Uncovering the Secrets on eBay

ISSUE 1: CONTENTS

HELLO & WELCOME

TIPS FROM THE TOP GURUS
Have you ever thought about SEO for Your eBay Store?
Secrets of the 1 cent (or one pence) Buy it Now Auction

IITTSS CCHHRRIISSTTMMAASS!!!!!!!!!!
Need Some Extra Money for Christmas? Use eBay!

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT?
eBay Workshops
eBay's MyWorld

WEIRD & WONDERFUL AUCTIONS!

PLANNED AND NEW ON EBAY
eBay Cracking Down on Fraudsters

HERE COMES THE NUMBERS . . . . .

EBAY IN THE NEWS
eBay Appears on Watchdog
Haunted!

SOURCES USED THIS MONTH

Okay I'm not an eBay expert by a long shot (but I will be - one day soon!) but as a researcher I know good information when I see it. I want to learn as much as I can about eBay, after all education, education, education (and action, action, action) are the keys to success online and anywhere else for that matter.

Each month I will trawl the best eBay newletters, blogs, articles, and news. The Auction Reporter will bring them to you in a summarized form (rewritten with my personality and take on them as not to break any copyright rules) so you can learn and implement the best eBay tips, techniques, strategies and keep up with the latest happenings on and about eBay.

From these tips, I will select a few that I am going to use before the next edition of the newsletter (these will be highlighted each month) and let you know what my progress is in the following month. By being accountable to you (and listening to all your suggestions) I aim to provide you with one of the best eBay newsletters online.

During December I will be trying the following tactics so expect reports on my attempts next month:

Setting up an About Me Page
Writing a Guide
Packaging a Selection of Ebooks/Software/Videos to Sell on eBay
Attempting a Couple of Sideshow Auctions
Study the eBay Workshops and various Ebay forums to see if there is some good information to extract for this newsletter.

Very few people explore the potential of optimizing their eBay Store despite the fact that over 50% of online shoppers research their purchase through search engines. Here are some tips that could put your eBay store into the rankings that matter.

Add Metatags:
Even though the human eye won't read Metatags the search engines will and you will need to look into configuring your Store and Listings through Html and the "Manage My Store Area".

Pick your keywords carefully:
The best way to pick keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and decide what words they would enter if they were looking for your product. To help you find useful keywords it would be worth using Overture to find popular search terms used on the Internet in general and then look at eBay Pulse to see what is popular on eBay. Now use these words in your titles, item descriptions and even your store URL and eBay ID if you can. It also worth bearing in mind that search engines will attach the most importance to words in titles and also ones in bold.

Custom Pages in your Store
These are pages within your store that you can create and enter unique content to show promotions, showcase an item or give details about your business.

The About Me Page
Another underutilized page that sellers neglect but really it is essential for all sellers to have as it's another place to put keywords, a link to your store, a newsletter subscription box and even promote affiliate links.

Reviews and Guides
Writing eBay guides and reviews are another great way of getting links from eBay and outside of the site and using your chosen keywords will potentially attract more visitors to your listings and stores. eBay recommends using "search tags" on these pages to show what topics and content are revealed in your content and to make your content visible to the search engines.

Here are some tips on picking a good topic for your guide (whatever you do, don't forget to include a link to your listing or store!)
Browse the most popular guides at eBay, you are likely to see that the most popular topics are how to avoid being scammed, how to protect your eBay account, selling tips.
Keep up to date with eBay Happenings (this newsletter is a great start!) and write about Hot Topics and Items.
Try to pick a topic you can relate one of your listings or your store to.
If you sell a book, ebook, DVD or album, why not write a review on it and link it to your listing

Get as Many Links as you Can
Try to create as many links to your eBay store as you can, ask your friends, acquaintances, subscribers and everyone you can think of! Try to find online directories to enter your store onto. Make sure you link to your store within eBay as well - on your guides, listings and About Me page. (The more page links, the higher the Google PR rating and the higher the search engine ranking!)

Featured Items
Nearly all featured auctions from eBay show up in the top 5 - 10 listings on Google. So pick your keywords carefully and pay about $20 to get a featured listing for your auction. As a potentially great traffic generator it's worth the risk. If you have an ebook that answers a desperate need and good keywords you could get loads of traffic for it this way.

eBay does not allow Buy it Now (BIN) items at 1 cent in its auction listings so how do eBayers get around this?

They use the "pre-approved bidder" technique.

First of all you need to open a eBay store if you don't have one already. Say you wanted to list 100 ebooks at 1 cent each to build up your feedback rating, you would list them as $0.01 BIN items in your eBay store. Then you would list it as a regular auction with the starting bid of $0.01 with a hyper link in your description saying "This auction is open to Pre-approved bidders only, click here for instant approval".

When the bidder clicks on this it will transfer them to your item in your store where they can purchase the ebook for 1 cent.

Where there's a will, there is a way around eBay's restrictions!

Apart from the fact you probably could find and buy just about anything on eBay for a gift for any member of your family for Christmas and then sell all your unwanted presents after Christmas but there are lots of other things you could actually do to raise enough money for an extraordinary Christmas.

Sell all those unwanted items around your house.

Have an early (or late) Spring clean, take some photos, list the items and gain some eBay experience and get rid of your clutter

Ask your friends, neighbors or local businesses if they have any unwanted items you could sell for them for a commission.

Package a selection of ebooks together and sell them on eBay. Search your computer for ebooks, software or videos with resell rights and bingo you could have best seller on your hands.

Create a mini-ebook of about 10 pages with resell rights and sell for $0.01 to $1 and make it about an affiliate you are promoting so you could get some back end sales and plenty of other people also selling it.

Put together a mystery auction where you wrap up a gift but don't reveal what it is but list it anyway. People like a little fun and a lot of interest and bidding wars can occur on items like these.

Write some custom letters from Santa or Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer if you prefer! - Potentially an excellent gift for kids

eBay Cracking Down on Fraudsters
There are items on eBay that are commonly targeted by fraudsters like Nike and Louis Vitton goods. Fake IDs are used and they just sign up the following week with a new ID.
eBay is planning on taking the following actions in the near future:

Paypal verification to list more then one item that is frequently counterfeited.

Sellers will be limited to just a few auctions until they have undergone an initial review.

1 and 3 day auctions will be eliminated on the most commonly counterfeited items

Cross border trade will be restricted.

eBay have announced their third quarter accounts, statistics and findings. Some of the more interesting tidbits were:

In this quarter eBay users have generated 584 million up 27% from the same time last year.

9 million new users have registered and started on eBay in this quarter alone, bring the total number of registered new eBay users to 212 million.

Store Inventory listing have grown 85% in the last year from 52 million listing in Q3 2005 to 95 Million the same time this year (even with a store fee increase)

Another unrelated statistic is that on Black Friday (24th November) eBay had 7.5 million unique visitors beating Amazon.com and Walmart.com

eBay Appears on Watchdog
It was bound to happen. Complaints have been received about the number of designer fakes on eBay. In the UK, the influential BBC program Watchdog revealed several examples of fake products that had been purchased via eBay.

The program showed there was a lot a potential ways that eBay could use to solve this situation. Making a spokesperson available to comment being one of them. Especially as this could potentially frighten people away from using eBay, which is particularly damaging for them being the Christmas season.

Haunted!
An odd trend is appearing on eBay, lots of items that are labeled as 'haunted' are selling for substantial amounts of money. Things like haunted dolls, the recent ghost in a jar and lots of rings blessed by witches or containing faeries!

I think a good story goes a long way and people like to look at curious things like haunted items and show them off to their friends. Some of it is tongue and cheek but do you really believe wearing a necklace will keep you young or your wishes will come true if you kiss a ring?

If it does work, maybe its more down to what your subconscious believes and puts into action rather then Magic or Magick. Maybe I'm being too skeptical but at least I'm not saying Buyer Beware. It's a bit of fun and if that's people what to buy and pay for it then that's their choice. I might very well find a nice haunted item to sell and test it out for myself!

http://www.skipmcgrath.com/newletters
http://blog.skipmcgrath.com
http://auctionbytes.com
http://www.planetsmsnewsletter.com
http://www.auctionenterprise.com
http://www.silentsalesmachine.com
http://www.jimcockrum.com/blog
http://www.olivergoehler.co.uk
http://www.sideshowauctions.com
http://www.ukauctiononline.co.uk/newsletter.html
http://www.auction-genius-course.com/blog/
http://www.ebayentrepreneur.net
http://www.powersellerking.com
http://www.ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/
http://www.whatdoisell.com
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com
http://ebay.about.com/
http://www.workwinners.com/Newsletter_archive.htm
http://theauctionrebel.com/
http://ebay.thatdeguy.com

ISSUE 1: CONTENTS -

HELLO & WELCOME

TIPS FROM THE TOP GURUS
Have you ever thought about SEO for Your eBay Store?
The Do's and Don'ts of Sourcing Goods
How to Deal with Non Payers
Secrets of the 1 cent (or one pence) Buy it Now Auction
What Desperate Buyers Can you Find on eBay?

IITTSS CCHHRRIISSTTMMAASS!!!!!!!!!!
Holiday Tactics
Need Some Extra Money for Christmas? Use eBay!
The Hottest Items this Christmas

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT?
eBay Workshops
eBay Catalog
Easy Traffic from eBay!
If You Sell Books . . . . .
If You Sell Antiques & Collectibles . . .
Abbreviations on eBay
eBay's MyWorld
Who are the Top Sellers on eBay?

WEIRD & WONDERFUL AUCTIONS!

PLANNED AND NEW ON EBAY
Place Bid Page has been Redesigned
Plans Announced to Hide Bidder IDs
eBay Introduces BestMatch to the UK
eBay Cracking Down on Fraudsters

HERE COMES THE NUMBERS . . . . .

EBAY IN THE NEWS
eBay May be a Source of Income for Al Qaeda!
O J Simpson's Book Goes on eBay
eBay Appears on Watchdog
College Kid Attempts to Sell his Future
Haunted!

SOURCES USED THIS MONTH