More about eBay Live, solutions floor, shipping to Canada & Poloroid pictures

Found another pic. This one was taken by the folks at the booth promoting shipping to Canadians. I really loved the solutions center and loved being able to talk to the vendors. At times I just had to get away though because I'm a sucker for salespeople. I think it is because I am so positive about my business that it doesn't take much to get me super excited about ramping up my business and how easy things will be if I just signed up for this service or that product. Shipping to Canada... I didn't need to be sold on that. They were preaching to the choir. I LOVE to ship international!
Funny thing is that they took this photo of me with a poloroid. Did you know that they aren't going to be making poloroids anymore? So sad. What a fun camera. I guess the reality of the digital age finally caught up to them. Digital pics just aren't the same. No fun fanning and watching as the picture develops right before your eyes. I guess I'll just have to chalk this one up to nostalgia and tell my grandkids about it.
Wonder how the poloroid market is on eBay?

Pictures from eBay Live!

I'm such a doh-doh. I took my camera with me to eBay live and only took 7 pictures. How in the heck did I spend 5 days in Chicago and only get 7 pictures? Anyhoo.... here they are.

This is the dinner for the Education Specialists the night before eBay Live!



The next one here is my room. I was so excited about a free hotel room that I had to get a picture of it.


Not too bad for the money is it? And they say "you get what you pay for" ... I'm pretty sure I got WAY more than I paid for. Free Wi-Fi too.


The drawback to my free hotel room was that it was WAY across town. I took the subway because I'm cheap and I think that subways are the coolest thing considering that I've never lived in a city that had one. This is where I got off the train, Chinatown.


This is from the train platform. See that building in the distance? That is the Hyatt at McCormick place where all the cool people stayed, right next door to eBay Live. Lucky for me, I like to walk and the weather was nice because this is the closest that the subway will get you.

This was my lunch one day. I took a picture of it to show my dad how much $6.08 will get you at McCormick place.


These guys sang to us in the line for the Gala. They were awesome and funny too. I got a kick out of their eBay color jackets.

My first eBay Live! oh boy, I've got so much to blog about

Ok, so I haven't completely made it back yet, but I'm close. I got stuck because of weather and now am only about 300 miles from home. One more night and I'll be able to sleep in my own bed again!
I've got so much to blog about from my first eBay Live! I don't even know where to start. Also, I've been reading a book recently that I just finished this morning that I'm going to want to blog about too.
The day before eBay Live all the Education Specialists were invited for an extra day of training and a dinner. This was awesome. I couldn't get travel arrangements to afford me to get there for the beginning so I got there just before lunch, right in the middle of a seminar by Jeffery Gittomer. WOW. I am so upset that I didn't get to hear the whole thing because he was fabulous. He was inspiring, energetic and insightful. To make things even cooler, he gave us all a signed copy of his book The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way
(I'm not selling mine, but of course you can get one of your own on eBay)
Yet another thing on my to-do list. Read this book. The trouble with being so excited about how much I want to learn and do is that there is no time to do it all. I filled an entire notebook with things that I want to do and read and learn. Gotta go get started.

What the heck is a Google PageRank and why should I care?

I know I've mentioned before that my ipod has very little music and tons of podcasts. Well, I'm totally loving it for two reasons.
1. I'm training because I'm going to run the Race for the Cure in October and I my goal is to beat my best time. My best time was when I was 26 years old and now, at 32 I plan to shave off a full minute. Listening to podcasts helps me zone out and not realize how extremely hot it is here in south Florida and how much my legs ache when I run. Makes time fly.
2. I am learning so much. I got a ton of great tips from some recent podcasts on SEO (search engine optimization). I'm pretty sure that there are tons of people out there that will just say 'Duh' to themselves as they read this, but because I had no idea, maybe it will be useful to some, so I'm posting what I learned this week.
The podcast that I found to be most useful this week is one called "Internet Marketing" that I found on itunes. It is from a UK company and these guys have the cutest accents so not only did I learn alot, I was impressed with the pleasant sounds too.
They talked about some stuff that was WAY over my head but I was able to glean a few nuggets of worthy info about Google PageRank. I'd heard internet folks talk about this before but never really understood. I just kept thinking it was about how close you are to the top of the page when someone does a search. Well, that is not it. I kept thinking that it was a dumb judgement because if I typed in exactly the right words, I could manipulate just about any site to come up at the top!
It is a ranking that google gives your site from zero to 10. Zero being bad and 10 being great. I've been searching for two days and the only 10 I've found was google themselves! This blog is a zero. eBay is an 8.
The way to find out a site's PageRank is to add it to your google toolbar. If you don't already have one just go get the toolbar (it is free) by searching "google toolbar" and when you are setting it up, click to include "PageRank". Voila, once the toolbar is there you can see the rank of any site you visit. If you already have a google toolbar you can add the page rank feature by going into the settings.
For your convenience (and my profit) I have a google searchbox right here on this page :)

Another cool feature of the PageRank button on the toolbar is that you can check backward links on any site. It is a dropdown next to the PageRank button and is pretty cool. I checked my site Addicted to Rockabilly, and found a couple of people that were linking to me that I was completely unaware of. I was also surprised to find that none of my blogs show up as linking to my site. Hmmmm? I have links all over anything I have control of, maybe they aren't there because they are all zero page ranks. :(
The long way to find backward links is to type link:http:// then the site you want to check into the google search engine.

Ok, so the reason that you want to know about your backward links is because that is exactly how google ranks you! So, if lots of good sites (meaning not the zero ranks) have non-advertising links to you than you will rank higher. Advertising links and reciprocal links don't count.

Now, I need to go figure out a way to get folks to link to my sites. :)

Gotta love the eBay Marketplace, Fiestaware fetching over Four Hundred Bucks!

This is why I love eBay! I've got a client right now that I'm selling a pretty wide range of items for on consignment. She and her fiance have realized that in combining their households they just had too much stuff.
eBay Trading Assistant to the rescue!
One of her items was a set of Fiesta mixing bowls. I know very little on the subject but knew that Fiesta is a brand that people look for and has been around awhile so I was pretty confident that it would sell.
I did the research on similar items prior to posting the item. I did not find anything exactly like the set I was selling but I discovered that a similar bowl will sell for around $30.00.
I was selling a nested set of 4. I like to start the bidding pretty low and give a chance for it to go up so I started the auction at $24.99 for all four.
As you can see by the results of the auction for the set of Fiestaware mixing bowls, I was so very wrong about the value of the item that I was selling.
As I am writing this post there is just under two hours left of the auction and the bidding is currently up to $447.99!
Yes that is right folks.... FOUR HUNDRED FORTY SEVEN dollars!
This is what I love about eBay. If I had just put these bowls out at a Flea Market or something where I actually had to make up a set price (or used the buy it now option) I would have put a price of about $75 on the set. Boy would I have lost some money.
This is the beauty of the eBay marketplace.
Now I need to add Fiestaware to my list of items to look for at yard sales/thrift stores.

Pictures, Photographs, pics, whatever you call them.... they are important to selling on eBay

**Apologies to the folks who subscribe via email. My daughter ran over and hit my laptop pressing keys to publish this post before I was done typing it... sorry for that.**



I enjoy reading the eBay Discussion boards. Particularly the "Building an eBay Business" board because the people there are alot like me. People who take what they do on eBay seriously and are professionals. Quite often people post asking for critugues or suggestions on thier stores. I LOVE to do this. This hits on several of my favorite things. 1. eBay 2. helping people 3. telling people what to do. Yes, I hate to admit it, but I love to tell people what to do. If I didn't start eBaying when I did, I was going to go into restaurant management. I figured it would be a good fit because I love to tell people what to do and I had 14 years experience in the service industry.

Ok, back to the subject at hand. Most every time someone asks for criques, PICTURES are the main thing that needs inprovement. All of the things that go into an eBay auction are important but many times it is the picture that makes (or loses) the sale. Your pictures need to give your customers a clear idea of what they are really going to recieve. It should look exactly like the item does in real life. If you ever have to write an apology for the bad pic in the description than you need to go back and re-do the photo!

How to do that: You can spend a lifetime learning how to take great photos. Obviously, you have something that you need to sell NOW, so that is no good. I think these basic tips are a good place to start...

• Use good lighting. Either natural of bright household lights


• Use a tripod


• Crop your photos very close. no one needs to know what is going on in the background


• make your gallery photo the right size so it doesn't warp


• clean the product or if it is clothes, iron them (no excuse for dust or wrinkles)


• take shots of all sides


• have a regular shot and a close up


• place a ruler, tape measure or something next to the product to indicate size


• use a template or basic html to insert picturs into the description to save on fees

Of course, as with all selling on eBay, some of these things may not apply to you. I mostly sell clothes so I rarely use the tape measure trick, but use it always when I'm selling fabrics to that people can see how large or small the pattern is.

I would also give the advice to not over-edit. I had a consignment client one time who told me that she had taken all the pictures for me. She emailed me the photos before bringing over the products. I think I hurt her feelings when I didn't use any of her pictures. I didn't use them because she had photoshoped them to look great. The products were in ok condition, but not perfect. Her photos made the products look perfect!

Just this week I had an issue where a seller "borrowed" one of my photos. I turned them in to eBay and got a canned response back from eBay that my photo was a stock photo therefore they were allowed to use it! I guess this is the drawback to having a really good photo. It was NOT a stock photo, it was one I had taken of my best friend wearing the dress. So, now I've even started watermarking.

There are lots of sites out there that can help with pictures. Here are a couple I've found recently:

http://ezauctionphotos.blogspot.com/

eBay photos/html discussion board

http://www.sigma-2.com/camerajim/index.htm

Feel free to comment here and add a site that you find helpful too.
(if you'd like, you can Read my old post about pictures too)

Marketing your eBay listings - what more can we do?

Today I had planned something totally different to write about here but I just got an email that I just HAD to talk about. I started to respond to this person directly but decided that it may be a good topic to discuss openly so we would all benefit from it.
The question came in from an eBay seller who had been selling for about a year or so. They wanted help with marketing their eBay store.
Me too!
That seems to be constantly on my mind. Of course, I'm an eBay junkie so maybe it doesn't consume everyone else as much as it does me. All music on my ipod has been replaced with business podcasts. I've become obsessed.

This seller told me that these are the following things that they have done so far in their marketing:

• Website that links to my eBay store
• Craigs List Ads
• Submitted domain name to Yahoo, Google, MSN
• Google Base
• Links to my eBay store in auction listings
• Wrote a guide
• Read several books about eBay selling

and here are some of MY thoughts on these:

• links to eBay store - Great! just make sure that they all have the ?refid=store tag at the end so that you can get 75% off the FVF. or better yet, an affiliate link.
• Craigs List Ads - most of the time, this is not something I do, and for two reasons. One, most people on Craigslist are looking to buy locally and want to pay in cash to avoid internet scams and shipping charges. If I'm going to sell it locally for cash (which I would be happy to do.... Cash is King!) why would I bother with paying eBay fees? I list stuff for sale on Craigslist all the time, and although that same item may be listed on eBay at the same time, I don't usually link to it. The second reason is that most times if you do this too much the die-hard Craigslisters get very upset with you and consider you spam. Being considered Spam is bad.
• Submitted domain name to Yahoo, Google, MSN - yes this is good, having your listings SEO optimized will help more though.
• Google Base - I do this, however, I'm not sure if it helps or not. I figure, it is free and takes two seconds so why not. But, I can't tell if it is this or the SEO optimizing that is working.
• Links to my eBay store in auction listings - KEY. This is key! Every auction listing should link to your other auctions/store inventory. eBay shoppers are going to shop around, you want to keep them shopping around within your store. The thing I'd like to add about this one though is that the links need not be above the description or pictures of the item that is listed. Do not make them overwhelming or too prominent. Your main purpose for the eyes to be on that listing is to purchase that listing. "if not this one, how about this other one?" kinda thing.
• Wrote a guide - I did this and am ranked pretty high, but the one I wrote is for something that I don't even sell! Kinda pointless right? I think a guide can be helpful if there aren't alot of others on that subject, you are a good writer and it is highly specific to your niche. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. If you notice on the guides there are items advertised on that page, you have no control over what items go there. They come up by an eBay algorithm of keywords so it could be your stuff, or it could be your competition. Ya never know.
• Read several books about eBay selling - yep. great thing to do. I read a bunch, reading one now and have several more I plan to read. However, choose wisely. If you are reading out of date material or things that are below the level you are already at, you will get very little from them. I would recommend reading other "outside of eBay" material too. I highly recommend Guerrilla Marketing and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

So, here are a couple of tips I'd like to add to this list:

1. Write a blog. Either an eBay blog or a regular one. If you sell the same items regularly and have a 'niche' per se, I recommend a regular one. If your items change regularly, an eBay blog. They are picked up by search engines and can lead folks to your stuff.
2. name your pictures. Search engines see hyphens as spaces so name your pictures something like "lucky-13-sinner-wrap-dress.jpg" (that would be what you would name your picture for a lucky 13 "sinner" wrap dress)
3. get involved in a group or participate in discussions in your niche (on eBay or off) and post relevant posts with your eBay store name as a signature. Be careful not to spam. This will establish you in your niche and you may learn some new stuff in the process. You can do this on blogs too!
4. SEO - I'm still learning here but I wrote a blog on it once before, so check that out
5. Promote your Charity listings on my site www.rockabillycharityauctions.com (see that... shamless self promotion!) it is free!
6. Join social networks. Myspace, facebook, twitter, etc. etc. Be kind, thoughtful and professional in your posts and bulletins so that you will be taken seriously.

Feel free to add any more suggestions.... comments are allowed :)

How best to use eBay blogs, or... what NOT to do

"Blog-land" is what some eBayer's call it. It is where you go when you click into "Blogs" under the community link. Some, err, correction, LOTS of folks just cruise the blogs and read because they show up there in order of arrival. The most recent blog appears at the top.
This can be a fun exercise or a good way to kill some time. Some folks cruise and leave comments on the posts as they read. That is fine. Linking is good.
However, the mistakes are made by those who post silly things like "goodnight bloggers" in a blog post. This is space wasted. Believe it or not, eBay blogs are picked up by google. How awesome would it be for someone to be looking for a specific item that is sold out everywhere and they keep searching and searching. At some point they come across a blog post that you did six months ago, back when you had that item in stock. So, you no longer have it but.... now you've gotten eyes off the world wide web and into your eBay store. Your merchandise is interesting enough to keep their attention right?
So, why the heck would anyone ever search for "good night bloggers"? Don't waste your space.