An interesting article from the desk of our good friend Dave Bromley. Please read on.

Regards
Steve H

If you have been around as long as me you may remember when eBay was a novelty and you could just about sell anything through the online auction. How things have changed. Buyers are becoming more demanding, more critical and more cautious.

This means that to be successful in today’s market sellers have to change their approach. To be fair many sellers having been adapting their approach to the changing market conditions for many years have prospered as a result.

To put it simply to become a successful eBay marketer requires professionalism, a business like attitude and quite a bit of work. The days of quickly throwing something up on eBay are long gone.

If you are prepared to do this then there is an opportunity for anyone to build a business using eBay as a launch pad. But as you build your business you need to be prepared to diversify. Relying on eBay as your sole outlet in the future could be a mistake.

Another eBay old wives tale was that if you sold on Bay you did not need a web site. That may have been true in the past but today no serious seller would consider having their own web site. Using your About Me page and flyers with the items you send out you can build up visitors to your site. You can then turn those visitors into customers without the need to pay any further eBay fees.

Why make life difficult for yourself? Don’t try and sell anything, sell the things people want. Sell them in a professional manner and operate your whole selling business in the same manner. Sure you might ell the odd refrigerator to an Eskimo but I bet you could sell them a lot more fur coats.

By Dave Bromley

Dave Bromley has been a registered member of eBay since 1999 and has written

both on and off line on subjects related to online auctions. You can read his blog at "http://www.ukonlineauctionnews.com"

Regards
Steve H

As part of the Spring 2009 Update, announced on 16th April, we introduced a new, more efficient dispute resolution process that involves some changes to eBays User Agreement.

eBay Buyer Protection programme

The biggest change to the agreement is the inclusion of the eBay Buyer Protection policy. We intend to gradually extend eBay Buyer Protection to more and more buyers over 2009; not all buyers will be able to participate in eBay Buyer Protection straight away. Buyers will be able to get their problems resolved on eBay faster, and the new User Agreement incorporates the new policy and includes language, which describes the parameters of eBay Buyer Protection.

As with earlier updates to the User Agreement, we've made other minor changes to reflect eBays current product and service offerings and industry legal standards. You'll see references to, eBay site services and tools where the old agreement simply reads, eBay site. These changes reflect the many new ways you can access eBays offerings through other websites, wireless devices, and tools.

The new User Agreement is effective immediately for new members registering on or after 27th May 2009, and on 8th July 2009, for current members. You don't need to do anything to accept the new User Agreement. If you don't wish to accept it, you can follow these instructions to close your account.

Regards,

The eBay Team

Some important updates from eBay I thought you might want to see.

Regards
Steve H

Buyers feel more confident about buying on eBay and sellers are more likely to see their listings convert to sales when PayPal is offered as a payment method. Through PayPal we can provide protection for buyers and sellers should things go wrong.

Here is an overview of the upcoming changes that will make it safer and easier for you to buy and sell on eBay.ie.

We're delighted to announce a significant expansion of the protection offered to buyers and sellers when using PayPal on eBay. These improvements will come into effect from June 2009.

Good news for buyers:

Starting in June eBay buyers will receive protection up to the full value of their purchases (including postage) when they pay with PayPal. Terms apply.

Good news for sellers

Also from June all sellers will be eligible for expanded seller protection against certain claims for fraudulent payments and items not received - regardless of whether they are a PowerSeller or not. Under the terms of the expanded Seller Protection coverage, you will not be required to post to confirmed addresses for eBay transactions. There won't be an annual coverage limit and Seller Protection will cover the 190 countries supported by PayPal for sales made via eBay.

We'll give you an update on this soon.

Offering PayPal as a payment method
From 1st July 2009 all sellers on eBay.ie will be required to offer PayPal as a payment option on all listings. This will give buyers the confidence that PayPal Buyer Protection is available on every item that they purchase on eBay should something go wrong.

We've seen that transactions made using PayPal result in significantly reduced instances of fraud. With every listing on the site offering a traceable, protected payment option buyers will have increased confidence to return to shop with you again.

Sellers will continue to be able to offer other payment methods alongside PayPal, as per eBays Accepted Payments Policy. Listings in the Motors Vehicles, Property and Services categories will be exempt from this policy.
Payment Holds for eBay Items
To help ensure every eBay sale results in a satisfied buyer who will return again and again, PayPal is identifying a small percentage of transactions that pose the greatest risk to buyers. From 1st July 2009, PayPal may hold some of these payments to ensure that the transaction is completed to the satisfaction of the buyer.

Thanks for your support in helping to keep eBay.ie a safe place to buy and sell.

Regards,
The eBay Team

To bring eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie in line with other global eBay sites, and to increase security for sellers, we will be going one step further and extending anonymous User IDs to winning bidders as well.

This change will be implemented this week.

Sellers will be able to view all bidder IDs on their listings

All members can click on the bidder ID and view the bidde's Bid History page, which will detail the categories in which they've bid over the past 30 days.

Feedback pages will show the same information as now buyers and seller IDs, with comments visible to all.

Regards,

The eBay Team

It is very easy to use eBay, you do not need any particular computing or marketing skills. In fact anyone can sell on eBay and while this is the sites strength it also leads many sellers taking the easy option and not bothering to build themselves a proper sales system.

If you are serious about becoming a regular seller and want to make the maximum number of sales you need to develop some sort of sales system. Think of this if you like as a kind of checklist.

Regards
Steve H

So Check 1, know your products.

Have you got good photographs of your products? These days’ digital cameras are very inexpensive and there is no reason why you cannot produce some god images. Do not rely on photographs from manufacturers’ brochures or images you have taken from the Internet.

Check 2. Get good photographs.

How does your headline and description n compare with your competitors? It is pretty certain you will not be the only person selling your type of product on eBay. Check you competitors, look at their listing and be honest with yourself, having seen the listings who would you buy from them or you?

Check 3, Look at the competition.

What is your marketing image like? I don’t mean your photographs but how do you as a seller come across to your customers. Do you appear as a professional marketer or as someone who is doing a bit of casual selling? Professionals don’t use creased second time around wrapping paper to send their items out in They do not rely on tatty hand written notes but use computer generated stationary. Whenever you buy anything from eBay study the condition of the packaging material and consider what initial impression does this give you.

Check 4. Make sure your items are packaged securely and create a favorable first impression.

Finally once you have made a sale, you have created a pathway to the customer, so use it. Send them an email to let them know that you have dispatched the item. A few days later send a second to check that your customer I happy with the purchase. All of this helps create a rapport between you and your customer. Also if you have other items for sale or a web site why not send details of these in the package. The joy of this is that if they generate any further sales you do not have to pay eBay anything.

The real message is that if you want to become a serious seller on eBay you need to get organized and build a system. A systematic approach will single you out from the majority of eBay sellers and greatly increase your prospects of building a successful; eBay business.

Best Regards
Steve Haddock
http://www.ukauctionline.co.uk/

Regards
Steve H

Every entrepreneur eventually learns that earning all of your income from one source can be a dangerous thing.

A lot of people who engage in reselling have come to depend on eBay for their entire incomes, or for their extra income if they are reselling part time.

When one site is relied on too much, it can be devastating to a home business when the rates are raised, as eBay does so regularly.

Here are four reasons why you shouldn't discount the smaller eBay alternatives:

Making sales to regular customers is a lot easier than finding new ones, so cultivating as many new regulars as possible can be extremely profitable.

** You can tap new markets by appealing to people who have left eBay because of their dissatisfaction with the site. **

Some buyers have left the site- particularly those who didn't like using PayPal once checks and money orders became against the rules.

The buyers who left have found an alternative to eBay. If you want their business, you have to be on those other sites.

** If you are reselling, you can run into resellers selling the exact same things on eBay- sometimes dozens of them. **

By branching out onto smaller sites, you can avoid a great deal of that competition.

**If your profit margin is fairly slim, another rate hike on eBay may mean little or no profit for your home business. **

If you have listings on other sites that charge less, you have those listings to fall back on if a new rate hike threatens your profits.

Having listings on more than one site also provides something that no one site can provide- peace of mind.

If all of your sales come from just one place, you may always have the worry in the back of your mind about the site going down, site updates disrupting your listings, price increases and even feedback sabotage by a disgruntled buyer.

If you have spread out across the Internet, that will be one less thing that you have to worry about.

What are you waiting for, get out there now and start checking out some of the eBay alternatives that are free, have more targeted customer groups and are available to you now.

You will not only be boosting your profits tenfold you will also be protecting yourself from future changes on eBay and potential listing hijack by competitors.

Now that's one hell of a reason to try out an eBay alternative.

Article by Rose Li

Explore potential eBay alternatives now! Visit http://www.chinavasion.com/ebay_alternatives.html to see a massive dynamic list of eBay alternatives from Chinavasion.com

Rose Li is the PR Manager for Chinavasion, China's top electronic wholesaler. Interested in getting the best wholesale deals from China's best dropshipper visit http://www.chinavasion.com

eBay.co.uk have just announced a series of changes that I feel needed to be brought to your attention, please read on and if further information is required just go the the relevant section when next logging in to your eBay account.

Best Regards
Steve H

We wanted to let you know about some changes that will happen in the week commencing 15th June 2009.

From now on, we're going to try to give you as much advance notice as possible of changes to eBay that affect your business. We are also going to group those changes into two major releases for 2009.

Here's an overview of the first release for 2009. You will be able to find out more details about each change by clicking the relevant links.

* New item page rolling out to all of eBay. Get your listings ready now.

* New eBay product pages shown to more buyers. List using product details from a catalogue.

* New way to list in Buy It Now allows you to offer all variations of one product - e.g. colour and size - in a single low-cost listing.

* Introducing free pictures in the Clothes, Shoes & Accessories categories, and a new webfile upload option.

Making selling on eBay more efficient

* New Smart FAQ to answer buyers top 20 questions before they contact you.

* Easy Returns, a new way for you to manage returns in the Resolution Centre and automatically get your Full Value Fee (FVF) credit.

* Customise item specifics when the available choices don't apply to your item.

Policy & other changes to selling on eBay

* Introducing free P&P in selected Clothes Shoes & Accessories and Tech categories (accessories only), plus Final Value Fee promotion for Shop owners.

* New, more efficient process for handling disputes.

* Extended deadlines for mandatory specification of dispatch time

* Category changes - find out if your listings are affected.

* Policies relating to multiple-item listings changing.

Regards,

The eBay Team

Here is another great article from the keyboard of our friend Dave Bromley. Please read and enjoy.

Regards
Steve H

There are no end of articles, ebooks, manuals and videos on the Internet that claim to show you how to make a fortune selling things on eBay. If you are to believe sales letters you are just a step away from making your fortune. But who is really making the fortune, you or eBay?

In a relatively short time eBay established itself as a huge International company which has held a near monopoly position in the online auction market for over a decade. Certainly there are many examples of both individuals and companies who have also grown and profited by marketing through eBay. However, for every success story there are many thousands of examples of less fortunate people who have spent more money than they have made from their efforts on eBay.

One of the major areas overlooked by newcomers is accurate costing. For example,
if you buy an item for $10 (or £10 in this example the currency does not matter) do you know how much you have to sell it for on eBay to make 50% profit. Obviously it is more than $15 because you have to also allow for all the eBay and Paypal or bank fees, plus the cost of packaging and postage.

Having decided the type of products or niche that you wish to specialise in then you need to find a reliable source of supply. Whether you are going to buy from a manufacturer, wholesaler or drop shipper you need to find out not only the basic unit price but what additional expenses such as tax or shipping have to be added.

Having established the cost of the item you then need to work out what the listing, final value and Paypal fees will apply. It is worth remembering that your listings may not always result in a sale and so you should also include an allowance in your figures for the cost of these unsuccessful listings.

Packaging takes time and money and this should also be included in your calculations. eBay are very keen to encourage sellers to keep shipping costs to a minimum and if you charge too much this can have an adverse effect on sales. Having said this, packing and shipping are not cheap and have to be included in your calculations.

Having calculated your costs you must decide on the profit per item that you require to make the sale worthwhile. This is not necessarily the price you should set, Always price your item at the price that you think your market will stand. You can always lower your price when competition or lack of demand forces it down. But never go below the price that gives you your minimum profit requirement, when that happens its time to get a new product to sell.

There is an old saying, “look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.” and that is true with eBay selling. Unless you know exactly what your costs are you will find it difficult to make a fair and consistent profit.

By Dave Bromley

Dave Bromley has been a registered member of eBay since 1999 and has written

both on and off line on subjects related to online auctions. You can read his blog at http://www.ukonlineauctionnews.com

A question that I am often asked, especially from new e Bayer's is When and How to Withdraw Your eBay Bid. This article answers that issue quite well and I feel is worthy of being reproduced here.

Regards
Steve H

eBay are a little strict about letting you withdraw your bid. They call it a 'bid retraction', and have a stringent set of conditions that you must meet before you are allowed to do it. Here are eBay's three acceptable reasons for withdrawing a bid.

You made a typographical error: This means that you accidentally typed the wrong amount into the bid box, bidding a far higher price than you meant to. This can be scary: imagine bidding £100 and accidentally adding an extra '0'! You are entirely allowed to withdraw your bid in this situation, and bid again if you want to.

The seller is not contactable: If emails to the seller bounce and they don't answer their phone, then the auction obviously can't continue, and you can cancel it.

So How Do I Retract My Bid?

eBay hide away the bid retraction form a bit, because they don't like people using it. You can find it by going here: http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?RetractBidShow.

Now all you need is the item number from your auction: this can be found on the item description page's top right corner. If you can't see it on the page, look in your browser's title bar, and in any emails eBay have sent you about your bid on the item. Choose one of the three allowed reasons, click 'retract bid', and you're done.

Are There Any Consequences?

Well yes, there are. The more unethical among you might have considered that you could just cancel bids anytime you feel like it by saying that you accidentally entered the wrong amount. eBay are one step ahead of you. Each time you retract a bid, it is counted on your feedback page for all to see - and anyone with a lot of retracted bids looks more than a little dodgy. eBay also say that abusing the bid retraction feature could get you banned.

So is there a way to retract your bid without facing a penalty? There is if your seller is nice, and most are. Sellers can cancel bids on their auctions at any time, and if you email them with a half-decent excuse then most will be more than happy to do this for you. After all, it's not in their interest for their item to go to someone who won't like it, as you might leave negative feedback.

Of course, retracting your bid should still be a rare thing: you won't win auctions that way! If you've followed us this far, the chances are you've won an auction by now, or you're close - but you might be a little puzzled about what to do next. Our next email will give you a few pointers.

This site has many well-written articles on eBay Marketing. Feel free to browse! There are other interesting topics at http://www.TechTutorial.org/sitemap/index.html

A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.

But What If…

They say the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn't arrived. If it still hasn't arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. No, I don't care what that costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?

The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.

They say the item doesn't match the description: Resist the urge to email back with "yes it does, you just didn't read the description properly". Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

I'm sure you're spotting a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.

You should always handle customers' complaints before they complain to eBay - in fact, you should email them preemptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.

Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let's say you were selling £10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a £1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer's £1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week's profit. It's far better to look at it this way: if you don't give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week's profit, but you'll probably lose a few weeks' profit after that too. Now which option looks better?

I absolutely can't emphasize enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints isn't the only thing you need to avoid. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you don't want to kill your business before it's even started properly - and I'll show you in the next email what they are.

This site has many well-written articles on eBay Marketing. Feel free to browse! There are other interesting topics at http://www.TechTutorial.org/sitemap/index.html

About eBay AdCommerce:
eBay AdCommerce is a pay-per-click advertising programme that lets eBay sellers promote their listings and eBay Shops via ads ('sponsored results') on eBay search result pages.

AdCommerce is another powerful advertising option for eBay sellers who want to drive more traffic to their listings and eBay Shops. Your ads will be shown on search results pages to buyers that are searching for a keyword, which covers your item.

Let's say you sell laptops and want your ad to appear when buyers search for the keyword 'computer' on eBay. You would need to decide your maximum 'cost per click' bid for the keyword 'computer'; that is, how much you're willing to pay each time a buyer clicks on your ad after running a search for 'computer'.

If you're one of the highest bidders in terms of cost per click for that keyword, your ad - which can include a title, a short description, and an optional image - will appear near the bottom of the search results page when a buyer runs a search for 'computer'.

When you create these kinds of advertising campaigns with AdCommerce, you can specify the maximum you want to spend on clicks. Once your budget is used up, your ads will stop appearing or you can add to your budget if you want to continue advertising.

With AdCommerce, there are no setup fees and no minimum payments: you pay only when a buyer clicks on your ad and goes to your listing or eBay Shop.

Get started now
It only takes a few minutes to register and create your first ad. To get started now, or read more about the service, go to http://www.adcommerce.co.uk.

Regards,

The eBay Team

Headlines in today's papers just show that there is hope for all of us in this current economic climate. Congratulations to Mark and all his team for making it happen.

Regards
Steve H

Booming online sales of electronic accessories have helped former Tesco trainee manager Mark Radcliffe to become eBay's second individual UK millionaire

Internet shopping is booming as traditional retail outlets struggle to attract customers and head off further falls in sales.

Customers are switching to the internet in the search for bargains and small businesses and entrepreneurs are benefiting from the upsurge.

The first of a series of surveys that could provide further insight into the boom and add to the existing data from the British Retail Consortium, the CBI and the Office of National Statistics, is due shortly.

Mark Radcliffe who used £200 he had saved from his wages as a trainee manager at Tesco to start his eBay shop 10 years ago, has joined Jamie Murray in the ranks of individual eBay millionaires.

Cardiff-based Mr Murray secured his millionaire status by building up sales of mobile phones and electronic accessories over the last three years to now pull in £2m a year.

He employs eight people but sees no need to develop a traditional network of shops because of his online success with BMCdigital. In the run-up to Christmas, his December sales were worth £230,000 compared with a monthly average of £120,000 during the year.

Mr Radcliffe, who started his business First2save in a garden shed in Southport, has built up an electronic accessories business with sales of more than £5m a year. He is eBay's biggest-selling business in Britain with 36,000 monthly orders and ranks sixth in the international league table.

He has 6,000 different product lines and is looking to expand from his current 10,000 sq ft warehouse to a building with three times the space. He is also seeking to increase staff numbers from 19 to 34.

More attention is being focused on the internet as an economic indicator because this is the first time online shopping has been faced with recession.

The latest eBay data also shows how online exporters are taking advantage of the weaker pound.

In January alone 244,000 British-based sellers generated £57m in export business, an increase of 49pc on a year earlier. They sold 2.4m items, a 40pc year-on-year improvement.

Small businesses are estimated to have achieved a 10pc rise in export sales by value and 13pc in volume terms in January, compared to December levels.

By Roland Gribben

Zero insertion fees means that if you're a private seller, you pay the majority of fees only when you successfully sell an item in a qualifying category. For full terms and conditions, visit http://pages.ebay.co.uk/sell/private-sellers-pricechange/ (eBay.co.uk) or http://pages.ebay.ie/sell/private-sellers-pricechange/ (eBay.ie)

Fees for business-registered sellers using the auction-style format and all sellers using the fixed price format or Buy It Now will be unchanged.

eBay.co.uk: http://pages.ebay.co.uk
eBay.ie: http://pages.ebay.ie/sell/private-sellers-pricechange-march/

The eBay Team

An answer to a question I received recently and thought worthy of a wider audience.

Maybe you know this, If so apologies. Some people I've spoken to had no idea !! Okay, what this info doesn't state clearly enough is that most websites have the address beginning http:// it's the ordering page that needs to begin https://

Kind Regards
Steve H

FIRST, MANY PEOPLE ARE UNAWARE OF

**The main difference between http:// and https:// ; is It's all about keeping you secure**
HTTP stands for HyperText Transport Protocol, Which is just a fancy way of saying it's a protocol (a language, in a manner of speaking)
For information to be passed back and forth between web servers and clients.
The important thing is the letter S which makes the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. The S (big surprise) stands for "Secure".
If you visit a website or webpage, and look at the address in the web browser, it will likely
begin with the following: http://.

This is why you never ever enter your credit card number in an http website!

But if the web address begins with https://, that basically means your computer is talking
to the website in a secure code that no one can eavesdrop on.

I hope you understand why this is so important?

If a website ever asks you to enter your credit card information, you should automatically
look to see if the web address begins with https://.

If it doesn't, then there's no way you should enter sensitive information like a credit card number.

Please remember always better to be safe than sorry.

From 10th March 2009, all knives and swords except cutlery will be banned from sale on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie. The definition of cutlery includes those implements which can be used for eating, including cutlery sets, individual pieces of cutlery and antique cutlery.

All other items, including knives used in the preparation of food will be banned, including (but not limited to);
# antique knives
# bread knives
# craft knives
# Stanley knives
# camping/ survival/ hunting knives
# diving knives
# kitchen knives
# Swiss Army knives and Leathermans
# all swords

We will be able to determine if the buyer or bidder enters the details of a debit card, solo card or pre-paid card, the types of card most likely to be held by under-18s. If the details of any of these types of cards are entered, eBay will prevent the buyer or bidder from completing the transaction.

If the bidder or buyer enters valid credit card details they will then be given the option to pay using any approved method of payment.

We will be strict in the enforcement of these new policies and any seller who repeatedly attempts to break this policy will face strict sanctions, including possible suspension from the eBay site.

Regards,

The eBay Team