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.

Freebies, freebies... if they offer it, you should take it

Ok, so you've heard my rants about credit card companies before, but today I am loving American Express. I just booked my flight for eBay live and it was completely paid for by shipping costs from my eBay sales.

My customers give me the money to ship their items and I pass the money on to the USPS but I run it through Amex first. I've put nothing out. All I have to do is keep good records and make sure to pay my bill on time.

I'm loving Amex even more today because they "loaned" me the point that I was short.

I never knew that you could do that.

I found the flight I need on Delta and in order to purchase a flight from Delta with my Amex points I first had to transfer Amex points to Delta SkyMiles. The flight I wanted was 50,000 points. I had 49,685!

I talked to a Delta rep and they told me that I could buy SkyMiles but they are only sold in increments of 2,000 for around sixty bucks. Ok, so, $60 from south Florida to Chicago isn't bad. I was trying to figure out the math of how many points I needed to transfer into miles and the Amex rep made my day by saying "oh, don't buy points, we'll loan them to you"

huh?

really?

you can do that?

yep. She said I was eligible to "borrow" up to 15,000 points. So, my flight was free (except for the taxes.... nothing is ever completely free)
And, another cool thing is that I'm staying with my cousin who has enough hotel reward points to cover our room. Yippeeeeeee.
eBay Live, here I come!

Money making eBay to-go is back.. if you haven't you should

Awhile back I did a post on the advantages of using tools like eBay to go. Then a couple weeks later I did a post on affiliate links. Well, at the time that I did it eBay had an eBay to-go tool that allowed you to include your affiliate link so you were able to use them together. But, recently eBay switched their affiliate service from a private company to in-house and for over a month we were without eBay to go with affiliate links. Well..... it is back!
Yay.
It is a widget so you can get paid by eBay to bring people to YOUR listings. I've written in more detail in those two other blogs but the quick version goes like this:
1. Sign up to eBay Partner Network
2. Create an eBay to go widget & post it wherever you like that will allow the script.
3. you are promoting your stuff and eBay will give you a cut of the FVFs if someone buys

I have mine on myspace and I create them for my consignment customers to put their items up on their myspace pages too.

If you don't want to be an affiliate you can still use the tool, you just won't be paid for it. The regular eBay to go can also be posted in the eBay blogs (can't use the affilate one there)

In my quest for top notch customer service. . .

Because I've finally updated and streamlined my shipping processes (future post... stay tuned) and automated a few of the tedious tasks in my daily eBay "chores" I've been able to make time to start searching the rest of the web outside of eBay. I'm doing this with a purpose though. I had realized the other day that the only sites I'd visited in the last few months were the ones that I use daily. This can't be good for business.
Back when I was a bartender I worked for a guy one time that spent quite a bit of time bar hopping. "Market research" he would say. Some people may call him an alcoholic. But, he was also a very successful business man. It wasn't just the competition he was looking at either. It was the entire industry.
Being an eBay seller I need to look at more than just eBay. Sure, I am very familiar with my competition on eBay and frequently look at other listings outside of my niche, but what about the rest of the web?
So, I've been spending time looking at all sorts of websites. I've been looking at how many products they carry, what their policies are, terms, etc. etc.
I found a site that pretty much perfected the customer service end of selling on the internet. LApolicegear.com has about a million products to offer but the thing that impressed me most was the fact that they put the customer at the forefront of their policies. They have written things in such a way that it makes the shopper feel like they are being met at the door by a dedicated staff member and walked through the process of buying.
When I saw the site I immediately thought of my dad who is a total gun enthusiast. They have all sorts of gun holsters and things that my dad would love. Along with gun holsters, they sell boots, tactical gear, under armor, flashlights, and all sorts of neat gadgets and things. I even found a pair of pants that were on sale for only $2.99!!
One would imagine that they are only for cops or government agencies but they are not. They definitely do sell to the government, but they sell to the public too.

*Sponsored post*