Do you have a question? Has something gone very wrong and you do not know what to do? Well, fair enough.
Below are the questions heard all the time from buyers.
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Does eBay have a Customer Service Department I Can Phone?
eBay are notoriously hard to contact, should you ever need to – it sometimes seems like they expect the site to run itself. You can email them, as long as you don’t have your heart set on a coherent response: go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index.html. You might have better luck in a ‘live help’ webchat here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/n-livehelp.html.
Only eBay Power Sellers (sellers with a very high feedback rating) get to phone customer service. If you really want to try your luck, type ‘ebay [your country] phone number’ into a search engine and you’ll probably find something. Unfortunately, the chances are you’ll have gone to all that trouble for the privilege of leaving an answerphone message.
It might seem cruel, but imagine the number of people who would call eBay every day with the silliest questions if they gave out their phone number everywhere. Its Wild West nature is, in a way, part of its charm.
eBay Sent Me an Email Saying They’re Going to Close My Account. What Should I Do?
This email asks for your password, right? It’s a scam, an attempt to frighten you, make you give up your details and then steal your account. eBay will never ask for your password or any other account details by email. eBay say that you should only ever enter your password on pages that whose addresses start with http://signin.ebay.com/. They even offer a special ‘Account Guard’ as part of their toolbar, which lets you check that you’re not giving your password to a dodgy fake site. You can read more here: http://pages.ebay.com/toolbar/accountguard_1.html.
It Seems Too Good to be True. How Does eBay Make Money?
For you, the buyer, eBay is free. Sellers, though, pay all sorts of fees: a listing fee for each item they list, a final value fee (a percentage of what the item sold for). They can they pay optional fees for extra services, including Buy it Now, extra pictures, reserve prices, highlighting the auction, putting it in bold, listing it first in search results or even putting it on the front page. You can see a full list of fees at http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html.
It’s obviously worth it to the sellers, though, or they wouldn’t carry on using eBay. The system is quite efficient, and basically forces both eBay and the sellers to keep their profit margins as low as possible – otherwise prices will simply go too high and the buyers will stop buying.
How Safe is eBay?
Well, as it happens, that is the subject of the next posting! All of eBay’s safety services for buyers and sellers are in one place, called ‘SafeHarbor’. SafeHarbor handles fraud prevention and investigation, helps with dispute resolution and keeps rule-breakers in check. Read all about it next time, and be safe.
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Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
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After all, you have come to the conclusion to become a successful seller with your own eBay business, do you?
Below is a simple, ten-step path to eBay enlightenment.
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Step 1: Identify your market.
Out of the items you are interested in, take a while to sit and watch for what items sell and what do not. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You will probably see the ’sweet spots’ quite quickly, i.e. those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price.
Step 2: Watch the competition.
Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.
Step 3: Find a product
Get hold of a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can get are. Do not be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal (see also dropshipping below). If the eBay prices you have seen are higher than the supplier’s, then you are set.
Step 4: Start small
Please do not throw thousands at your idea straight away – get started slowly, see what works and what does not, and learn as you go. Remember that it is very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work!
Step 5: Test and repeat.
Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then do not be ashamed to keep doing it, ever so often. The chances are that you just have discovered a good niche.
Step 6: Work out a business plan
A business plan does not need to be anything too formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you have spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else.
Step 7: Invest and expand
This is the time to throw money at the problem. Buy inventory, and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time.
Step 8: Make it official
Once you have made a few thousand dollars worth of sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Do not worry, it is not expensive or hard to do. A solicitor might be the best person to help you through the process.
Step 9: Automate
You will probably find that you are writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions. This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide.
Step 10: Never give up
Even when it looks like it is all going wrong, please do not stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you will almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.
Once you get into the swing of things, you might start thinking that you should quit your job and take up eBay selling part time. But it is not always as easy as it sounds. There are all sorts of factors that you need to consider.
The next posting will weigh up the case for and against taking up eBay full-time.
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Another viable and most recommendable option, when starting up an eBay business, is to make use of the drop shipping concept, which you can read about in the post – eBay and Drop shipping – What Is It All About?
Click here to find out more about drop shipping.
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Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke
Is the eBay Customer Always Right?
The answer to this question is ‘yes’. In fact, the answer is a BIG fat ‘YES!‘, the biggest yes you have ever heard. Of the course the customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, no matter how much time or money it might cost you.
A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedbacks, and negative feedbacks are to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell might have been. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.
But What If…
But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer.
Below are a few common situations and how to handle them.
The customer says the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still has not arrived. If it still has not arrived, you should assume it was somehow lost in the post and offer him or her to send a replacement if you have one, otherwise give them a full refund. I quite frankly do not care what it will cost you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?
The item has been damaged in the post. You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.
The customer says the item does not match the description. Resist the urge to email back with “yes it does, you just didn’t read the description properly”. Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to straighten out any confusing points in your description.
I am certain that you are starting to detect a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, whilst having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.
You should always handle customers’ complaints before they complain to eBay. In fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.
Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let us presume you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week’s profit.
However, it is far better to look at it form a different perspective. If you are not prepared to give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week’s profit, but you will probably lose the next few weeks’ profit as well. Now which option looks better?
I absolutely cannot emphasise enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints is not the only thing you have to give up on. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid unless you want to kill your business before it has even started properly.
In the next posting I will show you what it is all about
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If you are serious about making serious money on eBay and on the Internet, you must get the book
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Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke
You are probably reading this post because you KNOW that you can make money from selling stuff on eBay. Well, what you know is correct and what this article will teach you will help you even more to do so.
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Read on to get to know how to set-up your eBay business in five easy steps.
Unique Idea
The first step in starting up your eBay business is to have a unique item that you can sell, though that maybe very had to do. Among the millions of listings on eBay, there is no product or idea that you can think of, that is not yet listed. This maybe 95% correct, though it is always worth a try. Your unique idea should be close to your heart, a hobby, an industry or a service that you are very interested in.
Know the Competition
After that, then search through the eBay listings for similar items. Again, 95% of the time, items on your list are already being sold. Don’t worry about that. That is the beauty of free trade – everyone can sell the same item and the consumer has the option to choose whichever one he or she will take. It is ideal that you focus on the item that is closest to your heart and yet has the least listings on eBay. This gives you a better chance of competing in the market.
Make it Visual
To make your listing more appealing, take a digital picture of your item and include it in the ad. No matter how good and detailed your listings are, it is still best to have a picture of the item, which will say everything, nothing more, nothing less. Try to research also on the highest hitting listings and see why their visual representation is very appealing to many surfers.
Price it Right
The power of the dollar (or any other currency for that matter) is always at work in eBay. Because you allow interested parties to bid on your product, every dollar counts. Some recommend starting your price at $1, which if you were in the shoes of the buyer, sounds very appealing. Just make sure that you are selling an item that will eventually be bidded to the price that you like, say $500, even if it start from a dollar.
Online Payment Availability
PayPal is eBay’s partner in it’s payment system. And to be successful in you eBay business, you must be a member of PayPal as well. It is easy to set-up, in fact, you can do it simultaneously with your eBay membership and security is highly rated. Fees are also very reasonable.
Five easy steps in you eBay business set-up.
Start “to eBay” today!
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A very good introduction video what selling on ebay is all about can be viewed here
(to watch this video, you need Adobe Flashplayer – is free)
* * * * *
If you are serious about making serious money on eBay and on the Internet, you must get the book
“The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay”
Who else wants a part of the $24 Billion eBay boom…
The book reveals ways to sell on eBay where your risk of loss is virtually eliminated.
Where you risk almost nothing and your profits can be massive.
In just a few months time this book shot up to be the most popular eBook site on the Internet.
Click here now to download the book!
* * * * *
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♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Stay tuned,
Christer
BTW
Do you also remember to FOLLOW ME on Twitter?
If you find the information useful, don’t hesitate to Tweet or email the post to your friends and colleagues and set up a link on your own blog!
http://twitter.com/christerfolke
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