eBay Free Insertion Fees Now A Permanent Feature – But There’s a Catch!!

Filed under eBay Listing by on January 25, 2012 at 9:28 pm {no comments}

Great news for casual, or low volume sellers!!  eBay has now made free insertion fees a permanent feature.  This means if you only sell things now and again, OR you don’t sell enough to be a PowerSeller or Top-Rated Seller, and you don’t have an eBay Store you will now pay nothing to list your items.  There is a maximum of 30 free listings per month, but for the casual seller this would be heaps.

So, I hear you say, “That’s great!  But what’s the catch?  You don’t get anything for nothing today!”

Well, yes, there are a couple of small catches.

1.  eBay will be adding an advertisement to your listing page.  Personally I don’t think this distracts the buyer looking at your item, but some people disagree.
See below for a view of one of my own listings on my personal account that has the new advertisement on it.  (This account I use primarily for personal buying so it is neither a PowerSeller or Top-Rated Seller account and does not have an eBay Store attached to it at the moment.)

2.  The eBay final value fee (FVF), once the item is sold, rises from 5.25% to 7.9% and is capped at $49.95 if you did sell something really expensive.

So, what are the benefits of this to you?

1.  If your item doesn’t sell there is no cost to you.  So now is the time to grab out those items that you were contemplating listing but didn’t want to risk paying insertion fees if the item didn’t sell.  It gives you a ‘no-risk’ venue to sell your old stuff!

2.  It’s not just for items that start at 99 cents in an auction format!  You can start your item price at anything you wish, and have it listed as an auction, classified ad or ‘Buy-It-Now’ and the insertion fee will still be FREE!

3.  You will get free gallery images which used to cost you an additional 59 cents per listing.  Now there is absolutely no reason why the casual, or inexperienced seller, should not have an image showing in the search results!!  The gallery images helps draw people to your listing.  You would be surprised how many people just never click on a listing if there is no gallery image to get their interest.

Check out these links for all the details:-
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/201201.shtml#2012-01-18143712
http://pages2.ebay.com.au/News/InsideSelling/September_2011_fee_changes_-_C2C_sellers

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Human Error in eBay Listings

Filed under Auctiva, eBay Education, eBay Listing by on March 15, 2011 at 11:54 pm {no comments}

OK, OK!  I made a ‘human error’ in one of my eBay listings recently.  So shot me!!  Well I certainly think the buyer is going to do so when it comes to leaving me feedback.

So what was the human error in my listing?

The error I made was in some settings that I have set up in Auctiva.  Auctiva is auction management software that allows you to produce very professional looking listings.  It lets you schedule your listings and many other functions to control your eBay business.  (See the end of this post for a link to Auctiva so you can try it for yourself free for 30 days.)

Auctiva allows you to set up your listings with certain settings and wordings that will be inserted into all of your auctions automatically.  Therefore it reduces the amount of information you need to put into each eBay listing and makes listing faster and more stream-lined.

This is where the error occurred!  I have some wording in the settings of Auctiva that state my items can be picked up directly from me, thus allowing buyers that are close by to save some money on postage.  The problem is that I have recently moved from Victoria to Queensland and I didn’t realise that I had not changed the wording in the Auctiva settings to now say Queensland.

The only place this wording showed up was right at the end of my listing.  Who knew that I would strike a buyer that would read every single word in my listing.

Well, actually they didn’t!

In three other places in my listing it was clearly stated Queensland, but all they saw was two lines at the bottom that stated Victoria which suited them as they wanted to pick the item up.

Did they contact me to query or confirm my location before the end of the auction?  NO!
Have they now become upset at their, and partially my error?  YES!

Here is a screen capture of the recent eBay auction in question. (Please note all buying details have been covered to protect privacy.)

As you can clearly see in the seller information my location is clearly stated as Queensland.  This seller information is located at the TOP of the listing on the right hand side.  It is one of the first things you see when you view anybodies listing.

It is also clearly stated here on the ‘Postage and Payments’ tab shown below.

After an auction finishes eBay sends out emails to the buyer giving them my details so that they can contact me, see my location and pay for the item.  As you can see it also clearly states here that I’m in Queensland.

So where was the error in my listing?  Below is a screen shot of the payment wording that Auctiva automatically adds into all my listings.  This is the wording that I had not changed after I moved from Victoria to Queensland.

This seems to be the only location details that the buyer took notice of.  They wanted to pick the item up so they ignored all the other locations where it stated Queensland.  (Mind you it still would have been cheaper for them to pay the postage than to pick it up if I was still in Victoria.  Their petrol cost would have exceeded the postage cost!)

I absolutely admit that I made a human error in my eBay listing by not making sure all my settings were correct when I listed the item.  I’m just astounded that the buyer did not see all the other location details and query the listing by asking a simple question.

I received a message from the buyer telling me to “….be more careful and read your listings before placing them in the future…. “  I absolutely accept that criticism.  But their next comment made me laugh.  “….many people would not accept those types of mistakes happening….”

Really!!  Well many sellers would not accept this buyers oversight of not reading a listing properly and asking any questions before buying.  Three times this buyer ignored my location in very visible locations.  But they took notice of 2 small lines right at the bottom of the listing because it suited their need.

It is interesting to know that the majority of eBay buyers do not read through a listing all the way to the bottom before bidding or buying.  Really they don’t!  I have just struck a person who read every word and chose to ignore everything except what they wanted to see.  Unfortunately what they wanted to see was where I had made an error.

This has just been another lesson in the wonderful world that is selling on eBay.

 

If you would like to find out more about Auctiva click the link below.
You can try it free for 30 days!!

Auctiva.com
Powerful Auction Software
Custom Auction Templates

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Australian spelling versus American Spelling #5

Filed under eBay Education, eBay Listing by on May 17, 2010 at 9:00 am {no comments}

Welcome to the fifth post in my series on words that have different spellings in Australia than in the USA.

The purpose of my whole blog is to make everything directed to specifically using, and getting the most out of selling, on eBay Australia.  However, it is beneficial to make your items available worldwide as it infinitely expands your potential customer base.  So we need to take into account that some words have slightly different spelling variation in the USA and some other countries.  If possible we need to incorporate both the Australian and USA spelling in our titles and descriptions.

I have researched this topic and found, what I hope, is a complete list of all the words that have spelling variations.

I will included ALL the words that I have found.  I figure that just about anything can be sold on eBay today and you never know what words some people will use to research an item, so don’t laugh if there are words that you feel would never be in an eBay title or description, you just never know when or how they may be used!

This is quite a large list so I have broken it up in to ‘bite-sized’ chunks and will post a list of 10 words each week.  So if you know of any words that I have missed, chances are that they are coming up in a future post.

So, here is my fifth list of 10 spelling variations:-

1.  catalogue (Aust)          catalog (USA)
2.  dialogue (Aust)          dialog (USA)
3.  fibre (Aust)          fiber (USA)
4. gaol (Aust)          jail (USA)
5.  licence (Aust)          license (USA)
6.  mummy (Aust)          mommy (USA)
7.  odour (Aust)          odor (USA)
8.  revitalise (Aust)          revitalize (USA)
9.  sulphur (Aust)          sulfur (USA)
10.  travelled (Aust)          traveled (USA)

Check next week for another 10 words that have different spellings from Australia to the USA.

Related posts:-
Australian spelling versus American Spelling #1
Australian spelling versus American Spelling #2
Australian spelling versus American Spelling #3
Australian spelling versus American Spelling #4

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No one is watching my eBay auction!

Filed under eBay Education, eBay Listing by on May 12, 2010 at 5:23 pm {no comments}

I was looking at the site statistics for this blog the other day and was looking through what search terms people had been using to find my blog articles.  One of the search terms caught my eye, the search term was, “No one is watching my eBay auction”.

I thought I would write a blog post that specifically targeted this term as it is a common problem that many new eBay sellers feel.

So let’s look at the reasons why no one may be watching your eBay auction and ways to improve your ability to be found in eBay searches:-

  1. First of all let’s admit it!  Sometimes it takes listing your items several times for it to sell.  The week that you list your item may just have no one interested in looking, but a week or two from now there may be more traffic and interest in your item.  I’ve had items that I’ve listed 3 or 4 times and just when I was about to admit defeat I give it one more try and the items sells for way above my expectations.
  2. Is your price too high?  Have you done your homework to see what others are selling similar items for.  You can use eBay Completed Listings or Terapeak to research successful sale prices.
  3. Are you listing it only on your local eBay site or are you making it available internationally?  It does not cost anything extra to make the item available worldwide Of course the item has to be able to be posted so find out the size restrictions).  Your item may have more demand internationally.
  4. Optimise your title keywords.  Are you using the best keywords that buyers would use to look for your item?  You can read more about this topic here http://www.onlineauctionresources.com/ebay-listings-keywords.html & http://www.onlineauctionresources.com/optimising-keywords.html.  Also optimising your keywords can result in your eBay listing coming up in search engines such as Google.
  5. Are you spelling your keywords right and using all the spelling variations available?  You can read more about these topics here http://www.onlineauctionresources.com/au-vs-usa-4-2.html & http://www.onlineauctionresources.com/misspelling_5.html
  6. If you have terms and conditions in your listing are they too harsh and putting potential buyers off?  Read this to see what I mean http://www.onlineauctionresources.com/ebay-listing-terms-conditions.html
  7. Use gallery photos in your listings.  It has been shown that gallery photos improve your sell through rate and the final selling price.  Also if you have an eBay Store and use ‘Buy It Now’ gallery photos are no extra charge!
  8. Offer multiple payment options to your buyers.  Some buyers prefer PayPal for the added security it gives, some don’t.  Some people prefer bank deposit, some find that too much of a risk.  The more options you can give your buyer the more people who will feel comfortable buying from you.
  9. Offer multiple delivery options.  By this I mean offer ‘free postage’ if possible, this will also improve your listings position in the search results.  Offer combined postage discounts and offer to give people postage quotes before they bid so they can be sure of the postage costs they will be paying.  Many people will look to other listings if the postage costs are free, cheaper, or just clearly stated.  Offer payment on pick- up.  Not many people will take you up on this, but you just never know when someone local to you will find your item and want to save on postage and also get the item straight away.
  10. Make your listing ‘private’ is it is a sensitive item.  Some people like to keep their online buying habits a secret.  You can read more about private listings here http://www.onlineauctionresources.com/private-ebay-listings.html
  11. Use common eBay acronyms to get more out of your keywords and allow your listing to stand out without paying for advertising upgrades.  Read more about commonly used eBay acronyms here http://www.onlineauctionresources.com/ebay-listings-acronyms.html
  12. You could consider getting a fellow eBay member to look at your listing to give you some advise.  (I’d be more than happy to take a look at your listing and give you my thoughts for improvement!  Drop me a line at andrea@onlineauctionresources.com if interested.)
  13. You could do some additional free advertising of your own.  Use social networking to send out messages to the people you are connected to about your eBay listing.  Many people use Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to send out links to their eBay listings.  Do this constructively, such as, “I found an interesting item on eBay….”
  14. And lastly just face the fact that no one may be interested in your item.  You have to realise that you just may have an item that is not desirable at the moment.  Again this gets back to point number 2 of doing your research when you list items.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of just how much you can do to improve your listings.  Check back often for more hints and tips to help you on your eBay journey.  Feel free to subscribe to my blog to be kept up to date with my latest posts.

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Australian spelling versus American Spelling #4

Filed under eBay Education, eBay Listing by on May 3, 2010 at 9:00 am {no comments}

Welcome to the forth post in my series on words that have different spellings in Australia than in the USA.

The purpose of my whole blog is to make everything directed to specifically using, and getting the most out of selling, on eBay Australia.  However, it is beneficial to make your items available worldwide as it infinitely expands your potential customer base.  So we need to take into account that some words have slightly different spelling variation in the USA and some other countries.  If possible we need to incorporate both the Australian and USA spelling in our titles and descriptions.

I have researched this topic and found, what I hope, is a complete list of all the words that have spelling variations.

I will included ALL the words that I have found.  I figure that just about anything can be sold on eBay today and you never know what words some people will use to research an item, so don’t laugh if there are words that you feel would never be in an eBay title or description, you just never know when or how they may be used!

This is quite a large list so I have broken it up in to ‘bite-sized’ chunks and will post a list of 10 words each week.  So if you know of any words that I have missed, chances are that they are coming up in a future post.

So, here is my forth list of 10 spelling variations:-

1.  anaesthesia (Aust)          anesthesia (USA)
2.  carburettor (Aust)          carburetor (USA)
3.  disorientated (Aust)          disoriented (USA)
4.  encyclopaedia (Aust)          encyclopedia (USA)
5.  flavour (Aust)          flavour (USA)
6.  harbour (Aust)          harbor (USA)
7.  labour (Aust)          labor (USA)
8.  moustache (Aust)          mustache (USA)
9.  sceptic (Aust)          skeptic (USA)
10.  vice (Aust)          vise (USA)

Check next week for another 10 words that have different spellings from Australia to the USA.

Related posts:-
Australian spelling versus American Spelling #1
Australian spelling versus American Spelling #2
Australian spelling versus American Spelling #3

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