eBay Title Writing Tips

By Hendra Subrata Liu

Trying to help your buyers find your auctions can be a truly daunting task. Most people only search
eBay by title, not by description, and that means that you only have those 55 characters of the title
to cover all the possible search terms. That's not easy. In this email, I'll give you a few pointers.

Don't bother with eBay clichés
There are plenty of eBay auction titles that say things like "Super rare camera wow look low price".
These are stupid things to put in your title, as no-one is going to search for them.

Think like a buyer
If you were looking for your item, then what exactly would you type into that box? If you think it'd help,
try searching yourself to find someone else selling your item. What were the first things you thought of
typing?

Think like other sellers
Keep an eye on which sellers are doing best with items like yours, and try to copy their title styles -
if it works for them, it can work for you.

Be specific
You should be sure to write the item's brand and specific model number in the title, as people will
often search only for this information. Make sure that you also say exactly what the item is.

A Few Examples
Here are a few examples of good titles. They're real, and they're on eBay right now, making their sellers
money. So what makes them good?

"Dell Latitude Laptop P3 500mhz Notebook PC Computer"

If you know about computers, you'll know instantly what this auction is selling. It has manufacturer (Dell)
and product line (Latitude), followed by a few technical specifications (P3 500mhz is the processor speed).
Notice also that the title includes the four words 'laptop', 'notebook', 'PC' and 'computer', as the
seller wants people looking for any of those words to see his auction.

"OASIS Don't Believe the Truth CD Album (New)"
This auction for a CD is well formatted: it gives the artist name in capital letters, followed by the album name.
It then manages to include the two key words 'CD' and 'album', as well as the word 'new' - that means that
anyone searching for 'new oasis cd', 'oasis new album' and so on will find this auction.

"1840 Penny Black stamp, certificate, four margins"
Here's a slightly more obscure one, from the exciting world of stamp collecting. A penny black is one of
the oldest and most famous stamps. It uses a few key words that collectors will consider important:
'four margins' indicates that the stamp has been cut out with some margins around it and so isn't damaged,
and 'certificate' tells you that the item has a certificate of authenticity - it's a real penny black.
Remember to use every bit of space to squeeze in as much important information as you can in the title.

So now that you've written a winning title, you need to start on a great description. The next email will
show you how.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
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http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

How to Choose the Right eBay Product Category

By Hendra Subrata Liu

Some people think it's easy to choose the right eBay category, and often it is. Sometimes, though,
it might not be quite clear exactly what to go for.

Why is it Even Important?
Plenty of people use the category system to find items, when they're not looking for something specific.
If your item is listed in the wrong category - or you've just given up and listed it in 'Everything Else' -
then these people aren't going to find your auction.

Also, listing items in the wrong categories is against eBay's rules, and eBay say they will remove any
auctions that are wrongly categorised. They don't often actually do this, but it's not worth the risk -
especially since breaking any rules can cause them to penalise your account, including losing PowerSeller
status if you have it.

So What Can You Do?
eBay will suggest categories for you when you sell your item, if you type in a few words to describe the
item on the category selection page and click 'search'. You can make the best of this feature by typing
in exactly what your item is, with brand name and model number (if any), so that eBay can find the best
category for you.

If that doesn't work for you, then search yourself for items like yours, and pay attention to which category
most of them seem to be in (you can see this near the top of each item's description page). Try different
words and see which ones come back with the most results. You can also browse through all the available
categories from eBay's front page.

Remember that the more specific the category is, the better - use as many subcategories as are appropriate.
Don't just list your HP laptop in the 'Computers' category, for example - list it in 'Computers >
Laptops > HP'. Don't worry: your item will still appear in the 'Computers' category, as well as 'Computers >
Laptops', because items listed in subcategories are always listed in every category above.

Take some time to look through all the categories and get familiar with the way eBay as a whole is laid out.
After all, that's better than getting a few months down the line and finding that you still think of eBay's
category system like it's some kind of scary jungle.

What if More Than One Category Fits?
Don't worry, eBay have you covered. For a small extra fee, you can list your item in an extra category,
to increase the number of potential buyers who will see it. This isn't always worth it, though - some
items only really fit properly in one category, and listing them in extra categories is just a waste.

Once you know where to list your item, the next step is to write your auction's title. The title is the most
important thing about your auction - the difference between a good title and a bad title can be the
difference between $10 and $100. That's why I'll take you through the dos and don'ts in the next email.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

Taming the eBay Search Engine

If you know what you're doing, you can quickly find what you're looking for on eBay - and the more you
know about how buyers find you, the easier you'll find it to be found. Here are a few golden searching
rules.

Be specific
If you're searching for the first edition of the original Harry Potter book, you'll get further
searching for 'harry potter rowling philosopher's stone first edition' than you will be searching for
'harry potter'. You'll get fewer results, but the ones you do get will be far more relevant.

Spell wrongly
It's a sad fact that many of the sellers on eBay just can't spell. Whatever you're looking for,
try thinking of a few common misspellings - you might find a few items here that have slipped through
the cracks.

Get a thesaurus
You should try to search for all the different words that someone might use to describe an item,
for example searching for both 'TV' and 'television', or for 'phone', 'mobile' and 'cellphone'.
Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and search by things like brand and model.

Use the categories
Whenever you search, you'll notice a list of categories at the side of your search results. If you
just searched for the name of a CD, you should click the 'CDs' category to look at results in that
category only. Why bother looking through a load of results that you don't care about ?

Don't be afraid to browse
Once you've found the category that items you like seem to be in, why not click 'Browse' and take a
look through the whole category ? You might be surprised by what you find.

Few people realise just how powerful eBay's search engine is - a few symbols here and there and
it'll work wonders for you.

Wildcard searches
You can put an asterisk (*) into a search phrase when you want to say 'anything can go here'.
For example, if you wanted to search for a 1950s car, you could search for 'car 195*'.
195* will show results from any year in the 1950s.

In this order
If you put words in quotes ("") then the only results shown will be ones that have all of the words
between the quote marks. For example, searching for "Lord of the Rings" won't give you any results that say,
for example "Lord Robert Rings".

Exclude words
Put a minus, and then put any words in brackets that you don't want to appear in your search results.
For example: "Pulp Fiction" -(poster,photo) will find items related to Pulp Fiction but not posters
or photos.

Either/or
If you want to search for lots of words at once, just put them in brackets: the TV example from earlier
could become '(TV,television)', which would find items with either word.

Don't get too tied up learning the ways of the search engine, though: a surprising number of eBay users
don't search at all, preferring to look through eBay's category system and save their favourites in
their browser. The next email will show you how to make sure these people can find you too.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

How to Use eBay to Grow Your Other Businesses

Most of the people who make money from eBay don't actually make all of that money on eBay. There are all sorts of ways you can use eBay to give your existing businesses a helping hand.

The Supply Side.

If you have any leftover stock or used items from another business you run, then why not sell them on eBay? You can make this a regular thing, using it to get rid of things that won't sell for the premium you ask for in a shop, or items that are no longer in demand in the town or city where your business is based.

You can really make a lot of money this way, if you know what you're doing. You will, of course, already be an expert in the items you're selling, as you use them in your business, and you'll know that the items are of high enough quality to be sellable. This is a whole new market for your old inventory!

Not only that, of course, but remember that your good eBay reputation will make you a great buyer! If there's ever anything you want to get for your business, the chances are you'll be able to get it on eBay for a discount.

The Sales Side.

Here, though, is where the true power of eBay lies. eBay give you an 'About Me' page, where you can write anything you like and link anywhere you like. This means that you can get traffic to your business' website by linking to your website from your About Me page and linking to your About Me page from each auction.

To create an About Me page, just click on 'Community' on the toolbar, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'Create an About Me page'. You then get the option to either enter your own HTML or let eBay guide you through the process. All you need to do is write a little about your website, link to it, and you're done - you'll notice that more people start to come to your site straight away.

There are thousands of people who swear by this technique to drive traffic from eBay to their website - with a little persuasive sales copy on your site, they say, you can sell directly to buyers, cutting out the eBay middleman. What's more, all the traffic you'll get will be targeted - because the people who click through were interested in your auction to begin with.

This can be a really powerful technique, especially if you've already got an e-commerce site. Even if you haven't, you might find it worth your time to set up a website that does nothing but list your eBay inventory with a few dollars off each item, with a PayPal 'Buy Now' button for each item. Then simply make the link to your About Me page read 'Visit my website for even more bargains!', and you're done.

Now that you've seen how to drive visitors to your website, maybe you'd like a little help getting your auction in front of buyers. That's why our next email will show you the secrets of taming the eBay search engine.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

How to Think Like an eBay PowerSellee ?

By Hendra Subrata Liu

So what's a PowerSeller? PowerSellers are the people on eBay who've made it, recognisable by the little 'PowerSeller' badge next to their name. You've probably seen these people around - and to succeed on eBay, you want to think the way they do.

How to People Get the Right to Call Themselves PowerSellers?

eBay gets to decide who can be a PowerSeller and who can't, and they have strict requirements. To get in at the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rating of at least 100 (minimum 98% positive) and sell at least $1,000 worth of items every month for three months in a row. There are different levels of PowerSeller membership as you sell items of greater value: $1,000 total is bronze, $3,000 is silver, $10,000 is gold, $25,000 is platinum and $125,000 is titanium.

If PowerSellers ever fail to meet the required amount of sales, or their feedback falls below 98% positive, then they lose their PowerSeller status. In short, the only people who get to be PowerSellers on eBay are the people who have been successful for a good while, and are on track to stay that way.

The Shop and the Marketplace.

This is the most important part of understanding how PowerSellers think. They don't see what they're doing as being some random bazaar, or a hobby - instead, they see themselves as a business.

Put it like this. If you run a stall in a marketplace, the chances are that you have a general area of business, but you mostly just sell whatever you can get your hands on that week. If your dodgy buddy got his hands of a job lot of something at a discount, then that's what you'll be selling. This might be fun - and when you have a good week, you'll have a really good week - but it's no way to run a real business in the long-term.

PowerSellers think far more like shops. They sell the same things again and again, every week - regular stock for regular customers. They do 'boring' business things like keep inventories and budgets. They know what they're going to be selling, how much they buy it for and how much they expect to sell for. Just like a real shop, there can be hard times sometimes, but their income is stable and their business can grow slowly.

The best advice I can give you on thinking like a PowerSeller is this: don't take long-term risks for short-term gain. Look after your reputation, manage your selling properly, provide good customer service and the rewards will come to you in due course. And you'll get a little badge next to your name that makes people trust you more!

One possibility that you might have realised so far is what eBay can do for any other businesses you might have. Remember, millions of people visit eBay every day - why keep everything separate when you're starting to tap into that kind of power? The next email will show you a few ways you can use eBay to grow your other businesses.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

eBay - Part Time or Full? How to Decide ?

By Hendra Subrata Liu

Going full-time as an eBay seller is living the dream: making a real income, working from home, being your own boss and all the rest of it. It's the promise of a million scams, and it's finally come true - at least for some.

What they don't tell you in the success stories, though, is that becoming a full-time eBay seller is by no means for everyone. You really, really ought to try it part-time before you even consider taking it up full-time, and even then, caution is advisable. Before you burn your suit, here's a list of questions you should ask yourself.

How Much Do I Earn From eBay Now?

Work out how many hours a week you spend doing eBay-related things (be honest here), and divide it by the average amount of profit you make in a week. If you were doing full-time hours, would you earn as much as you earn now?

Do I Have a Good Job?

Think about what you might lose if you give up your job to focus on eBay. If you're in a well-paid job with good promotion prospects then it's well worth reconsidering: you might get a few years down the line and wish you'd stayed in your traditional job, as you'd probably be the CEO by now.

Would I Really Make Much More Money?

Unless you're selling a large quantity of small goods, most of what you do on eBay will be waiting for auctions to end - and you can wait at work just as easily as you can at home. This is why whether you would make more money on eBay really depends on what kinds of items you're selling - for low value items, going full-time could be a good move. For high-value ones, the chances are you'll hit the limits of how much money you have to invest in inventory long before you hit the limits on your time.

Is my Home a Good Place to Work?

Quite apart from anything else, you might find that the dream of home working is more of a nightmare in reality. People can start to depend on you to get things done that need to be done during the day. If you have a wife and children then they can resent the fact that you're in the house but refuse to have anything to do with them for large parts of the day. Giving in to any of these things and stopping work for a while will cause your profits to fall.

Can I Survive if it All Goes Wrong?

In the end, would you be able to get by if you had a month or two where you sold literally nothing? Or would you be desperately looking around for a job and cursing the day you ever discovered eBay? That's the real test.

If you made it through all these questions, then I guess you're cut out for the eBay life - and even if you didn't, you'd be surprised just how far you can get part-time. In our next email, we'll show you how to think like the eBay elite: the PowerSellers.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

10 Steps to Successful Selling on eBay

By Hendra Subrata

So you want to be a successful seller with your own eBay business, do you? Here's a simple, ten-step path to eBay enlightenment.

Step 1: Identify your market. Take a while to sit and watch for what sells and what doesn't out of the items you're interested in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You'll probably see the 'sweet spots' quite quickly - those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price.

Step 2: Watch the competition. Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.

Step 3: Find a product: Get hold of a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can get are - don't be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you've seen are higher than the supplier's, then you're set.

Step 4: Start small: Don't throw thousands at your idea straight away - get started slowly, see what works and what doesn't, and learn as you go. Remember that it's very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work!

Step 5: Test and repeat. Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then don't be ashamed to keep doing it, again and again. The chances are that you've just found a good niche.

Step 6: Work out a business plan: A business plan doesn't need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you've spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else.

Step 7: Invest and expand: This is the time to throw money at the problem. Buy inventory, and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time.

Step 8: Make it official: Once you've made a few thousand dollars worth of sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Don't worry, it's not expensive or hard to do - a lawyer is the best person to help you through the process.

Step 9: Automate: You'll probably find that you're writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions. This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide.

Step 10: Never give up: Even when it looks like it's all going wrong, don't stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you'll almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.

Once you get into the swing of things, you might start thinking that you should quit your job and take up eBay selling part time. But it's not always as easy as that - there are all sorts of factors that you need to consider. The next email will weigh up the case for and against taking up eBay full-time.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

10 Sure-fire Ways to Kill Your eBay Business

By Hendra Subrata Liu

It's surprisingly easy to kill your eBay business, if you're not careful - sure, you can start over from scratch without it costing you anything, but do you really want to? Still, if you want your business to end up dead in the water, here are some simple ways to do it.

Lie about an item: Say it works fine when it sometimes doesn't work. Say it's in perfect condition when it has a scratch. Your customers will hate you!

Post whenever you feel like it: Make sure to leave your customers hanging around, wondering when their item is going to turn up. This makes sure they buy from someone else next time.

Let items end anytime: Few people will be around to care about your auction if it ends in the middle of the night. Why go to the trouble of working out whether auctions will end at a good time?

Don't bother with email: Customers are just timewasters anyway. eBay businesses are supposed to run themselves! Never give informed responses to questions about your item.

Sell rubbish: Really, it's just eBay. You can just sell any old tat from the market for a 200% profit. Let quality be someone else's concern - I mean, really, what do they expect for that price?

Refuse to give discounts: You know what your items cost, you know what your profit margin is going to be, and you're not going to negotiate. Remember that giving customers special deals might make them feel good and come back to you again.

Make your listings ugly: As many colours, flashing lights and animations as possible will really give those customers a headache. Write as much in CAPITALS!!!! as you can. Preferably big, red capitals. Be sure to use the fonts Impact and Comic Sans. For an extra special touch, see if you can figure out a way to add some music.

Don't take photos: It's such trouble, after all. If buyers are picky enough to actually want to see items before they bid on them, then screw 'em, that's what I say.

Write short descriptions: Be as brief as possible, and use lots of mysterious abbreviations. This obviously makes you look very cool. You can even just write the title again in the description box. Think of the effort you'll save!

Use reserve auctions: Now, this is a fairly controversial final choice, but it really is one of the best ways to scare away your customers. They'll see 'reserve not yet met', and click that 'back' button before you know it. Luckily, they can always bid in a normal auction for the item somewhere else.

Now that you know the ten ways to kill your eBay business, how about we explore what to do if you want to do the opposite, and make a success of it? The next email will give you ten steps to successful selling on eBay.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

Is the eBay Customer Always Right?

By Hendra Subrata Liu

I can answer this question for you right now: the answer is 'yes'. In fact, the answer is 'YES!' - the biggest yes you've ever heard. Of the course the customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, however much time or money it might cost you.

A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.

But What If…

But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer. Here are a few common situations and how to handle them.

They say the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn't arrived. If it still hasn't arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. No, I don't care what that costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?

The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.

They say the item doesn't match the description: Resist the urge to email back with "yes it does, you just didn't read the description properly". Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

I'm sure you're spotting a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.

You should always handle customers' complaints before they complain to eBay - in fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.

Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let's say you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer's $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week's profit. It's far better to look at it this way: if you don't give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week's profit, but you'll probably lose a few weeks' profit after that too. Now which option looks better?

I absolutely can't emphasise enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints isn't the only thing you need to avoid. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you don't want to kill your business before it's even started properly - and I'll show you in the next email what they are.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

What's Your eBay Reputation Really Worth?

By Hendra Subrata Liu

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 Your 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 Your 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. But some customers can be, well, just a little difficult
to please. In the next email, we ask: is the eBay customer always right?

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

An eBay Seller's Checklist

By Hendra Subrata Liu

Being a seller is a lot of responsibility, and sometimes you might feel like you're not doing everything
you should be. This simple checklist will help you keep on top of things.

Have you found out everything you possibly could about your items? Try typing their names into a search
engine - you might find out something you didn't know. If someone else is selling the same thing as you,
then always try to provide more information about it than they do.

Do you monitor the competition? Always keep an eye on how much other items the same as or similar to yours
are selling, and what prices they're being offered at. There's usually little point in starting a fixed price
auction for $100 when someone else is selling the item for $90.

Have you got pictures of the items? It's worth taking the time to photograph your items, especially if you
have a digital camera. If you get serious about eBay but don't have a camera, then you will probably want to
invest in one at some point.

Are you emailing your sellers? It's worth sending a brief email when transactions go through: something like
a simple "Thank you for buying my item, please let me know when you have sent the payment". Follow this up
with "Thanks for your payment, I have posted your [item name] today". You will be surprised how many problems
you will avoid just by communicating this way.

Also, are you checking your emails? Remember that potential buyers can send you email about anything at any
time, and not answering these emails will just make them go somewhere else instead of buying from you.

Do your item description pages have everything that buyers need to know? If you're planning to offer
international delivery, then it's good to make a list of the charges to different countries and display it
on each auction. If you have any special terms and conditions (for example, if you will give a refund on
any item as long as it hasn't been opened), then you should make sure these are displayed too.

Have you been wrapping your items correctly? Your wrapping should be professional for the best impression:
use appropriately sized envelopes or parcels, wrap the item in bubble wrap to stop it from getting damaged,
and print labels instead of hand-writing addresses. Oh, and always use first class post - don't be cheap.

Do you follow up? It is worth sending out an email a few days after you post an item, saying "Is everything
alright with your purchase? I hope you received it and it was as you expected." This might sound like giving
the customer an opportunity to complain, but you should be trying to help your customers, not take their
money and run.

Being a really good eBay seller, more than anything else, is about providing genuinely good and honest
customer service. That's the only foolproof way to protect your reputation. Of course, you might be
wondering by now whether it's really worth all the hassle to get a good reputation on eBay. Won't people
buy from you anyway, and couldn't you just open a new account if it really comes down to that? Our next
email will set you straight.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com

5 Simple Steps to Posting Your First eBay Auction

By Hendra Subrata Liu

It's surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller's account
If you've bought things on eBay, then you already have an account - just log in with it and click 'Sell' in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click 'Create a seller's account'. If you've never used eBay before,then you'll need to open an account first using the 'register' link underneath the toolbar, and then click 'Sell' and 'Create a seller's account'. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell
For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn't really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you're in - I'm sure there's something in there that you're not all that attached to and could put in the post. Small books and CDs are ideal first items.
Step 3: Submit your item.
Click 'Sell', and you're on your way to listing your item.
The first thing you need to do is choose a category - it's best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.
Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn't, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but will also seem to drag on forever. If you've taken a picture, add it now - items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (just PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you're done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell
This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing - buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.
Remember that if your item doesn't sell then you can list it again for free.

Step 5: Collect payment and post it
eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending your payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything.
Once you've got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer's address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, post it, and you're done!
I hope you enjoyed selling your first item. Now that you're starting to get into it, the next email will give you a checklist of things you need to do to be a successful seller.

About the author:
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.pandanwangi.pobs.me
http://www.homebizrevelations.blogspot.com
http://www.healthismorepreciousthanwealth.blogspot.com