Hello,
Welcome to the 59th issue of UK Auctionline. I would like to take this opportunity of welcoming the many new subscribers.
I have never made any secret of my admiration for Sydney Johnston. In fact at a recent seminar someone accused me of stealing her material! There is no doubt that in my early days on eBay Sydney was a big influence as it was her book "Make Your Auction Network Sell" that got me started with eBay. Much of what is in that book is still relevant today and if you would like a "no cost" copy click the link and then scroll down to the bottom of the page that appears and click the link there. It is a good read I promise you.
The reason I mention Sydney is because last month The Sunday Times did an expose of a leading UK eBay seller who was accused of "schilling" which is bidding up the price of items you are selling. As a result several sellers have been permanently banned from eBay and others suspended. Therefore it seemed a good time to include Sydney's article Five Ways To Detect Shill Bidders On Ebay So That You Don't Pay Absurd Prices. I think you will find it informative
As you will see from an article I have included in the Extra Reading section of UK Auctionline this month eBay is moving. Well the financial part of eBay is so instead of being based in the UK for tax purposes they are setting up in Luxemburg. The main reason for this is that VAT in that country is 15% as opposed to 17.5% in the UK. This should represent a saving for eBay of 2.5% on all fees from non registered sellers and a saving of 2 .5% for all sellers who are registered for VAT.
A couple of months ago I mentioned Trevor Ginn's blog which deals on all matters relating to eBay. Glancing at it the other day I see that he has got hold of a copy of the investment bank Bear Stearns report on eBay. If you are a statistics person the figures Trevor extracts from the report it make interesting reading showing as they do year on year performance between categories. The report shows a big growth in tickets & travel over 1300% and a drop in Home and Garden over 40%. These figure relate to ebay.com but should be of interest to UK sellers.
That's about it for this month. Talk to you in March
by Dave Bromley
There has been quite a lot happening in the world of eBay over the last month. First of all came the announcement of eBay.co.uk's annual fee review. Generally for most people it is a case of as you were and the new prices will have little effect but as always with eBay fee adjustments there are winners and losers.
Sellers of technology products such as mobile phones that sell for more than £30 are the winners as they will see their final valuation fees drop between 5p and just over £40 depending on the sale price. However if you sell Books, Music, Film & TV or video games then you will be paying more when you sell items for between £5 -£10, which must cover the majority of items in these categories. In fact these changes incensed some sellers so much that they contacted the TV program "Working Lunch" who featured the price rises in one of their programs.
Another area that is hit hard is eBay Motors with as much as a 33% increase in Insertion Fees. Another change is that eBay will no longer refund reserve fees if an item sells. This could add as much as £100 to the cost of selling an expensive item. Full details are available at http://pages.ebay.co.uk/sell/importantinfo/
EBay have also announced that they are going to launch Feedback 2.0 this month. We have all known that the eBay feedback system is not perfect but was better than nothing. With Feedback 2.0 in addition to the current positive, negative or neutral comment, buyers rate the sellers on these specific transaction aspects based on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest rating. The average of all ratings is displayed on the seller's Feedback Profile page.
EBay claim that Feedback 2.0 will add a new dimension to eBay's feedback system, allowing buyers to rate transactions based on item description, communication, delivery time, and postage & packaging charges. Feedback 2.0 will add these new features:
Display of Item Title and Price - To give buyers more information to evaluate the reputation of a seller, the transaction's item title and selling price will be displayed beneath each Feedback comment on the Feedback Profile page for 90 days. This will give buyers more context while reviewing and evaluating Feedback comments.
The company believe Feedback 2.0 will help buyers feel more confident about a seller's reputation, while rewarding good sellers by recognising and highlighting the things they do to ensure customer satisfaction.
Whilst all this sounds very worthy I wonder how many of us are going to take the time to give the extra information. Many sellers use automatic feedback systems to save themselves time and effort and I cannot see them welcoming or bothering to fill in more details. But I could be wrong. For more details of Feedback 2.0 For more details visit http://pages.ebay.co.uk/services/forum/fb-main.html
By Sydney Johnston
There is as a lot of buzz about shill bidders on the eBay forums. But in actuality, shrill bidding isn't that common and is rather easily detected.
A buyer will sometimes attempt to use shill building to raise the price of merchandise he is selling. The idea is that the shiller will bid increasingly high prices, in the hope that legitimate buyers like you will top the artificially high prices in an effort to win the goodies for sale.
Here are five ways you can recognize a shill bidder:
1. Few shill bidders will have any feedback. This is because they never
follow through with transactions and therefore don't have anyone to leave
feedback. If the shiller does have legitimate transactions on ebay, he
is usually smart enough to use a separate ID, because he does not want
to get caught
shilling and lose all buying and selling privileges.
{It is important to note, however, that just because a bidder has no feedback that does not mean that he is necessarily a shrill bidder. This may simply be a new account that has not had time to build a feedback reputation.}
2. Generally, a shiller only bids on the auctions of a particular seller. When in doubt, you can check the current and completed options of a seller and see if this shiller has bid on other auctions by the same seller.
3. Shill bidders are most often newbies. You can check the feedback, and the date that the eBay account was created, for any ebay member. If the bidder's account was created two days ago and he is bidding on several auctions of the same seller, you can be pretty certain about what is going on.
4. eBay has ways of the tracking shillers. Of course we don't know everything they do (and if I did know I wouldn't tell!) but some clues all are dead giveaways. For example, if the seller and the bidder have the same IP address, eBay knows to take a closer look.
5. Shill bidders retract many more bids than normal buyers. eBay does allow any buyer to retract a bid, although this is only supposed to occur for specific reasons. But in actuality, a retraction is rarely challenged and ultimately what can eBay do? It cannot force a person to pay for a particular item.
It is wise not to use this option on a frequent basis. Remember that your
eBay behavior deal is constantly tracked. A retraction is considered to
be a "black mark" on your reputation so don't
do it very often. Shillers, on the other hand, don't care because they're
unconcerned about their reputation. If caught, they simply open a new account.
Sometimes a shiller is the high bidder at the end of an auction. In that
that case, the seller and buyer can agree to cancel the bid, rather than
retract it. However, all this takes a lot of work, planning and effort.
In the end, shill bidding is rarely worth the trouble and time. Instead,
smart sellers spend
their time finding products and writing listings - the two basic moneymaking
activities of an ebay business - instead of plotting how to raise profits
on individual listings. Success in business is about efficiency.
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
While 99.9% of people presume that to make money with eBay you need to sell your own products, the people that are making real money with eBay are doing something totally different...
There are in fact thousands of people this very moment who are getting paid by eBay without ever having to ship a product or deal with a customer!
They are doing this through what eBay calls 'the most innovative and successful affiliate program on the web'.
To find out more visit The eBay Opportunity
By: Steve Dempster
Do you sell on eBay? If so, have you ever wondered why some sellers seem
to convert their auctions into sales more than others? Here's one reason
why . . .
Let me just start this article out by telling you what I am not:
I'm not an internet marketing guru.
I'm not an internet millionaire.
I'm not into multi-level marketing.
I'm just a fairly ordinary guy - yet I make a steady top-up income from eBay.
Now that's not to say you can't make a full-time living with eBay (you most certainly
can!) but, for me, I enjoy trading at my level. I do have several other revenue
streams as well, so eBay has to fit in with those.
The thing is - I like to be good at what I do. So, when I started on eBay I looked
at several different ways of optimising my sales. These included tried and tested
methods such as selling quality goods, being honest with my prospective customers
and just plain playing fair. I'm in it for the long haul, you see.
One thing that that came to my notice was the time that auctions ended. There
seemed to be no logic to it until I remembered that eBay is, of course, a world-wide
business and that people world-wide use it. I'm talking time zones here. For
the purposes of this article I'm going to use two seriously big 'time-areas'
- the USA and Western Europe. The time difference between the West Coast of the
USA and, say, Germany is ten hours. That's a big span - but what is the effect?
Simply, it means that when a German eBayer is getting ready for bed a San Franciscan
has just finished lunch. No inherent problem there - unless the German is waiting
on an auction finishing that our resident of San Francisco is running. Let's
say it finishes at 8pm. PST. That's 4am in Germany. Our poor German guy has only
a few options:
He can put in a bid and hope for the best.
He can use an auction snipe tool and hope for the best.
He can stay up half the night and get fired for being late the next day for work!
The point I'm trying to make is this. I figured out that the products I sell
appeal to both US and EC customers - but with some variations. Product A is is
favoured by US customers, product B by EC customers. So I now set my auction
end time to fit in with a good timer for them. That's usually when they have
had time to get home from work, chilled out for a while and are feeling more
like firing up their laptop.
And do you know - it works. Since I adopted this simple strategy my auction failures
- the ones that didn't sell - have dropped to less than 2% of all my listings.
That's a massive improvement for a little bit of thought, I'd say - wouldn't
you agree? It doesn't stop with my simple model, though.
Say you're selling computer games. What time would you expect your customers
to be attentive? Or maybe you're into collecting and sell rare stamps - when
would the best time be for that twopenny blue to end? Even if you have an eBay
shop it is still important; unless you have products as Buy-It-Now's you still
have the auction end time to consider. So when you next sell items, think of
these points:
WHO am I selling to?
WHEN will they be at their computer?
WHERE are they in the world?
Just three little points - but they can make a lot of difference to your success
and the money you make. Always consider them when listing your items and just
watch the difference to your results!
Steve Dempster writes informative articles for the web and is also a ghostwriter. To learn more about levering your eBay sales, take a look at A New Life 4U
In last months issue of UK Auction Line I told you about Skip McGraths "The Complete eBay Marketing System". I am pleased to say that many subscribers have taken the opportunity to get this really well written and researched program. It is now being shipped directly from a UK fulfilment house so if you want to learn how you can follow in the footsteps of hundreds of pewople before you and build your own profitable eBay business go to http://www.skipmcgrath.co.uk
By: Bob Hamilton
One of the biggest mistakes that we made when we first started on eBay
was to establish a thriving business that was based on low-cost products.
We thought we were going to amake money on eBay with these low-cost products.
Yet along with low-cost came low-profit from each sale. Yes, there was a
profit. Even with high volume, that profit just wasn't enough.
Since we have two households to support, we need a fairly high monthly income.
To achieve that level of sales, we had to sell MANY, MANY, MANY of these items!
Talk about hard work for low income! Yes, you can amake money on eBay with low-cost
products, but the amount of work required is tremendous.
We soon found options that allowed us to continue with our current regular customers
and our chosen market niche. These new strategies included bundling the products
that we sold. We also added higher-cost products to our offerings. Finally, we
expanded the higher-ticket offerings in our eBay store.
. Bundling Products
We began to bundle our products. Rather than selling only one at a time, we began
to sell groups of identical products. We also found that we could successfully
group like products. Finally we found that we could take complimentary products
and group them together into a single auction. While we didn't get higher
individual prices with this strategy, by grouping products, we greatly simplified
our total time for a higher return!
. Higher Ticker, Higher Profit Products
We added higher ticket and thus higher profit products. These new products were
still within the same market niche. They were also very complementary to our
low-cost products. Thus our existing buyers were able to make the transition
and began purchasing them. This strategy again helped to provide higher profit
per item sold. It also significantly reduced the time require to make that higher
profit level.
. eBay Store
We added a large number of higher ticket items to our eBay store. As buyers found
these new items in our eBay store, more and more sale began to occur. Soon the
sales of these items began to help to offset sales of the lower profit items.
. Establish Minimum price level
All new products that we add to the eBay sales mix are required to have a target
auction sales price-level of at least $10.00. Even this may be too low. However,
by implementing the tactics outline in this article in combination with this
requirement we have been able to greatly increase our average sale and our average
profit per sale. We test and make sure that we can achieve that target before
adding large numbers of an item to our inventory.
. There are many other strategies that could be used, including totally
eliminating the low-cost items from sales.
Starting our eBay business with low-cost, lower profit items impacted the speed
of our business growth. Don't make the same mistake. Be sure that you amake
money on eBay by never selling low-cost items. Establish a minimum target sales
price level for all items that you purchase for resell.
To Your eBay Success!
(c) Bob Hamilton 2007 All Rights Reserved This article brought to you by Online Auctions Made Simple Helping you get started on eBay Visit www.onlineauctionsmadesimple.net for a Free Dropship Report
Blow to Treasury as eBay leaves the UK
Ebay UK Faces Sellers' Revolt Due to VERO Abuses
eBay Drop-Shop Auctioning4u Helps Manchester Clear The Clutter
ChannelAdvisor UK achieves 97% annual growth and is named finalist for two prestigious Codie awards
I have posted 5 new articles onto the web site at http://www.ukauctionline.co.uk
How To Use A WYSIWYG HTML Editor To Make Stunning Ebay Auction
Four Reasons Why You Should Never Use Animations In Your Ebay
Ebay Shops: Enough Niches For Everybody!
The Cost Of Doing Business On Ebay: The Article Ebay Does Not Want You To Read
John Thornhill who runs Planetsmshas just launched a brand new eBook titled
Auction Traffic Explosion.
In this eBook he reveals all the tactics he has used to build a mailing list
of over 19000 subscribers using eBay. JOhn is one of the UK's most successful
sellers of information on eBay. One of the secrets of his success is that all
his products contain top grade information and yet are offer at a very reasonable
price. (Usually less than £5)
This report is no exception when it comes to quality and price. There is no doubt that anyone who owns there own opt in mail list will have the capability of generating income whenevet they want to.
For less than the price of 2 drinks (or even one at a posh hotel) you can have this valuable fact filled report now just visit:
http://findv.com/x.php?3m7
It was 4 years ago when UK Auctionline went from being a fortnightly publication to a monthly one. We did this after surveying our subscribers and I have to admit it has worked well. The only problem is that very often breaking online auction news can appear a few days after publication and it is nearly a month before we can tell you about it.
So what I have decided to do is to add news features to the UK Auctionline Blog on a regular basis. I hope to add items at least 2 or 3 times a week. Also if any subscribers have items they think will be of interest you can e-mail these and they could be included in the blog.
To read the blog go to http://www.ukauctionline.co.uk and click on the Auction Blog link.
Dave
You can send your feedback to feedback@ukauctionline.co.uk.
Post licensing queries to license@ezeeweb.co.uk.
Copyright © 2007 Ezeeweb Solutions Ltd. All Rights Reserved.