Well, you don’t have to be a dummy to request a free kit - but you don’t have to be a genius either ;)

Apparently this is only for a limited time so you should definitely request your free auction success kit right now!

Do you want to make money selling on eBay? Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Power Seller of 4 years.

His website “The Auction Resource Network” reveals his inside secrets, tips, and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 per month on eBay.

His proven step-by-step system shows even users with little or no business experience how they too can make huge profits selling products on eBay.

In this short but to the point report he’ll cover topics like:

1. Low starting Price
2. No Reserve
3. Images
4. Cross-Promotion
5. About Me Page
6. Return Policy
7. Feedback
8. Instant attention
9. eBay Store
10. Shipping

Click here to download it. (just right-click and pick ‘Save Target/Link As…’): www.workathomemadeeasy.net/eBooks/top10ebaysellingsecrets.pdf

Basically, the featured gallery works a lot like ‘Featured Plus’ for normal listings, which shows your item before all the other results. Buying a ‘Featured Gallery’ listing shows your listing at the top when someone chooses to use the picture gallery instead of the list view.

Which Picture Gallery?

Exactly – you’ve probably got no idea what I’m talking about, since it’s such a little-used and well-hidden feature. Try doing a search for an item. Do you see just above the results, where you can choose between ‘List View’ and ‘Picture Gallery’ (it’s next to the options for sorting the results)? Click ‘Picture Gallery’. A whole new world opens up before your eyes!

This feature is there for buyers who prefer to work visually instead of by title – and there are a surprising number of them, especially if your items are being sold for their visual appeal.

What Happens When I’m Featured?

Becoming featured in the gallery means that your item will be displayed above the other items in the picture gallery when any search there includes your item in the results. You might think this useless, considering how few people ever look at the picture gallery – but for the people who do look, you’ll be right up there. You’ll stand out even more, in fact, since so few sellers buy the featured gallery listings.

Not only that, but your picture will appear almost twice the size of the normal gallery listings below it. Your picture will be taking up a big part of the users’ screen as soon as they get their results, and they can’t avoid seeing it! For users with smaller screens, your picture could take up as much as a third of their display area.

Consider it targeted advertising towards buyers who prefer to work visually – if you want to attract that kind of buyer, you’ll do well from the featured gallery. If you sell art then this will be absolutely ideal for you, especially for large, striking pieces. There are independent artists out there who’ve gone from no sales to bidding wars just by getting featured in the gallery.

So How Do I Get a Featured Gallery Listing?

Just tick the option when you’re going through the Sell Your Item process. It costs $19.95 per item, so it’s only really worth using on auctions where you think you’ll make more than that back in the extra bids.

By now, I hope your business is well and truly off the ground, and expanding every month – if you’re putting in the time, working hard and working smart, then it should be getting there. Unfortunately, though, this is the last post you will receive from us (or is it?…). Use your new eBay knowledge well, never give up, and good luck in everything you do.

Stay tuned for possible future updates…

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson is an eBay fan and recommends The Auction Resource Network - The Ultimate Learning Resource Site for Online Auction Sellers! ( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=riz_ebayseller ) for anyone interested in making money through eBay.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)

eBay’s affiliate program follows this basic formula, but with a few twists.

It pays a lot. Each user who follows your link to eBay, signs up and then bids on anything within 30 days will earn you $20. Most affiliate programs will only give you something like 10% of the user’s first purchase. What’s more, for each existing eBay user who clicks through from your site and then places a bid or buys something, you’ll get 10c.

You can be your own affiliate. If you just link to your own auctions with your affiliate link number from your own website, then you’re getting money without sending buyers to anyone except yourself. There aren’t many affiliate programs that can say that.

So Where Do I Sign Up?

You can visit eBay’s affiliate program at affiliates.ebay.com/. Once you’re there, just click ‘Join the Program’. You will then be required to sign up for Commission Junction, which is free.

How Can I Get People to Click the Links?

eBay suggest a number of ‘business models’ for their affiliates. Before people can click your affiliate links, they need to be at your website. There are two ways to get them there using a search engine, which eBay refer to as ‘natural’ and ‘paid’ search.

Natural search: This is when someone finds your website in a search engine’s normal results, either because something you wrote is relevant to them or you used SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques. Be careful not to use any dodgy methods to get a high search engine ranking, though, or eBay might come after you and keep your affiliate money.

Paid search: This strategy involves paying for traffic to your website or directly to eBay, by buying ads on search engines. If you go for this option, it’s actually worth placing ads on the less popular search engines instead of the big ones: they’ll have similar click-through rates as a percentage, but the cost typically won’t be anywhere near as high.

Content: What you can do is just have a normal website, with articles on a variety of subjects and perhaps a community forum. Run the website for pleasure, but place the occasional eBay affiliate link there.

Newsletters: Don’t ignore the potential of putting your affiliate ID in each time you send out a newsletter. You can get 10c for every bid it generates with no extra work, which could be enough for the email to pay for itself, whether it leads to any sales or not.

Sadly, our time together is nearly at an end, but there is one thing that I have left to show you. It’s called the featured gallery, and it could help your sales. Look out for the next post!

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson publishes the Home Business Tips Newsletter which you can join for free by clicking here.
( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/homebusinesstips.html )

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)

eBay’s Policy.

eBay refer to the practice of copying another seller’s listing and using it in your own auction as ‘description theft’. It is against their listing policies, and ignorance of the rules is no defence.

What Could Happen?

If your ‘theft’ is discovered, then your listing will be ended and all bids will be cancelled. Do it more than once and your account could get suspended, and you’re subject to the usual eBay punishments: you could lose PowerSeller privileges, or your auctions could be ended, leaving you with a stack of eBay fees.

Is it Likely?

It’s only likely that eBay will investigate description theft and go after you if the seller whose description you took actually takes the time to report you. When you’re competing with that seller directly, though, don’t be surprised if they do turn you in – after all, you’re their competitor!

Think of how you’d feel if someone was re-using a description that you took the time to research and fine-tune for the most sales – and not only that, but they were using it against you, to list competing items. That’s why other sellers don’t want their descriptions taken.

But I Don’t Like Writing Descriptions.

Instead of taking another seller’s descriptions, you can use the stock descriptions that eBay have on file for many items, especially things like CDs, DVDs and books. Simply enter the item’s unique ID number (an ISBN for a book, for example), and the listing will be created for you. If you can’t find any unique ID, then you can also search by name to find a matching item.

Once you’ve found your item, you’ll get a listing with all the technical details on the item, and often a stock picture, too. This is called ‘pre-filled item information’, and eBay licence it from big databases on your behalf.

It really is worth taking the time to write your own descriptions, though, as many people will be listing items using the pre-filled information. Remember that if you sell the same things often then you can re-use your own descriptions as many times as you want. You can keep your own database, re-using the ones that get high prices and re-writing the ones that don’t. Writing descriptions is the biggest way that you have control over your auctions.

It’s easy to keep discovering new things about eBay, isn’t it? So many of the rules and functions are completely hidden away that sometimes it feels like unravelling one big mystery – and, for me at least, that’s a big part of the fun. In the next post, we’ll take a look at how to make more money with eBay’s affiliate program.

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson is an eBay fan and recommends The Auction Resource Network - The Ultimate Learning Resource Site for Online Auction Sellers! ( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=riz_ebayseller ) for anyone interested in making money through eBay.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)

Collectors are the people on eBay who really do pay top-dollar for things that seem like junk to you and I – not to mention to the people you’ll be getting your stock from! That’s why you can make so much profit on collectibles. Here are a few tips.

Go to people’s homes. People’s homes are full of things that someone out there collects – they are the best and cheapest source of collectibles out there. Sure, you might find something if you hang around at enough garage sales, but you’d have competition. Getting invited to people’s homes to look around should be a dream for you, and one you’re doing your best to make a reality.

Buy on other auction sites. You’ll be surprised how much money you can make if you buy the collectibles that people sell on smaller auction sites like Yahoo Auctions, and then list it on eBay. These sellers will often be perfectly knowledgeable about their item, but simply getting a lower price because they serve a smaller marketplace. Sometimes you can almost double your money.

List in non-collectible categories. If your collectible doesn’t have a category of its own under ‘collectibles’, you might prefer to list it in a category that has something to do with the item but nothing to do with collecting. What you will often find is that people browsing a category for their favourite thing will pay more for your collectible than actual collectors would.

Do lots of research. Never list something you think might be valuable without searching and searching to dig up every piece of information you can on it. Everything you find out is likely to be useful when you come to list it.

List every tiny, tiny detail. Remember that collectors really care about the most seemingly insignificant things. An item from one year can be worth thousands while the one from the year before is near-worthless, or an item that is one shade of a colour can be worth far more than one of a subtly different shade. It’s not worth puzzling over and it’s not worth trying to pass your items off as something they’re not – just make sure you put absolutely everything you know in the description.

When you are listing items that require close research and description down to the tiniest detail, however, don’t be tempted to steal someone else’s work! Whatever you do, don’t take another seller’s description and try to pass it off as your own, as this could have all sorts of consequences for you. Our next post gives you a guide to eBay’s policy on ‘description theft’.

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson is an eBay fan and recommends The Auction Resource Network - The Ultimate Learning Resource Site for Online Auction Sellers! ( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=riz_ebayseller ) for anyone interested in making money through eBay.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)

Selling to Business.

If you’re selling business equipment and have mostly business customers, you should really aim to have your auctions finishing between 9am and 5pm on weekdays. It is worth, however, trying to avoid mornings and avoiding the ‘lead-in’ and ‘lead-out’ that takes place on Monday and Friday themselves.

Selling to Home.

If most of your sales are to private customers having it shipped to their own home, then you want your auctions to finish when these kind of customers will be around. Unfortunately, these times are the opposite of what they are for the business customers. The ideal time to catch a home customer is on a Sunday evening.

List for Durations.

In order to get your listings to end on a particular day, you can simply change the duration of your auctions depending on what day it is. For example, if you mostly sell to home customers and the day today is Thursday, then your auction needs to run for either 3 or 10 days to hit a Sunday. If you sell more to business and the day today is Friday, then:

a 1 day auction would be bad (finishing on Saturday),
3 days would be alright (Monday),
5 days would be good (Wednesday),
7 days would be good (another Friday),
and 10 days would be alright (Monday again).

You could draw up a little timetable of when you should and shouldn’t be listing depending on the days of the week – make it red, amber and green, traffic light style, and stick it on your wall.

Schedule Listings.

Of course, if that all sounds like too much trouble then there is an easier – if more expensive – way of doing things. Simply use any of the many tools that let you schedule listings (almost all listing programs and sites do) – you can set the start date for any day and time you feel like.

Be aware that you might have to pay a few cents per listing for this if you do it through eBay. With some software, you may also need to leave your computer on all the time, so the software can start the auctions when it’s supposed to. The advantage of this method, however, is that there will be no per-listing fee, since the auctions were scheduled through your computer and not through eBay.

If it’s the home market you’re after, then you might not have realised what one of the most powerful things to sell on eBay is. I’ll give you a clue: it’s not consumer electronics, or media products. It’s what eBay is famous for. Check out the next email for more.

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson is an eBay fan and recommends The Auction Resource Network - The Ultimate Learning Resource Site for Online Auction Sellers! ( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=riz_ebayseller ) for anyone interested in making money through eBay.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)

Buyers can also earn eBay Anything points when they use the eBay credit card, or exchange their frequent flyer miles for eBay Anything points. People think it’s really great to take frequent flyer miles they’re never going to use and get stuff on eBay for them.

How to Offer Points to Your Buyers.

Go to anythingpoints.ebay.com/offer.html and click ‘Log In to Offer Manager’. Enter an item’s number to offer Anything points on that item.

How Does it Work?

You choose how many points per dollar you want to offer to your buyers when they pay you with PayPal. Each point costs you 1c, and is worth 1c to the buyer – eBay don’t take anything out along the way.

For example, if you sell an item worth $500, and you offer 2 points per dollar, then the seller will receive 1000 eBay Anything points – the equivalent of $10. You only pay for the points when the buyer actually receives them, and you can offer points on as many or as few listings as you like.

Each listing you add will get a big banner below the description, saying “X Anything Points per dollar of the final price for buyers who pay with PayPal”. Buyers can click it for more information on the scheme.

Why Would You Want To?

Really, most sellers who offer points are doing it to get around a condition of their contract with their supplier. Many sellers only get access to goods at wholesale prices provided they don’t list them for sale below the manufacturer’s MAP, or minimum advertised price. The points allow them to offer the items at the MAP and then give their buyer money back in the form of points. It’s a bit like a virtual rebate.

The eBay Anything points scheme is good for you and for eBay, as it encourages buyers to use PayPal instead of more cumbersome payment methods. eBay are keen to promote PayPal, and obviously thought this would be a good way of doing it – not to mention that it keeps buyers coming back, to spend their points. You will also get to be listed on the ‘Earn Points from eBay Sellers’ page, which is here: anythingpoints.ebay.com/earn.html.

Here’s another advantage for you: if you buy things from sellers who offer Anything points, you can then use those points to pay your own seller fees. Another seller gets to pay your fees for you! All you need to do is go to My eBay, then Account Management, click the Pay button, and then choose the option to use your Anything points to pay.

If you’re going to offer points, then you want your auction to end for as much as you can possibly get – let the buyer pay for their own points! All you’ll need is our next email, all about strategies for when to start and end your auction.

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson is an eBay fan and recommends The Auction Resource Network - The Ultimate Learning Resource Site for Online Auction Sellers! ( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=riz_ebayseller ) for anyone interested in making money through eBay.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)

VeRO stands for ‘Verified Rights Owner’. It is the eBay policy that deals with complaints about your auctions from companies who own copyrights, patents or trademarks on the items you are selling. Unfortunately, it is often abused to remove items from eBay that are perfectly legitimate to resell, simply because the copyright owner doesn’t want people getting their hands on them.

If the copyright of something you’re selling is owned by one of eBay’s 5,000 verified rights owners, be prepared for trouble. eBay have given these companies the right to remove any auction from eBay that they see fit, and, say eBay, “eBay cannot require the rights owner to provide you with the exact reason of the request to remove your listing”. Worse, eBay may even suspend your account, or give your real-world contact details to the company in question.

Why Do eBay Do This?

Basically, they do it to avoid getting sued, or even getting threatened with being sued. There is a law called the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) that means that eBay must either take these auctions down when it asked to or take full responsibility for them from that point on. eBay doesn’t want to take any responsibility for your auctions.

It’s not worth worrying too much about it – 99% of the VeRO program is aimed at stopping fake brand-name goods or pirated media being sold through eBay. Big companies also seem to get quite upset when eBay sellers take the company’s ad copy, logos or professional pictures and use them for selling on eBay.

If you’d like to take a slightly patronising quiz about copyright to help you understand eBay’s policy, go here: pages.ebay.com/help/tutorial/verotutorial/intro2.html.

So Who Are These Companies?

There’s a complete list available here: pages.ebay.com/help/community/vero-aboutme.html. This list includes everything from the Microsoft and Adobe to Chanel and Nike, not to mention the RIAA (recording industry association) and MPAA (motion picture association). Most of the companies, understandably, deal in software, media or fashion.

eBay Say I Violated VeRO and I Want to Appeal.

Use the link at the bottom of this page: pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/vero-removed-listing.html. That’ll get you to eBay’s VeRO Seller Appeal Form, where you can put your case to them directly. You are supposed to take it up with the company that complained about you first, however – and sometimes you might find that they just back down, which makes the whole thing a lot easier.

If you have no luck getting any response from eBay by email, it’s not really worth trying to phone them – you’ll find they’re most responsive if you use the ‘Live Chat’ feature or write them an actual, real-paper letter. You’re best off being nice to eBay: they have absolutely no obligation, after all, to ever let you sell anything at all.

On a happier note, have you ever heard of eBay Anything Points? No? Well, you’re not alone. The next post will explain what these little-used points can do for you.

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson is an eBay fan and recommends The Auction Resource Network - The Ultimate Learning Resource Site for Online Auction Sellers! ( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=riz_ebayseller ) for anyone interested in making money through eBay.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)

Buyers can find your store, pay for items, and then complain about you for not shipping them or responding to emails – without you even being there to stop it. What’s more, no-one will accept the fact you were on vacation as an excuse: after all, what were you doing listing items on eBay if you were on vacation?

So what’s the solution to this little problem? Well, it’s easier than it sounds. Whenever you go on vacation, just make sure you don’t forget to send your eBay store on one of its own.

What Do You Mean?

eBay offer a facility to put your store on ‘vacation’, which basically means that it is temporarily suspended while you’re unavailable to ship items. This means that you don’t need to be available 365 days a year just in case someone orders from your eBay store.

How Do I Put the Store on Vacation, Then?

Go to My eBay and click ‘Manage Your Store’. Now click ‘Change vacation settings’ and choose ‘Turn vacation settings on’. Click the ‘Save Settings’ button, and it’s done. Once the settings are on, you have a few options about what you want your store to do while you’re away.

Hide your listings. You need to do this – your listings will be hidden from buyers, so they can’t bid on them. Be aware that it can take a few hours for your listings to disappear from the search results, though.

Display messages. If you want, eBay can put a message in your listings and on your store to say that you’ve gone on vacation – just in case anyone wonders what happened to you. You will be asked to say when you expect to come back. You should always do this, as it’s quite inconsiderate to just disappear without telling your loyal customers where you went!

Will I Still be Charged for My Store While I’m Away?

Unfortunately you will – not only the subscription for the store, but also for any listings that expire while you were gone. This is quite cruel of eBay, but what can you do? To lessen the impact of this, make sure you don’t list any new items for a while before you put the store on vacation.

I’m Back! How Do I Turn the Store on Again?

Click: My eBay, Manage Your Store, Change vacation settings, Turn vacation settings off, Save Settings. Everything will now go back to normal. You might want to send out a newsletter at this point, to let your buyers know you’re back.

Here’s another little headache that could get you into some trouble: eBay’s ‘VeRO’ program for copyright holders. I’ll show you how to avoid falling foul of it in the next post.

*** About The Author ***

Hannes Johnson is an eBay fan and recommends The Auction Resource Network - The Ultimate Learning Resource Site for Online Auction Sellers! ( www.workathomemadeeasy.net/go.php?c=riz_ebayseller ) for anyone interested in making money through eBay.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this
article within your website or newsletter as long
as you leave the article fully intact and include
the “About The Author” resource box. Thanks! :-)