Original PDF Flash format my-ebay-secrets  


My Ebay Secrets

the blatant
opportunist
65
by Don Lancaster
My eBay Secrets
I’ve been more or less successfully selling items on eBay Getting Stuff
for several years now. So, I thought I’d gather together
Because many eBay selling prices are often well under
some guidelines. While not all eBay professionals fully
wholesale or distributor costs, there is usually no way you
agree with all these tactics, here are some of the concepts
can profit on eBay by buying wholesale and selling online.
that seem to be working for me…
And while a very few people can sometimes do fairly well
Some Fundamentals
gambling on "truckload liquidations", most of these end up
as outright scams.
The surest way to succeed on eBay is to offer highly My rule for eBay success is to always seek out a 30:1 or
unique products which are not available elsewhere.
higher return ratio between the product cost and its
Products with which you are intimately familiar and might
average eBay selling price. Such returns quickly erode to
eventually become an expert in.
barely living wages after you allow for any unsellables, all
As an example, we are the web’s preeminent supplier of
operating expenses, repair costs, travel, storage, and all of
water soluble swimsuits. In addition to our bargain test
the usual nickel and dime gotchas.
equipment, "kiss your ass goodbye" nuclear memorabilia,
Almost always, it pays to lead off with your personal
unusual sensors, and other truly bizarre items.
value added. This should contribute the lion’s share to
Your second success rule is to always be scrupulously
the buyer’s perceived value.
honest. Misrepresenting or not delivering items is a certain
Achieving acceptable eBay margins demands buying in
route to failure. You should be prompt and professional
huge quantities of deeply distressed, wildly assorted, and
in all of your eBay dealings.
grossly underappreciated merchandise. Preferably in need
Most eBay sellers end up paying themselves less than
of slight cleaning and minor repair. Obvious but largely
prison wages. If you cannot continuously generate around
penny ante first choices are junk in your Aunt’s attic and
$140 per day from eBay sales, your efforts are probably best
unpopular yard or estate sales.
spent elsewhere. A minimum of 51 items continuously
For me, the sources that have worked out the best are
listed at any time is recommended. Assuming seven of
both traditional or newly privatized military surplus sales,
these hit per day for an average net-net profit of $20 each,
remote community college auctions, and dot.com or other
you can barely meet this minimum income goal.
tech bankruptcies. Useful links to these and other sites are
It takes bunches of time and effort to do this job right.
found at www.tinaja.com/auct01.asp. Your best ploy is
Especially those tasks you do not like or are not good at. Be
to consistently seek economically inefficient markets. If
willing to commit yourself to the needed work.
more than five percent of your offers are accepted,
It is best to offer a companion web site. One that can
you are paying too much. Naturally, you make up for a
generate linking traffic, resell related items, handle secure
5% success rate by bidding on twenty times as much stuff
transactions, and provide tutorials and other resources for
as you could possibly use.
potential buyers. Given the proper linking and promotion,
I try to keep most of my offers at one sixth of a penny
these two should complement each other nicely.
per dollar of original costs. I’ll sometimes go up as high as
Because it is not a good idea to relist an item before an
a quarter cent if it is something I really want. If someone
older one is sold and closed, use threads instead. A thread
bids against me, I walk away. One tip: Some sealed bid
is a group of related products. Say you stock four different
sales require even full dollar bid increments. Be sure to bid
NDT eddy current probes. Run them in the same thread.
as early as possible on these offerings. Note that this is the
Try to chose some "intellectual but vaguely mystical and
exact opposite of effective eBay bidding strategy.
subtle" eBay user name. Like Bee did with Abeja.
Two things to avoid at all costs are drop shipping and
Avoid tainted auction categories and items that other
consignment sales. If your drop ship source fails to deliver,
buyers or sellers have trashed. Bogus collectibles, software
you’ll take all the flak and all the losses. And selling for a
or concert copies, and "too good to be true" laptop pricing
friend is a near certain way to lose that friend. If you must
come to mind as obvious examples.
do consignment sales, quote a minimum 50% commission
Never sell something you feel bad about. Unless you do
over and above a $90 per item placement guarantee.
so at a rock bottom price and clearly spell out exactly why
But both these bad scenes are best avoided.
the vibes are bad.
September, 2001
Blatant Opportunist
65.1
Copyright c 2000 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (928) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting expressly forbidden.
I want it, I’ll next switch to Arcata Pet’s ImageViewer 32.
Listings
I’ll first do a 50% reduction to anti-alias. Then a crop and
The foremost listing rule, of course, is the more you tell,
rotate as needed. Followed by a brightness, contrast, and
the more you sell. Make your descriptions accurate but
gamma improvement. And a final sharpening. But a little
slightly understated. Clearly show minor flaws. Spell out
sharpening goes a long way. So, use only half of what
the shipping weight or cost. Provide active links to supplier
you think you need. The picture is finally saved as a high
websites or tutorial use info.
quality compressed JPEG format.
Provide a link to your own website. The website prices
Your images are sent via FTP to your ISP.
should be higher than your eBay opening bids.
Some of my image examples can be found here and
Make every title word count. Keep L@@K! and anything
here. Custom image work is available here.
else cutsey-poo out of your titles. Pick the most suitable
category. If in doubt, check where others have sold.
Getting Paid
Absolutely no backgrounds, sound effects, flashings,
The fundamental secret insider rule to a successful eBay
animation, or music. Stay sharp and clean. Always be
venture is no pissing around! Auction closes. Payment
sure to include one or more images.
made. Item shipped. Wham. Blam. Outtahere. Preferably
Be sure to strictly limit your terms and conditions within minutes and never leaving your house. Certainly
to ten words. Or twenty words absolute maximum. More
never driving anywhere or standing in line.
than this labels you as an undesirable eBay seller to be
Your best possible payment route is VISA or MasterCard
avoided at all costs. Avoid using restrictive or negative
done using a secure link to your own website. Although
statements anywhere. But clearly state all defects.
Paypal or Billpoint can work and may actually end up a
Learn and use HTML. Especially for any space between
tad cheaper than lower volume VISA fees.
paragraphs, useful links, and additional images…
Our strict terms maximize results for us: VISA/MC or

Paypal/Billpoint only. We have conclusively found that
<p> Bracketing paragraphs creates attractive
the check, cash, or money order buyers are often problem

vertical white spaces between them. </p>
oriented. Besides delaying a newly uncertain closure by
<p> Click for <A HREF="http://www.tinaja.com">
weeks. And purposely aligning themselves with felons,

Our Website </a>. </p>
losers, credit risks, and societal misfits.

We stopped doing COD’s years ago when our return rate
<p> Use this code <IMG SRC=your_pix-filename>
exceeded 26%. Compared to the negligible fraction of one
to add extra images or photos. </p>
percent for VISA/MC/Paypal.
Good HTML titles are on our Book Access page.
You undoubtedly will be accosted by some wildly
Naturally, there should be no religion or politics or pets
misinformed epsilon minus who claims you have to accept
or sob stories or guilt trips anywhere in your eBay listings.
cash or cash equivalents by federal law. Uh, this "not even
Nor anything else that is not tightly focused on selling the
wrong" myth confuses a debt with a contract. If necessary,
exact item listed. In a truthful and exciting manner.
send them to this US Treasury Site to set them straight.
I’ve found the free QuickPhrase generator to be very
I also strictly enforce No foreign bidders. No foreign
useful for entering eBay listings.
buyers. No foreign transshipments. First, because our
military suppliers contractually demand we do so through
Images
signed end user agreements. But mostly because we have
I’ve consistently found that decently done images should
consistently found foreign sales to be an appalling loss of
double or even triple your final prices. I strongly feel that
time, energy, money, and sanity.
at least two hours should be spent very carefully post
Tiny little things like the Canadian post office refusing
processing your images.
to accept my first class mail. Or sitting in a bank for hours
If you use a digital camera, I’d recommend a minimum
before they decided to (just this once) use the Canadian
of 3 Megapixels. Being able to record as an uncompressed
exchange rate on a check from a Nova Scotia bank.
bitmap is an absolute must. I normally prefer to use a
Minus a 75% service fee, of course.
scanner instead of a camera, since it gives me around fifty
Life is too short to ever again fill out a stupid little green
times the resolution.
customs sticker at the post office. Or to have the buyer ask
Crucial details on all these techniques first appeared in
you to commit an international crime by lying on it.
IMAGIMAG.PDF. Newer info is seen on our Auction Help
The bottom line is this: If you succeed with domestic
and Blatant Opportunist library pages.
sales, you do not need foreign involvment. If you do
It is important to do your image prep double size, so that
not, then the extra costs and hassles will not help you.
any jaggies will anti-alias. My prep normally consists of
knocking out all the background and replacing it with a
Closing Your Sales
slightly mottled pastel. This reduces final artifacts.
As soon as a sale ends, we email contact the buyer and
Horizontal and vertical edges are rectified to one pixel
advise them of payment options and shipping costs. If we
accuracy. Most shadows are reduced or eliminated, as are
have additional stock, we also ask them how many they
any scanning defects. Lettering legibility will be improved,
would like. And refer them to our website Bargain Pages
sometimes with a total reworking.
for related items.
Appropriate IP watermarking is also done.
We will sometimes contact the first and second runner
While others use Adobe Photoshop, I prefer to work in
up bidders to advise them of availability. You should not
plain old Paint instead. When the image is exactly the way
mine your entire list of bidders, especially those bottom
65.2
Blatant Opportunist
September, 2001
Copyright c 2000 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (928) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting expressly forbidden.
feeding bargain hunters who might be snitches.
reserve will bring a higher ending price.
You should never steal a buyer from another seller. If
Reserves do lock in bargain basement bidders. And give
you have an exceptionally specialized item it is rarely
you "insurance" against eBay going down at precisely the
appropriate to notify another seller’s runner up bidders
wrong time. They keep any Buy It Now offer visible much
well after their sale closes.
longer. They can also be a marketing tool to establish value
Should a buyer be slow responding, a week later we send
when you have large quantities of a new item.
out a polite "We haven’t heard from you" email note. If we
Even so, reserves are best avoided. Especially if you have
feel there is a comm problem, we get a phone number from
already sold similar items at acceptable prices. If anybody
eBay and try to make voice contact.
asks your reserve price, tell them. But don’t advertise it.
The next step (after 7 days but before 45 days) we will
I use reserves on higher value items, because I am not
request from eBay a non paying bidder alert following
about to give away a Tektronix Oscilloscope or anything
their help guidelines. Should that not do the trick, between
similar. There is a fine line between no bidders, one bidder,
10 and 60 days after the NPB alert, we file a FVF or Final and two bidders fighting each other.
Value Fee Credit. This gets you half of your eBay fees
A Dutch Auction lets you sell more than one item at a
back; the listing fee comes back on a free successful relist.
time. But the items do have to be identical and any choice
Add-on fees (such as gallery or reserves) are lost.
options are not permitted. More often than not, a Dutch
A bidder alert does not penalize the buyer. But FVF
Auction often closes at your opening bid price. These
notices do. eBay will automatically file a FVF for you if the
are closer to a fixed price sale than a true auction. Only if
buyer has become NARU, short for Not a Registered User,
your Dutch Auction gets oversubscribed do you receiver
and meaning they have been flushed.
higher per-item payments.
An eBay sale is in fact an enforceable contract under the
Dutch Auctions are well suited to lower cost items that
Uniform Commercial Code. But it is usually pointless to go
buyers can group to save on shipping charges. But watch
beyond a FVF and possible negative feedback. Don’t sweat
your total quantity offered, since eBay listing fees assume
a NPB. Relist and get on with your life
all Dutch items will sell.
If you find too many of your sales not closing, you are
Buy It Now does exactly what it sounds like. It gives the
selling the wrong stuff to the wrong people.
buyer the option of closing the auction immediately for a
Or should not be on eBay in the first place.
certain sale. BIN appeals to industrial buyers when they do
not want to sit around playing games.
Guarantees and Refunds
Our usual BIN strategy is to set it thirty percent above
An important goal of ours is no unhappy buyers We’ll
our normal closing price expectation.
first try to get our descriptions accurate enough that it is
painfully clear what we are selling. Should we find a totally
Promoting Your Auctions
clueless buyer, we will not force the sale.
Your first step in auction promotion should be using your
Filing instead for a "mutually agreed" FVF refund.
best possible title line placed in the best possible category.
We have an unadvertised and unconditional guarantee
I’ve also found eBay’s quarter gallery to be useful. But feel
policy on all items sold. To block "window shoppers" and
their other placement options are not cost effective.
similar problems, we do conspicuously offer a fifteen day
Your second promotion step is to use your own tightly
inspection privilege on our bigger ticket items. In which
linked web site. Have clickable AUCTION buttons on every
the buyer pays all shipping. Both ways. Having to put cash
page. Plus special auction tutorial pages. Along with your
up for an inspection deters potential scammers and ripoffs.
What’s New mentions. Be sure to provide back links from
Yet is quite reasonable for serious buyers.
eBay to your site as well.
The buyer can return for any reason. Should we in fact
Your third promotion step is to use carefully targeted
have mislead the buyer or sent a broken item, we will also
Usenet newsgroups. But only those groups which do allow
refund all shipping fees. At our option.
product announcements. Be certain to preface all of your
What usually happens is that you will offer a refund and
posts with an FA: as in "For Auction". Keep all of your
then never hear from the buyer again. Often they end up
announcements terse and occasional. Mention several
happy. Possibly they made some dumb operating mistake,
items per post. Always make lots of useful noncommercial
managed to cheaply fix the problem, or else decided they
contributions to the group’s message flow.
still got a real bargain. Or went on to other things.
Your fourth promotion step is to establish yourself as
Should you have an obnoxious or problem buyer, our
the place to go for the items you are selling. Seeking out
"no pissing around" rule tells us to give them one and only
repeat traffic from eager buyers.
option: A prompt and polite full refund of all costs. Take it
or leave it. No other adjustments! After which they are
Storage and Control
history and are blocked from further bidding.
In a word: triage.
Our total problem sales have been typically well under a
It is super easy to bury yourself in worthless junk. Even
fraction of a percent.
if that large Hewlett Packard plotter makes a graciously
understated credenza for your dining room. And it was
Reserves, Dutch Auctions, and Buy It Now
really unfair to call the load bank that sat in our driveway
A reserve should be just that: Your absolute minimum
for over a year a white elephant. Because it was a perfectly
bare bones net-net-net price you are willing to accept for
normal gray elephant color. And size.
an item. Most eBay buyers do not like reserves and eBay
Continuously triage your inventory. For hot and useful
charges you extra for them. In general, auctions without a
items, for possibly salvable stuff, and for any useless junk.
September, 2001
Blatant Opportunist
65.3
Copyright c 2000 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (928) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting expressly forbidden.
Flush the junk. Even if you have to take a loss on it or if
Ripoff sellers are usually dumb enough and lazy enough
the feds once paid a fortune for it.
that they simply link to your own image on your site. One
We use a mix of rental units, onsite oversize doghouses
fiendish ploy is to temporarily alter or else substitute your
(that your tax dollars paid $85,000 each for), and internal
image being stolen. Such as an appropriate subject busily
home storage. You should be able to instantly inventory all
pioneering new methods of animal husbandry.
of your better selling items. Keep them all strictly separated
from the "maybe" stuff.
Feedback
On stuff needing repair, note that you can use eBay as
eBay has an elaborate feedback system that keeps track of
a lending library. Buying a tech manual, using it, and
buyer and seller performance. While useful, remember that
then reselling it. Often for more than you paid.
feedback is an elected option. It has nothing to do
I’d recommend a "last in, first out" or LIFO approach.
with the actual buying and selling transactions.
You are probably most excited about your newest buys. Get
We normally leave our feedback once the buyer reports
at least few of them up and out the door. If for no other
receiving the item. Based on the concept of It ain’t over
reason to get your latest purchases into the black.
till its over. There is nothing more infuriating than to get
Note that the top half of storage units rarely gets used
wrongly slammed by a buyer who you’ve just irrevocably
efficiently. You can dramatically cut your storage needs by
praised. On the other, hand, "holding feedback hostages"
always stacking your stuff as high as you can. Bizarre
till the other side says something nice leads to a Mexican
shelving is often available for less than $5 at local auctions.
standoff. Or worse.
Mix and match as needed for efficient storage.
We never use neutral feedback and use negatives only
Try to create a balance between acquisition, inventory
when other eBay sellers are likely to suffer grief.
control, and successful eBay or website disposal. Always try
Some sellers unfairly discredit zero feedback buyers. Our
to sell your higher value items first.
experience has been the opposite, with somewhat fewer
problems. Buyers may come to eBay just to bid on one of
Protecting Your Images and Ad Copy
our test equipment or other tech items.
I have found that decent images can dramatically improve
And, of course, everybody has to start at zero.
your final selling prices. Such images can represent many
hours of valuable time and creative effort. Certain sleezoids
Shills, Snipers, Snitches, and Stompers
sellers on eBay may try to steal your images or ad copy and
A shill is a friend of the seller (or the seller themselves) who
use them without your permission.
tries to drive up an auction price. At a real auction, these
This, of course, is a big eBay no-no.
are plants in the audience or simply a crooked auctioneer
Firstoff, you should clearly spell out all your intellectual
taking nonexistent "off the wall" bids. Besides being really
property rights on your My eBay page and then join eBay’s
dumb, shilling on eBay is against the rules. Your defense
VERO or Verified Rights program. eBay will usually not
against a shill is simple: Always bid your max. Only do
assist you unless you take these necessary first steps.
so once very late in any eBay auction .
Once you are part of VERO. eBay will usually instantly
A sniper is someone who "steals" an auction at the last
stop any offending auction on request. Do be sure to use
second by ending up (strange as it may seem) the highest
one of their Time Sensitive email links.
bidder. Newbies get infuriated by snipers because they
Second, you should watermark all of your images to
appear to outbid by only an increment, rather than by the
establish proof of ownership. Having an undercropped and
snipers true proxy bid. Sniping, of course, is the holiest
uncompressed 2X original bitmap is a good start. Another
sacrament of the eBay religious experience. And not to be
name for watermarking is steganography. I’ve listed some
messed with. As with shilling, your defense against a sniper
good books on our Book Access library page.
is to Always bid your max. Only do so once very late
My approach to watermarking is to make a few subtle
in any eBay auction. Which is worth repeating.
and benign changes to the images that convert them into
It is virtually impossible to stay strictly within all of the
unique works of art. Such as interchanging the FOCUS and
exact rules at eBay and still make a profit. Some bending of
INTENSITY knobs on an oscilloscope. Being sure, of course,
the more minor rules and occasional wandering off into
that you don’t do anything that significantly misrepresents
gray areas is the norm. So long as your potential buyers
your offering. Such watermarks are exceptionally resistant
are not in any manner deceived or short changed. A
to recoding, copying, cropping, or recompression.
snitch is someone who "tells" on you and causes you grief.
Subtlety is crucial.
Usually because they just made a really stupid mistake and
One advantage of eBay’s photo hosting service is that it
want to blame somebody else. But sometimes to force their
may reduce image ripoffs. Still, I overwhelmingly prefer to
own badly misguided perceptions of morality on you. And
use my own images on my own website.
occasionally, to cause grief to a more successful competitor.
You can easily find out when anybody is stealing your
eBay Power Sellers (those who do meet minimum sales
ISP hosted images. Do this by inspecting the log files your
volumes) seem to have a modest edge over snitch attacks.
ISP is supposed to be providing you. Better ISP’s will also
Our approach has been to become a Power Seller but to
provide reporting services, such as Webtrends. You can
never mention or flaunt it. And certainly never list it.
click here for one of our daily Stats examples. Note those
Power Sellers are disliked by some buyers.
Top Referring URL’s in the Referrals and Keywords
Snitches are despicable and should get staked to the
section. Custom log file manipulators are easily done. See
nearest anthill. And left their till the next meeting of the
several examples in our PostScript library pages. Try our
steering committee.
InfoPack service for personal help.
A stomper is someone who gleefully bids early on an
65.4
Blatant Opportunist
September, 2001
Copyright c 2000 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (928) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting expressly forbidden.
auction solely to make the Buy It Now price go away. Their
Well, as someone who has done both brick & mortar and
theory is that nobody else will know the value, so they will
direct mail sales for many years, I can assure you that eBay
later be able to steal the item. A partial defense against
is overwhelmingly by far the finest and the most cost
stompers is to use a reserve price. The Buy It Now option
effective marketing tool available today. Or, for that
remains till the reserve is met.
matter, anytime ever. So long as they continue to be so, I
will gladly pay their utterly negligible fees.
Shipping Charges
If ebay wants to get filthy rich, more power to them. I
It is amazing how many eBay buyers do not have the
certainly do wish them well. They are to be congratulated
faintest clue that it costs time and money to ship stuff.
rather than class action sued.
Or that most industrial suppliers insist upon $50 or higher
minimum orders. On the other hand, there are a very few
For More Help
incompetent sellers who grossly overcharge on shipping to
There’s a newsgroup at alt.marketing.online.ebay.
get around eBay fees. Or to create a bargain illusion.
But note this is an open public forum and you can (and
Quite simply, your shipping policy should be both will) get sued should you say anything bad about anybody
revenue neutral and clearly stated.
specific. Regardless of the truth.
We overwhelmingly prefer United Parcel Service for our
I’ve got all sorts of auction assistance links and tutorials
larger items. You use their free barcode software, dump the
up on my Auction Help library page. Especially useful are
items in your front yard, and they all magically disappear
the handy tools from Vrane and Quick Phrase. Custom
into a big brown truck. While it gives UPS management
assistance is available through our InfoPack and related
fits, we use pickup flags the drivers dearly love.
consulting programs.
We normally state our shipping charges in pounds of
Let’s hear from you. ✦
weight rather than dollars. Potential buyers can find their
charges at UPS Online. Except for priority mail, a fixed
Microcomputer pioneer and guru Don Lancaster is the
shipping charge unfairly subsidizes those living far away at
author of 35 books and countless articles. Don maintains a US
the expense of those nearby.
technical helpline you will find at (928) 428-4073, besides
We always send a shipping email confirmation with the
offering his own books, reprints and consulting services.
tracking numbers. This gets rid of the "Is it here yet?" types
Don also offers surplus bargains found on eBay and on
who now can now hassle UPS rather than us.
his Bargain Pages .
We try to ship within one day of payment confirmation.
Don is also the webmaster of www.tinaja.com You can
We go out of our way to thoroughly clean, reasonably test,
also reach Don at Synergetics, Box 809, Thatcher, AZ 85552.
and ruggedly pack stuff, because one broken item hurts you
Or you can use email via don@tinaja.com
dearly. Most of our shipping supplies are free, gotten from
local merchants or other associates.
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO…
There’s an UPS weekly truck stopping charge that works
out to sixty cents or so per parcel. We approximate this for
revenue neutral and add this to our charges. But we do not
Go to the main library
charge for shipping tape or similar "handling" items.
It is interesting to think of shipping charges as a tax or a
bribe. Dollars the buyer pays that you don’t get to keep. An
Start your tech venture
obvious guide is to keep those weights down and your
value up. Whose corrollary is to never sell anything on
eBay that you cannot hold extended at arm’s length
If you have some very low value items, consider grouping
Sponsor a display banner
them into "sets" or using Dutch auctions. Where buyers
will buy more than one for shared charges.
We do use priority mail for stuff that nicely fits a one
Find research solutions
pound box. But we never use cheaper mail services. They
are simply not worth the problems they create. Limit your
post office waiting in line time wasting to a five minutes
per month absolute maximum.
Send Don Lancaster email
When do you have to deliver? The law says that if you
cannot ship within 30 days after payment, you have to
send a notice saying when you will ship. If you cannot ship
Pick up surplus bargains
within 60 days of payment, you have to send a notice that
the buyer must respond to to close the sale.
Naturally, the sooner you ship, the better. But buyers
Find out what a tinaja is
delivery expectations can often be way out of line.
Profits and Fees
View recommended books
There’s all sorts of individuals out there who get really
upset over eBay’s "exorbitant" fees and "outrageous" profits.
Or their treating their higher volume customers favorably.
September, 2001
Blatant Opportunist
65.5
Copyright c 2000 by Don Lancaster and Synergetics (928) 428-4073 www.tinaja.com All commercial rights and all electronic media rights fully reserved. Reposting expressly forbidden.