TOPRATEDSELLERTIPS.COM

Someone please explain this eBay insanity to me!

2010-03-11T05:19:00Z

Tonight I received 2 exact orders from the same buyer.

Buyer e-mailed me almost immediately and told me one of the orders was a mistake and would I please cancel it.

I went and filed for a transaction cancellation as I have done many times in the past. I don't guess I have ever read what happens after you file one of these because I was totally blown away by what I read on the Your case is now open screen as shown below:

Skip down to the bullet points.

The first one reads " If the buyer agrees to cancel the transaction, this case will be automatically closed and you will receive a Final Value Fee credit." Fair enough. That is what I expect to happen.

The second one reads " If the buyer declines to cancel the transaction, this case will be automatically closed and you will not receive a Final Value Fee credit." This is insane. The buyer makes a mistake. Asks me to cancel.. If the buyer does not agree after I file for the cancellation, I do not receive a Final Value Fee credit.

Can someone please explain to me eBay's reasoning on this?

At least one eBay seller is allowed to offer coupons

2010-03-07T16:36:00Z

I run another blog at onlinebuyertips.com While researching good buys on the internet I ran across a coupon offer from an eBay seller.
You can see this offer here. As you can see this offer is on the eBay site.

Upon further investigation I found eBay has a page of FAQ's concerning coupons. You can access this page here. If you scroll down the page you find at the bottom a section called Seller Questions. One of the questions is "As a seller, what do I have to do to accept coupons?"
Their answer is " Sellers simply need to accept PayPal as a payment method. Coupons are automatically converted to regular currency at the time of redemption, so sellers will not be aware that a coupon has been used to fund the payment."

Have I missed something? Are all sellers now allowed to accept coupons? Is this a trial? Does anyone have any insight into this?

My eBay sales up 34% January over February

2010-03-02T00:38:00Z

Even though February had 3 days less than January my eBay sales were up 34% in February as compared to January.

Even better news is that my eBay fees were up only 10% in February over January.

The reason for this was the reduced cost of FP30 during the month of February. At the old rate of 35¢ per listing I could not list all the items I would like to list. With eBay running a special of 10¢ per listing I was able to list with reckless abandon.

Next month when my rate falls to 5¢(I have a Premium store subscription) per listing my sales should look even better.

How were your sales on eBay for February compared to January?

Has the internet gone to hell in a handbasket...

2010-02-10T03:48:00Z

or just the sites I use most often?
The 2 sites I use most often are eBay and Facebook. Today on eBay I have received duplicate orders twice. eBay charges me two FVF's but I only sell one product. I have to apply to have the transactions cancelled to get my FVF's back and the buyer has to agree. Is eBay so hard up for cash they have to double bill? Also, I went to pay my eBay bill tonight. Guess what? They won't accept my payment. I tried to pay with PayPal. They told me that since I had a credit card on file I might be paying twice if I paid through PayPal. Since the credit card I had on file is expired I tried to pay with PayPal anyway. Pay button was disabled and would not work. Went to change my credit card info and it said if I changed it I couldn't not pay my current bill with the new credit card. They are double billing me and won't accept my money?

I use Facebook a tremendous amount. I have almost 600 friends and read every post by every friend. Since Facebook has made changes recently this is impossible. Are they trying to end my addiction? I don't have these friends to show how popular I am. I am interested in everything every one of my friends says. Maybe Facebook is just a popularity contest as some have said over the years.

Your thoughts, please

eBay having a 2-day 50% off Sale

2010-02-09T04:06:00Z

Click Here for all the details

eBay announces fixed price sale for store owners until new rates take over

2010-02-01T22:58:00Z

eBay announced a sale on fixed-price format for store owners today starting tomorrow, February 2 and ending March 29.

Store owners will be able to list items in fixed price format for just 10¢. The new rates taking effect on March 30 will have fixed price rates of 3¢ to 20¢ depending on what store subscription you have.

This is a great time to try out the fixed-price format, especially if you are not planning on upgrading your store to a Premium or Anchor store.

Click here to see today's announcement at eBay.com

eBay Spring 2010 Changes good for me

2010-01-28T01:15:00Z

The eBay Spring 2010 changes are good for me. They don't seem to be for the majority of sellers.

They are good for me for several reasons.

1) I have in the last year added more 30FP multi-variable listings. I have been able to list 24 shirts in one listing for 35 cents a month. That will now drop to 5 cents a month. The ability to list 24 different items(8 different sizes, 2 different colors) for only a nickel a month is great for me. I had plans to double the number of such listings soon. I will probably have approximately 500 FP30 listings soon. With the savings of 30 cents per listing that will be an automatic savings of $150 per month with the $49.95 store. Since all of my FP30 listings will be in the clothing category and sell for less than $25 there will be no increase in FVF's for me there.

2) I also have almost 3000 unique items in my store. My fee on those items will increase 2 cents each for a net increase of $60 per month. That $60 should easily be offset by the increase in sales I should see from these items being included in search. I have recently been raising the prices on those items and sales have been good. I have been raising the prices with the intention of keeping them high for a few months and then heavily discounting them to try to clear my stock out. With the listings showing in search I will probably wait longer to try to liquidate these items. I also have several hundred unique items that I have not listed. I will now begin to list those items again.

As I said at the first these changes will benefit me. A lot because of dumb luck. I see a lot of smaller sellers leaving eBay with the new changes. I think eBay's new motto to sellers should be "Grow or Go" because it seems that if you don't things are only going to get worse.

How are the changes going to affect you?

eBay Releases 2010 Spring Seller Update

2010-01-26T15:27:00Z

This is quite a change in the fee structure.
Click Here to read about it at eBay.com

eBay to announce changes January 26

2010-01-21T06:21:00Z

Ina Steiner at auctionbytes.com has reported that eBay will announce the first changes for 2010 next Tuesday the 26th.

Ina and several others think that eBay will probably lower insertion fees and raise final value fees. There is some speculation eBay will do away with eBay stores like they did in the UK a year ago.

The Dow Jones Newswire is reporting "Donahoe said the company has made significant progress in restructuring the way it charges sellers to list products on eBay's site. Front-end listing fees, which used to account for about 70% of seller fees roughly two years ago, now account for about 30%."What that really means is we have aligned our incentives with sellers. If they don't succeed in selling, we don't succeed in collecting fees," he said."

That has not been my experience. My listing fees are still much higher than my final value fees.

Sue Bailey is reporting at tamebay.com that "There’s also something revolutionary coming to the Clothes, Shoes and Accessories category"
No one seems to know what that is.This really interests me since I sell more in that category than any other.

My eBay pricing strategy for 2010 is working.

2010-01-10T04:53:00Z

I sell shirts on eBay. Most of them are used. Until all the changes were made I was selling 15-20 a day. This has now dropped down to about 5 a day, on average. since used items are getting more and more difficult to sell on eBay I decided a couple of months to price them at the lowest possible price I could just to move them out.

I priced most of the t-shirts at $4.99 each with free US shipping. This has been a complete disaster. Very few sold at that price. I did get a bunch of best offers at $1 and $1.50. They were offering me $1 and $1.50 for a shirt with FREE shipping. I may be crazy but I ain't stupid. I would be better off just to send the fools a couple of bucks and keep the shirt.

A couple of weeks ago I started raising the prices on my shirts. Most t-shirts are being raised to $9.99 with free US shipping. This is working pretty good. A couple have sold at that price and one even sold internationally at that price with $11.95 added for international shipping. Today I had one international buyer offer me $6.50 for a shirt I had at $9.99. I accepted because the International shipping charge was $12.95. I had another (US)buyer today offer me $7.99 for a shirt I had listed at $9.99 with free shipping. I accepted. I ended up getting $3 more for a shirt than I had it offered 30 days ago.

As I was writing this another offer of $5 came in on one of the shirts I had raised to $9.99 from $4.99. I did not accept but made a counteroffer of $6.99 reminding the buyer that this included 1st Class mail shipping.

Needless to say, I will be busy for the next few weeks raising the prices on all of the shirts that I have not already raised the price on.

#56 Top Rated Seller Tip-A work around for the latest eBay fiasco

2010-01-08T21:48:00Z

In the last few months eBay has changed the way you report non-paying buyers. They have made it easier but have taken away two features I have always found necessary.

Used to, after you had filed and received credit for your lisitng fees you were given the option to re list the item and the option to add the buyer to your blocked buyer list. These options are not given any more. I can understand why eBay doesn't want you to block a buyer but wouldn't it be in their best interest to allow you to re-list the item?

There are 2 ways to re-list an item. One is to go to your sold items and scroll until you find the item. It will look like this in the list.

After you re list the item it will look like this.

The second way is to go to the resolution center. I was unable to find a link to this anywhere on the eBay site but had it bookmarked. You can access it by going to resolution center.ebay.com/ From this location you can find the items you wish to re list and the usernames of the buyers you wish to block. This is the only location I could find a record of these buyers. There may be more ways to access this info that I haven't found. If you know of another way please detail in the comments section

Is eBay slow?

2010-01-06T21:54:00Z

I got this e-mail from eBay yesterday:

Except for one 30 day period I have been a Top-Rated Seller since the program started.

Be aware of tomorrow's postal rate increase

2010-01-03T21:51:00Z

The USPS is having a rate increase effective tomorrow. (January 4, 2010)

This increase hasn't received much publicity because 1st Class mail rates are staying the same.

The rate increases are in the Priority Mail and Express Mail classes. The biggest change is that all priority mail will now be charged according to zones.

Click Here to see the new rates

eBay having a 75% off sale for selected sellers

2009-12-31T18:43:00Z

eBay is having a 75% off auction style insertion fees sale for selected sellers.

The promotion runs December 30-January 3.

How do you know if you are one of the chosen ones? You should have received an e-mail telling you so.

For complete details CLICK HERE

eBay: On Location first location & date is announced

2009-12-30T01:36:00Z

eBay: On Location will kick off in Atlanta at the Omni Hotel on March 19-20, 2010, and will travel to additional cities, including San Jose, Calif., in time to celebrate eBay's 15th anniversary in August 2010.

eBay: On Location is a series of local events across the U.S. that will provide entrepreneurial eBay sellers with powerful tips, tools and guidance to increase selling efficiency and improve selling success.

There is a sign-up page to get additional locations as they are announced.

CLICK HERE to access that page

eBay extends 5¢ listing fees in media categories until March 30, 2010

2009-12-21T19:48:00Z

CLICK HERE for all the details

How eBay can get their traffic back

2009-12-17T21:53:00Z

Yesterday in a post I explained why ebay's traffic is down while amazon's is up. Today I will tell you how eBay can get their traffic back.

Effective January 1 eBay should make all listings free with free photo hosting. John Donahoe keeps saying the seller must have some "skin in the game". Sellers have a lot more skin in the game than eBay does. When a seller goes out and sources a product, prepares it for listing and goes to the trouble to list it on the site they have a lot of skin in the game.

In return for no listing fees eBay should have the right to monetize the listing in any way they see fit. This could be with affiliate ads, banner ads, AdSense ads, etc. It will be theirs to do with as they see fit.

The FVF should remain the same but should apply to the total price. (sale price + S & H)

All items listed on the site should be available in search. Search would take into account total price.

The feedback system should be scrapped and a new system should be devised where the total number of transactions is prominent. There should be a system where a buyer can contact eBay with a problem only after contacting the seller first. The number of times a buyer has to contact eBay would be displayed on the listing. Buyers would be allowed only a certain number of these calls to eBay. This number would be a percentage of how many transactions the buyer had participated in. ebay would have to step up to the plate and have highly trained personnel to handle all buyer complaints

There should only be one account allowed per household. Anyone with more than one account would have 30 days to pick the account they wanted to keep. Any account that has not been used in the last 60 days should be given 30 days to confirm that the account holder would like to keep it, otherwise that name would be come available. This would give a true accounting of exactly how may users there actually are on eBay. In addition, all stores should be closed.

eBay should function as a venue only. They claim this now when it is in their best interests. Other times they seem to think they own every item that is for sale on the site.

eBay should realize that the only customers they have are sellers. No sellers. No eBay.

A seller or former seller should be appointed to the board. Would be a good idea to allow the sellers to nominate and elect the seller they wanted to represent them on the board. John Lawson of ColderIce.com amd Skip McGrath of skipmcgrath.com are just 2 that comes to mind that would do a great job of representing the sellers on the board.

I have many more ideas but eBay is not listening so I will quit wasting my time and yours

Good Day!

Why Amazon traffic is up and eBay traffic is down

2009-12-16T22:31:00Z

Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes.com is reporting "Unique visitors to eBay dropped in 7.72% in November 2009 compared to November 2008, while Amazon.com's unique visitors rose 5.57% for the same time period."

I have read dozens of theories about why this is happening. The answer is simple, as most answers are.

Since day one Jeff Bezos has had a clear vision about where he wants Amazon to be. He has always said he wants Amazon.com to be the most customer-centric site on the internet and a place where you can buy everything. Amazon.com started out as a bookstore and has constantly added to it's catalog of items to buy since it's founding. Their traffic is up because every day there is more there to buy. The more you have available for sale the more people will look. It is what made Wal-Mart the world's largest retailer. People don't shop at Wal-mart just for low prices. Their prices are not always the lowest. People keep flocking to Wal-Mart because every time they go there they can find things to buy they couldn't find before. This is the same reason people keep going to Amazon.com. They know they can find almost everything there and if they don't find what they are looking for there will be plenty of new items they can buy.

eBay on the other hand built a huge traffic base because of the same reason. There were unique items being added to the site every day. You could buy almost anything on eBay. That was then. Now eBay is a pretty good place to buy new, refurbished, & out of season items but if you are hunting something unique you are about out of luck. It seems that the people in charge of eBay have no vision. Every quarter we hear they want to be something else. Last time I heard they wanted to be the Costco of the web. That is ok if you don't want a lot of visitors.
Go to your local Costco and count the number of cars in the parking lot. Go to your local Wal-Mart and count the number of cars in the lot.
$5 will get you $10 that the number of cars at Wal-Mart is at least double the number at Costco.

Why can you not find the unique items at eBay? A couple of years ago the new CEO decided eBay was too much like a flea market and he wanted to change it. He has done a tremendous job in that respect. It is no longer like a flea market. What John Donahoe's MBA probably didn't tell him is what makes flea markets successful. He has probably never spent much time in a flea market. If he has it was probably a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. What makes flea markets great is that most of the sellers do most of the buying. This is mostly done before the doors open to the general public. I have known people that rented booths at flea markets just so they could get in early to get the good buys. Flea markets exchange a lot of cash, mostly between the insiders. eBay made out like a bandit when it was like a flea market because items were sold over and over and they received fees every time this happened. When eBay decided they didn't want to be a flea market any more they succeeded in running a lot of the flea-market type sellers off. These were also some of the biggest buyers. This in itself would have been bad enough but what they didn't seem to realize is that every one of these "flea market" sellers had dozens of relatives and friends that also bought on eBay because they had heard about it from these seller/buyers. Word of mouth is what built eBay and word of mouth is tearing it down. They can do all the advertising, giveaways, etc they want. All this does is waste money, which they seem to have an unlimited supply of. Word of mouth has always been king

Tomorrow: What eBay should do to get back in the game

I am getting free traffic to my eBay store from Woot.com

2009-12-15T19:41:00Z

Yes, I am getting free traffic to my eBay store from Woot.com. Here is a screen shot from my eBay store traffic reports showing referring domains:

As you can see woot.com is my sixth highest referrer. It is ahead of yahoo, facebook and bing.
19 referrals is not a lot but you must consider this was for only 14 days. I know how it was done and it took very little effort. I will work on this for the next week and report back on the progress of raising the number of referrals.
If you are good I might tell you how to get this traffic

Amazon.com announces Kindle iPhone App now available and it's free

2009-12-14T15:34:00Z

This was announced earlier today:

"Kindle for iPhone App Now Available From App Store In More Than 60 CountriesCustomers around the world can now synchronize their reading between Kindle, their computer and their iPhone or iPod touch and never lose their placeSEATTLE, Dec 14, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that Kindle for iPhone App for iPhone and iPod touch is now available from the Apple App Store in more than 60 additional countries. The Kindle for iPhone App features Amazon's Whispersync technology that saves and synchronizes a customer's bookmarks across their Kindle devices and Kindle cross-platform applications, which include Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch, Kindle for PC, and in the coming months, Kindle for Mac and Kindle for Blackberry. Kindle customers can read a few pages on their Kindle, a few more pages on their Kindle-compatible device such as an iPhone and never lose their place.

"We are excited to make the Kindle for iPhone App available to iPhone and iPod touch users in more than 60 countries, allowing them to access the vast selection of the most popular books, all available wirelessly from the Kindle Store," said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. "The Kindle for iPhone App is the perfect companion for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX, and a great way for customers around the world to download and read books even if they don't yet have a Kindle."

With Kindle for iPhone customers in over 60 countries can:

Purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store.
Read the beginning of books for free before they buy.
Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read.
Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon's servers for free.
Choose from six different font sizes and adjust words per line.
Add and view notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX.
Read books in full color including children's books, cookbooks, travel books, textbooks and graphic novels.

The Kindle App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/.