Christmas is an exiting time of the year and everyone always seem to be rushing around scooping up gifts for family and loves ones.  So, will your eBay listings be part of the Christmas commerce gold rush or will your sales be left dwindling in the dark?

When I first started eBay’ing I simply assumed that no one would be buying anything from my eBay stores because there are so many people in the physical high street shops at this time of the year.  And ‘Oh Boy’ was I proven wrong. The first Christmas my eBay store was open, was a booming success.  Sales were high leading up to the Christmas week and I was even making sales on Christmas day! (Yes I am a workaholic and I do check my email after the turkey has gone).

So what can you do to make sure that your eBay listings are making sales this Christmas?  Here are a few tips to make sure your store is seen in this festive seasons shopping spree;

1)  If you have heard of the 80/20 rule, then you will know that in any business you will usually find a pattern emerge, and that is that 20% of the products make 80% of your profits.  So spend more time promoting your best sellers.  If you take a look at all your eBay listings you will probably find that some are selling better than others.  Most people spend time trying to figure out how to sell their most unpopular products.  This is time usually wasted.  Instead, spend that time promoting your best selling products.  Those are the products that are proven to make money, so it makes sense to try and make even more sales of those popular products.

2) Bundle your best sellers. If you have products in your inventory that compliment each other, package them together and offer those products as bundle promotion.  For example, you could offer a ‘Stocking Filler Bundle For Him’ and a ‘Stocking Filler Bundle For Her’.  Bundling items can work well at this time of the year and saves your buyers having to spend more time manually searching for different gifts.

3)  Get more exposure! Don’t forget about auction style listings.  If you use ‘Buy it Now’ style listings or store inventory, add a few more of those items as auction style listings. That way those listings will be guaranteed to appear on the first page of eBay’s search results and those hungry Christmas shoppers will be exposed to more of your listings.

4)  Consider holding a ‘Christmas Sale’ on selected items. Discounting one or two items can lull more traffic into your store. Buyers see the great bargain you are offering and click through to your listing.  From there you have the chance to offer more of your store inventory in cross promotion links.

5)  Spread the cheer! Christmas can be a stressful time for many people putting a strain on their time and their bank account. If you see that someone might be a little stressed, try to be patient with them and offer your help. This includes customer service emails.  If you get a pushy customer, remain patient and calm.  Its probably not your fault that the customer is being too aggressive, but maybe they are just having a bad day.  Money is important but there are other things that are more important in life.

These are just a few examples of things you can do to increase your eBay sales this Christmas and it doesn’t stop there. You can use these tips to boost your sales at any time of the year.  So take a little time to relax and enjoy your Christmas holidays.

Happy Christmas!

Create Multiple Custom Store Categories

It makes total sense!    eBay lets you create up to 300 Categories AND Subcategories in a single store.  That’s a lot of categories!!  Make sure you are using relevant, popular keywords in your custom category names.  This will ensure you are placing on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Showcase your new items when as soon as you list them.  If you have an eBay store, there is an option in your Store Manager that will showcase your store front.  This will show your newest items as soon as you list them.  If you need help with your custom pages you can read up on it here – Managing your Custom Pages.  eBay allows up to 5 additional pages that you can create!

Your About Me page – Highlight your specialties and anything that will entice someone to be drawn to what they are looking for.

Your own personal blog – Yes, your very own!  Not the one that eBay provides, but one that you can create using WordPress.  Don’t be scared – I know what you’re thinking.  It’s easier than it looks – TRUST ME.  If you need help, there is a wordpress orientation coming up that you shouldn’t miss!

When you’ve mastered the first three tips, let me know – I have a ton more! 

Have fun!

A great F-R-E-E feature included with your eBay membership is Want It Now. Whether you’re buying or selling, it’s a good option to utilize the Want It Now feature on eBay. 

What is Want It Now??

“Want It Now lets buyers post requests for hard-to-find items and allows sellers to respond to those requests with eBay listings.” –eBay

If your primary focus as an eBay seller is to find a deal & make some money, you can use Want It Now to your advantage by creating posts to seek out inventory.

eBay Seller – If you sell items on eBay, Want It Now gives buyers the chance to ask for items they want or can’t find. And as a Seller, you can respond to these requests with your eBay listings. It’s a great way to boost your sales during the slow times.  You can seek out potential buyers for items that you already have on hand by doing a simple search.

IMPORTANT: Please only respond to posts if the item you have is an exact match to the description in the post. It is considered SPAM if you respond to a post and the item is not an exact match – and you can be reported.

Try to search Want It Now every once in a while. Maybe a few times a season, when you feel your sales are slowing down, or whenever you get a good chunk of inventory. Search back about a week into the posts. It does take some time, but it’s worth it for extra sales. It also gives you an idea of what to look out for as you’re looking for seasonal inventory.

Buying inventory on eBay – Want It Now are want ads, only better! You can create a post asking for specific items. As sellers search through these want ads, they respond with eBay listings. Now, I like this feature because as an eBay seller if I’m looking for clothing lots or something specific…it’s a good way to seek out extra inventory.

How does this help find inventory for eBay?

This actually saves me a lot of time searching through eBay for what I want! It allows many responses to go right to my inbox and I pick the ones that best suit what I’m looking for. My goal in doing this is to get clothing for my daughters and offset the cost by selling some of that same lot of clothing to a local consignment shop, to make money. Later, when my daughters outgrow the portion I kept for them – I am able to resell that lot as gently used making the rest of my money back…..in turn; this meant my daughters clothes were f-r-e-e and I earned a profit at the same time! I love it when it works out that way!

Be sure you know your consignment shops policy on buying clothing and their policy on payment. Some consignment shops work on a 50/50 basis. Meaning if you give them a pair of pants and they sell it for $10 you get $5. Some consignment shops will pay a percentage up front. It just depends on your area.

You can spend a lot of time on Want It Now and it is a great tool to utilize, for both eBay buyers and sellers. Start out slow. If you are already selling on eBay, start out by going through your existing inventory every season. You never know what you might have around the house that someone is looking for!

Utilize it for saving time buying your own lots of inventory for selling to consignment shops or stocking your eBay store.

Check out what people are looking for that you have similar taste in, for your own kids.

Seek out items that are higher priced or hard to find items to narrow down the hot sizes/colors that people are looking for.

I hope this helped spark some ideas to gain some extra eBay sales!

Have Fun! 

Stock up with a wide variety of items to meet the needs of a broad audience.  Doing your research and learning what items sell well for you should be key items to keep in stock.  If you are passionate about an item that does well on eBay, than that’s an added bonus.  I choose a variety of new and used Boutique clothing items, and mix in toys around the holiday season.  That’s what works for me.  A BIG thing to keep in mind is stock ALL seasons ALL the time.  There are different countries in opposite seasons making potetial sales endless.

BUT, be mindful of getting stuck in your comfort zone.  Try new things and expand slowly building your customer base to a wide range of repeat buyers.  Selling clothing, for example, limits you to one target market.  It may require reaching out to a larger source of suppliers found at World Wide Brands.  Find items that compliment what you already sell. Make it more of a ‘one stop shop’ feeling to the buyer.  If you sell children’s clothing – compliment it with maternity clothing, and/or baby bedding.

Happy Selling! 

To get started, you will need to have an account on Facebook.  Invite your friends and eBay pals to join with you.  I’ll be more than happy to friend you as well – My profile is here.  You’ll grow your friends in time as you grow more comfortable with navigating around.

On eBay:

• Go to your My eBay Account and select Site Preferences. 
• Select Share your eBay items with friends. 
• Select Share all eBay items with Facebook with your Facebook ID account. 
• Click Apply.

Now, you’re all set!   Once you start sharing, all of the items you list for sale on eBay will continue to be sent to the social networking site to share with your friends, until you turn off sharing.  It’s totally automated, you set it and forget it!

Check it all out on eBay’s help page here. 

Happy Selling! 

Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called “Spark an idea Thursday.” As part of this tradition, I’ll be sharing with you my experiences and interpretations for each week’s topic for those of you who sell products or services online.

I invite you to grab our image over there to the right and carry the tradition through to your own blog. If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

The theme of this week’s Spark an Idea Thursday is: Spark an Idea about Improving Your Workspace.

Don’t you feel refreshed and ready to get things accomplished when your workspace is neat and organized?

I love a clean work area.  For me, there is nothing worse than sitting down to a mess of paperwork in front of your computer. Or having to step over piles of items you need to take pictures of and get listed to your eBay store.  It’s so UN-motivating. 

Do you have a pile of invoices and packing slips that have to be filed?  Articles that you printed out that have to be read?

Try this:

I like to call it the ‘paper game’.  Take the pile of papers that are stacked in a pile in-front of you and make them disappear once and for all.  And I don’t mean putting them in the trash can under your desk . 

Start at the top of the pile.  Take the first piece of paperwork in your hand and don’t put it down until it is filed away in it’s appropriate place.  Do this with each piece of paperwork until your are done with the pile.

On to your eBay inventory.  This is a tough one for some of us – it’s OK.  Keeping things organized may depend on the items you sell.  Storing clothing is a little easier than storing toys.  I used to use the big rubber bin method:

OK, yea – I’m 5ft. tall – as my business grew – so did my bins, all the way to the ceiling!  Not a very productive use of time when your digging for an item to ship that is in the very bottom bin!  So, I cleaned up my bins and went to the shelving method:

MUCH more organized.  When an items sells, I can see it, reach out and grab it in a second and ship it out the door.  Isn’t an organized space a happy space??    Oh, and the treadmill in the last picture – sold it on eBay. 

How do you organize YOUR space?  I look forward to hearing from you!

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  People subscribe to Feeds just like they subscribe to a newsletter you would get via email.  When the ‘Feed’ is updated, the subscriber is sent an email notice to check it out. 

You should have your RSS feed activated already, as eBay provides this to you automatically as long as you have an eBay store.  When you update your store listings, your feeds are automatically updated as well.  Again, this only works if you have Store Inventory.

To check to see if your Feed is active – go in to Manage My Store.  Under your Store Marketing – you will see Listing Feeds.

Select ‘Activate your Store Inventory listings via RSS’ and also select ‘Make a file of your Store Inventory listings available’.  Click Apply.

That’s it! You are updated and your feeds are active!  Let’s go submit your Feed to a couple places.  One place is Feedburner.com http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home which actually, was aquired by Google!  Free to join, but you have to register in order to submit your feed.

 Once you log in/register – it takes a few simple steps to get your feed burned. 

First – find your RSS Feed link on eBay. An easy way to find it is to go to your eBay Store Icon and click on it.  Then scroll down to the bottom of the page.  You’ll see the RSS icon in an orange box.

 Go ahead and click on the RSS icon, this will show your URL RSS Feed link in the browser and you will also be able to view what your Feed looks like to others subscribing to your Feed. 

Your URL should look similar to mine w/ rss in the begining, copy YOUR URL for Feedburner:

http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=StoreItems&siteId=0&language=en-US&output=RSS20&storeId=22585822

Next step is to head back to Feedburner.com and submit your feed in a few easy steps:

Select ‘Submit your Feed’ on the upper right of the screen and follow the 3 steps.  Paste your URL in the box. Select ‘Preview’.  You should see a page similar to what you viewed on eBay when you clicked on your RSS Feed icon. 

Finally, Submit into the Feed burner Directory!

Once you submit the feed, you can not submit it again. It will be updated as long as you keep listing items to your store inventory!  You can keep track of how many people view and subscribe to your feeds under the ‘MyFeedage’ menu, then by selecting ‘My Feeds’.  

This is just one prefered of getting your eBay listings out there into the cyber world.  It’s more of a ‘fix it and forget it’ method.  Once it’s out there, it’s taken care of and you don’t have to continually update it – because it’s in real time.

There are just tons, and tons of RSS sites to submit your RSS feed on, but you have to keep it targeted to your product or it won’t be accepted.  Feedburner.com has by far been the easiest and most organized.  And the best part about it is, you can also show up on Google in their ranking pages…I was SO excited when mine showed up on google!!

Have fun! 

Having a store will save you time and money. Currently, store listing fees are only .03-.05 cents per listing, depending on your asking price. If you elect to use the GTC (Good ‘Til Canceled) option, this will enable your items to automatically re-list at the end of 30 days, giving you more time to concentrate on making sales. You can list hundreds of items to your store inventory for practically nothing, as opposed to maintaining auctions all of the time. With store items, fees will still apply when your item sells, but the over-head for stocking your store is a lot less than constantly running and re-listing auctions each week. An added advantage is that you will be saving time by stocking your store rather than bothering with listing auctions. By listing all types of items throughout all seasons, you are opening yourself up to a wide variety of buyers. Shipping worldwide will also allow unlimited potential for buyers in other parts of the world who are in opposite seasons and in need of items that may be difficult for them to find at the time, but readily available for you to sell in your shop.

A major key to having a successful store is to continually keep it stocked. This lets you build your inventory to include hundreds of items. The more you list, the more you sell – it’s been proven time and time again. Why? eBay is a wonderful generator of automatic traffic, built in for you to harness without the needed technical experience of running an actual separate online store.

Having an eBay store is your own slice of the Internet. Buyers will check out your store, and by cross-selling other items within each item description, you will be able to recommend items in your store that may interest them. If you offer combined or discounted shipping for multiple
items purchased, customers will be compelled to buy more from you at one time. A store also allows sellers to use features like the Markdown Manager which is not available to non-store owners.

eBay offers tons of additional features at no additional cost. These added features will help you build up clientele for email marketing and more. This will allow you to keep in touch and let your personal email list know of special discounts available to them first before it’s open to the public.

Your store gives you your own unique style. Having a personal, unique design allows you to build your brand and specialize, which encourages repeat buyers. Once you master the features of your eBay store, then it’s time to break out and take advantage of outside opportunities to attract more buyers to your product.

One of the most interesting conundrums when viewed from both sides? Feedback.

Who says “I love you” first?

Ever since becoming an eBay seller, I’ve been interested in the “who should leave feedback first– buyer or seller?” debate. An endless debate, I assure you.

Initially, I left feedback for my buyers as soon as they paid for their item. It demonstrated trust and gratitude, in my opinion. But as my sales began to go up, so did my problems. Mo’ money, mo’ problems, indeed.

Evolution of My eBay Seller Feedback Policy

The beginning of the end of my eBay feedback naivety honeymoon began with a misunderstanding in terms. Not surprisingly, my first negative feedback came from a rather confused and confusing buyer.

My buyer was a woman who paid immediately and I left positive feedback immediately. I promised to ship her item within three business days of payment, clearly stated in the listing and in follow-up emails, and did so. However, on the third day after the auction ended, she left negative feedback because her item had not yet arrived.

First of all, had I shipped the item the moment the auction ended, it still would not have arrived on her doorstep, yet. Second of all, what?

The negative feedback was the first time I had heard from her since receiving her payment. I was completely blindsided and utterly crushed, as I saw my feedback as vital to my reputation as an eBay seller. I emailed the buyer and explained my shipping procedures again, took her step-by-step through what “business days” are, and explained the logistics of the postal system. All in a very friendly way.

She replied with a simple, “Oops. Sorry. Hope that negative doesn’t hurt your rating too much.”

Deep breath. Remind myself that, as sellers, we must work with the lowest common denominator, and just move on. I tried to broach the option of a mutual feedback withdrawal, although I had not left her negative feedback, but that was a lost cause before I even started. She was so confused by the entire process and genuinely felt that the feedback system could be used as a message system, blindly clicking past all of eBay’s warnings before you are allowed to leave a negative.

Nevertheless, I chose to remain optimistic and continued to leave feedback for my buyers immediately upon receiving their payment. I was doing so with some trepidation, though, as I was quickly learning that a buyer’s responsibility to contribute to a fair and honest transaction does not end with their clicking the “Pay Now” button.

I would soon change my approach to eBay feedback.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I routinely offer bonuses to my buyers as thanks for their choosing my auctions. I call them “lagniappe,” which means “something extra and unexpected.” When a buyer purchases multiple auctions or is particularly pleasant to work with, I will often upgrade their bonuses, sometimes to a duplicate of the item they have purchased. This is always met with surprise and gratitude, not to mention repeat business.

Except for one buyer that would be the catalyst for my feedback policy change.

The buyer was a man who had purchased some bath items for his wife. I knew that he was excited to have found her favorite discontinued bath goodies, so I decided to double the amount of bonuses that he had earned. Since this resulted in quite a few little travel-size bath items, I wrapped them all up in a little reusable plastic toiletry bag. My, what a thoughtful seller am I! He will be thrilled.

Um, no. Not so much.

The day he received his items, he emailed me and said, “Everything arrived as promised, but you only sent one bonus. I should have received three. Please rectify immediately.”

Hmmmm. Well, he must just be confused, because I actually sent six bonuses plus a gift bag. And is he really complaining about free gifts? Yes, he is. No good deed goes unpunished.

I emailed him and explained that what he must be considering “one” bonus was actually one gift bag full of double the bonuses. He had not, in fact, earned three gift bags full of bonuses. I then redirected him to the achingly clear language in my listings, explaining what the bonuses entailed.

His response? “I understand that I misunderstood when I saw the gift bag. However, if you see fit, I would appreciate two more gift bags of bonuses. I particularly like such and such scent. I’ll leave feedback once those gift bags arrive.”

I immediately changed my feedback policy.

Who is the feedback hostage here?

From that auction forward, I began noting in each transaction that I will happily leave feedback for buyers once they have acknowledged receipt of their items. I was very specific that I was not withholding feedback until I had received feedback from the buyers, however. A simple email letting me know that they had received their package was sufficient.

I felt this protected me from several bad buyer habits. Most notably, it ended the free-for-all that I had created by leaving feedback immediately upon payment. Instead, I made it more evident that I expected my buyers to do more than just pay on time: they should also honestly acknowledge that I had fulfilled my end of the bargain. No funny business.

If I had not fulfilled my duties as a seller? I would more than make it up to them and negative feedback would not be disputed. However, I could no longer allow myself to be held hostage by my buyers’ feedback. As I had been handling feedback, there was nothing stopping buyers from scamming me once their packages arrived. And yes, there are plenty of ways to cause havoc long after you have paid for an auction.

Which I think I have illustrated.

Still undecided.

But am I right in my decision to withhold feedback until I have at least received acknowledgment that the buyer has received his package? Is not being an honest and diligent seller enough to protect me? Does it not set a positive tone for the remainder of the transaction when I demonstrate good faith by leaving positive feedback upon receipt of payment?

Would a buyer be more or less likely to take advantage of me once they have secured positive feedback?

That last question is of particular interest right now. eBay has recently implemented a change to their feedback policies: Sellers may no longer leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers. Buyers are the only transaction participants enabled to leave negative feedback, as of May 2008.

A can of worms for another day, in which I ask you, “Who is the feedback hostage now?”

In the meantime, what is your approach to feedback? As both a buyer and a seller? I’ve shared my approach with you, but I admit that I am still open to change. How do you handle eBay feedback?