The Grassroots of Business Success

Remember pom-poms, megaphones, and cute cheerleading outfits from your school days. If you decide to take an eBay class, expect the opening of the course to bring about that kind of “rah, rah” feeling. However, eBay does have a lot to cheer about. In just 10 years eBay has become a worldwide marketplace, purporting to be the most popular and largest on the Internet. It boasts that eBay makes over 50 million items available online, with more than 5 million items added everyday, not to mention that eBay has single-handedly boosted digital camera sales. After all you can’t be a profitable seller on the site without having one.

Don’t get me wrong; the “rah, rah” business is not necessarily all bad because the instructors come to that position quite honestly. They have been very successful sellers; many of them power sellers, on eBay. They enthusiastically speak from their hearts and their own experiences. However, the eBay party line is a dominant theme during the introduction to the class and borders on being overkill. In all likelihood people would not have signed up for the class unless they were already serious about learning how to be buyers and sellers on eBay.

Despite my reservations about eBay touting its own praises, I still recommend that you do take a class on the eBay basics. One day of your time will be well worth it. You can find classes in your area by going to “Community” on the eBay home page. From there click on “Community Calendar” and then “eBay University.” The eBay University page provides information on eBay Basics or Beyond the Basics classes.

If you decide to attend a class, act fast because eBay classes fill up quickly. Why? Stop and think about it. There are more than 1.2 million registered eBay users, and more than 25,000 members make five figure income as full time eBay entrepreneurs. In addition, more than 250,000 part timers make several thousand dollars a year of supplementary income. This has gotten the attention of many, and the many are flocking to the classes to learn how to get started right away.

The six modules that the eBay Basics course will deliver are:

1. The History and Safety Features - The history and background of eBay is designed as a welcome to new users. It is the “rah, rah” part to which I have been referring. It is interesting to have that in the booklet that follows along with the PowerPoint presentation for the class, but this could be read later if anyone is interested in that. The safety feature was an important part in the first module because it offers peace of mind to know that eBay has a safe environment with a success rate for transactions of 99.999%. There are more than 600 reps available 24 hours a day, but they do need more when you look at the ratio of users to tech support personnel. The eBay safety features include: feedback; buyer protection program; PayPal Protection; third party dispute resolution; and a security and resolution center.

2. Setting Up an Account and Researching the Marketplace - To set up an account the students learn how to register for eBay and how to set up a Seller’s Account. They also learn how their ID becomes verified. In the research part of the module students are prompted to select an item to sell and guided on how to research the market value of the item. Included in module #2 is information on restricted items that cannot be sold through eBay.

3. Enhancing Listings - This module covers the topics of pictures, pricing strategies, and PayPal. The recommended way to put pictures in a listing is to use a digital camera although using a traditional camera or a flat bed scanner are other options. There are some funny examples of what not to do when using a digital camera. The pricing strategies include starting bid; reserve price; buy it now, fixed price, and Dutch Auction. A most important aspect of this module was the information on PayPal. It is a safe and easy way to receive payment from buyers. PayPal is accepted in approximately 90 percent of the listings.

4. Detailed Listings - With this information students are shown how to choose a good title and write a good description for an item they hope to sell. The goal is to make an effective listing by including information that is honest, concise and professional. This is also where the students learn about packaging and weighing items; payment options; shipping; and returns.

5. Completing the Sale - This module guides students through the process of monitoring listings and what to do after the listing closes. It emphasizes that communication is important because a seller must be ready to answer buyers’ questions on a daily basis. It necessary that a seller look at hits, bids, and email queries. When there are questions, the seller needs to be professional and helpful with responses. An easy way to monitor listings is to use My eBay. It makes a consolidated listing of all the particulars of the items which are listed. The other areas of interest in this module are the fees that are charged for the various details in the listing and the feedback information.

6. The Appendix - The materials in the reference section of the course booklet is invaluable. The samples included are: selling examples; tips on photography; item descriptions; HTML tips; basic fees summary; and a glossary of terms.

Selling products and services from a home based business can be an exciting, and profitable enterprise. To get a solid foundation on how to efficiently use eBay consider a course offered by certified eBay instructors. They have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share with new users. Three cheers for eBay and its class offerings…hip, hip, hooray…

For more information on eBay visit the How to Sell on eBay Resources Page at http://www.sbmag.org/howtosellonebay.html. While you are there, click on the eBay banner and then on “register” at the top of the page and its just that easy to be up and running. Oh, and don’t forget your pom-poms!!

Copyright usage: No permission is needed to reproduce an unedited copy of this article as long the About The Author tag is left in tact and hot links included.

About the Author

Barbara Snyder is a retired California Distinguished School Principal and Coordinator For Human Resources. She has a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction. She holds elementary education, secondary, community college, and administrative credentials. She is currently the publisher of http://EducationResourcesNetwork.com, co-publisher of Strictly Business Magazine at http://www.sbmag.org and a consultant to Chapman University. And an eBay seller. Questions and comments can be sent to Barb@gotoo.net

As the editor of the UK Auctionline Newsletter I receive a great number of e-mails from subscribers. Frequently the question they ask is, “Please tell me an easy way to make money on eBay.” I suppose the answer to this question really revolves around how you define the term easy.

It is my belief that there is no easier way to make money on the Internet than by selling items through eBay. What could be simpler, a straight forward 5 step process.

1. Get something to sell.
2. Photograph it, and write a description.
3. Upload your listing to eBay.
4. Collect your money.
5. Dispatch the item.

What could be simpler than that?

But I suspect what people are really asking is how can I easily get products to sell. From my experience this is what both newcomers and some experienced eBayers find difficult. So in this article I just want to highlight 5 very simple ways that you can get products to sell without even leaving your computer. This I hope that will be easy enough for everyone.

1. What, no photograph?
It is my belief that there is hardly an item listed on eBay or any of the other online auctions that does not benefit from having a photograph or image included in the listing. In fact most items that are listed without a photograph that actually sell tend to fetch 20% less than those with. In some categories the figures are even higher. For instance clothing items offered without a photograph average a 78% lower selling price than those with. So it would seem to be pretty easy to browse eBay looking for these “photo less” items, buying them and then relisting with a photograph. Money for old rope really.

2. Finding the poorly listed item.
There are many reasons why someone’s listing fails to attract any worthwhile bids. Bad title, short or poor description, wrong category, poor spelling and so on. You can find these by browsing around the auction site, but I would suggest an easier method.

Select the categories that you are interested in and look down the search feature for items finishing within the next hour. Here is where you will find the bargains that have failed to attract any bids for the reasons we have mentioned.

3. Unsocial hours
In any book about eBay you will find tips on when is the best time for auctions to finish. The most suggested times for most items are Sunday afternoon and evenings and Wednesday evenings. Some experts suggest that for business related items Monday or Tuesday during office hours are best. If you accept that there are times when you will get increased bids for your items there must also be times when if your auction ends you will not do so well. I would think if you have an auction that finishes between say 5 am and 8 am on a Monday morning you will not have too many people lurking to place last minute bids to push the price up. Again buy and relist with your auction set to finish at a more sociable time and you could easily make a 20% or more profit for very little effort.

4. Buy Collections
One of the easiest ways to make money on eBay is to cash in on other peoples laziness. If someone has say a collection of 10 china dogs, it is a fact that if they put all ten in one listing as a collection they will get less than if they had listed each item separately. But it is amazing how many sellers cannot be bothered to do this. I have in the past bought such a collection and actually made more from one of the items than I had paid for the whole collection.

5. Other online auctions.
Over 95% of all online auction sales are on eBay. They have the largest number of registered buyers and items listed for sale. For this reason items offered for sale on eBay get the best prices. So why not search around some of the smaller online auctions, because in many cases items listed with them will not attract such a good prices as could be achieved on eBay. Then all you have to do is buy from them and relist on eBay.

So there are 5 easy ideas for you to consider. Why not give some or all of them a try.

Dave Bromley runs the www.ukauctionline.co.uk web site and newsletter. This information packed web site contains hundreds of articles, hints and tips for getting the most out of eBay.To register for the newsletter and 6 part mini course visit his web site now.

If you know what you’re doing, you can quickly find what you’re looking for on eBay. Here are a few golden rules.

Be specific: If you’re searching for the first edition of the original Harry Potter book, you’ll get further searching for ‘harry potter rowling philosopher’s stone first edition’ than you will searching for ‘harry potter’. You’ll get fewer results, but the ones you do get will be far more relevant.

Spell wrongly: It’s a sad fact that many of the sellers on eBay just can’t spell. Whatever you’re looking for, try thinking of a few common misspellings - the chances are that fewer people will find these items, and so they will be cheaper.

Get a thesaurus: You should try to search for all the different words that someone might use to describe your item, for example searching for both ‘TV’ and ‘television’, or for ‘phone’, ‘mobile’ and ‘cellphone’. Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and search by things like brand and model.

Use the categories: Whenever you search, you’ll notice a list of categories at the side of your search results. If you just searched for the name of a CD because you want to buy that CD, you should click the ‘CDs’ category to just look at results in that category. Why bother looking through a load of results that you don’t care about?

Don’t be afraid to browse: Once you’ve found the category that items you like seem to be in, why not click ‘Browse’ and take a look through the whole category? You might be surprised by what you find.

Few people realise just how powerful eBay’s search engine is - a few symbols here and there and it’ll work wonders for you.

Wildcard searches: You can put an asterisk (*) into a search phrase when you want to say ‘anything can go here’. For example, if you wanted to search for a 1950s car, you could search for ‘car 195*’. 195* will show results from any year in the 1950s.

In this order: If you put words in quotes (”") then the only results shown will be ones that have all of the words between the quote marks. For example, searching for “Lord of the Rings” won’t give you any results that say, for example “Lord Robert Rings”.

Exclude words: Put a minus, and then put any words in brackets that you don’t want to appear in your search results. For example: “Pulp Fiction” -(poster,photo) will find items related to Pulp Fiction but not posters or photos.

Either/or: If you want to search for lots of words at once, just put them in brackets: the TV example from earlier could become ‘(TV,television)’, which would find items with either word.

So once you’ve found your bargain item, bid for it and won it, what if it all goes wrong? Don’t worry - eBay has a thorough dispute resolution procedure, and we’ll cover it in some depth in the next article, so you’ll be prepared if the worst happens.

Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how to make the most from Ebay and other online auctions.

eBay sales may have grown 51% last year over the previous year, but general online complaints jumped by 66.6% over the previous year to some 207,000+ complaints in 2004. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), stated in its yearly report that 71.2% of all complaints received pertained to auctions.

Online fraud is a growing problem on the internet and the auction segment is far from immune. The IC3 reports that most complaints consist of late or no shipment of products, items that don’t match advertised condition and bogus payment or escrow services.

If you decide to offer “all items to be shipped within 24 hours”, make sure you keep your word, and go to great lengths to honestly represent and describe the item in your auctions. Your bidders will appreciate your honesty and it will eventually show up in your feedback.

As consumer fears increase, there are a number of common sense ways to help protect you from fraud, as well as enhance your reputation as a trustworthy seller and set you apart from the crowd.

Watch Out for Bad Checks, Money Orders and Cashiers Checks
Years ago I had a buyer who complained rather loudly when I didn’t ship an item as soon as I received the check in the mail. In hind site it was a good decision to hold the shipment since the check ended up being fraudulent. Bad checks, money orders, and cashiers checks are rampant in ecommerce today. The simplest way to offset the danger of bad paper is not to ship the auction item until the check, money order or cashier check clears your bank for payment.

Overpayments

Never accept any overpayments for any item. One of the more popular scams today is for a buyer to send a cashiers check for an amount that is higher than the agreed upon final price. They then claim it was in error and ask the seller to kindly return the overage when the item is shipped. Off goes the item, the overage amount in good money, and the defrauded seller finds out too late the cashiers check was fake.

Use an Escrow Service for High Priced Items

The primary purpose of escrow services is to protect buyers and sellers from fraud. Basically what they do is to accept the money from the buyer and hold it until the buyer receives and approves the merchandise. Please note that fake escrow services are increasing on the internet. If a buyer contacts you after a sale and recommends an escrow service you are not familiar with BEWARE. At present eBay only recommends one escrow company: www.escrow.com. For information go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/payment-escrow.html

Records, Records, Records

Keeps a copy of every transaction detail from the original auction listing to the last email. You will need that kind of proof to validate your claims if you should find you need to file a complaint.

Protect Yourself by Being Educated

At the very least you need to be knowledgeable about your legal obligations as a seller and familiar with the fraud protections and policies for the auction sites and payment processing services you use. eBay and Paypal have extensive sections on their websites dedicated to fraud policies and protections. You should take the time to read through these or similar information pages for the sites and services you use on a regular basis and be very familiar with the material.

A few of the key recommendations from Paypal’s Protection for Sellers section include:

Ship only to the address listed on the Transaction Details page

Use a shipping service with tracking

Check out the buyer’s reputation

Accept payment from only one Paypal account per buyer

Limit credit card payments

Enhancing Your Safe Seller Image

Here are a few tips that will help improve your image as a safe seller for your bidders.

Identify Yourself - Make use of the about me pages to let your customers know who you are, how long you’ve been in business and how much their business means to you. Be honest.

Feedback Ratings - Auction buyers want to see 100% positive feedback.

Methods of Payment - Make it easy for your customers to buy but consider convenience, cost and security in choosing any payment method you offer.

Full Disclosure - Your auction listings should clearly state the condition of the item you’re auctioning, your shipping/insurance and return policies.

Bonding programs - A number of bonding programs are available on the internet. One of the more popular is BuySafe (www.buysafe.com). In a bonding program the seller agrees to certain obligations such as shipping on time, representing the item correctly, and standing behind the transaction. In return the seller can display a seal on their auctions showing bidders they are honest sellers and providing transaction insurance in some cases up to $25,000.

Other programs you should be familiar with include:

IDVerify
SquareTrade
Trust-e

If You Become a Victim of Online Fraud

You need to know exactly what should be done in the event you are victimized. Make your plan now, before it happens. The most recommended steps to take if you are victimized are listed below but please keep in mind these are general recommendations and you should have you own plan based on your needs.

File a complaint with your auction site
File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission
File a complaint with the IC3
File a complaint with the National Fraud Information Center
Contact your local and state law enforcement agencies
Contact the local and state law enforcement agencies in the perpetrator’s home area
File a complaint with the shipping company you used
It the perpetrator is a business and a member of the Better Business Bureau you should also file a complaint there.

Further reading

Paypal Seller Protection Policy (go to your Paypal account)

FTC recommendations http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/auctions.htm

To read the entire 2004 IC3 Internet Fraud Report http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/2004_IC3Report.pdf

More Important Fraud Links

Find Your Local Police http://www.usacops.com
FBI Internet Fraud Unit http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/index.com
FTC Internet Fraud Unit https://m.ftc.gov
USPS Mail Fraud http://www.usps.com/postalinstpectors/fraud/

© Copyright 2005 Steven Woodward - All Rights Reserved

Steven Woodward is the owner, editor and publisher of the Auction Sellers Network (ASN); a web site for individuals and companies who are serious about utilizing the online auction marketplace for their business. In addition to topical articles, ASN provides an extensive resource center, news feeds, member forums and classified ads. For more information or to become a member please visit http://www.AuctionSellersNetwork.com

No permission is needed to reproduce an unedited copy of this article as long the About the Author tag is left intact and included. We do request that we be informed where it is posted and reciprocal links will be considered.