Over the past few days I have received numerous newsletters and read many blog posts that focus on the importance of setting goals for the year ahead. This is good advice. I know from bitter experience that with no destination in mind and no map to follow, then it is highly likely that we will just go round in circles and end up right back where we started, having achieved little or nothing along the way.

The best blog post I have seen on the subject of planning for the year ahead was written by John Thornhill and if you are looking for some sound advice to help you achieve your goals then read it here. I will certainly be using John’s guidelines to help me get to where I want to be by the end of 2009.

Having said all that, and while I most definitely agree that the start of a new year is a good time to take stock and make plans, my own inclination is that maybe the focus on “new year, new start” is a little too strong.

Why? Well, let’s look at what happens with one of the popular New Year Resolutions: quitting smoking. As always, there will be many people lighting up their ‘very last cigarette’ at 11.50 on New Years Eve, and they’ll start the following day full of good intentions to never smoke again. And, of course, some people will succeed. But there are many others who just do not have the willpower to overcome the cravings and they’ll be smoking again by the end of the month. And having broken their resolution, they’ll give up on it until they try again next year.

Therein lies the problem. By their very nature, New Year Resolutions can only be made at New Year. So if you blow it early on, that’s the end of it until next year. It’s a good excuse not to immediately get back on track and try again. And it’s easy to treat your business goals in the same way. You decide now where you want to be by the end of the year, then somewhere along the way your plans derail and you just give up and resolve to try again next year, thus squandering what is left of the current year.

By all means, set your goals and make your plans now for the year ahead. But remember, a new year starts every single day. It may not be a year that starts neatly on January 1st and ends on December 31st. But no matter what date it starts, a year is still 365 days (yes, I know, except in a leap year, let’s not split hairs!) so if things go wrong, make the necessary adjustments and keep going. And if it’s a total disaster, make new plans. Don’t wait until December 31st to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again. Time is our most precious resource and once it’s gone it can never be replaced. Don’t waste it.

I will be moving house early in the new year so I am going to be busy packing and unpacking. And it’s likely that in mid-January I will be several days without an internet connection, so my plans are going to be on hold for a couple of weeks.

However, things should be back to normal by the beginning of February, then we’ll be back with lots of ideas about what to sell on eBay, plus we’ll be looking at ways to create multiple streams of income to help us through the looming recession.

In the meantime, we here at Online Auction Ideas wish all readers a very happy, healthy and successful New Year!

We will be back before the New Year to tell you a little about the plans we have for 2009. Until then, we wish you all a very happy holiday season

The Product Sourcing Tool on its own is no longer available but you can now get lifetime access to the ENTIRE Product Sourcing Package for a once only payment of $299.

As a member of Worldwide Brands you can now have access to:

• Wholesale Database of over 8,000 dropshippers and wholesalers who represent over 8 million products
• Market research Tools to help you pick profitable products
• The know-how to source products like a pro with 19 chapters of ebiz education
• An active community forum for guidance and support
• A ton of great content and valuable resources
• And a whole lot more…..

And for those who find $299 a little too much to find all at once, there is an option to pay four instalments of $85. But you need to be quick as this offer is only open until the end of 2008. When the ball falls in Time Square the easy payment offer will be removed.

If you are looking for ideas on what to sell, where to find it and how to sell it, click here to find out more.

Are you all geared up to take your share of of this big spend? Hopefully, the answer is yes, but if not, don’t despair because if you are willing and able to dispatch your products in a timely manner, you have another week or so to get your items listed and there will still be lots of buyers around looking for those last minute gifts.

According to the Royal Mail website, the last posting dates for Christmas for UK and the Channel Islands is 15th December for Standard Parcel Service, 18th December for second class mail and 20th December for first class. Special delivery can be used right up to 23rd December but due to the costs involved we would only recommend using this option for high ticket items.

It may be worth an extra 35p for a subtitle to tell buyers that you will dispatch in time for Christmas. Whether or not you use that option, it is advisable to state clearly in the body of your listing that you will post in time for Christmas on condition that cleared payment is received, and to add a disclaimer to the effect that although you will dispatch by Royal Mail’s recommended last posting dates, it is then out of your hands and you cannot guarantee that Royal Mail will deliver on time. Obviously, it goes without saying that if you promise to deliver in time for Christmas you need to keep that promise or you will be starting the new year with a raft of negative feedback.

So what are you waiting for? Instead of sitting here procrastinating, get over to eBay and list, list and list some more

We wish you the best of luck and look forward to hearing your success stories in the New Year.

Appropriately named “Selling on the River - the eBayer’s Guide to Selling on Amazon.com”, the book is written by Steve Lindhorst, a former eBay University instructor. Recognising the danger of having all his eggs in one basket, Steve added opened a Seller Account with Amazon so minimize the risk of going out of business if anything unforseeable occurred such as his eBay or Paypal accounts being suspended.

He soon realised that there was no comprehensive tutorial available to advise sellers of how to get the best results from their listings so he set about gathering as much information as he could from forums, internet articles and his own experience.

His book takes the reader through opening an account, listing inventory, pricing items, packing and shipping the Amazon way and making money. It is packed with tips and advice, explanations of terminology, screenshots and video tutorials to show eBayers the best way to list their products on Amazon.

Although I had been selling on Amazon for some time before I read the book, I still learned strategies that I knew little or nothing about, and I have no hesitation in recommending it. It is reasonably priced and comes completely without risk as it is covered by a 60-day, no-questions-asked guarantee.

Click here to read all about it.

Launched in 1995 as an online bookstore, they soon began to diversify and now offer a huge product range which includes CDs, DVDs, computer software, consumer electronics, clothing, tools, toys and games, baby products, household and kitchen items and much, much more.

In 2001 the Amazon Marketplace was launched and has since grown into a hugely popular channel for sellers to list their new and used items alongside Amazon products.

There is no auction format, all listings are fixed price. Listings stay up for 60 days, after which time the seller is given the option of re-listing any items which remain unsold.

Although there are no listing fees, Amazon charge low volume sellers a fixed per-item fee in addition to the final value fee. However, sellers who anticipate selling more than 30 items per month on the Amazon website can opt to become a Pro Merchant seller and pay a monthly fee in which case the per-item fee is waived.

Inevitably, since there is no listing fee, final value fees tend to be higher than those charged by eBay. However, there are no Paypal fees to pay and no waiting for buyers to send cheques or postal orders. Payment is collected by Amazon and paid into the seller’s account every two weeks. There is no such thing as a non-paying bidder on Amazon.

Sellers are not able to set their own post and packing charges, these are pre-set by Amazon. This can be something of a double-edged sword. If, for instance, you are selling a lightweight paperback book you are likely to make a small profit on the postage as well as on the book itself. However, if you are selling a heavy hardback book you would probably lose out on postage and this would need to be taken into consideration when you set your selling price.

If you have not yet tried selling on Amazon, why not give it a go? I was put off for a long time simply because I was reluctant to move out of my comfort zone and learn something new. However, I had a huge pile of books to sell and just couldn’t find the time to photograph and weigh them all, so listing them on Amazon seemed to be the perfect solution.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the process is. With photographs and descriptions already provided by Amazon, all I had to do was describe the condition of the book and set the price. I was delighted when several of the books sold within the first few days. There are no invoices to send and no slow payers to chase up. I just had to wait for an email from Amazon to say that a book had sold, print off the address label and dispatch note from the Amazon website and send the package. And remember, although listing a few books is an easy way to familiarise yourself with the process, you can now sell all kinds of things on Amazon.

I am in no way suggesting that you ditch eBay and move your business to Amazon but rather that you consider using it as another selling channel. After all, eBay and Amazon are the two most popular online shopping sites and between them your products could be seen by millions of potential buyers!

However, I am less than happy with several of the policy changes that have been made over the past few months, and I feel that eBay’s attitude to it’s sellers has become increasingly contemptuous, so I decided to take a look at some of the eBay alternatives.

CQOut

First on my list was CQOut. A UK based site launched in 1999 with users in more than 57 countries, they claim to have gained a reputation as the “Most Trusted Online Auction Site”.

At the time of writing they charge a one-off registration fee of $3.45 (£2.00) but there are no listing or relisting fees, no reserve price fees and no Buy It Now/Instant Buy fees. However, there is a charge of $0.09 (£0.10) for listing in a second category. Final value fees are on a sliding scale ranging from 5.29% to 1.76%

The majority of their upgrade fees are less than those on eBay but they charge $0.17 (£0.10) for gallery image (now free of charge on eBay) and $0.09 (£0.05) for cross-promotion.

A Store/Shopfront is available for $163.88 (£95.00) per annum reduced to £60.38 (£35.00) for CQ Trusted Sellers.

The site boasts no less than four bulk uploading tool options but I was unable to access details of these without signing up and logging in.

The total number of auctions on the day I checked out the site (October 14) was 875,694, the majority of which were in the Books, Comics & Magazines category (222,869).

The site was easy to navigate and user-friendly.

eBid

Next, I went to look at eBid. Established in 1999, they were recently voted Best eBay Alternative by Webuser Magazine. When I visited the site in mid-October there were 1,384,969 auctions in 7,610 categories.

Here, they have two types of seller account - just plain Seller which is free to register, and Seller+ for which registration fees range from $1.99 (£1.99) for 7 days to $49.99 (£49.99) for lifetime registration.

A plain Seller account gives access to “standard” auction format which is free to list with a 3% Final Value Fee. The “standard” auction excludes many of the features which come with a Seller+ account, but the seller can opt to pay $0.05 (£0.05) to list a Platinum Auction which then gives access to the additional features.

A Seller+ can use the Free Auction which is exactly what it says on the tin, with zero listing fee and zero final value fee, but it does not include a thumbnail image in the search results. Alternatively they can choose the Gallery Auction which includes a thumbnail image in the search result and all listings. This is still free to list but is subject to a 2% Final Value Fee.

Available upgrades include Featured Auction ($1.00/£1.00) which is listed above all free auctions and includes a thumbnail image, and Frontpage Auction ($2.50/£2.50) which stays on the front page for 24 hours then moves to the Featured section.

There are also ‘extras’ available such as bold ($0.07/£0.04), highlight ($0.18/£0.10), subtitle ($0.15/£0.08), extra photo ($0.05/£0.03) and extra category $0.05/£0.05).

ePier

Next on my list was ePier. This is a global online market run by “8 eager to please young entrepreneurs wanting to set the internet free”. Global it may be, but unless I missed something, the list of fees and the items for sale are all priced in US$.

On the day I visited (October 18) the homepage stated that they have 122,093 members, over 206,300 visitors per month. Between the auctions and storefronts they had over half a million listings.

There are no listing fees on ePier but your item can only be listed in one category at a time. For items selling at upto $25 the fee is 5% of the closing value. For items with a closing value between $25 and $1000 the fee is $1.25 plus 2% of the balance over $25, and for items selling at above $1000 the fee is $20.75 plus 1% of the balance over $1000. However for “Premium Service” subscribers (see below) the first $9.95 of final value fees will be waived.

The Premium Service costs $9.95 per month and includes a shopping cart enabled customizable storefront plus a host of other features such as 200Mb of image storage space, unlimited use of classified ads and priority customer service.

Additional listing options include Home Page Featured ($5), Category Featured ($1), Photo Gallery (Free), Bold ($0.50) and Reserve Price ($0.25 upto $25 and $0.50 for $25 upwards.

The site has a friendly atmosphere with users being encouraged to get to know each other and become part of the community.

Bonanzle

Finally, I went to check out Bonanzle, a new site which I was curious about as it seems to have created some interest among online auction users. In the absence of any information to the contrary, I believe it is only open to residents of the USA

Bonanzle is “an online marketplace for buying and selling items faster while having more fun”. They specialize in helping you buy and sell items that “aren’t shiny, new and mass-produced”.

When I visited the site in mid October there were a total of 203,515 items listed for sale, and they say that traffic has increased by 3-5 times per month since their launch in June. I couldn’t get details of the current user count as this information is only available to registered users.

Listing is free, as are final value fees on cash transactions.  For sales that are paid by check or through Paypal or Google Checkout, the final value fees are straightforward with no percentages to work out. The fee on an item with a final value of less than $10 is $0.50, on $10-$50 the fee is $1, on $50-$100 the fee is $3, on $100-$1000 the fee is $5 and on a final value of $1000 or more the fee is $10. It should be noted, however, than any shipping cost over $10 is included in the final value when calculating fees.

It will be interesting to see how this infant site has progressed by this time next year.

Conclusion

So what now? Will I be leaving eBay and taking my custom to one or more of the other online auctions sites? Unfortunately, the answer is no; at least not in the foreseeable future.

In spite of the shoddy way in which eBay treat their customers, Auction Count Charts at medved.net show that listings have increased in number from around 15.4 million at the beginning of September to just over 24 million by mid October. The sell-through rate has remained steady at around 40-43%.

So in spite of there being lots of other internet auctions online it seems that most sellers, myself included, are prepared to tolerate whatever eBay throws at us simply because that is where the buyers are.

If you have tried any of the other online auction sites we would love to hear about it and invite you to leave a comment below.

Due to a sudden family illness and an impending house move, I’ve hardly been able to find the time to switch on the computer, let alone keep abreast of what’s been going on on eBay! However, the invalid is now on the road to recovery and the house move should be complete by the middle of next month so hopefully life will soon be back to normal (ie, organised chaos as opposed to total chaos!).

As the holiday season is fast approaching, I will be doing regular checks on eBay to see what items emerge as this year’s hot products and, of course, I will be sharing this information with you here.

This is traditionally the most lucrative time of year for sellers both online and offline but due to the recession, credit crunch, economic downturn - call it what you will - many people may well be somewhat more reluctant to ’splash the cash’ this year than they have in the past. This makes it more important than ever to keep your finger on the pulse and be aware of current buying trends.

On a positive note, a survey recently conducted on behalf of Stores Magazine showed eBay second only to Amazon in the Favourite 50 Online Retailers list. The number of consumers doing their shopping online over the holiday season has been growing year on year and there is no reason to suspect that this won’t continue in spite of the current financial turmoil.

I hope you all manage to grab yourselves a decent slice of the pie, and  I will be doing my best to bring you relevant information to help you on your way so please add us to your favourites if you haven’t already done so.

However, there are now signs that eBay may have actually started to listen to some of their customers’ concerns.

On July 3, an announcement appeared on the eBay au (eBay Australia) site stating that they have withdrawn their decision to insist upon Paypal as the sole payment method. While they require all sellers to offer Paypal as an option, they will now continue to allow other payment methods. The full announcement can be found here.

Another apparent U-turn was announced on July 11 when eBay stated that from late August, neutrals will no longer be counted as part of the feedback percentage, and feedback scores will be recalculated retroactively. This is good news for sellers who lost a 100% score due to a few neutrals, as their perfect score will now be restored on condition that they have not received any negatives in the meantime. To see the full announcement, go here.

eBay have also decided that the new links policy announced on May 19 and due to be enforced in July has now been postponed. They say that the policy is going to be revised by mid-August and enforcement will not begin until four weeks later. It will be interesting to see whether they will continue to allow links from the ‘About Me’ page to non-eBay related websites.

However, an announcement on eBay Australia stated that from 21^st May all sellers will be required to offer Paypal as a payment option and from 17^th June all items must be paid for using either Paypal or Visa/MasterCard with transactions processed by Paypal. The only exception to this will be items which are paid for on pick up.

So as well as making it compulsory for sellers to offer Paypal as a payment option, eBay.com.au are pretty much removing the option for buyers to pay by any other means.

As far as I can see there is no benefit from this ruling for either buyers or sellers. The only winner is eBay themselves due to the extra revenue they will collect on Paypal commissions.

Is Australia being the testing ground before eBay rolls this rule out to other countries? What do you think? Feel free to leave your comments below.