THE EBAY SELLER'S NEWS, APRIL 2005, VOLUME 4, ISSUE #13

by: Skip McGrath

1. The Nigerian "Certified Check" Scam Is Now Targeting eBay

2. Whack A Non-Paying Bidder and Neat New eBay Tools From Ethical Technologies

If you read the Musings above, you already know about the cool game on this web site where you can whack a NPB. Besides games, however, Ethical Technologies has some great tools and resources for eBay sellers.

Ethical was founded by Scott Samuel. Scott started Honesty.com the inventor of the free counter. In the early days of eBay you could download a free counter from Honesty.com. You still can today, but now it comes from Andale who Scott merged with in 2001.

Ethical's mission is to develop user tools to help eBay sellers better manage their auctions and become more profitable. What is really cool is that they are looking for ideas from you the sellers. If you have an idea for a tool, you send it to them. If they develop it and sell it, they'll give you a piece of the action.

Two of neatest tools they offer now are a hassle-free listing tool and JayandMarie's scheduler and relisting tool. Jayandmarie is the user name of Jay and Marie Senese the number one seller on eBay with over 1 million successful auctions closed. Another cool tool is an email Thank-you program that sends a thank you email to everyone who bids on your auctions with a link to your other auctions. It only sends one email though. The tool is smart enough to realize some bidders bid more than once. You can set it to only send an email once every three months, six months or even a year so you are not spamming bidders. I spoke to my friend Big Bill at Ethical Technologies and he has offered my readers a one-month free trial if you would like to try any of their excellent tools. Here is how to get it: Go to www.ethical2004.com - Sign up on the site like a normal (new user). Once signed up and logged in, click on any tool, lower right corner will have the "start trial" section. Enter the promotional code (ethicalskip) before clicking start trail. This will start a trial of 30 days.

3. eBay Rolls Out New Advertisements and A Mail-Order Style Catalog

This is just a short item but I wanted to mention it. EBay has rolled out a new TV ad campaign that is really cool. I used to be in the advertising business (I created ads for such companies as Compaq Computer, RCA and Hitachi in my previous life. Remember the RCA ads with Nipper and Chipper, the big dog and the puppy? That was my work)

The new campaign is called The Power Of All Of Us. It consists of both radio and TV Spots. Your can see some of the ads and read about the campaign Here. eBay is also mailing out 30 million mail-order-style catalogs. The catalogs are organized by category and have examples of what you can buy on eBay and links to the product category.

4. Drop Shipping Your Own Merchandise

We always think of drop shipping as selling merchandise that we don't own from drop ship companies. The idea is you go to one of the drop ship warehouse companies, find a product, put it on eBay and when (and if) it sells, you pay the drop ship company and they mail it to your buyer. But did you know, that a lot of top sellers (including me) use drop ship warehouses to ship merchandise they own?

Why would you want to do this? There are several reasons. For example, if you are selling motor scooters would you want to store them in your garage? Also, what if you live in California? You are at a shipping disadvantage because 65% of the US population lives within 750 miles of Philadelphia, PA. Wouldn't it make more sense to have your motor scooters stored in a warehouse somewhere closer to the East Coast?

One of the companies that does this work is PA Depot. located in Harrisburg, PA about an hour from Philadelphia. When you buy merchandise you have it shipped to them. They store it in a dedicated area. When you sell it on eBay, you send them an email and they pack and ship it to the user. There are fees for this of course but you will save shipping costs on many or most of your shipments. PA Depot does so much shipping with the major carriers, they get pretty good discounts and they pass these on to you. So the fees you pay are somewhat offset by the shipping savings (which means you can mark up the shipping to make a few extra bucks or to cover your fee cost.

As you know I sell books. Our smaller books, such as The eBay Power Seller's Manual are printed locally. Our larger and heavier books, The Complete eBay Marketing System and How to Start & Run an eBay Consignment Business come in three-ring notebooks are printed on demand in three locations. We have a printing press and warehouse in Kelso Washington for shipments west of the Rockies, another location in St. Louis for shipments East of the Rockies and one just outside of London for European orders. (The one is London is new and will be up and running in a week or so).

This is also a solution for Canadian or European sellers. You can sit in Munich and launch auctions on eBay US for products that are purchased and delivered to your warehouse in the US and just ship out of there.

There are other companies around the country that provide warehouse and fulfillment services. If you want to find one in your area just do a Google search for terms such as "order fulfillment" or "third party logistics."

5. Cool Idea For The Holidays FREE Shipping For BIN Customers

Are you looking for a way to boost your holiday sales and profits? Here is a great technique: If your item typically sells for over $20, select the eBay subtitle feature (50 cents) and put this line in your sub-title: "FREE SHIPPING for Buy-It-Now orders"

You have to work the numbers out to your advantage. Here is an example. I sell Starbucks Collectible Mugs. I have a mug where my cost is $9.95. When I list it at $9.99 I usually get bids of anywhere between $17 and $19 and I charge $3.90 for shipping via Priority Mail. If I set my Buy-it-now (BIN) price at $22.95 and offer free shipping I am netting $19.05 which is at the high end of my auction range and almost double my money.

The real advantage is that I am turning my inventory over faster. As soon as someone hits the BIN button, I can launch an auction for another identical mug.

I have tried this where I set an even higher BIN price such as $24.95 and it works. People will pay more to get free shipping. I don't know why I think it's just an impulse thing.

I can't wait until the holidays are over so I can see if this still works. My gut tells me it will.

6. FREE Video Seminar OK not really free, but you can test drive it for free.

Last month I mentioned Cory Rudl's marketing course in my article about web site selling. Cory's stuff is fabulous, but it's pretty pricey. Some folks wrote me they wanted to buy it and just couldn't afford it. Right after that I got an email from Cory's affiliate manager about a new promotion. Cory has s 3.5 hour video seminar (DVD or VHS) that is excellent. The neat thing about this is you can try it for free. You get the video set for 30 days and you are not charged unless you keep it. Yes as I said last month, I make money when I recommend this to you (if you keep the video series and decide to pay for it.) But I only endorse products and services I use myself and that I believe in. I have purchased several of Cory's programs and never sent one back for a refund. He had one idea on this video seminar that took me ten minutes to implement and it increased my web site traffic by almost 15% in one week.

Cory's material is related specifically to internet marketing not eBay. However, he covers a lot of material that is really helpful to promoting your eBay store (which is a separately-indexed web site). Also, as any of the top sellers on eBay will attest, you need a web site in addition to eBay to generate consistent profits over time. By the way, if you didn't read last month's article, please go back and do so. That article generated more mail, questions and comments than any I have done in a long time. Click Here to read about Cory's Free Video Offer. You can click here to read last month's newsletter with the article on web sites and eBay Stores.

7. Product Review MK Digital Photo E-Box One Step Digital Imaging System

Last month we reviewed the EZ Cube photo tent, which is a product I have used for over a year. A picture is worth a thousand words, especially on eBay. Quality photos can mean the difference between getting one bid or dozens. This is especially true for jewelry items, which are notoriously difficult to photograph well.

Natural wrap-around lighting is the key to taking excellent jewelry photographs. The nice folks at MK Digital Direct sent me one of their units, the Photo e-Box to try out and review for my readers. I am impressed. Although I have had consistently great results with the EZ Cube for over a year, I always struggled with shooting jewelry and other really small objects or shiny objects.

I did have a couple of problems. I could not get my camera to sync with their software program so I could see the results on my computer screen as I shot. Also, the opening in the front and top of the box was just a little small for my camera lens (I use a Sony DSC F717 with the really large Zeiss lens). This would not be a problem for most cameras.

On the plus side I was able to take some great photos of several pieces of jewelry we have had sitting around here that I couldn't launch on eBay for lack of good photos.

The Photo e-Box is not inexpensive. In fact it would only make sense for someone who frequently shoots jewelry and other small objects. If you do get it, however, be sure to buy the Sparkle Light, an accessory that MK Digital sells. It's is a small light with dozens of LEDs that you shine at the object you are photographing. The reflections off of the LED cause your jewelry to sparkle. In fact even if you occasionally shoot jewelry and don't invest in the Photo e-Box, I would still buy one of these Sparkle lights.

The Photo e-Box is easy to master and a really great product. It comes complete with three different backgrounds, a universal camera bracket and imaging and cataloging software.

8. New Wholesale Sources for December 2004

Our first wholesale source isn't really a wholesale source but it is a place where you can buy to make money on eBay. It is called the ReFurb Depot. ReFurb Depot sells a wide variety of factory refurbished electronic equipment and appliances. Many of them come with a manufacturer's warranty. I would skip the computers (unless you are just looking for one for yourself because the margins on eBay are too small ) and focus on the other products, such as peripherals, home theater and stereo, office equipment and so on. The key here is that you can look at an item on the site, open another window in eBay's advanced search box and just flip back and forth to see what an item is worth. Once you find a sweet spot, just hit the buy button and get it up on eBay the first day it arrives.

I spent about hour doing this and I found over a dozen products where I could make between $50 and $200 per item. A lot of bidders don't have a good understanding of refurbished products. The real key to getting top dollar on eBay for a refurbished item is writing a good description. You should explain what a factory refurbished items is to give your buyer confidence. This is the sort of product that is also easier to sell if you have a 100+ feedback rating.

There is also a company called MCE that sells higher-end computer related products and servers that are refurbished. And, here are three companies that sell refurbished laptops wholesale: