

Quick Guide to Making Easy Money

Buying and Selling on EBay

By: Lee James

Edition 2

Copyright 2013 Lee James

Published by Lee James at Smashwords

Share Knowledge Publishing

Table of Contents

About the Author

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Opportunities on EBay

Advantages of EBay

Recent Changes to EBay

What to sell?

Chapter 2 - The Basics of Starting a New profile

Basics to Start Selling

Set Up Site Preferences

New Account Locked or Restricted

Help

Chapter 3 - Buying on EBay

PayPal

Search Techniques

What to Buy

Buying Opportunities from China

Art of Auction Bidding

Second Chance Offers

Shifty Shipping

Getting Blocked

Buying Bulk Wholesale

Leaving Feedback

Chapter 4 - Selling Basics

Fixed Price or Auction Format

Variation Listings

Writing the Listing Title and Description

Chapter 5 – Shipping and Packaging

Shipping with USPS

Delivery Confirmation

Insurance

Proper Packaging

Mailing Objects in a Basic Envelope

Mailing First Class

Mailing Priority Mail

Flat Rate Packaging

Regional Rate Packaging and Prices

Media Mail

Parcel Post

Dates on the Shipping Labels

Lost in the Mail

UPS

Other Shipping Services

USPS Packaging Supplies

Printing Tips

Chapter 6 – Art of Selling

Profit Margins and Pricing

.99 Cents or Less Sales

Photographs

Selling Jewelry

Selling Clothes

Listing for Free

EBay Fees

Sales Ranking

Chapter 7 – General Seller Issues

Unpaid Item Case

Customer Use and Abuse of Opening Buyer Protection Cases

Avoiding Mistakes

Customer Service

Getting Negative Feedback

Multiple Seller Accounts

PayPal Chargeback

Opening an EBay Store

Taxes

Listing Services

Free Listing Templates

Slow Sales

Chapter 8 – Glitches and Common Mistakes

Updates

Browser Issues

Missing Description

Error When Listing

Quantity Discrepancy

Item Description Freeze

Free International Shipping

Return Address

User ID Photo Not Displaying

Ship Notice Not Showing

Tracking Data Not Automatically Uploaded to PayPal

EBay Shows Sold but PayPal has No Record

Payment Icon Not Showing Paid

Disappearing Links

After a Move

Getting Charged for Free Listings

Can't Pay a Seller

Item Never Sells

In Conclusion

Dedicated to all the Struggling People of the World

About the Author

Lee James began a career in sales very young beginning at age four with painted rocks sold to neighbors and helping out at family businesses through childhood. After almost forty years experience it's still a passion and lifelong obsession to sell products that people want.

Lee has had many jobs including sales, customer service, and working for the post office which offered valuable behind the scenes experience in shipping packages. Accomplishments include obtaining a college degree in business and operating several eBay stores.

After being asked constantly for advice on how to sell using eBay, Lee decided to write a book and share this exciting money making opportunity with everyone!

Introduction

Welcome to "Quick Guide to Making Easy Money Buying and Selling on EBay". If you've always wanted to try selling on eBay but didn't know where to start, this book is for you! Maybe you've tried selling but didn't stick with it or couldn't find products to sell. There are solutions you weren't aware of and now making money on eBay is easier than ever!

Are you short on time? That's not a problem because this is a quick guide that's written without all the hype or fluff and gets straight to the point. If you're looking for a great home-based business that can be done without ever leaving the comfort of your house, you've found it! Perfect for stay-at-home Moms, people with health problems, or anyone wanting to make money!

This book is an essential must have tool for anybody wanting to be successful selling on eBay! You'll benefit from valuable information and techniques meant to complement eBay's existing data base of instructions for buying and selling. Detailed explanations on various subjects such as: the art of bidding, tricks of sales rank, best ways to ship products, cost cutting tips, common mistakes and glitches, how to search for great deals, creating impressive listings, how to be successful and more! Everything you need to make extra money or a living on eBay is right here within these pages!

Chapter 1 - Opportunities on EBay

EBay has opened up a whole new way to buy and sell for millions of people. It can be considered a year-round, always open garage sale for the average person. EBay can mean increased sales for established businesses as a valuable tool for reaching new buyers. And even a safe and secure platform for international buyers and sellers to trade goods with limited risk.

EBay continues to grow and change into the worlds preferred way to buy and sell. The possibilities are limitless and now it's even easier than ever for the average person to make good money on eBay.

Whether you're selling a product currently not offered or simply buying items at a low price and reselling them with a nice profit, it all can be done on eBay. In some situations you never need to leave your house, doing everything on eBay, from buying to selling. Open your mind to new avenues of making money by following your interests. Motivation comes naturally when you're doing what you love!

Advantages of EBay

EBay has leveled the playing field for all sellers by allowing everyone the same tools to succeed in sales. The little guy can easily compete with big business and thrive. Because customers choose purchases based on a variety of reasons, a new seller is just as likely to make a sale as more established businesses.

Some of the main benefits of eBay are the "Best Match" default line up in search results. This means eBay places the best sales listings at the top of the list which has nothing to do with lowest price. This keeps profit margins up and sales high without destroying the value of merchandise. Some of the other online sellers sort products by price only which tends to favor the lowest and can continually lower profit margins.

Anything is possible on eBay! Buyers pay what they want in auction format by placing bids. An item in high demand may sell for far more than you could ever imagine. On eBay the value of an item is based on customer demand and not cost to produce or provide.

A high "buy it now" price may be purchased because the buyer doesn't want to wait for an auction to end. Surprising sales are common on eBay because of the many variables including timing, demand, number of interested buyers, and listing choice. This makes selling very exciting and can even be an addiction for some people.

Items that couldn't easily be found before can be located in minutes. Complete inventories can be searched on eBay by anyone doing a Google search. This puts your item in front of many potential buyers that other websites cannot offer. Traffic directed to eBay is far greater than what the new seller with a website can generate alone. EBay is an established automated way to sell that anyone can utilize.

Because of the internet and eBay, the average person can sell items they would've given away before and make well needed extra cash. In such a vast market with many sellers of varying degrees of experience, the possibilities are unlimited. You can find good deals like never before. Add the global market and things can get very interesting!

EBay is a great place for niche products like handmade crafts or unusual items new to market. If it's not being sold on eBay then there is a hole to be filled and money to be made!

Everything you need is on eBay and it can be your supplier and mode of selling to provide you with a nice income. Buy low and sell high is the name of the game! What's cheap and easy to acquire in your area is not in another. There's an opportunity to make money off everything on eBay from selling garbage like used ink cartridges, to natural resources like drift wood, or profiting off of other seller's poorly listed merchandise. The possibilities are endless!

Many people have tried selling through the years and been turned off by one reason or another. The listing fees were high and paying for pictures was a pain. Maybe eBay was listening to those complaints because things have gotten a lot better and it's much more user friendly now.

Recent Changes to EBay

EBay is constantly changing many details about its website and how it does business. Much is in response to the changing economy and requests of eBay users. Five to ten years ago the economy was healthier meaning it was safe to list most anything on auction format and watch the price skyrocket. Unfortunately those days are gone and making money on eBay is a little more complicated but just as rewarding.

Say goodbye to insertion fees! Often times, listing an item is free because of the standard fifty free listings per month or from the many sales on insertion fees that are offered. That's right, every profile gets fifty free listings per month! Take into consideration the free listing sales that are sporadically offered and the burden of cost are totally removed from listing on eBay! Now anyone can sell lots of items and only pay final value fees that occur from making a sale.

Pictures are free! You can add up to twelve pictures for free on listings. Add even more free pictures on variation listings. So now, you can show every angle of that treasure to ensure sales.

Variation listings are a great way to list more for less. If you have the same item in several different colors or sizes, a multi-variation listing is the way to sell. The best part of a variation listing is that it can be used to maintain a higher sales rank by saving all the past actions to propel your listing to the top of the best match line up.

EBay Bucks is a new program that pays you two percent of all the purchases you make and grants you a coupon paid out quarterly. If you use eBay as your source for wholesale purchases you'll make free eBay Bucks to buy even more! You can even earn eBay Bucks by spending your eBay Bucks! This is a great reward program that ensures even more savings by shopping on eBay.

Those days of getting ripped off on eBay are gone and now you can do business confidently knowing you're protected. New Buyer and Seller Protection guarantees that every transaction is fulfilled to your satisfaction. Whether the item is not as described or you never received it, whatever complaint you may have, you can get a refund. The risk of doing business on eBay is minimal.

If you don't have a personal computer you can still list items. A mobile tool is now available to allow sellers the ability to use a cell phone for creating a listing. After a sale is made it's more convenient to print a shipping label through PayPal but it's not required. Everyone can enjoy the ease of listing products right from their phone!

What to sell?

"What to sell" is a common question everybody wants the answer to but it's different for everyone. You probably already know about the basic resources like going to garage sales, flea markets, thrift stores, estate auctions, and any place else that merchandise is sold at a low cost. But there are still more options worth looking into. Do what big business does and buy from a wholesaler or liquidator online. Do some research and buy what you think you can make a profit on. If you don't know the profitability of an item, just try one product that looks interesting. The experience will teach you if it was a good buy or not. Trial and error plus never giving in to failure is the key to success.

Search for low cost goods all around you including the regular stores that clearance out merchandise. Name brand clothes will always bring you a nice profit. Big & tall size men's and plus size women's clothes are always in demand. Sell your own handmade items like simple shelf brackets. If you don't have much money, sell what's abundantly available locally for free, like birds' nests or nuts. You'll be surprised to find out that there's a buyer for almost anything on eBay.

What are you interested in? Do you have any hobbies? For example, if you like fixing up old cars, you can easily make money selling parts for them on eBay. Go to the local junk yard and buy whatever you can afford cheap. Sell the items and come back for more with your profits.

Search eBay for hot selling items by picking a category and doing completed or sold listing searches to see what's in demand. This information may be all you need to make unlimited money on eBay. For example, 3M Thermal Fax machines that are no longer manufactured and can only be found at businesses getting rid of old equipment are in high demand. Various old outdated inventories can be purchased for pennies but are very valuable to the tattoo industry. These types of items that people are willing to pay big money for are in every category on eBay. Do some research and know what sells, then go find those items!

Many items can be purchased on eBay and then resold on the same site. It's all done on eBay! Never leave your home and have the mailman pick up and deliver all your packages. Print shipping labels at home and buy all your business supplies on eBay. There is no excuse for failure when you can sit on your couch and produce an unlimited income by using eBay!

If you like jewelry, buy low and sell high from purchasing goods from China on eBay. What's your passion and what brings you pleasure? If its books, then begin collecting and selling them on eBay. Once you try out a product line you'll know if it's something you can make money doing.

You may also stumble across opportunities you didn't know existed. For example: your buying leather gloves and find a business in China selling them for one cent starting bids. You win several at very low cost knowing they're worth more in the United States. After waiting a month to receive your wins, you list and make a nice profit selling them. You didn't plan on selling gloves but the opportunity presented itself and you seized it!

Browsing your interests or just plain shopping on eBay can lead to finding good deals worth making a buck on. For example your son wants Lego's so you do a search and find someone who listed these incorrectly and they're selling at a very low price. Buy them and resell with the proper description for a quick buck. Lego's are worth gold on eBay and demand is always high. You'll learn quickly when rewarded with bulky profits.

Take a long look at what eBay offers for sale and locate products that are not available. Offer these items by drop ship method or buy and sell to make money. Resort back to what your hobbies are for finding products worth selling. It must always be enjoyable and rewarding for you! Being self employed is satisfying work that builds on itself, so in time you'll always have products on hand you're profiting from.

Chapter 2 - The Basics of Starting a New Profile

Click the "New to eBay" button and begin filling out the form. Use your real name here and all factual information.

Your user name is very important. Pick a name that's professional and easy to remember. For example, "Gotta have it" may sound cute but isn't very professional and may give the wrong impression for what you're trying to sell. Something like, "Area Treasure" brings to mind exciting and unique products exclusive to your area.

Random letters or numbers won't be easy to remember and when a buyer tries to look you up they will be unsuccessful since it's too easy to make a mistake. A name like "Dead Babies" may have people running from your listings without even looking at what you're selling. Make it as short and simple as possible with a positive reference like "Quality Goods".

Keep in mind if you plan on selling a variety of products don't name it "Johns Tools" when you may also plan on selling jewelry. Keep the name non-specific to a certain product, that way if you vary your inventory a name change isn't required too.

EBay Bucks Rewards program is not easy to find but well worth the effort. Do a search for eBay bucks through the customer service link and sign up right away so you're making 2% cash back on all your purchases. Click the "Enroll in eBay Bucks" link from the search results and follow instructions.

You also need a PayPal account to pay and receive money. PayPal is a bank and functions like one. Follow the links on eBay to PayPal and sign up for an account. Don't worry, PayPal is the safest way to pay!

Before you can complete a purchase you'll be prompted to fill out your shipping address or before getting to that point you can input your address on the personal information tab in your account. Now you're ready to start buying!

First task is to get feedback numbers which establishes a history. Start buying small inexpensive items to increase your feedback numbers up to at least ten but the higher the better! Check out listings in China since these sellers will often sell at a loss just to raise their feedback numbers. Give a new seller a break and buy from them since they're more likely to leave feedback. Check their feedback given tab to see if they're bothering to leave feedback since some sellers never do it for any sales.

The basics of leaving feedback are simple and easy. You need to understand that all feedback is public so only post what you want the world to know. It's always better to be positive and keep the negative comments to yourself.

There are tabs on the feedback area that separate feedback into received as a seller, received as a buyer, feedback left for others, and all feedback. These tabs can help you find what you're looking for quicker than going through it page by page.

Another time saver is clicking the number of neutral or negative ratings in the recent feedback box to see just those comments.

You can only leave negative or neutral feedback for sellers. Buyers can get reported by sellers which are private and is reviewed by eBay before it becomes an invisible strike against them.

Beginning Seller Basics

A very important and required step many forget is linking your eBay account to PayPal. Sign in to PayPal and add your new eBay profile user ID to the selling tools area. Selling Tools is under the profile tab on the PayPal account section. You need to input the user ID and your password to receive money from that eBay account. If you forget this step a buyer will be unable to pay for merchandise from you.

After enough number bumping buys start selling inexpensive items to kick off your new profile.

Choose the listing feature that states, "More Listing Choices" or the advanced listing tool, mostly because it allows for twelve photos instead of four and this is the traditional eBay listing format, so learn it!

Fill out the listing form with as much information as possible. Write a detailed description and mention you welcome questions. This will help catch your mistakes if you forget to include an essential detail.

A very important area to double check is the payment information section. This is where you input your PayPal email address. EBay will automatically show the email address associated with your account so if your PayPal address is different make sure to correct it. If you fail to do so, buyers will be unable to pay you.

Follow all the prompts, upload pictures, and fill out each section to reach the bottom of the page. List "Buy it Now" items for the duration of "Good till Cancelled" so they will automatically relist in thirty days without further attention from you. If you're listing something on an auction format choose the longest time frame.

After clicking the continue button you might be asked to confirm your phone number with a call and pin test. Upon completing this you'll need to sign into your PayPal account from eBay to prove you have a PayPal account.

After you list your first item the top of your eBay account will display "Opt in to hassle free returns." Click on learn more and follow the pages to complete signing up.

Global Shipping program sounds nice but they charge extremely inflated shipping costs to your customers. Plus shipping times for international purchases are much longer and may get lost in the mail. All of this greatly increases the chance of receiving negative feedback. Ultimately the gamble is your choice depending on the level of risk you're comfortable with. You'll be asked to opt in to this program at this time.

After you list that first item you may be shocked at the rather strict selling limits. The normal beginning amount is ten items per month or $1,000 worth of sales. That doesn't leave much opportunity for profits. If you already have an existing seller account in good standing you can increase your limits by verifying your identity and performing a pin number test. Just click on "Request Higher Selling Limits" and follow the pages. Once you complete this you'll have 30 listings and $1,500.00 monthly limit. This is a decent starting point for your new profile.

Expect buyers to be apprehensive so it's best to avoid selling on auction format unless it's a high demand item. EBay has a probationary period of three months at this time. They're constantly changing the loop holes a new seller must jump through to become an uninhibited seller. Currently you will encounter barriers of selling limits, category limits, and a hold on the proceeds from any sales for up to three weeks after it's completed. These can be annoying but possibly helps eBay become a safer place to buy.

Set Up Site Preferences

You may benefit from setting up buyer requirements that limit sales from buyers who have a bad record. This is where reporting a buyer is utilized since they can be denied the ability to bid on your items.

The Site Preferences section is located in your account tab on the left side line of options.

It can be very helpful to remove your listings from displaying in areas you don't ship to. Basically doing this will hide your listings from people in other countries. Many buyers will attempt to buy something without looking at the details of where it's shipped to or the costs. This can prevent many unpaid item cases and eliminates the need to relist which saves those valuable free listings!

Many sellers will even limit the number of items one buyer can purchase for a specified length of time, usually 10 days. This keeps each transaction separate to increase feedback numbers but also limits bidding on auction items. It has many drawbacks but if getting numbers is your focus it may help increase them.

Take a few minutes to fully explore all the various preferences you can set up.

New Account Locked or Restricted

You just started your new account and have items for sale when you log in and find your account has been locked and listings removed. This is a common occurrence for new sellers. It seems to be standard practices to lock all new sellers' accounts and put it on hold for forty-eight hours until you call them or your profile will be deleted. Rather extreme but it happens frequently so after listing just one item for sale on your new account stop there and wait to see if your account is locked. Check back often to make sure the listing is still active.

If your account is frozen it will require a phone call to customer service. When you call they'll ask for general information like where did you get the item you have listed. After you verify some information your items can be relisted and the account is returned to normal.

You'll need to relist your product and the only lasting effect will be the use of one of your free listings. This is why you should only list one item first because if you listed all as many as you can, those free listings will not be replaced for your use.

Keep this in mind if you're bidding on a new sellers items and you get a message saying listings you bid on have been removed from eBay that this is why. You may have even bought merchandise and completed the purchase when eBay decides to lock their account and cancel all their transactions. Don't worry because if the seller catches this problem within the 48 hour time frame and calls to unlock their account they will still send it. If they don't get their account unlocked eBay will refund your money after you open a case.

In your time bidding on eBay you will have this happen frequently and shouldn't be taken as a serious problem. It's just the regular procedure to starting a new profile. Business as usual on eBay.

Help

If you have any questions just click on the customer service link at the very top of the screen. It will then show a place for you to type in a question. This is a great way to get information on just about anything. These searches will often lead you back to the official rules and policies of using eBay. Read up on this as much as you can to avoid future issues. They have valuable advice for selling, taking pictures, shipping, and just about any subject that pertains to using their website.

Chapter 3 – Buying on EBay

Buying on eBay is a great way to find unusual items, save money, and even buy wholesale. It's a considerable time saver and eliminates the need to use a car for shopping. Why drive on dangerous crowded roads when you can hop on the internet any time of the day and get what you want delivered to your door? Often times you can find what you're looking for even cheaper on eBay because sellers have lower operating costs without the maintenance responsibilities of a physical store. Bring all the stores to you in an instant and even enjoy shopping in exotic countries with very unique merchandise. Unlike traditional stores you can win auctions on eBay at a super low price and get amazing deals! When you win an auction and get an unbelievable bargain you'll be hooked forever!

PayPal

Everyone must have a PayPal account to play the eBay game!

PayPal is quickly becoming the safest way to pay for anything without sharing your sensitive financial information. No need to worry about those credit card numbers being stolen when you pay with PayPal! Just make sure the address bar is green with a padlock on it when you type in your password.

Many people are concerned about PayPal for several reasons but mostly because they don't understand it. PayPal is a bank and functions like one. When you earn money on eBay the funds go into your PayPal account and stay there until you move them to your regular bank account or spend it back on eBay.

Since PayPal is a bank they require you to verify your identity. But because this is an impersonal online bank they need the assistance of your local bank to guarantee you are who you say you are. This is why PayPal wants you to share your banking information with them either through deposits or user name/passwords. Just follow the directions and sign up knowing its safe and secure.

After you establish a positive history with PayPal you can apply for a debit card and use your PayPal funds for everyday shopping, paying bills, or get cash from any ATM.

You may not notice this easily but PayPal charges many fees for receiving money. Paying a bill is free but receiving money has its costs. PayPal charges a hefty percent and flat fee when you receive money from making sales. Log onto your account and search for a description of the fee scale for exact amounts. These fees are taken out immediately and you never have to pay a bill like eBay requires. So the money in your PayPal account is after fees and exactly what you have available.

Search Techniques

Searching for great deals is a difficult challenge that can quickly become for favorite money saving addiction. Doing searches for various products are a great way to discover what's already available and what sells well plus what's cheap. You may stumble across a seller liquidating merchandise at very low costs just to get rid of it. These are buying opportunities for you that will quickly disappear.

The search box is at the top of every page and there are some things to keep in mind. When you do a search you can do another search inside that search by simply typing words in the same box and hit enter. Don't get this confused if you're trying to do a new search and come up with nothing. Many people make this common mistake of searching inside a search with no results. To start a new search go to the home page and abandon the old search results.

Every word you type in will need to have a match for a result to be found so keep your search criteria simple and try several different words or phrases before stopping. Many sellers list items incorrectly with the wrong description or miss spelled words. The foreign sellers who don't know English inadvertently do a terrible job of describing their items. Just doing a broad search of categories is another way to find products that would normally be omitted from a specific word search. Play around with all the settings to get a feel for it.

The best way to find very low cost products is to filter your search results. For example, type "bag" into the search box. Filer the results by inputting a minimum price of 0 and a highest price of .30 cents. Also put a check mark in the free shipping box. This will give you results for bags that are very low cost and probably meant to sell at a loss if not enough bids are made. You can further sort the results by changing the "Best Match" option to "Ending Soonest" or "Price + Shipping Lowest First". If you're only interested in auctions you can filter the results for that too.

One valuable and little used way to sort results is by checking the "Complete Listing" box. This gives you the results for products that sold or didn't sell. This is important when researching how much something is worth or how much of a demand there is, to how many are available on eBay.

A new option for eBay searches is "Sold Listings". Click this option if you're just looking for data on price and amount sold.

Whenever you can find time, or get an idea of a product you're interested in, do a search. Enjoy some relaxing time by doing random browsing on eBay because you never know what you may find. Doing a search for shelf brackets may reveal a huge demand for decorative brackets or an unexpected market like Cat shelves held on the wall by brackets selling for large sums when you know you can make them for much less.

Sometimes the seller doesn't know the value of an item and accidentally lets a rare and expensive product go for a cheap price. Browsing eBay is never a waste of time when such possibilities exist.

The most important thing to know when doing searches is eBay automatically arranges results by best match which may not be what you're looking for. Keep in mind these are the most popular and biggest selling listings. They also put auctions that end soon at the top of the best match lineup regardless of popularity. As you can imagine, a listing high in the best match sales rank has a higher possibility of selling.

What to Buy

You want to make money buying and selling on eBay but the big question for you may be, "What to buy?" That's easy, focus on items you have a natural interest in. If you love baseball cards then start searching for good deals. If you love video games, buy some as cheap as you can find. The possibilities are only limited by your curiosity and interests.

After you explore your interests you may be surprised to learn of all he unique ways to make money on eBay. Basically the best way to start is search for good deals. Focus on small items that ship well or products you know are in high demand. Do some research to find out the most popular selling items on eBay and try focusing on them. For example, Hello Kitty merchandise is highly collectible. Pay attention to what the people around you collect and do some research.

Buying Opportunities from China

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Everything is made in China anymore and its all for sale at steep discounts on eBay! Whether you're interested in tools or clothes it's all cheaper from China. This is the first place you should look for buying wholesale and finding great deals. Sometimes you might stumble across products so cheap, you feel like your stealing it!

These Chinese sellers will often have low prices since many U.S. customers don't want to wait for lengthy shipping times. Average shipping time for standard slow shipping is about six weeks. The next step up is e-packet or airmail which can be as quick as ten days but often twenty days. If you buy the goods and wait for shipping, then post for sale, a profit will surely be made. Keep in mind the sizes run small and quality can be much lower than expected.

There are several reasons why the average buyer won't purchase from China but that's why people pay you to be a reseller and filter these problems out. You'll find that your listings sell more often if you omit the country of origin section since many people refuse to buy anything from China.

Chinese people don't know the English language and usually cannot write proper descriptions. This means many items are incorrectly listed and not being picked up in searches. Chinese misspell words easily or list in the wrong category. They make many errors that reduce the ability for buyers to find them. It takes more work to find these listings but they are out there.

For example if you're looking for formal bridal gloves just type in gloves instead. Then reduce the search results by price and click the free shipping filter. Search all the listings but also try searching in each category to see if any were listed incorrectly. You may be surprised to find these satin formal gloves listed in the crafts category because the Chinese people who made them think they're a craft. Opportunities to profit from someone else's mistake are all over eBay just waiting for you to scoop them up!

Many foreign sellers will offer products at a loss just to gain feedback numbers. These can often be priced far lower than wholesale costs and are steals. Pay ten cents for items normally worth ten dollars!

Sometimes Chinese sellers can reduce the value of their merchandise with poor customer service and lacking business practices. For example many jewelry sellers from China have ethical challenges and odd ideas about how business should be done. They purposely omit at least one item from every order, occasionally they just don't ship it, or refuse to compensate for damaged jewelry caused from poor packaging, they even pile delicate jewelry together in an envelope and ship it with an insulting "fix it yourself" reply to damaged or defective product issues, they commonly add a shipping charge after an auction is won that advertised free shipping, and finally blocking anyone who leaves negative feedback or causes any problems for them.

These practices turn customers off from purchasing and reduce the value of their merchandise. But the Chinese don't see it that way at all and continue on. All these issues are opportunity for you to take on the challenge of doing business with these difficult sellers and offer the goods for sale on your user ID.

If you find a seller who is offering products a ridiculously low price don't get too excited and bid/buy everything. The Chinese see this as a problem mostly because they fear getting mass amounts of malicious feedback from one buyer. Also, if you bid too much you will inflate the demand excessively and the seller may raise prices. You have the ability to control the price somewhat since eBay is a buyer controlled market. If you stop bidding all together the value will deflate. After the price lowers, come back to buy a few more. Use different profiles to disguise yourself as having a serious interest in their products. Sometimes sellers will still figure out you are just one buyer using several profiles, but this rarely happens.

EBay tries to push foreign sellers to use tracking numbers but many still do not. The chances of your item getting lost in the mail are significantly higher when no tracking is included. The saying "No Tracking, No Shipping" is unfortunately true more often than not. If no tracking is available for your purchase about 25% or more will be lost in the mail. But all packages with tracking usually make it to their destination.

Typically when you deal with a Chinese seller because your non-tracked package never arrived, they normally offer two options: refund or resend. Always choose refund because these sellers rarely resend the item and time will run out for you to open an item not received case. More often than not, they never sent it in the first place so don't give them another chance to scam you by asking for the item to be resent. This also applies to receiving a damaged or broken item. Just get a refund and purchase the item again if you really want to gamble with the seller.

When buying from a new foreign seller, just buy one and wait for it to arrive. If the item isn't what you expected or it never arrives, don't waste your time and money doing business with them. Send a message to the seller with questions if their shipping policy isn't clear on the listing.

Since your scrapping the bottom for good deals you'll come cross a few scams but there are still many great sellers offering high quality products at discount prices! Getting scammed is okay because that means the regular eBay member is also getting a raw deal and will avoid doing business with China and that's good business for you!

China also has advantages like cheap shipping to the United States. It costs us about $8 to ship a light package to China but it costs them about $1.50 or less for shipping to the U.S. They also get government subsidies for doing business with United States which means their government pays sellers to ship products to you. This explains why you can buy a silver plated bracelet from China for one cent. They are actively trying to saturate the market with their own products which makes it possible for you to profit.

Never buy items from Chinese sellers without going through the eBay website since you lose the advantage of having the protection of eBay. It's safe and satisfaction is guaranteed by Buyer Protection policies.

Art of Auction Bidding

Bidding on auctions is a skill that you'll need to develop and understand. Everybody wants what you value and want, so putting in early bids will often result in being outbid. An item with no bids tends to remain that way. Wait until the last hours or minutes to put in bids for best results. If someone else wants the item they will just outbid you and raise the price. But if you wait until very little time is left the chances of being outbid are less.

When you place bids, alter the amounts you bid because someone else will quickly realize you're bidding one dollar on everything. They will bid one dollar one cent and win the auction by one cent.

Never bid even amounts like one dollar or two fifty because most people bid these amounts too. Instead, bid one dollar one cent or two dollars fifty-nine cents.

Pay attention to how other people bid and alter your bidding to beat theirs by the smallest amount possible. If you know someone is bidding one dollar on everything then bid one dollar and one cent at the latest time possible for maximum wins at the lowest cost.

Don't get caught up in a bid and pay more than you want just because it becomes a challenge to win the auction. Those numbers may mean very little at the time but you need to keep your expenses as low as possible to make money selling on eBay. You're just buying the good deals and if you get outbid, move on to the next auction.

Be aware of shill bidding and try to recognize when it's happening. Are you consistently getting outbid on everything from one particular seller? Shill bidding is when the owner of the item up for auction artificially raises the price by getting others to bid against you. EBay tries to prevent this but it's very difficult to identify and control.

After bidding on various items you'll get an idea of how quickly or how much these items are in demand. If you notice that you're always getting outbid by one bid repeatedly, this may be shill bidding. Best way to beat a shill bidder is to bid at the very last seconds of the auction.

Use a bid assistant tool for automated last second bids. These handy programs can be downloaded online for free. They work best when you're just bidding on a few items but for many bids they can becomes quite time consuming and increase your work load. They have drawbacks like the bid you instruct it to post will be too low because of previous unexpected bidders. Unfortunately, sometimes it fails because of technical glitches or poor instructions. A non thinking computer program is not a replacement for your intelligent decision making abilities but it's a great tool to use when convenient.

Second Chance Offers

If you're quickly outbid on an item and you've never done business with the seller, don't bid again. You may get a second chance offer and be given the opportunity to buy the item at the highest amount you bid. If you bid fifty cents on a nice wallet but were outbid and the auction ends with a high winning amount, don't worry, often times the seller will send a second chance offer and still sell to you at that price. Some sellers don't know how to use this feature and will never send one but many do. Keep this in mind when you sell, that every bid can be a potential sale if you have many available and send second chance offers to all the bidders.

Shifty Shipping

You just won an item for ninety nine cents that you know you can make a nice profit on! You're so excited that more of these would be even better so you browse the seller's store searching for more great deals. Getting quality items at a low price can be challenging but what a rush when you get lucky and win something cheap!

But wait, you check your purchase history and the seller has added a shipping charge to the listing that stated "Free Shipping". What! You bought it as free shipping and now they added a large shipping fee that destroys your ability to make a profit!

This occurs more commonly that it should. The old bait and switch tactic is being employed by mostly Chinese sellers. Some will add fine print in the item description that there is a shipping fee but list it as free shipping, hoping you won't read those tiny words buried in the listing.

Sometimes the sellers offer two shipping services, one is free, the other allows for a hefty profit for them and they just switch it to the hefty profit selection. In this case you also have the ability to switch it back to free by clicking the pay now button and review the invoice. The option to choose free shipping service will be available to you. This is the low frustration route but most of the time they add a shipping charge you cannot reverse yourself.

Sellers can send an invoice after the sale with any amount of shipping they like even though the listing stated it was free. Hopefully eBay will catch on to this commonly exploited scam and make free shipping listings stay free.

After receiving the invoice for inflated shipping charges your only course is to send them a message asking to return it to free shipping or cancel the purchase. Normally this is a hassle that takes days and most buyers will never return to that seller again.

But wait! This may be a good thing for you as a buyer and seller on eBay. When sellers do this it lowers the competition for auctions and chases away customers which reduces their product value. This is an opportunity disguised by frustration and hassles when you finally get the item with free shipping and sell it for a nice profit.

So the trick is to pay for your purchases as fast as possible before they alter the invoice. Or you need to bully them into returning the shipping to free. It's a direct violation of eBay policy to advertise free shipping and then alter it to whatever they want. Tell them this!

If there is absolutely no mention of any shipping charge in the listing, you can pay for the shipping charge they added and then open an item not as described case that you WILL win. This means they are forced to give you a full refund and normally you can also keep the item. If they insist you send it back eBay policy states they must pay return shipping and this is a rather high cost from the U.S. to there. That is why they let you keep the item for free.

Getting Blocked

Before leaving negative feedback keep in mind the seller may block you from all future purchases. Sellers have the right to refuse doing business with you and the Chinese sellers use this option often. If you cause any problems for them at all they have the right to block you forever. Even opening a case may result in getting you permanently blocked. It may be possible to use another profile and begin business again but they could recognize your PayPal email and address.

It's a delicate balance to do business with the Chinese when they have such unusual business practices. But keep in mind when they block such a huge percentage of their customer base it keeps their product prices down and your profits up!

As a seller you can also block customers that abuse the system and there will always be some. Customer satisfaction should be your main goal and not throwing away sales by blocking everyone with a complaint.

Buying Bulk Wholesale

It can be very time consuming to bid, win, and buy each item singly but there are many bulk wholesale auction also on eBay. Or you can try buying from a wholesale distributor. It's always a risk to invest large sums of money in one product. This may be something you should put off doing until you're more established as a seller.

Typically the items from China on eBay can be had for less than wholesale prices. Why buy a case of screwdrivers for five dollars each when you can buy them one at a time from China for one dollar each? Especially since it's the same exact screwdriver that the wholesaler offers but they're just trying to make their own profit on it. Sometimes it's just more cost effective to go to the original manufacturer. Many Chinese sellers on eBay will mention in their listings that they welcome bulk wholesale offers. It can be a risk to complete these deals off of eBay but may result in huge savings.

Buying in bulk has many advantages including it can save much of your most valuable resource, time. It's easier to make one listing for a hundred items than a hundred listings for different items. This also gives you the ability to alter and change your listing to see which drives more sales to your door.

Buying a large quantity of items is always a risk and it pays to know the item will sell before committing or investing in a wholesale purchase. Do some research into what's selling on eBay by seeing what is the most commonly searched for items. Do simple searches in the completed listing section for ideas of great selling products. Check out sites like EBayMarketResearch.info and pick out items you're interested in selling. It's much easier than you think to find a wholesale outlet or drop ship service to work with. Do a Google search for wholesalers or try a couple of the more popular sites like, Salehoo and liquidation.com.

If you're just beginning on eBay it may not be practical to invest in a large wholesale purchase. Try single items until you get a feel for what sells at the highest profit margins. Stick to products you enjoy or have extensive prior knowledge of.

Leaving Feedback

If you have a bad experience buying from a seller it may infuriate you enough to leave negative feedback. Your experience with this seller will not be what every other buyer experiences and just because you had a negative transaction doesn't mean you should publicly declare it. Leaving bad feedback has very few positive effects. In fact, it only hurts the seller's ability to be successful.

If you need to vent, send them a private message but don't post negative feedback. These comments are displayed on your profile too, as feedback given, and sellers will use this information to decide if they want to do business with you. If your feedback shows that you are a critical difficult to please buyer, you won't get second chance offers. Consider the option of not ever leaving negative feedback as a professional courtesy you extend to your fellow eBay sellers.

Chapter 4 – Selling Basics

Selling on eBay gets easier and easier all the time, but there are many tricks to doing it more successfully. The best way to sell has changed with the economy but eBay always experiences constant growth and more people shop there every day. When the economy was doing well an auction format listing would get bid up to unexpected highs Competition was fierce and money was no object when winning the auction was all that mattered. With a slumping economy "Buy it Now" sales are the better way to make money depending on the demand for the product. This brings up the question, "What's the best way to sell your item?"

Fixed Price or Auction Format

There are two ways to list items on eBay, auction format with a starting price you determine or buy it now which is a fixed price listing for immediate sale. Each one has their advantages and they can also be used together.

Nothing's better than an auction that ends at a higher price than you could imagine but that doesn't always happen on eBay. The value of something is determined by the number of buyers for that product at a specific time. Merchandise that has less demand will not have many bidders and sell at a low price using the auction format.

When deciding which format to use you need to know what the demand for the item is. Do some research and find similar items from completed listing searches noting how many bidders it had. More than five separate bidders indicate high demand.

If you can't find any matching items to compare with, simply start it at a high price and slowly work your way down. But always start your auction at the lowest price you're willing to take or "your bottom dollar."

If you have a one of a kind item and don't know the value, its best to try auction format first before you set a buy it now price. Set the beginning auction price as high as you think you can sell it for. If you don't get any bidders the demand is somewhat low and its time so set a buy it now price and wait for a buyer. If the item is in fact rare and in demand offering it at auction will allow you to make more money on it verses just setting a random buy it now price.

If you have many of the same item that has a high demand, list one at ninety nine cents auction format and another at a high valued fixed price format. This gives the buyer an idea of the possible value of the merchandise they're bidding on. Plus the auction losers are very likely to buy one of the fixed price products because they had their heart set on owning that item.

Also try listing auction style along with a buy it now price set fairly high in the same listing. You may be surprised by an immediate buyer simply because many people are impatient or don't have time to wait for your auction to end. It's all about timing!

Impulse items like jewelry should be listed as fixed price listings because demand is usually low. If it's an unnecessary item that can easily be done without a buyer will often forget about it during an auction.

If you're selling a ring from an old relationship and don't have any money invested in it then try a very low starting bid to get a flurry of bidders fighting over a great deal. It's a gamble and can be fun to watch an auction like this because you could lose out big but you could also profit more than you ever imagined! People can get caught up in a bid and pay far more than they intend because it becomes a game to win the auction and money becomes just numbers typed into the computer.

Auction time length is usually best at seven days because that gives buyers a change to find the sale before it ends. Any longer and you raise the chances of being forgotten about by people bidding and not remembering to pay. Every listing format has a time and place and you will eventually learn their best use from trial and error.

Some disadvantages to auction format are people place a bid and forget to return and check for a win. You'll have far more non-paying sales through auction format than fixed price.

Remember the most important lesson in these difficult economic times is never price an item lower than your minimum asking price on auction format. You may lose money if you do!

Variation Listings

The variation listing is a great way to sell many variations of the same style item. For example, you stumbled upon a clearance at the store for table cloths and after seeing they were only twenty-nine cents you bought them all. So you're getting ready to list ten table cloths and now they will all fit in one listing. This is a great way to save on your free fifty listings each month.

Select the sell option from the top of the page starting a completely new listing. Hint, you can't create a variation listing from a previous listing that wasn't variation style. Simply select the box for variation listings at the top of the sell form and follow the directions. Some of the more common problems you may encounter are not having a variation style description available. In this case, just type in the style of variation in the "create your own" area. Occasionally there is a glitch when making your own variation style so if you encounter problems resort back to using one of the descriptions eBay has already prefilled.

If it will not accept your pictures and defaults back to the main photo then change the wording in the description. Some characters are not recognized and this causes the system to glitch. When in doubt change things one at a time until your problem is fixed. The variation listing can be very frustrating because so many details in a listing cause lots of problems. The troubles are well worth it when ten items are combined into one listing.

You can even create variations of variations so if you're selling bras you can create one listing with several sizes and colors. But sometimes people don't bother to look at each picture in the listing. So keep it simple and don't include too many variations per listing.

If you combine too many different items per listing you can't always put every detail in the title so your items can become unsearchable. For example if your selling jewelry making clasps and have four different colors but cannot fit each color in the title nobody will be able to find your listing for the colors you couldn't fit in the title.

Make sure you note in your main product description that a buyer needs to choose from the drop down box or you will get many questions as to how they can purchase the one they want.

Writing the Listing Title and Description

When you write the titles for your listing make every character count! This area contains the information a potential buyer uses to find your listing. If someone does a search for "kids clothes" they will only find listings with those words in the title. But when you made the listing you only put "Girls pink sweater size small new Gap brand," so your item doesn't show. Make sure you carefully consider every word a buyer would use to search for an item. Even adding words that are commonly searched but don't exactly describe your item will improve your visibility. Never leave unused spaces in the title because there is always another word to describe your item. To get an idea of some descriptive words you can use, simply look up other listings already on eBay.

The best practice is to put all the important information in the title such as, size, color, brand, and any other detail that a buyer would look for. Most people never read the item specifics or the long description so put everything in the title. It's well known on eBay that a seller can scam buyers constantly by selling the box of an item with nothing inside it because people will never read the details of the description to learn it's just the box.

Fill in all the information you can and write a careful detailed description of your item. If you're selling clothes take measurements of it from pit to pit, shoulder seam to bottom hem, and waist seam side to side. Describe the fabric plus how it feels and the weight. How it drapes over you. The more details you provide the more likely your listing will sell.

Fully disclose any damage or faults the item may have so you eliminate problems after the sale. If the shirt has loose buttons either sew them on tighter yourself or write it in the listing. A buyer will be very unhappy about loose buttons if you never mentioned it even though it's really not a big deal for anyone to fix.

If you had problems with a previous sale don't mention negative comments about it like, don't buy one item and send a message asking to change it to a more expensive item at the same cost, or know your size before ordering, negative feedback not accepted for this item, you must provide photos to prove any problems, not responsible for packages lost in the mail and if it says delivered don't send a message saying you never received it because I know that's a scam. All these negative references bring to mind a bad buyer experience and this will turn a customer off from purchasing. Keep the negativity private not public! If you have a problem with a buyer, handle it in messages but don't advertise to any future buyers what you're not going to allow now. There are areas set aside for you to input your business policies so don't bother inputting anything other than the item description in the proper area.

When you create a listing, its best to have already packaged the item so you know the weight and can accurately calculate shipping costs. For example, you're selling a heavy car part and just assume it fits in a flat rate box but when you finally sell it you realize it doesn't fit. Now you have to pay for shipping by weight and it costs far more than you sold it for. It's never good to lose money on a sale because you thought shipping would cost less than it does. These mistakes are bad for your profit margins and are easily avoidable. Fully preparing the item for shipping while you create the listing is the best way and means you can mail the product instantly when it sells. Customers always appreciate fast shipping.

Chapter 5 - Shipping and Packaging

A large part of selling on eBay is packaging and shipping. Your goal should be to package for the lowest cost possible and pass that savings on to your customer. Most buyers don't like paying high shipping costs and it's also a very common reason for receiving bad feedback. It's your job to know all aspects of shipping and how to do it as efficiently as possible.

Shipping with USPS

The days of waiting in line at the post office are gone! You can do business with them from your home via online and create a much more pleasant seller experience on eBay.

You'll need some basic supplies to get started selling on eBay and shipping with USPS. Most important is a scale to weight your packages. This can be purchased from the postal service but eBay has much better deals on scales that weigh more pounds. Once you have a scale your ready to calculate postage costs.

Shipping labels can be purchased right on eBay through PayPal. This is the preferred way to ship since the system is integrated with eBay and tracking is automatically uploaded to the sale. Besides the postal scale you must have a printer to print the labels. Shipping costs more if purchased directly from the post office so you'll save money by shipping through eBay's system. There is a discount for buying online and a commercial discount given to sellers using eBay's label system. Plus when you become a preferred seller there are even more discounts for using eBay labels. You must use eBay's shipping system!

Delivery Confirmation

Every package you ship should be tracked with delivery confirmation. If not, buyers will be more likely to claim they never received it and this will become a problem for you. Delivery confirmation is free for first class and priority mail packages if you buy the label online. You should never ship anything without it!

Insurance

Insurance is usually a waste of money since the post office makes it extremely difficult to collect and the responsibility is always on the seller to properly package the item in the first place. Just recently the post office began offering free insurance on packages shipped by priority mail of up to one hundred dollars. This is a great new advancement for the postal service and hopefully will be easier to use than it was in the past.

Proper Packaging

When packaging anything, imagine a poorly paid young kid in the back with no supervision sorting packages lazy style. He just throws them across a room to tall metal cages and they all pile on top of each other. The potential for damage is unlimited!

Use plenty of cushioning and double box items when you can. It's a delicate balance to keep shipping costs low but properly protect the goods. Don't let the item move freely inside the box and add materials to keep the object stationary. Shake the package and if it rattles add more cushioning. These packages take a long bumpy journey and will be vibrated, jiggled, jostled, dropped, smashed, squashed, thrown, and more then you can imagine while going through the postal system.

Electronic labels are read with a bar code scanner and the bar code shouldn't be taped over. They also need to be perfectly flat or they won't be scanned and tracked successfully. Use cardboard inside envelopes that are round to make a flat readable surface for the bar code scanner on tracking labels.

Mailing Objects in a Basic Envelope

Mailing an item in a basic envelope can be done as long as it fits and doesn't weigh too much. But it's very important for you to write "Non-Machinable" on the front of the envelope or they will attempt to run it through the address reading machine which could damage the item. For example, small camera memory cards should be in a bag and secured to a piece of paper. Write those important words on the front and pay for the proper postage.

Disadvantage is there will be no tracking available for this type of shipping. So the costs you save in shipping may be outweighed by people claiming they never received the purchase. It's a gamble some may be willing to attempt but remember tracking is always best!

Mailing First Class

Everything thirteen ounces and under in any type of package can be mailed this way. It's much cheaper than paying for priority mail and often times faster. Delivery times average 2-7 days and these packages can be dropped in any mail box with an electronically produced shipping label. This is by far the best way to ship and should be the first option you choose.

When you weigh these packages always round up for calculating postage price. For example: when shipping an item that weighs 3.1 ounces, you need to buy a label that states 4 ounces. If the item weighs in at exactly 3 ounces then you buy a label for 3 ounces. But it's difficult to know exactly how much a finished package will weigh when you don't have the label on it yet. A good average is to add .2 for the final addition of the packaging slip and label with extra tape for sealing.

Mailing Priority Mail

This option is suitable for heavier items and the best part is that USPS will provide shipping boxes for FREE. Most sized boxes can be ordered online and delivered to your door at no cost to you. Don't forget to add Priority mail stickers to your order and save on tape expense. They do have a tendency to peel off easy but used in combination with shipping tape saves you money.

Since priority mail packages are heavier than First Class they move through the system a bit slower. Usually they're delivered in 3-7 days depending on your area.

If the mailman doesn't always stop at your house, schedule a free pick-up to be absolutely sure they're in the mail.

Flat Rate Packaging

Using flat-rate boxes is a great way to cut costs and make shipping simpler. The post office has a wide selection of these available online for free. Anything that fits in the box with minimal expansion to the shape is acceptable. There is a weight limit that's very high to each box style.

Along with flat-rate boxes there are also flat-rate envelopes in various different sizes. Regular flat-rate envelope, gift-card, padded mailer, and the biggest is legal flat rate size. Legal size is the least common but has the most uses since jeans, light coats, shoes and so many heavy items fit inside but the cost is rather low to ship compared with using other style packaging. Order lots of this size and make it your first choice when looking for the cheapest shipping option.

Regional Rate Packages and Pricing

Recently the postal service added another option to shipping packages: Regional Rate. This is designed to reduce shipping costs for packages shipped within that region. For example if you're shipping a heavy item to a nearby state you would normally put it in a priority mail box and shipping costs are calculated based on weight. Regional rate is a set of seven different sized boxes that cost much less to ship and based on destination.

You must get these boxes on the USPS online website for free because they're not available at the post office.

Currently eBay doesn't have this option as a choice for calculating cost for buyers but you can still purchase the postage through eBay. This means you can make extra profit by using regional rate since calculated postage can only be done for priority mail and flat rate.

Keep a full selection of these boxes on hand and use them as often as possible because they always result in saving money!

Media Mail

Media mail is a great option for heavy books since it's much cheaper than first class or priority mail. Any books, software, or video games can be shipped this way. Check with the post office for any changes to their policies on what is allowed and what is not. In general, if it has advertisements in it then it's not allowed to ship by media mail. These packages are subject to inspection by the postal service so expect your package to be opened. This also means your books may be damaged by the postal service during inspection. Many times the books are cut or bent by employees doing these inspections.

Tracking costs extra but is available for media mail and should always be used on every package you ship.

Parcel Post

This option is one that has many less advantages and is not recommended. Packages are slowly moved through the system causing damage to the contents and are more commonly lost. Your customers will appreciate faster shipping far more then you saving a few pennies even if you do save anything at all with this option. Usually parcel post costs a few cents less or the same if not more than Priority mail. So don't waste your time or money on it.

Dates on the Shipping Labels

Some post offices require the date on the label to match the day they are shipped out of the post office. Other post offices don't care and will take it no matter what date you put on the label. The bigger the post office the less they care about details likes this. It all boils down to what the post master wants because this person has total power of the mail service for that area.

Lost in the Mail

Tracking information is updated constantly and packages still get lost often. This occurs more often with hand written labels because of mistakes and illegibility. Sometimes packages go missing in the middle of the journey because of damage or they simply get delivered to the wrong address. Sometimes the mailman doesn't scan the item to confirm it was delivered. Check your delivery confirmation often and wait for customers to complain if something was not received.

Whose responsibility is it when something gets lost? This is an excellent question that doesn't have an exact answer yet. If the postal service makes a mistake and delivers to the wrong address, it isn't their fault. This is their stance on the subject but eBay has seller and buyer protection for these matters. It all depends on the situation but if delivery confirmation states you mailed the package and it was delivered you are not held liable by eBay in most instances.

If the package was lost and tracking confirms it then you may be required to provide a refund since the post office is your agent. You're responsible for lost packages and the post office is not. Doesn't seem like the responsibility should fall like that but remember this is the post office that is run by the government and is not held to the same rules that standard businesses are. For this reason many people use other shipping services.

UPS

UPS is a great option for very heavy items that cost excessive amounts to ship with USPS. Some tricks to getting a good price are shipping from a business address because there are considerable discounts given. If you ship from a residential address the costs are much higher. Many people take UPS packages to work and mail them there.

Go online to look up rates and service details.

Other shipping Services

Don't forget about FedEx and DHL or possibly other local delivery solutions. Research these options for more information. You'll get a good idea of the best ways to ship from making your own purchases and seeing how other sellers' ship plus from doing your own shipping. The vast majority is shipped by USPS but sellers also use FedEx or UPS occasionally.

USPS Packaging Supplies

In the beginning when you first start your eBay business money can be tight, so saving on shipping supplies is a great way to cut costs. Each bubble mailer costs about twenty cents and up depending on the size. This can add up quickly when profit margins are slim. EBay has many dealers that will supply packaging supplies to you at a low price but there are other ways to decrease your expenses.

Reuse old packages from the products you bought on eBay. Peel off the labels and stuff them aside for use when you need them. Save everything that you receive and ask friends and family to save theirs too. Recycle every mailer you can find!

Paper towels, newspaper, plastic grocery store bags, and packaging from products you buy in the stores can all be used as cushioning for shipping your products.

Use your garbage as free shipping boxes! Every box of cereal and everything else that comes in a cardboard box will make perfect shipping containers. Open the boxes up carefully and tape them inside out for perfect light weight shipping boxes. Tape the edges together on two pieces of flat cardboard and you have a free mailer for light first class items. Use everything you can for shipping supplies!

The grocery store is a great resource for packaging supplies. Paper bags can be cut into six small mailers for first class shipping. Just fold the edges for extra support and tape them into shape. The tape will provide the durable surface needed to survive the postal journey. Grocery stores also have many cardboard boxes they will give away free.

When making mailers try keeping them slightly bigger than the shipping label. The labels can be folded in half around the package but that makes them harder to read.

Post ads online for recycling free packaging supplies. Yahoo has free cycle groups for many heavily populated areas and craigslist is also an option. Use every resource at your disposal especially your garbage!

Buy a small but full selection of poly bags, padded poly bags, bubble mailers, and any other small packaging materials. Supplement with your recycled materials to make you're purchased supply last longer.

Gift boxes for smaller items like jewelry can easily be made from light cardboard or card stock. These cute little boxes cost about twenty five cents and up. Save that money and make your own! You can look up instructions online by doing a simple Google search. Light cardboard from pizza boxes is a great resource for making boxes that have more uses than you can imagine.

In general, you need to look at everything as possible packaging materials and save it for that moment when it comes in handy. Organize all your free supplies so they're easy to locate. Do searches on eBay often for auction deals since many sellers list shipping supplies this way.

Printing Tips

When printing shipping labels and packaging slips, use one piece of paper for both! Print the packaging slip and then put it back in the printer to print the label on the other side since both only take up half a piece of paper. When you first start printing shipping labels on eBay it also prints a receipt and instructions so this takes a full page. You need to change the shipping label preferences. To do this click the "Printer and Label Preferences" link on the page that pops up when you click "Print Shipping Label" in your eBay account next to the sold item. This link is on the page that comes up next. When it pops up, uncheck the "Print Label Receipt and Instructions" box. Now you're just using half the paper to print shipping labels which also saves valuable ink.

Toner or ink is a very costly business expense! When you're printing multiple labels every day you end up using a lot of ink. Everyone knows purchasing new printer cartridges are extremely expensive. So buy a bottle of ink on eBay and inject your cartridges to refill them. Directions can be found online with a simple Google search. Just remember to refill them before they run out completely and make sure you put it in the right area or you'll ruin the cartridge. If you accidentally let your cartridge get so low that the print fades, inject it immediately and then print 3-4 garbage documents to pull the ink through again.

If you always refill before the ink runs out, you fool the electronics in both printer and cartridge to believe you still have plenty of ink. But if you let it run out the never empty cartridge game is over! The electronic signal is sent and your printer will start acting up with slower printing, beeps, blurring, pop-ups questioning you about your counterfeit ink.

Did you know your empty printer cartridges are worth lots of money? They are on eBay! So if you always buy new ones, sell the empty virgin cartridges for big bucks!

Chapter 6 - Art of Selling

The art of selling is complicated and takes some practice but if you keep a few things in mind, sales will rush in!

With most sales on eBay the demand alone is enough to sell an item but usually customers choose the best from available listings. You need to be the best by having good feedback, fast shipping, proper packaging, and great customer service. Besides describing every detail possible on listings it comes down to simple demand. Your wording can help sell to some point but many times a buyer doesn't respond to nonsense hype like, "Everybody loves this and so will you!" Buyers usually respond to complete detailed descriptions and advantages to buying your item the best. Although some tricks do help like creating a need to act on the sale immediately. Either by the auction ending, limited quantity, or a temporary sales promotion if you have an eBay store opened.

Keep an eye on your competition. Most sellers on eBay are big business and they're rather easy to compete against. Sometimes big sellers don't have a lot of detail on the listings, they don't answer questions quickly, they don't work weekends, they take lengthy holiday breaks, and often wait days to ship products. If you consider these selling practices, I'm sure you would rather do business with the small guy who is always available, ships quickly even on Saturday, and will personally deal with customers soon after receiving questions. Keeping these details in mind, you should price your items slightly higher since you offer better service.

Profit Margins and Pricing

In the beginning it will be difficult and you'll make mistakes. Expect this and see each failure as a valuable learning opportunity! Don't expect success immediately and be happy with breaking even or a slim loss. It takes time and extreme amounts of hard work to build a profitable business. This is not a get rich quick scheme but rather a source of income that is determined by your effort and abilities. It's all about you and if you don't work hard, you won't make money and there isn't a boss yelling at you. Your success is mostly dependant on self motivation and drive along with some good luck finding great deals to make a profit on.

Your profit margins are determined by what your customers are willing to pay. Setting a high price doesn't mean more money if no one buys it. In general, everything on eBay is worth ten dollars and this is a great amount to set sales at. Of course some things are worth more or less but most people are willing to risk ten dollars on an eBay sale since the item is not in their hands to examine. People are far less likely to buy a very expensive ring or wedding dress online unless it's a ridiculously good deal.

Number one killer of all newly started ventures is removing the profits from the business instead of reinvesting them. Expect to put money into your business in the beginning and never take money out. Imagine you're at a gambling table and you need to be all in and let it ride!

Have you ever been to a garage sale where people have ridiculously high prices on everything? We all have and normally most people leave the sale immediately, feeling turned off by the absurdity of the prices. That is what your customers will do if all your prices are too high. People love a good deal and this is why established business run sales to lure in customers. These are called "Loss Leaders" and your business will benefit from allowing customers to get good deals.

A great rule to do business by, is investing in small inexpensive items you can set the resale price at $10.00 and up. For example, you stumble across an auction for cosmetic bag sets sold for one dollar and sell them for ten dollars. It's not a large profit but small sales add up too.

You may even consider reselling items that only bring you $5 because all profit is good even when it's made in smaller increments. If you find a product line you love than the amount you profit doesn't really matter because you'll enjoy what you're doing even more.

Sometimes a seller will be satisfied with even less profit per item if you have a thousand to sell and they're in high demand. If you can sell 100 headphones at $3 each, per day and only make about $2 before expenses on each one, that's still a nice profit for the day! You're the boss so do whatever you're comfortable with.

Generally for most sellers a ten dollars profit is enough motivation to do a sale. With more expensive items you may want to make more profit than that. Don't ever drop your prices below what you paid for it because no one stays in business that way. And remember to include the fees in your product cost when calculating your profits.

Having a large inventory of slow moving products is just as profitable as a small inventory of fast moving items. Be patient with sales and take the time to build up your product line.

Make sure you research the value of items before listing them. If you have several of the same item and they sell quickly it's because your price is too low.

Once your business is well established it's easier to raise your prices and make more profit based on perceived value plus a proven track record.

.99 Cents or Less Sales

You've probably seen these sales where everything starts at $.99 or less and bid up auction style. You may have been surprised by how high some of the final bids are. This type of sale can bring people to a frenzy trying to get good deals. Once you get a low starting bid action sale going, people will bid on stuff they normally wouldn't because the flurry of bidding provokes it.

A sale like this takes a while to get people involved. If you plan on doing business this way, start small. List about ten items per week to slowly get the ball rolling. Make sure your merchandise is in high demand or you'll end up selling everything for the minimum bid you set. With this in mind, start selling items you're prepared to lose money on. As time goes by more and more people will become aware of your sale and slowly prices will be driven higher.

Low start auction sales must be continuous and consistent to keep buyers interested. Selling this way pushes your listings to the top of the best match line up and they get more views when buyers do searches. Offering free shipping will gain even more sales rank because eBay favors these listings and also pushes them to the top of the list.

If you sell with the "Buy it Now" format only, consider offering a few auctions at one cent. This is a loss leader that brings more buyers to your eBay store. Hopefully they will browse your other merchandise and buy the higher priced items too!

Photographs

If you were ever worried about taking great pictures for eBay, forget about it! After browsing eBay for a long time you will be amazed at how poor quality photo auctions still sell just fine. Sometimes a bad photo may help sales but in general a great photograph will go a long way in selling your item.

Taking excellent photographs is one of the more challenging parts of selling on eBay. Many cell phones are equipped with great cameras for this task. But you might discover that an expensive camera with a macro setting for good up close pictures of small items like jewelry may be required. For bigger items like shoes and clothes any camera will provide a great image.

Proper lighting is a tremendous help and taking pictures under a shady tree on a bright sunny day works well for many items that are a challenge. Bright cloudy days will produce the best images but waiting for that day may not be practical. With the proper flash you can take pictures anywhere at any time depending on the item. Some products will look great under a bright lamp inside without any flash at all. It's best to experiment with all the different techniques and choose the best for your subject. Jewelry is the hardest item to photograph and will require the most expensive equipment and expertise.

Use a simple photo editing software program to crop and brighten images. Many free programs exist online or if you bought the Microsoft office software suite use Microsoft office picture manager. EBay has simple versions of these tools for your use on the upload picture window.

Try keeping clutter out the images and use a plain white background for most items or a solid black background for light colored items. You will find that everything looks better with a white background. Using decorated scrapbook paper can add a nice touch to your photos. Extra objects in the shot will just confuse the buyer so less is more!

Cameras focus best when the object is equal distance from the camera lens. So take full on pictures and not from an angle. Place the item on a white piece of paper and aim the camera directly above it. For example, you're taking a picture of a jewelry box and if you're at an angle the camera will focus on the closest part of it and blur out the back.

As you look at listings on eBay you'll notice good pictures and bad. I'm sure you're more drawn to the good images when what you're buying is not very familiar. If you're selling Scentsy bars a picture is not very important but if you're selling an item like specific electronics or an item that has many variations, a picture is worth a thousand words. Instead of taking photographs on a towel or bedspread, try finding a more stylish background. Keep in mind that your listing will be one of many and you need to stand above the crowd. Try creating an elegant listing with creative flare and you're sure to get more sales.

Once your business is generating decent cash flow it's wise to invest in a photographers lighting set which consists of a couple lamps, light tent, backgrounds, and a tripod. Another very inexpensive but valuable tool is a flash diffuser. This is just a plastic shield over your flash to soften the harsh lighting effects. It only costs about three dollars from China. This will give your pictures that professional appearance and help to compete with the big businesses on eBay.

EBay is constantly changing its requirements for selling on their website. They continually push the picture quality to a better and higher standard. If you're going to purchase a camera just for taking eBay pictures get one that takes photos at least 1600 pixels on one side. Better yet, buy a camera that takes huge photos so you can crop them down to the acceptable 1600 pixel size eBay requires.

You may notice that some of the hardest items to photograph are tiny. If you have a camera that can accept a macro lens it's well worth it and your pictures will show far more detail. An inexpensive SLR digital camera would be the best for you to use with a simple macro lens. The lens costs less than twenty dollars and will magnify your pictures making the featured item easier to see for your customers.

A pop open light tent is a handy tool that removes harsh lighting and prevents shadows. This is required for taking pictures of jewelry and will make gold shine perfectly without distracting reflections.

Since you normally get twelve free picture slots with each listing, its best to use as many as possible! Make sure you show your item from many angles, up close, and with your hand in the picture to show scale. Showing exact scale will save you many complaints, returns, and bad feedbacks.

Add a disclaimer to your listing about exact colors varying by different computer monitors. You might use low lighting for your photograph and the buyer may have their computer monitor calibrated incorrectly to cause the colors to be way off from actual colors. Most buyers assume the color they see must be the color it is in their hand and have no idea there could be a difference.

Selling Jewelry

Jewelry is a great item to sell on eBay. Its small light weight and easy to ship, doesn't take much room to store, not to mention huge profit margins of up to ten times mark up on quality items. Jewelry is extremely difficult to photograph and fraud is rampant but there are considerable profits to be made.

You can easily buy inexpensive jewelry from all over the world on eBay but buyer beware, because it isn't always as advertised. You could be paying too much for cheap junk and this happens often. It's hard to judge jewelry unless it's in your hand but on eBay you have already paid for it when that happens.

You should have some knowledge of jewelry and gemstones so you know real from fake. Do research and ask the advice of professionals at jewelry stores in the beginning until you get the hang of it

Some tips to prevent loss are, don't buy a large quantity unless you're sure of the quality. Never do a deal off eBay because fraud is much more common without the protection of eBay and you won't have any recourse. Most jewelry must be stamped with content marks to be considered quality gold and silver. But unfortunately stamps are easily faked by anyone with a tool for stamping. These stamps are also available on eBay for just a few dollars.

If you decide to try your hand at selling jewelry there are some important details to keep in mind. Store the jewelry in air-tight plastic bags in complete darkness with a temperature controlled environment. Sunlight will tarnish the metals and air will further increase the discoloration effect. You should try selling the jewelry as quickly as possible so it doesn't become damaged in your inventory. Books are easy to store but jewelry will often tarnish and become valueless within time. If some does tarnish you can try wiping it with tarnish remover pads but that's a lot of work and tiny details may be impossible to reach.

When selling several small items in one order put them all in a bag and write the quantity on it. You would be surprised that customers don't even bother to look inside or open the bag to see how many and complain. Or another common occurrence is customers will open a gift box and the contents will fly out all over. They lose some and insist you didn't include all the times. Make small items bigger with a bag over it and staple them together so the customer cannot lose any.

Make your own gift boxes by looking up instructions online or buy nice high quality boxes on eBay. Add a velvet gift bag as a free gift and your customers will delight in their purchase.

Jewelry sales can be seasonal but hit their peaks before Christmas and Valentine's Day. Sales may slump at times but between graduation, weddings, birthdays, proms, and various holidays like Mother's Day there is a somewhat consistent demand for affordable jewelry gifts on eBay.

It's a gamble to attempt making money on jewelry because quality can be less than advertised but it does pay off sometimes. Search for jewelry at thrift stores or garage sales and learn how to recognize quality. Research other successful jewelry sellers on eBay and copy their system for descriptions. Once you get established on eBay as a quality jewelry seller, sales will come in and profits pile up!

Selling Clothes

There are always a few bucks to be made in selling your old clothes so don't donate them until you try listing everything on eBay first. Better yet, whenever you see a great clearance sale while out shopping, scoop them up and sell on eBay. Name brands are always a profit winner so study up and learn what those names are. For example you're dashing to the farm store for garden supplies and spot a clearance rack of Carhartt Clothing. Buy everything you can since this is one of those brands people pay a premium for!

Who buys clothes on eBay? Everyone does but certain items do sell better than others. Bestsellers are always popular expensive name brands that sell well for both genders and all sizes. This should be your focus for maximum profits.

Usually men's and kids sell better than women's clothes. Women enjoy shopping and like trying items on so don't expect huge sales of your women's clothes. Big and Tall men's clothes are a great seller since men usually don't care for shopping. Plus size women's clothes do sell better than regular sizes. Blazers and suit sets sell well for most sizes. Used underwear cannot be sold on eBay at this time but pantyhose can.

Group your items together if they are similar in bulk lots. Kids and baby clothes sell well this way since children outgrow clothes quickly. Bulk lots of kid's clothes will always be a good seller for you.

Using a mannequin for pictures will also help your sales because a buyer can get a better idea how the clothing will fit if it's displayed as worn. Don't bother with hiring a sexy super model but any way you can make your item look more appealing will help. A normal model or mannequin works just fine to display most clothing.

Take every measurement possible of the item your selling to help buyers be certain of the fit. Since they cannot try it on, having detailed measurements will help. Describe the fabric and weight of it along with how it flows. Is it stretchy or stiff? How is it supposed to be washed? Take a picture of the tags and any flaws.

Common ways to describe condition are NWT or new with tags, EUC or Excellent used condition, VGUC or very good used condition, and GUC or good used condition. Acceptable condition is the lowest quality but selling these items is a risk because few buyers are happy with poor quality goods. EBay had detailed descriptions about how to judge the quality of your items in their instructional data base.

Do some research to find out what an item normally sells for on eBay and use this as a starting price. Don't rely on items getting bid up for profit unless you're selling a popular name brand. If you list clothes at ninety-nine cents they will most likely sell at that price since pre-owned general brand clothing will not get many bidders.

Because people don't like waiting and take the risk of being outbid add a "Buy it Now" price to every item. For name brands, make this price very high but for average brands make it a reasonable price.

When you're out shopping you may stumble across extremely discounted merchandise. Buy these off season items and store them until demand peaks for listing on eBay.

Go to garage sales and second hand stores for more inventory options. Church rummage sales are often great places to find name brand clothes.

If you happen to be selling clothing that fits differently than the stated size on the item, its best to remove or marker over the wrong size that's attached to the item. For example, you stumble across some bulk lots of bras online and buy them up. When you're listing these for sale you try them on so you have an idea of how they fit. Chinese sizes can be irregular or fit small so you make note in your listing that the stated size is 36C but it fits like a 34B. When buyers receive their purchase they always forget those details and see the size isn't what they expected. More than likely they're going to leave feedback saying you sent the wrong size even though it still fits ok. Always use a marker to obstruct the size or write on the tag what it's supposed to be.

Listing for FREE

EBay is offering free listing sales more often all the time. These can occur at any time and usually last 3-10 days and can be for a specific type of listing style. You will normally get a message in your eBay account after it starts or just hours before. These events can motivate many to start listing feverishly. It's better to plan ahead for these sales and have all the items you want to list ready with pictures already taken. Unfortunately these sales are not predictable so it's difficult to totally rely on them as the only time you list.

Along with free listing sales, every user gets fifty free listing each month. They continually change what is free and what isn't but these are best used as 30 day fixed price listings for maximum exposure. Make them multi quantity and variation so the listings don't end after a single sale. With all this in mind, save your auction items for the end of the month when you're out of free listings and you can list these for the least cost with super low starting bids. Fees for this type of listing are the lowest you can pay.

EBay Fees

EBay has many fees to consider: Listing fees sometimes called insertions fees to list your item for sale, final value fees, and fees for adding embellishments like sub titles and features to your listings. All the fees are recorded separately in your account for viewing and need to be paid monthly like a bill. If you don't sell you won't have any fees to pay.

Final Value fees are approximately 10% of the total sale and shipping price, depending on the item category. Some categories require you to pay more or less than 10%. Along with these fees there are also PayPal fees of about .35 cents per transaction plus 3% of the value. This is very bad for small dollar amount sales because PayPal ends up taking the majority of the money you make. For this reason you should try to create higher value listings so the burden of fees is less. For example if you have three low value coin purses, consider selling them all together in a lot instead of per piece. Another way to prompt higher value sales is to offer free additional shipping so the buyer only pays one shipping fee on multiple items purchased. The PayPal fees you save by doing this will end up paying for the extra shipping costs you might incur by offering this deal on shipping.

All these fees equal roughly 20-30% of every sale depending on if you also pay a store fee. This can make it very difficult to profit when you also pay a high amount in product costs. For this reason you must spend as little as possible on your inventory and business costs. Every little bit helps and you may need to get creative by trying unusual things to get ahead of the fee beast.

As you begin to prove your abilities as a great seller and asset to eBay, they'll review your seller account every three months. This is when you may be awarded the trusted seller stamp of approval and receive a twenty percent discount in final value fees. For his reason, make sure you ship packages within one business day, use eBay shipping system so tracking is automatically updated, and offer fourteen days for returns, all with outstanding customer service!

Sales Ranking

When a buyer types in headphones on the search box and immediately the best match options pop up. They'll usually find what they're looking for within the first few pages. As a seller you want your headphones to be as high up in the best match options as possible. This is called Sales Ranking.

Sales Rank is one of the most important aspects to your success as an eBay seller. Understanding this will have a huge impact on your profits and could make or break your business.

EBay favors certain qualities or characteristics like how many sold, how many available, how many actions have occurred with the item, how reliable the seller is, offering free shipping, and much more.

Taking a closer look at these details, like how many you've sold is simple to understand. An item that sells frequently will rank higher. So don't sell your merchandise one at a time on separate listings. Instead, use one listing with variations or multiple quantities and don't let it sell out.

How many available is a more complicated scenario to understand. The more you have available the lower you rank. EBay pushes those listings with low quantity available to the top of the list. So if you have one hundred available and list it as such you won't be selling them very fast. The solution is rather time consuming and requires more effort. If you state your available items as two, and refill that quantity every time one sells, you're listing will rank higher.

Actions on your listing are buys, bids, views, and best offers submitted. So even if you're firm with the price, accepting best offers will boost your rank. Starting high demand items at one cent is best so they receive several bids, which boosts the rank.

Being a top rated seller with highest buyer ratings will also increase your sales rank. This takes time to establish but is a worthy goal to attain.

For all your listings choose "good until cancelled" time limit. This ensures that all your actions are saved with the listing each month. If you choose any other duration your action history is erased when the listing ends.

Offer free shipping because eBay favors these listings and increases their sales rank.

An option you can try that keeps your listing alive is including a place holder item in a variation listing. This can be an item with a ridiculously high price or something that is out of category that a normal buyer wouldn't want after viewing the listing. Some sellers even list a fake item as a place holder and tell customers not to buy it.

Catch more views with an interesting cover image and have one item at a very low price. This will generate more views that will translate into higher sales ranking.

In conclusion, use variation listings with fewer quantities for each item and keep updating the amount available after each sale. Accept best offers even if you turn them all down. For items in high demand that are guaranteed to receive multiple bids, list for one cent with free shipping. Offer free shipping as much as possible. Always use "good until canceled" listing duration on fixed priced items.

Once you get a listing to hit high on sales rank the sales will pour in!

Chapter 7 – General Seller Issues

You've gotten through the hardest part of becoming an eBay seller now that your all set up and made a few sales. Perfecting your listings, acquiring inventory, and dealing with day to day drama selling on eBay is next. There will be things you enjoy and others that ruin your day but never give up!

Unpaid Item Case

As a seller on eBay you will have many transactions that end up being unpaid items. These occur because people forget to check back to see if they won an auction. Sometimes it's just irresponsibility of a buyer who changes their mind and avoids the issue. A buyer can always request to cancel the purchase and you'll get a final value fee refund for it.

Something that's happening more and more are hackers getting into people's accounts and placing bids they never intend to pay for. These hacker bids usually happen late at night or early morning when people are normally sleeping. So if you wake up to unpaid sales they will most likely remain that way.

In the past eBay would make you bear the burden of cost on the final value fee but now you can open an unpaid item case. There is a set duration for which you choose from approximately 4-32 days. The normal way this works is for example you have your payment information set to "pay in 4 days" so after that time you can open an unpaid item case. Then the buyer has 4 more days to pay after the case is opened. If they don't pay you can close the case and get a refund on final value fees. Then relist the item and your only cost is the listing fee and time you lost on a non-paying sale.

All these details can be hard to remember when you're doing many sales so eBay has an unpaid item assistant which automates the whole process for you. The link to turn it on is in your account or on the drop down box to the right of the item in your eBay list.

If you're only doing fixed price listings you can set them to demand immediate payment which may help eliminate some unpaid items but they are just a fact of doing business on eBay.

Customer Use and Abuse of Opening Buyer Protection Cases

EBay has implemented the new concept of opening a case when a buyer isn't happy with an item. There are many reasons to open a case whether it's the item was never received or it arrived broken or not as described. This is the Buyer Protection program that is meant to protect buyers from fraudulent sellers. EBay has set up the contact seller link to automatically open a case even when they haven't contacted you on the matter. Opening a case is now the new way to send a message on eBay. The only way to communicate without opening a case is to use the "Other" option as the subject of the message. Most buyers don't know this and will start every communication with what seems to you as an aggressive move of opening a case.

For example; you sell a shirt that was described as the color blue but when the buyer got it they insist the color isn't blue its teal green. These are minor variations that are probably due to differences in computer monitors but it's still grounds for an "Item not as described" case. Your choices are to give them a full or partial refund without a product return, insist they return it but you will be required by eBay to pay return shipping, or escalate the case to a review board for a final judgment on the case.

If the case is decided against you it will have a negative effect on your account that can reduce your fee discount and sales rank. It's also permanently recorded on your account and is suppose to intimidate you into always granting full refunds immediately and never escalating the case.

It only takes one time for a buyer to learn the benefits of opening cases since they always end in their favor because of buyer protection insurance. Many eBay buyers abuse this program since it's an easy system to manipulate to their benefit. The common scam is: they will buy, open a case with subjective complains, receive a full refund, and then offer to save you return shipping money by keeping the item.

There's very little you can do in these situations other than pay them to go away and consider it an expense of doing business. In general, only approximately 10% or less of your customers will be a problem for you. It's just easier to let that ten percent get your merchandise for free than fight it and receive negative feedback. That ten or twenty dollar item is insignificant when you could end up losing a large amount of your sales volume from malicious feedback. Reporting them as abusing the system is the only action you can take but all they have to do is start a new eBay profile if they accumulate enough reports to affect them at all.

Keep in mind, eBay is operating in this manner to improve customer satisfaction. They hope to attract a larger volume of customers. More customers will equal higher sales and increased profits for sellers.

Avoiding Mistakes

Double check, triple check, and check again because once the post office has it, you cannot get it back. Mistakes are the number one way to get bad feedback and when you make one, its best to admit fault and pay to correct the problem.

Keep your inventory very well organized with product numbers on everything for quick retrieval and identification when sold. Label everything so you don't have to think much to fill an order. Often times, you're rushed or its dark and you can easily make mistakes if it's a judgment call to fill an order. But matching product numbers is almost fool proof.

Having an excellent organization system is the key to doing business mistake free. It pays to take the extra time and verify that your inventory numbers on hand matches what's listed on eBay. Always double check your inventory for problems like damaged in storage or originally mislabeled. Ivory can look like white in dim light so brighten the room and be critical before your customer does.

With eBay's shipping system it's almost impossible to make a mistake because it's all prefilled for you, including the shipping method. If someone decides to pay extra for speedy shipping the option is automatically entered when you print the shipping label. The only mistakes your likely to make are shipping the wrong item or describing it incorrectly.

For example, you buy a video game accessory at a garage sale for very little money and attempt to sell it on eBay. But after selling, the customer complains it's for the wrong system. Well you didn't know and the mistake was not intentional but you must pay for it now. Offer both a full refund and let the customer keep the item or ask them to return it and reimburse them for shipping costs. Send a free gift for your mistake and the customer will be very happy. Once you pay for your mistakes you'll be less likely to make them again but that's what self employment is all about. The responsibility always falls on you!

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Customer Service

Brush up your customer service skills because you will be dealing with unhappy customers and it's a delicate balance to handle the situation without flaring tempers. Pay attention to how the Chinese sellers handle problems when dealing with them through your buying experiences. Some are very bad but many are great at it. They seem to all follow a template that goes something like this, "Dear Friend, Thank you for your message. We are happy to help you in any way and strive to gain your satisfaction." The problem is usually addressed by a full refund, half refund, resend the item, or return the product.

It's easy to think everyone is lying or being overly picky but usually people don't complain unless there is a valid reason. Write up some very impersonal templates to standard problems so you can copy and paste into the message body. This will help you to hide your anger when people are being difficult.

Getting Negative Feedback

EBay originally started using the feedback system as a tool to make the website a safe place for buyers and prevent seller fraud. This doesn't always work and in fact it's a poor way to avoid fraud. But eBay has started other preventative measures like the probation period on new sellers and other account limits. The big change that made a huge difference is seller and buyer protection that always makes things right. Customer satisfaction has improved and buying is safer now.

But the feedback system is still there and is used more as a way to vent or maliciously hurt sellers. Unfortunately when dealing with the general public negative feedback occurs when it's deserved and when it's not. Sometimes sellers can be targets for receiving unwarranted negativity. It's a system that is commonly abused and hopefully eBay will fix this soon.

For example, you log into your account and are horrified by a malicious negative feedback that you feel is unfair. The buyer says they never received the item and yet tracking states it was delivered. They won't contact you or answer messages about the problem and leave that big red negative sign on what was your perfect green 100% positive account.

Certainly the situation doesn't seem fair but it's the way eBay works. Hopefully your future buyers will not hold the negative feedback against you but it will hurt your sales. Sometimes as much as 75% reduction in sales just from one negative feedback comment if customers are scared away by it. With so many people leaving bad feedback some buyers dismiss the occasional negative as an unavoidable snag.

You can respond to negative feedback on the public feedback forum. But resist the urge to leave anger filled replies under their comments. Wait a few days to cool down and post a reply that diffuses it. Make light of their negativity by saying "contact us before leaving negatives please, so we can fix it". Say whatever you can to make your next customer think that negative was a mistake and any problem can be fixed.

At this time eBay will not remove any negative feedback unless it's an obvious abuse of the system and that can be very hard to prove. You can send a request to the buyer asking them to revise their feedback. Sometimes this works and others it doesn't, but worth a try. Offer the buyer a full refund if you haven't given it already to revise their feedback to positive.

Many times you just cannot avoid getting negative feedback. Everyone knows that people can be especially mean when hiding behind a computer screen. Sometimes buyers are just intent on spreading negativity and there is nothing you can do about it.

The average customer can have many misconceptions about products for example: you're selling silk scarves and a buyer thinks they're not silk so they leave negative feedback saying "misleading seller, beware" comments. The buyer actually believes they are right because they think silk is satin. You as a seller, cannot educate the buyer alone. Sooner or later, after many disappointing purchases they may eventually realize what fabrics are which.

Some buyers make mistakes when they purchase, for example they buy the wrong size. In order to pacify themselves they will point the blame at you saying they weren't listed correctly or make other insulting false claims.

Competitors will often buy from you and leave malicious feedback in attempt to capture more sales for themselves.

People may leave negative feedback for some very minor reasons like; "the seller has not left feedback for me" when it's most commonly left after the buyer leaves feedback first.

Sometimes in auction sales a regular customer will leave malicious feedback to scare away other bidders so they win items at a lower cost.

Occasionally you will come across people who just want it all for free and will complain about anything and threaten to leave negative feedback if you don't give them a full refund.

This is just the cost of doing business with the general public and there will always be ignorant or fraudulent customers that irritate you. It's best not to feed into their negativity and just pay to make them go away. Add them to your blocked bidder list on all your profiles but there will always be another one coming.

Remember if you had a physical store you'd deal with shoplifting and buyers damaging merchandise which is just the cost of doing business. On eBay it's just slightly different issues.

EBay has an automated return system that eliminates the need to communicate with the unpleasant customer. Resist the urge to point out all their errors and misconceptions and just refund their money.

Again, the only recourse you have as a seller is to report the buyer. The world is not fair and eBay certainly isn't either. EBay was once a place where buyers got ripped off quite frequently and developed a reputation of being a risky website to shop on. Now they are doing everything they can to change that to the point that buyers can easily rip off sellers now. In time, hopefully a balance will be found but until then hang in there and be extra creative in order to thrive in a shifting market place.

Multiple Seller Accounts

After getting negative feedback you may see the need for several seller accounts so your ability to make money isn't hampered by malicious feedback. This is a good idea and is simple to set up, just repeat the same procedure as you did for your first account. At this time eBay currently limits a person to five seller accounts. They use your phone number as an indicator so if you have several phones you can have even more accounts. If you only have one phone try using a friend's phone number and just switch the number back to yours after the account has been verified. You will still be required to go through the same probationary period before your account is totally unlimited.

Don't ever use your separate accounts to bid on your own auctions because this is not allowed and your accounts will be deleted.

PayPal Chargeback

At some point you may notice that when you log into your PayPal account a case will be open and the funds from a sale will be put on hold. This occurs because PayPal thinks the item was purchased fraudulently with stolen a credit card or bank account numbers Usually a seller is just out the money in these cases but since Seller Protection is in effect, you will be reimbursed the money after an investigation. So don't worry about it and just patiently wait for the funds to be placed back into your account. This usually takes 1-2 weeks and doesn't affect you as a seller. There is very little you can do to avoid this since you have no control over how a buyer pays and if they use stolen financial information.

Opening an EBay Store

After selling for a while you may end up with hundreds of listing to manage. Finding one item in your active selling list was easy when you had a few items but it's rather difficult when you have several hundred. A trick to doing an inventory search is to click your feedback profile link. Then click the "View items for sale" link and type in what you're looking for on the main top search box. This will work for a while but eventually you may want to consider paying extra each month for an eBay store.

In the beginning of your eBay selling career when you're new and building your business, just use free listings. Once you become an established fixture on eBay a store will help tremendously.

Advantages of a store are the ability to search through your listings. Automatic feedback left instantly when a buyer leaves feedback for you. More accounting features are offered like how much of each store category has sold. Because of this you can get better financial and product demand information to make buying additional inventory easier. You get the benefit of lower costs for listing fees so you don't need to wait for a sale, plus a larger amount of free listings per month. Designer listing description frames are now free instead of thirty cents. You can run time limited sales with the "Markdown Tool" to help prompt more sales. You get to design a store front and organize all your merchandise into categories. Most of all, it gives you a more profession serious appearance as a reputable permanent committed seller on eBay.

Drawbacks can be that you will most likely agree to a one year contract when you sign up and this means you're required to pay each month regardless of how your sales are doing. So be certain that your sales will cover the extra cost of approximately fifty dollars (depending on the level) per month to have an eBay store.

EBay has a tool for you to input your information to calculate if you should open a store and at what price level.

To summarize, build your business with free listings and then open a store once you're more established. If you only plan on selling a few items then free listings may be all you ever need and less business costs are always better!

Taxes

Paying taxes is a complicate subject and hard to ignore. Currently, eBay does not report your income or send any forms to you at the end of the year. But PayPal will report sales over a total of $20,000.00. Once you pass that mark PayPal will produce a 1099-MISC form that will be in your tax document section and you will not be notified in writing or email. This might surprise some people since a running total is usually not given to standard style PayPal profiles. Contact an accountant for more details on this.

Listing Services

If you want to compete with the big sellers you need to copy what they do. This means more professional looking listings and marketing tools that are simple with services such as Auctiva. Do a search for all the options available to you. They cost as little as a few dollars a month for a low number of designer listing with the scrolling banner on all your listings. This alone is well worth it!

You can create listings with their service and encounter much fewer glitches. It can be more time consuming to creating listings but they will have a striking professional appearance. If you have many of one item, it's better to make the listing as impressive as possible.

For listings with just one item available, doing a simple eBay listing may be a better option.

Once your eBay business is well established and you know profits will be made, subscribing to this service is a great addition to your store. The technical support is easy to access and you can learn how to use it just by doing listings. It's a must have!

Turbo lister is also free software that's available to sellers for speeding and simplifying the process of doing multiple listings. It's easy to understand and learn, plus you can make changes to listings much easier. Give it a try to see if it helps you do what it claims, turbo list!

FREE Listing Templates

If you have a little understanding of HTML then use the free listing templates offered online. Do a Google search and pick the templates you like. Save them on a notebook file and simply fill in the blanks. This is a great way to improve the look of your listings for free and with minimal HTML knowledge.

Slow Sales

You have several listing completed and sit back waiting for those sales to roll in but they don't. Day after day you never seem to get any sales. Many people will often lower their price thinking this will solve the problem. It may spur a few sales but in the long run your profits will suffer and it's not going to increase sales to a steady point.

Instead try adjusting the parameters that effect sales rank. If you're prepared to cut profits anyway why not try an auction listing with a low starting bid plus free shipping. This is the style listing eBay pushes to the top of best match search results. It is proven that low starting bid auctions often finish at a higher price than a fixed price sale if demand is sufficient.

Do a variation listing with an interesting display picture and one item that's very low priced along with your other higher priced items. If sales begin coming in from one variation listing it will sail to the top of the best match line up and gain more views which equals more sales.

Add more descriptive title words or improve the listing in any way you can, even raising your price would help more than lowering it at a fixed price. Your goal should be to move higher in the best match line up so more potential buyers see your listing.

Don't write in the listing about any of the unpleasant aspects of doing business like, not responsible for packages lost in the mail, won't refund due to shipping address mistakes, no returns for not reading the description, or any other negative reference to doing business with you. These are turn offs for the customer and they will be far more eager to click the buy now button if you keep everything on a positive note.

With most products, sales will normally come in at a slow pace but if you have a hundred listings those will equal to about one sale a day. When in doubt be patient and try something new until you find success.

Chapter 8 –Glitches and Common Mistakes

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Technology is great especially when you can make money buying and selling on eBay but glitches can ruin your day making a two minute task take three hours. It occurs more than anyone would like but it's unavoidable. So these are some of the more common glitches you may encounter and how to deal with them.

Updates

EBay does updates and maintenance on their website at all times so if something doesn't work, patience is required. It's a forced break and you have no choice but to pause and let them finish. If things start to act up don't continue, just walk away because there is nothing you can do and eventually it will be fixed.

Browser Issues

Sometimes a glitch or problem may be attributed to the Internet Explorer browser. Try opening the page in a different browser, for example Goggle Chrome, and the glitch may disappear. A more common issue is the picture uploader will not allow you to upload any pictures or simply will not respond. Use a different browser and the problem is fixed!

Missing Description

You're working with your listings and when you click revise or sell similar, the page that displays is missing the description information. This is a very common glitch and it only takes a click of the refresh button or reload the page to display the missing information. So before you put too much effort into a listing make sure the description is there!

Don't rewrite the description if it didn't initially appear because when you post it, the newly written description will be blank and the listing will have a serious glitch. Always reload the page until the proper description appears or pause and try again later.

Error When Listing

You're up late trying hard to get those last few items listed before a sale ends and after tedious effort in creating a perfect listing you click the list button and get an error message. Your listing is now gone. If this is happening, they may be performing scheduled maintenance or just over loaded because everyone is trying to list during the last minutes of a sale. The best time to create listings is during the business working hours since everyone is trying to list products after work and late into the night. Expect glitches at these times.

Quantity Discrepancy

This is more of a mistake then a glitch but it happens frequently. You're relisting your products and it's much easier to just click the relist button and not look at the listing but the listing quantity is set at the original number you started the listing with. For example, you list ten rings in one listing with multiple quantities available. During the time it's listed you sell four of them so you're left with six. When you click that relist button it will restart the listing for ten quantities even though you sold four. So make sure when you relist those rings you click the edit button and input the correct quantity available.

Item Description Freeze

If you're creating a complicated listing with lots of detail, nothing is more annoying when the listing locks up. For example; you are adding more formatting to an old listing by taking out bullet points and centering everything but it totally freezes, losing the cursor. This is a very common problem so before you add extra flare to your item description, SAVE IT. Sometimes this is so bad you cannot do anything to the bullet points without it freezing.

It's better to avoid using bullet points all together which reduces the item description freezing glitch. Complete the listing and publish it, then go back to revise it and add the non essential sparkle. You will save so much time and frustration by taking this extra step!

Free International Shipping

You don't offer international shipping but you get several sales that say free shipping! How could this happen? It could be a glitch or the work of a hacker but it happens quite often. You may get a rush of overseas sales to people thinking they're getting a great deal. Contact the buyer and explain the situation or just cancel the sale right away before it becomes an unpaid item case the customer doesn't deserve. Usually these buyers won't respond to any messages. Most end up being unpaid item cases sine eBay's system won't allow them to pay or these sales are the work of hackers who cannot complete the purchase.

Return Address

You change your return address on the shipping labels to represent your business name instead of your personal name and enjoy the proud feeling of being in business for yourself. You print a few labels as sales come in, then all of a sudden it reverts back to your personal name and the business name you input and saved is totally gone!

This is a very common glitch. When you try to click add new address it may even say you can't have any more than one hundred return addresses because the memory fills full of your personal name repeated over and over. The only way to change it back to your business name is to edit your return address and save as default. This can happen periodically, so double check before you print shipping labels that your return address is correct.

User ID Photo Not Displaying

You may have taken great care to upload a picture or logo to your eBay user ID profile that represents your business and enjoy how professional your ME page looks. After a while that picture just suddenly disappears and a blank slot is all that shows. Don't worry, your picture is still uploaded onto eBay's servers but there is a very common glitch preventing it from displaying. That picture may end up not showing more than it does but don't waste your valuable time re-uploading it. The image is still there, just ignore it and focus on more lucrative tasks in your business.

Ship Notice Not Showing

It will quickly become your routine to log into your account and glance at the selling reminder section for that sentence "I need to ship 1 item". You will look forward to seeing this and hope it's there every time you log in but before you log out and step away from your computer, check the actual items sold section. Many times you will indeed have sold something but the reminder doesn't show up at the top of the page.

Tracking Data Not Automatically Uploaded to PayPal

You happen to log into your PayPal account and notice many of the items you shipped don't reflect it there. Usually when you ship a package the tracking data is automatically sent to PayPal but for some reason there are times when no tracking data is automatically uploaded from eBay. You can try logging into PayPal while you ship packages because sometimes this helps. But most likely you will have to manually upload all the tracking numbers from your eBay account to PayPal. This glitch usually lasts from days to weeks but will get fixed eventually.

EBay Shows Sold but PayPal has No Record

You're packaging a sale that eBay recorded and you log into PayPal to add tracking and you don't see the sale listed there. This is just a lag and sometimes a sale is sluggish to show up in your PayPal account. It normally will appear in an hour or so.

Payment Icon Not Showing Paid

You just paid for a large quantity of items from one seller and notice that some of the paid icons are not darkened which indicates you paid for it. There may be a few items in the invoice that show as paid but others don't, even though you sent the full payment. This is becoming a more frequent glitch all the time.

For high volume sellers who have experience with this it's not a problem and all your items are shipped. But small sellers assume if the icon isn't darkened than no payment was received. Although data can be found on PayPal and by total amount that proves you paid but some sellers will insist you never paid.

You won't know until you receive the package if they left out the items so at this time you can open an "item not as described" buyer protection case. This is the only style of case you can open because you already received the package so you cannot open an "Item not received" case. Tracking will prove that you did receive it so you must open an "Item Not as Described" case. If the seller continues to hassle you just escalate the case to be reviewed by PayPal and you'll receive an instant refund.

Disappearing Links

You may open a page and notice some details you know should be there are not. For example; you get a ship notice but when you scroll down the title of the item is gone. Just click back and forth through pages until it shows up or click the refresh button.

After a Move

After a stressful move you set up your eBay account to reflect your new address and begin shipping. BUT WAIT! One little detail that is very easy to forget is the zip code you're shipping from. This is on the shipping detail page and it doesn't change when you update your address. This will affect the price of the postage applied to packages. Before you print a label make sure you have the correct "shipping from" zip code in place

Getting Charged for Free Listings

You may be busily listing items trying to get as many as possible done before the sale ends and suddenly you notice eBay wants to charge a listing fee. This occasionally happens even during a mass listing sale and when you still have free monthly listings yet. This is a glitch or in other words, forced break time!

Sometimes it may be because an option was accidentally chosen that adds an extra fee. The most common accidental addition that charges a fee is when you change categories it doesn't remove the old one. This results in two categories chosen and adds a thirty cent fee. So double check that nothing additional was added to the listing. If you can't find any obvious problems, save your listing and come back later. Wait until eBay is done working on the website.

With this in mind, always pay attention to the fee you're being charged for every listing even if you know it's supposed to be free.

Can't Pay a Seller

Occasionally you will be unable to pay a seller due to system glitch or a mistake of the seller. Usually people forget to link PayPal and eBay accounts or change their password or user ID on eBay and forget to update that in the seller profile on PayPal. Keep trying and if you're unable to pay for over 24 hours contact the seller and PayPal. If you take the time to call PayPal they will most likely quickly blame the seller and say contact eBay for more solutions.

If you suddenly cannot pay anyone, it's usually because just one item you've purchased cannot receive a payment. Remove the suspected item or pay for one item at a time.

Get used to the fact that there will be glitches no one can understand or fix. When you search for solutions from either customer service the problems are quickly dismissed as someone else's fault. Do the best you can and sometimes that means cancelling the purchase if glitches prevent you from completing it.

Item Never Sells

After selling for a while you may notice a listing just never seems to sell. Many months or a year goes by and other listings sell but that one doesn't. Well take a closer look at it because more than likely there is a mistake in the listing. Usually the reason it's not selling is because there is something that throws the buyer off from clicking that buy button. Maybe the description is worded in a confusing manner or there is an obvious error. The price could be way too high or even far too low.

If you can't find an evident problem try totally rewriting the listing and take new pictures for it. Maybe list it in a different category or change some words in the title to capture more potential buyers.

Have some patience because it's normal for merchandise to sit a while before it's sold. Not everything will sell instantly and it often takes several months to sell most low demand products.

In Conclusion

Now that you have read this book, you know there are unlimited ways to make money on eBay and you have the tools to begin a rewarding business of your own. Everything from buying low and selling high, selling natural resources, making crafts or homemade arts, buying from China to resell, supplying items not currently offered on eBay, and using your interests to point you in whatever direction that may be.

Success isn't instant but is built in time and everything you do today you'll profit from in the future. Starting an entrepreneurial adventure in one product line can begin a journey that takes you to destinations never considered.

Use your happiness as the guide and motivation to continue doing what you love. Finally, open your mind to the possibilities and rewarding opportunities will arrive before you!

Check for free instructional videos on YouTube for this book and Thanks for Looking!

The End

