Jan 05 2009
10 Safety Tips For Buying On eBay
10 Safety Tips For Buying On eBay
eBay has become a household name for shoppers. A lot the buyers on eBay are not regular internet shoppers but they still shop on eBay. Such is the power of eBay giving simplicity of shopping and top bargains. From time to time, there is some fraud on eBay about fake fashion items, event tickets that do not exist, some expensive electronic items that do not exist.
eBay does its best to intervene and resolve such disputes. As a shopper, you can follow these 10 safety tips to avoid being conned.
1. Check the seller?s feedback. Positive feedback rating of over 95% is good. If there are many recent negative feedbacks, then this is not a good indication. Also, read all the negative feedbacks. Are these negative feedbacks reasonable? What type of response does the seller have for these feedbacks? Does the seller?s defense sound reasonable? Sometimes new members who buy items on eBay are paranoid and they leave a negative feedback in a haste so make sure if the seller has defended himself/ herself in a reasonable manner. If there are too many complaints of the same nature, then it is probably true.
2. The sellers must have some kind of identification or recognition seal like Paypal verified, or Square trade or a Powerseller seal on the auctions. Such sellers are more reliable. This is especially a good check when you buying an expensive item.
3. Ask seller a question before bidding on the item. Responsible sellers reply promptly to questions. Also, if the seller actually has the item, he/ she maybe able to answer a valid question otherwise not.
4. If you are buying something expensive, then get the contact information of the seller at http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQtZvbQQsofindtypeZ9. You have to login to your eBay account and send a request. You can get the seller?s address and phone number. In doing this, your address and phone number will also be emailed to the seller.
5. The items must have pictures unless it is a service that is sold on eBay. If there is no picture, then the items is probably not there. Almost all sellers will put at least one picture of the item. Let?s assume that the item is there but the seller has been lazy in not putting the picture in the auction ad. Would you like to deal with someone who is so careless? It just shows that the item may not be in good condition, maybe defective or broken.
6. Check description of the item. Research other websites for the same item. Some of the shopping websites to research would be shopping.yahoo.com, overture.com and shopping.msn.com. These sites are adequate for researching items and get the description that you need. The eBay description should match item description on other sites.
7. Research prices for the item on sale. If the item on sale is Gucci handbags, then search for this model of handbag on shopping.yahoo.com. If it retails for $800 on Yahoo and seller on eBay is selling a brand new one for $90, then this item may not be authentic! Large wholesaler are able to sell items for around 50% of retail but something like an original Gucci handbag, it is unlikely that a seller would let go for $90 because these items sell like crazy. Just a note on fraud items ? a lot of fraud eBay occurs on fashion items. This is very unfortunate and eBay has taken a lot of steps to eliminate fraud.
8. If the seller has not mentioned any shipping and handling terms, then ask before bidding. There are many auction ads, where the seller mentions that shipping and handling will mentioned to the winning bidder. Surprisingly, there are bids on that item! If you start bidding on the item, then it means that you agreed to the terms and condition of the sellers and there is less room for you to dispute later so ask for the clear instruction on shipping and handling.
9. Reliable sellers have clear description on their refund policy. If it is not there, then ask the seller for it. If the seller has no refund policy, then do not bid on the item. If the there is no refund policy in the auction description, then make sure you get the refund policy in an email from the seller. In this way, you have a document of the refund policy.
10. Do a search for the sellers past items on eBay. Check to see if the seller has sold similar items in the past. To search on the past auctions, go to the Advanced Search page. Here click on the items by seller link and type in the sellers ID and check the box for Include Completed listing. It is always good to check this especially if you are considering buying something expensive.
The author Guillermo Jalil owns several businesses including eBay business and other internet businesses. For more Ebay shopping tips on how to find great bargains visit <a href="http://www.startbuyingonebay.com" title="http://www.startbuyingonebay.com" target="_blank">http://www.startbuyingonebay.com</a>. For tips on how to make on the internet from multiple sources of income visit <a href="http://www.internetandmoney.com" title="http://www.internetandmoney.com" target="_blank">http://www.internetandmoney.com</a>.
Auction: Automate your Auction with Auction Software
If you list a few items “here and there” at online auctions, it only takes a few minutes to get your items up for sell. However, if you build an online auction business with hundreds of items for sale, you’ll run out of time and energy fast. That’s why automation is so important. Even if you find the perfect one stop online auction shop where you can sell all your items in one place, automation will still be necessary to keep the business going - and keep your sanity! Here are some great ways to automate your auction tasks. Automate with Auction Software There are software programs that are specially made for auctions. These programs will store all your listings in a database along with titles, descriptions, photos, pricing and shipping details. Some programs have a feature where you can save templates for certain categories. For example, if you sell household products, you might use the same template for all household items. Then, you might use a completely different template for your wholesale products. Therefore, you can save each template and have them available when you need them. How it Works A great benefit of using auction software is you can list more items in less amount of time. Here’s how it works: a) Type in your listings and accompanying details. b) Upload photos or banners for your listings. c) Submit the items to the auction site for listing. It’s that simple. Without this software, you will likely have to submit each item by hand through an online form with several screens.This could take several minutes or longer per listing. To get this software, check with your one stop online auction shop first. They might offer the software as a free tool. Use the search engines to search for “auction software” or “auction listing automation.” Automate Emails Once items have been sold, you should have some email templates ready to go for “thank you” messages, up-sell messages, etc. Create several “thank you” emails for the types of products you offer, each being customized for those customers. Also, create several “special offer” emails to send buyers throughout the year. Some one stop online auction shops provide automated email systems for you. It’s free and simple to set up a system like this, and the rewards are tremendous! Automate the Shipping Process Keep shipping supplies on-hand at all times. Prepare envelopes, boxes or bags ahead of time with labels, packaging materials, etc. Develop a system that you will use every time you receive an order so you won’t get disorganized. Take advantage of shipping “tools” supplied by your one stop online auction shop or payment processing company.Some auction sites or payment processors will provide packing slips for every order with the customer’s purchase details already printed for you. Automate Listing and Ending Times Schedule your items to end around the same time so you can easily manage them once the auctions end. If you schedule auctions to end on weekends, you can concentrate on shipping the items at the beginning of the week. Those who run auctions weekly usually go through a cycle of listing, ending and shipping around the same times every week. Saving Time and Money Automation will help you save time and money. You can list and manage more items through automation. Also, you’ll have a better chance at getting repeat business by sending regular mailings or e-mails to buyers. The more money you can save the better bargains your customers will receive.
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Ebay Success - How to Make a Real Income
By now, anyone looking to make money online has heard of or maybe even used the ever growing and very popular ebay. The beauty of ebay is this; no matter what your financial goals are, this buyer/seller site can achieve them. Some use ebay as a quick way to earn some extra cash, while others are using it to gain absolute financial freedom. The truth is; more and more part-time sellers are wanting to convert over to the more lucrative side of “the ebay phenomenon”.
I always recommend to those ,who are just looking to earn a few extra bucks, to start by selling things that they already own. Maybe you have some old clothes that are still in good condition; but you never wear. Toys are always a hot item on ebay, especially around the holidays. We all know how fast chilrden can lose interest in toys. One day, it’s their most favorite toy in the whole wide world; the next, it’s at the bottom of the toy box. Maybe you might even have some reading, how-to or even old cook books that are just taking up some space. Listing these things on eBay can easily earn you some extra cash.
Now, let’s get serious here. For those that want to make a real income on ebay listen up! Generating a consistent stream of income on ebay isn’t as hard as some might think. To be completely honest, it’s quite easy. Do you ever wonder how those big time money makers become Power Sellers on ebay? Well, it’s your lucky day because I’m about to tell you. The answer is, wholesale drop shippers.
What are wholesale drop shippers?
Wholesale drop ship companies are companies that you can buy goods from at discount or wholesale prices. These companies will then drop-ship the goods to the ebay sellers (that would be you) customers. The cool thing about drop shippers is the fact that the distributors name is never revealed. The ebay seller decides what the senders address is. Here’s a tip, many sellers just use their name or their own business name, this makes the ebay seller look very professional. So, this is how it works. Let’s just say that you wanted to sell tennis rackets on ebay. You already found a drop ship company that has tennis rackets at a reasonable price. What you would do now is list one of these tennis rackets on ebay for whatever price you want. After the item is sold, you would then go back to the drop ship company that you found earlier and order the item. When it comes to the shipping details, all you have to do is put in the information provided by the buyer when they purchase the item on ebay. So, in turn, the drop-ship company will then send the tennis racket straight to your buyer, and you never have to handle any merchandise or inventory! The best part is, you get to keep the difference as profit. What I mean is this, if you found tennis rackets on your drop ship site for only $75.99; and you listed it on ebay for $175.99, you would have made a $100.00 profit!
Finding quality wholesale drop-ship companies will be the back bone of your ebay business success.
Earl Stringer & Rachel Bishop, Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs & Success Team. Get Name Brand Products At Up To 80% Off Retail Cost, Visit The Website At: http://www.thewholesaleportal.com Check Out The Top Five Money-Making Programs Online at PlatinumReviewers, visit the website at http://www.platinumreviewers.com
Ebay Sellers: Shopping On Black Friday Will Make You Thousands
Black Friday is a goldmine for eBay resellers. On one single day there are more profitable items for sale than during the entire rest of the year. If executed properly, Black Friday can easily create thousands of dollars in profit. This article explains in detail how to find and buy deals on Black Friday and then how to sell them on eBay for a profit.
Preparing for Black Friday
In order to make the best purchases on Black Friday, it is necessary to start by gathering some supplies. Initially you will need the following:
- Money
- Transportation
- Advertisements
The first requirement is fairly self-explanatory, but keep in mind that the more money you can spend the more you can make. Don’t go out and spend $10,000 on your first trip though, as that is a lot to loose if you mess up. Prepare yourself to spend a set amount of money before leaving, that way you will know exactly what you are getting into. The second requirement is actually more important than it sounds. My friend and I went on our first Black Friday trip over four years ago, and boy were we under prepared. We went out with two sedans and came back with two sedans filled with products plus another sedan’s worth tied to the roof. I highly recommend that you at least attempt to find a rather large vehicle, though it isn’t imperative. Lastly, you will need to find yourself as many advertisements for Black Friday as possible. The sooner you get these, the easier it will be to do the research. I personally advocate searching online; there are many websites that post Black Friday sales ads well before they are printed. Look for deal sites and eBay selling sites to have these. Now that you have everything together, let’s get to the important part.
Researching Products for Profitability
It is ironic that the most important part of making money on Black Friday isn’t actually done on Black Friday. This is the part that separates those who will profit from shopping and those who will just buy things. It almost all comes down to the research. When the big day rolls around, it is important to know exactly where you are going and exactly what you are buying Also know how much money you expect to make from each product. Keep the importance of this step in mind as we continue.
The initial research begins with finding the material, a.k.a. advertisements. This can be done in two ways; the first is to go and get newspapers on the Wednesday before Black Friday, the second is to find ad-scans on the internet. I fully prefer the second method, as it allows me to research weeks in advance. A simple Google search for Black Friday will reveal many websites that are dedicated to providing ads as far ahead of time as possible.
Once your ad collection is assembled, you will need to sit down and look through all of them, paying specific attention to items you think will sell best. If you need to get a general idea of product value then vist www.selladeal.com/products and look at what items sell best. Next you want to write down a list of the products that you think will be profitable when sold. You will then check this list against the completed auctions on eBay to get an approximate selling value. To reiterate, you will be looking through ads to pick out valuable buys and comparing the price with their current value on eBay. This will give you a guess as to the amount of money you can make off of each item. I recommend repeating this process of finding an item and checking its eBay price several times so that your list will be fairly complete. At the end of this process, you should have a good number of products along with an idea of how much money you can make from reselling them.
Ranking and Scheduling Stores
Now it is time to plan out our shopping trip. Here we have this list of products and how valuable they are to us. The next step is to arrange the items by store and by profitability. This should make it apparent which stores are going to be more profitable than others - these are the stores that you’ll want to visit first. After you have the stores arranged based on profitability, you want to double check the hours of each sale. This will assure that you catch all opportunities because of differently timed sales (in a perfect world, each sale would start about 2 hours after the previous, in reality they will likely all start at the same time). The final step to this process is to write down an exact order of the stores that you will visit and an exact order of the products you will buy in each store. This list makes buying the best products a very straight forward trip. If you know what you want before hand, you will get there before the people who will have to think about it.
The Big Day - Black Friday
Believe it or not, this isn’t nearly as difficult as it is made out to be. Yes, there will be crowds. Yes, people will be acting like maniacs. This is why you will succeed - because you have already planned and researched everything and will not be acting crazy. The drill is simple: follow your schedule and buy as many of the profitable items as you can get. There may be times when you need to be assertive to stay at the front of a line, or even to push your way through a crowd to get to a product. The key is to remain polite, confident, and assertive enough to get to where you are going. Getting angry or causing trouble will only make things worse. If you cannot get one of your best products, it isn’t the end of the world. Remember that there are a lot of other items that you can get to resell for a profit. Here is a general set of guidelines for getting the best items:
- Always remain calm. You must be in control and thinking at all times.
- Be assertive. Say excuse me to get past people, don’t just wait there.
- Be polite. The moment you loose your temper, the sales reps will turn on you.
- Stick to the plan. Purchase the items that you can, and move on to the next store.
If all of these guidelines are kept in mind, there should not be any problems during Black Friday. There is one other thing to be aware of; up selling. Sales personnel will try rigorously to add on warranties, surge strips, antivirus software, and many other items that are not worth mentioning. Do not buy into their sales hype - stick with the plan and purchase the profitable items, nothing else.
Selling your Products on eBay
Almost there! Here is what’s next: cataloguing and selling the items online. This is pretty easy; the hard part is certainly over. Sell as many of the items as possible within the next two or three weeks, that way they will arrive by Christmas. Don’t panic or overload eBay in order to reach this deadline, the items will sell nearly as well the first week into January. I don’t recommend selling products during the weeks before and after Christmas, as this is usually a pretty slow sales period on eBay. I would highly recommend reading these selling guides if you need to brush up on your eBay auction technique. On the most basic level, you need to at least include a picture in each auction. That is about it - once everything is listed you need only sit back and deal with shipping. There are also some shipping guides in the above link if need be.
Let the Items Sell, and Count the Profits
This is the best part. Once everything is finished selling, it’s time to add it all up and see just how great Black Friday is. I personally made well over $2,000 on my first Black Friday. Give it a chance, do the research, and good luck!
Mason Hipp is an eBay powerseller and a regular contributer of selling guides, ebay products, and information to <a href="http://www.selladeal.com" target="_blank">http://www.selladeal.com</a>
You Can Sell in Ebay with Resale Rights? Posted By : nanu
Is reselling products with resale rights here to stay. You can then sell resale rights to it and generate instant backend cash. On top of that, for a paid book you can offer resale rights and even the right to grant resale rights.
How to Get Links from Auction Sites?
Internet auctions have emerged as one dynamic and effective economic force where millions of buyers and sellers are entering regularly. Online auctions provide a comfortable source of income to various webmasters. And for the customers, the auctions provide the platform to identify with the specific and discounted merchandise. Having your link in the auction sites proves to be an extremely beneficial deal in terms of traffic building and link popularity. If you want to go deep into how links from auction sites can help you build link popularity, read on the article further. First things first, when it comes to target traffic, auction sites prove to be amongst the best available options for your products. With all types of buyers and sellers conglomerating on the auction sites, the link popularity of your website also gains the propitious levels. Now the most important question pops up: How to Get Links from Auction Sites? To get your links on the auction site, you would have to first register with that site. The registration process is simple. You are required to fill in some mandatory details. These details include your name, your email address, your website address, and your phone number. After this an email would be sent in your account. It would require you to fill the details of the preferred payment method, product details and company details. Then with the final affirmation of the auction sites you would receive a confirmation of an official member of the website. After you have successfully registered with the website, you can start placing the products for auction. This would include a link to your website with the product. You can go for multiple links to your websites for even a single product. Getting a link with auction sites proves to be highly beneficial for you in two prominent ways. The first and the foremost benefit that you would get after getting linked to an auction site is the link popularity. The auction sites provide you with a temporary web space where you can provide multiple links to your product, its description and additional features. As you provide more links to the website, people would click frequently on the link, and it would gain higher ranking in the search engines. As more and more people would click on your link, the sales would definitely boost up. The second thing from which you would benefit is the traffic. As more and more visitors would click on your links to get the details of the products, their features and even their photos, the traffic would definitely increase. When the visitors would get to know fully about the products, they would prefer to buy them. This would again benefit you. As your website gets more popular, visitors would insist on directly coming to your website instead via the links. By doing these they would explore various new products and if they match their requirements, they can purchase them too. This would again benefit you as a website owner. Creating your link at an auction sites also gives you another benefit. You won’t have to ask for permission or a link back-up. You just have to pay a fee and you are free to proceed with your products posting.
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The Best Deal with Online Auction!
If you list a few items “here and there” at online auctions, it only takes a few minutes to get your items up for sell. However, if you build an online auction big business with hundreds of items for sale, you’ll run out of time and energy fast. That’s why automation is so important. Even if you find the wonderful one stop online auction shop where you can sell all your items in one place, automation will still be necessary to keep the business going - and keep your sanity! Here are some great ways to automate your auction tasks. There are software programs that are specially made for auctions. These programs will store all your listings in a database along with titles, descriptions, photos, pricing and shipping details. Some programs have a feature where you can save templates for certain categories. For example, if you sell household products, you might use the same template for all household items. Then, you might use a completely dissimilar template for your wholesale products. Therefore, you can save each template and have them available when you need them. A great benefit of using auction software is you can list more items in less amount of time or visit www.auctions-profits.com Here’s how it works: Type in your listings and accompanying details. Upload photos or banners for your listings. Submit the items to the auction site for listing. It’s that simple. Without this software, you will likely have to submit each item by hand through an online form with some screens. This could take several minutes or longer per listing. To get this software, check with your one stop online auction shop first. They might offer the software as a free tool. Use the search engines to search for “auction software” or “auction listing automation.” Once items have been sold, you should have some email templates ready to go for “thank you” messages, up-sell messages, etc. Create several “thank you” emails for the types of goods you offer, each being customized for those customers. Also, create several “special offer” emails to send buyers throughout the year. Some one stop online auction shops provide automated email systems for you. It’s free and easy to set up a system like this, and the rewards are tremendous! Keep shipping supplies on-hand at all times you can visit www.auction-o-matics.com Prepare envelopes, boxes or bags ahead of time with labels, packaging materials, etc. Develop a system that you will use every time you receive an order so you won’t get disorganized. Take advantage of shipping “tools” supplied by your one stop online auction shop or sum processing company. Some auction sites or payment processors will provide packing slips for every order with the customer’s buy details already printed for you. Schedule your items to end around the same time so you can easily deal with them once the auctions end. If you schedule auctions to end on weekends, you can concentrate on shipping the items at the beginning of the week. Those who run auctions weekly usually go through a cycle of listing, ending and shipping about the same times every week. Automation will help you save time and money. You can list and deal with more items through automation. Also, you’ll have a better chance at getting repeat business by sending regular mailings or e-mails to buyers. The more money you can save the superior bargains your customers will receive.
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