The reason is obvious: a dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.

But What If…

But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer. Here are a few common situations and how to handle them.

They say the item never arrived: Politely asks the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn’t arrived. If it still hasn’t arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. You should be bothered so much on how much it will costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?

The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.

They say the item doesn’t match the description: Resist the urge to email back with “yes it does, you just didn’t read the description properly”. Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

I’m sure you’re spotting a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.

You should always handle customers’ complaints before they complain to eBay – in fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.

Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let’s say you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week’s profit. It’s far better to look at it this way: if you don’t give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week’s profit, but you’ll probably lose a few weeks’ profit after that too. Now which option looks better?

Don’t bother with eBay clichés: There are plenty of eBay auction titles that say things like “Super rare camera wow look low price”. These are stupid things to put in your title, as no one is going to search for them.

Think like a buyer: If you were looking for your item, then what exactly would you type into that box?  If you think it’d help, try searching yourself to find someone else selling your item. What were the first things you thought of typing?

Think like other sellers: Keep an eye on which sellers are doing best with items like yours, and try to copy their title styles – if it works for them, it can work for you.

Be specific: You should be sure to write the item’s brand and specific model number in the title, as people will often search only for this information. Make sure that you also say exactly what the item is.

Here are a few examples of good titles. They’re real, and they were on eBay, successfully made their sellers money. So what made them good?

Example 1: “DELL PC P4 3.0 GHZ DESKTOP COMPUTER WIN XP 2 PRO”

If you know about computers, you’ll know instantly what this auction is selling. It has manufacturer (Dell) followed by a few technical specifications (P4 3.0 GHz is the processor speed). Notice also that the title includes the two words ‘desktop’ and ‘computer’, as the seller wants people looking for any of those words to see her auction.

Example 2:  “OASIS Don’t Believe the Truth CD Album (New)”

This auction for a CD is well formatted: it gives the artist name in capital letters, followed by the album name. It then manages to include the two key words ‘CD’ and ‘album’, as well as the word ‘new’ – that means that anyone searching for ‘new oasis cd’, ‘oasis new album’ and so on will find this auction.

Example 3: “1840 Penny Black stamp, certificate, four margins”

Here’s a slightly more obscure one, from the exciting world of stamp collecting. A penny black is one of the oldest and most famous stamps. It uses a few key words that collectors will consider important: ‘four margins’ indicates that the stamp has been cut out with some margins around it and so isn’t damaged, and ‘certificate’ tells you that the item has a certificate of authenticity – it’s a real penny black. Remember to use every bit of space to squeeze in as much important information as you can in the title.

Lie about an item: Say it works fine when it sometimes doesn’t work. Say it is in perfect condition when it has a scratch or two. Your customers will hate you!

Post whenever you feel like it: Make sure to leave your customers hanging around, wondering when their item is going to turn up. This makes sure they buy from someone else next time.

Let items end anytime: Few people will be around to care about your auction if it ends in the middle of the night. Why go to the trouble of working out whether auctions will end at a good time?

Don’t bother with email: Customers are just timewasters anyway. eBay businesses are supposed to run themselves! Never give informed responses to questions about your item.

Sell rubbish: Really, it’s just eBay. You can just sell any old tat from the market for a 200% profit. Let quality be someone else’s concern – I mean, really, what do they expect for that price?

Refuse to give discounts: You know what your items cost, you know what your profit margin is going to be, and you’re not going to negotiate. Remember that giving customers special deals might make them feel good and come back to you again.

Make your listings ugly: As many colours, flashing lights and animations as possible will really give those customers a headache. Write as much in CAPITALS!!!! as you can. Preferably big, red capitals. Be sure to use the fonts Impact and Comic Sans. For an extra special touch, see if you can figure out a way to add some music.

Don’t take photos: It’s such a trouble, after all. If buyers are picky enough to actually want to see items before they bid on them, then screw ‘em, that’s what I say.

Write short descriptions: Be as brief as possible, and use lots of mysterious abbreviations. This obviously makes you look very cool. You can even just write the title again in the description box. Think of the effort you’ll save!

Use reserve auctions: Now, this is a fairly controversial final choice, but it really is one of the best ways to scare away your customers. They’ll see ‘reserve not yet met’, and click that ‘back’ button before you know it. Luckily, they can always bid in a normal auction for the item somewhere else.

Now that you know the ten ways to kill your eBay business, how about we explore what to do if you want to do the opposite, and make a success of it? Which one do you choose, the easy way or the one that requires a bit of extra effort.  As the saying goes:   No pain, no gain!

Words:

Bid: telling eBay’s system the maximum price you are prepared to pay for an item.

Dutch: an auction where more than one of an item is available.

Feedback: positive or negative comments left about other users on eBay.

Mint: in perfect condition.

Non-paying bidder: a bidder who wins an auction but does not then go on to buy the item.

PayPal: an electronic payment method accepted by most sellers.

Rare: used and abused on eBay, now entirely meaningless.

Reserve: the minimum price the seller will accept for the item.

Shill bid: a fake bid placed by a seller trying to drive up their auction’s price.

Snail Mail: the post, which is obviously very slow compared to email.

Sniping: bidding at the last second to win the item before anyone else can outbid you.

Abbreviations:

AUD: Australian Dollar. Currency.

BIN: Buy it Now. A fixed price auction.

BNWT: Brand New With Tags. An item that has never been used and still has its original tags.

BW: Black and White. Used for films, photos etc.

CONUS: Continental United States. Generally used by sellers who don’t want to post things to Alaska or Hawaii.

EUR: Euro. Currency.

FC: First Class. Type of postage.

GBP: Great British Pounds. Currency.

HTF: Hard To Find. Not quite as abused as ‘rare’, but getting there.

NIB: New in Box. Never opened, still in its original box.

NR: No Reserve. An item where the seller has not set a reserve price.

OB: Original Box. An item that has its original box (but might have been opened).

PM: Priority Mail.

PP: Parcel Post.

SH: Shipping and Handling. The fees the buyer will pay you for postage.

USD: United States Dollars. Currency.

VGC: Very Good Condition. Not mint, but close.

The chances are that you’ll find more specific jargon related to whatever you’re selling, but it would be an impossible task to cover it all here. If you can’t figure one out from your knowledge of the subject, then type the term into a search engine, followed by the word ‘ebay’. The chances are that someone, somewhere will have seen fit to explain it.

While it’s good to be able to understand others’ jargon, avoid using it unless you really need to (for example, if you run out of space in an item’s title). Many people on eBay are not experienced buyers and you will lose them if you write a load of gobbledegook all over your auction.    :-)

What to Sell.

First off, you need to know what it is you’re going to sell: what’s your specialty? You’ll do far better on eBay if you become a great source for certain kind of products, as people who are interested in those products will come back to you again and again. You won’t get any loyalty or real reputation if you just sell rubbish at random.

When you think about what to sell, there are a few things to consider. The most important of these is to always sell what you know. If you try to sell something that you just don’t know anything about then you’ll never write a good description and sell it for a good price.

You might think you’re not especially interested in anything, but if you think about what kind of things you usually buy and which websites you go to most often, I’m sure you’ll discover some kind of interest. If all else fails mention it to your friends and family: they’ll almost certainly say “Oh, well why don’t you sell…”, and you’ll slap your forehead.

Out of the things you know enough about, you should then consider which things you could actually get for a goodenough price to resell, and how suitable they would be for posting. If you can think of something of that you’re knowledgeable about and it’s small and light enough for postage to be relatively cheap, then that’s great!

Don’t worry if you think the thing you’re selling is too obscure – it isn’t. There’s a market for almost everything on eBay, even things that wouldn’t sell once in a year if you stocked them in a shop. You’ll probably do even better if you fill a niche than if you sell something common.

Tax and Legal Matters.

If you earn enough money, you should be aware that you’re going to have to start paying tax – this won’t be done for you. If you decide to sell on eBay on a full-time basis, you should probably register as a business.

Prepare Yourself.

There are going to be ups and downs when you sell on eBay. Don’t pack it in if something goes a little wrong in your first few sales: the sellers who are successful on eBay are the ones who enjoy it, and stick at it whatever happens.

Anyone can sell on eBay, if they believe in themselves – and if you do decide it’s not for you, then the start-up costs are so low that you won’t really have lost anything.

Next time you’re on eBay, take a look at how many PowerSellers there are: you’ll find quite a few. Now consider that every single one of them must be making at least $1,000 per month, as that’s eBay’s requirement for becoming a PowerSeller.   Silver PowerSellers make at least $3,000 each month, while Gold PowerSellers make more than $10,000, and the Platinum level is $25,000. The top ranking is Titanium PowerSeller, and to qualify you must make at least $150,000 in sales every month!

The fact that these people exist gives you come idea of the income possibilities here. Most of them never set out to even set up a business on eBay – they simply started selling a few things, and then kept going. There are plenty of people whose full-time job is selling things on eBay, and some of them have been doing it for years now. Can you imagine that? Once they’ve bought the stock, everything else is pretty much pure profit for these people – they don’t need to pay for any business premises, staff, or anything else. There are multi-million pound businesses making less in actual profit than eBay PowerSellers do.

Even if you don’t want to quit your job and really go for it, you can still use eBay to make a significant second income. You can pack up orders during the week and take them down to the post office for delivery each Saturday. There are few other things you could be doing with your spare time that have anywhere near that kind of earning potential.

What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like: some PowerSellers are very old, or very young. Some live out in the middle of nowhere where selling on eBay is one of the few alternatives to farming or being very poor.  eBay tears down the barriers to earning that the real world constantly puts up.  There’s no job interview and no commuting involved – if you can post things, you can do it.

Put it this way: if you know where to get something reasonably cheaply that you could sell, then you can sell it on eBay – and since you can always get discounts for bulk at wholesale, that’s not exactly difficult. Buy a job lot of something in-demand cheaply, sell it on eBay, and you’re making money already, with no set-up costs.

If you want to dip your toe in the water before you commit to actually buying anything, then you can just sell things that you’ve got lying around in the house.  Search through that cupboard of stuff you never use, and you’ll probably find you’ve got a few hundred dollars’ worth of stuff lying around in there!  This is the power of eBay: there is always someone who wants what you’re selling, whatever it might be, and since they’ve come looking for you, you don’t even need to do anything to get them to buy it.

So you want to get started on eBay? Well, that’s great! There are only a few little things you need to learn to get started. Check out the articles in track2glory.com to get all the tips and tricks.  Feel free to share your experience as well by leaving supportive comments.

Once you have registered for FREE to become an eBay member, then you need to also register for a PayPal account.  Most  eBay members prefer to make and/or receive payment using PayPal.  So, if you don’t have a PayPal account, then it might affect your eBay business.

[ Brief Info: PayPal was founded in 1998 and taken over by eBay in 2002. PayPal is an online banking and money transferring service that is popular with many e-commerce businesses. Because of its ease of use, PayPal has become the preferred method of payment for a majority of online traders. Besides being compatible with buying and selling merchandise, it is also an effective way to give donations and send money to other users. Joining is free and takes little time to create an account.]

Now, follow these steps to get a PayPal account:

(1).             Open an internet browser, type ‘paypal.com’ and press ENTER.

(2).             Look for ‘SIGN UP’ button and click it.  You will then be directed to a page that looks like the one below.

(3).             Choose your ‘Country’ and select your preferred ‘Language’.

(4).             You are able to choose among 3 categories: PERSONAL, PREMIER or BUSINESS.  Select PREMIER as it is the suggested category to buy and shop online!

(5).             Fill in the relevant fields:

• Email address ( Note: You will be using the email address you keyed in  to log in to PayPal),
• Create your own password.
• Name and contact information and provide a valid email address. Without an email address, you cannot use eBay.

(4).             Cclick on ‘Agree and Create Account’.  Once you have completed the initial creation of your account, you will be prompted to confirm your email address in order to verify your identity and validate your account. Open your email and access the PayPal email that has been sent to your inbox. Click on the link within the email and you will be redirected to a confirmation page, indicating that your PayPal account is now active.

What you need to do now is to login to your eBay account, go to Account section and fill in the required information to LINK your eBay account with your PayPal account.

An extra note:  To sell on eBay, you need to fill out the Credit Card or Checking/Savings account information in your PayPal account in order to get it verified.  This is a form of insurance that eBay uses to prevent fraud. This prevents fraudsters from posing as buyers to sell nonexistent merchandise to their accomplices using stolen credit cards. eBay has taken great lengths to protect its buyers and sellers from fraud, which makes it one of the safest sites on the Internet.

I hope my explanation is comprehensive and easy to follow.  More importantly is for you to find that to register for a PayPal and eBay account is really EASY and SIMPLE process. Try it, it’s FREE and it’s FUN too!

eBay !? What on earth is eBay anyway? If you know nothing about eBay, this is pretty much how it works. If you ever have a dream to become a businessman or businesswoman, eBay is a great place to start.  With eBay, you can pretty much sell anything online, as long as it is legal in the eyes of the law.  You can start by having an item (either goods or services) to sell.  Next step is to decide on the price you want to sell the item.  Put it up for auction on your eBay site (normally for a period of 1, 3, 5 days etc.) and sit back and wait for someone to bid for the item.  You can be rest assured that if the price is right, it will get bids.   Amazingly, if they are a lot of people interested in your item, then the bidding price will go up and up and up… meaning a handsome profit for you!

In my on-going experience I find that eBay is simple to use. As long as you know very basic know-how in using computer and able to connect and surf the internet, you are ready to start your venture in eBay.  You don’t need to spend money to rent a place for your business premise and buying all the expensive office equipment and furniture, what you ever need is a PC and a connection to the internet.  So, let’s make the first step, the beginning of a great journey towards success.

A great place to check, to start to really learn the ropes, to have some fun, to keep it interesting, and to make some money is ebay.com.  Every single day, thousands of internet users sign up for eBay and become either buyers or sellers.

eBay is huge! And it’s growing every day.  It’s a vibrant community and if you just want to start out somewhere and get a feel for e-commerce with no risk – you are not required to pay a ton of money to check it out, its not complicated, its fairly simple and straight forward! You can learn all the basic things you need to know in a day or so if you are willing to check it out and play around… it’s a great starting point.

The very reason I say that it’s a good starting point is because you can get out there and sell a few things within 2 or 3 hours (depending on which country you live) of checking out eBay.com  for the very first time.  Just imagine, within few hours you can have an item (good or services) up for sale on the internet, have a worldwide internet audience seeing your product, and have all other ebay members/users from all countries around the world bidding on your item wanting to buy it.

Every day hundreds of millions of people shop on eBay.    In fact, eBay has recently announced that it currently has 84 million active users worldwide.   An eBay business is easy to start and does not take a lot of money to get up and running.   You can immediately start by selling (almost) ANYTHING!

eBay is visible in MANY countries.  In addition to its original U.S. website, it has established localized websites in many other countries, including the following:

Country/region	Website	Language	Launch date
Argentina	http://www.mercadolibre.com.ar/	Spanish	March 1999[13]
Australia	http://www.ebay.com.au/	English	October 1999[14]
Austria	http://www.ebay.at/	German	December 18, 2000[15]
Belgium	http://www.ebay.be/	Dutch, French	?
Canada	http://www.ebay.ca/	English, French	April 2000[16]
China (now defunct)	http://www.ebay.com.cn (site now redirects to eachnet.com)	Simplified Chinese	July 11, 2003
France	http://www.ebay.fr/	French	October 5, 2000[17][18]
Germany	http://www.ebay.de/	German	June 1999
Hong Kong	http://www.ebay.com.hk/	English, Traditional Chinese	December 21, 2003[19]
India	http://www.ebay.in/	English	March 25, 2005
Indonesia	http://id.ebay.com/	Bahasa Indonesia, English	?
Ireland	http://www.ebay.ie/	English	March 29, 2001[20]
Israel	http://www.ebay.co.il/	English	?
Italy	http://www.ebay.it/	Italian	January 15, 2001[21]
Japan	http://www.sekaimon.com/ (Joint venture with Yahoo! Japan)	Japanese	December 4, 2007
Malaysia	http://www.ebay.com.my/	English	December 1, 2004[22]
Mexico	http://ebay.com.mx/	Spanish	?
Netherlands	http://www.ebay.nl/	Dutch	?
New Zealand	http://www.ebay.co.nz	English	March 29, 2001[20]
Philippines	http://www.ebay.ph/	English	November 16, 2004[23]
Poland	http://www.ebay.pl/	Polish	April 22, 2005[24]
Singapore	http://www.ebay.com.sg/	English	October 24, 2001[25]
South Africa	http://www.ebay.co.za/	English	?
Spain	http://www.ebay.es/	Spanish	January 8, 2002[26]
Sweden	http://www.tradera.com/	Swedish	2005
Switzerland	http://www.ebay.ch/	German	March 29, 2001[20]
Taiwan	http://ruten.com.tw (joint venture with PCHome) [27]	Traditional Chinese	?
Thailand	http://www.ebay.co.th	Thai	?
Turkey	http://www.gittigidiyor.com/	Turkish	May 3, 2007
United Kingdom	http://www.ebay.co.uk/	English	October 1999[28]
United States	http://www.ebay.com/	English	September 2, 1995
Vietnam	http://www.ebay.vn/	Vietnamese, English	June 27, 2007[29]

So guys, are you ready to jump in the bandwagon? Or are you going to continuously do business the old ways?