Clint Herman’s eBay and Internet Marketing Blog

One thing I should tell you is that you not use your own handwriting, if you can avoid it. Writing addresses on boxes with a pen can be considered the work of an armature, so you should print your own labels instead. Here’s what should you put on them.

The buyer’s address: This is pretty obvious, but you need to make sure you are using the full address, including the country and zip or postal code. Make sure you spell your buyer’s name correctly, too. It’s always nice to have your name spelled right.

The eBay item number: Put this somewhere under the address and try to make it small enough so that it doesn’t overpower the address. Use this format: “Item number: 874403276882″. This will make it easy for your buyer to find the eBay auction again if they need to look at it for any reason.

Your logo: If you have gone through the trouble of creating a logo, then use it. Putting it on the shipping box looks professional and can help your buyers identify what it is that has arrived. A good logo can really add class to the whole package and it will help build recognition for your business.

Your address: It’s worth putting your own address on the box in case the item can’t be delivered and needs to be returned to you. A good to put this is right under your logo, as it reinforces the impression that you’re a real business.

Stamps: If you’re selling quite a bit on eBay, you should consider buying a postage meter. Using a postage meter looks professional, much better than sticking a bunch of stamps everywhere. This can also save you from having to weigh your items at the post office and buying stamps there.

Add the Phrase “eBay Items”?

Some sellers like to add the phrase “eBay items” or something similar on their shipping boxes, while other sellers feel this is unsafe because they think this could cause their shipments to get stolen. You can make the decision as to whether or not you do this. Just know that adding this phrase can help some of your customers identify your packages,  especially if they get tons of packages.

What to Add Inside the Box?

It might be worth printing the eBay’s confirmation of payment page and putting it in an envelope inside the package. You may want to also include a printed page featuring your logo, your website address and a message like “Thank you for your order. Please contact me if there are any problems. [Your name].” You can include any specials you are having on this page too. Always remember: the more they like what they get, the more likely they are to come back and order again from you in the future.

God bless,
Clint

There’s a good chance you’ve already taken a look at your competitors’ auctions, but what you might not have realized is just how much you can learn as long as you know what you’re looking for.

To begin with, you really shouldn’t waste your time looking at listings that are still running because you don’t know what’s going to happen with them. Instead, use the advanced search form and search the completed listings for auctions that sold.

Simply go to the advanced search form, type in the appropriate keywords, check the “Completed listings only” checkbox and set the minimum number of bids to 1. Also, it’s probably best to set it to sort order by at the bottom of the form to “Price: highest first”.

This will show you auctions that are in competition with yours that have recently ended, starting with the ones that sold for the most. Go through and take a look, ignoring any search results with prices in red because they didn’t sell. Pay special attention to the following points:

Titles. What information are the other sellers putting in their titles and what are they leaving out? If your titles are very different then it might be time to see if you can make improvements.

Descriptions. You’ll probably notice that the successful sellers haven’t just copied text from a company website or from an Amazon.com review. They’ve gone through the trouble of writing a little about the item and about themselves. Learn from their example.

Pictures. I can almost guarantee you that the top selling auctions will have very nice pictures which are good enough to let eBayers see what they’re getting. With items of any significant cost, you’ll probably find more than one picture, each from a different angle.

Style. Is it written conversationally or in a businesslike tone? The way you should write depends on your target market and these people seem to like what the top sellers wrote. After all, their items sold.

Time. It’s might seem insignificant to ignore this as a factor, but pay attention to when the top selling items’ auctions began and ended and how long they lasted. This might give you some clues about the best way to attract buyers who will bid your item up Then you can schedule your items accordingly.

Price. If your competitors are selling using Buy it Now, check to see what the maximum price is that they’ve managed to sell for recently and consider setting your own Buy it Now price slightly below that.

Shipping. Search the listings to find the “sweet spot” for shipping. If you can figure out a way to get your shipping costs lower than the highest sellers then this might be a great opportunity to differentiate yourself in the market. You might be surprised at how much of an impact a small difference in shipping make.

Once you’ve done your research and you find out what works, you can start to emulate your competitors. Of course don’t just copy them completely. Instead, structure your auctions in a similar manner and make sure they include the same information.

God bless,
Clint

As you move away from being a novice eBay seller, you might decide to start using fixed price auctions so you can budget better. It can be more reassuring to know that either you will make a small profit instead of having to wait to see whether it makes a profit or a loss in an auction. However, you need be aware that there are times when you probably shouldn’t use ‘Buy it Now’.

In a Holiday Season.

The market goes absolutely crazy just before the holidays and that’s why you shouldn’t list items using Buy It Now at this time. Do you want to wake up one morning and find that all your items have sold and that the people who bought them have relisted them with a higher starting price than what they paid you? Of course you don’t. I would recommend not listing anything in a fixed auction format from December 1st on, unless you have a lot of accumulated stock that you want to get rid of for low prices.

When an Item is In Demand.

If an item is selling within a few hours each time you list it using Buy It Now then you ought to consider using a normal auction format instead. Chances are that the final price you will get when using a regular auction will be higher than whatever you’re charging using a But It Now.

When You Have the Only Item on the Market.

If you have a hard-to-find item that very few others are currently selling, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use Buy it Now. You’ll be surprised just how high buyers will bid on things that are truly rare and how upset they’ll be if someone snatches it away from them using Buy It Now. It’s only fair to give everyone a chance to pay you more and more money, isn’t it?

If Your Item Doesn’t Sell.

If you have to relist your item over and over because it keeps failing to sell then it might be time to give up on listing it in the fixed price format. Using a Buy It Now over and over again will bleed you dry, so remember that Buy It Now only works for things that are in high demand. You might end up selling the item for a slightly lower price than you wanted, but at least the item sells.

It’s been a statistic on eBay for a long time: buyers really like pictures. The more pictures you have, the more likely they will buy from you, decreasing the chances of them buying from your competitor. In fact, there are plenty of buyers who will leave your auction within 5 seconds of arriving if they don’t find a picture there waiting for the, not to mention that your auction is far less likely to even get clicked on in eBay’s search results.

A little extra work on your photography can massively pay off, especially if you’re working on slim profit margins. But why is it so effective? Well, here are 3 reasons.

1) It shows a buyer is serious. Sellers who take the time to take good pictures are surely more likely to provide good customer service, and buyers know this, at least on a subconscious level. If a seller doesn’t even bother to take a photo and upload it to eBay then is he going to pack the item properly or mail it on time?

2) It makes eBayers better trust sellers. Your browsers will trust you more that you actually have the item you listed if you post your own photo of it. It also reassures your browsers that your item isn’t a beat up broken piece of garbage.

3) It makes auctions stand out. When your picture is displayed on the eBay search results screen, people can see the item right there instead of having to read your title and description. Allowing eBayers to work visually is very powerful and they are more likely not to pass over a search result with a picture.

So if you want the benefits that pictures can bring to your eBay auctions then what should you do? Here are a few simple tips to make your pictures better.

1) Bombard eBayers with images. eBay might want you to pay for the privilege of adding more than one picture to an auction, but if you have your own web hosting then you can do it for free. Just take as many pictures as you want, upload them to your host and then add them to the auction using HTML.

If you do not know how to do this then know that it’s very simple. All you have to do is perform a quick search on Google or check on eBay’s help pages and you will find all the information you need.

2) Improve picture quality. Get a good camera and pay attention to technique and composition when you take the photos. Don’t just throw your item anywhere and take the pictures. If you’re not sure of yourself when it comes to photography, an empty, lightly colored table against a white or nearly-white wall is always a good place to use.

3) Use the best pictures you can. If you have one, use an image-editing program to touch up your pictures. Don’t have one? There are plenty of choices. Do a search online and you will find plenty of choices, and a lot of them will be free. Adjust things like brightness and contrast to make sure your browsers get the best view of your items.

In Christ,
Clint

One day, for whatever reason, you might decide you want to end one of your auctions early. Before you do, though, you should carefully consider the ramifications of doing so because cancelling auctions can upset eBayers and upsets eBay, and there might be another way to get the result you are looking for. You will also still get charged the Insertion Fee, so keep that in mind.

I Want to Change my Listing.

If you just want to revise your listing, you usually won’t have to end it. you can revise almost any listing that has more than 12 hours remaining and hasn’t received any bids. You can remove the Buy it Now price, remove the reserve price, change the duration of the listing or add listing upgrades.

If the listing already has at least one bid, then you can still add upgrades or make a change to the description. You can even add more pictures too, if you want to. Once the listing gets into its last 12 hours without a bid, what you can do becomes far more limited. You can only really make a change to the description in this case. And when the auction is in the last 12 hours and you have a bid, then you can’t even change the description.

By the way, it’s a very bad idea to cancel a listing and ask your bidders to bid on another listing for the same item instead. Chances are they’ll be annoyed with you and probably won’t bother.

The Item is No Longer for Sale.

Perhaps you sold the item to someone else, you lost it or it got broken. Whatever happened, if you no longer have the item to sell, you should remove your listing. In fact, this is just about the only situation when eBay allows you to do this.

However, you need to make sure you remove the listing quickly because if you leave it to the last 12 hours, eBay will refuse to let you remove it, no matter what your reason for wanting to remove it is. This might seem like cruel and unusual punishment, but this rule is there to stop people from backing out in the last few hours just because they want to get a better price.

So How Do I End My Listing Early?

You can do it by going to this page: http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?EndingMyAuction&guest=1 and simply type in the item number and hit the Continue button.

Be very careful at this point. The option you almost certainly want to choose is ‘Cancel bids and end listing early’ and not ‘Sell item to high bidder and end listing early’. You’ll be asked to choose a reason why you ended the listing and then your item will be cancelled. Any bidders you have will be emailed at this point to let them know what happened.

Remember that ending a listing early because it looked like it wasn’t going to get a good price is against the rules, and eBay could come after you and get upset.

In Christ,
Clint Herman

Here’s a fun post for you…

eBay can be a very odd place, given that you can sell almost anything you want. Here is a list of some very strange auctions that have been recently listed.

1) TV part: Producers of the TV show Ally McBeal once used eBay to auction off a walk-on part on the show.

2) Wedding dress: Nothing usually strange about selling a wedding dress, but the seller of this one was auctioning his ex-wife’s dress. He modeled it and added a long piece of writing about his ex-wife in the description. It sold for £3,850.

3) Girlfriends: Some girls actually auctioned their services as “imaginary girlfriends”, who would send the winning bidder pictures of themselves, love letters etc, which the winner could then use to pretend they had a girlfriend.

4) Virginity: An 18-year-old British girl sold her virginity on eBay, but fortunately it was bought by a kind businessman who agreed to give her the money without actually wanting anything in return.

5) Toenail clippings: If you can believe this, a girl sold her toenail clippings on, one clipping from each toe. She got a $1 for the set of 10. What a bargain for the sense of satisfaction the buyer received from winning the auction.

6) Britney Spears’ gum: Yup. Someone picked up some gum chewed by Britney Spears’ at a London hotel and came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to sell it on eBay. Oddly enough, the  seller was right and raked in $263 for it!

7) Fighter jet: A state brokerage in Virginia sold a U.S. Navy F/A-18A Hornet jet fighter for just over a million bucks. However, it was in pieces and unusable, but the seller offered to put it back together and make it ready to fly for the low price of $9 million.

8 ) Virgin Mary sandwich: A woman listed a grilled cheese sandwich that she claimed the Virgin Mary had appeared to her on, and if you can believe it, the sandwich sold for $28,000. All I can say is wow!

9) Kidney: One man tried to sell his kidney on eBay. I guess it’s okay because you only need one, right? Unfortunately it’s illegal to buy or sell human organs. Very imaginative though.

10) A ghost: Can you believe it? Not only was it a ghost, but it was a ghost in a jar. Hummm… The ghost was apparently terrorizing a man and so he decided to capture it and sell it on eBay to someone who might be able to give it a better home. Maybe he should write up an instructional ebook on how to capture a ghost in a jar and sell that on eBay.

All you need to do is spend a little time online and you will find all kinds of people trying to sell you all kinds of information about eBay ‘secrets’, and the cost can be astronomical. Seriously, I just checked out a site that was selling an eBay-related program for just shy of $1,500.

Here’s a sample of the types of claim you will find out there you should be careful of: “Along with over 400,000 other eBay sellers I make a living on eBay. I go days without needing to speak to a customer, even though I have a customers all over the world. My business runs virtually on autopilot with only spare time effort on my part.”

You too can pay for such valuable tips as: “Simply write a list of questions other people would pay to get the answers to, give that list to a friend and have him call you on the phone and ask you those questions. Then record the call, have the recording transcribed and edit the transcription! And ta-da, you just created a valuable ebook and you did it quickly with little effort.” And tons of ebooks have been created this way, or even with less effort.

So what do books like this contain?

A lot of them are of little to no value. Don’t get caught up by the slick sales letters and all the hype about secret sales strategies. Most of these ‘you can’t do without this’ strategies boil down to the same thing. Follow the advice and you’ll spend a ton of time writing long sales copy or other tasks so you can sell crappy ebooks to the naive on eBay or by funneling eBayers to a website. Now don’t give me wrong. I’m a fan of ebooks, and there are really good ones out there and there are a lot of people making good money with ebooks at the center of what they do. However, I’m for a realistic view of learning and running an ebook-based business.

A big theory out there is that these ebooks will sell themselves and you’ll only have to put minimal effort into it. However, the reality is that trying to sell ebooks on eBay or anywhere else is not easy and there is a lot of competition. I can’t say the market is totally saturated but it’s not the same as it was even a couple years ago. It’s not as easy as a lot of people say it is.

So remember to be careful when researching for information, especially when you plan on shelling out your hard-earned money to buy. Also remember that, if given enough time, you can find a lot of the information you’re looking for free.

In Christ,
Clint

A template is like a web page that you see many sellers using on their auctions, filled with design elements like borders around the edge and different fonts. Most new sellers on eBay don’t bother using templates and you might not have either. Generally a descriptive listing and a good picture will do the job just fine.

However, if you want to add a punch to your auctions and make a great impression on your auction visitors then it’s a good idea to have a standout template. Here are some tips on what to do and not to do.

1) Choose an appropriate template. The most important part of choosing your template is the style you select in eBay’s listing designer or the equivalent in whatever listing software or web pages you use. You probably should use third-party software or template pages instead because eBay’s designs can be somewhat bland.

Anyway, the different template designs will usually be themed under categories like ‘Tools’, ‘Toys’ or ‘Computers’. So make sure you choose an appropriate category for whatever you’re selling. Those flowers you see on the webpage might be pretty but they have nothing to do with tools or pet supplies.

2) Put the photo at the top. Remember that the picture of what you’re selling is far more important than the description. Put your best picture at the top of the description area, add the text description below and then add any extra pictures you have. A good photo of your item is the first thing your eBay visitors want to see when they visit your auction so why not put it at the top?

3) Add your logo. Although not necessary to have, a well-designed logo will give your auction a professional touch, especially if the look and color scheme fit in with the rest of your template. A logo will also go a long way toward branding you in the minds of the people have seen visited your auctions before. So when you are ready for this then don’t skimp. If you can’t do it yourself then pay a designer to create your logo.

4) Don’t be afraid to use large fonts. It’s often the right thing to do to use different sized fonts. If you have something important to say then say it in a bigger font, headline-style so it will stand out. Just don’t get too carried away. (:

5) Learn a little HTML. It might be a little intimidating, but there are plenty of resources out there about learning HTML, and a little goes a long way. You’ll find all sorts of ways to put your auction in high gear once you know what you’re doing. Believe me, there are all kinds of things you can do to make your auction stand out and look professional.

6) Preview your listing. Check your work! Remember to click that preview listing button when you are done so you can what everything will look like when it goes live. This is important. I’ve caught many mistakes this way, and I’m sure you will too.

God bless,
Clint

You need to remember that eBay is a marketplace and there will always be slimy eBayers lurking around trying to rip other eBayers off. The trouble is that these people can be a hard to spot online. Below are ten tips to help you stay a step ahead of the rip-off merchants.

1. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is: This is very practical advice related to more than just what you do online, but it especially good advice for eBay. If you come across an item that seems too cheap then it’s probably priced this way for a reason. You might have just found a scam or the item might just be in bad shape. Thoroughly investigate the item before you buy it.

2. Know the value of what you are looking to purchase: This relates to the 1st tip. There are eBayers who regularly bid items up to a price that is so high that they might as well have gone out and bought the item brand new. Check completed eBay auctions to get a good idea of a good price to pay and check off eBay to find what a similar item is selling for new.

3. Limit your bidding to “real” things: eBay has plenty of sellers who are trying to pawn all sorts of schemes, scams and strange things. The chances of getting cheated on these types of auctions are so high that it’s not really worth it.

4. Don’t make a deal outside eBay: Occasionally people will ask you to send them money outside eBay, to avoid the eBay fees and/or PayPal fees charged sellers. If you send money this way then you are taking a risk because your transaction will be entirely insecure.

5. Be cautious where you send payment: People hack into others’ eBayer accounts, and when they do, they will ask you to send your payment to an address that is not eBay confirmed, which means is doesn’t belong to that account. If you send your payment under these circumstances then you might not receive what you paid for.

6. Look out for sellers who suddenly change what they sell: Sellers can look like they’ve made lots of transactions, when really they’ve never sold anything of worth. If they suddenly start selling $1,000 flat screen televisions, take note because there is a chance the eBay seller is planning to run off with the cash.

7. Shill bidding: If an eBayer who doesn’t seem to have bought anything before is constantly outbidding you on a certain item, be suspicious. This person might be a seller who is “shill bidding”, which means he is bidding on his own item to force up price.

8. Don’t use the seller’s escrow service: If an escrow service is recommended to you by a an eBay seller, it is possible that is owned and run by that person. If this is the case, the seller just might keep your cash and never send you what you bought.

9. Pay online: If you pay electronically, you greatly increase your chances of recovering any losses. Pay using a credit card via PayPal, for example, instead of sending out a check or a money order. These low-tech payment methods can not be easily tracked.

10. Buy from sellers who have a good reputation: Every eBay seller is rated via eBay’s feedback system. It’s very easy to check this, as the overall feedback appears next to the eBayers name. Clicking this link can give you more detail on the seller’s past transactions. The higher the seller rating, the more you can trust them.

God bless,
Clint

Hey guys! Thanks for reading my blog.

Over the last few months I have tried to pack this blog full of good quality eBay related information, and I hope you have enjoyed. Rest assured, I will continue to do my best to keep providing you with information in the months to come.

I wanted to take a couple minutes to let you know of a new ebook package I have just released called “How to Get Started Selling on eBay”. I’ve put a lot of my time, sweat and tears into this and am proud that it is now “live”. The ebook is designed for those who have no experience selling on eBay or those with little experience.

I really focused on the basics, trying to spell out exactly what they need to get set up and selling on eBay quickly and easily. Besides the easy-to-follow content, I have packed the ebook with tons of screenshots to make learning as easy as possible. Besides the content and screenshots, I will be putting together a series of videos to work in conjunction with the ebook.  These videos will add tremendous value to this package, and I’m looking forward to getting them out.

Take a look at the site: http://www.beginnersauctionguide.com/

I also have an affiliate page set up for anybody who is interested in promoting this.  I’m paying out 50% for all sales you make. The price is set at $27 right now, but I do plan on raising the price to $47 once I have have added a few other things to the package. The link is available on the site.

In Christ,
Clint