Archive

Hello and welcome to the 15th Issue of UK Auction Line Newsletter.

Ebay will shortly be increasing the number of characters that you can use in your title. Currently you are restricted to 45 letters and spaces but soon this figure will be increased to 55. They have already introduced this change to eBay.com and it is expected that this will be introduced into Europe during February.

A subscriber recently spoke to me about the fact that I advertise products through the newsletter. Basically he thought this was wrong because it would affect my impartiality. So I thought it would be a good idea to state my policy. I do not accept any outside advertising or sponsorship. However, when I come across a product that I find helps me sell on eBay or that adds to my eBay knowledge I will tell you about it.
If I think something is poor or bad value I will also tell you about it. In other words I never recommend anything that I would not use myself.

Of course some of the items have affiliate programs, which mean that if I introduce other buyers I receive a payment. Others do not and I just recommend them anyway. Well that is that off my chest and I hope that you enjoy this issue and find something of interest.

Stop Press - QXL annouce free listing weekend 24-25th January. This could be a good time to try them (see article).

Dave Bromley

Contents:
1. eBay Shops
2. How welcoming are you?
3. Extra Reading
4 . Final Thoughts

Ebay Shops

On January 10th anyone who still had a shop on eBay started paying for the privilege. There are three different types of shop available now with varying benefits: Basic (£6.00 month), Featured (£30.00 month) and Anchored, (£300.00 month). Stated prices are inclusive of VAT.

In this article I am looking at the various benefits that you receive for each level of monthly investment. In the coming months we will be looking at Shops in more detail but today we shall just be looking at what you will get for your money.

The Basic Level: Cost £6 per month.

All auction listing appear both in your shop and your eBay Listing and Search pages.
There is no additional insertion fee to have your auction item included in your shop. Reading the eBay guide it does appear that there is an additional 5p charge Buy It Now fee for these items when they appear in your shop.

You can also have Shop Inventory Listings and these are fixed price listing that only appears in your shop. You must also remember that these listing do not appear in the eBay Search or Listings. The insertion fee covers ANY quantity of an item in a single listing, so whether you list one or a thousand the cost is the same. The costs are as follows:

30 days 5p
90 days 15p
Good ‘Til Cancelled
(renewable after 30 days) 5p

Final valuation fees are 5.25% for the first £25 and 2.75% on the remaining balance up to £1000 and 1.5% on the remaining balance above that.

Enhancement fees appear to be inline with normal listings.

The Featured Option costs £30 a month. For this you get all the benefits of the basic package plus:

Cross selling of your shop inventory on your listing pages. Which I take to mean that with this option all your shop items also appear in your auction listings.

Priority placement in “Related Shops” section

Featured Placement on the eBay Shops home page

Prime positioning in the top level directory pages where your item is listed.

Finally the Anchor option will cost you a hefty £300 a month.

In addition to all the other features you receive one million impressions per month for your shop throughout eBay.com –including the eBay Homepage.

Showcase placement of your logo within the eBay Shops Directory pages.

Premium placement in “Related Shops” sections of the Search and Browse pages.

I would be most interested to hear from any subscribers who are using the eBay Shop facility to learn how successful it is for them. I suspect very few if any of my readers are using the Feature or Anchor options but if you are why not let me know.

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How welcoming are you?

The other day I was browsing around eBay, (as you do when you are trying to put off doing any real work.) when I came across a strange listing. It started off, in big bold letters stating that PayPal was the preferred method of payment. It then went on to say that any successful bidder who did not pay up within 10 days would receive negative feedback.

After this came the fact that insurance was not provided and if the buyer wanted it he or she would have to pay for this themselves. Also some where in all this it also added for good measure that even if Paypal was there preferred method of payment, if you used it they would charge you a 5% surcharge. Only after all that did you come to the actual item listing, which was in a much smaller and plainer font than all the other information.

Now OK, that is a pretty extreme and possibly slightly exaggerated example but I hope you see the point. Imagine you are walking down your local High Street. One shop is brightly lite, has the doors wide open and sign saying, “Come in, Feel Free To Browse” . Next door is a dark and dingy shop with signs in the windows, saying things like, “Shoplifters will be prosecuted” “All items damaged will be paid for” and “No Children”. Now which one are you likely to go into?

Talking about payment or shipping before the potential buyer has even had a chance to see what your selling is not a good move. Also for what it is worth, I tend to avoid any seller who tries to charge a supplement for paying by PayPal.

If you are using Turbo Lister or one of the other listing software programs they allow you to put all your shipping and payment details at the end of the listing were they are easy to see but not intrusive.

Look at your listings, what message are you sending out?

“Hello it is great to see you and I would love to do business with you.”
or
“I don’t really trust you but if you obey my rules I might sell to you”

So make your listing as bright and welcoming as you can it is a sure way to attract more visitors and a higher sale price.

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QXL

Offers of the Month

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