eBay Selling Secrets by Andrew Lock, the ‘Renegade eBay Auction Seller’

In the world of eBay, the subtitle is the line below the main listing title. It’s an optional add-on (‘listing upgrade’ in eBay speak) that currently costs 50 cents on the eBay.com site (35p on eBay.co.uk). Now, if you listen to the chatter on many of the eBay forums (don’t do that by the way), you’ll hear countless sellers dispense the advice that you shouldn’t bother with the subtitle because it’s too expensive. Well of course it’s expensive if you’re running hundreds of listings every week like most sellers do! More on that in a moment. You can see a subtitle circled in the listing example below:
So you understand what we’re talking about, right? Renegade eBay sellers use the subtitle effectively as a marketing tool. Let me explain. Since the title is ONLY used for keywords in a properly prepared listing, the subtitle provides a great way to SELL the sizzle. By that I mean, the benefits rather than the features which tend to be covered by the title. Let’s look at an example. In the next image you can see the title keywords that are purely factual. They do a good job of getting the listing to appear in the search results, but what then? This seller
has done the smart thing and included a subtitle where they provide some persuasive reasons to view the item, such as ‘new in box’, ‘mint’ and ‘over 20 years old’. Generally speaking none of these would be search terms, so the seller did the right thing in including them in the subtitle rather than the title.

“Renegade eBay sellers use the subtitle feature as a marketing tool.”

As with the title, it makes sense to use every available character you’re allowed, but few people do that. You’re paying the fee whether you use two words or ten, so why not use the most you can?

Since subtitles appear in the search results, that’s another good reason to use them. On a typical page of search results, the listings that have subtitles will stand out from the crowd naturally.

I saw a great example of this recently when I went to buy a battery for my Dell laptop. You can see the search results page that came up in Exhibit B. Guess which listing I clicked on and bought from?

The answer should be obvious when you look at the options. One seller used the subtitle, and they used it really well to state the product was ‘original, not a cheap replacement part.’ Maybe the other sellers also sold genuine parts, but that note was enough to convince me to buy from that seller rather than anyone else.

Of course, if you find that for some reason many sellers in your niche are using subtitles, then you’ll probably get better results by not using one, because that’ll be a way to get your listing to stand out. Renegades go against the flow, they stand out from the crowd. A word about the fee. If you’re being smart about what you sell, and limiting yourself to just a few, powerful listings for products that you’ve created (ideally information based products) then you have nothing to worry about. 50 cents is nothing compared to the profit potential of the sale, AND the lifetime value of being able to sell over and over to even one customer from each listing. Once again, here’s a resource that is ignored by most eBay sellers for stupid reasons because their reasoning is fundamentally flawed. Shhh, let’s keep it our little secret.

If you’ve ever received a negative feedback rating on eBay and you’re genuinely passionate about providing good service, you’ll know how crushing it is. Usually sellers take it personally and feel emotionally wounded. I’m serious.

The fact is, eBay feedback IS important. Actually, it’s vital for your success, and although the system has its weaknesses and flaws, overall it accomplishes what it set out to do. What’s that? To protect users from individuals who abuse their standing as a buyer or seller.

A quick reminder of how it works – in each transaction both the buyer and seller can rate each other with a choice of a positive, neutral or negative rating. Notice I said ‘can’. It’s not required or compulsory to leave feedback, but most eBayers do, because they like to receive as many positive ratings as possible.

The vast majority of transactions go well and each party awards the positive rating to each other.

Something that’s very important to understand about eBay feedback is that you ONLY receive ONE feedback point for a transaction with another user – be they buyer or seller. Let me give you an example. If you bought 3 items from the same seller, you’ll only receive one feedback point. So the number in brackets after the user ID is the number of unique eBayers you’ve transacted with, but the actual number of transactions is probably a lot higher.

From what we’ve already discussed about feedback, you can probably see that it’s a topic that generates a lot of buzz among eBay members. Here’s how I handle feedback. I set up Selling Manager Pro to automatically reciprocate positive feedback. That’s it. So if someone gives me a positive rating, the system will automatically return the compliment. Beyond that, I don’t touch the feedback system. Why? Because it can be VERY time consuming to generate and leave feedback. Remember, we’re running a business, and we want to do that efficiently. Do people occasionally insist that they want me to leave feedback first? Yes, of course. Do I? No! For one thing it’s too time consuming to do it manually, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll reciprocate.

Unlike most eBayer’s, I haven’t fallen into the trap of believing that you can never have too many feedback ratings. I’m convinced that you can reach a point where having thousands of ratings makes you look unapproachable to buyers – like a big, impersonal business.

If you’re sensible there’s no reason why you’d ever accumulate more than a couple of undeserved negative feedbacks. ALWAYS check a sellers feedback before buying from them to avoid problems down the line, and ALWAYS block users with less than 0 feedback, which is a definite warning sign. That’s easy to do within the ‘my eBay’ control panel settings in your account. Go to ‘my account’ then ‘preferences’ then click on the ‘buyer requirements’ option under the selling preferences tab. It looks like this:

You’ll also notice that in this example, anyone that’s received 2 unpaid item strikes within the last 30 days is blocked from buying. That’s a sensible option to leave on as a default setting.

If you do find yourself the recipient of a negative feedback, regardless of the circumstances, always try to resolve the matter and encourage the other person to agree to ‘mutual feedback withdrawal’ through the eBay system.

The number one key to acquiring automatic positive feedback is to communicate well with your customers. Above all else, that will gain you friends on eBay. Nothing frustrates buyers and sellers more than someone who can’t be contacted.

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