Free Shipping Options for your eBay sales

eBay's new Fast 'N Free lets buyers know at a glance--in search results and on the Item page--when an item ships for free and, based on their shipping address and the item location, that it will arrive on their doorstep within 4 business days.

The eBay Fast 'N Free logo appears on listings when all the following conditions are met: •Both the buyer and the item are within the 48 contiguous states.

•The listing includes a free shipping service and offers 1-day handling.
•Based on the buyer and seller’s geographic location, seller’s past delivery performance and the carrier’s performance, eBay can estimate with a high level of confidence that--using the free shipping service--the item will be delivered in 4 business days or less.

eBay says their statistics show that listings enhanced with the eBay Fast 'N Free logo sell better than those that don’t.

All that fuss over $10...

Yesterday morning my email box had a note from a customer who thought the book she bought was "not as described," so she was asking for a refund.  I thought I had described the negative parts of the item well enough, but in the interest of customer service, I agreed to refund her money--she even asked me to refund the amount it was going to cost her to send it back.  I don't usually do that, but didn't want to spend time discussing it with her, so I also agreed to that.  After sending that information back to her, I received another note--this time she said, "I would be happy with half the purchase price refunded. 10.99/2=$5.50.
Does this sound fair to you?"

Yes, it sounds fair to me!  I immediately refunded the $5.50 and wrote her a quick Thank You/apology note and forgot all about it until later that afternoon.  I was checking my sold lists looking for an item I needed to leave feedback for....and, I discovered she had left a neutral feedback for the transaction!  Needless to say, I was not pleased since I had tried to accomodate her earlier in the day.  The one neutral did not affect my 100% feedback, but still I didn't want it there for everyone to see!  So, I went into eBay where you can request a revision of feedback (feedback forum/request feedback revision), filled out the required information, and where I could leave her a note, I wrote:

I tried hard to fix the problems in our transaction per your wishes.  I was willing to pay your postage to return the book to me, but then you said you would accept a refund of ½ the original price- I immediately did that.  In many people’s eyes, a neutral is just like a negative. Could you please change the neutral to a positive?  Thanks so much!  -Rae 

Originally I had written a longer note, but eBay only lets you use 500 spaces. I wanted to include the entire story so eBay would understand the details in case I had to discuss it with them....

So I went about my business for the rest of the afternoon, hoping for the best outcome...a couple of hours later I got another email from eBay saying she had agreed to redo the feedback!  Whew!

I Changed My Mind!

This is a "Heads Up" notice for all my former eBay students....


Previously I always told you how I like to make my titles in Capital letters--I told you it was just my personal preference, and you could do it any way you like. 


But now I have found that if you use all caps your items will not show up in the Google products search for fixed price. Google disallows all listings that do not use standard capitalization.

So now, I'm going through my listings, changing titles that need to be upgraded.  And now that we're allowed the 88 spaces, I can add to some of them, too. 

Have You Looked at G+ Yet?

Well now that G+ has been around for a couple of months (give or take a week or two…), what do you think? 

I jumped in and set up a G+ account right away just in case it turns out to be a big player in the social media picture, but I’m just too busy to keep up with it….I tend to turn to Face Book first…

And, as usual, if anyone wants a G+ invite, send me a note with your Gmail address.

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? 

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.

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. 

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. 

New sizes for eBay pictures

FYI: Larger pictures are available on eBay Item pages now. Because photos are so important, larger pictures are now available on Item pages.

The display size of the pictures at the top of listing pages has increased from 300 pixels on the longer side to 400 or 500 pixels (depending on the buyer's screen resolution). That's 25% more space to show your items.

Later this summer, the size of pictures displayed in the Enlarge and Zoom features will also increase to approximately 1000 pixels on the longer size.

My Facebook was slowing down!

In just the last couple of days I noticed Facebook was so slow!  I couldn’t scroll down without waiting a few moments for it to catch up with my mouse and if I tried to close it, the site took forever.

It seemed like nothing else on my desktop was affected.  Hubby thought it was my browser (I like IE, he’s a Chrome fan).  He said I could use FB with Chrome and still use my other sites with IE, but that really wasn’t a good answer for me, so I went looking for a solution. 

And I found it!  Would you believe it was my AVG antivirus scanner that recently upgraded.  I found a discussion that pointed out the AVG Link Scanner was the culprit.  So I went in and disabled just that part and everything on Facebook is back to normal—whew!

So, if you use AVG and are experiencing serious slow-downs on Facebook, open the AVG application and double click LINK SCANNER.  Then uncheck the Enable Search Shield and Enable Surf Shield (they are right together).  Click Save, and restart your computer. 

Promoting next week's Blogging Class

This was on NTV's early morning (9am) show today.

eBay has a One-Day Listing Sale - Today

FYI:  eBay is running a 1-day promotion today, June 14. Sellers can list Auction-style listings for a 5-cent Insertion fees no matter the auction starting price.

The promotion applies to both eBay Stores subscribers and sellers who do not have an eBay Store subscription. Sellers who do not have an eBay Store subscription are still eligible to list up to 50 listings Auction-style listings for free per month. Once the free insertion fees have been used, the 5-cent promotional rate will apply to eligible listings.

OOPS!

I was listing a men’s tie with a novelty cartoon character on it; and as usual, I list information from the label, which this time included that it was made in Myanmar. Frankly, I’d never heard of Myanmar—but I soon found out about it!  When I got the last page of my listing, a big square note popped up that said:

Embargoed Goods!
eBay prohibits all sales of products of Burma (Myanmar) origin that were imported from Burma (Myanmar) after August 27, 2003.
If you list such an item in violation of this policy, we may remove the item and may revoke your trading privileges on our site.  

If you list an item of Burma origin that was imported prior to August 27, 2003, we encourage you to explain in your listing the circumstances and timing of its importation from Burma.
More information on the current restrictions may be found at the following site:
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/index.shtml
All I can say, is check your labels!

Little Golden Books

I don’t usually deal in children’s books, but I did list a collectible Little Golden Book this week.  I needed to do some quick research before pricing it and thought I’d share a bit of what I learned.

Everyone remembers reading the Little Golden Books as a child--Little Golden books were first produced in 1942.  Twelve titles were sold that year. They were an immediate hit with young children and their parents, who loved the 25¢ price.  These older books are quite collectible. If you have an old one in good shape (no scribbles, no missing pages, etc.) you might be surprised how much it sells for. 

One thing to remember:  Never date your book by the copyright.  Copyrights seldom changed and the book that says 1942 just might have been printed in 1980!

For books published in 1947 – 1970, there is an easy way to tell the edition: Look on the last page of the book in the lower right hand corner by the spine. There will be a letter and this letter tells the edition. For example A=1st, Z=26th, AA=27.

For books published between 1971 – 1991, on the bottom of one of the first two pages you will see something like A B C D E or a b c d e. The first letter to the far left is the edition.

For books published after 1991, besides having the copyright date, the book will also have a printing date in Roman Numerals. If a book from this period does not have a Roman Numeral date it is a first printing and it was left off by mistake. If the letter "A" precedes the Roman Numerals the book is a first edition. If an "R" precedes the Roman Numeral then the book is a (R)evised edition.

It’s a complicated system, but good to know if you think you’ve found a valuable book!  Go look in your shelves to see if you have one of the older books!

Facebook Friend Requests

Something new for Facebook: When users include a personal message with a friend request, that message will now also appear in the Messages inbox of the recipient. These messages, which allowed users to add a short note to a friend request, only appeared in the Requests channel. This made them easy to miss, especially since once a request was answered, the message was permanently deleted.

By adding these friend request personal messages to the Messages inbox, users are much more likely to see them and users will always have them, significantly reducing the chance of these notes being lost.

Flush Left

Centered text is harder to read than text that is flush left.  (quoted from Griff who was on eBay Radio yesterday)  Go check some eBay descriptions—you’ll see what he means! 

I really never gave it much thought before since all my eBay descriptions are flush left (also known as aligned left or justified left).  But now that he mentioned it, I think that’s an important point—almost as important as not making your description look like a rainbow. 

It’s all about making your listing easy to read.  If at first glance it looks hard to read, many people will just go on to someone else’s eBay offering.  If you want to make a profit, you have to pay attention to small details!

Selling Barbie Dolls

Do you sell Barbie Dolls on eBay?  I recently acquired a few copies of Barbie Bazaar—a Barbie Collector magazine.  These are from 1989 and beyond (first published in late 1988—I do have the premier issue, too!)—I just about have them all listed.

One issue has an article on selling guidelines.  Remember, this was 1989 when there was no eBay and very little internet.  Some dealers would sell Barbies and accessories by mail.  This article gives suggestions for uniform grading of collectible Barbies.  The purpose was to grade the dolls & clothes; and to list the flaws any item might have.  (Kind of sounds like how I talk about descriptions on an eBay listing to my students.) 

They suggested that these acronyms be used for descriptions:

NRFB - Never Removed From the original Box

MIB - Mint in Box

MINT - Unplayed-with condition.  Doll may have been displayed, but never played with and looks like it just came out of the box.

EC - Excellent Condition.  It may have been played with but has no flaws.

VGC - Very Good Condition.  A nice doll that may have some minor flaws.

GC - Good Condition. This may make a decent display item, but has some major flaws like cut hair, green by ears, fingers missing, etc.

Fair - Item could be dirty, buttons missing, or may be torn or stained.

Interesting list, isn’t it?  I personally would combine the last two.  And, remember to list (and photograph) every flaw that you see in your listings.

Outstanding Customer Service

Part of my recent trip to California included a stop in Las Vegas for eBay sellers’ convention—eBay on Location.  I’ll be telling you about it in bits and pieces, but today I want to talk about Customer Service. 

Marsha Collier, author of the many eBay for Dummies books, was there. She talked about the importance of connecting with customers, making them feel important, and offering top-notch customer service.  Her presentations have motivated me to do better in the communications department (I think I do OK now, but there’s always room for improvement). 

But, let me tell you about an eBay seller who excels in the area of customer service—their eBay ID is sleepymountainmattress.  Granted, they are a company and not an individual seller like myself, but their attention to keeping me informed about my purchase has really impressed me. 

I ordered a memory foam mattress topper from them (I discovered I could get one for soooo much less on eBay than from my local big all-in-one store) a few days ago.  They have sent me at least 3 emails thanking me and telling me that the order was shipped, how it was sent, and when it would arrive. 

This morning my phone rang—I almost didn’t answer it because it was a number I didn’t recognize.  It was sleepymountainmattress, thanking me again and telling me the package ought to arrive today!  Wow!  What outstanding customer service!  I will certainly look to them the next time I need any of their products!

 (And if you have been thinking of buying one of those memory foam toppers, they have great prices—check them first)

Look in your junk drawer!

Don’t discount some of those junk-drawer items as being just “junk.” I have been going through my folks’ house and selling some of their items that my brother and I don’t want to keep. I found this old beer opener and thought it might have some value.

And it did! Even I was surprised! It turns out that the advertising on it was from an old California brewery that no longer exists. I started the auction on eBay at just 99¢ and I was thrilled when it went up to $8, and then a few days later it was at $20. It sold at even higher! 

Check out the completed auction HERE--You will hardly believe the final selling price! Do you have any old beer bottle openers to sell?

There's That LIKE Button Again!

I’ve noticed something new on eBay--there’s a Facebook LIKE button on some of my listings. When I click on it, that listing is posted on my Facebook page!

These Facebook Like buttons appear at the top of the page, directly under the listing title. The buttons do not appear in all categories yet, but are starting to show up on a few of my own listings--mostly those with free shipping.

I had heard a little bit about it at the eBay convention in Las Vegas last week--eBay told us that "We're actively working on putting more "Like" buttons on the site."

I, for one, "Like" it.