10 Tips For Increasing Your eBay Response

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by Kirsten Hawkins

So you’ve got the buyer in front of your auction, and they’ve read the description. They’re must be interested, or they wouldn’t be looking… but just how can you push them over that line and make them leave a bid? Read on for some tips.
Improve your picture: In all that description writing, you might have missed the vital importance of your item’s picture. A picture with bad lighting or an intrusive background looks amateurish and won’t make anyone want to buy from you.
Add an About Me page: You’ll be surprised how much you can reassure bidders just by creating an About Me page and putting a little bit about yourself on your business on there. You can also have a few special offers there for people who bother to look at the page, and let people subscribe to your mailing list so that you can email them updates.
Use SquareTrade: Signing up at SquareTrade and displaying their logo on your auctions shows that you are committed to have them resolve any disputes that arise. You always see this on PowerSellers auctions – it makes you look more professional.
Write terms and conditions: Have the ‘small print’ clearly visible on all your auctions, giving details of things like shipping times and prices, your refund policy, and any other business practices you might have. This helps build confidence with buyers.
Show off your feedback: Copy and paste a selection of the feedback comments you’re most proud of to each item’s description page, instead of making bidders go and look for it. If you have 100% positive feedback, be sure to write that on every auction too.
Add NR to your titles: If you have extra space in a title, put ‘NR’ (no reserve) on the end. Bidders prefer auctions that don’t have a reserve price, and doing this lets them see that yours don’t.
Benefits not features: Make sure your description focuses on the benefits that your item can give to the customer, not just its features. This is a classic sales technique. If you have trouble with this, remember: ‘cheap’ is a feature, ‘save money’ is a benefit.
List more items: If you want more people to respond to your items, then list more items! You might find you have better like listing items at the same time, instead of one-by-one. There’s no need to use a Dutch auction – you can just keep two or three auctions going at once for an item you have more than one of in stock.
Accept unusual payment methods: To reach those last few buyers, accept payment methods that many sellers don’t, like cheques.
Buy some upgrades: The best upgrade is the most expensive one, which makes your item appear first in search results. In crowded categories, you might find that this is worth the money.
Once you’ve got some buyers, you want to keep them coming back to you. The next email will show you how to turn one-time buyers into long-term customers.

About the Author: Kirsten Hawkins is an eBay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit www.auctionseller411.com for more great tips on how to make the most from eBay and other online auctions.

Source: www.isnare.com

How To Respond To An eBay Buyer’s Complaint

by Kirsten Hawkins

At some point in your eBay selling life, one of your customers is going to send you a complaint. As long as you respond to it properly, however, it’s easy to keep a complaint from turning into a crisis.
Respond Immediately and Grovellingly.
Someone might complain to you directly, or they might do it through eBay. Whatever happens, you need to email them immediately. Here’s a template to use:
“I have just received your complaint and I would like to say that I am very sorry you aren’t satisfied. If you would like, I can send you a [replacement/refund] for the item, as part of my ‘no questions asked’ guarantee. I apologise again for our mistake.”
Whatever you do, don’t start making excuses for yourself. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t get around to posting it yet because I’ve been busy at work and I’m going on holiday next week…” – no-one cares. If the buyer isn’t satisfied, then you screwed up, and you need to apologise repeatedly and do everything you can to make them happy again. Besides, is it really worth your time to go through eBay’s long-winded dispute process when all it’s going to do is alienate your customers?
This an attitude that will give you a massive advantage in eBay selling, for the simple reason that many smaller sellers are confrontational, unhelpful and out for every penny they can get. If buyers are rude to you, it’s just because they’re used to dealing with rude sellers.
Responding politely, promptly and being willing to do anything for your buyers will mark you out as different. It’s so rare that you might even manage to turn your complaining buyer into one of your most loyal customers!
Let People Phone You.
Don’t insist that everything is done with email – allow frustrated buyers to phone you and have a chat about their item. The chances are that they will never have talked to a human voice before about an eBay complaint, and will be even more impressed with anything you offer them to solve their problem.
Neutralise Negative Feedback.
If it really comes down to it and your complaint ends up as a piece of negative feedback on your record, make sure you post a response – and don’t make it something like “buyer was impossible to work with, avoid”!
Instead, post an apology, and detail what you did to put things right, for example: “Very sorry for the scratched item, I have sent a replacement”. You may also find that some buyers leave feedback before you have the chance to put things right, in which case you could write a phone number in the response space, or something like “I have emailed you about a refund”.
This will let anyone looking through your feedback see that not only are negatives very rare, but the few that there might be aren’t really worth counting.
In the next email, you’ll learn how to turn your shipping costs into a profit center.

About the Author: Kirsten Hawkins is an eBay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit www.auctionseller411.com for more great tips on how to make the most from eBay and other online auctions.

Source: www.isnare.com

Learning the eBay “Lingo”

by Kirsten Hawkins

Do you have trouble sometimes understanding when people talk about eBay? Don’t worry, some of the jargon is really obscure, and you can’t be expected to understand it until someone’s told you what it means. Here’s a little list of some of the most useful lingo to know, but you don’t need to memorise it – even the most common jargon is only used relatively rarely.

Words

• Bid: telling eBay’s system the maximum price you are prepared to pay for an item.
• Dutch: an auction where more than one of an item is available.
• Feedback: positive or negative comments left about other users on eBay.
• Mint: in perfect condition.
• Non-paying bidder: a bidder who wins an auction but does not then go on to buy the item.
• PayPal: an electronic payment method accepted by most sellers.
• Rare: used and abused on eBay, now entirely meaningless.
• Reserve: the minimum price the seller will accept for the item.
• Shill bid: a fake bid placed by a seller trying to drive up their auction’s price.
• Snail Mail: the post, which is obviously very slow compared to email.
• Sniping: bidding at the last second to win the item before anyone else can outbid you.

Abbreviations

• AUD: Australian Dollar. Currency.
• BIN: Buy it Now. A fixed price auction.
• BNWT: Brand New With Tags. An item that has never been used and still has its original tags.
• BW: Black and White. Used for films, photos etc.
• CONUS: Continental United States. Generally used by sellers who don’t want to post things to Alaska or Hawaii.
• EUR: Euro. Currency.
• FC: First Class. Type of postage.
• GBP: Great British Pounds. Currency.
• HTF: Hard To Find. Not quite as abused as ‘rare’, but getting there.
• NIB: New in Box. Never opened, still in its original box.
• NR: No Reserve. An item where the seller has not set a reserve price.
• OB: Original Box. An item that has its original box (but might have been opened).
• PM: Priority Mail.
• PP: Parcel Post.
• SH: Shipping and Handling. The fees the buyer will pay you for postage.
• USD: United States Dollars. Currency.
• VGC: Very Good Condition. Not mint, but close.

The chances are that you’ll find more specific jargon related to whatever you’re selling, but it’d be an impossible task to cover it all here. If you can’t figure one out from your knowledge of the subject, then type the term into a search engine, followed by the word ‘ebay’. The chances are that someone, somewhere will have seen fit to explain it.
While it’s good to be able to understand others’ jargon, avoid using it unless you really need to (for example, if you run out of space in an item’s title). Many people on eBay are not experienced buyers and you will lose them if you write a load of gobbledegook all over your auction.
By now, you’re well prepared for eBay life, and you’re probably ready to get started with that first auction. In the next email, we’ll show you how to dive in and get started.

About the Author: Kirsten Hawkins is an eBay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit www.auctionseller411.com for more great tips on how to make the most from eBay and other online auctions.

Source: www.isnare.com