What Is Your Reputation Really Worth On Ebay

Writen by Paul Duxbury

Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay – without it, you're nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make.

If you've ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands doesn't require any thought or fear – it feels just like buying from a shop.

A Bad Reputation Will Lose You Sales.

In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Who's going to want to do business with you when they've just read that you "took a month to deliver the item", or that you had "bad communication and sent a damaged item"? The answer is no-one.

Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page. You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again.

It's even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback – once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.

You Can't Just Open a New Account.

Besides eBay's rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a new account. You literally have to start all over again from scratch.

You won't be able to use all the different eBay features. Your existing customers won't be able to find you any more. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating. Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumours about you: it's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

A Good Reputation Will Get You Sales.

When a PowerSeller tells me something, I tend to believe them. They can be selling a pretty unlikely item, but if they guarantee it is what they say it is, then I trust them – they're not going to risk their reputation, after all. This is the power of a reputation: people know you want to keep it, and they know you'll go to almost any lengths to do so.

This is true even to the point that I would sooner buy something for £20 from a seller I know I can trust than for £15 from someone with average feedback. It's worth the extra money to feel like the seller knows what they're doing, has all their systems in place and will get me the item quickly and efficiently.

You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there's only way to get a good reputation: make sure you please your customers every time.

Paul is Head of Training for a major UK Charitable Organisation with a wealth of experience in personal development, management development, e-learning and operational management. In addition he owns PK eBooks (http://www.pk-ebooks.co.uk) two sites specifically aimed at those who want to successfully sell on eBay http://www.ebay-profits.co.uk and http://www.info-entrepreneurs.co.uk

Improve Your Ebay Auction Success By Using All Of The Free Product Sourcing Tools At Your Disposal

Writen by Chris Vendilli

Selling in-demand items on eBay is by far the most profitable choice you can make when doing your product sourcing. With so much competition on eBay, there's simply not room for error or choosing to sell anything less than popular.

The problem eBay sellers face however is that the state of the market is constantly evolving. Last months best-seller may be this month's total flop.

No matter how difficult or competitive selling on this auction giant may become, eBay will always try to make the process as painless as possible. Fortunately, eBay itself provides a number of tools that can help you identify the latest selling trends. This article will briefly explain these tools to you, show you how to access them, and evaluate their usefulness.

The first tool that eBay provides is "The Hot Items Report" (http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf) - In the words of eBay itself "Hot...Very Hot…Super Hot! Discover which categories and products are on fire—where bid to item ratios are high and demand is outpacing supply." This is certainly an invaluable resource that will help you keep a check on the current state of the eBay marketplace and stay on top!

Second up there is the "The eBay Pulse" (http://pulse.ebay.com) - This allows you to view the most popular searches, largest stores, most watched items and more. It's an extremely useful tool, but a word of warning – sometimes only the most unusual and intriguing items show up here, and not the ones that are in the highest demand. It may not always be a true reflection on what is really the most popular item(s) on eBay. To demonstrate this, on the day of writing several items featured in The Pulse were what you might call "get rich quick schemes," whilst another was someone offering to have your advert tattooed on their back for all to see!

Marketplace Research

(http://pages.ebay.com/marketplace_research/index.html) is a new service that allows you to analyze data on completed auction listings. Although the service does incur a monthly charge, it may be worth a look if you'd like in-depth data and statistics already collected for you. If you're familiar with eBay's advanced search features you may be able to accomplish something similar to Marketplace Research on your own.

The eBay Community (http://hub.ebay.com/community) is another useful section to the site if you're seeking out popular items. The chance to talk with other sellers, network, and discuss the latest trends may mean you can keep ahead of the pack. It's nice for a good old elbow-rubbing session with fellow eBay nuts too. eBay is such a humongous marketplace most sellers realize it's not a bad choice to share your success stories with potential competition, since you may pick up some tips for yourself.

Of course you can also simply keep an eye out yourself. Take a look at completed auction listings. Is the item you're thinking of selling doing well for other people? Is this a seasonal item? How many other sellers are in this niche?

With this wide range of tools at your disposal, you've got a ready-made resource to search for those hot items. I've got dollar signs in my eyes already!

Chris Vendilli Copyright © 2006

Chris Vendilli is the owner, founder, and CEO of The 3 Rivers Auctions Company. Chris has helped numerous people start successful online businesses mainly focusing on eBay and affiliate marketing. Chris is also an eBay Power Seller, indicating he has in depth knowledge of the way eBay works! If you're interested in getting more information regarding eBay tips, trends, strategies, & secrets please visit Chris's site using the link below:

http://www.3riversauctions.com

Drop Shipping Is Your Perfect Home Based Business Solution

Writen by Michael Nalbone

Drop Shipping Is Your Perfect Home Based Business Solution

Drop shipping is one of the greatest businesses to operate from home. With drop shipping you sell another company's products, use their warehouse and shipping facilities, and they provide you with the sales tools you need like product descriptions and images and more - free of charge!

Drop shipping is great for small businesses because you can start with literally nothing & gradually increase to higher levels of success. Drop shipping allows you to leverage other, much larger company's resources!

Any business owner who needs the an inexpensive & efficient means to market items online should look into drop shipping. Drop shipping allows you to sell almost any type of product you want with no warehouse & no inventory.

No inventory = low risk! You only purchase an item from the dropshipper after you've already made the sale! You never get stuck with a garage full of products that won't sell.

Drop shippers packages all of the products for you, they place your name on the return address of the package & then they ship it to your customer. You'll look like you're a multi-million dollar outfit to the customer!

In order to do business with a real wholesaler, some of them (not all) may require proof that you're in business & not just some consumer looking for great prices. So, you may need to file for a Resale Tax ID for your State. It's easy to do I filed my application online in just 10 minutes & even received a temporary certificate that I immediately printed out. I was literally in business within 10 minutes!

If you're SERIOUS about running a business you MUST have one! No ifs, ands, or buts. And, it's so easy to get one, there's no excuse not to.

If a wholesaler doesn't request a Resale Tax ID from you, they're a very small company or they're not real wholesalers, just middle-men.

When you find wholesale companies that drop ship many different types of products, everything from toys to electronics, and they don't request your Resale Tax ID, be aware that probably aren't a real wholesale company. Most legitimate wholesalers focus on a specific product type, like electronics or toys alone.

These middle-men companies just forward your order to the real wholesale company. You won't be able to compete on a level playing field with your competition if you do business with these guys. Chances are your competitors have Resale Tax IDs.

So be aware that you're dealing with a middle-man wholesaler who will have the real dropshipper dropship your products for you. Do yourself a favor & avoid dealing with the middlemen and get a Resale Tax ID. You'll save yourself a lot of money by be able to compete with the big-guns.

After your account is set up with the real wholesaler, you'll get a printed catalog and possibly a CD-Rom with product descriptions and images that you can use.

Middle-men usually don't provide these "bonuses". You just upload the image & description to your web site, decide on the price & wait for the orders to come rolling in!

Drop shipping will allow any person to run a successful & competitive business from home regardless of a lack of start-up funds.

Mike Nalbone is the creator of "The Wholesale Detective" http://www.nalbone.org/detective/ which is a complete resource for people seeking to utilize drop shipping to start or expand their own business.

How To Select Items To Use The Featured Auction Section Of Ebay

Writen by Donny Lowy

On eBay it is utterly simple to list an item in the featured auction section! If you are able to spend on substantial extra fee, you can get your auction featured. There are two price tags for two different kinds of auctions featured viz. for $99.95 you can have a regular auction featured on eBay. And for $19.95 you can have your auction featured in its special category. You will find the featured auction appearing at the top of its category. In the regular auction listing it shall appear in bold.

While you are opting for featured auction section of eBay you have to judge for yourself whether your item for auction is worth it or not ? For most items auction featured section does not work since when potential bidder is looking for something specific, they are least likely to browse through the featured sections. So you have to be very careful while selecting items to be in the featured auction section. Items that are supposed to be bought on impulse might get sold well in the featured sections. It is mostly seen that many people who visit the featured sections are actually browsing only to look for something to buy.

If an item of yours is not being identified with keywords or is really difficult to search for then the section for featured auction is best to sell your product as the visitor shall find the same on a listing with a huge number of auctions. Featured sections also prove to be good when the eBay users are new and are unable to search effectively with proper keywords. Even if you are selling a popular consumer item, featured sections help you to sell well.

Donny Lowy runs http://www.closeoutexplosion.com an online wholesale and closeout business that supplies eBay sellers, retailers, and flea market vendors.

Louis Vuitton Avoiding The Ebay Nightmare Fakes

Writen by Rufus Steele

Without a doubt, eBay was one of the cleverest on-line ideas that anyone has had so far. The idea of creating a site where you can bid on and buy items ranging from an eggcup through to a disused Boeing 747 or a Nuclear Missile Silo was pure genius.

Sadly though, whenever a good idea comes along, the seedier side of humanity is sure to be not that far behind, sliding along in it's wake leaving a gooey trail behind themselves.

So it is on Ebay. Current estimation holds that nigh on 37% of the worlds counterfeit and fake goods are sold daily on Ebay.

Having seen some of the listings I can fully believe it.

Especially where designer label goods are concerned.

Take a look at just about any page of Louis Vuitton items listed on Ebay and on average you'll find 95% of them on each page are fake.

So how can you avoid the easy to make mistake of buying a cheap quality fake LV?

Learn.

Learn as much as you can about the specific item you're interested in.

Don't go trawling ebay for ideas on what to buy and expect to be able to find a prize, hidden away deep in the listings. There are LV addicts who spend the best part of the day doing just that, trawling the auctions, checking and rechecking, looking for the bags that are being sold by owners with little knowledge, owners who are selling at a price away below what it should be. Then they'll "snipe" the auction in the last few seconds - right out from under your nose!

If you really want to buy a pre owned LV then your best bet would be to go to a consignment store and see if they can get hold of one for you. They'll have a constantly changing stock of second hand authentic items for you to choose from and you're fairly assured of it being genuine.

But if you really must buy your LV off eBay then try to use one of the approved LV sellers.

Who or what is an approved LV seller, you may well ask?

Well, there are two sets of LV sellers and buyers who have proven themselves, over a period of time as well as a set number of successful sales of authentic goods, and who have a distinction awarded by one of two "bodies".

The two bodies are MyPoupette and ALVA (Authentic Louis Vuitton Addicts).

A MyPoupette recommended seller is known as an MPRS (My Poupette Recommended Seller) and an ALVA recommended seller is known as an ALVA SS (ALVA Seller Select).

Both of these lists have a criteria that any seller MUST meet before being granted the "badge". That criteria requires a certain number of authentic only items to have been sold with supporting feedback and good trading practice before they can qualify.

Once they are awarded this distinction they are then allowed to use that title and badge in their auctions.

Now, although nothing in life is guaranteed, you can be much more assured and comfortable buying your used LV through one of these sellers.

Why?

Well, two reasons really.

Firstly, many of the resellers who have earned this level treat their selling and buying as a business. To sell a fake would result in their being stripped of their titles which could seriously affect their turnover! They only deal in authentic items and HATE fakes.

Secondly, both of the bodies who issue these distinctions have an interest and a duty in ensuring that their members behave and sell properly.

Should a buyer have an issue with one of these sellers they can take their complaint to either MyPoupette or ALVA and ask that they intervene. Although neither of these bodies are legally responsible for your sales and purchases with their listed resellers, they do take any complaint seriously and will investigate and assist where possible.

On past record, when you deal with a seller with either of these titles you are going to have a good time!

And that means you avoid buying a fake LV on Ebay!

Copyright:: Rufus Steele 2005

Rufus Steele is the author and creator of the Louis Vuitton website, a site dedicated to all things Louis Vuitton