eBay Shopping Secrets

Simon Fusco asked:


Common eBay Scams to be on the Lookout For

Are you looking to start buying on eBay?  If you have never used eBay before, you may not necessarily know that it is relatively easy to fall victim to an eBay scam.  While eBay is considered a safe place to shop online, there are a number of eBay scams that you should be on the lookout for.  Knowing what these scams are, before you start shopping on eBay, will help to reduce or completely eliminate your chances of becoming a victim.

Before we start to examine some of the most common eBay scams that you should be on the lookout for, it is important to mention why those scams exist.  eBay is considered an online market place or an online auction website.  Just about anyone with an internet connection and an eBay account can start eBay sale auctions.  This is what makes it possible for scammers to trap innocent shoppers like you. While eBay does work to combat these scams and eliminate the individuals behind them, there are some people who slip through the cracks. That is why you will always want to be on the lookout for eBay scams. 

Speaking of common scams to be on the lookout for, one of the most common scams involves selling a product that the seller actually doesn’t have.  This type of scam is sometimes difficult to spot, but there are signs that you should look for.  When posting an eBay auction, an eBay seller should have pictures of the item or items that they are selling or at least accurate descriptions.  With some items, such as books, CDs, or movies, eBay sellers are given the option of using a stock photo; one that is provided by eBay.  All other items should have a genuine photo, taken by the seller.  If not, you may want to refrain from making the purchase, as it may mean that the seller isn’t even in possession of the item or items that they are trying to sell you.

In addition to selling items that they don’t even have available, another common eBay scam involves lying about the items that they do have. For instance, there are some eBay sellers, although a small number of them, who claim that they have an item, like a car radio, which is in brand new condition, but it isn’t always.  It is not uncommon for some eBay seller to outright lie or strength the truth a little bit.  Unless you have a watchful eye, you may not find out until it is too late.  That is why it is advised that you not only purchase items from eBay that are accompanied by pictures, but that you also examine those pictures.  You will want to try and see if something really does look new or if it is in “like new,” condition.

Another common eBay scam that you will want to look for involves those who want your personal information.  This type of scam is implemented in two different ways. First, there are a small number of sellers who tell you that they need your credit card information, but they shouldn’t.  Whether you pay by PayPal, personal check, or money order, you shouldn’t give out any personal information to any eBay sellers, even if you are buying an item from them.  If you are not using PayPal, just send a check or money order to the address given to you, nothing else needs to be done.

The second eBay scam that involves trying to get your personal information is phishing.  Phishing scams are increasing in popularity, making it easier to fall victim to one. With phishing scams, a scammer sends out an email that looks like it is from eBay. The email is often accompanied with a message stating that something is wrong with your account and that you need to click on the attached link, sign in and fix it.  This is a scam.  What they are trying to do is get your eBay account information.  Once that has been done, they may have access to stored personal account numbers, as well as the ability to use your eBay account to make fraudulent purchases. 

The above mentioned eBay scams are just a few of the most common ones that you may run across. Although there are those on eBay who are trying to scam or take advantage of you, the chances of falling victim to a scam on eBay are actually quite low, as long as you proceed with caution.

www.newebaywealth.com

Brian Mcgregor asked:


Let’s suppose you’ve optimised your auction titles so that you will get returned in search lists.

And let’s imagine you’ve used short durations to get your auctions near the top of the results, can you make your auction stand out from the crowd?

Well, yes you can, but unfortunately it means you have to give eBay some more of your hard earned money.

What we’re talking about here are eBay’s listing upgrades.

Sometimes this can pay off. This is especially true for high priced items.

Gallery This is probably the most basic of features. It shows your photo on the search results page as well as inside on the item’s description page. This is usually always worth having, unless your item is of very low value.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk 15p eBay.com 35c

Subtitle Subtitle enables you to convey pertinent information that you couldn’t squeeze into the auction title. Useful for technical items where the auction title isn’t long enough to hold the key features of the item. Also useful for selling phrases, and offers, such as free shipping.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk 35p eBay.com 50c

Bold Helps your auction to stand out on search results pages, although costly for low value items.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk 75p eBay.com $1

Border This places your auction within a coloured box on search results pages. It can be effective, but again is of questionable value on low price items.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk N/A eBay.com $3

Highlight Puts your auction within an eye-catching coloured band on search results pages. Useful for high priced items.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk £2.50 eBay.com $5

Featured Plus! This shows your item at the top of the page in the Featured Items section of search results. It will also appear in the Featured Items section to those eBayers who browse by category. This can pay for itself with an item that’s worth more than about £55 ($100) and getting a decent number of bids.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk £9.95 eBay.com $19.95

Gallery Featured This shows your item first when someone chooses to view items using the ‘Picture Gallery’ view. In my experience not many people use this view, but the feature might be useful for some kinds of items.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk £15.95 eBay.com $19.95

Home Page Featured Although the ultimate in listing upgrades, the value of Home Page Featured can be questionable. This shows your auction title in a special display on eBay’s home page, however, eBay doesn’t guarantee that purchasing the upgrade will result in this happening! What you’re buying is an eBay “best endeavours” to give you Home Page exposure.

If you feel you could pull a lot of buyers into your auction through the first four or five words of your title, by all means try it. You also get Featured Plus! feature as part of this upgrade. Note the disparity in this upgrade cost if you use UK eBay.

Current Cost eBay.co.uk £49.95 eBay.com $39.95

Finally, as with many elements of eBay trading, no results can be guaranteed. You must test and test and test. Try different upgrades and keep records of the results you achieve.

You might just find the ideal combination for your auctions.

Bob B Hamilton asked:


To those who are into business it is an essential part of the business to have someone or hire someone to monitor the business for you. Online marketing is one business trend that is very popular today and one of the online companies that you can use to market a product or products is eBay. EBay is a very popular online auction site catering to thousands of small, medium or large scale businesses. If you are one of the many who auctions on this site and you are auctioning items as your main business, you may have experienced difficulty in monitoring and listing products.  IN this article I present make money selling on eBay with Turbo Lister – the small package that offers huge benefits to your eBay business.

EBay, with the aim of providing better services to its members has many services and tools that you can use to make your eBay auction transactions easy to manage. One of these tools is the Turbo Lister. This is a program that you can download for free on the eBay site. The benefits will help power you on the way to make money selling on eBay.  Turbo Lister, as its name suggests, is a listing tool that provides the following benefits:

1. Lets you do automatic or automated re-listing of your auctioned products.

2. Lets you monitor your products in a flash with the user friendly interface similar to windows explorer.  You will not have difficulty adjusting to this program.

3. The dilemma of hiring someone to just monitor your auction listings is resolved, saving you money.

4. You can use this eBay Turbo Lister even if you are offline or do not have an internet connection. You can work on your listings and upload them to eBay when you go online.

5. The best part is eBay Turbo Lister is free to download from eBay’s auction site.

Make money selling on eBay with Turbo Lister.  To acquire this tool you must be a member of eBay.  Turbo Lister will use your eBay details such as your eBay username and your eBay password to proceed with the downloading.  Once Turbo Lister is installed on your computer you are on your way to a hassle-free online marketing.  Essentially, you just need to follow these basic steps:

1. Login to the program using your eBay username and password.

2. Your first time you will select the “create new item” button to create the first listing.

3. Enter the description, title, category, etc. in the menu. It will also provide you with an option for bidding or auction format or the “Buy It Now” selection.

4. If you are auctioning digital items it should be listed under the category “Everything Else” because digital items need a confirmation for authority to sell. Then you can fill up or tick required boxes in the menu.

5. Finally, you have to ensure that “Payment Methods” are filled and the most preferred method is PayPal although you may enter other payment methods. Ensure to provide your PayPal details when you select this payment method.

See now the beauty of the eBay Turbo Lister?  Novice or professional online business persons will really benefit from this offer from eBay.  Actually, there are still other services offered in this on eBay.  You can explore them to see if they are useful for you.  So, if you are a serious eBayer or want to become a true blue eBay auctioneer you should get the eBay Turbo Lister and experience these benefits in action.  You’ll discover Turbo Lister is one of the tools that will help you make money selling on eBay.

To Your eBay Success!

optica00002 asked:


This month I have encountered two small problems, which have affected my eBay business. If I had spent a little more time thinking about the design of my auction listings, these problems could have easily been avoided and I would have had more time to spend on other things instead of editing tiny mistakes in nearly 100 listings. There have been many similar occasions in the past where a little more forward planning would have avoided me redesigning all my eBay auction listings. Therefore, my advice to you in this issue is to think carefully about the design of your auction listings. More time spent on your listing now can mean MUCH less time spent redesigning them in the future.

Now the two actual problems I encountered this month were the down to my PayPal address and my eBay ID. The first problem was that for some reason the Pay Now button in eBay was not working for all customers. This led to me getting many emails from buyers saying the Pay Now button is not working, or worse many people sending payments to one of my email addresses that was not registered with PayPal. The end result was me having to explain and solve the problem via multiple emails to multiple customers. So how could I have avoided this problem? Well in my actual eBay listing and Payment Policy I made no reference to my PayPal email address but included all my other email addresses. I overlooked including my PayPal email address in the listings simply because I assumed that the Pay Now button would work at all times. Obviously not. I have now amended all listings to include my PayPal email address (payments@theebookcavern.co.uk if anyone is still unsure) and thankfully since then I have had no PayPal payments sent to the wrong email address.

So now all seems fine and dandy with my eBay listings when 2 days ago I received an email stating that I needed to change my User ID because the previous one (**www.theebookcavern.co.uk**) made reference to this website. Now on eBay you can get away with this type of User ID for a while but sooner or later eBay will catch you out and make you change it. I knew this so really I should have chose a more sensible User ID instead of trying to get a little extra traffic to my website. So how does this affect my listings? Well in every listing I include a link to my eBay feedback and eBay About Me page which now needs to be changed. So that means more fun for me as I will have edit all my eBay listings yet again.

So you may be wandering OK but what’s the point of this story. Well you (and hopefully me as well) can learn from my mistakes. These two examples illustrate how just a LITTLE forward planning would have saved a LOT of time for me and can do for you too. I will give you a few things to think about when designing your auction listings but you may think of more.

1) Ebay ID:- When choosing an eBay ID you need to think about using one that both reflects your line of business and also sticks to eBay policy. I know that it may be tempting to use **yourwebsitename** as a User ID but that is a violation of eBay policy and they will make you change it eventually. If you have to change your User ID then you have to change every Feedback and About Me link in all your listings. Choosing a User ID which is within eBay policy will save you a lot of time in the future.

2) About Me Page:- Do you have an About Me page? If not you should get one as it is one of the best promotion tools you have on eBay. If you do have one you really should link to it in your auctions as from the About Me page has much fewer restrictions than your other eBay pages (for example you can link to your own website). If you want to promote yourself on eBay the About Me page is the best way to do it and the best way to increase traffic to your About Me page is promote it fully.

3) Ebay Store:- If you have an eBay store then it is essential that you provide a link to it within your auction listings. Many customers who view your auctions will not know that you have an eBay store or if they do they may not know exactly what one is. If you want to maximise your sales potential you need to make as many customers aware of your eBay store as possible. Putting a simple sentence at the top of your auction listings such as “Can’t wait for this auction to end? Then Click Here to purchase it right now from my eBay store” will give your eBay store maximum exposure in your eBay auctions.

4) Email Addresses:- Make sure that all relevant email addresses are included in your auction listing. Your PayPal email address must be in here to avoid similar problems to the ones I experienced. All the email addresses you wish to be contacted on should also be included as well. For example I include my PayPal email payments@theebookcavern.co.uk, my delivery enquiries email delivery@theebookcavern.co.uk, and my general enquiries email sales@theebookcavern.co.uk. Even if you only have one email address which is the same as the one associated with your “Contact the Seller” you should still include an email link in your auction description simply because it makes it easier for the customer.

5) Ebay Store Custom Pages:- If you have an eBay store you are allowed to design custom pages for whatever purpose you see fit. If these custom pages are in any way relevant to the auction then you should include a link to them too.

6) Images:- Have you put in all the images you want to use to promote your auction. If not make sure they are all included. What about your eBay store? If you have one then a store logo is a great way to promote your store, make you look more professional, and hopefully increase traffic and sales.

These are just a few of the many things you should consider before listing an item on eBay. I am sure you can think of many more. These rules are especially applicable to ebook sellers on eBay because you will be constantly re-using the same auction listing to sell an ebook because you have an infinite supply. Getting the listing as close to perfect now will save you a LOT of time in the future. Good luck!!!