many results can be as unhelpful as too few. How can you decide which words to put in the title?

Overture Tells You Exactly What Keywords to Use As a die-hard shopper before, I wish my eBay Maniac had known about Overture. It would have helped me locate more items that matched what I was searching for. My eBay Maniac didn’t learn about Overture until recently and by using it, we’ve created far more keyword-intense auction titles. To use Overture, simply type video camera in Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool and then click the arrow to the right of the text box. In seconds, Overture returns a page full of results, such as the one shown in Figure 7.3.

Figure 7.3

The Keyword Selector Tool ranks recent search text performed on the item you enter.

The Keyword Selector Tool takes all searches performed on your search text (in this case, video camera) and returns a list of all searches performed that contained those words in the past month. Instead of focusing on the results of the searches, the Keyword Selector Tool focuses on the search terms themselves. The entire purpose of the Keyword Selector Tool is to determine what keywords most people use to search in addition to the terms you entered. — 112 —


It’s abundantly clear that the number-one phrase searched for with more than just the words “video camera” in it was “digital video camera.” Almost four times as many people searched for “digital video camera” as they did the third-highest search phrase, “sony video camera.” If the second-highest search phrase used in the past month on the Internet was “digital video camera,” then you can bet your bottom dollar that you’d better put the word digital in your auction title also! If you do, your listing will appear in more search results than those who only use video camera. Overture doesn’t take capital letters into consideration. Searching for Video Camera will produce the same list as searching for video camera (not capitalized). By adding one simple word, digital, to your video camera auction, you increase the number of times your auction will appear in the search results dramatically. But don’t stop there. Look down in the Keyword Selector Tool’s list and you’ll be rewarded with other gems that you should put in your title: DVD (if your camera is DVD-based, such as the ones that write directly to blank DVDs), professional (if it’s a top-of-the-line model), wireless (if it has Bluetooth or other similar technology), cctv (if it has that type of lens system; your manual will verify if this is true), and of course JVC. It doesn’t matter what order you place these keywords in; if the camera has one of these features, be sure to use these keywords. If you have room, add other information, such as New or Like New or Free Ship or any other helpful note that makes the bidder want to view your camera’s listing when they browse through a list of eBay search results. Don’t add those kinds of extra words, however, until you’ve used as many keywords as possible. (If you expect the item to sell for $50 or more, list the item with a subtitle that costs you 50 cents extra to use and put non-keyword text, such as Free Shipping or Like New Mint Condition with Original Box.) If you still have room, drop down into the lower-numbered search terms and you’ll locate some surprising terms that you may not have thought of. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend putting Best in a title; it wastes valuable keyword space and is such a subjective qualifier. Nevertheless, a surprising number of searches for best digital video camera appear later in Overture’s list, so you might want to toss best into your title if there’s room. To support such a claim as best, I’d recommend somewhere in your listing telling why you think it’s the best; perhaps it received an award, or was winner of a Best Of magazine category (the camera’s website will tout things such as this), or in your opinion (it’s fine to state this) it’s the best for using at parties and other gatherings because it handles so easily and it’s so quick to focus and record with. — 113 —


Dig Deeper with Overture Keep excavating with Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool. In other words, once you get enough keywords for video camera, try a different phrase. Perhaps JVC video camera; when you do that, you’ll see driver and battery are popular words, so you might want to consider one or both of those words and mention in the listing that it comes with a battery and CD-ROM, with all the appropriate computer drivers needed to download pictures to a computer. As my eBay Maniac says, with this one simple secret that you promised you wouldn’t tell another soul about, your auction will mop up the floor with most of your competitors because you’ll be found by far more eBay searches than their auctions will. In addition, Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool is completely free to use! Also, if your eBay Maniac doesn’t know about the Keyword Selector Tool, this one tool will impress your maniac perhaps more than anything else you bring to your family’s eBay business.

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The Power of Keyword-Laden Titles

How important are the words in your titles? You’ve no doubt been convinced by Jayne’s hammering of this all-important subject. I want to do a little hammering myself. Consider this about the Overture set of results: a single keyword can make a thousand-fold difference in how many search results your listing appears in. Adding just Digital to Video Camera in your title, for example, would have resulted in your listing appearing in almost 20,000 more search results than just using JVC Video Camera without the word Digital. No serious seller can take this lightly. Most don’t know about it. That’s a huge advantage for you. (Even most PowerSellers don’t know about Overture.)

Forgetting the Obvious Is a Common Mistake In selling the scores of rare and used books that we’ve been selling on eBay for quite some time, my eBay Maniac made a startling discovery about a year ago that increased our bids. It seems so obvious to us now. Why it took us so long to realize it is beyond us, but it’s a good lesson for you to see that the obvious can be staring at you in the face a long time before you see it.

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We were crafting keyword-intense auction titles. We used the Overture Keyword Selector Tool and made sure that we would include as much as possible. If we were selling a Sherlock Holmes first edition, we would put Sherlock and Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle and Mystery and Detective in our titles, and as much of the book title as possible and the author’s name if it wasn’t a book by Doyle but about him or his Holmes. Yet, we were omitting the word book in every auction title! That means that when someone searched for Sherlock Holmes book, they wouldn’t see our listings! What a horrible mistake. The word book was a 1,000-pound gorilla sitting on top of us and we didn’t notice it. Before doing anything else, make sure that your title simply tells exactly what you’re selling. People looking for Sherlock Holmes books are far more likely to use the word book in their search than just Sherlock Holmes, because when they don’t use book, they get movies, movie posters, detective costumes, magazines, and books. They’ll quickly learn—faster than we did I’m sad to say—that the word book helps limit their search results to exactly what they really want: a Sherlock Holmes book. Here’s another example. Consider this title: The Hunt for Red October Tom Clancy Book That’s a far better title than The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy Great! even though only one word changed. Great! wastes six characters that could be filled with a keyword, and omitting Book makes the entire title a loser as opposed to what it would be with Book included.

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Some Non-Keywords Can Be Useful

We’re not always opposed to using non-keyword qualifiers in auction titles. For example, if we’ve filled the auction title with rich keyword content but we have room leftover, we might add the word Nice or even Stunning. We do this to catch the bidder’s eyes in a long list of search results. We’d never use such a qualifier, though, unless we had used as many intense search result keywords as possible.

In addition, we’d never rely on adding nuisance text such as L**K!!! ###SUPER!!!###, because bidders’ eyes gloss right over such wasteful text, and rightly so, especially after their email Inbox is flooded with spam that uses the same trite tactics day after day.

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Write Listings That Talk to Your Buyers Always keep in mind that your auction listing is an advertisement. An effective ad is not like most ads you see in print, on billboards, and on television. An effective ad works well when it takes the stance that it must be a salesperson, talking directly (face to face) to an interested customer. When your auction reads like that, your auction will sell your item.

Your Buyer’s Favorite Word That means you write auctions just as I’m writing this book to you. Your buyer’s favorite word is you. Think about this sentence—does it feel as though I’m writing directly to you? I am. That’s my intent. I want you to know I have something to tell you that will help you. If I spoke in third person (meaning I never use the word I) and if I never used you but kept writing eBay sellers, those two changes alone would make this book far less interesting to you than I can make it by sticking with the writing style I’m using. I want to sell you with this book. It’s not that I want you to buy anything; you’ve already got the book. It’s that I want to sell you on the importance of the techniques I’m describing. I learned most of these techniques from my eBay Maniac, and they are techniques that are both exciting and profitable. I want your family’s eBay business to be as successful as it can be, and I want to be a part of the reason why. I am excited about what we do on eBay, and I want to tell you about it too. I don’t worry about you competing against us; the odds of you competing against us given the eclectic nature of what we sell are slim, but even if you did, my hat’s off to you and I hope we both prosper from these techniques over the sellers who don’t take the time to learn what works and what doesn’t. Always keep in mind that when someone looks at your auction, they are usually doing so because they actively searched for something and your title included some term they want to know more about. Therefore, they have an interest in your auction and it’s up to you to keep their interest long enough to convince them to bid.

When in Doubt Leave the Humor Out Once you develop a writing rapport that enables you to write listings that sound as though you’re talking to buyers, you might occasionally think of something funny to put in your listing. Surprisingly, humor is often an ineffective selling technique. Your buyer might think it’s funny, but humor is a taste that differs so greatly among us that it’s difficult to pull off. The problem is that it’s difficult to write something that makes most of your readers — 116 —


smile. Some will think your attempt at humor is dumb, even if it is truly funny to most people. If it’s the richest buyer looking at your auction who doesn’t like your joke, then your humor may cost you a good high bid. If you are tempted to say something funny, really analyze your auction’s tone and read through your listing with and without the humor to see if it really makes your selling more effective. Of all the humor possible, using dry, subtle humor lightly and sparingly is the most effective. If it’s dry and subtle, then those who would think it’s funny will often be the ones who get it and the rest may not even realize it’s humor and won’t be put off by your attempt.

Sell the Sizzle and Not the Steak Your auction lookers won’t be bored if you’re describing an item’s benefits that help them do whatever it is someone interested in that item wants done. While you’re talking to your bidders, tell them a story in the auction. The story might be a simple recap of how you obtained the item and why you are selling it. Perhaps it’s a story of how you have one just like it and how it improved something in your life. Again, your story should tout the benefits and not the features. A features list is fine somewhere toward the bottom of your auction, but a benefits list should come first. Too many sellers rely on a features list for the actual selling. You’ll need a features list in many items, such as electronics so that your buyers will know whether it fits their needs, but save the features for the bottom of the auction listing unless you can transform a feature into a benefit earlier. For example, does the cell phone you’re selling have wireless Bluetooth? If so, then instead of writing Bluetooth enabled (as most ads say), instead write the following: No more getting on your knees to plug a cable in the back of your computer! With this phone, when you want to download your computer’s address book to your cell phone, just hold the phone close to your computer and let the phone do the work from there. That way, you are telling about a feature but you’ve turned it into an immediate and useful benefit for your bidders. Many may not know what Bluetooth-enabled means, and the ones who do might not have thought through the ramifications of such a phone. Don’t go into detail about what Bluetooth means; instead, describe the benefit that Bluetooth gives your buyers. Promote benefits and not features. Describe how your bidder benefits from the item. An old selling adage that my eBay Maniac learned a long time ago applies directly here: Sell the sizzle and not the steak. — 117 —


Once you determine all the benefits, rank them and lead with the biggest benefit. Grab your bidder as early as possible. Don’t bury the big benefit or (far worse) build up to it. Too many other eBay sellers are ready and waiting for your potential bidder to get bored with your auction and click to their auctions. You don’t have time to mess around when you have a sales lead who actively got to your listing after searching and then clicked on your auction title. That’s a hot prospect, so bring out the big guns early by immediately promoting the item’s benefits.

”Always Be Closing, Always Be Closing” I had no interest in selling or marketing before eBay. My eBay Maniac didn’t either until eBay came along, but then he began to realize how vital it was to implement tried and true techniques that move indecisive buyers to becoming bidders. One of the classic selling movies, Glengary Glen Ross, had this famous line: A-B-C. AAlways, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing. Always be closing. Although movies adapted from stage plays don’t always play well on the big screen, that line was effective on the screen, perhaps due to how important it really is that salespeople remember it. Pay attention to infomercials the next time one comes on and listen for how many times they say, “Call now.” They might even say, “So dial the number,” and you’ll hear them urgently state, “Pick up the phone and call 1-800….” They are closing the sale every time they do that. They are putting in the heads of the viewers a call to action. They’re implying, “Instead of sitting there, I’m letting you know what you should do, call now!” You can also be closing the sale throughout your auction listings. This is one we don’t do enough ourselves, so we must remind ourselves when we begin slipping. Sprinkle the phrases Place your bid now, Click the Bid Now button, and Bid now for this…. Certainly the final paragraph should begin and end with such calls to action. It’s a subtle but effective way to move some of your auction viewers to click that all-important Bid Now button.

Another Powerful Selling Technique: Paint a Mental Picture If you and your eBay Maniac feel sorry for all your competitors, you don’t want to implement the following technique in your auction listings. By using this technique, you’ll take too many sales away from those poor folk who sell the same things you sell. If doing that keeps you awake at night, skip to the next section. The rest of this section will put so much more money in your pockets that you might not be able to handle the guilt! — 118 —


Okay, I assume anyone left is really chomping at the binary bits to learn what this technique is: paint a mental picture for your bidder. That mental picture’s sole purpose will be to place your item into your bidder’s hands. That’s it. All the great catalogs do this, including J. Peterman and Land’s End. For rare and expensive items, painting a mental picture that places that item in the hands of your bidder works especially well. We’ve used this before on some extremely rare books we sold that were worth several thousand dollars each. Painting such a picture isn’t difficult. It really doesn’t matter how you approach it, as long as you guide your bidder through the idea of actually holding the item. Here is one of many things you can say that does just this: Imagine how anxious you’ll be when your postal carrier rings your doorbell and asks you to sign for a box, a box that you know contains this precious black pearl necklace. Once you close the door you’ll take your box to the nearest table and carefully unwrap it so as to get a peek inside of your new black pearls that you’ve wanted for so long. There they are, beautiful in the box but…just imagine how they’ll look around your neck! Granted, this might be slightly overboard. I went on longer here than I would in an auction. In an auction, this would be slightly too forced because of how long it goes on. Having said that, you can glean several ideas from it. Just using something such as “Imagine how anxious you’ll be when the mail carrier hands you the box with your very own black pearl necklace!” is plenty to put that mental picture of your item into your bidder’s possession. As long as something you’ve said makes bidders mentally see themselves holding that item, then you’ve done the job. Technically, for a brief point in time, you have temporarily transferred ownership of the item from you to the bidder. The bidder will experience an ownership feeling when you do that. The bidders will not be as likely to leave your auction listing before placing a bid as they otherwise might.

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Two Weirdly Named Fields You Should Read More About: NeuroLinguistic Programming and Psycho-Cybernetics

The painting of a mental picture comes from a combination of fields not specifically related to selling but often used for improving one’s mental acuity, outlook, and personal performance: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (also called NLP) and Psycho-Cybernetics (originated by the late Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his book Psycho-Cybernetics, which is still in print).

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If you knew me, you would know that psycho-babble kinds of topics are about the last kinds of topics I would promote. Both NLP and Psycho-Cybernetics, in spite of their weird names that conjure up some New Age nothingness, were both developed separately but overlap in many of their results, hence when someone is familiar with one they typically know about the other too. If you know of someone who suffers from anxiety, or who needs help focusing on the job at hand, Psycho-Cybernetics includes a series of simple mental exercises to help people focus and become far more productive. Amazing advancements have been made using Psycho-Cybernetics with Down’s Syndrome kids that helps them assimilate even faster into society than they otherwise do. Both NLP and Psycho-Cybernetics talk a lot about forming mental pictures and the powerful results when you do so. Painting a mental picture for your bidders that places your item in their hands mentally takes advantage of this NLP technique. The transference of ownership for that moment in time in your bidder’s mind dramatically increases the likelihood of a bid if that bidder had even a small interest in the item to begin with.

Is All This Coercion? No, Selling Is Your Obligatory Duty If you think the mental picture technique is little more than coercion, you don’t understand your job. First of all, you must have confidence in what you sell before you sell it. You need conviction that everything you say in your auction is accurate and truthful. You need to be convinced that, even if the item is something you no longer want, there is value in the item and someone can use it. If you don’t believe in it then your buyers will sense that. Don’t waste a precious gift like the mental picture technique on such an item. It makes no sense to do so. Your bidders will know you aren’t thrilled about what you’re selling, so if you do sell, stick to a basic description and hope for the best. Even better, don’t sell something until you are ready to sell it. Once you are convinced the item is worth auctioning, and once you’re convinced that you aren’t overcharging on shipping, and once you’re convinced that you can confidently tell the complete truth about the item, then and only then are you ready to sell it. And if you believe that someone, somewhere can benefit in some way at all then it is your obligation to convince bidders to place bids. If you’re convinced the item should be — 120 —


sold, then sell it with all your might. Convince your bidders that it’s in their best interest to bid on what you’re selling. The item might be broken and you can no longer use it. That doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t want it. Lots of broken items sell on eBay. Do you have an old Mr. Coffee maker from the 1980s that you couldn’t sell for 50 cents at your last yard sale because it no longer heats up? I guarantee that somebody on earth still uses that identical coffee maker and they recently broke the carafe. They miss their morning Mr. Coffee! All they want is a carafe and they don’t care if they have to buy a broken coffee maker to go with it. You do your bidders a disservice if you don’t grab them and tell them with every tool in your arsenal how your item will benefit them. Give them a call to action and tell them to place their bid right now. Paint a mental picture for them that puts your item in their hands. And then…if you have the guts to manage a really large income, you need to read the next section.

The Most Powerful Wealth-Building Sentence You Can Put In Your Auctions Is… My eBay Maniac agrees that I brought a lot of unforeseen advantages to our eBay business. But he has taught me a lot as well. As I’ve said, it’s fortunate for our business that one of his hobbies is studying sales techniques. Fortunately for you, I’m about to give you what is perhaps the hands-down most powerful technique possible for an eBay seller. With this one technique, I’m getting ready to increase the number of bids that you and your eBay Maniac get, starting from this point forward. That increase will be astronomical. Let me warn you, this technique isn’t for amateurs. It’s for eBay sellers who want to leap-frog their competition and corner perhaps the largest market share possible for their item. It’s not for the faint of heart. In spite of the almost-limitless selling power this technique gives you, the best thing about it is that it’s only one simple sentence. A sentence you can put in every auction you list from this point forward and you won’t have to change a word no matter what you sell. This one, simple sentence is far more powerful than both the call to action (Click the Bid Now button to make sure this precious Elvis salt shaker doesn’t get away from you!) and the mental picture (When you open the box and push the button, Elvis swivels his hips, — 121 —


salt comes out the feet, and The King warms your heart with a solo rendition of Love Me Tender sung directly from his lips to your ears). If you’re content with only better-thanaverage sales, stick to those two techniques alone. When you read about this one-sentence technique, you will know that it’s gold. You might even want to send my maniac and me a whole bunch of money in thanks, but we’d just have to return it to you! It will seem so obvious and yet you’ll agree it’s perhaps the single most powerful sentence one can use to convince buyers they should buy from you and not from your competitors.

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Warning, Warning Will Robinson

I don’t like to interrupt in the middle of Jayne’s sections, but I’m going to make an exception here. Please know, Jayne’s correct in that this one sentence will steal bidders from your competitors. Nevertheless, before you use the sentence, be warned. You run a huge chance at total success in dominating the market in the category you sell in. But if you fail to deliver on this one sentence then your credibility will be shot forever. If one buyer gives you feedback that says you didn’t fulfill this promise, you might as well change IDs if you ever want to use this technique again. Make sure that you can stand behind this technique’s promise. If there’s any doubt, do not use the technique. Save it for when you can fully stand behind it. We don’t always use it simply because we will only use it when we are 100% certain we can uphold its promise. When we’re going out of town or when holidays are upon us, we’d never use this technique due to the risk of failure if we couldn’t follow through.

You’ve waited long enough. Here is that sentence:

“If we fail to mail this item within 24 hours of receiving proper payment, we will refund 100% of your money and ship this item to you absolutely free of charge.” Does that promise frighten you? If it does it’s because it is such a powerful guarantee. You want to make your auctions so tempting that buyers will think they are taking advantage of you if they win your auction! That sentence is one of those offers that seals the deal. Even Ross Perot would be impressed at this sentence’s giant sucking sound that appears when it pulls bidders into your auctions. The buyers are certain you’ll ship the item quickly—who could afford not to? But in addition, your buyers know it’s entirely possible they might get the item for free. — 122 —


That is an offer that is irresistible. Will it work for items where bidders don’t necessarily need prompt shipping? Yes, it will work because it adds tremendous security for the buyer that you mean what you say. It’s also a no-risk gamble for every one of your high bidders that it’s possible they will get a free item. This technique will only be weak when you have a low feedback score. Once you have 45 or more feedbacks and a high positive percentage (no less than 99.5%), you’re established enough to make this promise mean something to your bidders. “Proper payment” does mean that the buyer has to follow your payment rules of course. If you state that when receiving checks you hold the item until the check clears, then this means 24 hours from the time the check clears and not from when you receive the check in the mail. That’s reasonable. But assuming your payment terms are not ridiculous, “proper payment” is a completely acceptable expectation on your part before you start the 24-hour clock. If you feel that 24 hours is too constraining for you, extend it to 36 or 48 hours. Know that each of those time extensions weakens your offer. In addition, if it’s an extremely expensive item, such as over $500, it would also work to change the wording to promise to refund $50 or $75 or $100 (the higher the promise, the more powerful your offer is) of their purchase if you miss the mailing cut-off time. Keep in mind, however, that if the item goes for an extremely high bid, the complete 100% refund guarantee makes your auction one of the most magnetic to bidders on all of eBay.

How Do You Want to Be Perceived: Big or Small? Decide now how you want bidders to perceive you. If they perceive you as a large company with a large staff, they have a certain set of expectations from you. They’ll trust that you’ll ship the item. They’ll be more trusting that you’re accurately describing what you sell. They’ll know that you have a business to protect and a reputation you guard. Although the same is true for individual sellers who don’t formally have an eBay business, buyers have a slightly different set of expectations for you. They might trust you more than a large business knowing that individuals have more to lose when a sale goes bad. They might trust you less than a business because they know you can change IDs and start again if your feedback rating gets bad enough. (Actually, eBay has some protections against that, but those protections aren’t impossible to get around for those who are persistent.) One thing buyers consistently do expect out of individual sellers is better support. They’ll want their questions answered quickly and honestly before an auction ends. — 123 —


They’ll want you to be able to get back to them quickly after the sale. Although it’s true that a business might have more resources than an individual to accomplish this, still a business is often perceived as a faceless company that deals with so many sales each week that buyers are only numbers, for the most part. However you want to be perceived, you must decide and try to maintain that image. This means that you (or a computer guru you hire) must create auction formats that portray the image you want to project. My eBay Maniac and I want to be perceived as a family business. We don’t want our auctions looking as though we’re a big company. Buying from big companies is just fine, but we’re not one and we want to maintain a sense of personalized service and a family auction. We strive to make our auctions look as professional as possible and yet not be large-scale professional. We always want to portray that we know what we’re doing, that we’re skilled, and that we’re experienced, but that these are still family-run auctions. How do we do this? Using the most obvious way possible, we tell our bidders exactly that with statements such as the one in Figure 7.4. Who we are

Answers bidder questions

Figure 7.4 We let our bidders know exactly who we are because we want to portray the accurate image that we’re a family-owned eBay business but that we also take our job as eBayers seriously. — 124 —


Figure 7.4 also shows one example of how we inform bidders of our payment and shipping policies. We feel that the more information we give, the more questions we preanswer for bidders when they’re ready to bid. For example, if an international bidder wants to bid, but only if we accept PayPal in currencies other than the U.S. dollar (we do and you should too), they can read that we do in our Payment Policy section. If we didn’t make this clear in the auction, then we might lose a bidder. Sure, the bidder might write to ask us if we accept PayPal in non-U.S. currency, but no matter how quickly we reply, they’ve more than likely found a seller who made it clear they accept PayPal in foreign currencies.

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When We Get Questions, We Expand Our Policy Section Our Payment and Shipping Policy sections change over time, usually as the result of questions from potential bidders.

We don’t want our bidders to have questions. When they have to ask, they lose their urgency to bid right then and we are likely to lose their bid even if we answer promptly. If more than one bidder asks the same question, we realize that we should have answered that question in our auctions. We attempt to include that information in subsequent auctions when appropriate. It’s true that “policy” information is ignored when it gets too long, but many bidders will skim such sections in an attempt to get an answer to one of their questions. It’s our goal to answer all questions before they’re asked. It not only reduces our auction management chores, it makes for more confident bidders too.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. That is certainly true about eBay auctions. Good items go unsold without a picture. People want to see what they are buying. There’s added risk when buying from a stranger and a good picture (or multiple pictures, if the item warrants them) helps reduce the buyer’s concerns. Unless you or your eBay Maniac are photography buffs, you probably can learn ways to make better pictures for your auctions. Several texts are filled with multiple chapters on taking good pictures for eBay. One of the best texts that explains auction photography basics is Michael Miller’s Absolute Beginner’s Guide to eBay (ISBN 0789734311). Your eBay Maniac no doubt already has a way to take pictures of what you sell. The two primary devices used to create pictures for auctions are a digital camera and a scanner. — 125 —


A scanner is useful for books and other flat items that you can place on the scanner bed. A digital camera is best for just about everything else. Because virtually every book and article about eBay describes how to take and use pictures effectively in auctions, and because your eBay Maniac has already been using pictures in auctions for a while, I just want to review the basics for you here so you understand the importance of pictures. I’ll also offer a few tips on how to get better pictures for your auctions.

Clear, Close, and Detailed The clearer the picture and the more it shows of your item, the more effectively the picture sells the item. A tripod is useful to help ensure your picture isn’t cloudy from camera movement. The closer you get to the item, the more susceptible the picture becomes to camera shaking and your picture will blur. Don’t blur your pictures with shakes; use a tripod when in doubt. A close-up is better than a long-distance shot except when you’re putting several pictures in an auction and you want a long shot to show the overall item, with the closerin shots showing the detail. Don’t use flash. Well, you sometimes will in spite of that warning. We have done so at times. But the experts rightfully warn that a flash will wash out a picture. Instead of using the camera’s flash, proper lighting is superior.

Some of the Top eBayer’s Photography Tips and Tricks I’m offering my own Top Ten eBay Photography Tips. They’re in no specific order. Your eBay Maniac probably knows about some or all of these. Unless your eBay Maniac knows about all of them, any one of these you begin implementing with your maniac will immediately improve the pictures in your auctions. Improved pictures mean more bidding. More bidding means more money. 1. Take pictures from a slight angle because that is better than a full front-on shot. For example, a toy train taken from the side, but with enough of the front to get one or both headlights is far more effective than taking just a side view of the train no matter how clear the side-view picture is. Even if you put multiple pictures in the auction, one of the train’s front and one of the train’s side, this rotation of the train to get more of a 3D feel will make a far better picture than the lesser 2D effect from a straight side or front shot. 2. Don’t let distracting, unrelated items show in the background. This includes chairs, curtains, and worst of all, parts of people (especially the photographer’s face in the item’s reflection!) unless the people are holding the item and it’s obvious that the — 126 —


hand is there to help capture a closer detail of an item that cannot stand on its own. (The hand might also serve to show relative size of the item when the need arises, although I find that a coin or ruler next to the item does better.) Small props such as an interesting rock or platform of some sort can be appropriate to showcase certain items such as jewelry. 3. Frame your shot so that the item consumes the full camera lens with as little else showing as possible. For the item’s primary photo, the one you’ll use as the gallery picture, this properly framed shot is especially critical. 4. Use your digital camera’s close-up feature when you need to take clear close-up shots of items or parts of the items. Usually, the camera’s close-up setting is called the macro mode and is usually available with the press of a button on the back before you take the close-up shot. The macro mode button typically uses a flower icon to indicate its presence. Get close to the picture and don’t over-zoom to ensure a quality shot. 5. Take pictures of your item’s good features and its blemishes. Make sure your bidders are convinced you’re not hiding anything out of the shot. If you describe a blemish, try to include a picture of it. This will not detract from the bids that item would get; instead, it helps increase the bids because the bidders can see for themselves that the blemish (such as a crack or chip) you describe is accurate and not worse than you describe. 6. When you use lights, fluorescent lighting can cause tint problems. If you must use fluorescent lighting, learn how to adjust the white balance on your camera (the white balance determines how the camera sees the color white in the lighting you’re using) to help with the tint. Better, though, is to stick with regular nonfluorescent lighting. Special full-spectrum bulbs that fit regular lamps are the best and are used by photography professionals. Because these bulbs aren’t too expensive, you don’t have to be a professional to use them. Search eBay and you’ll find them. This book’s website’s Resource link (at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com) offers at least one source for these bulbs if you don’t want to trust your first purchase of full-spectrum bulbs on eBay. Natural lighting almost always produces crisp and clear pictures, and you can use light coming through a window that hits your objects to take advantage of natural lighting indoors. Make sure the natural light shines through from the side so you don’t get a halo effect and a dark object, as is possible when the light comes directly from behind the subject. 7. You need to diffuse your lights, meaning don’t let the bulb shine directly onto the item. This usually means getting some reflector screens (moderate cost at a photography store) or just some kind of shading for your lamp. Using two or three diffused light sources (such as lamps and possibly an overhead light) is better than using only one light source as this keeps distracting shadows to a minimum. By diffusing — 127 —


the light you reduce the possibility of glare that can appear on shiny objects such as DVDs. Light diffusion doesn’t always eliminate all glare on such shiny surfaces, so you also can change the camera angle to help eliminate the glare. 8. Keep the resolution (that is, the size and detail of a computer image) small enough so that your auction page loads quickly. Many buyers still use dial-up connections, and if they have to wait for all your photos to appear on the page, they often will go somewhere else. Several programs, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, have features to allow you to reduce your digital pictures to a reasonable resolution and file size (about 400×300 pixels, or dots on the computer screen, is not a bad size). 9. Slightly overcast outdoor lighting is nice to use if you can’t get the equipment for proper lighting to work indoors. The trouble with slightly-overcast outdoor lighting is you aren’t in control of when it is slightly overcast outdoors! Certainly never shoot outdoors if the sun is bright, especially if you cannot get the sun’s rays from coming your way and glaring the picture, as is often the case around noon. 10. For items about the size of a lamp and smaller, special photography tents are available that ensure perfect lighting and clarity on every picture you take. Your local photography store can help you find one that’s right for your needs. These photography tents are especially effective for taking photos of jewelry and tiny fragile items that are otherwise so difficult to light and shoot. This book’s website, www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com, has a Resources link that includes a few photography tents and lighting shades that we prefer. Our reviews are biased because we only recommend what we think are superior for their cost.

You Now Will Do More Than Compete—You Can Dominate With the powerful techniques in this chapter, you and your eBay Maniac are armed to the teeth to sell as much as you can. Most, if not all, of this chapter is probably as new to you as it was to me when I started on eBay. It might surprise you to learn that most of the techniques will probably be new to your eBay Maniac as well. The really great thing about these techniques is that your competition will probably never know about them. As much as I’d like to imagine every eBayer in the world reading this book, it’s just not going to happen. Many of the eBay PowerSellers of the world think they already know all they need to know to sell their wares. The smart ones are always looking for another edge, but most will not know about the techniques here. Go now, list a bunch of things, and make a fortune! In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to help your eBay Maniac manage auctions once they begin. — 128 —

8

Once the Auction Begins, There’s No Time to Rest

I

enjoy watching our auctions more than my eBay Maniac. Perhaps it’s the innate shopper in me. Watching your auctions can be fun. The reason? You’re making money! Cha-ching! Most auction bidding activity takes place in the final hours of an auction. Throughout your auction’s duration, you’ll watch from your My eBay page all your eBay activity. You’ll be thrilled when you see bids begin to appear. On some of the hotter items, the bids might begin early and furiously. I used to worry when an auction wouldn’t show a bid for several days. I learned not to fret because that happens, and it doesn’t portend the future; most bidding takes place in an auction’s final hours.

Once an Auction Is Listed, Bidders Will Have Questions No matter how diligent you try to be, no matter how many questions you try to answer in your listings before they’re asked, bidders often want to ask you about your auction. We realized early that when we get the same question multiple times, we must have failed to answer that in the auction. I’d keep track of those questions and we’d try to answer those in the next set of auctions we posted. In Chapter 6, “Each Listing Should Showcase Each Item,” I discussed how you can use questions to craft better auctions in the future. Not only will you get questions that are legitimate, you will get questions that aren’t always so helpful. I handle many of these because my eBay Maniac does not have quite as much patience as I do. Keep in mind that you’ll get the usual redundant questions such as “How much is shipping?” when you’ve stated three times what the shipping costs are. These do occur, and a short polite answer is best. My eBay Maniac says he’s always tempted to answer, “Our auction states


that shipping is only $3.67, but if you’d prefer to pay more, just add the extra to your payment.” He’s never done that. Yet. Sellers can get frustrated with these kinds of redundant questions. They do waste your time when you were diligent enough to answer them already in your listing. Instead of getting frustrated, however, a far more effective way to view this situation is as a learning opportunity. I said that my eBay Maniac is not as patient as I am, but he’s seen several of my patient replies turn questioning shoppers into winning bidders. Whoever is the most patient in your household should probably be the one who deals with frontline questions from bidders. When you get many of these kinds of redundant shipping questions, for example, you’re learning valuable information. Many of your buyers don’t read the fine print. Perhaps you need to put your shipping terms in a more prominent place. Perhaps your fine print is too fine. Or perhaps everything is okay and you decide not to change anything related to your shipping section. Whatever you do, you can learn from the questions your buyers ask.

Quick Replies Build Trust If your family eBay business is not a full-time one (and for most I’d assume this is the case), and even if it is full-time, you cannot be at the computer working all hours of the day. You’ll receive questions from all around the globe and you won’t be online to answer them all immediately. Short delays are understood by the people asking the questions. Having said that, the quicker you can respond, the more trust you gain from potential bidders. If you reply quickly, they are more likely to trust that you take eBay seriously and you’ll ship their items quickly if they win them from you. Make it a goal to answer all outstanding eBay questions before starting any other eBay activity. You will be more anxious to post new items than to answer questions about existing listings, but all those questions should be your highest priority. Think of it as getting the tedious work out of the way so you have time to post more auctions. When a question comes in, my eBay Maniac often forwards the question to me. He then deletes the question from his Inbox (we have two separate email addresses) so neither of us inadvertently answer the same question twice. By letting one of us be the primary answerer (and remember, the one with the most patience for redundant questions is better suited to this task), we can help ensure that the questions get answered. If I won’t be home for a while, my eBay Maniac answers the questions because a prompt reply is so critical.

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Chapter Eight Once the Auction Begins, There’s No Time to Rest

Messages versus Emails As I explained in the section “The eBay Message System” of Chapter 4, “The Perils of a Home-Based eBay Business,” eBay prefers that all members communicate through the eBay message system instead of email. eBay says they want to protect people’s privacy and will not disclose an email address with other eBayers except in these three cases: • The high bidder’s email address will appear on the listing that only the seller can see. • When an auction ends, the email address of the buyer and seller will appear on each other’s listing. • An end-of-auction email is sent to the winner and seller telling the other’s email address. The completed auction page displays the other’s email address for a few days before eBay removes it. (This email address, during the time it does appear, is only visible by the buyer and seller.) When you want to contact someone outside of an auction you’ve completed together, eBay puts a link labeled Contact Member (it’s labeled Ask the seller a question when the link appears on an auction listing under the seller’s eBay ID). When you click this link, the Ask a Question form appears. When you send a message from a seller’s auction page, the auction title travels with the message so the seller knows what you’re referring to when you ask a question about the auction. If you clicked Contact Member from another page, such as a member’s feedback page, the message won’t be associated with a specific auction, as Figure 8.1 shows. When someone receives an eBay message, they get an email describing the message contents with a Respond button they can click inside the email. When they click the Respond button, they are taken to an eBay message page, similar to the one in Figure 8.1, where they can respond to the question. The original sender now will receive an email telling them the response and allow them to respond to that. Not only will eBay send you an email telling you that you have a message, but you will see the waiting messages from your My eBay page, where you can save them, sort them, and respond to them. Many eBayers seem to have little nice to say about eBay’s message system, especially the old-timers who recall the good old days when eBay displayed email addresses for the winning buyers and sellers on every auction page and email related to that auction. My eBay Maniac is one of these “old-timers” who prefers to communicate by email. They say they’d rather handle all contact directly through emails, especially when it’s between a seller and the winner of that seller’s auction. — 131 —

I Married an eBay Maniac Type your question or comment here

Figure 8.1

When you have a question or something to tell another eBayer, use the eBay message system to contact them.

I like the eBay message system more than my eBay Maniac, but I wasn’t helping with our eBay sales back before the message system became so integrated into the eBay site. All our received and sent messages appear in a section on our My eBay page, and I can quickly scan through them if I have to locate one for whatever reason. When we’re looking for an email-based message, locating the message is more difficult; Microsoft Outlook’s search feature is notoriously slow and all our non-eBay emails can get in the way of one we want to locate. One of the things about eBay’s message system that most agree is nice is the fact that questions and comments about auctions can be—at the seller’s directive—automatically posted at the bottom of the auction related to the question. Ever since eBay implemented this messaging system, we’ve had bidders who asked legitimate questions or wanted information we should have included. Perhaps we omitted a copyright date for a book or something that collectors would have the desire to know. Not only were we able to answer those question, but others with the same questions can see our answer without having to ask. Figure 8.2 shows one such Q&A session at the bottom of an auction. eBay lists the first few words of each question and answer, and anyone can click the final hyperlinked word to read the rest of the session. — 132 —


Bidder’s question Seller’s answer

Figure 8.2

Once you get questions and answer them through eBay’s message system, your Q&A sessions appear at the bottom of the auction they belong to.

Changing a Listed Auction: What Is and Is Not Allowed If an auction has no bids and it isn’t in its final 12 hours, you can revise the auction. Perhaps someone wrote you a question about your item, or pointed out an error in your title or listing that you need to discuss in the auction listing. There are several reasons why you might want to change a current auction, including the following: • To correct a mistake in the title or listing • To add or replace the picture • To change the starting bid • To modify a shipping policy (perhaps you failed to set the option that shows you ship worldwide) • To add a promotion to the item, such as putting a border around the auction when it appears in search results

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If your item has a bid, you cannot change the title, starting bid, or description, but you can add to the description. When you do, eBay appends your message to the bottom of the auction listing, and bidders will see the extra text only if they scroll down far enough below your auction to see the additional text. This is why you should consider using HTML if you’re savvy with HTML, or use the simple formatting tools that eBay provides for those who don’t know HTML, to increase the size of the extra text you’re adding. This and perhaps a yellow background helps draw attention to your important addition to the auction listing. I don’t know HTML, and frankly I don’t want to know HTML. (My eBay Maniac says it’s simple, but he enjoys C++ programming, so who can trust what he says about HTML?) When HTML code is involved, my eBay Maniac handles the change. It turns out, however, that one rarely has to resort to HTML. Many sellers don’t use HTML or a HTML-formatting program such as FrontPage to create auctions. If you use an auction-listing service such as Mpire, which we often use (www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/mpire), you’ll never need to know HTML. That’s one reason I enjoy using such a service. eBay makes it relatively simple to add to a listing if you omitted something or need to correct something in the auction. Figure 8.3 shows an eBay revision box where the user is adding to an auction’s description. Figure 8.4 shows how the additional text appears toward the bottom of the auction. With the large letters, it’s likely someone interested in the auction will see the additional text.

Figure 8.3

Use a large font to help ensure that your bidders see your auction’s added text. — 134 —


Figure 8.4

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By formatting the text with a large font, you cause the added description to stand out enough for most bidders to notice it.

Hands Off the Final 12 Hours Although you can change an auction that has no bids, and you can add to an auction’s description if it does have at least one bid, you can do neither during an auction’s final 12 hours.

There have been times when we’ve gotten a question about something we should have stated in an auction but failed to, and the auction had fewer than 12 hours to go. This means we either had to let the omission or mistake remain or cancel the entire auction and relist it with the correction. Cancelling would cost us our listing fees and some trust with those who had bid before we cancelled. To make up for that, a mistake has to be big and it’s got to cost us significant money if we don’t cancel before we’ll actually cancel an auction. Usually, it’s less costly just to leave the error unless it means we’ve misrepresented something about the condition of the item or otherwise will make the bidders think we’ve misled them.

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Is a Promotion Worth the Cost? If an auction is sluggish, we always wonder if we should promote the auction more, such as revising it to add a border around the title when it appears in search results. We’ve found that unless we’re selling an expensive item, for at least $100 or more, the added promotion is often not worth the extra cost. You will almost surely find this to be the case also unless you’re selling costly goods. As long as you’ve included at least one picture, and as long as you’ve used the Gallery option so your item’s picture appears in a list of search results, the extra promotion often won’t turn a sluggish auction into an active one. Instead of paying more for more promotion, try lowering your starting bid if the auction has no bids yet. A lower opening bid often gets more activity than an added promotion, and the lower starting bid costs you no money to change. Your eBay Maniac has probably tried several types of auction promotions that eBay offers. If not, you should definitely discuss these features to see if one might improve your listings. Perhaps your maniac has found one that works well in your situation. Certainly a Gallery picture that appears in search results next to your auction title is worth the cost, but the other promotions are typically too expensive unless you can test their return in some way to determine if they pay for themselves. Make sure that you check the picture to be sure the item shows up well on the listing page. I’m a better photographer than my eBay Maniac, so whenever he can’t get a good picture of an item I’ll take over. I’ve found that sometimes a picture looks good until it appears on the eBay auction and then I notice that the color isn’t true. When the color differs too much from the original item, you certainly need to reshoot the picture. If you can’t photograph color accurately, check out “Some of the Top eBayer’s Photography Tips and Tricks” section of Chapter 7, “How Descriptions Drive Sales.” Your camera’s white balance might be out of adjustment.

Some Errors Are Too Major to Ignore If one of you writes a description, the other should review it. You’ll find that the person who doesn’t write the description is far more likely to spot typos and other mistakes. My eBay Maniac is a full-time author and his marketing skills, which you learned in Chapters 6 and 7, are superb. In spite of all that, he can write an auction, read through what he wrote, list the item on eBay, reread the auction, and miss two or three mistakes he made. This is common because he’s so close to what he wrote that he misses

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things others would see. That’s why we both are more confident in our listing accuracy when I have a chance to review each auction right before, or perhaps right after, he lists it. As long as the auction has no bids we can correct mistakes we might find. If we see an error in a listing that has bids, or worse, someone sends us a message telling us about an error we didn’t notice ourselves, we have to make a decision as to the seriousness of the mistake. If the listing has several bidders and we inadvertently misrepresented the item, we will write all the bidders who have bid to tell them of the problem. If you have the need to do this, click the bids link towards the top of the auction listing. The link will describe how many bidders the auction currently has. A Bid History page appears, such as the one shown in Figure 8.5.

Figure 8.5

At any point you can see who is bidding on your item.

When you click on a bidder’s ID, that bidder’s member profile appears, which is a listing of that bidder’s feedback history with some other details, such as links to items that bidder might be selling. When you click the Contact Member button on the member’s profile page, eBay takes you to the message system, where you can send a message telling the bidder about the mistake. I recommend that you tell the bidder they are welcome to cancel their bid. Sure, you’d rather that they don’t. Whether they cancel or not, your bidders will appreciate your honesty. In our experience, no one has ever cancelled a bid when we’ve alerted them to a mistake.

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Contacting an auction’s bidders can be time-consuming and frustrating. Yet, how much is trust worth? For my eBay Maniac and me, trust is the basis of our eBay business, and we will go miles to protect it. I recommend that you do the same.

The Easiest Time to Sell Something to Someone Is Right After They’ve Purchased Something from You In my husband’s electronic book eBay eXtasy, he discusses the importance of upsells, and that’s where I learned what upsells are all about. An upsell occurs when someone buys something from you and then you guide that buyer into an additional purchase. Don’t confuse the honorable upsell with the dishonorable bait-and-switch tactic. A baitand-switch occurs when you lure someone into your business—or in this case, to your auction—with a promise or price or description that is too good to be true. Once there, you let the buyer know that they probably should not take what they bought but instead, for just a few dollars more, they can take something that will really do them some good. Bait-and-switch is actually thinly veiled false advertising and the Federal Trade Commission will frown on the practice. More important for you, eBay will frown on it and might kick you off. Some sellers might think they cannot upsell given their inventory of eBay items, and we can understand that. I don’t want to sound hypocritical, but we can rarely use upsell techniques because we sell so many different things. We might be selling lots of glassware this week, rare books next week, and two cast iron stoves the following week. An upsell technique will work best for you when you have a fairly predictable set of goods that you sell over and over (such as DVDs you buy for wholesale in large quantities and resell), or at least when you have goods that basically fit a general category (as would be the case for car parts, truck parts, engine fluids, and so on, as an example of related goods). But even if you sell a varied assortment of items, ask yourself the following question: What do my buyers want immediately after buying this item? Before going further, realize that this upsell technique isn’t just for the big sellers on eBay. Suppose you sell an MP3 player that you were given as a gift and you don’t use it enough to keep it. Have you got a spare pack of new batteries that will fit the player? Don’t include the batteries with the MP3 player in the auction! Instead, when your buyer wins, send an email telling your buyer that you’ll toss in a brand new set of batteries for $2.75 extra (or whatever) to save the buyer the trouble of purchasing them.

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That $2.75 isn’t much, but it’s just like your MP3 player got an extra $2.75 if you weren’t going to use the batteries anyway. Consider what you might do if you have a laptop to sell. Before listing the laptop, find a deal on a good laptop carrying case at your local discount store, if you don’t already have one to sell, and then offer the bag at a slight markup. If your buyer got a good deal on the laptop, the buyer may very well pay you a premium for the carrying case just because it saves the buyer the trouble of finding one. If there’s a lot of competition for that laptop, offer the bag as a free bonus in the listing to rise above your competition and get higher bids than you otherwise would without the bonus item. If you sell a car on eBay Motors, strike a deal with a local finance company to give your buyer an interest rate discount (even if it’s only a fraction of a point) as well as a finder’s fee to you. You can do the same with your car’s insurance agent. As long as you truly get your buyer a deal on these extra services, these are unique ways to add money to your sale. You should get paid for your legwork, and the finance company or insurance agent didn’t have to advertise to get business you sent—your buyer gets a deal, so once again, everybody wins. Don’t feel any guilt about the finder’s fee, or about profiting from the extra sale. Perhaps you are giving your buyer a discount over what they’d pay anywhere else, perhaps you’ve offered them a service that protects them, or perhaps you’ve gone to the trouble to obtain this service. You should get paid for your trouble—everybody wins. Every successful business in the world uses the upsell technique. Once you have a customer who has just purchased, it’s easy to add something else to that purchase. It’s the old “candy by the cash register” technique, or even better, the “Would you like fries with your hamburger?” upsell.

Cross-promoting Your Auctions eBay allows you to cross-promote your auctions, but for some reason, books and websites that teach eBay rarely discuss this cross-promotion feature. If your maniac isn’t aware of this feature, you will be able to dazzle them with your new-found knowledge. When someone wins your auction or views your auctions that have ended, eBay shows the bidders a list of up to four other items you’re currently selling. Figure 8.6 shows such a cross-promotion. The cross-promotion box appears at the top of the closed auction, whereas this cross-promotion isn’t there to get in the way while the auction is active. When the auction is active, the cross-promotion box appears toward the end of the listing.

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I Married an eBay Maniac Other items seller is selling

Completed auction’s description starts here

Figure 8.6

Once a buyer wins, they’re in a buying mood and chances are good they will be interested in other items you have for sale.

Figure 8.6 shows what can happen if you let eBay handle the cross-promotion: we won a Doc Savage Belt Buckle (actually my eBay Maniac won it, and why he wants that is beyond me) and the seller obviously has other Doc Savage belt buckles for sale as well as other things. Unless the item is something that a bidder might want multiple quantities of, cross-promoting the same item after the sale wastes cross-promotion space that could hold an entirely different item that might be more tempting (such as a bronze-colored belt to go with the buckle). Fortunately, eBay provides you the tools to determine exactly which items you want to cross-promote. If you do nothing, eBay guesses at the cross-promotion, but if you want to be more active in which items appear along with specific auctions, you can control that.

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Offer Combined Shipping Discounts

The cross-promotion feature works especially well if you make it a policy to reduce combined shipping charges for bidders who win multiple items. This policy increases your bids because bidders might bid slightly higher than they otherwise would have, knowing that they’ll get a break on shipping if they win multiple items.

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We state right in our auctions at least twice that we offer combined shipping discounts. In the past, we’ve even listed some auctions formatted to include this message up to five times in each auction. That’s how important we feel this technique is.

Figure 8.7 shows that one way to do so is simply to tell the buyers what you do in your other auctions.

Figure 8.7

You can perform your own cross-promotion by letting bidders know you’ll reduce combined shipping charges when they win multiple items from you.

Setting Up Your Own Cross-promotion Product List To determine which of your cross-promoted items appear when you list an item, go to one of your current auction pages and click the link labeled Change your cross-promoted items. You must be signed in to see it. eBay displays the Change Your Cross-Promoted Items page, shown in Figure 8.8. The table with four auction titles and pictures toward the top of the page determines which of your other items appear when someone bids on or wins the current item. eBay chooses these automatically, and eBay doesn’t always choose wisely. If you have other items for sale that relate more to the item being sold than one or more of the default

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cross-promoted items, click the option labeled Change to manual selection, select one or more of the four cross-promotions to modify, click the Change Items button, and then select from the list of your auctions up to four items that you want cross-promoted with the current one. The earlier you set up these meaningful cross-promoted items, the earlier they will help cross-sell themselves. Click to change cross-promoted items

Figure 8.8

You have the power to determine exactly which of your other items your auction’s bidders and winner see.

Modifying cross-promoted items is somewhat tedious if you have several auctions. The payoff is worth it, however. Remember the best time to sell something else is right after someone has bought from you. By displaying related items that might tempt the bidders and winner of the current item from which you launched this cross-promotional setup, you run a higher chance that the bidder or winner will want something else you have.

Making Cross-promotions More Automated If you don’t have time to set up your cross-promotions—although taking the time to do so often pays in extra bids—then instead of letting eBay make all the choices, you can help narrow which items appear in your cross-promotions. Locate the link under your cross-promotion item list labeled Change criteria for this item. Under the Promote items matching these criteria heading, click the Select an — 142 —


eBay category link. A category list appears, such as the one in Figure 8.9. Select the category you want eBay to select from. Once you save the category, whenever eBay displays a cross-promotion for the current item, eBay will only cross-promote from the selected category.

Figure 8.9

Select which category you want eBay to choose from when it picks cross-promoted items.

When we are selling an assortment of items, we’ll always work the cross-promotion screens. For example, we might be selling some rare and fragile china for someone along with our usual rare and used books. We don’t sell china often enough to create a new ID to niche that category by itself, so we just sell the china under our primary umbrella eBay account along with everything else. If someone were to bid on one of the china pieces, such as a saucer, we don’t want pictures from four of our book auctions to appear in the This seller is also selling these items cross-promotion section. We want the other pieces of china that we’re selling to appear. We even modify our cross-promotions within the same categories as often as necessary. If we’re selling a batch of Dick Francis novels, for example, we want the person who bids on one of them to see other Dick Francis novels we’re selling and not see a list of unrelated how-to books.

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Determining Cross-promotion Connections eBay now supports a cross-promotion feature called the cross-promotion connection that enables you to cross-promote someone else’s items along with your own. eBay will then ensure that your items always appear first in the cross-promotion list but the other user’s with similar products will also show up. Let’s face it, you aren’t too keen on the idea of promoting a stranger’s auctions from within your own auctions, are you? However, it’s in your best interest to allow this. eBay assumes you want to use a cross-promotion connection, but you can click the Edit link to opt out of this process. If you don’t want to promote someone else’s auctions, then eBay won’t use your auctions in other seller’s cross-promotional displays. If you actively sell from multiple eBay IDs, you should set up your cross-promotions to your other IDs. That is the true power of this feature. Before cross-promotion connections, you could only cross-promote items from the same ID as the current auction. So if you had an ID that specialized in stereo accessories, you couldn’t cross-promote those items from an ID that sold only stereos. If you own multiple eBay IDs for multiple niches you sell from, there might be times when your inventory runs low in one or more of your IDs. You might not even be running four other auctions in one or more of those IDs, depending on your inventory. Therefore, by setting up a cross-promotion connection to all of your IDs from all your other IDs, you always ensure that something you sell from one of your accounts will show up whenever any cross-promotion takes place with your auctions. Change your cross-promotion connection options by clicking the option labeled Manage your cross-promotion connections. This is the second link under the title Cross-promotion connections—When someone bids or wins the following item. eBay displays the Cross-Promotion Connections page, shown in Figure 8.10. If someone has specifically requested to be cross-promoted in your auctions, you can accept the request by clicking the Request New Connection button under the heading Pending Connections: Requests I’ve Received. To request a connection on someone else’s auctions, click the Request New Connection button under the Pending Connections: Requests I’ve Sent heading. The other eBayer will accept or reject your request. Any and all of your active cross-promotion connections appear under the heading Active Connections, and you can modify the list if you ever want to change it for any reason.

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Chapter Eight Once the Auction Begins, There’s No Time to Rest Click to opt in or out

Figure 8.10

You can control whose auctions appear when someone bids or wins an item from you.

Managing Auctions Keeps You Busy You should now understand some of the work that is required on eBay during an auction’s duration. The work doesn’t stop once the auction appears on eBay. There will invariably be questions from buyers, and possibly even corrections you need to make to your listing. Using the eBay message system to correspond with bidders should help you make the work of updating your listing information even more efficient. Watch how your maniac handles these tasks and then see if this might be an area where you can pitch in and help. There’s even more work to do once you cross-promote your items and handle the emails. In addition to handling the specific actions required by your auctions, you need to be promoting your auctions in general using all the tools available to you. In the next chapter, “It Seems We’re Always Selling,” you’ll learn simple ways that you and your eBay Maniac can promote your sales.

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9

It Seems We’re Always Selling

M

ost family eBay businesses don’t consider themselves large businesses. Most don’t even consider themselves a business, although you’ve learned throughout this book how much more effective you can be when you treat your eBay sales as a proper business. Not only do you and your eBay Maniac get deserved tax breaks, but when you begin to track your costs, search for new inventory sources, and learn new ways to promote your sales, you’re going through the same motions that most businesses go through. You and your eBay Maniac’s eBay sales do comprise a business. You don’t have to run a large business to go through the effort of promoting your business. Always be on the lookout for ways to promote your sales. Our selling doesn’t end with our auction descriptions, and yours shouldn’t end there either. If you want to maximize your family’s eBay business, you need to keep selling. This doesn’t mean doing something costly such as buying radio advertisements. There are several no-cost and low-cost ways to promote your auctions. This chapter explores a few of those ways.

Your About Me Page Should Create Trust Your About Me page is web space that eBay provides every one of its users. Even those who never sell anything and only buy should create an About Me page. It helps to demonstrate who you are and that you’ve been around eBay a while. Also, you might have something in common with a seller, and that commonality might turn into subsequent deals for you. There is vast disagreement about what an About Me page should contain. The About Me page, viewable by anyone who clicks the Me icon next to your eBay ID, is your web space that tells buyers as much or as little as you wish them to know. Use this space to build trust. Make no mistake, far more people view About Me pages than one might first assume. People want to know with whom they’re dealing.


Many sellers never bother creating an About Me page. For them, no Me icon appears next to their eBay ID. Once you and your eBay Maniac put any content onto your About me page, eBay displays the Me icon next to your ID everywhere it appears on eBay so that others will be able to click your Me icon and view your About Me page.

Either Have a Plan or Leave Your About Me Page Blank Don’t work on your About Me page until you’re ready to populate the page with something useful. It’s fine to work on your About Me page even if you want to put a picture of your family and a note there about how much you enjoy helping buyers obtain the things they want most. Some sellers mess around with an About Me page but never put anything useful or informational about themselves there. Others decide to see what’s involved and put the following message on their About Me page: Under Construction, please come back soon! That’s the About Me page’s kiss of death. Nobody will return. Most sellers never get around to changing such a page. So leave it alone until you have something to put there.

Your About Me Page Is Free Real Estate Never ignore your About Me page. If your eBay Maniac already has an About Me page, you might glean some tips in this chapter to make your About Me page more effective. If your maniac has never created an About Me page, now is the time to do so. Fortunately, my eBay Maniac had already created an About Me page for our sales before I got involved with eBay. I’ve given him some ideas and ways we might change it for the better. We tell a little about ourselves and even posted two letters there that buyers wrote to us to tell how we went above and beyond their expectations. A testimonial is a powerful selling tool. Two testimonials are better than one. When potential buyers see what other buyers say about us, that lends us more credibility than if we were to say it ourselves. If you treat your buyers better than you expect to be treated, you too will get letters of praise. The very week I wrote this chapter, we received a huge box from UPS. In it was about 2 feet of about 12 pounds of delightful, freshly baked cakes, candies, and other sweets from The Swedish Bakery in Chicago. It was sent by a couple we’ve never met. About a year ago they bought some books from us and were happy with their purchase. They write us from time to time. This is the second box of scrumptious goodies they have sent from that Chicago bakery, which the wife, Kathy, owns. Let me tell you, the longdistance friends you make on eBay really can make your heart swell. (And with this friend, our waists swell also!) — 148 —

Chapter Nine It Seems We’re Always Selling

To create your About Me page, click your My eBay page’s Personal Information link on the left side of the page. Then click the Edit link to the right of the About Me page link. eBay displays the description page shown in Figure 9.1, which explains the process you’re about to go through to create or manage your About Me page.

Figure 9.1

Get ready to create your own About Me page.

Once you click the Create Your Page button, eBay gives you the option of using step-bystep About Me page help or entering your own HTML if you know HTML or understand how to transfer the HTML web page description from a web page program such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. If your eBay Maniac has already created an About Me page, you can follow this same procedure to make changes to that page that you both feel might improve your About Me area. Certainly for newcomers to web page creation, the step-by-step process eBay provides for creating your About Me page is the way to go. When you choose the option labeled Use our easy Step-by-Step process and click Continue, eBay walks you through your About Me page creation. If you want to enter your own HTML code, click the option labeled Enter your own HTML code instead of choosing Use our easy Step-by-Step process. Assuming you selected the step-by-step option, eBay displays the Enter Page Content web page. Here is where you craft your About Me page’s contents. — 149 —


In the Page Title box, give your About Me page a title that appears atop your About Me page in large type. Below that will be a couple of text boxes to enter up to two paragraphs about yourself (or about your auctions or about your selling policies; whatever you wish can go there). All the standard formatting tools are available so you can apply italics, color, and boldface to your text as Figure 9.2 shows. Formatting buttons

Figure 9.2

eBay’s step-by-step About Me page simplifies the creation of your About Me page.

Below the title and body text-entry boxes is the Add pictures section, where you can send one or two pictures to your About Me page. (You’ll decide where the pictures go on the page in a moment.) Toward the bottom of the page, eBay enables you to specify from 10 to 100 feedbacks that you want to appear at the end of your About Me page, as well as titles from 10 to 200 of your current auctions. If your feedback record is good, you’ll want to provide some on your About Me page. They serve as powerful testimonials as to the way you do business. If you have email or letters from buyers that also work as testimonials, you should consider putting the content of one or two of them on your About Me page too. Don’t use any names unless you have permission. The About Me page is a free place to advertise your current auctions, so be sure to select 10 or more auction listings to appear there.

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Finally, one of the few places that eBay ever allows you to link outside of eBay is on your About Me page. If you and your eBay Maniac ever develop a website where you also sell items, you can direct people to that site on your About Me page. It is wise to read eBay’s About Me policy because eBay has been known to change the rules regarding policies related to links in the past. The About Me policy appears here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/contextual/listing-aboutme.html When you click the Continue button, eBay takes you to the Preview and Submit page shown in Figure 9.3. Here, you select a layout for your About Me page. Perhaps you want your pictures to appear to the right of your About Me paragraphs. Or perhaps you want the figures to appear before the text. (If you want more control over figure placement, you’ll have to resort to using HTML or hiring someone who can do it for you.)

Figure 9.3

Format your About Me page so it takes on the feel you want to portray with your text and graphics.

At the bottom of the Preview and Submit page is a preview of your About Me page. If you change the layout at the top, the preview changes to reflect that layout change. Once you have your About Me page the way you like it, click Submit. eBay then creates the page. From that point forward, your eBay ID will have an icon labeled Me next to it wherever it appears. Bidders can click your Me link to learn more about you. — 151 —


You Can Always Share About Your Family An effective About Me page simply tells something about you and your family. You don’t have to go into great detail. Telling about yourselves personalizes your About Me page and, vicariously through your About Me page, personalizes your auctions. Perhaps you should describe your hobbies or something special that your family likes to do outside of eBay, such as camping. When you tell about yourselves, not only do you personalize your auctions, you also connect with some bidders who look at your About Me page. If they also go camping, for example, they will feel camaraderie with you, even though they’ve never met you. They’re more likely to feel as though you’re “one of them.” Pictures can also be effective, but don’t overdo them. Keep your About Me page fairly simple if you’re trying to personalize it. Unless you’re providing information that can help bidders learn more about the products you sell (another tactic discussed in the upcoming section “An Informational About Me Page”), you’ll want to keep a personalized About Me page clean and relatively light on text and graphics. Keep it friendly.

An eBay-Intensive About Me Page I call an About Me page dedicated to promoting the seller’s selling reputation an eBayintensive About Me page. This is an eBay page where you might discuss the care you take in packaging the goods you sell. Telling about packaging care is especially good when you sell fragile and rare items. You might also discuss your shipping and insurance policies. Why not show your buyers the care you put into wrapping? For extremely fragile items, consider placing three or four simple pictures on your My eBay page that demonstrate how you package what you sell. By doing so, you are providing evidence that you package items carefully for shipment. Buyers will appreciate that you’ve not only told them but you’ve also shown them the care you put into the items you ship. In your About Me page, you can discuss how quickly you ship and how fast you respond to questions. (Make sure you do respond to questions quickly.) Another effective way to promote your eBay-intensive About Me page is to list some of your current items for sale as well as recent feedback. eBay provides links for those things. Once you’ve elected to put a list of current items and recent feedback there, eBay updates your About Me page’s content with that data so the items and feedback your buyers see is always fresh.

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Don’t Replace Text from a Good Auction

Some sellers use their About Me page for all their shipping and payment policy information. They then feel they can remove that information from each of their auction pages. This lessens some of the text and potential clutter from their auctions, and it can make auction listings faster to create. These sellers will put a note in their auctions requesting that bidders look at their About Me page to learn about their shipping and payment policies. The drawback is that many bidders will not click over to see the About Me page when they have a question about shipping. If they don’t see the answer they’re looking for on the listing page, they are likely to click the Ask Seller a Question link and bother the seller or, more likely, move to the next seller with the same item in their search results list. If the seller puts all information related to their auctions in each separate auction, bidders do not have to pause from their shopping to look at the About Me page or click to ask a question—and the seller won’t be bothered by a question that could easily been answered in the auction. It’s okay to put such policy information in both places: on the About Me page as well as on each auction’s listing.

An Informational About Me Page You and your eBay Maniac will probably develop a unique About Me page that fits your business well. I just want to give you an example of a couple more kinds of About Me pages I’ve seen used effectively. You can spend your entire About Me page focusing on the products you sell. This technique can be effective when you routinely sell the same items or items related to each other. You might go into detail about how you buy in large quantities so you can sell for a low price compared to others. You might mention how the quality of what you sell far surpasses similar items the buyers might find on eBay. Whatever your selling strengths are, those are the things you want to talk about on your About Me page. You can even write a series of tutorials explaining new and useful ways buyers might use your products. You can write these in Microsoft Word or convert them to a universal format such as a text file or Adobe PDF format and offer them as a free download. If you and your eBay Maniac are unfamiliar with creating PDF files or linking to off-the-webpage files, any moderately knowledgeable computer person can convert your files or

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post them in a place accessible from links on your About Me page with little effort or expense. Unlike auction listings that disappear from eBay about 45 days after they end, your About Me page remains active on the Internet as long as you have an eBay account. This means that search engines such as Google.com and Yahoo.com will eventually look at your page and possibly make it available when someone searches for words that match those on your About Me page. Knowing this, put as many keyword-rich terms and phrases on your About Me page as possible. Use the free Overture tool discussed in Chapter 7, “How Descriptions Drive Sales,” to find appropriate keywords and phrases related to the things you sell. Sprinkle those keywords and phrases on your About Me page so that your About Me page eventually ends up in search engine results when someone searches for items related to what you sell.

A Combination Is Wonderful We use a combination of elements on our About Me page. For example, we provide two free reports that any eBayer might find helpful. One is a report titled “99 Tips for Buying and Selling on eBay,” and the other links to a free email-based eBay newsletter anyone can subscribe to that brings tips to whomever wants them each month in a newsletter format. We even tell our buyers about the first free report in most of our listings, as Figure 9.4 shows. You can link to your own About Me page from any auction, and this free report is what my eBay Maniac heard called an ethical bribe to get buyers to check out our About Me page. The free tips gets them to look at our About Me page, and the two long testimonials we placed there help build trust so when the buyer returns to our auction, it’s our hope they are more likely to bid. We provide a brief three-paragraph description of who we are and why we sell on eBay. You can be assured that we will also be telling bidders about this book on our About Me page as well. Any information we can provide that furthers our credentials as reliable sellers will only improve our chances for getting bids. The same is just as true for you. Your About Me page is the place where you don’t overdo the tooting of your own horn, but you do provide as many facts and testimonials as will briefly fit to demonstrate your credentials. We provide a couple of letters from satisfied buyers in the past as testimonials. Testimonials are powerful selling techniques that show how others respond to your past deals.

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Figure 9.4 We tell all potential bidders about one of the free reports we make available from our About Me page to entice them to visit our About Me page to learn more about us. My eBay Maniac created our About Me page with a table of our current auctions toward the bottom. Anyone who glances at our About Me page also gets to scan all our auction titles. It’s our hope they will see more than one item they’re interested in. This is yet another way to cross-sell your items; buyers look at one of your auctions, visit your About Me page, and see other things they might want in the process. Finally, we inserted a table of feedbacks from our recent buyers to serve as further testimonials to the care and promptness of our auctions. If you visit our About Me page at http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ViewUserPage&userid=bidmentor, you will see that we don’t use a lot of graphics or fancy formatting. We try to keep it simple. It’s our hope that more people will take the time to read the five or so paragraphs we have there if we don’t overload the page with graphics and page after page of text.

Use eBay Keywords to Promote Your Sales Surely you’ve seen banner advertisements, those boxes at the top, bottom, and sometimes in the middle of web pages that sell services and products. eBay also displays banner ads at the top of search results and elsewhere. When you search for an item, you’ll often see three banner ads at the top of the search results that relate to your search phrase. (A fourth banner ad, textual in nature and slightly larger than the text — 155 —


ads at the top of search results, also sometimes appears on eBay pages on one side of the screen.) Figure 9.5 shows three such banner ads that appeared as the result of searching for Atkins books. eBay assumed we were possibly searching for the successful Atkins dietrelated books, which explains the first ad banner that appeared. The term books was enough to trigger the middle banner ad, which is a seller of educational books. The reason for the third and final banner ad isn’t so obvious from the banner ad, but upon clicking that link one finds that banner pointing to a seller of books also. Three banner ads

Searched for this

Search results

Figure 9.5

When you search for an item, banner ads related to your search appear above the search results.

The first banner ad is a larger, graphical ad as opposed to the other smaller, textual ads. (Sometimes a fourth, slightly larger textual banner ad appears on the side of eBay search result screens.) Other than the size and graphics, the procedure to display your own banner ad on eBay is the same for either type.

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Here’s a step-by-step process of how the banner ads work on eBay: 1. A buyer searches for something. 2. eBay produces a list of matching search results with (usually) three banner ads at the top of the search results. 3. If the buyer clicks any item in the search results, that item’s auction displays as expected. 4. If the buyer clicks one of the banner ads instead of an auction title in the search results, eBay immediately takes the buyer to the landing page for that banner ad. Depending on what the banner ad’s owner designated, eBay either sends the buyer to a single auction or to an eBay store where the banner ad’s owner has items for sale that should be related somehow to that banner ad’s text. The banner ad, therefore, drove traffic to a specific listing or eBay store, and that was what the owner of the ad selling those goods wanted to happen. The banner ads certainly don’t ensure that more sales will be made, but we find that we get more bidders when we participate in the eBay banner ad program.

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Banner Ads Display the Seller’s Feedback Score

At the bottom of the smaller textual banner ads, the feedback score and positive percentage rating of the seller who bought that banner ad appear. If you don’t like the seller’s feedback score, you are less likely to click that banner ad.

Any Seller Can Use eBay Banner Ads When my eBay Maniac suggested that we create some eBay banner ads for a huge assortment of rare Civil War books we had to sell a few months ago, I assumed that to get banner advertisement on eBay would require a lot of time and money. Whenever I see banner ads atop the web pages I visit, I assume there is some mammoth advertising company putting those out all over the Internet, in a somewhat random order but somewhat based on content. It went over my head how that was done. I said this to my eBay Maniac. It turns out that I was basically correct! Getting banner advertising across routine websites does require some time and money and requires contacting a few key companies that specialize in the distribution of such ads.

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Fortunately, eBay banner ads are much simpler to get. Also, eBay banner ads can make sense financially even for a small family eBay business. I’ll show you how you can take advantage of this extra advertising in a moment. First, I must tell you that it took me a little while to understand how the eBay banner ads worked. Google.com uses a similar process to display banner ads, and my eBay Maniac had previously bought banner ads on Google for some of his other business ventures, so he immediately grasped the concept about eBay’s banner advertisements. I wasn’t so fortunate, and it took my eBay Maniac explaining the process a few times before I got it, simply because it was such unfamiliar territory for me. I found that I quickly understood the eBay banner ad process once I understood how banner ads are targeted and once I understood the bidding process behind the ads. So hang on just a little longer and everything will fall into place for you as it did for me.

Banner Ads Are Targeted Ads Keep in mind, eBay most often displays banner ads that are related to search results being displayed. It would make no sense to display a banner ad for a Bosch home mixer when someone searches for a jackhammer (although those Bosch mixers are powerful!). eBay analyzes each term in each search and attempts to locate banner ads that are keyed to any or all of the words in the search. eBay rotates banner ads in an attempt to give all participants exposure. If you want your banner ad to appear when someone searches for Linksys Router, your banner ad will rotate with all the other sellers who requested banner ads to appear for the search term Linksys Router.

You Only Pay When Somebody Clicks Your Ad One of the things that makes the eBay banner ads affordable is that you only pay for an ad’s appearance when someone clicks your ad. That means that if your banner ad appears 4,000 times in a week, but only 100 people clicked your ad, you only pay for those 100 clicked impressions (the Internet term for how many people clicked your ad). In a sort of bidding process, you will make an offer for how much you want to pay for each clicked banner ad. The higher you offer, the more often your banner ad appears in the rotation.

The eBay Banner Ad Process Uses Keywords When sellers set up their eBay accounts to display banner ads, they must tell eBay which search terms to key the ads to. They can attach as many of these terms as they like to a banner ad. — 158 —


In other words, if you were selling collectible items related to the Batman movies, you might ask eBay to key the following words to your banner ad: Batman Batman movie Batman movies Batman collectibles Batman comics Dark Knight (Batman’s nickname) Not surprisingly, these are known as eBay keywords because they key your banner ad to specific search terms.

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Banner Ads Aren’t Useful for Low-cost and Eclectic eBay Sellers

We find that banner ads work best when we have a relatively large group of related auctions. For example, when we sold approximately 100 rare Civil War books, we created a banner ad for those books. When someone clicked our ad, they were taken to our eBay store where they could view all our Civil War books that we currently had listed. Banner ads are also useful for high-dollar items you are selling, even if you sell only one of those items. If you sell the same kinds of items over and over, a banner ad might also benefit you.

Although banner ads are inexpensive, they still cost something every time someone clicks on your ad, so you must weigh the general cost with how much money you might get in extra exposure due to the ad.

Putting It All Together I told you that the banner ad process takes a while to explain, but you now have all the pieces and you’ll quickly grasp how it works. You’ll find as I did that the actual setup of the eBay banner ads is relatively simple. Now that you understand the targeted nature

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of banner ads and the keywords behind them, you can easily follow the process for setting up the banner ads: 1. Go to https://ebay.admarketplace.net/ebay/servlet/ebay, which is the eBay Keywords home page (see Figure 9.6). Here is where you select keywords and create your banner ad. Click after registering to sign in

Register here

Figure 9.6

You’ll create and assign your eBay banner ads on the eBay Keyword website.

2. Click the Get Started Now! button to sign up if you or your eBay Maniac have never used eBay keywords for banner advertisements. Although this is a sister site to eBay, you need to register here even though you’re already a registered eBayer. 3. Once you register and sign in, click the link that reads Create New Campaign. In its simplest form, a campaign is a set of one or more related banner ads. You can assign as many words and combination of words as you like to each banner ad in each campaign. Name your campaign and click to add funds to your campaign. You won’t know at first how much money to spend on a campaign, so use an initial funding of $20, which is the minimum amount to begin a campaign. (If you don’t use all of that, you can transfer the excess to a different campaign or get a refund later.)

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So if you were selling vintage phonograph albums from the 1940s, you might name your campaign Vintage Records, add $20 to fund the campaign, and click the Create Ad button to work on your actual banner ad. If you and your eBay Maniac have an eBay account that has reached one of the PowerSeller status levels, you get free banner ad money! Rest your mouse pointer over the link labeled, What is a Promo Code? and look at the code next to your PowerSeller status level. For example, if you are a Gold PowerSeller, your code is ebaygold and you can enter that code every quarter for a free $75 in eBay Keywords funds. (The Bronze and Silver PowerSeller levels are offered a one-time amount that is not renewable each quarter.) You’ll be able to use that eBay Keywords money to purchase banner ads. 4. The Create New Ad screen appears, where you specify whether or not this banner ad will take the users who click it to a specific auction, a category inside your eBay store (if you have an eBay store), or to a listing of all your items for sale. 5. Scroll down to the Create your Ad section and enter a title and description that will appear in your banner ads. Figure 9.7 shows an example. As you type a title and description, the textual banner ad and the larger graphic banner will appear. If you want a fancier graphic banner ad than the default ad, you (or a graphic design artist who you hire) can create an ad and save it in the computer-based graphic GIF file format by clicking the Upload your own GIF link instead of accepting the relatively bland graphic banner ad that the eBay Keywords system generates for you by default. 6. When you’re satisfied with your banner ads, click the Proceed to Keyword Selection button. eBay analyzes your auctions linked to this banner ad (in step 4 you specified whether to send banner ad clicks to a specific auction, all your auctions, or to your eBay store, and eBay analyzes whatever you selected as the target of the click) and suggests various keywords and tells you the maximum you must pay per click to ensure that your ad gets seen the most. This is tricky I found out. You don’t have to pay the maximum. For example, for the vintage records phrase, eBay Keywords currently suggests that you pay 28 cents, which ensures that you’re paying more than anyone else using that specific phrase. You don’t have to pay that much for everyone who clicks vintage records, and if you do you’ll soon run out of funds. You can pay as little as 10 cents (the current minimum) per click or as much as you want. You don’t have to appear more than any other seller of vintage phonograph albums to take advantage of eBay banner ads.

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I Married an eBay Maniac Textual banners appear here

Enter ad details here

Larger graphic banner appears here

Figure 9.7

Enter a title and description for your eBay banner ads.

Enter the maximum cost you’re willing to pay for each click. On most of your keywords, this might only be a dime. On possibly one or two very common search phrases, you should be willing to go up in price some so your banner ad appears regularly in the rotation as opposed to rarely. Once you enter all the keywords you want to buy (and you can delete the ones that eBay suggests for you if you don’t care for them), click the Proceed to Review button and you’ll see a screen similar to the one in Figure 9.8, with a rundown of your current campaign. You can create more banner ads for this campaign or click Proceed to Payment, where the eBay Keywords system will want your credit card information to get the $20 payment. You can modify the campaign now or at any time during the campaign, so you might want to see how your campaign runs before changing it. As with everything in sales, testing is worth the effort to learn what works and what doesn’t. 7. Once you pay for the campaign, the eBay Keywords staff will need a little time to review your ad and keyword selection to make sure neither violates any policies (the policies are located at http://ebay.admarketplace.net/ebay/servlet/ebay/ template/res%2CEditorialFAQ.vm, where you’ll read the editorial guidelines for submissions). Once your campaign is reviewed (typically in less than 24 hours), you’ll receive an email that your campaign has gone live and your banner ad will be floating around eBay bringing sales to you until your $20 runs out! — 162 —

Chapter Nine It Seems We’re Always Selling Your custom graphic ad appears if you uploaded a GIF image

Figure 9.8

Review your eBay Keyword banner ad campaign before paying for it.

At any time you can return to the site and add more funds to a campaign if that campaign starts getting low or runs out of money. You can modify anything about a campaign, including the keywords you’re paying for, the amount you pay for any of them, and your banner ad contents. You can also put a campaign on hold once you sell the items from that campaign and then reinstate that campaign if you ever sell those items in the future.

eBay Keyword-Based Banner Ads Do Bring Results Whenever we’ve tested eBay banner ads, we’ve seen them pull more bidders to our auctions than when we didn’t use banner ads. Those extra bidders come with a cost: the cost per click that gets people to our listings. You need to treat each campaign with care, especially when going into this for the first couple of times, to make sure that you’re not spending more than the campaign is worth to you in extra sales or bids. Strategies that boost the effectiveness of the eBay Keywords system could fill an entire book, and I’ve only given you a section of a single chapter here. I realize this concept might still be sketchy to you, but you now have all the basics that you need to understand how campaigns work. It took one complete campaign for me to fully understand how it all worked to bring us extra bids. I had my eBay Maniac to help explain it to me — 163 —


since he had done this several times without me, and now you have me to give you a head start on eBay banner ads. In spite of your head start, it will save you money and time if you quickly review the eBay Keywords Main FAQs page here: http://ebay.admarketplace.net/ebay/servlet/ebay/template/res%2CMainFAQ.vm An FAQ is a web page that provides frequently asked questions (and answers) related to something such as the eBay banner ads.

Your Emails Can Sell in Their Signatures Although using eBay Keywords might seem daunting, as soon as you finish setting up your first campaign, you’ll see that there’s really nothing more to understand or do than what I’ve described in this chapter. If you’re like me, though, you’ll need to go through the process once from start to finish to grasp what’s really happening. Not every promotional technique is complicated. There’s another way to promote your auctions that requires absolutely no work on your part once you and your eBay Maniac set it up: using email signatures. An email signature is text (which often has a hyperlink to a web page) that appears at the bottom of every email you send. In what is perhaps the most popular email program, Microsoft Outlook (and its sister program Outlook Express), you can create your own email signature that promotes your auctions. Many other email programs and even some webbased email (such as GMail, Google’s email system) allow you to create a signature too. Every single time you send an email, the recipient gets a description and link to your auctions. If you send emails anyway—and who doesn’t these days—you might as well let a free ad to your actions go along for the ride! Figure 9.9 shows one of our email signatures. What we’d like is for Microsoft Outlook (the email program we happen to use) to rotate several signatures so the same one doesn’t always appear. As it works now, we must select a different email signature if we don’t want the default one we’ve created to appear on whatever email we’re sending at the time. Although you can’t see the color in the figure, my eBay Maniac highlighted the text with a yellow background to draw the reader’s eyes down to the email signature. Although we have several email signatures that we use, my eBay Maniac mostly uses this one. It might sound a tad self-serving, but that’s the idea of an ad! It was his goal to create credibility so that the recipients of his emails click that link at the bottom of the email. They are then immediately sent to a listing of our current auctions. Without the signature, we wouldn’t reach some potential buyers who will now have the opportunity to visit our listings when they click this signature. — 164 —


The email signature

Figure 9.9

Why not include a free advertisement with every email you send?

Search the help system of whatever email program (or web-based email system) you use to learn how to create your own email signatures. Be sure to include some kind of call to action, and the old standbys of Click Here or Click HERE are still useful to get the reader to actually click the link.

Once an Auction Ends, More Work Is Needed After you have created the auction listing, handled the emails, promoted your auctions, and the auction ends, it’s time to collect payment and mail the item to the buyer. Get prepared because the post-auction process can take longer than the preparation of the auction listing. In the next chapter, “We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends,” you learn what’s in store for you when one of your auctions ends. I’ll describe how my eBay Maniac and I streamlined the process, and you can do the same for your family business.

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Part IV Whew! The Auction Ended, Now What? 10

We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . .169

11

Don’t Skimp When You Ship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191


10

I

We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends t’s so much fun when an auction ends with bidders!

That’s when you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get paid for your efforts. I say “reasonably” because some bidders won’t pay. Those are the ones you hear about whenever there’s a story about fraud. Those are the ones that newcomers to eBay worry about as I did when I first began helping my eBay Maniac. Fortunately, those are also the ones who are few and far between. Most eBay buyers and sellers are honest, friendly, and are easy to deal with. In this chapter, we’ll explore ways to confront the post-auction process that awaits you. Here, you’ll see what you can do after an auction finishes to ensure a fast and simple conclusion to the transaction.

Sending End-of-Auction Invoices Once an auction ends, eBay sends both the buyer and the seller an email with the auction’s information included: the final selling price, the buyer and seller IDs and locations, and email addresses, shipping costs, and other auction-related data. Although everything in that email should be complete enough for most payments to be made, many sellers prefer to send additional information to the buyer. We prefer to send an email for our auctions in addition to the invoice. Even if our buyers are already overloaded with emails, as most of us are these days, our extra contact shows them that we’re here and we’re ready to handle whatever they need. We feel that when we quickly respond with an email or a customized message within their invoice, they respond faster with payment or with questions they have for us.


Customize eBay’s End-of-Auction Email to Show You’re on the Ball Some sellers never send anything to buyers after an auction completes. These sellers send no invoices, no emails, no messages. As long as you are sure your buyers need no further information, you don’t really have to send more than the email eBay already sends. We prefer to send more, and we’ve noticed that large eBay sellers almost always send additional information after we win their auctions. If the larger and extremely successful sellers follow this practice, it’s probably in our best interest to do the same. It’s probably in your best interest, too. In defense of those sellers who do nothing unless the buyer asks a question, eBay’s end-of-auction letter contains just about anything a buyer needs to know in order to pay the seller (not the seller’s mailing address, however). You can customize that endof-auction email so that your winning bidders receive additional information that you want them to know after every sale. Follow these steps to customize the end-of-auction email so the invoice within the email says exactly what you want said: 1. Go to your My eBay page. 2. Click the Preferences link. 3. Click the Show link to the right of the option labeled Logos and branding. 4. Click the Edit link to the right of the option labeled Send Customized End of Auction and transaction emails. The Customize End of Auction Email page shown in Figure 10.1 appears. 5. If you have a graphic logo image, you can request that eBay display your logo atop each emailed invoice by entering your logo’s web location. The logo must be 310 pixels wide by 90 pixels tall. A graphic designer or anyone familiar with computer graphics files can scan your logo and resize it to this required banner size if you wish to have one. It helps to “brand” your ID so when someone sees your logo a few times they will begin to associate that logo with your good products and service. 6. If you choose not to customize the invoices by clicking the option labeled Include my custom message in this email, eBay will send the regular end-of-auction email to all your winning bidders. Some information such as your mailing address does not automatically appear in this email. If you want your mailing address or other information to appear, you’ll need to click the custom message option and type the information you want seen by every winning bidder.

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Chapter Ten We Have Work to Do When a Sale Ends

Figure 10.1

You can customize the logo and message your winning bidders receive.

PayPal buyers don’t need your mailing address because they can click the Pay Now button in the end-of-auction email and pay through PayPal any time after the auction ends. 7. If you want a copy of each end-of-auction email your buyers get sent, click the option labeled Send me a copy of the custom email when it’s sent to a winning buyer. Although getting a copy of each winning bidder’s email is probably not needed, click this option every time you change your customized end-of-auction emails long enough to receive at least one copy of your end-of-auction email to ensure you can check for typos. 8. Click the Save button to save your changes. All subsequent end-of-auction emails will display your custom message (and logo if you specified one).

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Customizing Your Message Your custom message cannot be more than 2,000 characters, and you cannot include any HTML formatting in your custom message.

eBay provides AutoText, which you can use to put auction-specific information in your message. When you type an AutoText label in your custom message, eBay replaces that AutoText label with actual information in your end-of-auction email.

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For example, if you want your custom message to address your buyers by their eBay ID, you could start your custom message like this: Congratulations {BUYERUSERNAME} for winning my auction! Your buyer will see their name in place of {BUYERUSERNAME} in the email they receive. To see a list of all the AutoText entries available for your custom message, click the down arrow under the AutoText list. You don’t have to type the actual AutoText name in your message, although you can; when you’re ready for an AutoText entry, click the AutoText item you want in your message and eBay inserts that AutoText item at your text cursor’s current position.

You Can Send an Email in Addition to the End-of-Auction eBay Notices We use customized end-of-auction emails, but we also like to send our own email to our winning bidders once an auction ends. Figure 10.2 shows what our post-auction emails look like. Our emails include a link to our eBay auctions. Also, we think our simplified format is helpful for our buyers. Perhaps most important, we let the buyers know what to do when they bid and win multiple items from us.

Figure 10.2

By sending our own emails, we can include links and we can format our endof-auction notices to look the way we prefer they look. — 172 —


A couple of drawbacks exist for sending your own end-of-auction emails. One is that you do somewhat duplicate the end-of-auction email that eBay sends to your winning bidders. Bidders might not appreciate the multiple emails for each auction, although none of our bidders have told us the extra email is a burden. Also, if you aren’t at your computer close to an auction’s ending time, such an email will perhaps arrive too late to be as effective as one sent immediately after an auction ends. Perhaps your eBay Maniac already has a good system in place for handling end-of-auction emails. Over time, my eBay Maniac and I have decided the email seen in Figure 10.2 is effective for what we want to do. Talk to your maniac about adding end-of-auction emails to your eBay selling procedures if this is not currently a technique they are using. You can use our email as a starting point, or create your own. Just be sure to make it informative and useful, and not just another piece of “junk” mail.

A Good Problem to Have: One Buyer Wins Multiple Items Everybody likes a deal. When you make it clear that you greatly reduce combined shipping charges, bidders who plan to win one of your auctions know they are rewarded when they win a second auction. In a way, they have to pay less for that second item than other bidders would have to pay. The other bidders would pay full shipping, but someone who wins two of your items doesn’t pay full shipping for each subsequent item they win within a specified time period. We inform bidders several times, sometimes as many as five times in an auction, that we offer “greatly reduced combined shipping discounts.” We want them to look at other things we have. We want to save them money when they win multiple items. As my eBay Maniac says, “Combined shipping doesn’t cost us as much, so we should pass along that savings to our bidders.” As shown in the previous section, our end-of-auction email tells buyers what to do if they are bidding on more than one of our items. This is the primary reason we prefer to send end-of-auction emails. As Figure 10.2 shows, we state the following early in the end-of-auction email: “If you are bidding on additional auctions of ours within the next 3 days, don’t pay yet but please send us an email after you completely finish bidding. Our auction catalog is here: http://www.BidMentor.com. Once you let us know you’re done for now, we’ll mail you a final invoice with a greatly reduced shipping & insurance cost.”

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This informs our bidders that they don’t have to contact us to tell us they still have bidding left to do. We send the completed, combined invoice with reduced combined shipping when they tell us they’re ready for such an invoice. The reason we go to extra lengths to help buyers pay less for combined shipping is not only to encourage bidders to buy multiple items, but to also reduce our workload. It’s as easy to mail two items as it is one most of the time. In addition, my eBay Maniac once purchased several DVDs from the same seller. The seller mentioned in the auction that they reduced combined shipping charges. Yet, when my eBay Maniac began winning the DVDs, he would get an invoice from the seller for each individual DVD with full shipping on each invoice. No mention was made on later invoices about the multiple wins. My eBay Maniac had to write the seller several times to get a combined invoice. That seller needed better information that explained how buyers were supposed to determine combined shipping charges.

Not Everybody Will Do As You Request In spite of our post-auction email diligence, some bidders still send us questions asking how the shipping discount is going to work. That means they didn’t put much effort into reading our email, but we must remember that the buyer might be busy and it’s easier to ask us than to search through all the end-of-auction emails looking for an answer that might not even be there. Also, newcomers to eBay (you were one yourself just nine chapters ago!) are sometimes a bit overwhelmed already and might miss your instructions. After someone has bought from you a time or two, they’ll be more accustomed to following your procedures. Problems have occurred for us when buyers of multiple items pay separately for each item. When they click the Pay Now button on their end-of-auction invoices from eBay, they are charged the full shipping amount for that item. In fairness to the quicker payers, some bidders immediately pay for everything they win with PayPal by clicking that Pay Now button the moment the invoice from eBay arrives. They might very well click that before we’ve been able to put together our email telling them what to do for multiple wins. The problem for the buyer is that we don’t know if they plan to win additional items from us within the 3-day period we allow combined shipments. Sometimes the moment we get payment for a sale, we go wrap that item for mailing. We use Stamps.com and we print postage directly onto their mailing label as soon as we wrap their item. If they win another item from us an hour later, we can’t easily reverse the Stamps.com postage and open their package and rewrap with the additional item. Although Stamps.com, Endicia.com, and other online postage sites do allow you to request a refund on incorrectly printed postage, requesting that refund and rewrapping the same items multiple — 174 —


times starts to cost you a lot of time and effort. When this occurs, we generally have to mail the first item separately due to the trouble of changing the packaging. Before we wrap the second item they’ve won, we send them an email asking if they are planning to win something else within the next 3 days so we can mail them together and give them the discount such combined shipping incurs. We do let them know that we wrapped the first item not knowing they were wanting at least one other item. If we haven’t wrapped an item that someone paid for yet and we see they won another, we certainly mail them together and refund part of their shipping. The nice thing is, such quick buyers have almost always paid through PayPal. Therefore, when we notice that someone paid separately for two or more items and we haven’t yet mailed those items, we wrap and mail them together and then issue a refund onto their PayPal account for the excess shipping and insurance they ended up paying.

You Can’t Always Mail Items Together When you’re selling fragile or awkwardly sized items, it’s not always possible to ship them together and reduce combined shipping charges. If we have only books for sale, we don’t qualify our reduced shipping charge message. If, however, we’re selling items that don’t ship well together at the same time, such as fragile china and books, we qualify the wording we use to state that we’ll combine items when feasible. We’ll go onto explain that damage could occur to the fragile items if we didn’t ship them separately from the less fragile items, which is why we will make every attempt to reduce combined shipping charges when someone wins more than one item but sometimes we cannot adhere to this goal due to the nature of the inventory. Our specific situations I describe in this book will apply to your family’s eBay business somewhat, although not always directly. In other words, you might sell only one item at a time, albeit a fairly expensive item, and you don’t worry about combined shipping problems. As you read through what we face in our business, you will learn ways to work through your own specific problems as an eBay seller. It’s my hope that you learn how flexibility and some ingenuity can get you through problems that crop up from time to time. You can learn that flexibility from what we do. Also, we can learn from what you do, and we’d love to hear from you about your experiences if you send them to us at [email protected].

eBay Helps Somewhat with Multiple Wins eBay makes an attempt to help eliminate the problems surrounding the same buyers winning multiple items in one auction. We’ve found that eBay handles this situation best if you sell multiple quantities of the same item. Suppose you routinely sell rolls of — 175 —


bubble wrap at a fixed price. In one fixed-price auction, or perhaps in your eBay store, you might have as many as 100 rolls for sale, and buyers can purchase as few as one roll or as many as all 100 rolls. If you routinely sell an assortment of different items, eBay’s combined shipping discount options won’t apply as well to your situation. You will need to handle multiple wins similarly to the way we do, which is manually, through emails and partial adjustments to PayPal payments when necessary. By going to your My eBay page, clicking Preferences, and then clicking the Show link to the right of the Shipping and Discounts section, you can edit your combined purchase options. Click the Edit link to display the Shipping and Discounts page (see Figure 10.3). Here, you can determine the timeframe eBay uses to calculate combined purchases, and you can offer discounts of a fixed amount or based on the combined package weight.

Figure 10.3

eBay provides options that can help generate shipping discounts for multiple purchases.

Combined Shipping Is Why We Once Received Two Negative Feedbacks My eBay Maniac once received two negative feedbacks the same day. The first read, “Put 2 items in one box and charged total shipping for the 2 items.” The second feedback from the same buyer who won the two items within a 24-hour period from us read, “Need to learn about combined shipping.” — 176 —


Here are the events that led up to those negative feedbacks: 1. That buyer won the first item. 2. We immediately sent that buyer our emailed invoice (in the format of the one in Figure 10.2) that asked them not to pay yet if they planned to win something more within 3 days. 3. About an hour later, the buyer paid with PayPal, paying the full shipping cost for that item. 4. The next morning, that same buyer won something else. Fortunately, we had not wrapped the first item for mailing. We sent a request that the buyer let us know when they wanted a final invoice. 5. About an hour later, that buyer sent payment for the second item, through PayPal, paying that item’s full invoiced shipping amount for the second item too. 6. After the second payment, we wrapped both items together and calculated the combined shipping and insurance costs. We placed the mailing label on the package. 7. We immediately issued a partial PayPal refund for the overpayment in shipping and insurance. We explained what the partial refund was for. We also sent a separate email telling the buyer the reason for the partial refund. 8. We mailed the package with the two items. 9. Upon receipt of the package, the buyer filed those negative feedbacks. Sometimes you just can’t win. My eBay Maniac immediately sent an email to the buyer to ask for an explanation. It was an extremely respectful and calm email. My eBay Maniac explained what we did by issuing that immediate refund but asked if there was something we missed. Did the buyer win a third item we hadn’t noticed? Did we send the partial refund to the wrong location? My eBay Maniac copied the original email that explained the partial refund at the bottom of that email and sent the email to the buyer. The tone throughout was extremely apologetic and was a request for more information about where we messed this up. I’ve seen my eBay Maniac write far more direct and, shall I say, blunt emails. This was polite and apologetic, although we still were not sure what it was we had to apologize for. My eBay Maniac sent that email as a standalone email and also through the eBay messaging system to ensure that spam filters on the buyer’s end wouldn’t filter out the message delivery. — 177 —


Three days went by and the buyer did not respond to our email. We had received two negative feedbacks that were not only undeserved, they were severely damaging because they indicated that we don’t uphold a very important promise in our auctions for discounted combined mailing. My eBay Maniac went to his feedback page (you can see yours when you click your feedback score in parentheses following your eBay ID on any eBay page) and clicked the link (at the bottom of the page) labeled Reply to feedback received. This option allows you to include a follow-up feedback response to any feedback. One way to use the feedback reply is to respond to negative and neutral feedbacks to explain your side of the story. My eBay Maniac wrote this for the follow-up: “U need to retract this error. Refunded excess Ship/Ins $ the day I mailed items.” You only have 80 characters for the reply, so you often need to resort to abbreviations in your follow-up message. The problem was not just that the feedback was harmful. Given our exemplary feedback up to that point, buyers will be fairly understanding when a single buyer has a complaint that may not be a typical problem with you as a seller. A big reason for our concern was that if we’re going to get a negative feedback, or in this case two negative feedbacks, they needed to be deserved! When we mess us, we deserve to be corrected and exposed. If we don’t mess up, we don’t deserve a false negative reputation. When a buyer and seller mutually agree to withdraw a feedback, eBay will withdraw the feedback. The feedback’s note does not go away, but a negative will no longer count against you in your feedback score. If we could get the buyer to agree to withdraw the incorrect feedback, then it couldn’t count as two negatives and eBay would put a note at the bottom of the feedback telling others that the buyer and seller mutually agreed to withdraw the feedback. We couldn’t get the buyer to respond to our emails, so there was little hope the buyer would make the effort to learn where the feedback withdraw option was. Therefore, we began the procedure to withdraw our own feedback. That starts the process, and eBay sends a request to the other party to acknowledge the withdrawal. If the buyer agreed, then the feedback would no longer be a negative and my eBay Maniac’s explanatory reply along with eBay’s message that the buyer and seller mutually agreed to withdraw the feedback would make it clear that we were not at fault. Fortunately, the buyer agreed to withdraw the feedback when eBay sent the request. The buyer never sent us an explanation or an apology (which was deserved). As long as the buyer agreed to withdraw the two negatives, we were satisfied. — 178 —


To start the process for a feedback withdrawal, go to the Mutual Feedback Withdrawal page at http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MFWRequest and enter the auction’s item number. eBay then contacts the other member and if the other member clicks to agree to the mutual withdrawal, both your feedback and the other’s feedback will be withdrawn and a message placed on the feedback to show the withdrawal. Figure 10.4 shows the result of the feedback withdrawals so you can see how the mutual withdrawn feedback entries appear. Two negative feedbacks are withdrawn

Figure 10.4

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Mutually withdrawn feedbacks no longer count in your total feedback score, but the feedback message remains in your feedback history.

Retracting Feedback Is Not a Simple Procedure

One of the most difficult things to get eBay to do is to edit or remove a member’s feedback entry. Generally, eBay refuses to do either. I don’t know of any case where eBay has ever agreed to edit the wording in a feedback entry. Rarely, however, eBay might remove a feedback entry completely, but getting eBay to do this isn’t a simple matter. Only if a feedback violates eBay’s Feedback Abuse Policy (found at http://pages.ebay. com/help/policies/feedback-removal.html) will eBay consider removing feedback. This applies if the feedback someone leaves for someone else is defamatory or constitutes libel

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against the other party. Feedback that includes the other party’s phone number or address also is removable to protect the member’s privacy. Just realize, once you leave feedback or receive feedback, that feedback is generally permanent. Therefore, be very careful if you leave negative or even neutral feedback. Make sure you have all your facts straight so as to not leave undeserved feedback, good or bad. If you’re having problems with another eBayer, try to do everything to work out those problems before resorting to negative feedback.

Follow-ups to Feedback Have Hidden Benefits In the previous section, I explained how we used follow-up feedback to explain our position on the undeserved negative feedbacks. It’s too bad we had to wait three days to post the follow-up, but our buyer deserved that time to reply and explain how we messed up if we truly had. You don’t have to wait for a negative (or neutral) feedback to reply to your feedback. We don’t reply enough to our feedbacks, but we should. We should reply to positive feedbacks too. If you and your eBay Maniac open an eBay store, you might be able to send people to your store who might not otherwise know to go there. You can post a follow-up to your positive feedback that thanks each buyer and reminds the buyer to check your eBay store. You could even mention that you’ll give repeat buyers a 5% discount off their next purchase or whatever similar enticing policy you offer. You have only 80 characters to respond, so make sure you’re succinct and clear in your feedback reply. You can even make a positive feedback score look even more positive by replying to it! One time I saw a book on our sold shelves that a buyer paid for 6 days before. We try to ship within hours of our buyers paying us and that’s become far more possible now that I am part of our family eBay sales. We certainly try never to go 48 hours without shipping unless a postal holiday falls somewhere within that 48 hours. As soon as my eBay Maniac saw it had been six days since the buyer paid, my eBay Maniac took these immediate actions: 1. He posted positive feedback for the buyer and told how quickly the buyer paid. — 180 —


2. He mailed the book Priority Mail. The buyer had paid for, and expected, much slower Media Rate. Depending on the mail load at the time, the buyer actually might have received the book faster than if we’d mailed it the day the buyer paid if we’d used Media Rate. 3. My eBay Maniac immediately issued a full PayPal refund, including shipping, to the buyer and explained what happened. He also sent an email to the buyer to explain the refund, even though the explanation appeared in the PayPal notes section. To many, this is far and away too much customer service. Just upgrading the book to Priority Mail was enough. Yet, my eBay Maniac was uncomfortable and felt he had let the buyer down, even if the buyer would never have noticed the difference. By the way, that auction was not using Chapter 7’s powerful selling technique that promises 24-hour shipping (see the section titled, “The Most Powerful Wealth-Building Sentence You Can Put in Your Auctions Is…”). However, we still treated our buyer as though we had made that promise. That buyer left us the feedback shown in Figure 10.5. The buyer explained what happened and left us extremely favorable feedback. We felt a reply to that feedback was needed to explain the situation in more detail. That feedback and our reply provided us with a powerful testimonial. Sure, we wish we’d mailed the book the day the buyer paid. The resulting feedback, however, turned a bad situation into a powerful testimonial that confirms for any seller looking through our feedback that we hold true to doing the right thing and erring on the side of our buyer even when we don’t have to.

Figure 10.5

You can turn a possibly damaging mistake into a helpful testimonial with an appropriate feedback response. — 181 —


The Best Part: Getting Paid Receiving payment for what you sell is a nice reward for the work you put into that auction. When you first begin selling, every payment can generate almost excessive relief that you didn’t get stuck with a deadbeat bidder. Once you’ve sold for a while, the individual payments don’t even enter your radar because you know that most eBay buyers pay and most eBay sellers ship when paid. Unfortunately, an extremely small percentage of eBayers are deadbeat bidders. I don’t use the term deadbeat bidder to disparage nonpaying bidders excessively. Deadbeat bidder is the generally accepted term for nonpaying bidders. Even with that term being so prevalent among eBayers, it’s always understood that not everybody who doesn’t pay is a thief. Remember, you don’t ship until you get payment, so at most you’re out auction fees and the lost income for the period that the item was listed and the time spent waiting for a payment that never arrived. Some people truly do get sick or have major changes in their lives, and whatever bids they placed on eBay are low in their priority list. Just consider how many auctions won in the Gulf States failed to get paid after 2005’s major hurricane hit so hard. The hurricane hurt buyers too; some buyers who paid right as that hurricane hit never heard from their sellers and lost the money paid. This natural disaster hit both buyers and sellers, and some of those who weathered the storm to tell about it might not be back on eBay even yet.

PayPal Rules Most of the time, when an auction ends you’ll have a PayPal payment within a few minutes, hours, or days. The last number I heard was that 80% of all eBayers pay with PayPal. That means that as a seller you must accept PayPal. Many buyers refuse to go to the trouble to write and mail a check or to get a money order. It’s amazing that just a few short years ago we all figured “all we have to do is drop a check in the mail.” Now, all we have to do is click Pay Now, confirm the order, and click again to pay for whatever we buy wherever the seller is in the world.

Paper-based Payments Can Be a Hassle Some buyers won’t have PayPal accounts, and they will mail you a check or money order. It’s fine to hold the item until the check or money order clears. Unless the buyer has a history with eBay, it’s almost always wise to hold items paid with money orders to give the money orders time to clear. Money order fraud is growing as color printers get better at duplicating the look of real money orders. — 182 —


Make sure you state in your payment section that you hold checks and money orders for up to 2 weeks. Buyers usually understand this and won’t be surprised when you don’t ship for a while. Use whatever timeframe you’re comfortable with. Check clearing is much faster today than it used to be, but you should still give ample time for the check to clear. My eBay Maniac finally convinced me that handling checks and money orders these days is not as attractive as taking PayPal payments. With PayPal, you get your money instantly. Well, by “instantly” I mean it’s transferred to your PayPal balance, which you then can spend or request for withdrawal, as soon as the buyer pays you. I thought the “instant money” was nice, but PayPal incurs a fee. When someone wins something for $100, and they pay us $100 with a PayPal payment, we get less than $100 because PayPal keeps a percentage fee. With checks and money orders you keep the full $100 out of every $100 paid. The problem is the cost of your time required with depositing several checks and money orders each month. Unlike PayPal payments, you must physically handle paper-based payments. We find them to be somewhat irritating (and I never thought getting money in the mail would be irritating!) given what we have to do to deposit them and wait for them to clear, as opposed to receiving PayPal payments. If your buyer pays with PayPal and uses a PayPal eCheck to pay you, PayPal sends you a payment notice but the funds do not clear into your PayPal account for a few days. I suggest that you do not ship the item until you receive PayPal’s cleared funds email. The money isn’t yours until it clears into your account, and some fraudulent buyers use this method to trick some sellers into shipping before the funds clear into the sellers’ account.

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Handling Cash Payments

After an auction ends, if a seller requires cash, don’t pay the seller and report the seller to eBay. eBay no longer allows cash transactions to be listed as a payment option, and eBay has never recommended cash as a payment option. Certainly there are some sellers who are legitimate but who want cash payments. These sellers are excessively risk-adverse and don’t trust PayPal or paper-based payments. Another obvious suspicion is the seller doesn’t like the IRS (although such sellers do have my understanding sympathy on that front). As a buyer, sending cash is the riskiest way you can pay anyone, and even if you send the cash using FedEx or any other highly traceable mailing means, the seller can always say the envelope was empty when it arrived. You might be dealing with an honest seller, but why risk it?

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We have dealt in cash, and we actually still do for a very specific type of transaction. If someone who lives close to us wants to meet us at a coffee shop or somewhere convenient instead of us mailing the item, we request cash for that transaction. We won’t be able to hold a check or money order before delivering the item, so cash is the only sensible way to get paid—assuming they don’t send the payment through PayPal before we meet. We have sold several items to locals in the past, and we don’t charge shipping costs for buyers who want to meet. We only meet when we’ll be heading that way—otherwise a meeting like this would be even more inconvenient than wrapping the item to mail and depositing a check in our bank. We realize, though, that a buyer who lives extremely close shouldn’t have to pay to have us ship the item, and it’s a little perk for local buyers that you should consider.

Always meet in the daytime in a busy area for safety’s sake. You should take all normal precautions for such meetings, obviously.

What to Do When Someone Doesn’t Pay It happens. Sometimes you don’t get paid. The worst thing that can occur is you thought you got paid and mailed the item only to find out later the payment was invalid. With a bad check or money order, you should contact your District Attorney’s office to learn what to do. Because your buyer likely is not in your state, any legal action is going to be tedious for you. If you never receive payment or if a PayPal payment turns out to be fraudulent, there are some actions you can take to improve your odds of getting your money. The next two sections discuss things you can do if you’ve been the victim of fraud.

The Buyer Disappears the Moment the Auction Ends When someone wins an auction but never pays, don’t take it too hard. It’s all a number’s game as they sometimes say. Odds are, you will have transactions that go badly. If one of your first auction experiences is negative, keep in mind that your eBay Maniac has been doing this a while. It will seem worse to you than to your eBay Maniac because it is all new to you. The trick is to keep plugging away at your family’s auctions. Keep selling, keep handling transactions, and expect some to go wrong. — 184 —


Your eBay Maniac probably has a bias as to whether you should file a negative feedback for the deadbeat bidder. It’s true that you want to tell others that this bidder did you wrong. It’s not a matter of revenge, it’s a matter of warning other good sellers to watch out for this bidder. The problem with negative feedback is that your deadbeat bidder can file negative feedback for you in retaliation even though you were not in the wrong. It might not be worth a negative or even a neutral retaliation. There are other things you can do.

Send a Follow-up Email Once an auction ends and the buyer doesn’t pay, send your buyer a second email as well as a message through the auction page’s Contact Bidder page. Ask if payment has been sent or when you can expect it. Some buyers do honestly forget to pay and will promptly do so when you remind them. We don’t hesitate to give these buyers positive feedback for the auction, but we do not give them that feedback until they give us feedback for the transaction. Normally, when a buyer pays, we leave that buyer positive feedback right then. The buyer did their job, now it’s up to us to do ours and ship what we sold. If, however, we had to nudge the buyer to pay, we don’t leave positive feedback until the buyer does so for us. You never know if the payment reminder, no matter how gentle you were, bothered the buyer enough to seek the revenge of negative feedback has been.

Use eBay’s Nonpaying Bidder Site If your payment reminder doesn’t work, fill out a nonpaying bidder dispute. Go to http:// feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CreateDispute for the Report an Unpaid Item Dispute page shown in Figure 10.6. You’ll need the nonpaying bidder’s eBay ID and the auction number for the auction they didn’t pay. eBay will send the buyer a notice of the nonpayment filing you opened. If the buyer pays you should close the dispute. You’ll be given a chance to explain why you’re closing the dispute, so let the system know the buyer paid and all is well. If the buyer disagrees with you for some reason, the buyer will let eBay know through the unpaid dispute console that there is a reason for not paying. You should research the buyer’s claim and either agree and fix the problem or dispute the buyer’s claim and continue with the unpaid dispute process.

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Figure 10.6

When someone doesn’t pay, you can ask eBay to encourage the buyer to pay you by opening a nonpaying bidder dispute.

After 7 days, if the buyer still hasn’t paid you, return to the unpaid dispute page and request your auction’s final value fees. These are the fees eBay charges you based on a percentage of your item’s final selling price. eBay will immediately credit you those fees for your auction. You then can relist the item in another auction or sell the item to the second-highest bidder using the second chance offer. If your item sells after you relist it, eBay will credit that first auction’s listing fees too, which means you don’t pay fees on that first auction that didn’t work out.

Send a Second-Chance Offer to the Next Highest Bidder To send a second-chance offer, click the completed auction’s bidder list to see if you are willing to sell the item for the second-highest bid amount. If so, you specify whether you want the second-chance offer to last a day, 3 days, or 5 days. If the second-highest bidder accepts your offer within your specified timeframe, the sale completes and the second-highest bidder becomes the new winner of that auction and you resume your responsibilities as you would at any auction’s completion.

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The second-chance offer is great if you have more than one item to sell. You can offer each additional item to the second bidder, third bidder, fourth bidder, and as many other bidders in the bidding list as you want. Their bid levels will determine how many of these offers you want to make. You are not charged multiple listing fees for each offer the bidders accept. eBay charges you only a final value fee based on what you sell the item for in these subsequent offers.

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Don’t Sell to a Deadbeat Bidder Twice

Once you complete the final step of an unpaid item dispute, eBay asks if you want to add that nonpaying bidder to your Blocked Bidder list. We always block nonpaying bidders from bidding on our auctions in the future by electing to add the bidder to our Blocked Bidder list. Select Yes to eBay’s question that asks if you want to block that bidder from subsequent auctions you list in the future.

PayPal Takes the Money Back from You In spite of PayPal’s heavy security systems in place to verify payments, every once in a while a fraudulent PayPal payment gets through. PayPal thinks the payment is valid, PayPal puts the money in your PayPal account, you ship the item, and a few weeks later PayPal says, “Sorry, just joking!” and removes those funds from your account without saying “please.” This can occur up to 90 days past the sale. This has occurred twice since my eBay Maniac began selling on eBay in 1999. Both times PayPal put the funds back into our account once we supplied the documentation that PayPal requested. Some PayPal accounts have confirmed mailing addresses. These are PayPal accounts linked to a credit card. PayPal’s verification process was sufficient in PayPal’s eyes to “confirm” the mailing address. When a buyer pays you with PayPal, the PayPal email states whether this buyer has a confirmed mailing address or an unconfirmed mailing address. If confirmed, you should ship to that address and use delivery confirmation or some other tracking method so you have proof that you shipped to that address. If the payment turns out to be fraudulent and PayPal removes the funds from your account, send PayPal a tracking number that PayPal can verify through the post office, UPS, FedEx, DHL, or whatever carrier you used to ship the item. When PayPal sees that you did your part—that you shipped to the confirmed mailing address PayPal sent to you in that original payment email—PayPal puts the funds back into your account and the matter is over. PayPal takes the loss. — 187 —


If you ship to an unconfirmed mailing address, even it that was the address in PayPal’s payment email, and even if you have confirmation and tracking that you shipped the item and it was delivered, PayPal will probably not ever put the funds back into your account. For this reason, many sellers refuse to sell to any PayPal customer who has an unconfirmed mailing address. The sad thing is that PayPal does not make address confirmation available to most countries yet. That means that most international buyers will not have a confirmed mailing address and they cannot yet get one. Also, many buyers inside Canada, England, and the United States who can get a confirmed mailing address don’t always do so. Perhaps they don’t have a credit card or choose not to link a card to their PayPal account. If you refuse to sell to all unconfirmed PayPal buyers, then you are losing out on a lot of buyers and your bids will be lower. One way to put the odds in your favor is to accept payments for all PayPal users except when you expect an auction to go for more money than you’re willing to risk. If you typically sell $20 items, and if a payment goes badly every 300 auctions, the loss of that $20 isn’t a big deal. You probably will not want to limit your sales to confirmed mailing addresses. If, however, you ever sell something worth $100 or more, you might consider putting a note in your auction that you require payment from confirmed PayPal payments if the buyer pays with PayPal. If someone wins and pays with an unconfirmed mailing address, you can easily refund their payment through PayPal and request a different payment method. If a buyer has a solid feedback history with ample recent positive feedbacks, you might consider going ahead and accepting that buyer’s payment even if the buyer has an unconfirmed PayPal mailing address. Just remember that PayPal won’t guarantee payment to you if things go bad.

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Confirmed PayPal Mailing Addresses May Not Be 100% Certain I have a friend who sells a lot on eBay.

Recently, a buyer paid with a confirmed PayPal mailing address. My friend sent the item. A few weeks later PayPal removed the funds due to buyer fraud. My friend sent PayPal proof that he shipped to the confirmed mailing address. My friend promises (and he’s trustworthy) that in spite of mailing to the confirmed mailing address, PayPal refused to reverse the charge and kept the funds. He’s still trying to learn why PayPal won’t make the transaction good. This doesn’t bode well for the safety of confirmed mailing addresses. We think there must be something else going on in all that, espe-

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cially since we’ve had two similar transactions that PayPal made right as soon as we showed proof of shipment to the confirmed mailing address.

Until you learn otherwise, however, keep our friend’s experience in the back of your mind and know that nothing is a sure thing in our wired world of commerce.

Payment Received, It’s Time to Mail Once you receive proper payment, it’s your job to wrap the item for shipment and then to mail the item. Shipping deserves its own chapter. That is why you’ll find Chapter 11 titled “Don’t Skimp When You Ship.” Shipping can be tiresome. Shipping can be time-consuming. Two can often prepare packages for mailing more than twice as fast as one can. That’s why when I started helping my eBay Maniac, we were able to increase our eBay business dramatically and not just by a factor of two. It didn’t happen right away though. Shipping was a major problem for us. How do we mail 200 books each week so they arrive undamaged? How do we mail 200 books each week so that we didn’t get too damaged from all that work? We’ve made mistakes. We’ve learned tricks. I’ll tell you about it all in the next chapter.

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11

Don’t Skimp When You Ship

M

y eBay Maniac agrees that the biggest benefit I brought into our family’s eBay business relates to wrapping and shipping. I first made it a requirement that we set aside a dedicated shipping area with a table we only use for shipping and a standalone rack used to hold the packing supplies. We don’t really have enough room for a large, dedicated shipping area, but we did the best we could and it’s now much easier to get things shipped out. In addition to setting aside the shipping area, I researched packaging methods so we can be better assured that our buyers get what they want without breakage. Because wrapping and mailing was my primary job when I first began helping, and it still is one of my major areas of expertise in our family eBay business, I needed to get a good handle on this important aspect of eBay. I knew absolutely nothing about packaging and mailing, so it’s fine if you don’t either. You will benefit from what I learned, and I hope you will be able to take what I learned over time and more quickly apply it to your own eBay situation.

Shipping Considerations Shipping is certainly the most physical part of eBay. To wrap promptly and securely takes effort. Although this was the area where I could be the most beneficial to my eBay Maniac when I first began, it was a task I dreaded. He was selling everything from books to rare china. Each package was a challenge to me until I was able to get a better handle on how to deal with the various packaging options available to us. If you routinely sell the same kinds of items over and over, your shipping procedure won’t be as challenging as it is to those of us who sell vastly different items from one month to the next. You will be able to standardize better because you’ll be mailing the same sizes of boxes regularly. If you sell on consignment for others, as we do, you’ll have many different sizes, shapes, and weights to deal with.


Fast Shipping Equates to Repeat Sales The faster you get items out the door, the better your feedback will be. Receiving feedback on every transaction isn’t as important as getting repeat customers though. When people are happy with your service and speed, they are more likely to risk their money with you in the future. So work to get items mailed as soon as you can after receiving payment. Your feedback score and your bank account will both benefit. Before I began helping, my eBay Maniac would accept anything for sale that his consignment clients gave him to sell and list these items as quickly as possible. That is all well and good, until it came time to package the sold items for mailing. After the buyer paid, my eBay Maniac would scramble to get the item wrapped as fast as possible and often he didn’t have the supplies needed to do the job. One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to know how you will mail something before you list it. Have the appropriate packing materials and boxes ready for any items you currently have listed. You will avoid the end-of-auction scramble, and your sanity will be better assured before each trip to the post office.

Weight Is Everything Size can be a factor when mailing because all carriers have a size limit. If you exceed that size, you are charged extra to ship something. For example, the post office always places an extra fee on packages whose longest length plus the distance around the thickest part is more than 108 inches. Other carriers, such as FedEx and UPS, also have size restrictions. They will mail just about anything, but once it exceeds their initial size restrictions, you must pay more to mail the item. In spite of the size restrictions, I suspect most of you will not exceed the size limits too often. I base that on our history; my eBay Maniac and I have shipped more than 3,000 packages and perhaps have exceeded the size limits just five times. That combined with the fact that we sell about anything on consignment that our friends and family want us to sell means that we’ve sold quite a variety of items and still the size restriction hasn’t been much of a problem. The primary consideration that determines a shipping rate is weight. It might cost more to mail the same weight to different parts of the country, and it certainly costs more to mail the same weight to different parts of the world, but the weight is the real factor in a package’s cost, so you must ensure you know what something will weigh for mailing before you list the item on eBay. Otherwise, you run the risk of charging too little or too much. If too little, your profits will be eaten up by shipping costs. If too much, your buyer won’t appreciate being overcharged and will be less likely to buy from you again.

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Chapter Eleven Don’t Skimp When You Ship

Knowing that weight is so critical, not only should you know how you’re going to package and ship something before you list it, but you should also know what that item will weigh when you mail it. This requires that you weigh the item and then weigh the packaging materials you plan to use. Over time this gets simpler. For example, although we sell many kinds of things, we sell more rare and used books than anything else. The protective packaging required to mail close to 100% of all books we sell weighs exactly 5 ounces. Therefore, before listing a book, we weigh the book and add 5 ounces, and that total is what we base our shipping charges on. It’s incumbent upon you to determine how much each item will weigh when shipped before listing that item so you’ll be able to charge appropriately. If you sign up for a trial with Stamps.com, they will send you free digital scales. That’s not a bad deal. See the section titled “Print Postage from Home with Stamps.com, Endicia.com, PayPal, and the Post Office Websites” later in this chapter for more information on using these services.

You Can Charge Flat Shipping Fees or Weight-Based Fees eBay allows you to charge a fixed fee or a weight-based shipping fee called a calculated shipping fee. You determine which one you want to use when you list something. You can omit the shipping costs altogether and ask that bidders write to you with their location to determine shipping costs, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Buyers like to know what they’ll pay for shipping, and the best place to tell them that is in the auction itself, where they’ll see the shipping charge while they’re viewing your listing. Some sellers specify the domestic shipping cost but ask international buyers to write for shipping costs. That makes little sense. eBay has simplified the way you specify both national and international shipping costs, and it’s about as easy to list international shipping costs in an auction as it is to list domestic shipping costs. After you enter the item’s category and description on the Sell Your Item page, eBay displays the Payment & Shipping page. There, you can specify whether you opt to mail worldwide or only to countries you specify. In addition, you can state either a flat-rate shipping method for each region you mail to or request calculated shipping based on the buyer’s location. Figure 11.1 shows how you can specify up to three domestic (this assumes you live in the United States; your screens will differ depending on your country) shipping options and prices. You don’t have to specify all three; if you only ship using Priority Mail, you can specify just Priority Mail shipping costs.

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Figure 11.1

Flat-rate shipping means that your buyers know exactly what the shipping charge will be when they look at your auction.

The Domestic Handling Time option specifies the time you estimate it will take for you to wrap and mail the item once you receive payment. eBay displays this on your auction page. The lower the number, the faster your buyers can expect to receive the item. Don’t underestimate the time required, but take into account your plans for the day around the auction’s end to ensure you can meet this goal. Once we had to take some items with us to mail while on vacation because we listed items that ended while we would be gone. After we realized what we’d done we could not cancel the auctions without incurring the listing fees and without risking angering some bidders who had already bid, so it was easier to just deal with shipping the items as promised. You can add some cost to each flat-rate shipping option to cover your supplies, such as tape and packing materials and boxes if you buy your own boxes. Also, you can include an insurance fee inside the shipping cost or keep it separate by changing the Shipping Insurance option below the rate boxes. If you add some cost for packaging and perhaps a little for handling, you should state this in your auction so your buyers understand. Many buyers like flat-rate shipping. They know exactly what their shipping cost will be when they view your auction. The drawback to flat-rate shipping is that you must average your costs or overcharge some buyers. For example, in general it’s less costly to ship a Priority Mail package that — 194 —


weighs more than 1 pound to someone in the next town than it is to mail that same package to someone 15 states away. By specifying a flat-rate shipping amount, you either must charge the most costly option (such as to Alaska if you’re in the continental states) to everyone or must average the cost (for packages shipped close to home, you’ll make a little, and for shipments several states from you, you’ll lose some). Many sellers are converting to the calculated shipping cost method. This means that each buyer is charged based on their location. In any auction you list that uses calculated shipping fees, your bidders see the Calculate shipping box shown in Figure 11.2, where they can enter their ZIP Code (or select their country) to determine what their cost will be. Once they click the Calculate button, a pop-up window appears stating what their shipping costs will be if they win the item.

Figure 11.2

By specifying calculated shipping, all bidders will see their postage costs after entering their location and clicking Calculate.

To specify a calculated shipping fee based on the winning buyer’s location, click the Calculated tab on your Shipping & sales tax page. Select up to three domestic mailing options and up to three international methods you’re willing to use when shipping the package. Figure 11.3 shows how we’re offering three domestic shipping methods (all through the post office) and one international (Airmail Letter Post). We’ve checked the Worldwide option (which in turn checks all country regions we’ll ship to) so bidders know that we

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will ship the item to any winning bidder within those regions in the world. The packaging and handling fee is $1.79 in this example. This covers some packaging, time required to fill out the customs form if we ship internationally, and includes mailing insurance, which we now require on just about everything we ship. You don’t have to pay the high retail postal rates for shipping insurance. eBay sellers have far less expensive options. If you’re interested in these options, this book’s web page www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/resources has information about lower-priced insurance services, and you can pass along much of your savings to your bidders to give them a good deal on insurance. Select the package weight here

Figure 11.3

All you need to know is the package weight to specify calculated shipping.

Don’t Wrap an Item for Mailing Too Early Resist the temptation to wrap an item before its auction ends and payment arrives. After listing an auction, you’ll have a week or so to wait on it to sell. It seems logical to get the item ready for mailing during that week so that when the winner pays for it, you can slap a label and postage on the box and get it out the door. If you routinely sell the same inventory over and over, this works well. For all others, don’t wrap before receiving payment.

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I used to wrap some things before the auction ended but I learned quickly that has severe drawbacks. Often we’ll get questions about an item up to the final hour of an auction. If the item is wrapped and we can’t answer the question without looking at the item, we have to unwrap the package, and that’s not something you’ll want to do. It wastes tape, it often wastes paper, and the rewrapping never looks as nice as the original wrapping. Before you wrap an item to send, include a note to your buyer. First thank your buyer and then mention that you left feedback (if you did) and you’d appreciate feedback as well so you’ll know they received the item safely. Give them your email address or phone number in case there are problems. Your buyers are more likely to contact you before leaving you bad feedback if there’s a problem when you make it easy for them to contact you. For international buyers, an invoice affirms to the customs agent that your declared value is accurate, so always include an invoice in your international packages.

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Wait for Payment to Package Anything

Even once an auction ends, follow Jayne’s advice and don’t wrap the item before the winning bidder actually pays for it. You cannot be assured that the bidder will pay you and you might have to relist the item.

Relisting it generates a new auction in which bidders might have unforeseen questions. Unforeseen questions often require that you look at the item to answer them, and you won’t be able to inspect the item if you’ve wrapped it for mailing.

Using the Post Office I am writing this book to help others learn more quickly what it took my eBay Maniac a longer time to learn. As such, I am telling you how we handle the challenges we have faced in the years we’ve sold on eBay. By seeing what we do, you can learn from our mistakes and profit from our knowledge. I say this to let you know that we primarily use the United States Postal Service (which I’ll abbreviate as USPS throughout most of this discussion) for our eBay mailings. Depending on your location and what you sell, you may also find the USPS to be your best option. If, however, you routinely sell heavy items weighing 5 pounds or more, you might find FedEx, UPS, DHL, or even a freight company to be better suited for your business. — 197 —


I would guess that close to 80% of eBay sellers do rely on the USPS primarily as their shipping carrier. I don’t have any researched figures to support that claim, but I know from the amount of purchases we make on eBay this is the case. Also, knowing that the postal service is one of the easiest ways to mail smaller items and often the least expensive for books, magazines, and other media such as CDs and DVDs, I know that many of you are going to use the USPS just as we do. Some sellers are able to pull up to their post office loading dock and hand over the ready-to-go packages. The loading dock will have carts for this and perhaps your post office will work out a way for you to do this. You probably need some kind of relationship with your post office ahead of time due to heightened security these days. In addition, this only works when you’ve preprinted the postage on the packages using one of the online postage services (see “Print Postage from Home with Stamps.com, Endicia.com, PayPal, and the Post Office Websites”). If you sign up with a UPS or FedEx account, those carriers might pick up at your door at no extra cost if your average monthly quantity can justify their pick-up expense. Many people don’t know that the post office will also pick up at your door free of charge as long as you mail at least one Priority or Express package in each batch of items for which you request a pick-up. You can go to www.usps.gov and request a next-day pickup. When you do, your carrier will come to your door the next day when they normally deliver your regular mail and take whatever you have to ship. If your eBay Maniac already has an account with UPS or FedEx and prefers them over the USPS, that is fine and you should apply what I write here to the carrier you already utilize. Most of what I write about the USPS applies to any shipping method. So when I talk about the post office, you might have to swap “post office” for “UPS office,” but I’m confident you’ll still benefit from my experience. Every carrier offers its own benefits. If your eBay Maniac has not fully researched which carrier works best for the kinds of items you sell, you should. Research some of the other carrier options to see if you would benefit more by using someone else. When you sell different items all the time, it’s more difficult to use a single carrier than if you sell similar items. Almost all the carriers provide new, clean, and free boxes. If you use the post office, you can get all the free Priority boxes you want. At www.usps.gov you can order Priority boxes in various sizes, and a week or 10 days later the boxes arrive at your door free of charge. Don’t use Priority boxes when you mail Media Rate, First Class, or Parcel Post. Using Priority boxes to mail using one of the lesser-cost mailing methods makes the postal service angry—and you won’t like them when they’re angry.

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I’ve found another benefit to using the postal service. The post office gives you mail-carrying buckets to haul your packages and other mail to the post office, making the trips to and from your car easier. Figure 11.4 shows what these buckets look like. Watch your carpet, though, because these buckets are often dirty.

Figure 11.4

Get a few mail buckets from your post office to help make carrying your mail and packages easier.

Print Postage from Home with Stamps.com, Endicia.com, PayPal, and the Post Office Websites We find ourselves grateful for online postage. You will too once you’ve tried it! I used to take all our wrapped boxes to the post office every day or two. I’d stand in line. I’d anger someone behind me once I got up to the counter due to all the boxes I brought that had to be weighed and mailed. Even if I had calculated the postage from home and put the correct stamps on the packages, I could not drop them in a box outside the post office as we used to be able to do; all packages weighing over 1 pound now must be presented to a mail carrier. That means the post office lines get longer and the hassle of mailing the traditional way gets more frustrating. My eBay Maniac signed up for a free trial with Stamps.com. With the trial offer he found we got a bunch of free postage and even some digital scales free of charge just for trying them for 30 days. It seemed like a deal too good to be true. I now understand how Stamps.com can make that offer: once you try them for 30 days, you will not want to return to the old way of doing things.

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Stamps.com isn’t the only game in town. Many prefer the advantages that Endicia.com has to offer. If you want no services other than shipping labels with preprinted postage, you can use the post office’s website at www.usps.gov to print labels and postage. You can also print postage directly from your My eBay page for any completed auction by clicking the Print Shipping Label option in the Action column, and PayPal will fill in the address for you (assuming you have a PayPal account—and if you don’t, why don’t you?). I compare and contrast several mailing options at this book’s web page at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/resources.

Things Are So Much Easier When You Use Online Postage When you print a label and postage directly from your printer, you don’t have to stand in line. You can drop the package in any mail box at any post office within your home town’s postal area as long as you’ve created the label with electronic postage such as you’d do from www.Stamps.com. If there is no drop-box large enough to handle your package, you can take your boxes to your post office clerk, set them on the counter, turn around, and walk away. (I even find I can politely bypass the people in line and quietly set them on the counter if there’s an area to do so. All I need to do is get the postal clerk’s eye so the clerk knows the packages are there.) Your regular home mail delivery carrier can pick up your packages—even international ones as long as you’ve filled out the customs form properly—and take them to the post office for you. The most work required is printing the address and postage from Stamps.com or one of the other online options and taping the paper to the box. We don’t even do that because we ordered 8×11-sized 2-up labels (meaning there are two labels, one on each half of the page). We print directly onto these labels and slap them on the box, and we’re completely finished dealing with postage and addressing.

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The More Helpful Online Postage Services Comes with a Reasonable Fee

Stamps.com and Endicia.com both charge you a monthly fee to use their services. The fee pays for the software development and the maintenance required for such a site’s interaction with hundreds of thousands of customers. With these fee-based services, you get more than you get from the post office’s online postage or even from the PayPal-based postage you can print. We find the fee to be worth every cent and a trivial cost for several reasons. For one thing we add enough handling to the postage we charge our buyers to pay back this fee based on how many packages we plan to ship each month. The fee we pay is

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about $15 each month, so over a couple of hundred auctions the fee is not a factor. We use the extra services in Stamps.com a lot, and we’d miss them if we went to one of the no-fee services such as the postal service’s online postage system. For example, when a buyer writes to ask if we’ve sent a package, we can easily scan our sent items from within Stamps.com’s simple screens to locate everything related to that buyer’s shipment. One click of a button emails our buyer with the package’s details, such as when and how we shipped as well as the delivery confirmation number we used. Speaking of delivery confirmation, many online postage systems provide this free of charge or at a greatly reduced amount over what you’d pay if you went to the post office, stood in line, and had them apply your delivery confirmation slip. We save from 30 to 45 cents every time we mail an item, so the $15 monthly fee more than pays for itself in saved delivery confirmation charges alone.

International Considerations When you mail internationally, you might have to hand-address the package depending on which online mail system you use. Also, you’ll use one of two customs forms depending on whether your package is under 4 pounds or is 4 pounds or heavier. Some online postage suppliers even print the customs forms for you, although we’ve found it’s about as simple to fill them out by hand. The online customs forms require so many options that this is one of the few things in life that’s often easier to do by hand. I once mailed a box to Europe that weighed less than a pound. Technically, a box that weighs less than 1 pound requires no customs form. The box was delayed at customs for a while, although we obeyed their own rules by mailing without a customs form since it was under a pound. We find it more reliable to fill out a customs form for everything we ship, even those items under the 1-pound limit. Customs no longer holds the mail for inspection as they did that time when we hadn’t used the form. If shipping internationally seems daunting given the required customs form and international laws, eBay can help put your mind at ease when you visit eBay’s International Shipping page at http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/shippinginternational.html. Figure 11.5 shows what’s available, including helpful information on customs forms, currency conversion, and even a time zone calculator in case you need to contact an international buyer about something.

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Figure 11.5

eBay’s International Shipping page can answer all your questions about shipping to foreign countries.

Some countries have strange policies. For example, Italy is the only European country that does not accept Global Priority Mail. You’ll find that instead of learning the ins and outs of each country, your online postage system will often be helpful in letting you know which countries accept which kinds of postage. You must mark the value of what you ship on the customs form. This means that if you sold a lamp for $87, you should mark $87 for the lamp’s value. We have had a few international buyers request that we check the option labeled Gift on the customs form or lower the stated value (or both) so they have to pay less customs. We never ever do this. Not only would our own post office be suspicious because they know by our mail volume that we run an eBay business here, but we would be violating both American and international laws. We now put the following in every auction we list: We cannot mark customs forms as “gift” for this or any other sale and we must write an accurate declaration of value. We still get buyers who request that we violate this policy, but we do not do so. Here’s a tip you can use to save your international buyers customs duty charges on much of what you sell if you sell used goods: we’ve found that many countries do not

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charge our buyers a customs duty charge if we write Used, second-hand lamp (replace lamp with what you’re selling) for the item’s description. You should not do this if the item is new, obviously, but your buyers will appreciate the help when you can accurately write this description on their customs form.

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Different Countries Support Different Shipping Policies

No matter how careful you are, you might sometime violate a country’s shipping policy without intent. Patti Rich, this book’s eagle-eyed Technical Editor, told me once that one country (alas, Italy again) does not allow you to mail plastic toys. Who could have guessed that? We could have guessed that actually. We love Italy, and we visit there as often as we can scrape together enough money to get a discount flight. On almost every trip, we’ve found ourselves at the post office having to mail something home. It is at that point that we almost scream at the top of our lungs when we’re told some crazy bureaucratic hoop we must jump through. So we aren’t too surprised when we hear of another crazy Italian postal regulation. Of all the countries you ship to, if you mail to Italy, it would be a good idea to check Italy’s policies at the postal service’s website (www.usps.gov) to double-check that you aren’t violating anything there.

Other than Italy, you’ll generally have no trouble mailing just about anything to any country that you can mail to within the USA.

Make Sure Your Items Arrive Intact An entire book could easily be devoted to packaging items for safe mailing. Different kinds of items require dramatically different considerations. Mailing a book differs greatly from mailing a DVD, and both differ greatly from mailing rare china. Some items, such as the 8,000-watt generator that weighed 600 pounds we sold a few years ago, require boxing for freight shipment. One common consideration you must always strive for is to pack items so movement is minimized as much as possible. Movement is more responsible for damage than lack of padding, although both contribute greatly to an item’s condition at its arrival. If you mail glassware, such as a cup and saucer for example, you can wrap the cup and the saucer separately in bubble wrap, but you want to keep them separate in the box you mail them in so they don’t shift and knock against each other. — 203 —


It’s always a good idea to double-box any fragile china and glassware and make sure at least a 1-inch difference appears on all sides of the inside box, padded well, for example, with packing peanuts. Use enough peanuts and press them down as you add them to reduce shifting. Packing peanuts can shift during transit, so you might find bubble wrap to be a better padding.

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Protect Yourself by Marking Expensive Items

Recently it has been reported that some people buy second-hand, broken merchandise at a deep discount at resale stores, then order the same item that’s as good as new on eBay. They then return the broken item for a full refund if the seller guarantees the sale, as most good sellers do. This is nothing short of fraud, but how can you protect yourself if you sell expensive merchandise? One way is to get a black light marker and make a mark on the item with a code you’ll recognize before you wrap the item. This mark is invisible to the naked eye, but under the right light the mark will appear. This lets you know if something is returned to you that you didn’t sell. It’s a brilliant idea, and more and more eBayers are going to this safer route to sell their more costly items. Sure, perhaps the thief has a UV light also and can mimic your mark, but most won’t know to do this. Often, you can find these markers on eBay and elsewhere on the Internet. They typically cost less than $25. Go to google.com and search for black light pen. Suppliers come and go. We’ll locate at least one current supplier of these markers and lights and tell you where you can find them at this book’s website (www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/resources).

Shipping Success Depends on Your Tools and Supplies The supplies you get often determine how well your items arrive. Although you can recycle boxes that have been used before, make sure the boxes are clean and have no structural defects, such as bumps along one of the corners or edges or holes where moisture could get inside during shipment (as can happen during rain when a carrier is moving or delivering your package). Over the years we’ve found that gift shops are a good source of nice, clean boxes we might be able to reuse. Also tell your friends and family that you’re always on the lookout for good, clean boxes and packing materials for inside the boxes such as bubble wrap. When they receive something in the mail, they can save the boxes and packing for you. — 204 —


Although we use the post office Priority boxes quite a bit, not all our buyers want to pay Priority mail rates. Because we sell a lot of books, we ship many items Media Rate, which is one of the least expensive ways to mail books, CDs, and DVDs. Therefore, we must locate mailing boxes we can use for mailing the rare and used books we sell. We used to wrap all our books in bubble wrap, then enclose the bubble wrapped book in brown paper (called kraft paper), then tape the package with clear 3-inch packing tape. Sometimes, however, books would still arrive damaged. A heavy book, when dropped on its corner, will dent whether or not you used bubble wrap on that corner. Packages get tossed and dropped by postal workers. Although we find that packages almost always arrive in better condition when we mail with a private carrier such as FedEx or UPS, we still rely on the postal service for the majority of our sales, especially due to their well-priced Media Rate mail. Therefore, we had to find a different way to wrap books. We found that we must use heavy cardboard to protect the corners of the books we ship. Finding used but clean, sturdy boxes for all we mail got to be an impossible chore. We began ordering in bulk from Uline.com. I offer complete bias for Uline.com because they are the most reliable, quickest, and least expensive mailing supply company we’ve ever dealt with, and we’ve dealt with a lot of them. (If we find one that’s better, I’ll tell you about it at this book’s website at www.IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com/resources.) Every couple of months, an 18-wheeler rolls up in front of our house and the driver honks. It’s our job to go move one or two pallets with 2,000 cardboard cutouts into our garage. We’re fortunate because we live in the country and have a tractor with forks. Without that, we’d be out there unpacking the pallets by hand and bringing in the cardboard (and other supplies such as tape and packing staples) in several (and I mean several!) trips on foot. We order the pallets because Uline.com offers such a tremendous price break on large orders. We have to pay a lot for each shipment, but over 2,000 auctions the cost is virtually nonexistent. We charge our buyers for the materials, but that’s only a few cents for each item sold. You might not need 2,000 pieces of cardboard folders to mail books in. You might not need 2,000 of anything. The idea here is that you need to think ahead. In other words, if you consider what you need for the next week or two of mailing, you’re likely to go to your local office supply store and buy a few packing supplies. You will pay an incredible premium to do that. You must consider buying ahead, even months ahead, if you want to get a handle on your costs. My eBay Maniac never thought to do this before I joined into the eBay foray, and he was spending a lot of our profits just buying packing supplies every week or two. When I joined in and we began listing far more items, buying a week’s worth of packing supplies certainly was not an option, either financially or from a time standpoint. — 205 —


Yes, storage is a huge problem. We have shipping supplies in our garage and in the garage attic area. I named this chapter “Don’t Skimp When You Ship” with this section fully in mind. Many of our shipping headaches went away when we began buying the right supplies in quantities that made sense financially. You must determine what this quantity is for your eBay business. If you sell only 1,000 items in a year’s time, then you might not want to order all your packing supplies for the year in advance, but 6 months in advance makes sense if you get a good discount on 500 packing items. Know, however, that with your help your family eBay business will grow, so if your estimate is 1,000 based on what your eBay Maniac sold last year, this number might be well under what you sell this year with your help. Get the right tools for the job. We ordered professional tape guns for the packing tape we sometimes use to seal our cartons instead of using the cheaper plastic packing tape dispensers we messed with for a year or so. Mailing is no longer the task that we (especially I!) dreaded. Timing is everything. It took me about 4 minutes to wrap a book the old way, with bubble wrap and paper and tape. Now I can wrap a book for mailing in about 15 seconds!

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Each Carrier Has Their Own Services and Supplies As Jayne says, stock up on supplies you need to mail in the foreseeable future. A general rule of thumb is to stock up with more mailing supplies than you think you need.

You don’t always have to order your own supplies because your carrier can help with some packing materials. If you think you’ll mail 300 items that will fit in a Priority flat-rate box over the next 3 months, order 350 flat-rate boxes. The same holds for UPS and FedEx supplies (including airbills if you don’t print labels from your computer).

We never regret having too many shipping supplies because we know we’ll use them up eventually and we can store the excess in our attic or garage until we need them.

Should You Mail Every Day? I must warn you, even if you get quality packing supplies and find ways to decrease the time it takes you to wrap your eBay items, you will still need a break from wrapping — 206 —


regularly. We have started timing most of our auctions to end in three batches throughout the week. Instead of listing daily and having auctions end daily (and therefore wrapping daily) we now get payments that come in waves, generally a lot come in the hours after our batch of auctions end due to PayPal, and only a few trickle in later by mail or by later PayPal payments. Therefore, I usually only have to wrap about three times each week. I sometimes will wrap more often for those payments that trickle in, but that generally consists of only one or two items as opposed to several items each day. I find that giving ourselves a break from daily wrapping and mailing pays dividends because we don’t dread our mailing area as much as we used to.

You’ve Completed the Transaction! Time to List Something Else Once you’ve wrapped and shipped the item, you’ve completed your part of the transaction. Now it’s up to the buyer to leave you feedback. Don’t get your hopes up too much because some buyers just never get around to doing this for some reason. Don’t worry about it, because over time your feedback rating will steadily grow even if a few never leave feedback. By now you’ve gone through the entire auction process with me in this book. You’ve seen everything from understanding eBay, to finding inventory, to writing effective listings that sell, to receiving payment and shipping the goods. You’ve come a long way! Although your eBay Maniac will be filling in some of the details, you’ve probably already been involved in some auctions with your eBay Maniac. If you’re like most people who finally get on eBay, you’re already having a blast. If you have other family members in your home, even small ones, why not get them involved too? You can turn eBay into a tremendous educational experience for the whole family, and everyone can pitch in to make the business perform more smoothly and successfully. I’ll show you ways you can get everybody involved in the next chapter. It’s my farewell chapter to you. You don’t need me anymore; you’re on your way to becoming the second eBay Maniac in your home!

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Part V Our eBay Future…It’s After Midnight and I’m Still on eBay! 12

Where Will All Our eBay Activity Lead? . . . . . . . . . . . . .211


12

Where Will All Our eBay Activity Lead?

I

f you’re like most readers of this book, you and I have something in common. We each have eBay Maniacs. You and I are both on our ways to becoming eBay Maniacs ourselves. How can we help it? eBay is addicting in many fun and profitable ways. eBay is far simpler than some of us ever imagined it would be. Armed with a little knowledge, eBay can be extremely profitable. I suspect you have begun to implement the tips and techniques I’ve been relating from my own experiences. It’s my hope that what I’ve learned will amplify your own eBay experiences. If you have joined in to help your own eBay Maniac already, I am fairly certain that your eBay Maniac will welcome your help and added expertise. What can you now expect? Where is your family eBay business headed? I cannot predict the future, but I have some expectations for our own eBay business. You can glean from us what might be in store for yours too.

When Should You Expand? By coming into your eBay Maniac’s selling business, you will automatically expand that business. Even if you begin to help slowly, you’ll be freeing some of your eBay Maniac’s time. Your eBay Maniac will be able to spend time listing more auctions. Your inventory will turn over more quickly, and the income will flow in faster. Your help speeds up a lot of the eBay process. Therefore, your business will expand the moment you pitch in, even though you’ll still be a novice with little experience. With this book’s techniques and with the work your eBay Maniac has devoted to the business so far, you will quickly come up to speed, and your addition will be more valuable every day, expanding what you can do together dramatically.


Once you get rolling and feel comfortable with the whole auction process, you will find ways to help that I’ve never thought of. You will locate new supplies of inventory and learn new ways to promote what you sell.

100 Weekly Auctions Is Our Limit Without Help We’ve found that 100 auctions each week is about the most we can handle by ourselves. If we didn’t write such complete descriptions, we could list more, but we’d make less each sale because our descriptions would be less compelling and detailed. We’d spend more time answering questions such as, “What condition is the book in?” if we didn’t spend as much time in creating a detailed auction listing. We had to start seeking additional help once we hit the 100 weekly auctions mark. It’s my guess that with both of you working on eBay together, you will also be limited to 100 or so weekly auctions without help. (This assumes that eBay is your part-time income.) You’ll have it easier if you routinely sell the same items over and over, as opposed to selling different kinds of items each week. If you sell from a fairly static inventory of 20 or so items that you have multiple quantities of, you could perhaps list 200 or more auctions each week before you hit a workload limit that begins to turn your part-time business into full-time jobs.

Why Not Make This a Full-time Job? Perhaps you and your eBay Maniac want this to become your full-time job. That’s great! We have aspirations of that too. Different sources vary in how they count, but it’s fairly certain that from 450,000 to 750,000 people now make a full-time living selling on eBay. If as many as 750,000 people worldwide do this, you can too! Right now, we want eBay to remain a busy-but-part-time business. Due to my husband’s writing career (and now mine perhaps), we often find that writing deadlines and conference travel consume most of our time and what little work time is left we devote to eBay. eBay doesn’t have to be full-time all the time. Between the months of August to December, we’ve hired as many as two part-time employees to help us. Those are the four busiest selling months for eBay, and we like to double the number of listings we normally post. Last year we sold about 200 items weekly, but we could only do so because we had help. Keep open the possibility that you can add bodies to your eBay business. If you paid a part-timer only $10 an hour, but that part-timer’s help frees you and your eBay Maniac up to list 10 extra auctions in that hour’s time, you will find that the worker is not an expense but a profit-generator. You probably will find even better help that requires far more than $10 an hour and still find that the cost is an investment that produces a good return. — 212 —

Chapter Twelve Where Will All Our eBay Activity Lead?

The Kids Can and Should Join In In our immediate household, it’s just the two of us. We’ve found that our two white fluffy dogs do their job, but their job appears to be slowing us down, so they’re no help. If you’re fortunate enough to have extra (and non-canine) bodies in your home, you’re already equipped with a part-time staff. From as early as 5 years old to the teen years, your children can add to your business wonderfully.

Tax-Advantaged Help I’m no tax expert, so you should check with an accountant to learn ways to hire your kids effectively. You and they can save a lot of money on taxes when they come to work for you. Routine expenses such as their health insurance costs might become business expenses too. Don’t forget yourself! If your eBay business pays you a salary, that means that your business is formally set up to take advantage of as many tax breaks as possible. You might opt to be a sole proprietorship or turn your business into a corporation; I can’t tell you which is best for you, but your accountant can, and finding out will be well-spent consulting money. Getting help setting up your business formally can easily pay for itself in tremendous tax savings often within the first few months. The more formal you can structure your business, the better advantage you can take of the legal loopholes that were designed for just such a purpose: to further commerce. I’ll admit, to my eBay Maniac and I, the idea of being a corporation sounded daunting and something that wouldn’t interest us. My eBay Maniac looked into it recently and learned of the benefits of such a financial structure. He also learned that we, as the business owners, don’t need to do much to maintain the books as long as we hire a bookkeeper to handle the tedious work for us. All that’s really needed on our part is to record our expenses and income properly as we incur those expenses and receive the income. The bookkeeper does the rest. We haven’t yet made the decision to incorporate, but doing so is now a real possibility in our minds, when such a thing never would have occurred to us before.

Make It a Family Affair It’s obvious how your teenaged children can help. They can help wrap, mail, handle routine questions, and so on. Always view any help your children do as an educational experience for them, and you’ll reap unexpected benefits. Using some imagination, you can think of all kinds of educational opportunities to use with your young ones. — 213 —


Do you think one of your children might be interested in developing better photography skills? If so, put that one in charge of all photographs. Get good books such as Michael Miller’s Tricks of the eBay Masters, second edition (ISBN 0-7897-3543-1) that teach how to take the best pictures possible of items that you list. Consider a good book on photo-editing, such as Easy Photoshop Elements 4 (ISBN 0-7897-3524-5) so your child can tackle any basic photo-editing that might need to be done to auction pictures. Is one of your children geared toward math? Obviously, that’s the one who should begin getting involved with bookkeeping. Put that child in charge of all postage-buying tasks, shipping weight measurements, and so on. Get some simplified introduction to business books and have that child begin learning about financial ratios. Even if you don’t understand them (although they are simple), a handful of financial ratios such as ROI (return on investment) will give you a snapshot of where your business is from one month to the next. You’ll all benefit from these ratios, and you might just be creating the next business tycoon in the family! What about the wee ones, such as children 4 to 6 years old? Throughout this entire book, eBay has been an educational experience for you, and it can also be such an experience for your youngest ones as well. Here are just a few obvious skills you can instill in the youngest ones: • It’s a lot of fun and hardly too early to learn how to address mail. • Put a large, colorful map on your wall and get lots of colorful push pins. Track all the places, both inside the country and foreign countries you’ve mailed to. Go online to find information about the foreign countries to learn more about your buyers. • Mail doesn’t get sent for free. Letters and packages require stamps. You buy postage in advance, and stamps serve to show you’ve paid enough to hire someone like the UPS driver and the postal workers to get the item to its final destination. • If you wait to mail something, the people who paid for the item have to wait to get it. People appreciate it when you honor them by promptly following through with your commitments. • Lots of auction listings must be double-checked for errors in spelling and grammar. You earn people’s respect when they see you’ve taken the time and effort to be accurate.

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Homeschooling Families Should Always Integrate eBay into Their Curricula

We know several homeschool families, and I speak at homeschool conferences and write for some of their publications. From what I have seen, the norm is that they graduate wildly successful children who are smart and confident. Of course, other school children can also graduate as successfully, but I see the homeschooling situation as being able to benefit from eBay even more than the other schooling options. With 2 million estimated homeschoolers currently (and the number is growing rapidly), more of them should consider integrating eBay directly into their curricula. Such families can easily integrate a family eBay business into their homeschooling course load given the kids are home and more available than traditionally educated children. In any of the three general schooling formats—public, private, and homeschooling—hardly any emphasis is placed on business. Yet, our country has been the most successful due to the freedoms for entrepreneurship that our country has enjoyed more than most others over its history. Don’t keep business out of your child’s education. Your graduated child will be better prepared to face the world of commerce. Teach bookkeeping using the family’s actual business records. Teach inventory control, reordering, and return on investment. Those subjects don’t have to be left out of schooling. Keep good notes, and perhaps you’ll write your own book someday: Teaching My Kids Business the eBay Way! You don’t have to be a homeschooling family to do the same thing. You can still approach eBay as a fully educational experience for all your children. Homeschoolers have a time advantage, however, and I think it’s important to combine that time advantage into an educational opportunity on business.

A Home eBay Business Is Freeing and Not Constraining I know we treat our eBay sales as a business, and I also know that one must do that to be as successful as possible. Having said that, I do not treat our family eBay sales as a job. I think that’s the best thing for this kind of home business. Many weeks we work harder at our eBay business than we would at other jobs we could get. We certainly have been known to work far more than 40 hours a week in this our “part-time” eBay business. Still, it never seems like a real job. It almost feels as

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though we’re getting away with not having to do real work. I know that sounds somewhat sly, and I don’t mean it in any uppity way. I think the fact that we choose to do this and that we can still do it out of our little home makes it seem like far less of a chore than a more traditional income would seem. I find eBay to be freeing. I don’t find eBay to be constraining. Sure, we’ve always got to respond quickly to questions, we’ve got to mail promptly, we’ve got to keep listing new auctions or our income stops. All of that can be viewed as constraining, but it just never feels constraining to us. I encourage you to experience this freeing feeling while at the same time you make money with eBay. In spite of some of the challenges I’ve presented throughout this book, you have heard me always return to the fact that eBay is fun. You’re actively involved in a community of sorts, albeit a massive community that is said to be growing by as many as 5,000 new members daily. If this turns into a larger, outside-the-home, full-time eBay business for us, I doubt it will feel like a chore even then. eBay is still the best way I’ve seen to run a business and yet keep things very personal and personable. That’s an amazing statement given that you might never meet one of your customers in person. It’s the fun and freeing spirit that eBay auctions seem to instill. The best part is that buyers often feel they’ve gotten great deals while at the same time sellers feel they’ve received fair prices. When the entire world has 7 days or so to bid on something you sell, the final price is generally what that item is worth. If your description or photograph is poor, you’ll have to adjust that price downward accordingly of course. That’s the thing about eBay: it’s the great equalizer, and those who spend a little effort to learn effective selling techniques are usually rewarded for that effort.

eBay Is Little More Than a Decade Old But Still a Baby eBay is still in its infancy. Those sellers who have been around a few years have seen major changes in the auction site. (They’ve also seen major fee increases!) Still, eBay retains a new feel even today. It’s as though it knows it’s a major powerhouse, but it’s still young and maturing as an electronic commerce (eCommerce as they say) website. You’re not too late to join in the fun and profits. Quite the opposite—you are still getting in on the ground floor. Even though millions of eBayers are registered users, the vast majority still buy far more than they sell. That is what they call a seller’s market, where the seller still has the advantage.

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If eBay ever turns into a buyer’s market, the smart sellers who have honed their techniques over the years and invested time to learn what does and doesn’t work should still do well. My eBay Maniac and I are only scratching the surface with what we could be doing on eBay. Our selling techniques are powerful and yet there’s so much more for us to learn. That is great! When we stop wanting to learn more, that means the boredom will have set in and it’s time to find something else to do. When you turn into an eBay Maniac, I’d love to hear your experience. You can always write us at [email protected], and we’ll do our best to answer. I suppose it’s possible we may get so many emails that we can’t respond to each one, but knowing us, we’ll still try. We love talking to others about eBay. We love helping others maximize their skills. I have it on good authority that “iron sharpens iron,” and your success stories will do nothing but encourage us to work toward more success ourselves. May you become the next eBay Maniac in your household.

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Index A About Me pages auction descriptions versus, 153 eBay-intensives About Me pages, 152 family centered pages, 152 informational pages, 153-154 integral designs, 154-155 leaving blank, 148 linking outside eBay, 151 overview, 148-151 pictures, 152 policies, 151 trust, creating, 147-148 accounting consignment selling, 87-89 employees and, 65 importance of, 61-62 third-party tools for, 65-66 accounts. See also IDs alternate addresses and, 28 multiple accounts, 17-18 registering, 27-28 sign ins, 27-29 Add pictures section (About Me page creator), 150 Add to Favorite Sellers link, 100 addresses, real versus alternate addresses, 28 advanced searches, 108 advertising About Me pages. See About Me pages banner advertisements. See banner advertisements, 163

consignment selling to increase inventories, 84-85 email signatures as ads, 164-165 with clothing, 84-85 “always be closing” rule, 118 antiques, researching, 19 Ask a Question form, 131 Ask the seller a question link, 131 Auction Catalogs (consignment selling), 78-79 Auction Web, 9-10 auctions basic auctions, description of, 23 bidding. See bidding Buy It Now (BIN) feature, 25-26, 36-38 cost of, 75 descriptions searching, 33 writing, 39-40 durations, setting, 40-41 dutch auctions, 24-25 fixed-price auctions, 24 listings “always be closing” rule, 118 benefits, highlighting, 117-118 coercion versus marketing, 120-121 comparing bad and good listings, 102-105 descriptions, About Me pages versus, 153 HTML and, 134 humor, using, 116-117

auctions keywords, importance of, 113-114 leading with benefits, 101-102 listing tools, 94-96 neuro-linguistic programming, 119-120 painting mental pictures, 118-119 personalizing for audience, 116 promotional flourishes, 136 psycho-cybernetics, 119-120 scheduling, 69-70 revising mid-auction, 133-138 titles, 39, 108-110, 114-115 writing, 39-40, 96, 101, 105-106 multiple auctions, advantages of, 93-94 reserve auctions, 24 second chance offers, 186 seller managment. See sellers times (start/end), planning efficiently, 61 watching, 41 weekly limits, 212 won auctions bidders and, 38 payments. See payments sellers and, 41-42 automobiles. See eBay Motors AutoText, end-of-auction invoices, 171

B bait-and-switch tactics, 138 banner advertisements, 155-164 best as keyword, 113

bidding Buy It Now (BIN) feature, 25-26, 36-38 categories (eBay), 98 deadbeat bidders, 182 Blocked Bidder list, 187 follow-up emails, sending, 185 negative feedback, 184 Report an Unpaid Item Dispute page, 185 second chance offers, 186 email confirmations, 37 maximum bids, defining, 13-14 multiple item bids, 173-178 overview of, 35-36 payments. See payments proxy bidding, 13-14, 36-37 second chance offers, 186 sellers. See sellers won auctions, overview of, 38 big versus small business images, 123-125 BIN feature. See Buy It Now (BIN) feature black light pens, 204 Blocked Bidder list, 187 books, shipping, 205 bricks-and-mortar businesses. See also storefront businesses bubble wrap, 205 businesses (eBay). See eBay businesses Buy It Now (BIN) feature, 25-26, 36-38 buyers. See also bidding deadbeat bidders, 182 Blocked Bidder list, 187 follow-up emails, sending, 185 negative feedback, 184 Report an Unpaid Item Dispute page, 185

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multiple item buyers end-of-auction invoices, 173 separate payments, 174 shipping arrangements, 175-178 second chance offers, 186 buying. See bidding

C calculated shipping fees, 193-195 Calculated tab (Shipping & Sales Tax page), 195 camera icons, 34 cardboard, shipping books, 205 cars. See eBay Motors cash payments, accepting, 183 categories (eBay), overview, 98 Change Items button (crosspromotions), 142 Change to manual selection option (cross-promotions), 142 Change your cross-promoted items page, 141 checks, accepting, 182-183 children eBay businesses, 213-214 homeschooling, eBay as a part of, 215 clicks-and-mortar businesses. See eBay businesses, 56 combined purchases end-of-auction invoices, 173 separate payments, 174 shipping arrangements, 140-141, 175-178 comma-separated values files, record keeping with, 87-89

dutch auctions complaints, handling. See customer service Completed Listings Only option, 108-110 Completed listings option (eBay searches), 35 confirmed mailing address defining, 16 PayPal payments, 188-189 consignment selling advertising to increase inventories, 84-85 Auction Catalogs, creating, 78-79 client payment schedules, 87 contracts, 80 definition of, 18 eBay Motors and, 80-82 friends and family as clients, 74-75 increasing inventory through, 73-74, 84-85 inventory overloads, 86 liability risks, 80 list of tasks for, 75-76 over-diversified inventories, 83-84 possesion of items, taking, 76 recordkeeping, 87-89 selecting/rejecting inventory, 77-78 shipping/handling and, 76 time estimates, giving effectively, 74 Trading Assistants, 85-86 wholesaling and, 82-83 Contact Bidder page, 185 Contact Member link, 131 contracts (consignment selling), 80 control listings, 83 conversion of foreign currencies (PayPal), 23

costs auction costs list, 75 banner advertisements, 158-159 tax deductions from expenses, 57 counters, using effectively, 102 Create Your Page button, 149 credit cards, 36 cross-promoting auctions, 139-140 automating, 142-143 cross-promotion connection, 144 product lists, setting up, 141-142 customer service buyer’s remorse, reducing, 61 complaints, handling, 67-68 importance of, 21 questions, handling common questions, 67 eBay messages versus email, 131-132 overview, 129-130 quick replies, 130 quick responses, 66-67 Customize Display link (My eBay page), 31 Customize End of Auction Email page, 170-171 customs forms (international shipping), 201-202 cycles of buying/selling, 10, 52-53

D daily mailing (shipping/handling), 207

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deadbeat bidders, 182 Blocked Bidder list, 187 follow-up emails, sending, 185 negative feedback, 184 Report an Unpaid Item Dispute page, 185 second chance offers, 186 dedicated eBay business spaces advantages of, 59 creating, 49-50 importance of, 51 juggling home and eBay space, 52 limitations on, overcoming, 50-51 shipping/handling space, 52 delivery confirmation (shipping/handling), online postage systems, 201 time estimates, 194 descriptions. See also auction listings searching, 33 writing, 39-40 digital cameras, 39 digital scales, 193 direct marketing theory auction listings, 101-102 eBay searches, targeting, 100-101 overview, 99-100 studying, 97 targeted marketing, 97-98 Domestic Handling Time option (Payment & Shipping page), 194 domestic shipping costs, 195 durations (auctions), 40-41 dutch auctions, 24-25

eBay businesses

E eBay businesses, 69 advantages of becoming, 147 consignment selling. See consignment selling dedicated spaces advantages of, 59 creating, 49-50 importance of, 51 juggling home and eBay space, 52 limitations on, overcoming, 50-51 shipping/handling space, 52 eBay, categories of, 98 expansion, determining, 211-212 freeing experiences, as a, 216 full-time jobs, 212 history of, 9-10 kids, 213-214 recordkeeping, 65-66 storefront businesses versus, 55-56 taxes, 213 vacations from, 68-72 workload limitations, 212 eBay Express, 24 eBay Live, 73 eBay message system, 70-72, 131-132 eBay Motors, consignment selling and, 80-82 eBay Solutions Directory, 96 eBay time, seller considerations, 40-41 eBay’s message system, 70-72 eChecks (PayPal), 183 Echo Bay, 10 email bid confirmations, 37 eBay’s message system, 70-72, 131-132

end-of-auction emails, 170-173 follow-up emails, sending to deadbeat bidders, 185 PayPal invoices, 60 post-auction emails, 172 shipping notifcations, 42 signatures as ads, 164-165 vacations, checking during, 69 winning notification email, 38 end times. See times (start/end), 61 end-of-auction invoices, 169 copying, 171 customizing, 170-171 multiple item buyers, 173 PayPal buyers, 171 post-auction emails, sending, 172 saving, 171 Endicia.com website, 200-201 Enter Page Content web page (About Me page creator), 149 errors (auction listings), correcting, 135-138 ethical bribes, 154 Excel (MS), recordkeeping with, 87-89 expansion (eBay businesses), determining, 211-212 expenses auction costs list, 75 banner advertisements, 158-159 tax deductions, 57 expensive items, packaging, 204

F families About Me pages, 152 homeschooling, eBay as a part of, 215

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selling things for. See consignment selling fast shipping, benefits of, 192 Favorite Sellers lists, 100 FedEx (Federal Express), 198, 206 feedback banner advertisments and, 157 begging for, 64 Feedback Abuse Policy, 179 Feedback link (My eBay page), 38 importance of maintaining, 12 negative feedback combined shipping, 176-178 deadbeat bidders, 184 replying to, 180 withdrawing, 179-180 payments, verifying, 20 positive feedback, replying to, 180-181 sales, tracking/determing what has sold, 62 sellers tips, 43 zero scores, raising, 29 fixed-price auctions, 24. See also Buy It Now (BIN) feature flat-rate shipping fees, 193-194 follow-up emails, sending to deadbeat bidders, 185 foreign currencies, converting to PayPal, 23 fragile items, packaging, 203-204 fraudulent PayPayl payments, 187 freight shipments, defining, 17 friends, selling things for. See consignment selling full-time jobs (eBay businesses), 212

listings (auctions)

G–H–I gallery pictures, defining, 34 gifts, shipping auction items as (international shipping), 202 Global Priority Mail (USPS), 202 Google.com, researching with, 19 graphics. See pictures happy buyers. See customer service history of eBay, 9-10 hits, definition of, 35 home businesses. See eBay businesses homeschooling, eBay as a part of, 215 hosted web space, 79 HTML (hypertext markup language), using in auction listings, 134 humor, using in auction listings, 116-117 IDs. See also accounts creating effectively, 28-29 multiple IDs, 17-18, 144 passwords, creating, 29 images. See pictures IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com website, 16 Include my custom message option (Customize End of Auction Email page), 170 individual strengths/ weaknesses, determining, 47-49 informational About Me pages, 153-154

insurance (shipping/handling), 196 international auctions foreign currencies, converting to PayPal, 23 payments, 36 shipping costs, 193 customs forms, 201-202 gifts, shipping auction items as, 202 Global Priority Mail (USPS), 202 International Shipping page, 201 Italy, 203 plastic toys, 203 web resources, 203 inventories increasing through advertising, 84-85 through consignment selling, 73-74 like items, timing auctions together, 59-60 over-diversified inventories, 83-84 overloads, 86 storing, 58-59 invoices, 41, 169 combined item invoices, 173 copying, 171 customizing, 170-171 multiple item buyers, 173 overview, 60-61 PayPal buyers, 171 post-auction emails, sending, 172 saving, 171 Italy, international shipping, 203

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J–K–L Keyword Selector Tool (Overture), 112-114 keywords banner advertisements and, 155-159, 163-164 importance of, 113-114 kids eBay businesses, 213-214 homeschooling, eBay as a part of, 215 kraft paper, 205 liability risks (consignment selling), 80 limitations on space, overcoming, 50-51 linking outside eBay, 151 listings (auctions). See also descriptions “always be closing” rule, 118 benefits, highlighting, 117-118 coercion versus marketing, 120-121 comparing bad and good listings, 102-105 descriptions, About Me pages versus, 153 HTML and, 134 humor, using, 116-117 keywords, importance of, 113-114 leading with benefits, 101-102 listing tools, 94-96 neuro-linguistic programming, 119-120 painting mental pictures, 118-119 personalizing for audience, 116 promotional flourishes, 136

listings (auctions) psycho-cybernetics, 119-120 scheduling, 69-70 revising mid-auction, 133-138 titles, 39, 108-110, 114-115 writing, 39-40, 96, 101, 105-106 log ins, 27-30 logos (end-of-auction emails), 170

M mailing addresses (confirmed/unconfirmed), 188-189 mailing daily (shipping/ handling), 207 Manage your cross-promotion connections option, 144 marketing theory auction listings, writing, 101-102 direct marketing, 99-100 eBay searches, targeting, 100-101 studying, 97 targeted marketing, 97-98 maximum bids, 13-14. See also bidding Me links, 151 merchant accounts, defining, 36 message system (eBay), 131-132 money orders, accepting, 182-183 motor vehicles. See eBay Motors Mpire recordkeeping software, 89 multiple eBay accounts, 17-18, 144

multiple item buyers end-of-auction invoices, 173 separate payments, 174 shipping arrangements, 175-178 My eBay page Customize Display link, 31 Feedback link, won auctions and, 38 monitoring auctions, 41 overview, 30-32 Print Shipping Label option, 200 seller auction management, 63-65

N–O narrowing search results, 35 negative feedback combined shipping, 176-178 deadbeat bidders, 184 Feedback Abuse Policy, 179 replying to, 180 withdrawing, 179-180 neuro-linguistic programming, 119-120 NIB, 32 notifications. See emails number game nature of eBay, 52-53 online postage benefits of, 200 Endicia.com, 200-201 Print Shipping Label option (My eBay page), 200 Stamps.com, 199-201 USPS, 200 organization importance of, 20 inventory, storing, 58-59 like items, timing auctions together, 59-60

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My eBay page and, 63, 65 recordkeeping employees and, 65 importance of, 61-62 third-party tools for, 65-66 space dedicated to eBay advantages of having, 59 creating, 49-50 importance of, 51 juggling home and eBay space, 52 limitations on, overcoming, 50-51 shipping/handling space, 52 Overture case sensitivity, 113 Keyword Selector Tool, 112-114 overview, 111-112 titles, writing, 110

P Pacific Standard Time, 40 packaging items. See also shipping/handling advertising your skills, 152 black light pens, 204 books, 205 expensive items, 204 fragile items, 203-204 padding, 203 Priority boxes (USPS), 198 supplies, 205-206 tape guns, 206 tips for, 197 Page Title box (About Me page creator), 150 painting mental pictures, 118-119 passwords, creating, 29 Payment & Shipping page, 193-194

sell-through rates payments cash, accepting, 183 checks, accepting, 182-183 deadbeat bidders, 182 Blocked Bidder list, 187 follow-up emails, sending, 185 negative feedback, 184 Report an Unpaid Item Dispute page, 185 international auctions, 36 list of methods, 36 money orders, accepting, 182-183 multiple item buyers, separate payments, 174 PayPal payments, 14-15, 182-183, 187-188 verifying payments, 20 PayPal confirmed mailing addresses, requiring, 188 eChecks, 183 email invoices, 60 foreign currencies, converting, 23 fraudulent payments, 187 overview, 14-15 payments, accepting, 182 safety, 15-16 unconfirmed mailing addresses, 188 personalizing auction listings, 116 photos. See pictures Picture Manager, 95 pictures About Me page, 152 clarity and detail, 126 digital cameras, importance of, 39 flash photography, 126 gallery pictures, definition of, 34 hosting limitations, 95 importance of, 125-126 selling items and, 39 top ten tips, 126-128

Place a Bid screen, 36-37 policy section, expanding, 125 positive feedback, replying to, 180-181 Post this question and response on my listing option, 40 post-auction emails, 172 postage, printing, 199-201 PowerSellers, defining, 16 Preview and Submit page (About Me page creator), 151 Print Shipping Label option (My eBay page), 200 Priority Mail (USPS) Global Priority Mail, 202 Priority boxes, 198 shipping fees, 193 promotional flourishes (auction listings), 136 proxy bidding, 13-14, 36-37 psycho-cybernetics, 119-120

Q–R questions from customers common customer questions, 67 eBay messages versus email, 131-132 overview, 129-130 quick replies, 130 quick responses, 40 quotes, searches and, 35 recordkeeping consignment selling, 87-89 employees and, 65 importance of, 61-62 third-party tools for, 65-66 refunds, shipping/handling, 122-123 registering accounts, 27-28

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rejecting items (consignment selling), 77-78 replying to questions. See customer questions Report an Unpaid Item Dispute page, 185 reports at IMarriedAnEBayManiac.com, 16 Request New Connection button, 144 researching items, 19, 32, 39, 108-110 reserve auctions, 24 Resources link (book Website), 128 Respond button, 131

S safety PayPal, 15-16 sign in tips, 27 scales (digital), 193 scheduled listings, 69-70 searching eBay advanced searches, 108 descriptions, searching, 33 narrowing results, 35 overview, 32-34 quotes, using, 35 Sort by option, 32 sorting results, 34-35 targeting auctions to searches, 100-101 second-chance offers, 25, 186 security PayPal, 15-16 sign in tips, 27 sell-through rates, 97

sellers sellers About Me pages. See About Me pages “always be closing” rule, 118 auctions. See auctions bidding. See bidding big versus small business images, 123-125 Buy It Now (BIN) feature. See Buy It Now (BIN) feature categories (eBay), overview, 98 coercion versus marketing, 120-121 consignment selling advertising to increase inventories, 84-85 Auction Catalogs, creating, 78-79 client payment schedules, 87 contracts, 80 definition of, 18 eBay Motors and, 80-82 friends and family as clients, 74-75 increasing inventory through, 73-74, 84-85 inventory overloads, 86 liability risks, 80 list of tasks for, 75-76 over-diversified inventories, 83-84 possesion of items, taking, 76 recordkeeping, 87-89 selecting/rejecting inventory, 77-78 shipping/handling and, 76 time estimates, giving effectively, 74 Trading Assistants, 85-86 wholesaling and, 82-83 counters, using effectively, 102

customer service buyer’s remorse, reducing, 61 common questions, 67 complaints, handling, 67-68 importance of, 21 questions, handling, 40, 129-132 quick responses, 66-67 direct marketing theory, 97-100 eBay searches, targeting, 100-101 time, 40-41 vacations from, 68-72 feedback, 43 banner advertisments and, 157 begging for, 64 Feedback Abuse Policy, 179 Feedback link (My eBay page), 38 importance of maintaining, 12 negative feedback, 176-180, 184 payments, verifying, 20 positive feedback, replying to, 180-181 sales, tracking/determing what has sold, 62 sellers tips, 43 zero scores, raising, 29 inventories. See inventories invoices, 41 My eBay page, auction management from, 63-65 organization tips. See organization payments PayPal payments, accepting, 182 verifying, 20

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pictures clarity and detail, 126 flash photography, 126 importance of, 39, 125-126 top ten tips, 126-128 policy section, expanding, 125 recordkeeping, 65-66 repeat buyers, 100 researching items, 19, 32, 39, 108-110 revising listings midauction, 133-138 shipping/handling promptness, importance of, 42-43 refunds, 122-123 targeted marketing, 97-98 upsells, 138-139 vacations, 68-72 wholesaling, 82-83 Selling Manager, 94 Send me a copy option (Customize End of Auction Email page), 171 Shipping & Sales Tax page, 195 Shipping and Discounts page, 176 shipping/handling. See also packaging advertising packaging skills, 152 black light pens, 204 books, 205 calculated shipping fees, 193-195 combined shipping, 140-141 consignment selling and, 76 daily mailing, 207 delivery confirmation, online postage systems, 201 delivery time estimates, 194

UPS (United Parcel Service) domestic shipping costs, 195 email notifications, 42 expensive items, 204 fast shipping, benefits of, 192 FedEx, 198 flat-rate shipping fees, 193-194 fragile items, 203-204 insurance, 196 international shipping costs, 193 customs forms, 201-202 gifts, shipping auction items as, 202 Global Priority Mail (USPS), 202 International Shipping page, 201 plastic toys, 203 web resources, 203 multiple item buyer arrangements, 175-178 packaging items efficiently, 19-20 padding, 203 postage, printing, 199 benefits of, 200 Endicia.com, 200-201 Print Shipping Label option (My eBay page), 200 Stamps.com, 199-201 USPS, 200 promptness, importance of, 42-43 refunds, 122-123 size limits, 192 space, finding in home for, 52 supplies, 205-206 tape guns, 206 tracking numbers, excluding, 42 unconfirmed mailing addresses, 188 UPS, 198 USPS, 193, 197-199 weight, 192-193

shirt trick, the, 84-85 Show link (Shipping and Discounts page), combined purchase options, 176 sign ins, 27-30 signatures (emails) as ads, 164-165 size limits (shipping/ handling), 192 small versus big business images, 123-125 sniping, definition of, 41 Solutions Directory, 96 Sort by option (eBay searches), 32 space dedicated to eBay advantages of having, 59 creating, 49-50 importance of, 51 juggling home and eBay space, 52 limitations on, overcoming, 50-51 shipping/handling space, 52 Stamps.com website, 193, 199-201 start times. See times (start/end) Step-by-Step process (page creation), 149 storage (inventory), 58-59 storefront businesses, 55-56. See also consignment selling strengths, determining, 47 suggestions, making palatible, 48

T tape guns, 206 targeted ads, 97-98. See also banner advertisements

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taxes eBay businesses, 213 expense deductions, 57 testimonials as selling tools, 148 This seller is also selling these items cross-promotion section, 143 times (start/end) planning efficiently, 61 vacations and, 68 titles frivolous words, 115 golden rules of, 108 keywords, importance of, 113-114 obvious points, stating, 114-115 random characters (@, #, etc.), 115 writing, 39, 110 Top Ten eBay Photography Tips, 126-128 toys, international shipping, 203 tracking numbers (shipments), excluding, 42 Trading Assistants, 85-86. See also consignment selling trust, creating with About Me pages, 147-148 Turbo Lister, 94

U Uline.com website, packaging supplies, 205 unconfirmed mailing addresses, shipping to, 188 unsold items. See inventory UPS (United Parcel Service) shipping/handling, 198 shipping/handling supplies, 206

upsells upsells overview, 138-139 USPS (United States Postal Service) Global Priority Mail, 202 postage, printing, 200 shipping/handling, 197-199

Priority boxes (USPS), 198 supplies, 205-206 tape guns, 206 tips for, 197

Y Yahoo! Search Marketing. See Overture

V–W vacations from eBay, 68-72 watch lists, 41 watching auctions, 41 weaknesses, determining, 49 weight (shipping/handling), 192-193 wholesaling, overview, 82-83 winning notification email, 38 won auctions bidders and, 38 sellers and invoices, 60-61 overview, 41-42 working together, overview, 47-49 workload limitations (eBay businesses), 212 worksheets (Excel), recordkeeping with, 87-89 wrapping items. See also shipping/handling advertising your skills, 152 black light pens, 204 books, 205 expensive items, 204 fragile items, 203-204 padding, 203

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