Category Archive for Contributors

How about an interest-free loan for 6 months from your friends at eBay and
PayPal?

If you qualify for PayPal Buyer Credit (hurry, it expires 12/31/06), you can pay no interest and make no payments for 6 months if you spend $500 or more on a transaction.  For
transactions from $50 to $499, the term is 3 months.

eBay clearly intends this to be a holiday shopping promotion but there is no
rule that says you can’t use it to bootstrap yourself into a nice little
profit-making sideline.  Here’s an idea how you might do it:

Remember we talked about scrap metal a few weeks back?  Many of these eBay
precious metal lots contain jewelry that can be repaired or even fashioned into
new items.  You can get just about everything you need to fix gold and silver
jewelry right there on eBay, plus packing materials and labels.  Instant
business.  Roll your profits over and now that you have real cash money, you
can source merchandise from outside of eBay too.  Just keep growing and keep
going.

Even simpler:  Use this promotion to buy commodity items on eBay.  By
commodity, I mean items that keep their value.  Hold for a few weeks and sell
on eBay in January when traditionally sales are brisk.  Sure, you’ll pay eBay
and PayPal fees, but now you have cash and as in the above example, you can
source stuff from anywhere.  When you pay off the loan in late May, the pile of
cash that’s left over is all yours.  Pretty good for starting with zero!

I’m just scratching the surface here.  I’ll bet there’s a clever lad or lassie
out there who can make this promotion sit up and beg for them.

fLufF
–

Recently an ex-neighbor gave me her new email address. She apologized for the length of it and said her 16 year old son had created it for her. I waited until she left before I chuckled. So much for kids knowing everything about computers!

With the ability to choose any name that wasn’t already taken, he had selected firstname/lastname/randomnumber@bigISP.com.

If you don’t get the joke, it’s simply this: AOL suggestively assigns screen names
such as yourname/randomnumber@aol.com (If I suffered brain damage
and signed up for an AOL account, I would be offered some variation on fluffy1234@aol.com).
There are so many of these name/number combos floating around now that people
like my ex-neighbor’s son simply assume that’s what an email address has to
look like.

So. Do you use templates and pretty borders in your auctions? Do you do it
because you assume that’s what an auction has to look like?

Let’s try an experiment. Odds are this time of year you have a stack of mail
order catalogs sitting around. Open the Coldwater Creek book to any page.
See how the designer works with a two-page layout to create harmony and balance
while showcasing five or six items? Some of the photos bleed off the page.
There is no wasted space. There are no borders. Just stunning photos of
gorgeous items.

In catalog selling, every square inch must pay for itself because the books
are so darn expensive to create, print and mail. Catalogers are obsessive
about evaluating the selling power of their book and are constantly trying to
boost it. You should be trying to increase the power of your auction layout,
too. You have even less space to work with. Don’t waste it on borders.

There is no rule that says you can’t use the same picture twice or more in an
auction. I put my photos inline using HTML. Then I use eBay’s one free
picture hosting to showcase the best picture. And finally, I put all the
pictures in eBay’s new Picture Show, which is FREE. Picture Show creates a
slide show on the left side near the top of the page. Anyone who lands on your
item page will see the picture first.

That’s power. Get some.

Enough about me, let’s talk about you.

Look at what you’ve got going for you: a computer (or access to one), the
skills to use it and some hard-won knowledge about how eBay works.

Now let me ask you: Is your eBay merchandise worthy of you?

I’m looking at an eBay seller who has 25 cent thingies in her Store, with 75
cent shipping. Hokay. What are her costs?

• 5 cents for a Store listing.

• 3 cents FVF (Final Value Fee).

• PayPal transaction fee is 30 cents plus 1.9 to 2.9 cents…let’s just call it 33 cents.

• Say 5 cents for the envelope, 39 cents for postage

And what have we got? Assuming she got this thing for free, a 15 cent profit.

Not so fast.

With 142 items in her eBay Store, this thingie must pay its own way. A basic
Store is $15.95 a month, so the thingie has an 11 cent load to bear. Oh dear.
Our profit is now just 4 cents.

But surely if you sell enough and it takes only seconds to address this thing
and drop it in the mail…

Our seller received 113 feedbacks in the last 30 days. Assuming a 50% laziness
rate, let’s say that makes 226 sales. 226 times 4 cents.

Oh, you look. I’m afraid to.

$9.04 for one month’s work.

When I meet a seller like this, I ask why they work so hard for so little
return. “It’s fun!” is a typical response, or “I’m just trying to get rid of
this stuff.”

My responses are “Wouldn’t it be more fun to make some serious money selling
something people want, and doing it with the same amount of work?” and “Lot
this stuff up, take a bunch of pictures, and have one listing that starts at 99
cents.”

Guys, eBay was trying to tell you something a few months back when they
revamped Stores fees. The results are in: You didn’t listen. Only 6% of
Stores closed.

I try to avoid making pigskin prognostications, but look for
Store fees to go up again, perhaps next spring, and continue going up until the
math-impaired among you finally get It.

fLufF

se’cure
­adjective
1. free from or not exposed to danger or harm; safe.
2. dependable; firm; not liable to fail, yield, become displaced, etc., as a
support or a fastening: The building was secure, even in an earthquake.
3. affording safety, as a place: He needed a secure hideout.
4. in safe custody or keeping: Here in the vault the necklace was secure.
5. free from care; without anxiety: emotionally secure.
6. firmly established, as a relationship or reputation: He earned a secure
place among the baseball immortals.
7. sure; certain; assured: secure of victory; secure in religious belief.
8. safe from penetration or interception by unauthorized persons: secure radio
communications between army units.

—————–

It dawned on me recently that when some people talk about a site being “secure”
(#8) or not, what they’re really saying is that *they* don’t feel secure (#5).

As Michael pointed out in a recent show, one study shows that the number of
people who recognize a phish email is dismally low. So apparently if Grandma
Jane eBayer is getting mail that purports to be from eBay and PayPal on a daily
basis, it reinforces her perception that neither eBay nor PayPal are secure
(#8), even though it’s actually her lack of knowledge about what maketh a phish that is the prime cause of her anxiety.

Add to that the persistent rumor that some of the malicious emails come from
insiders. “How else could they know my real name?” Grandma Jane doesn’t
remember the contests she entered or the online warranty cards she’s filled
out, and she will not believe you if you remind her. She thinks privacy
policies are in place to protect her privacy. She’s certainly never read one
or considered the implications.

Compounding the problem is that when company reps try to educate Grandma Jane,
she just tunes them out and tunes in QVC instead. Those nice hosts, she
almost feels like she knows them. And such pretty jewelry, and what a great
value. All she has to do is pick up her old analog cordless phone and give her
credit card number.

So safe, so certain. Shucks, she’s been doing it for the
last forty years, starting with that Veg-O-Matic guy, Ron Popeil.

Pay no attention Jane to the man parked at the curb, operating that scanner.

Your identity is secure.

fLufF

Do you have some broken sterling silver or do you have some broken sterling silver or gold jewelry just sitting around in a drawer?

For those who don’t know me, I’m a long-standing eBay seller/entrepreneur who has over the course of time amassed a wine vat full of outside-of-the-box experience while doing business on the big E. As far as my style goes, I’ve been called many things, but only a few are printable so let’s go with “curmudgeon”.

Jon Winokur, in his sublime compilation _The Portable Curmudgeon_, writes:

“Dictionaries define curmudgeon as a churlish, irascible fellow; a cantankerous old codger…A curmudgeon’s reputation for malevolence is undeserved. They’re neither warped or evil at heart. They don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s excesses. They’re just as sensitive and soft-hearted as the next guy*, but they hide their vulnerability beneath a crust of misanthropy. They ease the pain by turning hurt into humor. They snarl at pretense and bite at hypocrisy out of a healthy sense of outrage….Nature, having failed to equip them with a serviceable denial mechanism, has endowed them with astute perception and sly wit. Offense is their only defense. Their targets are pretense, pomposity, conformity, incompetence.”

I couldn’t have said it better, Jon. Thanks.

As a computer industry veteran, I’m not easily dazzled by technology. I also believe that selling is selling, whether you’re standing on a street corner hawking hot dogs or offering 5 carat flawless diamonds online.

And if you want to boost your eBay sales you’ll be better off listening to the masters of the game rather going Google-gaga. Maybe someday I’ll actually meet someone who has made a Gbase sale.

Hasn’t happened yet.

fLufF

*Not really. -f.

I’m happy to announce that Charleen Larson (aka fluffythewondercat) has accepted my invitation to post on the E-Auction-Air blog as a contributor.

I, like so many of you, have been a long time fan of fluffythewondercat’s (Charleen’s nom-de-net) straight-ahead, no-prisoners posts on the boards (Vendio, OTWA among others).

Apart from being very knowledgeable, acerbic, and not suffering fools…qualities that have afforded her wide-spread admiration and qualities, frankly, that are in short supply wherever one might trod, either on-line or off; Charleen is genuinely concerned with helping sellers become better merchants. In doing so, she steadfastly refuses to give in to whining, nincompoopery or inferior obstinacy…(superior obstinacy has yet to be encountered).

fLufF’s posts will be her own, I’m simply here along with you to enjoy the ride.