eBay Shopping Secrets

John Case asked:


Tips for Selling on eBay(R)

* The first thing you should do is sign up an account with Paypal.com. Once your account is set up, follow Paypal’s instructions to verify your address and account. This will help build buyers’ trust in you as a seller. Paypal will help you easily accept payment from buyers as well as pay wholesale suppliers securely.

* NEVER respond to an e-mail from Paypal that asks you for your login information, or asks you to follow a link to a login page. This is a scam known as “phishing.” A typical message might include scare tactics such as “We have noted an illegal login attempt to your account” or “You have added a new e-mail address to your account.” If you follow the link, you will be directed to what LOOKS like a Paypal login page, but your login information will actually be sent to crooks, who will promptly use your info to clear out your account. Paypal will NEVER send you an e-mail asking for your login info. If you receive a suspicious e-mail, you should forward it to: spoof@paypal.com and they will reply to let you know if it is authentic or not.

* Never respond to an e-mail from eBay that asks for your login information. Some bogus messages appear to be from interested buyers. For example: “Is your product still for sale? Let me know!” or “I sent payment 2 weeks ago! Where is my product?” Another common message is: “Update your eBay information within 48 hours, or your account will be suspended!” Again, your login info will be forwarded to scammers who will use your eBay ID to artificially drive up prices on their own auctions, or use your eBay ID to run a fraudulant auction in which they collect payment for an item that doesn’t exist. If you receive a suspicious e-mail, forward it to spoof@ebay.com and they will let you know if it is authentic. If you want to respond to a question from a buyer, it is safer to login to your eBay account, and go to the “My Messages” section, and reply directly through eBay.

* When buying from a wholesale supplier, ALWAYS pay through a credit card, or Paypal. NEVER pay for products through Western Union. Many Western Union clerks do not require ID for the seller to pick up the money. It is too easy for a wholesaler to collect the money and not send your order. If a wholesaler insists on Western Union, simply look for another supplier.

* If you pay a wholesaler through an escrow service, use only escrow.com. If a wholesaler insists on another escrow service, simply look for another supplier.

* Before buying from a wholesale supplier, be sure to check eBay for similar items and calculate if you can sell for a competitive price and also get a profit.

Each and every day, an average of $86 million changes hands through eBay(R) auctions. Every day, an estimated 2 million people use eBay(R) to buy things they can not find in stores, or to get rid of things they do not use any more in order to make room in their house. But did you know that 430,000 eBay(R) run a full or part-time business from their homes? Of course, there are the big product sellers, who auction off things like new cars, real estate, or computers. However, there are also normal people running eBay(R) business from their homes, not only selling things that are no longer needed around the house, but selling everyday consumer goods, and making a full-time income from it.

The secret of eBay(R) success is finding products to sell that match your interests and lifestyle, locating a reliable wholesale supplier, and mastering the system of putting up auction pages on eBay(R) in order to keep your seller fees to a minimum while maximizing your profits.

Here are some tips for selling on eBay:

* Remember that eBay users will buy based on cost as well as reliability of the seller. If you have a relatively low feedback score, and you are selling the exact same item at the exact same cost as a seller with feedback of 3000 or more, you are not going to make many sales.

* Create e-mail template message to communicate with buyers. You should make at least three messages: one for when you receive payment, one for when you send the order, and one to send approximately two weeks later, to check if everything is OK. Good communications are essential in building good feedback ratings.

* Feedback is very important. Always leave positive feedback for buyers as soon as payment clears. If a buyer has not left positive feedback by two weeks after the close of the auction, send a follow up e-mail. Be very careful about leaving neutral or negative feedback. Even if you have a valid reason for leaving negative feedback,once you leave negative feedback, the buyer is likely to retaliate with negative feedback, harming your reputation. Instead, use eBay’s “Send an invoice to buyer” or “Report an unpaid item” functions.

Jerry Work asked:


I am a professional Internet marketer. I deal with the issue of driving traffic to web sites and converting that traffic into customers. My wife runs an eBay-based business selling vintage clothes. She likes using eBay. It has a built-in user base of well over 100 million users and offers the tools to allow her to accept several different forms of payment, including credit cards and PayPal. eBay also allows her to operate a Web store, while also selling items via auction. eBay allows anyone with a computer and Internet access to go into business for themselves. A lot of people are making a lot of money on eBay.

However, a letter my wife recently received from eBay has bothered her to the point where she is seriously considering pulling out of eBay and running her business through her own standalone site. eBay claims that it is losing money on the stores that it hosts, because so much of eBay’s inventory is now contained in the stores rather than in the auctions. To counter this, eBay is dramatically raising its fees for items listed in eBay stores.

The argument that eBay is losing money by hosting stores sounds like crap to me. Web hosting is dirt cheap. Web hosting for a small business can be purchased for $5 per month, with more hard drive space and bandwidth than a typical web site would ever need. eBay store hosting starts at about $16 per month for the basic store, which is heavy in mandatory eBay-branded top level content. eBay is raising the base fee to list an item in a store from 2 cents to 7-10 cents - up to a 500% increase.

So the question is: is it worth it to continue to do business on eBay when it is so much more cost effective to do business with a standalone web site?

I believe the answer is to use a combination. eBay delivers customers. It is a great way to build a customer base. If you are just establishing your online business, the following would be a strong formula for acquiring customers:

1. Set up an eBay store. Make it look as good as you can. Stock it with products.

2. Start running auctions. Use the auctions to drive eBay traffic to your stores. Do this consistently, placing some number of items up for auction every week. I suggest ending your auctions on Sunday night.

3. Maintain consistent inventory in your store. Try to get visitors to your store to leave their email address. What you want to do is get people returning to your store on a regular basis to check out what you have.

4. Build a standalone web site, outside of eBay. Populate your new store’s inventory with the same products you sell on eBay.

5. Contact your eBay store customers and tell them about your new web site. If your ecommerce platform allows, give your existing eBay customers a coupon to use at your new site.

6. Use search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, articles, etc., to drive new traffic to your site. This step will be a lot of work and will require a lot of planning, but it is critical to your success.

7. Gradually phase out your eBay store. When you are confident that all of your old customers now know about your new site and the new site is picking up customers on its own, then shut your eBay store down. Give yourself a pat on the back.

OR

You may choose to continue to run your eBay store in addition to your own web site. If eBay continues to generate business for you and the fees still allow you to show a good profit on the items you sell, then you might as well continue to use it.

When all is said and done, you will have used eBay as a stepping stone to establish your online business. If you already have an eBay store and have been running auctions, then you may start at Step 4 above.

Now…this is probably not the way eBay wants its customers to operate. The company has built an incredible platform to allow anyone to conduct business online. But the fact is, with its recent hike in fees, it is becoming less and less economically feasible to use eBay as a way to conduct business. We believe that using this kind of strategy is a good way to take advantage of eBay to build your business, but then shift to a more economical ecommerce platform to maximize your profitability.

This article is a very high level sketch of a way to establish an ecommerce business. There are many details to fill in. You might want to seek the help of an experienced web site designer and Internet marketing professional.