My Pages

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

My Multiple Personalities


Sometimes people roll their eyes when I tell them I have two different eBay IDs….but after a quick explanation they understand.  I have my “store” ID (rae.on.the.bay) and then I have another that is exclusively auction style listings (ask.rae). 
Almost everything in my eBay store is listed as “buy it now”  and I use the “ask.rae”  site for auction listings, and for teaching purposes.   When I teach it is good to be able to show the exact steps needed to list an item.  I also use this alternate site when I am at my California home--I can still sell on eBay--I put the main store "on vacation" while I am away from my inventory... 
Sometimes people use two different IDs for another reason:  one for buying and one for selling.  Anyone else have two IDs? 

Friday, July 8, 2011

Four Mistakes

If you’re doing any of these things, you’re probably leaving money on the table with many of the items you sell.

Listing an item at the wrong time. It is said that more buyers browse Internet auction sites on Sunday evenings than any other time during the week. If your auction is scheduled to end at any other time than Sunday evenings (specifically between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern time), you’re not getting the maximum exposure for your auction at a time when people are most eager to buy.

Not giving your photos the attention they deserve. One common mistake that people make with the photos they use is not having enough pictures to accompany your item’s description. Over the years, I’ve learned pictures of your item are one of the most important components of your sales page.  Multiple pictures from various angles will ALWAYS help you get higher bids for your products.

Using flashy listings. These listings use all kinds of flashing animation, multicolored text and other bells and whistles in an attempt to entice bidders. In fact, it does just the opposite. Listings like these are distracting, hard to read, and will always discourage people from bidding, resulting in a lower final sales price. The descriptions that you give of your item on your sales page ARE NOT designed to get a buyer’s attention (you already have that if they’ve clicked on your listing in the first place). They should be designed to get someone to actually place a bid.

Using a reserve. Using a reserve to guarantee that you’ll get a minimum price for an item can kill your auction. Nothing scares away potential bidders more than seeing the "Reserve Not Yet Met" tag. If you’re truly concerned about a minimum price, just set your starting price a little higher.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

I Should Have Known Better

Well, I had my “duh” moment for the week (I hope it’s for the week—I’ve got too much to do to waste my time like this).

Anyway, for the past few days I’ve been doing battle with my computer speakers.  This morning for what I vowed was the last time, I unpluged and replugged in all the sound wires and restarted the computer—still no sound!  I figured it was time to break down and buy new speakers. 

Then I thought to check one more thing…the volume control on my desktop.  Yep, there it was: set to mute!  Boy do I feel dumb—that’s the first place I should have checked! 

My computer cords really don't look this bad, but when I'm trying to find the right one, it looks like this cord jungle to me!
It kind of reminds me of the old story about the blonde (yes, I am blonde…) who called the computer repairman when her computer wouldn’t turn on.  It turned out that she hadn’t plugged it into the wall outlet. 

Saturday, July 2, 2011

New Shipping Fees

A couple of months ago, I started offering “Free Shipping” on a few of my items. As anyone with any common sense knows, “Free Shipping” is nothing more than increasing the price of the item to cover the shipping expense. I knew at the time that eBay would benefit by being able to charge Final Value Fees (FVF) on that increase in sales price, but I have found that the sales psychology of offering “Free Shipping” to customers has certainly more than made up for the increase in fees.

So now that eBay will be implementing the new fee policy (FVF will be a percentage of sales price + shipping costs) on July 6, it might be a good time to rethink your own shipping policies.