If you have a BUY IT NOW option on an Auction you should . . .

If you use the BUY IT NOW option on an auction you should add the "immediate payment required" option.
I don't usually use this option on my store items or regular BIN listings, but if you are running an auction, and you have a store, the point of the auction is to try and drive business to the store right?
I've known this forever and used it quite a bit when I was selling costumes around Halloween, but totally forgot about it last week.
I was selling a Tiffany bracelet and necklace set for a friend. It was several days into the listing and I had quite a bit of traffic although no bids yet. It had watchers in the double digits. I had a potential customer write to me and made me an offer as he/she needed it by the weekend and couldn't wait for the auction. I asked the consignor what they would like to do and she said she would accept the offer.
So, I added a BIN but didn't click "immediate payment required" this was my mistake. So, the guy/girl went in and purchased the set but never paid for it. I knew that they needed it by Saturday so all day Friday I kept going back in and checking my PayPal account and left my schedule open because I may have to make a second trip to the post office (I do my shipping in the AM) but no payment. I checked my PayPal account again at 5:40 because the last FedEx shipments go out from Kinkos at 6. Nothing.
So, beginning around 6:30PM I start getting a barrage of emails with various questions and requests (like FREE shipping). During the transactions this person indicates that they are still expecting the set to arrive by the next night! I had to explain to them that it was absolutely impossible to get a necklace & bracelet from the East coast to the West coast in less than one day.
So, the buyer backed out.
I now have to pay a second set of listing fees and go through all the marketing steps that I had already taken to get traffic....AGAIN. Do you think that those watchers will come back again? or do you think they will probably just surf over and buy from my competitors?
Errrr.....
The unfortunate thing is that I have 4.9, 5, 4.9, 4.8 on my stars and really NEED the 15% discount and now I'm worried that this deadbeat is going to leave me a garbage rating and ruin all my hard work. I searched his/her feedback and it seems that they have a history of doing this. Several sellers have left messages in the past that say things like "asked for discount after purchase"!!! Oh jeez.....
Ok, so learn from my mistake, make sure to use the "immediate payment required" option on auctions with BIN.

If you wanna see the NEW listing for the Tiffany bracelet & necklace set, CLICK HERE

A cool way to get funding for your eBay business in a bad economy

I am such a busy body that I can't sit still long enough to watch much TV but I love to listen to NPR while doing my photographing and measureing for my eBay auctions. I must say, it has gotten pretty depressing lately all this talk about how bad our economy has become and the credit crunch and the housing bubble and all that. But it finally hit home when I opened my recent statement from my money market account and I am only earning .2%! This time last year I was earning 5.6%, and yes, that was a point BEFORE the 2.
How depressing.
Thankfully, my eBay sales have not tapered off. Yay!
So, I looked at the places that I had my savings stored and would you believe, my highest earning interest rate is the two loans that I lent out on Prosper.com.
If you aren't familiar with Prosper, it is a people to people lending market. People can go sign up at Prosper and either loan money to individuals or borrow money from individuals. Prosper does the credit check and keeps track of the loans so they take a small cut of course. The way they set it up in order to lessen the risk for the lender is that a borrower is actually borrowing small amounts from many different lenders. The borrower sets up a profile, much like an eBay auction, where they tell how much they need, what it will be used for, and the intrest rate they are offering to pay. Then, prosper checks thier credit, gives them a score and posts any delienquents or anything. (no identifying information of course) A lender will pick out listings that they want to bid on and can bid by interest rate on the people they want to lend to, lending as little as $50 on each loan.
So, a lender wanting to lend out a thousand dollars can actually spread it around and loan $50 to 20 different people. And, a borrower who borrows $1,000 can have it come from 20 different people.
I got a $5,000.00 loan from Prosper last summer and I orginally asked for 13% interest. So many people bid on my loan that the interest was pushed down to 9.45%!!
So, I re-invested some of that money back into other people asking for Prosper loans and am earning 16.75%.
It is sort of like taking out the middle man. Well, I guess Prosper is still the middle man, in a way, but cheaper than a traditional broker. Prosper loans are a maximum of $25,000 and are only 3 year loans (no penalty for paying it off early though).
I am writing about them here for two reasons, one, I love Prosper and thik it is such an innovative idea and two, if you sign up and either bid on a loan or get a loan funded, I'll earn a commission!
So, if you want to check it out... click my little ad here:


Thanks.

Tip to Save you money on PayPal

I got this tip from a regular on my favorite discussion board, the “Building an eBay Business” discussion board. If you sell items for less than $12.00 you could save a bundle in PayPal fees by having a “micro payments” account. The regular PayPal fees are $0.30 + 2.9% (or 3.9% for international) but if you set up a micro-payments account the fees are only 5% + $0.05.
Now, take a second and let those numbers sink in. If you are someone who regularly sells items below $12 you could stand to save quite a bit. If you regularly sell items above $12 than stick with the regular PayPal business or premier account.
Or, if you are like me and sell both under and over $12, get two accounts! One of my stores has an average sale price of $47 so I left that one alone. But, my other store, most everything I have listed is at $9.99. I opened up a new PayPal account and changed my payment email address in bulk. The hardest part of the process was finding the micro-payments sign-up. Why? Because they don’t list it on their site! But, for you, my loyal readers… here is the link:
https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html
ordinarily, you have to call and request it, but because I hate calling and being on hold so I know you do too, I’ll share my link.
Just think… if you sell something for a dollar the fee is only $0.10 in a micropayments account, versus $0.33 in a premier/business account! I know it is only a difference of $0.23, but when your payment was only a dollar that is a big chunk of your revenue!
Oh Happy Days of lower PayPal fees!

moving moving moving

Hi. I'm moving the blog!

www.powersellerdaily.wordpress.com

or you can always use the link on my homepage www.powersellerdaily.com

Cheers

The decline of customer service

I'm just so annoyed today. I've spent my entire morning and all I've done is make 2 phone calls. My to-do list for today is long and I even had a completely different subject matter planned to write about today but think it can wait. I need to write about this.
I've been noticing lately that there is a significant decline in customer service. I'm sure you've noticed it too but just were too frustrated or out of time to deal with it.
Done any traveling by plane lately? If you have, I'm certain that you sat, squished into that teeny tiny little seat stalled on the runway for at least 15 minutes. More likely 30 or more. It has become the industry standard. Pack 'em all in and sit on the runway. Why?
My dad is a pilot and he explains to me that this is the "money line". The way that pilots and flight attendants get paid is by "flight time" and flight time only begins once the plane has pulled away from the terminal. So, because of this, the flight crew has an incentive to sit on the tarmac rather than in the terminal where all the rest of us would be much much more comfortable.

Called tech support? Called any large company for that matter? How long were you on hold? I've been experiencing crazy long hold times and minutes and minutes of push 1 for this or enter your account number automated garbage before even being allowed to start waiting on hold.
After being on hold with Endicia for over 30 minutes today I gave up. The entire time thinking about checking out their competitors because it is crazy. I think, the next time I hire a new provider or begin paying for a service of some sort I'm going to try calling their customer service line first. If I can get through in a reasonable time (ie, less than 10 minutes of hold.... and even that is too long!) I'll consider their service.
I was calculating the cost of my time and today, I've wasted over an hour on hold and one of the companies I'm still going to have to do it all over again! I would benefit tremendously by hiring someone for minimum wage to sit and wait on the phone while I get some real work done.
Customer service has gone down the tubes and I applaud eBay for setting the DSR bar so high so that it gives sellers an incentive to improve their service. Now if we can just get the phone companies, cell companies, cable companies, airlines, insurance companies, city governments and all the other players who are notorious for their poor service to get on board.