ebay

Free Traffic to Your Auction Listing with eBay Blogs

Marketing Fan — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:06:56 +0200

A new addition to the blogging world is eBay with a new section on their website called eBay blogs. This new feature is great news for both budding businesses as well as established entrepreneurs who are looking to expand. Registered users can sign up and setup their own blog which are very easy to maintain without any special knowledge of technologies like HTML.

Blogs

The word blog comes from the combination of web and log and has become one of the latest crazes to hit internet. A blog is an online publishing tool to share your thoughts and opinions on the internet.

An eBay blog can be used for a variety of purposes like enhancing your eBay store or sharing personal experiences. If you frequently post good content on your blog, it will be picked up by search engines and hence act as a great tool to generate extra traffic to your auction listings for free.

Blog content

Blogs provide an easy and efficient way to interact with customers and many sellers instantly see the benefit of having a blog. Blogging can be fun and it can get quite addictive once you get the hang of it. Blogs can be used to provide updated information, details of your products or just about any information about your business that you would like to share. Just remember that buyers will visit your blog only if the content is interesting and useful to them. You could also write about products which are complimentary to the ones you sell. For example if you sell DVDs, you can write about the latest advances in DVD players and good models available in the market or if you are selling antiques, you can write a bit about the history of the products and the places where they are usually found. Good quality content will keep customers coming back for more as everyone likes to read from someone who has authority on the subject.

Remember to avoid too many advertisements about your products and too little useful content on your blog. The more useful and buyer friendly information you present, the more traffic you can expect from past and potential customers which may lead to more traffic to your auctions. Also understand the community values of eBay community.

Promotion

Promoting your blog is just as important as promoting your auction listing. There are a number of ways you can start promoting your blog and indirectly, your auction listings or eBay shop. Since every blog will have its own unique website address, you can submit this address to blog or website directories. You can also submit your blog content or articles to some of the major article directories. Make sure that all your email correspondence has a link to this website address.

Comments

A great way to get noticed and promote your blog is to comment on other related blogs. Your comments should be informative and meaningful and this could help to establish as an expert in your field, thus generating more traffic to your blog and auction listings. Avoid posting comments which have nothing to do with the blog as this is seen as blog spam or splog content.

Search Tags

Tags are keywords which are embedded in your content page and help identify concepts unique to the content you create. Search engines hunt for these tags in web pages and use them to return search results. Keywords could include the brand name; item and something unique about the product or about the content of your blog which will make it stand out from the others and increase your visibility in search results. So if you are selling DVDs, your relevant tags could include keywords like ‘DVD', ‘DVD Players', ‘Science Fiction', ‘Media' etc. This will ensure that anytime a buyer searches for any of these keywords, your blog will show up in the search results and could generate more traffic to the blog and in turn to your auction listings. Avoid tags which are irrelevant to your blog content or products as inappropriate tags amount to keyword spam and are not permitted and subject to removal.

There are also many auction tools available to boost your business on eBay. But blogs have their own distinct advantages. So if you don't yet have a blog get out there and get blogging.

eBay Affiliate tracking broken for 2+ weeks

Marketing Fan — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:56:36 +0200

eBay’s Affiliate tracking mechanism was broken April 7 and is still to be fixed on April 23 !

last message from April 18 states

ebay on April 18 wrote:

The eBay US team has been working to solve the tracking issue that began on Saturday April 7th.

A fix was implemented over the weekend and early data is pointing to an overall improvement.

Additional data is required to confirm that the fix is complete. We will update you as soon as we have confirmation that tracking is fully restored.

At that point, we will assess the full impact of the partial outage and calculate the make good.

This means they’ll just credit an arbitrary amount of money, based on your past performance… you could as well have referred that $80,000 sale and would not get money for it.

AuctionAds which was invented by ShoeMoney and is now run together with TLA is actually based on the CommissionJunction based AffiliateProgram of eBay – and they sent out a not so happy mail two day’s later

AuctionAds on April 20 wrote:

began on Saturday April 7. These issues affect revenue share and ACRU performance. The exact scope of the issue is not fully known by eBay. When the notification first went out eBay thought the fix was going to be forthcoming. We communicated with eBay and made the decision to wait to notify our users until a fix was completed and the lost revenue credited. Unfortunately the tracking issue still hasn’t been fixed, and it doesn’t appear that a fix will be in place shortly. As a result, the credit can not be determined until the problem is resolved.

We understand your frustration in this matter and while it is not a problem with AuctionAds we are extremely frustrated as well. We fully understand that receiving a bonus credit is never the same as knowing what your real stats are. [...]

Now, technical probs happen – shit happens anyday – but how broken can a system be, that a major corporation like eBay is not able to just FIX IT within a couple day’s time?

I mean, the worst thing that can happen is that the archived TERABYTES of clicks need to be migrated, but that wouldn’t take THEM from registering new commissions…

Having been in the software development and OLTP business for more a decade I REALLY do not understand what the eBay guys are messing around here… I feel it’s a big mess!

eBay Express

Marketing Fan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:51:09 +0200

eBay Express

eBay launched their new product eBay Express in spring - and it's pretty different to what we knew as eBay ... read about the differences, requirements, advantages and chances for you. Sellers have high expectations from eBay Express, eBay plans a launch of eBay Express in the UK and eBay developers will even get new features for eBay Express ... so time to look at this product!

eBay Express - the new face for eBay

eBay Express is the attempt of eBay to provide a online shopping experience that customers are already used from "traditional" e-commerce shopping sites. eBay Express was made for the busy consumer who wants new/used/hard-to-find-products and doesn't want to wait after bidding ends on an auction.

It is in a sense the same as a Buy it Now feature already available in eBay. In fact, the same listings eBay appear in eBay Express too. However, the seller has to meet certain criteria to get the products he list on eBay appear on Express. He/she also must not opt out from the option of getting his/her products listed in the new site.

They have a sleek new design at eBay Express, where buyers can make category wise search for products. Though eBay Express is mainly for new products, you can shop for antiques, used products,

A buyer can add different products to his or her shopping cart and pay for it on a single checkout process. To get eBay Express Buyers Protection, the shopper must pay using Paypal and through the Express site only.

eBay Express listings come from professional sellers. All of the rules, terms and conditions are same as that of eBay.com. The difference is that there is no bidding for auctions setup.

It's as simple as 1-2-3

Find the product(s) you want,
use your paypal account to pay different vendors in one click,
wait for the product to be shipped to you.

You can lodge complaints under the specific Buyer Protection Policy for eBay Express, if you get a defective product. I assume that this special protection is paid more attention to then the normal complaints from buyers.

Seller qualification for eBay Express

The seller does not have to do anything special to list his/her products in eBay. The main qualification criteria include a high positive public feedback (98%) with minimum 100 feedbacks from buyers or sellers. The merchant also has to accept PayPal payments and your account set to ship to unconfirmed addresses. eBay Express is currently available for US market only.

eBay Express Seller requirements

Unlike with original eBay auctions, eBay Express sellers need to provide a return policy. Publishing a photograph of the product, specifying postage charges and willingness to send the product to unconfirmed addresses in US are other requirements. If you have customers from international locations, they will have to purchase your products through eBay.com and not through eBay Express.

There is however no direct way to differentiate yourself from a bunch of sellers trying to sell products in your same category. Products are searchable on a variety of criteria.

Categorizing your product as detailed as possible is the best way for customers to find your products. It is also essential to build strong credentials as a reliable eBay power seller. In fact this qualification criterion is a blessing in disguise. If your products are listed in eBay Express, your potential customers instinctively know that the products come from reliable sources.

That means you are actually already a credible person the moment your product is listed in eBay Express.

eBay Seller Tools

Marketing Fan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:37:52 +0200

Seller Tools for eBay

Helping you sell on eBay

It is quite natural people look to automate repeated processes. When it comes to eBay selling or buying, there are different actions that both sellers and buyers do on a regular basis. Creating a list is the toughest task for sellers while keeping track of the items they have bid is the toughest task for buyers. There are quite a few handy tools that help both sellers and buyers. Listed below are few tools to make the job of selling easier for both pros and novice sellers.

Sell Your Item (SYI - http://pages.ebay.com/sell/syi/index.html) is the place you can have a pulse of selling items on eBay.

Advanced sellers can use eBay Turbo Lister (http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/), a free download from ebay.com. It helps you list thousands of items. The advantage is you can create the listing offline and upload them all in one go. You can also make any number of changes after you create the listing and edit the format with a range of fonts and colors for maximum visible appeal.

Tracking sales through eBay is quite easy with My eBay (http://pages.ebay.com/sell/tools/myebay/), the free option beginners must use. Another one is Selling Manager (http://pages.ebay.com/selling_manager/), a subscription based (currently $ 4.99/month) sales-monitoring tool which helps generate and print bulk feedback and invoices. It is quite a useful feature when it comes to monitoring completed and pending sales and activities. It works alongside Turbo Lister.

Sellers can also make use of Seller's Assistant tools (http://pages.ebay.com/sellers_assistant/) as a complete desktop listing and sales managing tool.

ebay goes even one step further to assist you pick the right sales tool to list, sell, invoice and send feedback to your customers according to your expected monthly activity. eBay Tool Recommendation (http://pages.ebay.com/sell/toolrecommendations.html) is a place for both novice and experienced sellers.

eBay Storefronts

You can set up a virtual eBay Store (http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/seller-landing.html), which is a good way to make a good first impression and increase sales. You can easily create a professionally looking eBay shop, which will serve you for a long time. You have a unique URL, thus you can redirect people to your shop directly, through search engine advertising, or through eBay.

Using an eBay Storefront is a good option every seller can opt for. eBay storefronts offer a customizable look for your store. There are several advantages for an eBay Storefront as it can save considerable time than ‘Buy it Now' and ‘Bid Now features'. There is a fee of $ 9.90 a month. The storefront users repeatedly report 25% quarterly increase in their sales.

In addition to driving traffic directly to your eBay store, you can also cross-sell your products with other merchants selling comparable products. It is also a good way to create initial credibility as a professional seller.

Availability of the seller tools coupled with your commitment to customer service can make you a successful eBay seller in a few months. But I would recommend you don't go for payment based seller tools until after you gain considerable experience as a seller and a buyer.

Tools for Buying and Selling on eBay

Marketing Fan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:08:50 +0200

EBay Buyer Tools

First Buy, then sell

Becoming a buyer is the first step before you start selling through eBay.

eBay Express

It is quite a democratic society, where the feedbacks from buyers and sellers are the most useful tool to protect both parties from fraudsters. Your confidence will further rise with eBay Express, where only sellers with a very high positive feedback are featured. eBay express is also the place where you can buy fixed price products relatively quickly. You also have the option to purchase items from different buyers and pay for them in a single step.

Proxy Bidding

You will often see items that capture your imagination in eBay, where prices are mostly decided on an auction system. You see the price low and you will place a bid, in the hopes of a good deal. You think you will win the bid till the last minute. It is quite an embarrassing situation to see an unsuspecting sniper successfully shooting your product in the last 3 seconds, leaving you dumb. What if you have a proxy bidding system that will bid for you while you sleep?

eBay Proxy Bidding System allows you to set the highest amount you are willing to pay for a specific item. The proxy bidding system will bid for you up to the maximum amount you are willing to pay, through gradual increment over your competitor. Auction Sniper (http://www.auctionsniper.com/) is a third party proxy-bidding tool that helps you get the product you want. You have to pay up to 1% of the bid as fees.

eBay Toolbar and my eBay page

eBay too has some buyer tools like the eBay Toolbar.

The eBay Toolbar is a free buying/bidding tool from eBay. This desktop item allows you to keep a watch list of items you are bidding for.

My eBay page is another convenient option to save your eBay favorites - searches, sellers and products or categories.

Safe eBay Transactions with PayPal

You can use eBay and Paypal account for buying and selling through eBay. The password to both sites need to be securely protected. eBay offers a guarantee for transactions up to a certain value if they are paid with PayPal.

Beware of Phishing Attacks

Have you too come across the term phishing attack before? It is the attack that some scrupulous party will send you an email in such a form that the email comes from eBay or Paypal. Don't open emails from eBay too - you can read emails addressed to you by eBay at My Messages page follow this option for safety.

Don't click in eMails - never ever!

If you receive an email from Paypal, read the content and don't click any link on it, instead type in paypal.com in your web browser and log in using your email and password. It is also to be noted that just don't click on any links to Paypal from any website. Go to paypal.com to learn more about online security - http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/fraud-prevention-outside. I also mentioned the topic phishing mails in my tech blog recently and even two years ago when I received the first paypal scam mails

Commonsense rules? no way.

In most cases sellers and business people think that commonsense rules. Experiences prove it wrong. It is always safe to keep a skeptic mind, especially if you see an offer at eBay too good to be true.

eBay Motors

Marketing Fan — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:36:51 +0200

EBay motors - selling and buying cars on eBay

The Internet has really changed the way we buy and sell things for good. Although not the first ecommerce website, eBay is the first online mall to bring sellers and buyers together. According to Nielsen-NetRatings, eBay Motors, a subsidiary of eBay has unique position as automotive website. The main advantage that eBay motors offer to sellers is the generation of sales lead through different channels - eBay bids, Best Offer, Ending Soon, email, etc. There is an also an army of eBay affiliate marketers who send leads through their websites, blogs, forums, emails, etc. This site sells more cars in a matter of few hours than a regular dealership sells in a year.

Customers can find vehicles from other states and for lower prices. Buy a car ‘unseen' can be a tough decision to take. Landmark one-millionth vehicle (a 2003 Honda Odyssey) sale at eBay was closed back on April 24, 2004. The North Virginian buyer was lucky enough to get the bill footed by eBay itself. The no-pressure, democratic atmosphere makes buyers feel comfortable with their purchases. No question asked and nobody to face if you continue to view the pictures of the vehicle 10 or 100 times and take three hours or four weeks to finalize your decision.

The buyers and sellers share their buying and selling experiences at forums and blogs. A seller that gets repeated negative feedback will be kicked out of the system. Credible sellers post photos of the vehicle from many different angles and list even the details of paint scratches.

Sellers can get their online vehicle sales business started by setting up a shop in eBay and listing their products. You can find the details at http://pages.motors.ebay.com/services/getting_started/getting_started.html. It is your responsibility as a seller to maintain credibility as a good seller.

EBay offers up to $20,00 worth of protection to vehicles and $ 1,000 for vehicle parts sold through the site.

There are basically two systems of sales at eBay Motors - Buy Now and Bid Now. In the former method you can straight away buy or sell the vehicle or vehicle part at the listed price while the bidding system allows buyers to decide the maximum amount they are happy to pay.

You can feel the user driven community of eBay. To gain some credibility as a reliable seller takes some time. A common advice for all eBay sellers is to first list a few lesser value items, mainly to get a bunch of good feedback. List your big-ticket item only after gaining some good review points and positive feedback by your satisfied customers. It also helps you gain some valuable experience in the process of selling on eBay.

Photos, a large number of them with accurate description of different parts of your vehicle translate into better acceptability by new and seasoned buyers. While photographing your vehicle, make sure you do so with a decent backdrop. The backdrop you choose will have to say something about you.

IntelliChoice.com is a place that motor buyers and sellers use to determine the value of a used vehicle. Alternately, both parties browse several listings to find the prices at which similar model cars are sold.

Ins and Outs of eBay Business

Marketing Fan — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:45:48 +0200

The Ins and Outs of eBay Business

Many individuals, small to medium size companies pin their hopes of financial stability and growth through eBay business. The 14 billion ‘eBay-pie’ has a share for virtually everyone in this world. Many people have started their eBay business with literally no startup cost. The principle that guided them is “your junk is someone’s treasure”. True, they have started by selling used laptop, the grandfather clock that remained hardly distinguishable from the dust in the basement, to brand new computers and cars.

Nature of eBay

This introduction will tell you about the democratic nature of eBay, where everyone can have a place. It is a serious business opportunity - consider the fact that eBay motors sell more cars a day than most dealerships sell in a year to understand the real possibility of eBay business. EBay affiliate programs allow you to sell products of other people for a commission.

Start selling on eBay

Starting selling through eBay is just a child’s game. (See http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/basics.html to find the details of selling through eBay.) Graduating to a professional eBay merchant takes a lot of dedication, planning and hard work.

eBay Business

If you are anything serious about making it big with eBay business take some time to analyze the scope of your eBay merchandise. Use the following checklist while venturing out into eBay business.

Products to sell on eBay

As a first step, take a moment to think what sells in eBay. You can’t create demand for your product, but you can come up with a product that has demand from the market. Antiques, electronics, cosmetics, cars, vehicle parts, you can choose from a virtual unlimited choice of products.

Know your eBay competition

If you see hundreds of merchants selling an item, it is not wise to choose that product for you, at least in the beginning stage, as it will be a severe task for you to pull that first order and to build credibility.

The price you pay for the product

No matter what, you can find a wholesaler or a drop-shipper that offers you bulk products for cheap rates. Go for the cheapest source to begin your eBay campaign.

Observe Closely

Closely observe eBay for a few weeks and learn how products are listed, what kind of photographs are used, what kind of description are provided, what is the average customer feedback of sellers that sell products for higher prices. A dedicated effort of three weeks can help you identify the tricks and techniques of eBay selling.

Products with high ASP (Average Selling Price) require different treatment than low ASP products. Low ASP products are best sold on a Buy it Now basis, while going for a bidding system will be more appropriate for high ASP products. The thing is to closely follow the trends of movement of your choice of product(s).

Be patient

You are not going to taste overnight success with eBay. You may initially make no profits or even make loses. The thing is to have a long-term strategy. Invest in building credibility. There is nothing comparable to great customer feedback. Sellers with more positive feedback make good profits by selling products for a higher price. Customers too will be happy to part their money in exchange of something of value.

Google Adsense Auto Clicker on ebay

Marketing Fan — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:37:28 +0200

If you every wondered how click fraud works, or how small webmasters can get other webmasters being kicked from Adsense,

then this is probably the answer… a small tool – created in germany – used for clicking on Adsense ads… via proxies, or not.

What’s notable is the fact that ebay does not close this auction, which is obviously an attempt to support click-fraud…

If you read up the forums some people complained about it already, but it seems ebay does not care.

The auction is in a pretty german english – but the message is frigthening

Quote:

You simply can enter an Internet address to the appropriate field, to this you enter the number of desired clicks and time interval between the clicks. The X-TREM Blaster takes care of the clicks for you or to the start.

So you could really point it to only one site and cause a nice traffic spike there. That then increased the CTR and causes all alarm bells go off at Google. And if you are unimportant enough I suspect you simply get a “you are banned for invalid clicks” mail from Google, because it’s obvious that the surge of clicks came from those proxies the tool uses….

Another sad story to be added to the “Google Bowling”-repertoire … and 38 people already bought that tool!

[via Google Adsense Buster]:

Ebay Api calls now free

Marketing Fan — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 19:04:08 +0100

already announced on November 14, 2005 when I was in Vegas, eBay Enhances Developers Program by Enabling Free Access to eBay Web Services

eBay relevant text ad program

Marketing Fan — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 11:40:43 +0200

The german eBay Partnerprogram (of ebay.de) offers eBay Relevance Ad - a pay-per-click system being implemented by affili.net , obviously one of the bigger affiliate program networks in the german language area.

They pay 15 Euro-cent per click, which is currently between 18 and 20 US cents - which is really quite nice...

puzzled by having missed the launch in August (ok - was on vacation, but I expected some buzz in the keep up afterwareds) I was trying to find something comparable in the US/UK area and it seems this is a pioneer project for the german market... didn't find anything in english so far.