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By Martyn Boaden in Featured

Your eBay listing is your salesperson. Most sales people look smart and professional. Your eBay listing must also look smart and professional and give the appearance of a legitimate business. This will instil confidence in your buyers.

If you are selling the same item as someone else on eBay, but your listing is more professional and gives the impression of a legitimate business (whereas your competitor’s does not) then people will be more likely to buy from you. They may even be willing to pay more to buy the same item from you than from your competitor – because they have more confidence in you.

Make your eBay listing attractive and professional but avoid flashy gimmicks that distract. Just because you can add blinking images and flash video and music doesn’t mean you should. Whilst clever, they won’t increase your sales. They will just distract. If it doesn’t directly help you to sell your item, don’t use it.

A simple audio or video message in your eBay listing WILL increase sales.

Make your eBay listing EASY ON THE EYE. Some of your potential buyers may have poor eyesight. You don’t want to lose them because they can’t read your listing. But even if they have 20:20 vision, you are more likely to grab and hold their attention if reading your eBay listing is EFFORTLESS.

Dark text on a light background is the easiest to read. Black text on a white background is best and should be used in most cases. Different coloured text can be used sparingly to draw attention to a few key words and phrases.

Use a font that is appropriate to what you are selling. If you are selling children’s toys, “Comic Sans MS” might be an appropriate font to use. But this would create the wrong impression if you were selling something more “high-brow” such as a business course for which “Times New Roman” would be more appropriate. If in doubt, use an easy to read font such as “Verdana”, “Calibri” or “Arial”. Avoid difficult to read fancy fonts such as “Monotype Corsiva.”

SOME PEOPLE WRITE THEIR LISTINGS USING JUST CAPITALS. THIS IS A MISTAKE. IT IS ACTUALLY HARDER TO READ THAN LOWER CASE TEXT.

Capitals can be used SPARINGLY to draw attention to a few KEY WORDS and PHRASES.

Most people will skim through your listing to see if it’s of interest before they decide whether to read it fully or move on to the next listing. You want them to notice the most important words and phrases – the ones that describe your product’s major benefits – as they skim read.

So emphasise these important words and phrases by using a combination of CAPITALS, bold text, underlined text, high-lighted text or by using different font colours. But don’t over-use these as your listing will look messy and what you want to emphasise will no longer stand out.

These emphasised words and phrases must build sufficient interest in the skim-reader to encourage them to read your eBay listing properly.

A big block of un-broken text, many lines deep, is daunting. Break it up into several smaller paragraphs that are only a few rows deep. Don’t worry if this grammatically in-correct.

You are NOT writing a piece of prose for your English exam. You are writing a sales letter. Your style should be CONVERSATIONAL and EASY TO READ. Use SHORT sentences and SHORT paragraphs with SPACE between each paragraph. This breaks your text into small bite sized pieces which are easier to digest.

Whilst you don’t need perfect grammar (because you are using a conversational style), you DO need perfect spelling. Poor spelling is VERY unprofessional. Compose your listing in a word processing software program such as Microsoft Word with the spellchecker on and correct any errors. If spelling isn’t your strongpoint, get someone else to proof-read your eBay listing.

Write everything in a logical order such as headline, description, guarantee, shipping terms, payment terms. Break up the text with sub-headings such as Guarantee, Shipping Terms, Payment Terms, etc so that it is easy to follow.

You can use brand awareness to enhance your credibility on eBay. If all your eBay listings look the same, people who haven’t bought from you yet will soon become familiar with your listings. They may eventually buy from you instead of a competitor because this familiarity breeds confidence.

Consider having a logo made and used in all your listings to make you look more professional, differentiate you from your competitors and help build brand awareness.

Most salespeople dress conservatively, i.e. a business suit and sensible shoes. They don’t dress to “express themselves” and stand out. This would distract from their sales message. They just want to look professional so that customers will have confidence in them. Your logo and your listing design should do the same.

You can make your listings completely bespoke and unique by using HTML (which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the code used to design webpages) even if you don’t know how to use HTML! You can use “What You See Is What You Get” (“WYSIWYG”) software such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

The way this software works is you design your webpage in a similar way that you would write a Word document, without using any HTML code. The program automatically converts your design into HTML for you. You then copy and paste the HTML code into eBay’s Sell Your Item or Turbo Lister templates. You can download a FREE WYSIWYG software program called NVu.

Martyn Boaden is the Founder of The Online Auction Resource Centre where you will find more information and all the resources you’ll ever need to set up and run your successful and profitable eBay business. And for a limited time only you can get instant access to his popular eBay Business Box (worth $164 + $17 pm) for FREE by clicking this link: http://www.TheOnlineAuctionResourceCentre.com

By Martyn Boaden in Featured

If you’ve listed products on eBay without a photo and successfully sold them – don’t be fooled into thinking you don’t need a photo. You would almost certainly have got more bidders, and therefore probably a higher selling price, with a photo.

If your eBay listing doesn’t have a photo and your competitor does, you will lose out. If you don’t have a photo, potential buyers will be sceptical or suspicious. They will think that you either don’t really have the item for sale or you have got something to hide, i.e. it’s not in very good condition. Without a photo, your listing will not look professional which will damage your business image.

Your listing MUST have a good quality digital photo of your item. If you are selling new products, the manufacturer or your supplier may have photos that you can use. But you must check that you are allowed to use them. Otherwise you could be prosecuted, or at least have your listing removed. Also, if you use the manufacturer’s photo, all your competitors may be using the same photo, so your listing won’t stand out.

Often, when people are just selling stuff from around the house, they will use any old snapshot of the item and you can see all sorts of domestic mess in the background. This is not good enough if you want to run a successful and profitable business on eBay. A good photo will increase the perceived value of your item and attract higher bids. A poor photo will cheapen your item.

You should take photos in good light with a plain background behind the item so as not to distract from it. You can use a plain bed sheet for this. Pictures must be sharp and clear. Take lots of photos from different angles and use the best – the one(s) that make the product look most valuable.

If you don’t have a digital camera and can’t afford to buy one, see if you can borrow one. Alternatively you can probably get ordinary photos put on a disc at your local photo-processing shop. You can then upload them to your computer. Or you can scan them into your computer if you have a scanner.

Digital photo files can be quite large and so should be compressed for the internet so they don’t slow down the loading of your page. People online are impatient – they won’t wait around for your page to load.

You can also improve your photos, such as adjusting the brightness and contrast, or air-brushing out unwanted distractions in the background, by using photo editing software if you have it installed on your computer.

If you don’t have software on your computer to edit photos and compress them, use irfanview dot com (it’s FREE!). You can compress them so they load faster, crop them, lighten them, darken them, add text, etc.

At the time of writing this article, upgrading to a gallery photo – where the photo appears next to your listing title in the search results – is FREE on eBay UK. If it isn’t free when you are listing your item – PAY FOR IT! If other listings on the search results page aren’t using a gallery photo – yours will stand out. If they are – yours will get over-looked if you don’t have a gallery photo.

Remember that your customers are buying without having seen what they are buying. You need to provide them with as many photos as is necessary for them to know enough about your item and its condition to be able to make an informed decision as to whether they want to bid. If you don’t provide enough photos for them to be able to make up their mind, they probably will not bid.

If two listings are selling the same item, but one just has one small, slightly blurred, photo and the other has several large, clear photos taken from every angle including close-ups, who would you feel more comfortable buying from?

If you are selling brand new ipods, one photo will probably suffice because your customers will know what they are getting. But if your item needs 10 photos to show it off properly – you should use 10 photos. Seeing everything about your item gives people the confidence that they know exactly what they are bidding on.

Take close-up photos of any defects. Then winners of your auction can’t justifiably complain that the item was not as described and return it or give you negative feedback.

If you use eBay’s photo uploader, each additional photo increases your listing fee. But you can add unlimited photos for FREE if your photos are hosted somewhere else on the internet. Your Internet Service Provider may provide you with some webspace packaged together with your email and internet access account.

You can design your listing as a webpage hosted on the internet with as many photos as you like, displayed how and where you like on the page, then copy and paste the HTML code into eBay’s List Your Item form. You need to ensure that the HTML code has the correct path to where your photos are hosted on the internet otherwise they won’t show up in your listing on eBay.

If you don’t have your own website on which you can host your photos, you can host them with Tupics dot com or Vendio dot com for a few dollars per month. Vendio also offers additional cool tools so you can add watermarks to your photos (so other people can’t use your photos) and have a zoom function added.

Alternatively, you can add multiple photos to your listing for FREE and have them displayed as a slide show on your listing, by using Slide dot com. You upload your photos to slide, design your slideshow, then copy and paste the HTML code that they give you into your listing.

Another alternative is to upload your photos to Facebook dot com. Although the photos won’t appear in your listing you can say: “To see more photos of this item, click the following link:” and then copy and paste in your listing the link to your photos that Facebook provide.

Martyn Boaden is the Founder of The Online Auction Resource Centre where you will find more information and all the resources you will ever need to set up and run your successful and profitable eBay business. And for a limited time only you can get instant access to his popular eBay Business Box (worth $164 + $17 pm) for FREE by clicking this link: http://www.TheOnlineAuctionResourceCentre.com

By Vickie Sayce in Featured

When you are running your own home business on eBay, you may find occasionally that you’ve listed something in error, or someone wants you to split an auction, so you need to cancel a current listing you are running. Cancelling a listing is easy, it’s perfectly okay to do on eBay. There are some things to know before you start, however.

Cancelling a listing is not necessary if you simply need to make changes to your current auction. Simply go in and edit the erroneous information, and it should be updated immediately. If you are making a drastic change, however, you must have no bidders on your auction to do so.

Cancelling an auction simply because the bidding price is not high enough is against eBay’s terms of service, and can get you suspended or banned from eBay if you do so.

If you need to cancel your eBay auction listing, log into your account on eBay. Visit your selling section, and you will see a current list of all the items you are currently selling, both active and inactive. Find the listing that you need to cancel, and copy the item number of that listing. Visit “Related Links,” and choose “More.” You’ll see an option for ending your listing early; this is where to input your auction number.

If your listing currently has bids when you want to cancel it, you have the choice to either cancel all of the existing bids, or award the item to the highest bidder. If you have decided to cancel all of your bids, or you had no bids before cancelling the item, you will then need to explain to eBay why you are cancelling the auction. After you submit this information, the listing will be cancelled.

Reasons for cancelling your eBay auction may include restructuring a listing for a potential buyer – for instance, if you have multiple items in one listing, and a buyer only wants to purchase one of the items, you may want to “split” the auction for them and create a new listing so that they can purchase the single item. There is no guarantee that the buyer will bid and purchase the item, however, so exercise caution, because the potential buyer is not required to bid solely because you created a special auction for them. You may also want to end the listing early to award the item to the highest bidder if you have reached the price you were hoping for, and want to hurry up and ship out the item.

It is also important to note that eBay does not refund the listing fee for cancelled auctions. While you won’t have to pay a final value fee – unless you award the auction to the highest bidder at the time of cancellation – you still have to pay the original fee that you were charged when you listed the item. This is usually very small, but for larger auctions, this may be something to consider before cancelling an auction if you don’t want to lose a lot of money.

If you want to make money on eBay while raising the kids, visit http://AuctionPaydayKidsPlay.com to find out how. Vickie Sayce teaches others how to get started on eBay (VickieSayce.com), and has been buying and selling on eBay since 2001. She has written a very informative book on starting an eBay business to make money from home while raising the kids.

By Vickie Sayce in Featured

Pricing your items that you want to list on eBay can be difficult for those who have never done it before. List your items too high, and you won’t receive any bidders. List your items too low, however, and you run the risk of not making money – or worse, landing yourself in the negative. If you consistently price your items incorrectly, you can find yourself with little to no business, or owing money at the end of the day. Pricing your items correctly from the get go can severely cut down on how often this happens.

When you have done your research and know what items are popular on eBay, you should know what items you are looking for and their average selling costs. If not, you need to look up the most popular items on eBay by category, narrow down the products that you are interested in selling, and figure out what the average final selling price for each item you are interested in is. When you have a general idea, then you can start looking for where to purchase the item.

Purchasing items to resell on eBay can be tricky. You don’t want to spend too much money up front and risk having overstock that doesn’t sell, but you also don’t want to spend more money on each item by buying less at a time, leaving you a smaller margin of profit. The best route to go is to find an item you want to sell going for at least half the price of what you want to sell it at. This gives you plenty of wiggle room to make money, without setting your starting bid to high.

When you list your items on eBay, list them as low as possible for you to break even. This includes your final value fee, your listing fee, and your shipping costs, along with the total price you paid for one item. If the item you are selling cost you $50, and additional costs, including eBay fees, totals $10, then the absolute lowest starting price for your item should be $60. This way, if only one person bids, you will at least break even on the transaction.

If you are feeling a bit risky, you may even want to list your item slightly lower than what your total costs for it are. Starting your bid lower than the other bids for the same item on eBay can get you more hits, and in turn, more bids. Many sellers often balk at the idea of setting their starting bid too low, but really, these are the sellers who probably see the most money for their auctions. Buyers are drawn to what they think is a deal, and once they get caught in a bidding war, there’s no telling how high the final price could soar.

Be cautious not to set your starting bid too high, or you could effectively drive away potential bidders. Bids that start close to what the final price of the item should be, or bids that are significantly higher than the starting bids for the same items from other sellers, are far more likely to be passed over with no bids.

If you want to make money on eBay while raising the kids, visit http://AuctionPaydayKidsPlay.com to find out how. Vickie Sayce teaches others how to get started on eBay (VickieSayce.com), and has been buying and selling on eBay since 2001. She has written a very informative book on starting an eBay business to make money from home while raising the kids.

By Vickie Sayce in Featured

One of the wonderful things about eBay is that they offer a wide variety of different tools to help sellers generate more business. One of the more popular tools that eBay offers its sellers in the eBay Selling Manager, which is a sales management tool that can help you manage your auctions more efficiently. eBay also offers a more inclusive version of their selling tool, called Selling Manager Pro. Both of these tools do come with a low monthly fee that is added to your eBay statement, unless you run an eBay store, in which case it is free.

Deciding which version of the eBay selling tool you need can be tough. To start out, go for the basic package. You can always upgrade if you find you need to later. At the present time, the basic version is only $4.99 per month, so it won’t put a big dent in your budget. If you have a small to medium amount of sales to manage per month, this is all you need. You also get a 30 day free trial with the basic version, so if you decide it’s not right for you and your business needs, you can cancel before your trial is up and not waste any money.

The Pro version offers more tools for higher volumes of sales. If you have a large inventory to manage, the Pro version is probably a better choice for your business. At the moment, the pro version is just $14.99 per month, and it also offers a 30 days free trial. The basic Selling Manager is also free for basic store subscribers, and the Selling Manager Pro tool is available for free to those with a premium or anchored store.

Both tools have software that needs to be downloaded to be utilized. Both software programs support just about any operating system, so you shouldn’t have a problem with compatibility issues. Once the software is downloaded, your eBay selling links will automatically be replaced with your Selling Manager links, making it easy to use the selling tool with your current selling methods.

The software makes it easy to list and re-list your auctions, view scheduled listings, sold items, and closed auctions. You can track your sales, sent bulk invoices and e-mails to customers, and easily leave feedback for all of your buyers using the software. For record keeping purposes, the Selling Manager also lets you download or import your sale information to your computer or into a new Excel spreadsheet, making it easy to track your sales for tax purposes, or for your bookkeeping needs.

The Selling Manager can make boring and tedious tasks quick and easy to manage. You can keep track of your auctions with ease, and stay in contact with your buyers with the click of a button. This eBay tool makes it simple to manage your eBay home business right from your computer without needing to log into eBay, and can boost your efficiency, working like a dedicated employee for you around the clock.

If you want to make money on eBay while still raising the kids, visit http://AuctionPaydayKidsPlay.com to find out how. Vickie Sayce (dotcom) teaches others how to get started on eBay, and has been buying and selling on eBay since 2001. She has written a very informative book on starting an eBay business to make money from home while raising the kids.

By Michael Tasker in Featured

Over the years, eBay has introduced all sorts of different auction types, in an effort to give people more options when they buy and sell their things on eBay.

For every seller who doesn’t like the idea that their item might sell for a far lower price than they intend, there’s another who wants to shift hundreds of the same item quickly. eBay tries to cater to all tastes. This email gives you an overview of the different kinds of auctions and their advantages for you.

Normal Auctions

These are the bread-and-butter of eBay, the auctions everyone knows: buyers bid, others outbid them, they bid again, and the winner gets the item. Simple.

Reserve Auctions

Reserve auctions are for sellers who don’t want their items to sell for less than a certain price – a concept you’ll know about if you’re familiar with real auctions. They work just like normal auctions on eBay, except that the buyer will be told if their bid does not meet the reserve price you set, and they’ll need to bid again if they want the item. If no-one is willing to meet your price, then the auction is cancelled, and you keep the item.

Fixed Price (‘Buy it Now’) Auctions

Buy it Now auctions can work in one of two ways. You can add a Buy it Now button to a normal auction, meaning that buyers can choose either to bid normally or to simply pay the asking price and avoid the whole bidding process. Some sellers, though, now cut out the auction process altogether and simply list all their items at fixed price. This lets you avoid all the complications of the auction format and simply list your items for how much you want them to sell for.

Recently, eBay added a twist to fixed price auctions: the ‘best offer’. This means that buyers can contact you to negotiate a price, which could be a good way to get sell some extra stock at a small discount. The only downside to reserve and fixed price auctions is that you pay a small extra fee to use these formats. In general, it is more worth using reserve auctions for higher-priced items and fixed price auctions for lower-priced ones – but remember that you can combine the two formats.

Multiple Item (‘Dutch’) Auctions

These are auctions where you can sell more than one of a certain item. Dutch auctions can be done by bidding. Buyers bid a price and say how many items they want, and then everyone pays the lowest price that was bid by one of the winning bidders. If you have trouble getting your head around that, then don’t worry – everyone else does too! These auctions are very rare.

What is more common is when a seller has a lot of one item, and lists it using a combination of two auction types: a multiple-item fixed price auction. This just means that you can just say how many of the item you they have, and offer them at a fixed price per unit. Buyers can enter how many they want and then just click Buy it Now to get them.

Now that you know about the different types of auctions, you should make sure that the items you plan to sell don’t violate eBay’s listing policies.

Michael Tasker operates a successful information marketing business and continues to expand to various websites plus direct marketing channels as well. Discover the secrets to become an Ebay power seller in the new A-Z guide and power yourself into the 2% Ebay elite. The audio and transcript guide shows you everything that the elite use to generate a huge income selling on Ebay. Sign up for a free course at: http://www.goodbyemoneyworries.com/ebaycashpoint/ebaysign.html

By Clint Herman in Featured

So you’ve decided you want to get started as a seller on eBay. There are a few things you really need to know before you go and throw yourself in at the deep end.

Selling on eBay.

First off, you need to know what it is you’re going to sell: what’s your speciality? You’ll do far better on eBay if you become a great source for certain kind of products, as people who are interested in those products will come back to you again and again. You won’t get any loyalty or real reputation if you just sell rubbish at random.

When you think about what to sell, there are a few things to consider. The most important of these is to always sell what you know. If you try to sell something on eBay that you just don’t know anything about then you’ll never write a good description and sell it for a good price.

You might think you’re not especially interested in anything, but if you think about what kind of things you usually buy and which websites you go to most often, I’m sure you’ll discover some kind of interest. If all else fails mention it to your friends and family: they’ll almost certainly say “Oh, well why don’t you sell…”, and you’ll slap your forehead.

Out of the things you know enough about, you should then consider which things you could actually get for a good enough price to resell, and how suitable they would be for posting. If you can think of something of that you’re knowledgeable about and it’s small and light enough for postage to be relatively cheap, then that’s great!

Don’t worry if you think the thing you’re selling is too obscure – it isn’t. There’s a market for almost everything on eBay, even things that wouldn’t sell once in a year if you stocked them in a shop. You’ll probably do even better if you fill a niche than if you sell something common, and believe me, the number of niches on eBay is absolutely mind-blowing.

Tax and Legal Matters.

If you earn enough money, you should be aware that you’re going to have to start paying tax – this won’t be done for you. If you decide to sell on eBay on a full-time basis, you should probably register as a business. Of course, even if you sell part-time or in your spare time on eBay, you need to consider these things. I’m no attorney – that’s just my opinion.

Prepare Yourself.

There are going to be ups and downs when you sell on eBay. Don’t pack it in if something goes a little wrong in your first few sales: the sellers who are successful on eBay are the ones who enjoy it, and stick at it whatever happens.

Anyone can sell on eBay, if they believe in themselves – and if you do decide it’s not for you, then the start-up costs are so low that you won’t really have lost anything.

If you’re ready to start selling, then the next thing you need to know is the different eBay auction types, so you can decide which ones you will use to sell your items. There’s plenty of information out there that will go into this topic in great detail. Just do on search on Google.

Clint Herman is a successful eBay seller with over 6 years experience selling on eBay. He also loves teaching others how to sell on eBay. He is the author of “How to Get Started Selling on eBay,” which is a beginner’s guide to selling on eBay designed for people who are new to selling on eBay. The guide is available at http://www.beginnersauctionguide.com/ar.html

By Clint Herman in Featured

marketing.jpgIt’s extremely easy to put your eBay business 6 feet under. You have to be careful, even though you can start over from scratch without it costing you much, but is this something you really want to do? However, if you want your business to end up dead in the water, here are some simple ways to do it.

Lie about an auction item: If you say an item works fine when it sometimes doesn’t or if you say it’s in perfect condition when it has blemishes then you will have angry customers.

Mail the auction item whenever you feel like it: If you leave your customers hanging around wondering when their item is going to turn up then you will probably end up with no repeat buyers.

Let items end anytime: Few people will be around to bid on your auction if it’s ending in the middle of the night. You should go to the trouble of working out whether auctions will end at a good time.

Don’t bother with email: If you take the attitude that communicating with customers is a timewasters then your eBay businesses will end up on the chopping block fast. Communicate by giving informed responses to questions about your auction item.

Offer trash: Don’t get caught up thinking you can just sell any old tat from the market for a huge profit on eBay. Don’t let quality be someone else’s concern. At the very least, if you do sell an item at auction that is old, tarnished, scratched, etc. then be open and honest about this in your eBay auction ad.

Give no discounts: If you stand hard and fast to the adage that you will give no eBay buyers discounts then you are going to leave money on the table. Not only can you get buyers to buy more, you can get buyers to come back again.

Use visually unappealing auction listings: Things to do if you want to repel potential bidders: use a bunch of colors, flashing lights and animations. Write the entire auction description in CAPITALS!!!! Hey, might as well use big, red capital letters. Also, be sure to use the fonts Impact and Comic Sans, and for an extra special touch, see if you can figure out a way to add some music.

Don’t use pictures of your auction item: Not only do pictures give more information to your eBay bidders, but they will also give your auction more of a chance of getting checked out when buyers do searches. And I personally think having pictures in your listing can give bidders more of sense that they will not get ripped off by you.

Write short descriptions: Another eBay business killer is to be as brief as possible in your auction description. Also, try not too use too many mysterious abbreviations, and for goodness sakes do not just write the title again in the description box. Use reserve auctions: Now, this is a fairly controversial idea, but this can be one of the best ways to scare away your eBay 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 I know this can be used properly, but try to avoid it as often as possible.

God bless, Clint

Clint Herman is a successful eBay seller with over 6 years experience selling on eBay. He also loves teaching others how to sell on eBay. He is the author of “How to Get Started Selling on eBay,” which is a beginner’s guide to selling on eBay designed for people who are new to selling on eBay. The guide is available at http://www.beginnersauctionguide.com

By Clint Herman in Featured

shopping cartSo now you have a potential eBay buyer checking out your auction. They’re obviously interested in the item you are selling, or they wouldn’t be checking out your auction. Let’s say they’re on the fence about whether to buy or not. So how can you nudge them and get them to bid or buy? Well, check out the tips below.

Increase your picture quality: It’s been said over and over – a picture is worth a thousand words. If your picture is not good quality then it probably won’t matter what you wrote in your description Maybe you missed something important that a good quality picture would convey. If you have bad lighting or a background that drowns out your item then it will be worth little to nothing to those checking out your auction. Make sure people can see what you’re selling and consider using multiple pictures to show different angles and aspects of your item.

By Melody Wigdahl in Featured

shopping cartEBay has been the ideal home based business for years. Most of us started with the ‘clean out the garage’ model, and over time graduated to dropshipping, and in many cases, it has turned into a pretty significant fulltime income.

Over the last several weeks, several VERY disturbing changes have taken place at EBay as EBay seems intent on wiping out the very business base that built the behemoth, to focus on the corporate clientele that have taken a much larger position on EBay over the past couple of years, using EBay to sell off their excess inventory directly, rather than selling to the large discount chains as was the previous habit.

Here’s an overview of some of the most significant – and damaging – changes that affect you and I, the folks that have built home businesses around EBay….

1) The EBay Feedback system now only allows Sellers to leave POSITIVE for Buyers. On the other hand, Buyers can leave any kind of feedback they want for Sellers. This means that if you have a problem with a Buyer (gee – that never happens, right?) you are pretty much out of luck! So, if the Buyer feels that he should have received his widget in 3 working days – even though you clearly state that it takes no less than 10 working days for the widget to ship – he can give you a negative! And you are pretty much powerless since there is no arbitration system in place.

2) Neutral Feedback? HAH!! Guess what? They no longer exist! All of your neutral comments have now been converted to NEGATIVE feedback ratings. Top PowerSellers have lost their PowerSeller status and the perks that went along with it – including the extra discounts that were often factored into their pricing. Although the PowerSellers were given a period of time to ‘correct’ the situation – the bottom line is that Buyers are not terribly responsive to such requests – and this means that a huge percentage of PowerSellers…aren’t. An interesting side note here is that one PowerSeller that was hit by these changes…..is also one of the speakers at this week’s EBay Live Conference in Chicago……should be a very interesting speech…….

3) The Final Straw…….dropshipping is huge on EBay. My hubby has been very successful dropshipping on EBay – both through EBay partners such as Doba and others, as well as resources of his own, through his 25 years in the wholesale gift industry. Today he received an email from PayPal stating that any orders that were ‘known to be dropshipping” would result in a 21 day hold on the funds from the customer! The only way around this is to send PayPal the tracking notice when the product ships and supposedly they will ‘release’ your funds.

Personally – I have dealt with PayPal in the past over disputes – and the response times are horrible. Basically, this means that if you have been earning a living dropshipping – you will now have to be financially solvent enough to cover all of your sales out of your own pocket, rather than paying for the product with the funds from PayPal. This pretty much will kill the entire dropshipping business model for most people on EBay.

4) No digital products – Ebooks were a HUGE seller on EBay and it was a great business model! Automated download, a real ‘set it and forget it’ business model if handled correctly. But apparently it was not handled correctly by many and now ebooks and other digital items must be sold in DVD format and physically shipped. exactly why it was such a great business – you didn’t have to ship anything!

At one point, we had 4 stores on EBay and thousands of products, but we have been ‘branching out’ and are looking at other products, such as the EBay Affiliate program, niche store scripts etc.

After this latest round of changes, and the notice today from PayPal, we will be pulling 99% of our products off EBay.

As a home business – it no longer works for us.

Over the next few days we will be posting reviews of the various store models as we take them for a test drive – we will bring the pros and cons of every system!!

Melody Wigdahl is a serial entrepreneur, lifelong geek and founder of Work At Home Ideas For Women, and The WomensNet Network, Home Of The Amber Grants For Women Entrepreneurs , a networking and resource site for women entrepreneurs. Melody has been working from home for more than 2 decades – web based since 1996 – and loves to share ideas and stories with other entrepreneurs!

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