NEWS | Message from DaveHello <$firstname$>
This month eBay have launched the improved version of their listing tool Turbo Lister. The new version offers an easier listing process offering as it does the ability to create a listing within a single page. It is generally much quicker to use in than in the past and it is also much easier to make changes. I have always been a fan of this no cost tool for bulk listing and was most impressed with the improvements. If you have not tried Turbo Lister for a while it might be worth having another look. Paypal have announced that they have launched Paypal Mobile in the UK. PayPal Mobile lets you buy goods by sending money through your mobile phones. It also means you’re able to send money to other PayPal users via your phone using the person-to-person payment service. Using PayPal Mobile’s “Text to Buy” service, you will be able to buy things instantly, such as CDs, DVDs, shoes and clothes, by sending product codes via text message. eBay Express has been launched in the US and Canada. Express is basically a fixed priced shop site. It has been suggested that this is eBay’s attempt broaden their appeal outside of the auction market. Providing the launch across the Atlantic proves successful I am sure that we will be seeing eBay Express over here soon. Ina Steiner of Auctionbyte has written an excellent article explaining al about eBay Express and you can access this at http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m05/abu0166/s02 There has been a great deal of activity in the eBay forums in the USA about what they call “Chinese Bandits”. As I understand it what happens is that supposed buyers mainly from China register multiple eBay ids and then make bids on a whole range of Buy It Now Items which they then subsequently do not buy. What they are after is to collect the e-mail addresses of sellers so that they can then subsequently send them e-mails offering pirated designer items. This can be a real pain not least because you as the seller have to go through the hassle of going through the not completed sales procedure to get back your Final Valuation fees from eBay. I don’t know how rife it is on eBay.co.uk yet but it is worth looking out for these pests, Have fun on eBay and the other online auctions this month.I hope that you enjoy this month’s newsletter and find the articles useful and informative. Dave
How To Stop Ebay Auction Sniping.By Kirsten Hawkins Every day, hapless bidders get beaten to the punch by auction snipers who jump in at the last minute. I know how annoying it can be, as I once had it happen to me three times in a row on the same item! The thing is that the only people who can helpthe poor bidders are us, the sellers. The Problem. Bidders will bid on an item and then wait for days until it finishes, only to have someone else outbid them at the last minute. In a traditional auction at a real auction house, thisisn’t a problem at all, as the auction keeps going until everyone has bid as much as they want to, and the auctioneerdouble-checks with the classic phrase “going, going, gone”. The problem on eBay is caused by the fixed length of time that eBay’s auctions last, and the fact that they aren’t extended significantly if someone places a new bid in the last fewseconds of the auction. Imagine if a real auction house worked that way, letting people shout “50 cents more!” at the lastsecond and win an item. It would simply be unfair, and many buyers think it’s unfair on eBay too. The Solutions. Until eBay decide to fix the problem (and by now it’s looking unlikely that they ever will), you’re the only one who can do anything for your buyers. First off, you can encourage your buyers to use eBay’s proxy bidding system the way it was intended. The idea of the system is that they enter the maximum they’re willing to pay for an item and eBay places bids for them automatically up to that maximum. They’re not supposed to come back and bid an extra dollar every time they get outbid. If your bidders are bidding high enough, then no sniper will even come along and beat them – because they will have set the maximum snipe level in their sniping software to less than the normal bidder’s maximum. Changing the way people use eBay is hard, though. One alternative is to keep an eye on who’s bidding on your auction, and cancel bids from known snipers – but this requires you to be around right at the end of the auction to cancel their bids. You might also want to set your auction to end sometime when bidders will be around so that they can outbid snipers themselves. This is good business sense anyway – most of the bidding always takes place in the last few hours of an auction. An easier way to thwart bid snipers is to offer ‘Second Chance’ sales to bidders who get outbid by a sniper at the last minute. This is good for you, and for them – they still get to buy theitem they wanted, and you’ve just made two sales: one to the sniper and one to them. Once you’ve sold your items, though, you might be upset to find that one of them gets returned for a refund. Our next email will show you how to turn these returns into profits! About the Author: Kirsten Hawkins is an Ebay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visithttp://www.auctionseller411.com/ for more great tips on how tomake the most from Ebay and other online auctions. NEWS:Channel Advisor Launches New Auction Management System in the UKChannelAdvisor, leader in online auction management, has just made setting up a business online even easier with the release of its ChannelAdvisor Pro auction management toolkit - enabling streamlining of all the processes involved in managing an auction business. As well as dramatically simplifying the organisation and tracking of inventory and creation of professional and template auction ads, it enables efficient management of transactions and dispatches, and the automation of customer communications via email. Users can also replicate previous ads for identical or similar item sales, as well as manage images such as logos and product photography. With over 15 million users and over 11.7 million visitors a month, eBay.co.uk has become the UK's largest shopping centre. While many small businesses are using eBay to expand their market or clear old stock, many others are using eBay as their own dedicated website. As well as eliminating the costs involved in setting up a website, marketing costs are also significantly reduced as these businesses benefit from the footfall already generated by eBay which brings customers to their virtual front door. More than 68,000 people in the UK make a living on eBay - in fact the UK leads the way with 40% of the 170,000 people across the European Union who rely on eBay sales as their primary or secondary source of income. “While English people are notorious for complaining about their jobs, they now have no excuse for not taking the plunge and setting up their own business,” comments Jennifer Gibson, General Manager at ChannelAdvisor. “Thousands of eBay businesses are doing very well and it is really very easy to do!” ChannelAdvisor has highlighted ten of the most common mistakes that eBay traders make - avoid these and you will be on your way to building a successful eBay business: 1. Imprecise descriptions: The product description forms part of the contract of sale - clear descriptions will attract relevant bids and ensure a satisfied customers 2. Wrong title: Don’t use vague and unclear product titles in the hope that this will lure in more potential customers - buyers go for listings that directly address their needs 3. Wrong starting time: The majority of bids are placed when an auction is about to end so the duration is irrelevant. Much more important is that the auction ends during peak bidding hours - between 6pm and 10pm 4. Private profiles: Anyone who does not make their feedback public has something to hide and prospective buyers will go elsewhere 5. Missing images: An image says a thousand words and is a must have on eBay. The first image is free but traders should also consider paying extra for the additional eBay gallery option 6. Overlapping: If you are offering the same items for auction regularly you should ensure your auctions do not overlap as bidders will move to the later auction in pursuit of a lower price 7. Delivery costs: These should cover postal charges as well as packaging and handling, but should not be an opportunity to make additional profit 8. Feedback revenge: Do not seek revenge for unfair negative feedback as this can escalate - stay calm and focus on future sales 9. Wrong trading tools: A lot of trading tools are aimed at occasional sellers - regular sellers should consider auction management tools to reduce admin 10. Wrong platform - eBay is a highly competitive and commoditised trading environment. You should consider whether your product portfolio would be better suited to alternative or additional online platforms such as Kelkoo.
Are you looking for some new products to sell on eBay? The Louis Allport collect of 6 CDs with copy and master resale rights are a great and easy product to sell on eBay. A choice of 6 titles for just £11.95 each or buy all 6 for just £59.95 and get a 7th as a bonus.To find out more Louis Allport Special OffertopFour Reasons Why You Should Never Use Animations In Your Ebay Auctions By Sydney Johnston Inexperienced auction sellers, or those lacking in confidence, often want to make their auction listings more dramatic and exciting. They dread the possibility that buyers will be bored by their auction and turn away with indifference. Therefore, they reason, they will spice up their auctions with some "animations" - graphics that blink, change colors, spin, travel around the web page. Or the seller may be a tech person who loves toys and is proud of his ability to create unusual effects. Regardless of their reasons, animated elements on an auction page are almost never a good idea for the following four reasons: 1. Rather than attracting attention to the merchandise in your auction, your potential customer may watch a spinning ball or follow Santa and his reindeer through the sky. We want the customer's total attention on that all-important question: "Do I want to buy this widget or not?" Distractions are not good for your wallet. 2. Animations can make the load time of your auction listing much longer. I have been using DSL four years and have forgotten (happily!) how horrible it is to use dialup. However, for many places on this planet, high-speed connections simply are not available. For these folks, loading your page mighttake forever, and you can be sure they won't wait. Experts tell us that the average user spends only 7 seconds at a webpage before departing for greener pastures. If your sales page is still loading, no sale for you. 3. It takes time for you to figure out how and whether to use animations. This is time that would be better spent on writing more exciting and dynamic copy - copy that will turn a prospective customer into a real buyer. A smart business person will treat time as her most precious commodity and spend it onwhat is most likely to bring a sale. 4. Many of these animations are just downright annoying. I personally do not enjoy looking at screens that are twirling, whirling and blinking. Two particularly irritating animations are an inescapable message that follows up and down the left side of the page, regardless of where I'm looking, and "trails" that follow my mouse. A huge majority of people feel the same, apparently. Sellers need to make it as easy as possible for people to buy, rather than throwing obstacles in the way. Are there any occasions when animated pictures are of any value in an auction listing? Possibly. For example, if you are selling to graphic designers then animated elements might be appropriate. As always, testing, testing, testing is the only way to truly know. But for the rest of us folks - forget the glitter and focus on your merchandise. That's what makes us buy. About the Author: Learn how to sell on eBay with 16 hours of online instruction taught by a 10 year eBay veteran. Own an eBay business instead of an eBay hobby.http://www.auction-genius-course.com
New Reverse Auction Game Launched Virtual World Direct the e-lottery company announced on Saturday 6 th May that they are launching a Skill Game based on the Reverse Auction. The prize up for grabs in a Mercedes CLK convertible worth over £38,000. The idea is that you place a bid and the winner is the person who bids the lowest UNIQUE amount. For instance if you bid £35.67 and nobody else has bid that amount and it is the lowest unmatched bid then that is what you will get the car for. The game can be played anywhere in the world and the organizers say that wherever the wined comes from they will arrange for the car to be shipped to them. Normally entries to the game cost £1.50 but if you would like a chance to test your luck if you go to www.winamerc.com you can have a completely free go. Best of luckIt's Easy To Use Ebay Auction Templates By Monster Internet Empire For many ebay sellers it makes sense to use auction templates to list their items, instead of having no design at all. Using a pre-designed ebay auction template allows you to present yourproduct in a professional way. In fact, recent research has shown that visitors stay longer on a well designed website compared to amateurish looking one. Well, this very same principle it also true for your eBay auction listing. The better your ebay auction listing looks, the longer they stay on your site and the greater is the chance that they place a bit. Watch your own buying behaviour when you buy something on eBay. You'll be surprised why you placed a bid on a particular item. Another big advantage of using ebay auction templates is, that even an absolute beginner and eBay newbie can use it and launch professional eBay auction listing instantly. Furthermore, you can re-use the same template over and over again. You can just add the text and description, upload the new pictures, make a link to the pictures in your new auction listing and you are ready to go. The best thing is that you can leave other details, like contact information, shipping details, company policy, payment instruction and a link to your 'about me' page all in place. There is no need for you to re-write it. This saves you precious time. You don't need to know a lot of HTML. In fact modifying existing auction templates is easy as 1-2-3: You read the template file into your preferred WYSIWYG HTML editor. I personally love the 'Composer' program from Netscape.It's free and has many features that only expensive HTML editor programs offer. The big advantage of designing your auction listing offline is that you have full control on the design process. I had many ugly looking auction sites, because I wanted to save time and use Internet Explorer, logged into my eBay account and tried to list an item online - 'on-the-fly'. Big mistake! In fact, it took longer and the outcome was not convincing at all. I then decided to design the auction listing ‘offline’ first. I have used several HTML editor programs before but after I have tried Netscape 'Composer' I haven't looked back to any other HTML editor. When I am happy with the site, I just save the source code to my hard disk and I can always re-use this template. Then you simply copy and paste the source code into the ‘eBay description’ box when you list your item. It’s just very easy… There are thousands of ebay auction sites and even though there may be more than one ebay auction listing using the pre-designed auction template you choose, the likelihood of a visitor and potential buyer seeing both sites is not great. Every ebay auction site is unique in the products it presents. EBayauction templates present your item quickly and professionally without the hassle of designing an eBay auction listing from scratch. About the Author: Thomas Haselhorst is CEO of Monster Internet Empire and webmaster of http://www.auction-design-for-free.com http://www.powerseller-articles.auction-design-for-free.com |http://www.rebrand.auction-design-for-free.com |http://www.monster-ebook-sale.com | http://www.submit-articles.biz
The DVD Workshop Programby Dave Bromley Last month I told you about the DVD Workshop. Since then I have had an opportunity to use the techniques that were described in this 11 DVD program. Our latest program Blast Your Way to eBay Success includes 3 DVDs and you just cannot imagine how easy it is to produce them. With people being prepared to pay almost silly money for information DVDs both on and off of the online auctions this is something you should look at. When you consider that a the cost of production costs of a DVD are less than 50p you have to see the huge potential profits that are waiting. Bill Myers comprehensive program takes you through every aspect of creating your own DVDs and there is also a section devoted to selling on eBay. Even if you did not want to sell them yourself there is a huge market out there of people who want information DVDs to sell on eBay and through their web sites. There is a terrific opportunity for someone to really cash in on this demand. For more details contact Malcolm Samuels by CLICKING HERE |
CONTENTSFrom Dave How to Stop eBay Sniping Channel Advisor Launches in UK Four reasons not to use animations New Reverse Auction LaunchedIt is Easy to use ebay templates DVD Workshop Program Extra Reading Don't forget the cow Dave's final thoughts Copyright & Info. |
