Secret eBay Marketing Part 1
Hi -- could you tell me about your background please?
Sure. I've only been in internet marketing for a little over a year now. About a year and a half.
Previously to that I'm a sales rep -- actually sell Microsoft software for a living so I've been in sales for 7 or 8 years now ... but I was very interested in earning a full time income from the internet and I've been experimenting with that and playing around with that for probably three years and I got really serious about a year and a half ago ... decided I was going to make some things happen.
My first business on eBay was selling tickets. Event tickets. Concert tickets to popular bands like U2 or Creed or Madonna ... whoever the hot artist was at the time. I started learning how to get my hands on the best concert tickets and then selling them on eBay -- which is completely legal if you follow the rules.
eBay has rules and there's laws in each state in the United States, and there's different laws in different countries, but once you know the rules you can make some money doing it ... and I was doing quite well just selling tickets on eBay. That's where I started.
And then out of that came my first book and that's where things really picked up. My first book taught others how to get the good tickets too. And that was my first eBook.
What's the domain name for that book?
The web site for that first book, and it's a very amateur web site but it still makes me good money ... if anything it's great proof that you don't have to get real fancy to make good money on the internet. The web address is 321tix.com. Tix being an abbreviation for the word tickets.
So on that site I provide people a little proof that I know what I'm talking about, and that ticket guide still sells today. And that was one of my primary items that I sold and still do so on occasion.
Can I just ask out of interest -- obviously not giving away all your sources but I'm curious how you found out about that? Where did you go for special deals on tickets? It sounds quite unique.
Well, there are about 40 tips in that book and they range everywhere from how to use your computer to it's maximum capability on TicketMaster.com -- for example the speed of your connection and how to manipulate the different windows that you have open at any given time.
Very technical things like that all the way down to some phone tips and some tips when you're calling Ticket Master how to make sure that you get to a live operator at the right time and what things to say to delay them if you get through a little early. It's really a game. It's a game ... and it's all about increasing your odds.
Interesting. Did you find that out just through trial and error?
Yes - trial and error. It took me about 6 to 8 months to kind of teach myself and learn the ropes.
It must have been something you were really interested in to play around with it that much?
Yes -- I did talk to a few experts I found -- people that knew what they were doing. And after a while I had a good foundation of knowledge in my head ... I put it on paper, turned it into an ebook, and it started selling very well and that became the premise of my now much more popular book The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay. It's quite a system that I put together and I've got a lot of people that are really enjoying success using it.
Out of curiosity concerning 321Tix.com -- you say you'd been playing around with selling over the internet for a while ... how did you actually start promoting that site?
I started out without much information -- without much useful information. I've just kind of experimented, and a lot of things I tried didn't work very well. I had some success with pay-per-click search engines and initially that was my only success. Like GoTo.com now called Overture.com. I still use that today with a good deal of success.
But by far the most successful way that generated traffic to my sites is via eBay ... and I don't want to mislead anyone: eBay has a lot of rules, they don't just want to be a sign post for other web sites, they don't like being treated that way, but they do leave the door open, and they do allow you to grow your business off eBay.
I've noticed that actually -- I've done some selling on eBay and I've noticed the rules getting more and more stringent and it's often quite difficult to keep up with them all. They used to be a lot more relaxed about it. For example -- you could link directly to your site from your auction, but not anymore.
It was getting very abused, and so eBay did get stricter with the rules about what you could and couldn't do from within an auction, but then they started -- recently they've been doing some things to make it friendlier.
They're getting a lot of push back, and there's a lot of businesses, big name businesses that people around the world will recognize, that are trying to sell on eBay and they want to put some name recognition on there as well.
So those big businesses are really pushing eBay to allow them to do both -- to promote eBay and to promote their own business at the same time and that's where eBay has left the door open for us little guys to get in there and do some things ... and I stay on top of those rules, as the rules change I let everyone in my audience know ... I've got a newsletter list of about 8,500 people right now and it's growing by 100 or so a day, and that's one of the primary purposes of that newsletter: helping people stay on top of eBay and the developments there.
So do you find it quite a job staying up to date with all the rule changes?
Not really -- there's only been a couple of changes in the last year ... only two changes that will even affect things.
I think when you're new to it though, it looks a bit overwhelming the sheer amount of rule pages eBay has ...
Yes -- it can be overwhelming but it only takes a short time to get comfortable buying and selling on eBay. The concept is pretty simple and the rules ... they do fluctuate and change but eBay has competitors out there that are keeping them friendly. Let's put it that way.
There's new auction sites popping up all the time and keeping the pressure on eBay. eBay sellers keep the pressure on them. I think eBay is trending friendlier. As a tool to promote any business they're getting friendlier ... they have to. They can't keep burning bridges with their top sellers. They're trying to attract more sellers, and to do that you have to keep your rules friendly.
eBay are far and away the biggest auction site, but just as you said I've noticed huge companies like Sun ... I think Sun were selling servers on eBay ... so there's some huge companies using it as well.
Right, and I guarantee that Sun has their logo in their auctions, and they have a link to their web site somewhere in those auctions.
It doesn't matter if you're one guy selling out of your garage or if you're a multi-national company trying to sell things on eBay ... the rules are the same for everyone and you need to learn to take advantage of the rules and use them to your advantage.
Actually -- I think people would be interested ... where can they sign up for your newsletter?
By simply sending a blank email to newsletter@silentsalesmachine.com. They'll be signed up automatically ... they'll get an autoresponder reply immediately letting them know that they've been signed up ... and it's free. And it's very eBay and internet-success focused.
And that comes out once a month or so?
It comes out as often as I have something worth saying. Or a good article to share. And it's not more than 3 or 4 times a month at the most ... so once a week at the most but in August there were two issues for example.
So when did you start selling on eBay exactly?
I was playing around on eBay ... I've been on eBay for three years, but it was just a hobby ... I would sell an occasional item ... I sold an old pair of Nike tennis shoes for $650 just one time ... you know people buy the most insane things on eBay. You never know what sort of money you have just sitting in your closet 'til you throw it out on eBay and people will just go nuts for it.
So I was doing that kind of thing -- just playing around with it ... but as far as turning eBay into a money-making 24/7 profitable system, I've only been doing that about a year.
Something you mentioned to me the other day -- you said that eBay is one of the best starting blocks on the web ... why do you say that?
For the brand new person ... let's say they've bought a computer two weeks ago and they're now on the internet for the first time and they're thinking "I want to make some money from all of this -- what's the best place you can start on the internet to start to get a feel for financial success -- what works on the web?".
A great place to go, to start to really learn the ropes, to have some fun, to keep it interesting, is eBay.com. And that's just not my opinion, that's a fact. Every day 9,000 sign up for eBay and become either buyers or sellers.
eBay is just massive and it's growing every day. It's a vibrant community and if you want to just start out somewhere and get a feel for e-commerce with no risk -- you don't have to pay a ton of money to check it out, it's not real complicated, it's fairly simple and straight-forward, you can learn all you need to know in a day or so if you're willing to just check it out and play around ... it's a great starting point.
And the reason I say that it's a good starting block is because you can get out there and sell a few things within 5 or 6 hours of checking out eBay.com for the very first time ... and you can have an item up for sale on the web, have a worldwide audience seeing your product, and have people from all countries around the world bidding on your item wanting to buy it.
It's just an exciting prospect. It's a way to jump in fast. And that's why I say it's a great starting point because of the simplicity, the low upfront commitment that you have to make as far as money goes.
It's 30 cents an auction isn't it?
30, 35 cents for a basic auction and you're on the internet. You now have a web site. Your auction is a web site.
And traffic as well.
And you have traffic, right. And you have people contacting you with questions that are potential future customers. You're set. You're rolling. And you've spent very little money. And very little time.
A very interesting story I heard along those lines is about someone who had never sold on eBay, and they'd just moved house, and in the basement of the new house they found very old badges for firemen's helmets.
And he didn't really know anything about them so he literally just described them for his auction, took photos, and put them up on eBay ... and each one was selling for hundreds of dollars!
Yes, it's insane. I have customers of mine that full-time all they do for a living is go to estate sales, yard sales, junk sales of any kind ... pick up unique, unusual, interesting items that they think will sell well on eBay without actually knowing a whole lot about it in some cases ... and sell it on eBay. And see what happens. They do that for a living.
Now what I've encouraged them to do is to turn that into more of a business and attach information products to it. Teach others how to do the business ... get a mailing list where you teach other people what to look for ... and start to grow -- turn that passion and that interest into a business. And Bay is the best tool in your toolkit to make that happen.
You mention linking info-products and your own mailing list to your eBay auctions ... how would you do that?
Well, let's start with how you don't do it. You don't turn eBay into a sign post ... and what I mean by that is: Don't list an auction with the sole purpose of trying to build your mailing list or get traffic to your web site.
You can't just put right in your auction listing "Please Join My Mailing List -- Click Here" or "Please Visit My Web Site -- Click Here". eBay doesn't like that. They frown on that. They won't let you do that ... so it's not that simple.
But what you can do is offer some other features that eBay offers ... and anyone that contacts you as a result of your auction, you can certainly give them more information ... whatever email response you send to that person be sure to invite them to join your mailing list and tell them why they should ... and offer them a free report of some kind ... and hopefully it's all related back to the product that you're selling so you know that you've got people who are potentially pretty interested in whatever you're offering.
So once someone's contacted you they're inviting you to give them more information. Answer their question first and then ask them to join your free mailing list, offer them a special report of some kind that might be of interest to them, tell them where your web site is ... you can put anything you want in an email.
Something I've done that eBay does allow is I have a link to my web site on my About Me page. However, my auctions never get huge amounts of traffic, so I was curious ... you mention you have a lot of back-end sales and make a good living from traffic redirected through eBay. How do you get the numbers to such a good quantity?
Sure. Let's go back to my tickets ... remember I started on eBay selling tickets for events? One of the nice things about event tickets is they tend to get a lot of hits on eBay. So it is a numbers game. You need to sell items that get a lot of hits or you need to sell a lot of items that get a few hits. It's much easier to find a handful of items that get a lot of hits. It's a lot less work.
But what I was doing in my auctions was simply inviting people that wanted more information about the ticket business or my ticket business on eBay, to click and check out my About Me page. And when they did that they were offered the opportunity to visit my web site. And there's things you can and can't say, and you've got to follow eBay's policies. But I got a lot of traffic from that.
At it's peak I was making between $80 - $100 a day selling ticket guides, just from the traffic being generated from eBay auctions.
And that sells itself doesn't it since everything's set up ... the web site and the order taking and everything?
Yes -- it was all automated. I'd wake up in the morning and have two or three orders ... they'd already been fulfilled and the customer was happy. It was on auto-pilot ... all I was doing was putting tickets up for sale.
And that was purely from traffic from people who visit your About Me page in your ticket auctions?
Yes, that's correct. I also did some pay-per-click search engine traffic but that was nowhere near as effective as the eBay traffic. The people who were coming to me from eBay were highly qualified leads that didn't cost me near as much as pay-per-click leads that I was paying for. And they were more likely to buy too.
I was using pay-per-click ... I think I was paying 25 cents to get a decent ranking on Overture.com and the traffic just wasn't that responsive. There were people searching for "Ticket Master" for a lot of other reasons than wanting to buy a ticket guide ... but people who came from my About Me page, they were very interested, they were highly qualified, they wanted to be on a mailing list, they wanted to learn the tricks of the trade, so it was great traffic ... it was very qualified high-quality traffic that wanted my products.
So is that all you did to redirect people from your auction to your About Me page -- just a single link? Just offering them to visit?
Yes. That's correct.
So very straightforward -- no tricks -- very upfront. Simply "Find Out More About Me, Click Here"?
Yes -- and I did do some other things as well. None of it's any more profound than that. There are other things that you can do and as I discover new tricks and techniques I publish them in my newsletter, and I let people know about it.
And I've even held contests in the past where I get all 8,500 of my subscribers thinking creatively the same way I think. Coming up with ideas. There are a lot of really good ideas that have come through the newsletter as a result. And that's exciting for me when I've got other people thinking that way and bringing me ideas. It's a lot of fun.
So for somebody starting out, you would say all it takes is simply a link saying "Visit My About Me Page" and just trying to get as much traffic to the auctions as possible?
Yes. That's a great start. That's a great place to start to convince yourself that this really does work.
So then what would you have on your About Me page? I've visited quite a few out of interest, and in comparison I would say mine's quite impersonal because it really just prompts people to visit my site ... whereas I've seen others where they have family photos and other such things. I'm just curious what you actually do with yours?
Well, it really varies. What I have on mine ... I've left it alone for quite some time now so it ties in very well with my book. I actually send them right to my eBay About Me page from within the book. So I've left it alone so all the examples in the book make sense as I teach people about it.
But I think there's a few key elements. There's things that you want to do: you want to make people an irresistible offer of some kind. Offer them something for free. Give them an incentive to click to your web site.
You only have their attention for a very brief moment and you want the customer to feel compelled to click over to your web site ... so a free special report, or a really good reason to join your newsletter, a free ebook maybe that might be of interest to them ... and it's the same techniques you use on the web in general to draw people's interest.
The more professional and the more interesting the offer, the more likely you are to get clicks. So your About Me page is a mini-web site and it needs to be treated as such.
And in your case is it always related to the auctions you run?
Not necessarily. If you're getting enough hits to an auction you can promote whatever you'd like from your About Me page and a certain percentage of people will be interested.
Keep in mind the big challenge on the internet is getting traffic. Everyone's trying to get traffic. Get qualified traffic, or just get any traffic. You go to eBay, you put something up for sale, you've got traffic. Now what are you going to do with it?
Make sure you're capturing as much of it as you can. Your About me page is an important piece of that and needs to be professional, it needs to have some good information on there to make people interested in what you have to offer.
So does your About Me page at the minute focus exclusively on getting people to your Silent Sales Machine web site?
It focuses on getting people to my ticket web site, since that's how I started ... to my ticket guide. And that still sells pretty well. I do a split-screen, and I've also started to promote my book as well from there. So people can take a look at either.
So you cater to two audiences then?
Yes. And you can split your page up and make it look like two pages.
You don't want to get it too busy or too crowded. I try to discourage people from putting pictures of their dog or their kids or their boat on the About Me page. That's a waste of space ... you're not going to make any money from that.
It's a nice touch, it's friendly, but you're not going to make any money. If that's all you want to do ... have a nice, friendly, pleasant web page that you can refer people to so people can learn about your dog and your birds, an About Me page is great for that. But you won't make any money doing that.
So do you have a mailing list for your 321Tix.com site as well?
You know, I don't. But I didn't want to do a disservice to those people. I do have a resource page for people that have bought my book and I do add tips to it on a regular basis but I've never started a mailing list for that particular book.
If we could run through an example for somebody reading who's starting anew ... so they set up an auction which let's say gets a reasonable amount of traffic, they set up their About Me page and it links through to their web site ... you would say in the first instance they must capture the email address?
I've learned over the past year that that is a very important element to what we're doing here. Because if you lose their email address, you'll never see that person again. So you want to get the email address first and foremost. Do whatever you can to get that. The most important thing you can do with your traffic is to build your email list.
Secondly, present them your products. But products will come and go ... the item that's great and hot today and that's selling like crazy ... perhaps six months, eight months from now could be worthless ... and you've still got the name of that customer that was interested in you at some point and you can stay in contact with them and you can educate them on what's working now. What the latest and greatest is in your field.
If they showed an interest at one point there's a good chance they'll continue to stay on your mailing list and you can continue to educate them, and tell them what you're doing with your business. So getting that name is the most important thing for sure. That's the best focus you can have on your About Me page.
Whether or not you even have a web site ... I have some people that don't have a web site. They simply invite people to join their mailing list from their About Me page. They say "If you want more information send an email to ..." and that person is now on the mailing list.
So do you always offer something like a free report?
I suggest people offer a free report, or an ebook that they've got resell rights to or giveaway rights to. Something that might be of interest to their audience.
It could be just about anything ... use your imagination. The more creativity that you put into it, the better your results will be. But something that will be of interest ... and just about anything will be of interest to some people. But it's all about finding that perfect combination.
On your web site I notice for capturing email addresses you have a popup. Have you done tests with and without a popup? Have you found popups help increase your sign up rate?
Popups are very annoying ... I don't like them ... they drive me nuts on other people's sites, but the results are fantastic. I've seen a 50% - 60% increase in newsletter signups as a result of having a popup. So I'll continue to use them.
I never get complaints from people. Well, I've had maybe two complaints in the past 8 months, from people saying "I hated the popup -- I'm never going to go visit your site again". That's okay, I can handle one or two people in 8 months sending me an angry email when I'm adding an extra 30 or 40 people a day to my mailing list.
And that's purely from eBay traffic?
Well, my affiliate program is spreading to the point where I'm getting a lot of traffic from that. It's a snowball effect.
Start small. Don't be afraid to start small. Don't be ashamed of a mailing list of only 50 or 60 people. With the right product promoted in front of those 50 or 60 people things can take off really quick.
I do agree with you about the popups. It is the dilemma. They do work, but they're annoying as well. So it's always this compromise.
Yes, exactly. But as annoying as they are I think people understand that they're effective and for that reason they put up with it. Especially internet marketers ... we've all learned to kind of put up with it. But we all know it's annoying.
My site is a very decision orientated site. People are forced to make one decision when they visit my Silent Sales Machine site. Maybe two decisions. Do they want to join my mailing list? Yes or No. Do they want to buy my book? Yes or No. And that's all there is.
There's no other distractions. There's no other links. The great majority of people visit my site one-time, and then never come back. And that's fine. I'm not looking for heavy repeat traffic. I don't need it. I just need people to see my product one-time, decide if they want it or not, and if they leave that's fine. Ideally they join my mailing list and they'll get some great information from me from time to time, and they'll get reminders about my book too.
So they may come back one other time and buy the book ... so most people will visit my web site two times maximum. That's fine. That's completely fine. I'm not trying to run a content based web site that I have to update daily and keep fresh and put fresh new images and pictures and graphics all the time. People come once or twice -- to them it's new.
Your book's very affordable ... I admit that I'm quite a conservative purchaser online ... I've had my big spending moments but now I try to choose very carefully. And your product when I visited the site really stuck in my mind and within an hour or so I'd already picked up a copy.
And it has a lot of interest online -- why do you think that might be? Why has it done so well ... what is it that people really like about your product?
I think I know. I'm not sure I know ... but I think I know. I think the reason why it's so interesting and has caught on so quickly is the simplicity, the freshness of it ... it's a new idea.
There are literally no other 'gurus' out there ... there's no other eBay experts or eBay teachers that take the approach that I do to eBay. Most people that teach you about eBay will teach you how to sell the junk in your closet and make some money. But my book takes over where they leave off.
My book says "Now that your junk has gone -- and you've made a few hundred dollars, what are you going to do now? Are you going to abandon eBay now because you don't have anything to sell? Or are you going to create a system that can live on? That can grow your offline or online business using eBay as a tool?"
And that's just a neat concept for people because everyone's asking "What should I sell on eBay? How can I make money from eBay?". And I have a great answer to that question. And there's a lot of people asking that question. And they're getting a lot of bad answers.
So tickets is obviously something you're interested in, and as you say it gets a lot of traffic ... have you noticed other types of auctions that get a lot of attention?
I hesitate to create competition for my customers that have found a successful niche ... let me say that before I answer your question. Because I would be doing a disservice to some of my most successful students if I were to tell you "Go buy 100 of this item and sell it on eBay -- you'll be amazed" because I've just created 50 or 100 new competitors for my loyal customer, and I won't do that. I can give you some categories...
Maybe I can rephrase it in a way that would actually work more long-term -- do you have any suggestions for spotting a popular trend?
I do have a tool that will be on the resource page very soon that helps people determine exactly what is popular on eBay ... what's selling well ... what's getting a lot of bids ... and you can a lot of times tell just by browsing on eBay -- you'll find some auctions that have a lot of bids and they'll be a hit counter on that auction ... and you'll see a thousand people have seen this auction ... and that's just amazing traffic, and chances are the person that's selling that item doesn't even know what they're sitting on.
They don't even realize that they've got a gold mine right there. They've just lost 999 customers and they have one winner of that auction. One person won the item but they lost 999 potential future customers of that item or for similar items. There's no contact being made there.
And that's just sad, and I have people who have turned it into a business ... just contacting people like that on eBay that are already successful, already selling, and helping them set up a system to capture those leads. Becoming partners with them and showing them how to do it ... consulting with them or becoming their partner ... developing a web site for the back end.
It's another business opportunity.
Yes -- a huge opportunity there for someone that finds an interest in that by just contacting Power Sellers that don't get it. And showing them the goldmine they're sitting on and helping them tap into it.
You mentioned there are some categories people can keep in mind for big sellers ... would you mind mentioning those?
Collectables. Collectables are generally very hot. They have very passionate audiences. A lot of the big bidding occurs there. When I say collectables I mean anything that people might collect: antiques, stamps, or old items of any sort, or unique items of any kind.
That's kind of where eBay has it's foundation. That's where it started. Those are the people that grew eBay ... and that continues to be where the most vibrant activity is. And I encourage people all the time to find a hobby or interest that has an associated collectable item with it and become an expert at that collectable.
A great example would be baseball cards or sports cards of some kind. Learn all you can learn about it, become interested in it, and become an online guru of that topic.
And you can start on eBay with just a handful of auctions and within a short time you can be considered a guru of that industry because of the traffic and the web site you have on the back-end ... and the number of sales you're making ... and the newsletter that you have.
Your audience can grow very quickly because people who are interested in baseball cards know other people that are interested in baseball cards and if you start giving good information on a regular basis, pretty soon you've got a large mailing list and you can cross-market to them.
What else might your list need? They might need binders to store their cards in, or decorative shelves to display their cards ... sell those items to the people on your list ... keep a percentage of the profits.
Sell someone else's product and keep half -- it's a joint venture. There's all kinds of directions you could go. But it all starts on eBay with a few simple auctions.
And really spending time going through the categories, looking at different auctions, and checking out the hit counter and also their feedback quantity as well?
Yes. I'm glad you bought up feedback. That's actually a great mini-topic for us to go into for just a moment. Without feedback you don't have credibility. But that's only the bad news. The good news is once you have some feedback you've got tremendous credibility and you need to take advantage of it.
One of the biggest downfalls on the internet right now is it's hard to tell who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't. Who are the real experts? Who should I be listening to? "Who can I trust?" is a big question with people on the internet. "How do I know I can trust this guy?"
eBay gives you a great way to establish yourself as a trustable, honest, fair person that should be listened to. And that's their feedback system. Every time you have an auction that ends both the buyer and seller have the opportunity to give each other feedback.
And so when people who are just starting out on eBay ask me "How can I build my feedback?" I tell them "Go buy a few things -- get some positive feedback. Buy a few real inexpensive items ... get some feedback rolling ... sell a few items ... get your feedback built up to 30, 40, 50"
30, 40, 50 feedbacks looks really good. Especially with someone brand new to eBay. And you have a lot of credibility then and you can capitalize on that in many ways.
Plus of course at 50 you can do Dutch auctions.
Yes -- when your feedback reaches 50 you can sell more than 10 of any single item. You can buy a lot -- 100 items at a deep discount and sell them all at once to 100 different buyers.
And at 10 feedback you can do Buy It Now.
Yes. That's correct. You can take advantage of the Buy It Now feature. And they don't want people who are new to eBay messing up auctions. There's some restrictions when you start out and have zero feedback. You don't have much credibility yet ... you need to spend some time and teach people that you know what you're talking about.
But my strongest eBay account has feedback of 400. I'm not one of these guys that has 21,000 feedback. Those people are sitting on huge goldmines ... those people with feedback ratings of 21,000 or more. But I'm making more money that they are. And I'm spending a lot less time selling things on eBay. But eBay is still my foundation.
So you have more than one eBay account?
Yes -- I have multiple accounts. And there's actually several good reasons for that...
First you need to have a separate account for selling. Separated from buying. When you first start out just have one account. But once you establish yourself and you're trying to build a business around your eBay account you don't want to be buying a lot of things with that account.
The reason being is because that's an opportunity for someone to leave you negative feedback that you don't necessarily want having access to your account. One negative feedback looks bad -- you want to avoid that, so if you do get into a dispute with somebody as a result of having bought something keep it separate from your business. Keep it separate from your eBay business.
And hopefully people can understand the reasoning there. It's just a smart move to keep it all separate. A lot of times you'll get on eBay and you'll buy something and it will come, and it's not quite what you expected or you're a little disappointed and you'll try to get your money back and send the item back and if there's any problems at all that can look ugly on your records, so keep it separate.
Another good reason is you can participate in the eBay chat rooms anonymously. There are some very mean people that can lurk on those chat rooms and they could try to sabotage your auction or run up false bids on your auctions ... or not like what you have to say and try to do something mean to you on your account. So have an account that you use for the chat rooms ... when you have questions to ask.
And some of the other reasons: you can promote more than one business that way ... you can have completely separate businesses ... maybe two or three businesses with different web sites, with different products, different front-end products that you're promoting.
Another reason -- you might be able to sell that account in the future if you've built it up and got the feedback level high enough. Right now eBay won't allow you to sell your account, that's actually against the rules, but it's such an asset that at some point if eBay does ever change the rules some of the people with the high feedback rating accounts, they could make some great money on those.
That's a very interesting point. In a way it's like selling a business.
Exactly. It's like selling a business with a solid reputation and history. Businesses change ownership all the time -- it happens all the time in the real world. Why not on eBay?
And my theory is eventually eBay will allow that to happen as long as they get a percent of the sale. So I think we'll see that change in the future. But right now you can't do it. But why not have four or five of those assets with some real good feedback ratings built up, and when eBay changes the rules if they ever do you've got some things to sell that can make you some good money.
Sometimes I find it a bit hit and miss actually getting feedback after auctions. I was wondering if you have any pointers for actually boosting the chances of getting feedback to help your rating go up quicker so your business can grow quicker?
What I recommend is that you contact the customer as soon as the auction ends and let them know that as soon as they're happy please leave you feedback. And then a few days later you contact them again ... you can automate this and there's tools ... I like Auction Watch and there's other tools that help you with the whole feedback tracking systems.
You want to contact them more than one time. And also when you ship them the item be sure to put a reminder in there: "Please leave me feedback" and don't be afraid to go back through your records and look at people who haven't left you feedback and drop them an email with a simple link saying "Please click here and leave me feedback -- I'm trying to build my eBay business" and people will do that ... you just have to make it easy for them. And if you do that they'll leave you feedback.
Do you generally give them feedback first and then say "Would you return the favor?"
I don't actually recommend that. It may sound a little strange but I like to wait for them to leave feedback first if I'm the seller. Simply because I don't like being burned by feedback. And typically people buying on eBay are less experienced than people selling on eBay and you want to be able to remind them that "Hey, as soon as you leave me positive feedback I'll do the same for you" and that's a bit of an incentive for them.
Now when you're dealing with a seasoned eBay pro who's got several hundred feedbacks it really doesn't matter who leaves feedback first -- if the transaction ended successfully and both people are happy you can go ahead. But when I'm dealing with someone who only has three or four feedback as a customer or maybe no feedback, I want to be very careful that they understand the impact that feedback can have so I hang a little reward out there for them: "Leave me positive feedback and I'll do the same for you".
So they don't accidentally think that because my shipment arrived a day later than they thought it should they can now leave me negative feedback. That's not what feedback is for. It's for people who are truly very disappointed with a transaction and they're trying to point out a dishonest person to other eBay sellers.
You need to be very upset before you leave someone negative feedback on eBay. You need to work it out first because it's such a black mark on somebody when you do that. I've never left anyone negative feedback on eBay. I've always found another way to work it out. And I've never had anyone leave me negative feedback.
And you need to be very protective of that. Just because you get one negative mark doesn't mean the world has ended, but that's also a good reason to have multiple eBay accounts.
If you start to have some problems with one, and you feel like your negative feedback's holding you back, you've got some other accounts already rolling that you can switch your business over to while the one with negative feedback recovers.
And if you do get negative feedback respond professionally. One of the worst things you can do ... and you've seen this before ... someone will leave negative feedback, and the next thing you know the seller's responding by saying "You jackass, you should have paid attention".
Now is that going to win you more business? I don't think so. Who wants to risk being called names if they mess up. Just be very professional and polite no matter how mean the other person wants to get ... that will carry you much further and will actually probably win you some business if you can put some humor in there.
And let people know that the situation's been resolved, be light-hearted about it, be generous, be humorous, and the negative comment can even turn into a positive for you. That's almost an art -- your first instinct is to blaze right back at that person but the last thing you need is enemies on eBay and that guy's now trying to nail you back for what you did to him and you don't have time for that. You don't make any money when you're playing those games.
Concerning using Auction Watch and similar tools -- how do you manage your auctions? How do you make the whole process of selling easier?
You have to remember that my primary focus on eBay is to sell as little as possible, but generate maximum traffic and profits. Although there's a lot of money to be made in selling multiple items, and selling a lot of items all at once ... those people running 2, 3, 400 auctions at any given time ... they're doing very well but the problem I have with that is when do they go on vacation? How do they leave town for three days?
If you've got multiple auctions ending every day, it's just a very busy way to operate an online business. Some people love it, and if you want to do that use Auction Watch -- there's several other tools available and you can look around on eBay and see what other Power Sellers are using.
I've never allowed my business to get that big to where I had to use an auction service just to survive. The most auctions I've ever had going at any given time will probably be 25, 30, and the simple features of Auction Watch have allowed me to stay on top of that very easily. It wasn't a big struggle for me.
