New eBay DSR Policies Stressing Out Sellers

The Online Seller's News, October 13, 2009, Volume 9, No. 15

Tips, Tools, News and Resources for eBay, Amazon and independent Online Sellers
by: Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings from eBay and beyond

1. New eBay DSR Policies Stressing Out Sellers
2. Free Wholesale Sourcing Information for My Readers
3. Give Your eBay Listings A Pick-me-up
4. Save up to 7% on your annual shipping costs with UPS and FedEx
5. Niche of the Month: Used Non-Prescription Medical Equipment
6. eBay Wholesale Sources for October 2009

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts." ~ Winston Churchill

Musings for October 2009

My blog has been a very profitable portion of my business. Last month I released my latest book, How To Make Money Blogging From Home with co-author, Marsha Perry who is a WordPress expert. I also found a great free resource for more blogging information. It’s a free eBook from Blog Mastermind called Blog Profit Blueprint. This is a great companion to my book.

With the economy so bad and people losing their jobs, I get email every week from people who are so desperate to make money that they have fallen for some expensive scam. It breaks my heart when I get emails like those. It bothered me so much that I did a blog post over the weekend where I warn about the types of programs to avoid and listed some of the online resources I trust and recommend. You can click here to read the post.

Last week I sent out a rare special edition of my newsletter to alert readers to a workshop on a unique eBay niche that offers easy-to-source products that sell for markups as high as 500%.  The workshop was a huge success, and the testimonials are already rolling in.  The eBay sellers who participated are jumping right into this profitable niche with both feet.

I partnered with Jim Cockrum in this workshop. If you don’t know Jim, he is the author of probably the best selling book on eBay ever, The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay, and Jim is one of the internet’s good guys. Everything he offers comes with a money back guarantee and he has over 100,000 followers who get his weekly newsletter and 3,500 people are members of his paid membership training program, My Silent Team.

The workshop was presented live last Friday, but it was recorded. The recording and all of the support materials are still available to another 10-12 people before we close it down. This is a niche where you can listen to the recordings and download the source material on Wednesday, source your products on Thursday and have profitable sales by Sunday.

Click here to read about this workshop. We don’t want to saturate the niche, so we are limiting this to a very few people. If you get to my blog and see a notice that the program is closed, then you were too late. When you learn what this niche is and how it works, you will understand why we are limiting this to very few people.

I saw Meg Whitman (former CEO of eBay) interviewed on Neil Cavuto’s business program when she announced she will run for Governor of California. That got me to wondering what California would look like under Meg’s leadership…?

Here are some thoughts I had:

• Under Meg, everyone will be required to have a PayPal account and pay their taxes and fees via PayPal.
• Each Government office will have a feedback program. They will be able to leave negative or positive feedback on each citizen but citizens will only be allowed to leave positive feedback for them.
• Surplus land, building and materials will be offered for sale exclusively on eBay
• Every business in the state will be required to offer free shipping on anything they sell and ship.
• Taxes will increase every January, but there will be several Free Tax Days throughout the year. You can learn about them in the small print at the bottom of the State of California website where it is posted about 1 hour before it takes effect.
• Tax refunds will be paid with eBay Bucks

You can let me know if you think of any other likely policies under Governor Meg. Use the “contact us” form and I will post the best ones in the blog next week.

I just received an email from the folks at XsitePro. If you don’t know them they are one of the most popular website builder services used by lots of home business owners. They are coming out with a new website training program in a week or so and they are having a contest where they will be giving away ten of their training programs. All you have to do is visit this link and sign up for the launch notice and you will be automatically entered in the drawing. The number of people signing up for this sort of thing tends to be in the hundreds –not the thousands, so your chances of winning are pretty good. XsitePro is a great service and they are well respected in the industry. Don’t worry they won’t’ spam you or sell your name.

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

[top]

1. New eBay DSR Policies Stressing Out Sellers

Ever since the new eBay DSR policy went into effect in early October, my email inbox has been filled with complaints from sellers who have received warnings that their listings may be suspended.  Many of these sellers have excellent feedback scores and overall DSR scores of 4.7 to 4.9 –yet they are close to being suspended. The reason is that even though most of their DSR scores are high –they have a few DSR scores of 1 or 2 stars.  Under eBay’s new rules, that can get you in trouble.

eBay now calculates the percentage of DSR ratings that come in at 1 or 2 to determine what percentage of your total DSRs these represent. If you low sores exceed 3% overall or 4% on any one of the DSRs, then you are in danger of having your listings suspended.

Here is an example: If your total DSRs for the past 12 months are 400, then it would take only 12 low DSRs to hit 3%. And to make Top Rated Seller, you will need to keep these below 0.5% which works out to 2 low DSRs out of 400.  Small sellers have to be very careful. If your total DSRs are only 60, then just two bad DSRs could get you in trouble. However, eBay is giving you a break on this as they have set a minimum of 4 low DSR scores. Sellers with excessive low DSRs will be disadvantaged in search and if they are too low, then your listings can be suspended altogether.

This is admittedly a tough standard to meet. If it turns out to be too tough, I think many sellers will just give up and eBay will have to revise the program.

Besides the DSR issue, there are other new requirements than went into effect in October. Some sellers have already had problems because they didn’t change their listings.  eBay has created a checklist to help sellers and a list of best practices to help sellers work with the new policies.

[top]

2. Free Wholesale Sourcing Information for My Readers

If you have been reading my newsletter for a while then you know that the only company I recommend for wholesale sourcing information (other than my own) is WorldWide Brands.  I was chatting with Colleen at WorldWide Brands last week and she told me about an unusual offer I wanted to alert my readers to.  Here is a chance to go behind the scenes at WorldWide Brands and sample their services for free.

If you don’t know about WorldWide Brands they are the oldest and largest Wholesale Sourcing Information Company.  Although they are best known for connecting eBay, Amazon and small website sellers with real wholesale sources, they also do much more. When you join WWB, you also get access to dozens of hours of training videos, excellent webinars and a product sourcing research tool. So for a limited time, my readers can get access to these excellent series of tools for free. 

Just click here to start your free tour

Drop Shipping for eBay

On the subject of wholesale, I probably get more questions about drop shipping than any other topic. Usually those questions relate to working with the large dropshipping warehouses that advertise all over the web. If you have been following me for a while then you know I am not a fan of those services. The best way to dropship successfully is to work directly with small manufacturers and master distributors who will drop ship to your customers. And, WorldWide Brands is one of the best places to find those sources.

This link will not give you access to all of the sources –you will have to sign up for the service for that –but you will see a few free sources on the landing page. I think you will be so impressed with the free training they offer that you will not hesitate to sign up for their service.  WorldWide Brands is the only company of this type that I endorse and recommend for my readers.

So click here for your free behind the scenes tour. When you get to the page, start by watching the introductory video, and then start accessing all of the great free training videos and webinars they offer.

Once you have read the material and seen the videos, if you want to sign up for WorldWide Brands services, you can save $20 if you use this link: www.worldwidebrands.com/skipmcgrath. That is a special link they created for my readers.

[top]

3. Give Your eBay Listings A Pick-me-up

When I get tired I can either take a nap or take a pick-me-up like a fresh cup of strong coffee. Your eBay listings can get tired too --and like you, they can also use a pick-me-up. Here are some tips to refresh tired and lackluster listings.

1. Crop your gallery photo -- Look at the two photos below. In the one on the left the item being offered is very small, whereas the second photo shows the same item that fully fills the frame.

2. Rewrite or rearrange your item titles -- If your titles are not getting very many hits, then you may want to try rewriting them. Most importantly be sure and include all relevant keywords or terms people might search for.  If someone were looking for a computer microphone, they might type in microphone or just mic. Or if you were selling a complete  headset, then you might want a title like: Computer microphone and earphone headset. This way you pick up people searching the terms headset, microphone and earphone.

Some people search for tee shirts, T-shirt or Tshirt. In my case I sell outdoor firepits. If I just use the term firepit I get a few hits. But when I use firepit and fire pit in my title then I get a lot more hits. I found that by adding the word patio, I got even more hits.

Use a research tool such as HammerTap to find the best keywords for almost any given item.

3. Experiment with different listing days and times. If you read my article in the August newsletter, then you know that the conventional wisdom on listing days and times doesn’t work for all product categories. Read that article and experiment with different times for your products.

4. Try the eBay subtitle feature. Yes it does cost a bit, but this is a chance to differentiate your listing by providing some extra information. eBay claims that listings with subtitles are 18% more likely to sell. Here is a page that explains the benefits of subtitle and how to use them.

5. Try longer listing times for expensive or highly specialized items. If you are asking a high price or selling a highly specialized item for which there are very few buyers then it probably pays to invest 40¢ in the 10-day listing option. This will give your item longer exposure to find those few buyers that are out there.

6. Make sure your item descriptions are complete. It is a well known fact (and I have personally tested this) that longer descriptions have a higher sell-through-rate than short descriptions. Less information creates questions in people’s minds. Some of them may email you for the answer, but most people will just click away. When you are listing an item, think about it from the buyer’s perspective. What questions would you have if you were buying this item? Then answer those questions in your description.

Use these tips and you will see your listings success rate improve. If you would like to learn more about creating successful listings, check out The Complete eBay Marketing System.

[top]

4. Save up to 7% on your annual shipping costs with UPS and FedEx

Shipping is a major cost center for every eBay seller. What if I told you that you were leaving free money on the table every time you ship with UPS or FedEx?

FedEx® and UPS® are great companies. They absolutely, positively guarantee the on-time delivery of your packages and the vast majority of their shipments are on-time.  But when they are just one minute late, you are entitled to up to a 100% refund of your shipping charges. But how do you know if a package is late? 

Check out a company called Refund Technology.   This company automatically tracks your FedEx and UPS Ground, Express, or International shipments for you! When your packages are delivered late they do all the work to secure your refunds.  The carriers pay the refunds directly to you. Statistically almost 10% of all packages are delivered late –but you never know that unless you track all of your shipments –which no one has time to do.  This is like getting free money. Over time Refund Technology can reduce your shipping costs by 5% to 7%.

They have two payment plans. In one plan there is no risk –they track your shipments and split any refunds with you. For high volume shippers they have a small monthly fee that will allow you to realize more money than if you split the refunds.

[top]

5. Niche of the Month: Used Non-Prescription Medical Equipment

The medical equipment market on eBay (and Craigslist) is huge –but by far most of the items for sale are new. A lot of people overlook the market for used equipment. It is much smaller –but also much more profitable. If you are selling a new wheelchair, you might make a 30% margin on your sale because of all the competition.  But if you buy a used wheelchair at a thrift shop for $25 and Sell it for $150 then you are making an 83% margin, or looked at another way, a 600% markup.

When you look at completed auctions for medical equipment and devices, at first glance it looks like the sell through rate is very low.  This is because the category is swamped with thousands of listings for new products –many of them fixed price listings that just sit there forever.  But once you drill down to used items, you will discover that the sell through rate is actually quite high –and best of all these products are easy to source. You can find them in three ways:

• Advertising in local classified ads and on Craigslist
• Thrift shops
• Garage sales

Notice that the title of this article contains the words …Non-Prescription. This is very important as you are not allowed to sell devices that require a prescription. This would include things such as oxygen concentrators, CPAP machines, prescription glasses or any device you can only get with a professional prescription.  But that still leaves tons of items. These include blood pressure machines, nebulizers, crutches, walkers, handicap toilets, wheelchairs, electric scooters, leg and knee braces, etc. There are millions of people in the United States who are temporarily injured and need these devices for a short period of time. Once they recover, these devices usually sit in their garage for a few months and then show up on Craigslist for free or at garage sales or thrift shops. 

I went into my local thrift shop yesterday and they had two wheelchairs, a pair of aluminum adjustable crutches and a flex knee brace.  Any of those could be sold on eBay at a 2x to 4X markup.

One thing to be careful of: Make sure any product you buy is clean and in good working order. And if you buy something large such as a wheelchair, give some thought to how you will pack and ship it. They do fit within UPS guidelines but you will want to have the right sort of box.

If you are not sure about an item to sell, be sure and read eBay’s policy regarding the sale of medical devices and equipment.

If you don’t think this can be a profitable area to sell on eBay, I spoke with one seller last week who has specialized in these products for the past three years. She didn’t want me to reveal her username, but she is a Gold PowerSeller. That is someone who sells between $10,000 and $25,000 per month. And all she deals in is used equipment.

[top]

6. eBay Wholesale Sources for October 2009

TechLiquidators is a company owned by Best Buy, that liquidates overstocks and returned items from Best Buy and other large department stores. Be careful to only buy surplus and avoid “Returns.” Returns are items that could be broken and the boxes have been opened.

Gem and Lapidary Wholesale puts on wholesale trade shows all over the country where you can buy gem, jewelry and lapidary products. Just register on their site and you will get a list of shows near you.

All time Trading is a general wholesaler of novelties and seasonal items.

CKB Products is a large, well-known wholesaler in dozens of product categories. I have heard mixed reports about this company. Some sellers really love them and have been working with them for years while others have complained about their products and services. I have not personally worked with them so I suggest if you work with them you start small with maybe a test order or two.

Gold Fathers sells a line of lower cost gold jewelry.

Aura Perfumes Of Paris is a perfume and fragrance wholesaler who will drop ship name brand perfumes.

JD Yeatts & Son, Inc.  Imports Home Decor, Giftware, Lawn & Garden, Nautical, Wind Chimes, Christmas and more.

Silk Flower Depot features Wholesale Silk Flowers, Artificial Flowers, Fake Flowers and is the largest silk flower wholesaler/importer in the Southeast.

Mars Distributing  sells the whacker that kills Mosquitoes, Flies, Hornets, Yellow Jackets, Spiders inside or outside of the house, tent, camper, boat or car. Looks like a Tennis racket. Just touch the insect and it is zapped dead.

That’s all for now. See you in a couple of weeks

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.

Click Here. Double your traffic. Get Vendio Gallery - Now FREE!