Home » Business & Work » Internet » Make money online

My eBay Life

Ranked #5,219 in Business & Work, #158,561 overall

Welcome to the wonderful world of eBay!

Thank you for visiting!

I joined the world of eBay and started selling online in April 2004. I began with auctions and soon opened an eBay store. Although I closed my store in 2009 (not a reflection on eBay), I still sell on eBay and enjoy it. The eBay business is sometimes a bumpy ride, but never a boring one.

Selling on eBay, and participating in the eBay community, has been a fascinating experience. There's always something new to learn. Not to mention whole communities of people to "meet" online.

Tons of resources are available if you want to learn more about doing business on eBay, and I've been gathering information about them here for you.

My user ID is the-silver-lotus. You can check out my feedback here.

I hope you find this lens helpful. Please don't forget to take a moment to rate it. Happy eBaying!

Contents at a Glance

Helpful Tools and Web Sites For eBay Sel...
eBay Business Centers
Business Help: SCORE and the SBA
If you sell on eBay...
ebay on Squidoo

Helpful Tools and Web Sites For eBay Sellers

These are some of the tools and websites I've found helpful in developing my eBay business. I hope they can be of help to you too!

eBay Auction Count Charts: These folks monitor EBay's pages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 1.5 hour intervals for their auction counts and the sell-through statistics. Fascinating stuff.
HTML Practice Board: Type in your html and see how it looks
Hexadecimal HTML Color Chart: Choose custom colors for your store (background, foreground, or text).
eBay Dedicated Practice Board: Check your auction listing HTML or templates on a simulated eBay page.
Links for eBay Sellers: This page was organized by members of two ebay community groups and contains a wide range of links to ebay resources, including, but not limited to, item research/identification, shipping, bookseller resources, phone numbers, shipping supplies, and resources for "jazzing up" your listings. There's a lot here, so be sure to have a look
Yardsale Queen: Looking for merchandise to sell on eBay? Many people do quite well buying at garage sales and reselling on ebay. This website will help you learn how to be a smart yardsale shopper and avoid garage sale scams. It includes a bulletin board where you can advertise your yard sale and find out about yard sales in your area. And if all that stuff you bought piles up and you have to have your own garage sale, this site has tips on organizing a successful sale.
Toolhaus.org: Several good feedback tools: you can check out an eBay member's negative feedback, see mutual feedback left by two members, see recent feedback with an item number, and even see which items members have bid on.
eBCalc: eBCalc is a free online eBay fee calculator. It allows anyone who sells on eBay to find out what their total eBay and PayPal fees would be if they were to sell an item on eBay. They also have a nifty Reverse Net Profit Calculator that can tell you what amount you should charge for Shipping & Handling to receive the amount of Net Profit you want. There's also a Reverse Shipping & Handling calculator built in as well that can tell you exactly what you should be charging for Shipping & Handling to completely cover your eBay fees, your PayPal fees, and your actual cost of shipping.
Free Tools For Better Auctions: On this page set up by ShipScript, a member of the eBay community, you'll find lots of different free tools that can help improve your listings. Check it out!
List My Store: Want to start an eBay store? Need help with your existing eBay store? This is an excellent resource for you!
eBay Forums: Building An eBay Business: For my money, this is the best discussion board for those who want to build their eBay business. Why? The folks who populate this board tend to be very helpful to both newbies and experienced eBayers, and they are really nice. The energy is good, and while there are (and will always be) complaints about eBay's treatment of sellers, board members tend to get over those quickly and get back to using their energy to move forward.
Kovels antiques and collectibles resources: If you buy or sell antiques and collectibles, the Kovels web site has tons of information that can be valuable - and it's free. You can also get a free trial issue of their magazine.
eBay Pulse: EBay Pulse is a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay. An excellent place for sellers to see what's hot.
eBay Research Labs - cool tools from eBay: Here's some of what you'll find:

BayEstimator: Optimize your eBay listing title with BayEstimator

Repex: Use the reputation extractor to learn more detailed information about your feedback (or someone else's!)

ebaysaurus: A semantic query network. Peek into the eBay community vocabulary with this tool. It can help you see what queries are popular - just enter a search term and the tool will help you unravel it.

Surprise-A-Day (aka Buzz of the Day): Every day ebay looks at a different item that's for sale on its site and shows new & info about it, along with listings.

eBay Business Centers

According to Entrepreneur magazine, "eBay is the most level of playing fields--virtually anyone can make money auctioning their stuff. But to move from eBay hobbyist to eBay business owner takes work and planning." And they are right. Their web site offers information that will benefit both new and experienced eBayers. Everything from getting started on eBay to growing and managing an eBay business is covered. Visit entrepreneur.com.

The eBay Center on ATT/Yahoo is part of ATT/Yahoo Small Business and is another very valuable resource. When you're done checking out the eBay information, have a look at the other small business information - you may well find some very useful ideas and tools.

Business Help: SCORE and the SBA

free help and tools

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is an independent agency of the U.S. government established to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve free competitive enterprise and to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation. Among the many helpful services it offers are free online courses that will help you with many aspects of your business.

SCORE is an outstanding nonprofit association dedicated to educating entrepreneurs and the formation, growth and success of small business nationwide. SCORE is a resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

SCORE's local offices throughout the country offer workshops and other services for small businesspeople. And 24/7 their website is the place to go for a wealth of support and guidance. Learn about starting, managing, financing, and growing a business. About technology. Get free templates, workshops, and tools. Doesn't matter whether your business is online or not - if you've got or want to have a small business, this is one of the best resources you'll find.

If you sell on eBay...

you should have a Squidoo lens (or lenses)

Join Squidoo and promote your lenses using these excellent tools

The Isle of Squid: The Isle of Squid is a Directory of the Best lenses on Squidoo.
SquidUtils - Utilities and Tools for Squidoo Lensmasters: SquidUtils has complementry utilities and tools for Squidoo Lensmasters. Tools include: the advanced dashboard, lensmaster feeds, plus Amazon links and feeds.
Lensroll Networking / Popular Lenses: Social networking for Squidoo lens masters to share relevant content. Build links, increase traffic, make money for yourself.

ebay on Squidoo

some eBay-oriented lenses for you to visit

Squidbids and Other Help On Squidoo

If you sell on eBay, you'll find that Squidbids is great squidoo feature.

SquidBids - just the good stuff: SquidBids - The place for trusted eBay sellers to strut their stuff, showcase their auctions and stores, and get more traffic.
Squidoo Directory Group: SquiDirectory is an online directory of selected Squidoo's by expert authors on a variety of subjects. From art to unique gift shopping ideas, politics, music and sports and more.
Squidoo is an outstanding web resource for many interesting subjects. Silver Lotus' My eBay Life is proud to be a member. Be sure to check out the directory, and consider submitting your lens: Squidoo Directory

More helpful tools and websites

Seems as though the list never ends. A good thing too!

eBay To Go: Great little widget! You can use it to promote your ebay listings on other web sites, blogs, etc.
Auctiva: Free, popular, and a certified eBay provider, Auctiva is auction management software.
Auction Cloud: AuctionCloud shows popular keywords most frequently used by eBay users when searching for auction listings.
Shopit - The Social Commerce Network: Shopit is the world's first and largest peer-to-peer social commerce network that enables users to buy, sell and trade anything, anywhere on the Internet. And not only is it free, but you can import your eBay and Yahoo store listings. Shopit widgets work with nearly 40 sites such as Facebook, Friendster, and Yahoo 360, just to name a few.
Free ebay research data from Terapeak: eBay pricing research tools help you increase your profits while selling on eBay. Terapeak is the industry leader for eBay research with over 200 thousand sellers using its service worldwide.
Auction Repair Home Page: A collection of tools to help find problems, and make repairs to auction listings.
Copy-Not: Prevent routine theft of your eBay listing photographs with this easy-to-use script (just add it to the html in your listings). No method is 100% foolproof, but this is a great little tool for preventing casual theft of your pictures. And it's FREE.
Cool Text: Logo and Graphics Generator: Cool Text is a free graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a lot of design work. Easy to use!

Ask Marsha Collier: How Do I Use Twitter to Promote eBay Listings?

Google is your friend. Use it!

Google Base is a free Google service that helps you publish virtually any kind of information, including stuff you're selling, on Google Base or other Google properties.

Smart eBay store owners use Base and find that it really adds to their traffic. And it's free, so you've got no excuse!

Google Base: This is where you start. Sign up and get your feed on Google in no time.
ebay to Google File Converter: If you run into any problems getting your feed to Google Base, and you've checked out all of Google's help info and Base discusssions, try the appropriate ebay to Google File Converters at this site.
Google's Free Marketing Tools: If you sell on eBay and/or have a website to market or products or services to sell, Google offers a number of free tools to help you. I wrote this HubPage to help people learn what Google's tools can do.

Books and other media to help you with eBay

Many good books and DVDs about eBay have been published. Here are a few you should investigate.

Keywords, Traffic, Search

Get those buyers to your eBay store!

Keywords are critical to every type of listing on eBay. Even if you have an auction listing that isn't around long enough to be indexed by a search engine, you still need to use the right keywords for eBay's internal search.

At 7 days, auctions don't last long enough to be indexed by search engines, but if you have an eBay store, you want traffic originating from all over the Internet, not just from ebay.

These links will take you to useful free tools that will help you with search, keyword, and traffic concerns.

Google Keyword Tool: This tool generates potential keywords and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends.
Keyword Generator: Generate keywords, make meta keywords, and lots of other tools
Increase Your Traffic: Automatically add your URL for FREE to over 70 of the most important indexes and search engines! Improve your search engine ranking. Highly recommend this do-it-yourself web promotion site! I use it, and not just for my eBay store....
TypoBid: When a seller spells brand names (keywords!) incorrectly it's your opportunity to get a deal - misspelling results in fewer bids, which means a cheaper price for you. Sometimes the price will be low enough that you can turn around and sell the merchandise for a profit!
Typo Buddy: Here's another website where you can find listings with incorrectly spelled titles. The great thing about this one is that it's not just for eBay -- Craigslist is included as well. When you type in what you're looking for and hit the search button, results for both eBay and Craigslist are displayed. Cool!

More books about eBay for you to check out

Don't know where to get products to sell on eBay (or elsewhere)?

Skip the scams, the memberships, the fees and the frauds! Here is straightforward information - with NO affiliate or other commission-based links - that I've organized to help you get started in the hunt for wholesale merchandise to resell on eBay, amazon, your own web site, and even your bricks and mortar location.

the no-nonsense guide to buying wholesale products for resale

Better Photographs For Your Listings

These are links to websites where you'll find tips and tricks for producing better photographs for your listings.

Camera Jim's Guide to eBay Auction Photography: Excellent, with lots of tips for every photographic budget.
Jerryrig.com: A homemade lighting box, macro tips, and other how-to ideas - not only for photos.
Basic Jewelry Photography: Will help you shooting great photos of jewelry and other small items
Table Top Studio: A motherlode of help for photographing many types of products
A Homemade Light Tent: Easy to make light tent using common objects from your office or home
BetterPhoto.com: Links to articles, discussions, and Q&A about photography
Kodak's Tips & Projects Center: Information about digital photography and many tips for shooting better photos
Digital Photography: From DT&G Photographic, lots of information about digital photography

The latest news about eBay

from around the world

Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Make eBay your place for socially conscious commerce

eBay has partnered with World of Good to bring socially conscious consumers a fantastic range of fairly traded products from around the world. Visit World of Good at eBay.

AuctionBytes Blog

News and insight focusing on
ecommerce and the online auction industry
by Ina Steiner, Editor of AuctionBytes.com

Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

News and Strategies For eBay Sellers

World of eBay: My fellow eBay seller Marty's blog. He's found some interesting stuff to sell on eBay!
Hammertap's Resource Center: Hammertap provides auction research software and education programs. Their website also features free and excellent resources for eBay sellers. And be sure to have a look at the newsletter archive to see what you may have missed.
All Business Auctions - Blog and More: A blog and more - lots of eBay information and news here.
eBay Strategies: Scot Wingo's eBay Blog. In addition to discussing eBay strategies, Scot provides his take on the latest eBay related news.

If you sell online, be sure to use Every Place I Sell

it's free! and highly recommended

EveryPlaceISell.com is a user-generated directory to help buyers find their favorite sellers. You can search the directory by seller business name or User ID to find the seller with a list of all the places they sell. You will also find special offers and sales the merchant may be offering on a particular site, such as free shipping or coupons.

Sellers, you may list your business in the directory for free - make sure your customers can always find you. EveryPlaceISell.com is published by Steiner Associates, the publisher of AuctionBytes.com.

A number of online sellers reported that EveryPlaceISell.com started delivering traffic within a few days after they signed up. That's pretty darn good for a free listing! Go have a look:

Silver Lotus

Ask Marsha Collier: Do I need more than one eBay store?

Tamebay

keep up with eBay developments through this blog

Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Make PayPal Work For You

an excellent free guide to minimizing your PayPal fees

I found this guide to PayPal on eBay. It was written by a highly rated, experienced eBay member and is loaded with tips that will help you save money on your PayPal transactions. Highly recommended!

Do you do all your eBay trading through a single PayPal Account? If so, you might be losing money.

Are you aware that your [credit] card provider might charge back a transaction that's gone wrong if PayPal refuses your Claim?

Have you ever made payment by PayPal and thought 'I don't want to used cleared funds, I want to pay with my [credit] card or by instant bank transfer?

Have you ever wondered if there is a way to reduce the fees that PayPal takes from low-value transactions?

If so, read on. There is a way.

Read the rest here.

Auction Bump

Have you tried Auction Bump yet? They offer 100% FREE Advertising for your eBay Auctions and eBay stores, along with a host of other free advertising opportunities. So Bump your auctions here and be seen by more bidders, more buyers, and more often! Be sure to check them out.

Internet Mosaic

A nifty site to help you promote your ebay store or other online business

Comic Relief: goofy auctions on eBay

It's good to know that members of the eBay community haven't completely lost their sense of humor. Take, for instance, eBay member goofyauctions. His independent website features weird eBay auctions - now we don't have to look for these auctions - GoofyAuctions does the work for us!

You can join forces with GoofyAuctions too and earn $5.00/auction for affiliating your ebay listing(s).

Get all of the details - including the banner shown below (or another one) at GoofyAuctions.

PowerSeller Daily

an eBay junkie's life

Advice, tips, trivia and humor of an Ebay Powerseller.

Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Search Engine Optimization and SEO Tools

Do you have an eBay "How To" lens?

If your lens is about any aspect of buying or selling on eBay, or about the eBay Partner Network (affiliate program), add it here!

This is not for promoting eBay listings, only for lenses with eBay how-to information.
Some really good ebay "how to" lenses have been added here. If you're new to eBay, be sure to have a look at them.
All submissions will be reviewed, so please don't waste your time or mine by submitting lenses that aren't relevant.
Thank you.

My eBay Life

Welcome to the wonderful world of eBay!

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

Helpful Tools and Web Sites For eBay Sellers

eBay Business Centers

Business Help: SCORE and the SBA

free help and tools

If you sell on eBay...

you should have a Squidoo lens (or lenses)

ebay on Squidoo

some eBay-oriented lenses for you to visit

Squidbids and Other Help On Squidoo

More helpful tools and websites

Seems as though the list never ends. A good thing too!

Ask Marsha Collier: How Do I Use Twitter to Promote eBay Listings?

Google is your friend. Use it!

Books and other media to help you with eBay

Keywords, Traffic, Search

Get those buyers to your eBay store!

More books about eBay for you to check out

Don't know where to get products to sell on eBay (or elsewhere)?

Better Photographs For Your Listings

The latest news about eBay

from around the world

Make eBay your place for socially conscious commerce

AuctionBytes Blog

News and Strategies For eBay Sellers

If you sell online, be sure to use Every Place I Sell

it's free! and highly recommended

Ask Marsha Collier: Do I need more than one eBay store?

Tamebay

keep up with eBay developments through this blog

Make PayPal Work For You

an excellent free guide to minimizing your PayPal fees

Auction Bump

Internet Mosaic

A nifty site to help you promote your ebay store or other online business

Comic Relief: goofy auctions on eBay

PowerSeller Daily

an eBay junkie's life

Do you have an eBay "How To" lens?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Please pick your widget size and display. Then click "Make the Widget" to get the code that's just right for you.

Voila! Just copy and paste this code into your own site. Have fun!

Oopsey! Please login to Squidoo in order to add this module to your lens.

AuctionZip

live auction information

Powerseller King

SRG: The Sellers Resource Group

eBay Sellers Working Together

Visit these online sellers

1

2

3