The Future of eBay - What the New Policies Mean for You

The eBay Seller's News, February 2007, Volume 7, No. 3

Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The Newsletter for Professional
eBay Sellers by:  Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings

1. The Future of eBay - What The New Policies Mean for You
2. Seven Deadly Sins of eBay
3. Sourcing Product on Craigslist To Sell on eBay
4. Tips for Making Money With My Affiliate Program
5. eBay Niche Market - Vintage Photographs
6. Advanced Techniques for Selling Information Products
7. New Wholesale Sources for February 2007

"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.."
(Perfect is the enemy of good)
~François-Marie Arouet better known by his pen name, Voltaire, was a French writer and philosopher.~
 

Musings

eBay's new announcement season is here. 2007 will most likely go down as the year eBay tries to reinvent itself. Our first article, the Future of eBay, gives you my take, and some predictions, on the changes announced and those to come over the next 30-60 days.

eBay is under huge pressure from Wall Street to improve earnings and from large sellers who are growing their business with other platforms. Some of these changes will affect the very culture of eBay. It may be more than a year until the full effects are known. This will be a very challenging year for sellers.

My quote this month is from Voltaire. He was a very strange guy --and years ahead of his time as a thinker and philosopher. I chose this quote because it is very relevant to eBay sellers. A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post that laid out the premise that it is better to start doing something even if you make some mistakes that to just think and plan forever and never get started.

You will never find the perfect product, take the perfect photograph, create the perfect headline or write the perfect description. Yes you want to strive for excellence --but forget perfection. Even if you achieved it, the marketplace changes so rapidly, you would only be there for a day.

The real secret to making money on eBay is to avoid the basic blunders and get the mental obstacles out of your way that keep you from achieving success. Look for little wins and small victories and the big wins will come over time.

February is when we take off for the Bahamas every year. So I will be pulling down all my auctions except those products that I drop ship and I won't be checking email or the phone very often. We have a house sitter while we are gone but he doesn't answer my phone. So if you send an email or call me, please be patient if it takes a while to get back to you.

My latest book, Ten Little Known, Highly Profitable Niche eBay Businesses Anyone Can Do is selling very well and I am getting excellent feedback from readers who have found the businesses easy to start with very little effort or investment. None of them will make you rich --they aren't designed for that. But there are some great ideas and techniques in there to make some extra money easily and quickly.

Last month I told you about the rollout of WorldWide Brands (WWB) new wholesale sourcing product OneSource. On January 19th I conducted an online teleseminar on wholesale sourcing for eBay sellers with Chris Malta from WWB.

I had hoped to have the teleseminar up for readers to listen to by now but we have run into some technical issues we need to resolve. Once it is available I will post the link in my blog.

OneSource includes all types of real wholesale sources that span the spectrum from drop shippers, light bulk wholesalers, large bulk wholesalers and even direct importers into one sourcing tool that is completely integrated with an eBay and website research tool.

The best way to understand how OneSource works is to watch the free video. Click here and when you get to the site, then click on the link that says take the tour. This link will give you $50 off the intro price plus another $20 for my readers. I don't know how long they can make this offer available, so don't wait too long.

The Day Job Killer is the Latest Product from the Creator of Project X.  This is not for everyone. But if you want to make money from affiliate programs and Google AdSense You will want to see this.

This newsletter is for eBay sellers, but a lot of my readers also have websites and like to earn money from affiliate marketing and Google AdSense. Last year, Rob XYZ (He is a 34 year-old affiliate guru from the NYC who won't reveal his name, came out with a product called Project X that I used to increase my income from Google AdSense and my affiliate banners by over 200%.

The Day Job Killer is his latest product and it just launched today. It sells for $77 today through Thursday and then the price will go up to $97 or possibly more. I just got a look at it and its worth every penny. Warning these are not techniques for the squeamish. They are all honest --nothing illegal or unethical --but this is Gorilla marketing at its best. Now don't buy this if you aren't ready to work at it. It will take you a couple of hours to study the material, you will have to invest some time in learning how Google AdSense works if you don't already use it, and then it will take a few hours to set up your ads. But if you are ready to invest the time, he can show you how to make money from Google AdSense and Clickbank even if you don't have a web site --and how to really drive affiliate income if you do have a blog or a web site. Click here to learn more about the Day Job Killer.

A couple of weeks ago eBay invited their top 250 sellers to an e-commerce forum in Burlingame, CA near eBay's headquarters in San Jose.

The event was billed as an opportunity to get input from their largest sellers. Although several members of PESA, the Professional eBay Seller's Alliance were there, the event was seen by some as ignoring PESA who has been lobbying for changes to benefit large sellers. According to my sources, although there was plenty of opportunity for sellers to lobby eBay, the event had more to do with eBay soothing seller tempers, working to slow defections from the platform and trying to pre-sell many of the changes coming to the platform. Apparently eBay was successful as most of the attendees I spoke with came away with very a positive outlook.

By now everyone has heard about the profit potential of using misspelled words to find cheap items on eBay and to include in your titles to get more hits from those who can't spell.

Sandy Hall has automated the process. She offers a complete system that automatically finds products with commonly --and even some uncommonly, misspelled words. Her system also comes with a ton of free auction tools including an image gallery tool, image protection tool, auction template creator and lots of little html tips, tricks and advice. The Misspelled eBay Search System is one of those little products that really delivers a lot of value for the money.

Many of you have web sites in addition to your eBay business. If you are like me you are always trying to get more traffic to your sites. Google AdWords has just become so expensive and frankly doesn't convert to sales very well. I still get the best results from people who find my web sites by searching.

Earlier this month I read an article in Revenue magazine about Colin McDougall and the techniques he uses to set up web sites and drive natural traffic within a matter of weeks. One of his web sites managed to get on the first page of Google within 19 days.

When I got to his web site he was offering an eBook called The VEO Report. I bought it and it was excellent. I learned 7 things I didn't know about getting free traffic and I am still only 1/2 way though the book.

Colin is the real deal. He has made as much as $60,000 a month in income from his web sites. The VEO Report starts with the basics and goes through all of his techniques in very simple language anyone can understand. I just made a few changes to my www.Firepit-Grills.com web site and within a week I had the number two listing on Yahoo, a listing on page two and page three of Google for the term firepit grill.

The battle against spyware, hackers and viruses never ends. I have tried almost every program on the market and finally settled on the Anti-Virus, Spyware suite from Trend Micro. This is the product recommended by Kim Kommando, winner of the PC Magazine award and the Cnet Editors Choice Award. I have tried MaAfee and Norton and the Trend Micro product blows them both away and is cheaper. Click here to read more about it.

Let's get started with this month's issue:

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1. The Future of eBay - What The New Policies Mean for You

There are big changes coming to eBay. Some of them like hiding bidder IDs have taken effect, while others like Feedback 2.0 have been announced, but not yet rolled out. According to Bill Cobb's announcement these changes and others are being made to "improve the buyer experience on eBay." Bill spoke at the ecommerce forum of eBay's top 250 sellers. You can listen to an archived web cast of his talk here.

The changes coming fall into three main categories:

1. Reinvest in eBay's core by simplifying the site, improving finding (the search engine), and accentuating the things that make eBay fun and unique.
2. Take a more proactive approach to Trust & Safety to protect members from fraud.
3. Improve the buyer experience on the site by holding sellers to higher minimum standards.

Here are some key things to expect and their likely reaction by sellers:

eBay Search engine - There are big changes coming to the eBay search engine. From what I have heard these are positive. However when anything changes, you can expect some folks to get angry as they have to take the time to learn how the new things work.

One thing you are likely to see is a take off on the eBay gallery feature, when you hover your mouse over a gallery photo, the photo enlarges. I think what we will see is a feature whereby you can simply hover your mouse over a listing that comes up in search and a mini-preview of the auction will be displayed. This way you will not have to actually click on an item to look at it.

If you would like to see how this might work, go to www.ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves). When you perform a search, each of the search results have a little binocular symbol next to the URL. If you hover your mouse over the symbol (it takes a couple of seconds) a window pops up where you can see a preview of the web site. The window is too small to be useful, but in eBay search it will be large enough to read. This will require sellers to place more emphasis on the photo, their title and possibly the first few lines of text in their description. Subtitles will also become more important (more fees for eBay).

While they are at it, I hope eBay also pays a little attention to the search engine under the HELP tab. Whenever I do a search there unless you get the exact keyword eBay uses for a feature, you rarely get useful results.

My World and Blogs - There are a lot of rumors that eBay My World will replace the About Me page. The other thought is that eBay will make it harder --or even prohibit linking from My World to outside web sites. This will certainly hurt some sellers. Whenever eBay raises a fee or institutes a new restriction of some kind, a lot of sellers threaten to leave and some marginal sellers actually do. But if eBay moves to totally prevent linking to outside web sites, many sellers who use eBay to build their off-eBay business may not have any reason to stay. Right now eBay earns a lot of fees from these sellers. The sellers see the fees they pay eBay as a way to capture customers. If eBay completely removes linking I suspect it would hurt income over the long run.

In his statement, Bill Cobb hinted that we will see more features like eBay World, Deal Finder, eBay Pop and eBay Matchups. I know these are popular with folks who like to spend hours surfing eBay for fun, but as a seller I see them as distractions. Yes, they can be used to help drive hits to your auctions, but few busy sellers have the time.

Feedback 2.0 - This is the biggie. Feedback 2.0 will be the first major change to eBay's feedback system since the beginning. The new system will be rolled out on eBay.uk and eBay Australia in a few weeks. Feedback 2.0 will allow buyers to rate sellers on communications, the accuracy of your description and shipping and handling. This one has some sellers bothered as it opens the door to a lot of nitpicking. Personally I am keeping an open mind, but I will be on eBay.UK site in the next few weeks watching the action and gauging the reaction of UK buyers and sellers and reading the board posts.

As I see it, if you are really good at customer service and communications, deliver your product quickly at a fair price and write accurate helpful descriptions, the new feedback system could be a way for sellers who excel in these areas to stand out. Whereas sellers with marginal customer service practices will pay a price.

You will also be able to see the item title and price next to the feedback comment.

One really positive change to feedback is changing the system so only feedback received in the past 24 months will be counted in your score. eBay will archive all feedback older than 24 months. This will allow good sellers who made mistakes in their early experience on the site, redeem themselves and improve their score if they perform well for a two-year period.

New Seller Requirements - Starting this month, new sellers will be required to accept PayPal or have a merchant credit card account that can be verified by eBay. I think this one is a no-brainer and eBay should have instituted it a long time ago. Furthermore I think sellers should be required to verify their PayPal accounts. This will go a long way towards preventing fraud. The only drawback to the system is for high value items. I am not going to sell a $10,000 diamond ring if there is any chance of getting a chargeback once the ring is shipped. I stand behind my products and will always give a refund if there is truly something wrong, but if I am selling a car, or a diamond ring or some other very expensive item, I want the cash in my hand before I ship or the buyer must agree to use eBay's escrow service.

Existing sellers are grandfathered but this could be a problem for new sellers who want to sell expensive items such as jewelry, rare coins and stamps or other valuable merchandise unless PayPal comes up with some seller protections that cover these high value items.

I would also like to see eBay require new sellers to have performed at least ten purchase transactions on eBay before trying to sell. In my books and classes the first thing I teach people is to learn to buy on eBay before trying to sell. Taking this simple step will actually save you money and prevent mistakes that could earn you negative feedback when you are just getting started.

Cross-Border Selling - eBay also recently announced their cross border selling rules as part of the improvements to trust and safety. New sellers who want to sell internationally must also become PayPal verified. Again, I don't know why eBay doesn't require all sellers to become PayPal verified. It is a simple process, easy to police and can dramatically reduce fraud.

Counterfeit Goods - Bill Cobb made it very clear that eBay will continue to crack down on counterfeit goods. Some of the new procedures have been rolled out. These include:

• PayPal verification to list in volume
• A minimum number of days as a confirmed, registered eBay member to list in volume
• 1 or 3-day listing durations are removed as available options for these items
• Cross-border trade restrictions
• Delays in these listings appearing in search to give eBay time to look at suspicious auctions before the public sees them
• The number of listings per seller may be limited

One problem is that eBay will not specify which products or brands they are targeting. The obvious are brands like Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Rolex and so on. But there is a lot of counterfeiting in lower priced designer clothing too, including Polo, Seven for All Mankind, A&F and Under Armor. There are now even fake iPods coming out of China.

Bill Cobb also hinted that there will be other changes coming throughout the year 2007

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2. Seven Deadly Sins of eBay

Calling mistakes a sin may seem a bit much to some, but wasting money listing items that don't sell is the sin of waste and squander. There are many mistakes you can make that will kill your auctions, but in my opinion, these are the Big-7:

1. Don't Take PayPal
2. Not Enough Information
3. Missing --or Poor Photos
4. Not Checking Your eMail Frequently
5. Rigid --or Silly Payment, Shipping and Return Policies
6. High Starting Bids
7. Holding Feedback Hostage

Number 7 was a close call. If I listed an eighth sin, it would be ending your auction at a poor time of day when few people are on eBay.

I don't have enough room in the newsletter to detail each of the sins, but I have written a lengthily article on each one. You can read the text of the complete article on my free articles page under the Advanced Selling Category.

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3. Sourcing Product on Craigslist To Sell on eBay

Craigslist has been around a long time. You may, or may not know, Craigslist is partly owned by eBay. All of the ads on Craigslist are free except job postings which is where they make their money. Unlike eBay, which has a very controlled culture and environment, Craigslist is a bit like the Wild, Wild West.

Craigslist is not really meant for buying things from people located in another city. It is primarily designed as a classified service for people who want to purchase goods and services in their local area.

The truth is I haven't used Craigslist that much. Mostly as I get older I am getting lazy. Whenever I have something to sell that is large, heavy or difficult to pack and ship, I put it on Craigslist instead of eBay. Sometimes I get pretty good money, but sometimes I sell it for less than I could get on eBay. But, in both cases I don't have to pack and ship it because the buyers are local, they pick it up.

One of my sons uses Craigslist a lot. He sells concert tickets and other items he comes across. He recently listed an old sea kayak on Craigslist and within 2 hours of posting the ad there was a guy in our driveway with a pickup truck and $700 cash to pay for it.

Recently, I have been spending time on Craigslist looking for collectibles and other merchandise to resell on eBay. I have been astounded by some of the values you can find. One lady was selling off her late Uncle's collection of small Ming Dynasty pottery pieces he had collected while living in Asia. I looked at the photos and descriptions on Craigslist and then popped over to eBay and found these items selling for more than three times the average price of the items in the lot. I contacted her and made an immediate appointment. She was asking $540 for the entire collection. I offered $500 cash and took the whole lot. I haven't listed them on eBay yet as I need to do some more research and will probably wait until we return from vacation. But I have no doubt I can make a nice profit on these.

Last month a fellow was selling two framed antique western scene prints from the 1940s. He was asking $25 each. I didn't even haggle as I knew they would sell on eBay for over $100 each --and they did.

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4. Tips for Making Money With My Affiliate Program

My new affiliate program is off to a good start. We signed up over 200 affiliates in the first few weeks. A few of the new affiliates jumped right on the program and started promoting it right away and I just sent out some very nice checks for the December sales. January sales are already going strong and I will again be sending out some nice checks on February 17th. They would normally go out on the 15th but I will be on vacation until the 17th. So I hope my affiliates will forgive the two day delay.

Besides the affiliates who signed up and are making money, there are dozens of you who signed up but are not getting any clicks or sales. This may be for several reasons. You may have placed banners where they aren't being seen or getting any traffic. Those of you with eBay listings may be having trouble attracting hits to your about me page where you can locate your banner.

Here is a simple way to do this. One of the best performing pages is my 99 Tips for eBay Buyers and Sellers. You can give this away as a free gift to anyone looks at your auctions.

eBay does not allow you to put an active banner in your auction listing that goes directly to my affiliate link, but you can put the banner in your About Me page. The trick is getting people to link to your about me page. The most efficient way to do this is to put a clickable image of the banner in your auction.   We've written out the instructions for you here.

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5. Niche Market - Vintage Photographs

Vintage photographs are a hugely collected category. The sell through rate is very high. In some categories it is as much as 80%, and many vintage photos sell for over $100 each.

OK - so what makes a vintage photograph? There is no set definition of vintage other than somewhat old. Of course the oldest photos date back to the era of the Civil War and before, but I am talking about more recent stuff here (1930-1980). By the 1930s a lot of people had cameras and by the 1940s almost everyone owned one. This was also the era of great photojournalism and advertising photography.

As with any product the trick is finding out what sells and then finding the product to meet the demand. Neither of these are very hard but they do take a little bit of effort.

As for what sells - Celebrities and Hollywood stars are probably the best, followed by Transportation and the Military. This would include photos of pre-1980s movie stars, famous politicians, early cars, trucks, trains, gas stations, planes and any World War II, Korean War or even Vietnam war photos.

Old photos of towns and cities sell very well as well as anything related to cowboys and indians. Some other categories that do well are photos of large construction projects such as the Golden Gate Bridge or large dams (Hoover, Grand Coulee, etc.), photos of early blues, folk and rock stars, early (pre 1980) shots from the US Space program, any major historical event, and original prints by any famous photographer.

Here are some of the things to look for when finding photos that you can sell.

• What is it? If you have a photo of an old biplane from the 1930s it is worth some money. But if you actually know the name of the airplane (or the train or car, etc.) it is more valuable and easier to sell. The more information you have about the subject the better. Also it helps if you can date the photo at least to a year. A lot of old photos had the date imprinted on the back, so this often helps.
  
• Condition is everything. Every fade, tear, crease or stain reduces the value of a photo substantially. It is pretty hard to find old photos that are in perfect condition, but try and avoid the ones with major damage.
  
• Size matters! The larger a photo the more valuable. In general, small snapshots are not worth very much unless they are of a very rare of hard to find subject. Look for 5x7 inches or larger, but 4 x 5 used to be a popular format and some of those are OK as well.
  
• Quality. Out of focus, underexposed photos do not sell well. In general, photos taken by professionals, photojournalists or advanced amateurs will sell for much more than those made by people just taking snapshots, but even an armature photo is valuable if it was well taken. and of an important subject.

So where do you find these vintage photos? They are literally hiding in the garages and attics of America. One fellow I know just goes to garage sales. He rarely sees any photos for sale, but he simply asks the person having the sale: "Sir - do have any old photographs for sale?" He may hit five or six garage sales before someone says yes, but he has made some tremendous finds including a box of Hollywood publicity stills of various movie stars from the 1950s and 60s. He paid $100 for the box and sold them on eBay for over $12,000 in a period of four weeks. He also scanned some of the better ones and resells the digital images for $4.99 each.

Another source is estate sales. Obviously older people will have older photos. Once again if you attend an estate sale and don't see any photos, then ask. Because a lot of people assume they have no value and don't put them out.

You will often run into people who have boxes of small snapshots. Individually most of these have almost no value unless they are of a really important subject or person, but if you look on eBay you will see people selling boxes of mixed old photos for prices between $10 and $50. I am not sure who buys these and why, but they do sell pretty well. However, you would want to buy these pretty cheaply --probably no more than $5 for a large box.

Lastly --it pays to advertise. Take out small classified ads that say you will pay cash for old photos in good condition. Don't give up if no one answerers the ad right away. For some reason this type of ad needs to run for a while before it starts working. Another great place to advertise is Craigslist. Just post a wanted ad and you will get calls. Be as specific as possible so you don't get calls from people with lots of junk.

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6. Advanced Techniques for Selling Information Products

If you have purchased my information products system, How To Create and Sell Information Products on eBay and would like to take your business to the next level, you may want to look at a new program just out from a unique partnership between Tim Knox and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming.

Tim has built a huge business selling information products on eBay and Dr. Mike is one of the leading internet marketers in the business. They have combined to create a huge product called Auction Traffic Mastery.

Auction Traffic Mastery combines the power of eBay with the profitably of digital products. This is not a cheap program and it's clearly not for everyone. I can tell you right up front this system will work --but it does take a bit of work. So, if you have purchased my book and now want to learn how to explode your marketing and sales and really dive into this subject full-time, then you may want to check this out.

Auction Traffic Mastery is a 9 CD (audio/video) set on the topic of using eBay to sell information products, funnel traffic to your other websites, and build a strong repeat customer list.  Click here to read more about this product.

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7. New Wholesale Sources for February 2007

Cliquidate.com is a liquidation source of good quality kitchen, bed and bath goods. They are not an actual wholesaler, per se, but a steeply discounted retailer. Nevertheless they sell some high priced kitchen items at prices below those offered on eBay. You have to select carefully and check the price on eBay first, but you can find some great items to resell from this site. Be sure and check their hot deals as that's where the best prices are.

Skywalker Communications is a large distributor of consumer electronics. Although they have a lot of the popular brand, hot consumer electronic products, this is a very difficult area to compete in, but there is a lot of money to be made in the accessory products, speaker kits, cables and so on. Once you arrive at the site you will have to download and fill out a dealer application to get wholesale pricing.

Old World Baskets sells Folding oak baskets, Bible boxes, military clocks and flag boxes. Minimum Opening Order: $100, Terms Opening Order: Credit Card and Prepay.

CDM Wholesale sells Florals, Containers, Candles, Home Accents, Furniture, Seasonal Products, Wood Items, Textiles, Floral & Craft Supplies, Metal & Iron and Botanicals. If you live in Ohio or Western PA, they have an 81,000 square foot warehouse where you can go and shop. But they recently started putting all their products online. Just register at the web site and start shopping wholesale.

The log cabin and country look is still hot and a lot of people shop for decor items on eBay. AT Imports is a very large importer and dealer of these goods.

The Quite A Bear Company sells elegant handmade teddy bears make from recycled furs. Minimum order is $100.

Velluca sells a line of beautiful, luxurious handmade silk shawls, scarves and wraps. They are having a clearance sale right now to make room for the spring and summer items. Their line was featured on the NBC Today show.

The Collectors Armory is the leading source for Historic Reproductions, featuring hundreds of Civil War, Old West, Medieval, Revolutionary War, Napoleon, Cowboy, Confederate, Samurai and World War II Gifts and Collectibles.

Decorator masks are hot. AbraCaDabRa offers a wonderful collection of masks. Great for home decor or gifts and handmade of high quality materials, masks can be enjoyed all year round. Wide selections of colors and shapes at reasonable prices. Their website is temporarily closed but you can email them for prices and photos at kari73072@aol.com.

The BodyBudy is a hot bath and spa product. Click on the link that says Press Coverage to open a PDF that gives the pricing.

Michael Rodents sells Licensed bed, bath and kitchen decor. Disney, Looney Tunes, Taz kitchen linens and Mickey Mouse bed and bath decor.

HealthWise sells a line of juicers, blenders, pasta machines and other small specialize kitchen appliances.

That's it for this month. Remember we will be on vacation for the first two weeks of Febuary, so I may not be returning calls and emails very quickly.

Skip McGrath