Rookie eBayers are prone to making certain mistakes that are detrimental to their businesses. CEO of internet consulting company, http://InternetBusinessSkills.com, Allison Hartsoe, shares her insights on avoiding the top ten mistakes eBay newcomers make:

See Yourself through Your Customers’ Eyes

• Don’t Start Off with a Feedback Rating of Zero. No one wants to be your first buyer—they’d rather not be a guinea pig when their money’s at stake. Go in and buy a few products, so you don’t appear to be completely inexperienced.

• Don’t Take Fuzzy Pictures. Clean, quality photos are integral to giving your customers the right impression. You want them to perceive you as competent and professional, so make sure your listings look the part.

• Include Contact Info in Your Listing. Knowing they can get a hold of you if any issues arise goes a long way towards making shoppers feel comfortable and safe buying from you. Always include an email address, and preferably a phone number where they can reach you as well.

• Respond to Customers’ Questions Immediately. People expect “instant” everything, including customer service. The quicker you answer your customers, the better chance you have of resolving their issues, and making that sale. Hartsoe points out, “If it takes you two days [to respond], they’ve probably moved on.”

Money-Matters

• Don’t Accept Cash in the Mail. You have no way of proving that a payment was or wasn’t received, or that the amount was correct. Accept credit card payments or PayPal—these are faster and leave a convenient paper trail.

• Set Your Prices Based on the Market. Use eBay’s Completed Auctions feature, or try http://HammerTap.com or http://Terapeak.com’s market research tools. You should have a good idea of the right price before listing your items.

• Don’t Lower Your Item Prices by Artificially Inflating Your Shipping Costs. If you charge 50 cents for an item, and then piggyback 6 dollars in shipping fees, your buyers won’t see the shipping charges until they checkout. At the very least, they’ll be unhappy; and they may choose not to complete the sale at all.

What’s in a Name?

• Have a User ID that Reflects Your Products. An ID relevant to your business, such as “RefillInk,” provides more credibility than an ID like “2Cool4You.”

• Don’t Use Unknown Brand Names in Your Titles. Of all items sold on eBay, 60% are found using the search function, which only searches main titles. You’re given 55 characters to sell your item—don’t waste them on terms for which nobody’s searching.

• Don’t Use Misleading Brand Names in Your Titles. In other words, don’t put “Disney” in your listing title for a teddy bear, unless he’s Winnie the Pooh, or some other Disney creation. In addition to violating your customers’ trust and garnering a bad reputation, you’ll also end up in eBay’s doghouse. Hartsoe warns, “They’ll pull your listing; and if you don’t rectify the situation, they’ll pull your store and ID, and suspend you.” For frequently searched keywords, relevant to your products, that you can use in your listings, check out http://Pulse.EBay.com.

Bypassing these seemingly obvious, but all-too-common mistakes, can spare you many headaches, and make your transition into the world of eBay-selling a much smoother ride.

About The Author

Chris Malta and Robin Cowie of WorldwideBrands.com are the Writers and Hosts of The Entrepreneur Magazine EBiz and Product Sourcing Radio Shows. http://www.worldwidebrands.com/EMRinfo for more FREE eBiz info from Entrepreneur Magazine Radio!

As a new ebay member, you will have no feedback. This can affect your credibility with both buyers and sellers.

Furthermore, you are prevented from listing items with “Buy it now” or as a “Featured Plus” listing, until you have a feedback score of 10 or more.

To build your feedback, you could battle through the early days, doing business as usual, with feedback increasing every time you make a sale or purchase. However, as a new ebayer, this could take some time, unless you have a lot of money to spend, or extremely lucky in having “hot” items to sell.

There is a quicker way.

If you do an advanced search, and put ebook in the keyword field and specify a max price of 0.01, you are likely to get several hundred items back.

Here’s how to get feedback quickly. It may cost you a couple of pounbds, but it’s worth it.

Buy as many of these penny ebooks as you want feedback. You will need to select items from different sellers (as 2 feedbacks from 1 seller only counts scores 1). You should also choose sellers who accept paypal – that way you can pay immediately. Leave the seller positive feedback (regardless of what you think of their item).

Once you’ve purchased and paid for the item, you can send a polite message to the seller asking that they leave positive feedback, as you paid promptly.

Not all the sellers will leave feedback, but you should be able to build your own feedback to a good level for just a coupe of pounds (or dollars).

An article from http://www.tradeco.co.uk

In past eBay tutorials, we talked about how people on eBay are willing to pay to learn what you already know - and the best way to convey (and sell!) that information to them is through an electronically delivered book, or "ebook". When a customer purchases your ebook, you just email it to them, and you're done!

We talked about using Microsoft Word and Adobe Professional to create ebooks, and the pros and cons of each. I've been writing ebooks for almost three years, and while these two products are good, they have their limitations. The best program I've come across yet to write your own ebooks is a product called Ebook Pro.

For those who are concerned that an ebook program will be too complicated for them to learn, fear not! Ebook Pro is about as simple a program as there is. All you have to do is click on a button or two, name your ebook, and start writing!

Ebook Pro also allows easy insertion of images, charts, and just about anything else you want to put into your ebook. And whether you're writing about soup or nuts, you'll want to put some simple illustrations into your ebook to make it more interesting to your readers.

The best feature of Ebook Pro, even better than its simplicity, is the username and password feature. You simply have to have some kind of password protection on your ebooks, or they're going to be heavily pirated - that is, someone will take your ebook and post it on a site where others can post it for free. That takes money out of your pocket!

While some ebook programs will allow only a single password to be assigned to your ebook, Ebook Pro will create different username and passwords for every single purchaser of your ebook! It just doesn't get any better than that. And once your ebook really takes off, Ebook Pro will even help you automate the distribution of your ebooks. It's a great product to get started with and grows with you as your business grows.

Ebook Pro is also quite affordable, as it's less than half the price of Adobe Professional. Having used MS Word, Adobe Pro, and Ebook Pro to create and sell ebooks on eBay, I can say that I've been using Ebook Pro since the first day I bought it and have never gone back to the other programs. I know you'll be just as happy as I am with my copy.

Regardless of which program you choose to create your ebooks with, the important part is to get started! In future eBay tutorials, I'll share some tips and tricks I've learned along the way that will help put more money in your pocket. Until then, get to writing, and give yourself a raise by selling your ebooks on eBay!

About The Author

Chris Bryant is an eight-year veteran of eBay, and he wants to help you use eBay to change your life just as it's done for him. For free eBay tutorials, articles, and other freebies, visit http://www.freeebayauctiontutorials.com today!

In my last few eBay auction tutorials, we talked about what you can sell to make money on eBay and start your own home business. But whether it's an ebook packed with your favorite recipes or custom coffee cups, one of the most important decisions you have to make is the price of your item.

As we all know, the highest bidder in an eBay auction wins the item. There's also a "Buy It Now" feature on Ebay you can use to sell your item for a set price rather than auctioning it off, and that's the way I sell all of my items. If you use "Buy It Now", the purchaser can decide to pay your asking price and purchase the item immediately, rather than having to wait for the end of the auction.

If you're selling a physical item, you have to take inventory and shipping costs into account, and we all have to pay various fees on eBay in order to sell items there. These fees vary depending on how much your item is sold for. If you’re selling a physical item, don’t try to cut the price of the item and then charge a lot for shipping. For example, there’s a certain type of computer cable I occasionally buy on eBay, and I’ll see the same cable listed at $5 from one vendor and 99 cents from another. Why? The vendor selling it for 99 cents asks $8.50 for shipping! EBay is really starting to crack down on this behavior, and frankly, it’s a really good way to discourage customers from making future purchases.

When deciding on a price, the key is to NOT price the item too high…but you also have to avoid selling it at too low a price, because that will make people think that your item has no value.

I went through that personally. When I started selling my first ebook on eBay, I priced it very low, thinking that I'd make up for the low price by selling a lot of them. It just didn't work out that way. If you put too low a price on an item, instead of being happy that the item is cheaper than others, it makes people wonder what's wrong with it. After a while, I raised the price, and started selling more ebooks!

You may have to experiment a bit in order to find the best price to offer your eBay customers, and that's just part of being in business. The key is not to ask too high or too low a price. If you have a competitor on eBay selling the same thing you're thinking of selling, check their feedback to see if they seem to be selling quite a few of them, or hardly any. Adjust your price appropriately, and if one price doesn't move items, try another. And when it comes to selling on eBay, don't be afraid to ask for a premium price - as long as you're offering a premium product!

About The Author

Chris Bryant is an eight-year veteran of eBay, and he wants to help you use eBay to change your life just as it's done for him. For free eBay tutorials, articles, and other freebies, visit http://www.freeebayauctiontutorials.com today!