eBay Selling

If you’ve never seen them before, you might not be aware that eBay has its own extensive classified ad area. The ads are pretty pricey when compared to many of the other classified ads available online. The eBay Classified ads are often used to advertise real estate or to try to drive traffic to other websites where something is being sold.

Now, the rumors in the corporate world are that eBay is looking to buy up several online classified ad companies and to make a huge online classified ad network controlled by eBay.  It seems possible that this could happen, as they have already achieved an unmistakable monopoly of the online auction industry. It’s possible that they could soon start to run online classified ads just as badly and jack up the price for everyone.

I know what you’re thinking. Hey- we’ll just use Craigslist. Unfortunately, eBay already owns a huge stake in Craigslist- 25 percent of the company. If they push to make Craigslist a paid service, they could probably do it whenever they choose.

If you have relied on checks, money orders and/or cash for your eBay payments up until now, don’t forget that their time is about to come to an end. I do know of a few people who are hesitant to start using PayPal and having their money transacted online. Yes, there are some minor risks involved with this payment method, but I have overall found it incredibly easy and convenient.

If you don’t yet have an account, it’s time to get one so that your eBay selling doesn’t have to be interrupted. You will have to go through a few steps to verify your account, and that can take a week or more. There are only a couple of weeks until snail mail transactions are banned, so get to it!

If you are relisting media items or listing new ones, remember that one of the new rules is that there is a fixed maximum amount of shipping allowed for media items. In just a few days, all of your media items will have to include a shipping price that falls within the new maximums, as outlined in this rate chart . I have not seen a specific date for when this happens, but the rate chart says “in October,” so I will assume that means Oct. 1st until I hear otherwise.

The rule actually does not prevent you from having a shipping price that is higher than the maximums- it just says that you have to have at least one shipping option that falls within that range. So, if you have a book that has to ship for $4 or less, you can have a Media Mail rate of $3 set, plus you can offer a Priority Mail rate of $5. The winner of the listing will get to decide their shipping method from among the ones you list.

I finally got my eBay Store closed. I had posted before that it looked like the site was making it pretty easy to close the stores for the people who wanted to change their store listings to the new low-priced fixed price listings. It looked simple enough and the redesign even looked like it was being helpful. None of that turned out to be the case.

Trying to change items from store listings to fixed price listings ended up taking a ridiculous number of hours before I finally figured out how to make it easier. I’m not sure what the problem is on their end- it looks like perhaps there is such a rush to transfer listings that it is causing the site to slow down to the point that every transfer times out and has to be done again and again and again.

If you are going through listing transfer hell right now- save some time and cancel all of the listings in your store. The timing out seems to happen when the listings are transferred directly from the store to fixed price. If you end a store listing and then go to your unsold file and relist it there as a fixed price listing, there are no time outs and no problems.

The eBay Pulse is a place that I’ve mentioned before here on eBay selling. It’s a fun page to look at, but it can also give you some insight into what is selling best. The page has been upgraded and redesigned and now offers several new keyword lists to give you even more insight into what the hot sellers are.

Take a look at the Pulse here for some ideas. Apparently, the redesigned eBay Pulse page has incorporated keywords from blogs into the keyword lists. I’m not exactly sure how that helps eBay sellers, but perhaps eBay expects items that people are talking about most will be the items that everyone is looking for.

If you don’t want to go the thrift store route and you don’t have a lot of Halloween items lying around, you can still participate in the second-largest retail season of the year. If you have any talents for crafts, there are a number of Halloween items you can make at home and sell on eBay.

If you make candles, soaps or ceramics, make a few with a Halloween theme. The market for Halloween decor is getting stronger and stronger, and you’ll likely do quite well with your items. Also consider making yard decorations and anything else you can think of that has a spooky Halloween theme.

If you haven’t already gotten your Halloween items out to sell them on eBay, now is the perfect time. People actually start shopping for Halloween items in August, but the mad rush starts at the end of September as many people start to realize that the holiday is coming up.

A few good Halloween items to sell:

• Old costumes- adult costumes sell especially well

• Halloween decorations

• Candle holders with a spooky theme

• Unusual outfits or hats- someone can use them in a costume

If you want to take advantage of the Halloween rush, and the Halloween retail season is second only to Christmas, you can still get involved even if you don’t have any suitable items to sell. Hit a few thrift stores and find some vintage outfits that would make perfect costumes. Look for accessories that could fit into Halloween themes as well.

First, just let me say, ha ha ha ha ha ha! When eBay bought Skype for $4.1 BILLION, most people were scratching their heads as to how Skype could possibly be worth that much. It was a nice idea- to incorporate Skype into auctions so that you could interact on a personal level with buyers and sellers. You would be able to talk directly to your seller and answer their question in person and give them a dose of extra-mile service.

It sounds like it could work for some eBay users, but how eBay thought it was worth over $4 billion no one ever understood. eBay sellers were livid that their fees were raised at just about the same time as the purchase.

Well, eBay has finally admitted that they paid too much for the site, though they only admit to paying $1 billion too much. I beg to differ on that point, but hey, what’s a billion here and there? They can always jack up prices to make up for it.

I recently found out that eBay owns StumbleUpon. I really had no idea about that. It doesn’t seem like something that would be of use to them, and it looks like they don’t think so either. They are now looking to sell the site to the highest bidder because page views are down on the site.

This pretty much fits in line with eBay’s overall business strategy: pay as much as you can for a site and it doesn’t perform, just sell it instead of trying to improve the site. How are they staying in business again? Oh yeah- the exorbitant fees. I had almost forgotten that. Almost.

After a lot of consideration, I have been started moving my store items to fixed price listings in anticipation of closing my eBay store. Luckily, the new design is making it pretty easy to do. If you look at your listings on the selling page, the drop down menu to the right of each item includes a Send to Fixed Price option. Once you use that, the system ends your store listing for you. The whole process takes only a minute or two, so getting these listings converted won’t take too long.

In the end, I’ve decided that the better visibility of fixed price listings is going to be a better option than keeping a store. Sales from eBay stores have been good, but fixed price listings are far more visible to buyers.