Book Links

Root Out Bad Feedback on eBay

Posted by hughlh

If you are buying from (or selling to) someone on eBay with tons of feedback, there is no easy system in place to only see the negative feedback. If someone has 500 feedback but 10 negatives, I want to see what those negatives were. If they have trouble shipping in a timely manner, if they pack everything in a shopping bag, if they are going to ship me my book in a Count Chocula cereal box, I want to know about it.

That is why I use the feedback tool at Toolhaus. If you enter the seller ID of the eBayer in question, they will root out the bad feedback and put it all in one place, saving you from scrolling through pages and pages.

Basic HTML For eBay and Other Places

Posted by hughlh

If you sell on eBay, have your own website or just want to post in your favorite web forum, it helps to know some HTML.

Most of what I know about HTML, I learned by cutting and pasting. Here is a good list of cut and paste HTML tags.

If you want to write your own, here is a practice board where you can try your code.

If, however, you are too lazy or just can’t be bothered, you can always use this online HTML editor to write your own code.

How Much Does PayPal Cost?

Posted by hughlh

A while back I wrote about a very simple tool that would allow you to determine the cost of doing business on eBay. I thought at the time (and still do) that it is a neat tool; the problem comes up when I just need to figure out my PayPal fees.

To just determine your PayPal fees, there is this nifty tool. I like it especially because If I want you to receive $50, say, it is nice to know that I should send you $51.80 for you to net $50 after fees.

What Does It Really Cost To Sell on eBay?

Posted by hughlh

I have always maintained that selling on eBay is a great proposition assuming two things:

1. An above average sell through and
2. The item you sell is of high enough value.

Sell through rate is basically the percent of items you put up for auction that end with someone buying them (Say you put 5 auctions up, 4 of them end with someone buying the item, You have an 80% sell through rate).

The item we sell should have an average closing price above $15.00, $20.00 is better.

Thanks to this little tool here, you can see exactly what it costs to sell an item on eBay.

For example, all day long you see people put auctions up for $9.95, the end at $9.95 and then the buyer pays with PayPal. The tool tells us that the cost of that transaction is $1.62, or more than 15%.

Thought it was a pretty cool little tool.

Auction Ads - eBay Affiliate on Steroids

Posted by hughlh

Most of you reading this have some sort of web presence. Further, many of you sell on eBay and have links from your site to your auctions. Most of us are upset about the way eBay has made change after change, with every change further hurting the seller. One way to fight back is with eBay’s Affiliate Plan.

Until Recently, eBay’s Affiliate Program Sucked!

For years, eBay has had an affiliate program: if you send someone to their site and they either register, use buy it now, or win an auction in 7 days, you get a percentage of what eBay makes off that transaction. Honestly, however, it was an awful small percentage. And until very recently, you could make nothing on referrals who bought your items.

Enter Auction Ads

AuctionAds is, for want of a better term, a middle man in the eBay Affiliate process. One major problem with eBay’s affiliate program was that it was tiered, so you made a small percentage until you hit a breakpoint, and then you made a larger percentage. Auction Ads is a registered affiliate, so the combined referrals of all their members count toward that breakpoint, so you are getting a larger percentage than you could qualify for based on your own referrals.

The possibilities are endless. You can use Auction Ads to make a link, or you can highlight your own auctions in a window, or you can highlight auctions related to a theme (such as I did with book-binding tools in the window to the right). And thanks to a change in eBay policy, you can now get credit for referring people to your own auctions.

Overall it is quite neat, and another way you can make money with eBay.

Other places that have talked about it:

AuctionBytes

OpenAds

Shill Bidding On eBay Explained

Posted by hughlh

A recent article talked about the proliferation of shill bidding on eBay UK. For the uninitiated, shill bidding is when the seller (or a confederate) bids on his own items, thus driving the bid up. The end result is that the final bidder pays a (possibly) higher price than they would have had the seller not interfered.

An example:

You have Grandma’s family Bible in pristine condition and the rent is due, so you put it up on eBay. Because you read my blog, you decide to put it up for bid at $1, with no reserve. It gets quickly bid up to $50, then sits there like a dead rat. You know this book should sell for at least $250 and, what is more, you NEED $250 to pay the rent. You call your mom and have her bid on the Bible, having her place a max bid of $245, so the next bid by anyone will have to be for $250.

In the above example, you and Mom engaged in shill bidding. Mom was your shill, driving the price up artificially.

I am a huge fan of eBay and sell a lot there, so let me be the first to tell you that there are dealers who do this on a regular basis. I know (by their own admission) of 3 high end dealers who do this, and have studied 3 others who I am 99% certain do this. It is a huge temptation, especially for dealers who place items for clients on consignment. You give me a $5,000 book to sell, I put it up on eBay and it is 5 hours before auction end and it is sitting there at $2300. The dealer calls some friends and says “I am about to lose my a## on this book, can you bump it up for me?”. They do, there is a natural flurry at the end, and the dealer gets his price.

I understand why the sellers do it, but I think it is self-defeating for several reasons:

• Word always gets out. Always.
• You never know what a book is going to sell for until the very end.  Sniping is a way of life on eBay. We have had many times when books were way below what we needed to make on them as late as 2 minutes before auction close. I once watched a book of mine jump $2300.00 in the last 37 seconds.
• It would be difficult to explain why the one of a kind book you had for sale last week is up for sale again this week.

While I believe it is self-defeating, the cold hard truth is that it does happen, and is damn hard to prevent. The recent decision by eBay to hide user id’s will only serve to exacerbate the problem. The question begs itself: How can I buy books safely on eBay?

I wrote extensively a while back on the subject of buying books safely online; to that advice I only add that the surest, safest way to buy on eBay is to bid the highest price you are willing to pay, and then forget it. If you are willing to pay $100 and it is currently at $25, bid $100 and then do not look back. This assures you you will never pay more than you had intended for any item, and no amount of shilling will force you to pay more than $100.

When it is all said and done, however, the best advice I can give you is to buy from someone you trust. As I have said before, if you do not know books, you had better know your bookseller.

The Wisdom Of Multiple eBay Selling IDs

Posted by hughlh

I mentioned once on another website that I have 4 eBay id’s, and a reader wanted to know why. Her concern was that she had heard of people using their other account for shilling purposes, and she was curious if there were legitimate reasons you would want multiple accounts.

This is an extremely good question, and one that I had intended to address at the time, but, as John Lennon said, life is what happens while we are busy making other plans. There are quite a few reasons a serious eBay seller should have multiple IDs, and none of them have to do with shilling.

In no particular order, here we go:

Experimentation

I use a very precise layout for my eBay ads. Everything in it has been tested over several years, so I KNOW it works. What if I want to try something wild, like voice recordings in my ads or a dancing squirrel in the corner? Seriously, I keep an ID that is just for experimenting with new techniques, new layouts and such. This way I can test new things without confusing or offending my client base.

Selling Off Topic.

We have a friend (who I hope is not reading this) who works in a Perfume store. Every blessed Birthday, Christmas, even Easter, guess what everyone gets as a present? That’s right. I have had CKone, Drakkar (I did not even know they still made it), Polo, Ralph Lauren and everything else you can think of. The problem is, I do not wear scents. Ever. So, the week after the holiday, one of my eBay accounts has perfume bargains up for sale.

Likewise if I found some depression era green glass salt shakers at a yard sale for a dollar or if we want to sell some clothes the kids outgrew. I do not want my book clients scanning my listings and seeing an 18^th century Bible, a Signed Limited Edition and some Osh Kosh b’gosh overalls. It would dilute my effectiveness and make me look like this was stuff I found at a garage sale.

Buying Inventory

I buy a lot on eBay, and much of it makes it way back up on eBay. I hate getting phone calls and emails wanting to know if this is the same book I bought a week ago for $4. Plus, it pisses off the original seller to see you get $500 for something they sold you for $10, so much so that you could end up on the blocked bidder list.

I talked about shilling the other day, and one reason you want another ID to buy with is to protect you against shilling. Let’s say your eBay ID is RARE.BOOKS. If you bid on an item, the seller says to himself, I have a live one here. Obviously, this guy knows something I don’t, no way am I going to let him take advantage of me. So, he calls mom and has her bid on the item to drive the price up. If, on the other hand, you use your other ID, which is BEERGUZZLER, no one thinks twice.

Protection

If you spend any amount of time on the eBay discussion boards, some argue it is worthwhile to use a non-selling ID to post there. If you piss someone off because you think George Bush is a genius you do not want them to use their non-selling ID to bid on all your stuff and not pay, or for them to contact all your bidders and tell them you are a child molester. Yes, I know those things are wrong, but they could happen, and as Clausewitz said, we plan for capabilities, not probabilities.

Insurance

If Nigerian Spammers invade my account, I could be out of business for as much as a week or two until eBay gets it all straightened out (This happened to us on one of our accounts last fall). If, however, I have a second ID, I just add a credit card so I can use it to sell with, then I send an email to my clients telling them what happened and where I can now be found and go forward, with only some inconvenience to show for it.

There are no doubt other legitimate reasons you could have another eBay ID, but those are the main ones. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comment box, or email me direct.