2009 February | eBay Selling Secrets by Andrew Lock, the 'Renegade eBay Auction Seller'

Archive for February, 2009

15 More eBay Quick Tips You Must Know

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

There are lots of important things I’ve learned about eBay that it’s easy to take for granted, so I wanted to take this opportunity to bring you up to speed with some of these lessons…

1) Use Hammertap (www.auctionresearchtool.com) BEFORE you list any new item. It’ll enable you to optimize all the important criteria for your niche, such as the best keywords, the best start and end times and days, the best listing format, and so on.

2) Think like the customer thinks. Too often we impose our own ideas which don’t translate well to buyers. If in doubt, ASK customers what they want and tailor your descriptions to include those key points.

3) Sell on eBay’s international sites. There’s a VERY big world beyond the borders of your own country. Most sellers stick with their own geographic area, but that’s a big mistake because you can easily reach many more English speaking customers around the world.

4) Start auction listings at 99 cents. That price attracts bids very fast, and bids attract bids, which is exactly what you want.

5) Use a fixed price listing to establish a ‘standard, reference price’ for your item. Set that price as high as possible. For example, if you want to sell an item for $50, list the fixed price listing at $75.00 to create a reference point. When buyers win an auction for less than $75, they consider they’ve got a bargain, and everyone’s happy.

6) eBay Pulse (www.eBay.com/pulse) is a useful way to get a snapshot of what’s popular on eBay at any given time. Use it to get a feel for the marketplace.

7) ALWAYS include an offer with any physical item that’s mailed to customers from an eBay sale. It’s free marketing – you’re already sending the package, so it costs next to nothing to include a message that offers the buyer something else!

8) Pack items well. These days packages get thrown around pretty badly while in transit. Don’t assume that anything will be handled with care! Stickers saying ‘fragile’ will probably result in your package getting stamped on.

9) Don’t over inflate shipping costs. Buyers hate this with a passion. Even if they love the product they’ll probably never do business with you again if they can order the item from someone else.

10) Create a yellow border around your main image – it makes it stand out from the crowd when viewed in the search results, and your listing is more likely to be clicked on as a result.

11) Use photobucket.com to host additional images to avoid the eBay charges. It’s easy, and it’s free. Upload extra photos, then copy the html embed code for each one, into your eBay listings. Once you’ve created the listing, there’s no need to change it again and your images will always be included.

12) Take some time to study other eBay listings. You’ll find elements that you’ll want to include from other listings you like, and you’ll also find elements you’ll want to deliberately miss out based on listings you don’t like!

13) Create a template for new listings in Turbo Lister. Include all the elements you need, and it’ll make the creation of new listings much faster in the future.

14) ALWAYS include comments from previous buyers in EVERY listing. We call these testimonials, but never use that word – it’s a marketing buzz word that doesn’t mean much to ‘ordinary’ people.

15) Use the scheduling function in TurboLister to start your listings at exactly the right time. It costs around 10 cents per listing, so it’s a bargain considering it frees you up from having to upload them at the time you want them to go live. It works flawlessly, and it’ll usually result in a higher final selling price too!

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Why Your Choice of Words in Selling Matter ( a lot)

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

I was driving along the interstate here in Salt Lake City the other day and I saw a car dealer that used the term: ‘Certified Pre-Owned Vehicles.’ Or, to put it another way, ‘Used Cars!’ Do you see the point? Words matter, a lot!

This observation reminded how important words are. They need to be given careful thought because often they carry a negative or positive connotation to BUYERS.

Most buyers don’t CONSCIOUSLY think about the positive or negative impact words have on them, it just happens naturally, subsconciously. But it does happen, and that’s the point.

Let’s consider some examples that I first learned from master sales trainer Tom Hopkins:

CONTRACT

Here’s a word that inspires fear in most people. It doesn’t sound like a positive word, does it? Yet many people still use it.

e.g. “I’ll send you a contract for the sale.”

A much better word is ‘agreement.’ “Look over the agreement, sign it and send it back.” Can you see how that sounds a lot less confrontational?

COST / PRICE

Both of these words tend to invoke a negative reaction from most people. “The cost of this item is $400.” Or, “the price for this is $400.”

Much better alternatives are ‘investment’ or ‘amount’. For example, ‘your investment for this item is $400.’ Or, ‘the total amount comes to $400.’

SIGN

We’re all pre-conditioned to be wary of signing things, aren’t we? So why would we want to encourage that perception in our transaction by asking someone to ‘sign the form.’

Much better alternatives are ‘approve’, ‘authorize’, ‘endorse’ or ‘ok’. For example, ‘if you’re happy with everything, simply approve the document at the bottom there.’

OVERUSED WORDS

Then there are words that are overused and have lost their meaning as a result. How about these gems:

Next Generation

Market leading

Industry standard

Value proposition

Integrated

Core competencies

Scaleable

Interoperable

Synergy

Leveraging

Relationship management

Starting a dialogue

Proactive

Best practices

Who speaks like that? It’s not real world language, and unsurprisingly, most people’s eyes glaze over when they read that type of puffy corporate speak. Stay away from this type of language at all costs!

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Website / eBay Listing Review - Salsa Crazy

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Each month I’m going to review a website or eBay listing from someone in our community. There’s always room for improvement even if your site is already successful, so if you’d like me to take a look and suggest some tweaks for free, send an email to this address: customerservicezone@gmail.com – don’t forget to include your name and the name of your website! This is also a great opportunity to promote your site for free, to others in our community.

This website review was submitted by one of our subscribers. It’s Salsa Crazy (www.SalsaCrazy.com) and the site looks as though it’s designed to be a portal for anyone interested in salsa dancing.

When the home page loads there’s a lot going on with the site, as you can see from the image above. It’s a little daunting, honestly. The pop-up window that drops in to offer is a good addition for this site because it helps to grab the readers name and email for follow-up. The offer is a good one:

“Sign up to receive Salsa Crazy’s Complete 7 Day Salsa Dance Training Course, FREE!”

The only addition I would make is to assign the course a value. For example, simply adding the words ‘…a $75 value’ would likely increase the number of signups. Everyone likes to get something for nothing, don’t they?

The main issue with the home page is that there’s no clear readership path. In other words, there are lots of options but readers like to be guided down a specific ‘route’.
There really needs to be a large headline below the banner that grabs the attention of the reader and makes them a promise.

The home page layout needs tidying up, too. The ad near the top for a Salsa DVD is distracting, it’s a good ad, but in the wrong place because it disrupts the flow of the reader.

When I clicked on ‘Salsa News’ a new page opened that looked like a completely different site. When I glanced at the URL I was still on SalsaCrazy.com but the layout and graphics were completely different. This is not a good idea because readers like to feel comfortable with a consistent layout and design elements.

The same problem existed when I clicked on ‘salsa DVD’s’ – I was taken to another site in this case that looked completely different.

In fact, as I continued to look through the site, it was a challenge to find any pages that matched the look or design of the home page. This is a major issue that should be corrected so that customers feel comfortable, at ease, and familiar with their ‘surroundings’.

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The BIG Lesson of the Month - Why You MUST Be Patient

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

In Russia, a guy orders a car and is told by the salesman that he can take delivery of it in 8 years time on 23^rd of April. The customer immediately responds with, “will that be in the morning or afternoon?” Slightly bemused by the question, the salesman says, ‘It’s 8 years away, what difference does it make?” “Well”, the guy says, “the plumber is coming in the morning.”

I love that story. It nicely puts into perspective that time is relative for different people.
In our ‘western’ world, it seems that the pace of life is going faster and faster. A new month seems to come around as fast as each week used to take. They say that happens as you get older, but it seems to be accelerating at a lightning pace if you ask me.

I want to address the subject of patience in this column because we all tend to want things NOW. We don’t want to wait, we want it immediately. That applies to all aspects of life, including our business success.

You’ve probably heard the expression, ‘It took me 20 years to become an overnight success.’ How true that is, and it presents an accurate picture of how it is for MOST entrepreneurs. There really is no luck. There is hard work, consistently, day after day. There is stubborn, unbreakable persistence. What some people perceive as luck is actually a result of all these things previously mentioned. It’s a deliberate manouvering of events to CREATE ‘luck’.

Sadly, most people don’t understand that REAL WORK is involved in establishing a new business. They believe that they can and should be able to take a shortcut to success.

Yes, admittedly there are some superstars who achieve incredible goals within a year or so, but they are the exception to the rule, and even then they’ve usually been primed with some previous education or background that enabled them to accelerate at the right time.

Rather than complain about how difficult your life is, or moan about the easy lives of others with successful businesses, take responsibility for your own actions by putting in the work to create your own successful business. ANYONE can do it, but most CHOOSE not to. Why is that? Usually, they’ve been sold the notion that all they need is a single ‘magic pill’ – a business that virtually runs itself with no work, effort or intervention by anyone else. We all know that’s a lie, but it’s a very powerful and persuasive sales message that millions of people latch onto, every day.

If you’re struggling with your business right now, don’t give up. Keep applying yourself to learning new skills. I read at least 1 or 2 new business books every week, sometimes more. It’s important to state that I enjoy that process - it’s not work for me. If you’re fed up, it could be that you’re not in the right business, honestly. You should love what you do the majority of the time (we all have off days) from time to time.

The important thing is to keep moving forward, even if it’s in small increments. Keep heading for that light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t stop midway down the tunnel, or turn back.

In September, 1963, golfer Floyd Root started hitting golf balls at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and kept hitting them non-stop, across country, for 13 months until reaching the Atlantic Ocean. He lost 3,511 golf balls along the way.

The late sports super-agent Mark McCormack, said that he thought most avid golfers approach their weekend game with far more determination, drive, persistence, patience and sustained interest than they do their careers or businesses – and if they flipped their passions, they’d all wind up millionaires many times over. Obviously, Mr. Root was particularly driven, persistent and patient!

Dan Kennedy once wisely commented: “because people believe too much in the pleasing but mythical possibility of overnight success, they are too quick to give up on their ideas and themselves, too quick to give into disappointment, too easily lured and seduced by the promise of one magic pill after another. It is quite common to find people willing to devote 3 or 4 consecutive hours at a time to playing a game of golf, playing a video game, or some other recreational pursuit, but quite uncommon to find those same people devoting 3 or 4 hours at a time to reading or studying self-improvement, career improvement or business improvement materials, studying at the library, or even working diligently on a business project.”

It’s clear that you need to set realistic expectations. Push yourself, but don’t push yourself over the edge so that you give up permanently.

Also, be aware that the greatest successes usually occur shortly after the greatest failures or the time of the most frustration. That’s when many people stop. In Seth Godin’s book, ‘the dip’ he goes into great detail about this unusual concept. It’s accepted by some of the world’s greatest marketers that their brightest times came shortly after their darkest hour.

There’s also another side to all this. In our marketing to end users, we need to be careful not to step over the line of making claims that are untrue. At the same time, we want to make the product or service look as effortless as possible.

If we were brutally honest with all customers about the downsides to our products or services, there would be few sales. So we want to be smart about marketing, but not dishonest because that’ll come back to bite us.

“…be smart about marketing, but not dishonest, because that’ll come back to bite you.”

Patience IS still a virtue, a valuable one. Don’t try and push it out of your life. Work with it and embrace it. Your success will seem extra sweet when it arrives.

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There are Still Undiscovered Niches to Exploit on eBay

Monday, February 16th, 2009

There’s a store in California and a couple of other states called ‘Fry’s Electronics’. Think of it as a jumbo Radio Shack, about 20 times the size at least. It’s like a CostCo for all things electronics. As a bit of a gadget geek I’m like a kid in a candy store whenever I visit a Fry’s! Here’s a picture of the front of the Burbank store in California, complete with huge UFO smashing through the front! If you get chance to visit one of these stores I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I digress. The interesting thing is that purely by coincidence, on my last couple of trips to a Fry’s I’ve discovered some niched products that aren’t being sold on eBay, for which there are substantial markets ready and willing to buy!

“…I’ve discovered some niched products that aren’t being sold on eBay, for which there are substantial markets ready and willing to buy.”

On my most recent trip I was browsing the aisle with the GPS devices and I noticed they had a number of training DVD’s – ‘how to use your Garmin GPS’ etc. I asked one of the salesman how many of these DVD’s they typically sell and he said they were very popular especially among older folk because they were daunted by the prospect of learning how to operate a new GPS for their car, or their fishing, boating, or camping trip! The main manufacturer of these DVD’s seems to be Bennet Video of BennettMarine.com.

The price points for their titles range from $24.95 to $39.95, so there’s some very good profit margin in there (see the exhibit page).

If you have any doubt that about the size of the market, consider this revelation from a press release issued by Bennett Marine:

————————————————————-

October 25, 2007 — Bennett Marine Video’s CEO and founder, Michael Bennett, proudly announced the one million sales milestone of its worldwide GPS (Global Positioning System) instructional DVD franchise. Leading the video industry in technical training for more than 20 years, BMV has worked in partnership with the top GPS manufacturers to consistently update its product lines.

————————————————————-

That’s right, they’ve sold more than a million of these training DVD’s. Not too shabby, huh? How would you like a slice of that action? The fact that I only recently came across them proves that they haven’t done a very good job at marketing them, and I couldn’t find a single one of their products for sale on eBay!

If this niche appeals to you, my advice would be try and get loan units from manufacturers to create your own range of DVD’s to maximize your profit margin. It’s really not that difficult. If you can’t get the cooperation of manufacturers, I suspect that it would still be worthwhile to BUY GPS units and resell them when you’re done creating the training. There’s plenty of profit potential to make that process feasible.

Don’t stop with eBay as a sales channel. Amazon.com is a prime candidate for this type of product, and you should also setup your own website for direct sales too. ProStores makes an ideal structure for this type of site where you need to get up and running fast, selling products via your own ecommerce platform without having to understand the technology.

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A Major New Breakthrough for the H3 System

Friday, February 13th, 2009

I’ve been working on refining the H3 system in the light of the changes on eBay in the last few months.

As you probably know by now, it’s no longer allowable to list digital downloadable items (other than as a classified ad).

This hasn’t been an issue for users of the H3 system because I’ve always encouraged the use of physically delivered products as preferable to digital downloads anyway.

But there was a challenge in keeping the entire process systemized. Finally, there’s now a way to automate the listing and delivery of CD’s and DVD’s, which I’m delighted to share with you.

The missing link is a script called ‘MyDD’ which you can download for a one time fee of $97 from www.myddscript.com – that’s a real bargain considering what it does.’

Don’t worry if you don’t know what a script is, that’s not important. It’s basically a piece of software that runs automatically behind the scenes.

In this case, the role of MyDD is to interface between PayPal and Kunaki.com. In other words, you know that orders for your CD or DVD purchased on eBay will be paid for via PayPal, right? Well the MyDD Script is setup via an online control panel to know as soon as someone has paid for an item. Without any interaction required from you, it will automatically place the customers order with Kunaki for you (Kunaki manufactures CD’s and DVD’s for you).

Not only that, but the MyDD Script will also send customizable emails INCLUDING letting the customer know the tracking number of their package. So there are numerous opportunities for you to further sell to customers within this communications that are built into the MyDD Script. Again, ALL THIS HAPPENS AUTOMATICALLY. I can’t stress the importance of this enough. It enables you to have a completely hands-off approach to using the H3 system on eBay.

By the way, if you know of other scripts that claim to do the same thing (there are some) PLEASE don’t use them. I’m telling you this to save you from wasting your time and money. I’ve bought and tested them all, and the MyDD Script is the best one for smart marketers like you and I. Please trust me on that.

Something else you should know is that the support at MyDD is excellent. I ran into some compatibility challenges with my webhost and they sorted it out for me. I’m not a behind the scenes website server type of person so I was reassured to know that they could handle all the techy stuff and email me when it was done. If you know that stuff then you’ll be up and running even faster.

Amazingly, the script even works with products that are sold via auction. You simply set the minimum amount you’re prepared to accept as a final price, and the script will check that at least that amount was paid before ordering the product for the customer at Kunaki.com. Another neat feature is the ability to fulfill digital downloads within the system for sales outside of eBay.

To review the essential tools that you should be using for the H3 system to work effectively, they are:

Hammertap, the auction research tool.

www.AuctionResearchTool.com

TurboLister, free tool to create your listings.

Goto the sitemap on www.eBay.com to download it

Selling Manager Pro

Goto the sitemap on www.eBay.com to install it in to your eBay account.

Kunaki, to fulfill your CD’s and DVD’s

www.Kunaki.com

MyDD Script to place the eBay orders at Kunaki automatically for you.

www.MyDDScript.com

Cover Action Pro to create stunning cover graphics.

www.Cover-Action-Pro.com

I own every one of these tools, and you should too if you’re serious about running the H3 system effectively.

You could do it the hard way, but you’ll be wasting your time, energy and you’ll wonder why you’re worknig so hard!

It’s so important to systemize your business, and of course that’s the main theme of my other major training publication, Microwave Marketing (subscribers can get the lowest available rate by ordering at www.MWaveMarketing.com/special).

Let me know how you get on with the MyDD Script, and don’t be afraid to feedback your questions or concerns to the creator – Socrates Socratous, who I’ve had a number of conversations with over the last few months.

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Your Pet as a Marketing Tool?

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Pet owners are a passionate bunch of people. My wife treats our cat like a king, and he lives up to the expectation by acting like one!

I’m constantly bemused how Luci will willingly get out of bed to let the cat out of the bedroom even when she’s been woken up from a deep sleep. I daren’t try that…

As you can probably tell, my relationship with our cat is one of toleration. For example, when I find him sprawled across some papers on my desk Luci’s reaction is “look how cute he is” and mine is, well, different. His current way to annoy me is to drink from a glass, take a look:

I was at a gas station the other day and outside there was a tub of free dog biscuits for ‘fido’. I’ve never seen that before, and it confirms the observation about how passionate pet owners can be.

All of this brings me to share an important marketing lesson with you. One way to grab the attention of your audience is to talk about animals. Why? Because most people have some kind of pet, they’re passionate about them, and they like talking about them. Not only that, but using animals makes your message stand out from the crowd. That’s why it’s a renegade strategy.

As an example, in a local marketing group I belong to here in Salt Lake, there’s a mother and daughter team who put out a monthly printed marketing newsletter. And every month, there’s a column supposedly written by their dog! It’s hilarious, they’ve received a lot of media attention for doing that, and their subscribers love it.

Online, why not write a sales letter in the style of a cat, dog, goldfish, bird, or whatever other pet you have? If that sounds odd or even crazy, just think about how popular movies like Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and Babe were! Animals were the stars of both of those movies, and there’s countless other examples as you know.

A number of Dan Kennedy students have used the famous ‘squirrel’ letter with terrific results. It was first used by Rory Fatt who offers marketing systems to restaurant owners. He sent a little trash can with a bag of peanuts inside, and the sales letter, which was written entirely in the style of a squirrel (not that I’ve ever received a letter from a squirrel before), accused the person who hadn’t responded as being ‘nuts.’

Think how you would have reacted if you’d received that letter. It WOULD have got and kept your attention, wouldn’t it? And that’s the point. Techniques like these are so ‘renegade’ that they achieve dramatic results, far beyond a standard, boring sales approach.

Try it with your audience, especially if you are a pet lover. Many marketers have told me that they ALWAYS get an increased response when they talk about their pets in emails for example.

Always remember that most people love animals. And despite my outward displays of nonchallance towards Tigger, I do love him really - even though I know he’s got me wrapped around his little paw…

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14 eBay Quick Tips You Must Know

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

There are lots of important things I’ve learned about eBay that it’s easy to take for granted, so I wanted to take this opportunity to bring you up to speed with some of these lessons…

1) You can find the contact information of another eBay member you’re involved in a transaction with by clicking on ‘advanced search’ at the top of the home page then ‘find contact information’ on the left hand side.

2) Never copy and paste descriptions from another eBay sellers listings! You could easily be making a promise you can’t keep, or divulge incorrect information about the state of their item, which doesn’t apply to yours!

3) If your item is NEW, be sure to check the box in the listing wizard that indicates ‘item is new’. This is important because if that box is checked, your item will also appear in eBay Express.

4) The easiest way to list an item as a classified ad is to use Turbo Lister, a free software download from eBay. Visit the download page at: http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/index.html

5) Understand that shipping costs are VERY important to eBay buyers. If possible offer free shipping, but at the very least make sure shipping costs are as low as possible.

6) If you’re a smoker, ensure you keep physical items in a smoke-free environment such as your garage. If you send items out that smell of smoke, you’re asking for negative feedback.

7) Under the new eBay rules, buyers can give positive, neutral or negative feedback to a seller. Sellers however can only give positive feedback. This means buyers will be less hesitant to give a lower feedback rating if it’s justified, so you’ll need to pay close attention to good communication, fast shipping, and good packaging.

8) Under promise and over deliver rather than the other way around. For example, state shipping times as 5 days but ship the same day wherever possible. If you state next day shipping and it doesn’t happen, you’ll have unhappy customers.

9) Keep an eye on trends. eBay pulse shows you which items are popular. Don’t follow the crowd but think about what ELSE you might sell within a niche that’s already popular. Information products are particularly valuable.

10) The ‘featured’ listing optional add-on keeps your item at the top of the search results on the page it would naturally appear on, for the duration of the listing. It’s a useful add-on if you can justify the cost.

11) You can change your eBay user ID in your ‘my eBay’ control panel. The old ID remains active for awhile to help past buyers find you.

12) The number of phishing and spoof attacks is so large that it’s sensible to install the eBay toolbar as a protection. Then, if you receive a link in an email that you believe to be from eBay, when your internet browser tries to open the page, it’ll autoamtically alert you if the page isn’t a genuine eBay or PayPal page.

13) Include past feedback comments in every listing (as long as it’s positive)! Use the following code: {eBayFeedback SIZE =”n“}

n = the number of past feedbacks you want to display (up to 200)

14) Have fun! If your business is getting to be a chore, take a break, you’ve earned it.

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How to Get Noticed Online

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

How to Get Noticed
Online (and get more traffic to your site)

I get a lot of emails from people pitching me stuff. Occasionally I get packages from someone who wants me to be an affiliate, but mostly it’s online, via email.

I find it quite fascinating that MOST people are too lazy to pick up the phone and call me or send a package. Both of those methods would definitely get my attention more than an email. I don’t know about your inbox but a single email is a needle in a very large haystack.

I HAVE to skim emails in order to process them in a timely fashion. If someone’s pitching me to buy or promote something it has to be truly exceptional OR be from someone I know in order to get and keep my attention.

Now that last statement is very important. I’ll let you in on a secret that’s based on thousands of years of proven psychology. It’s not a sexy secret but it’s overlooked by many…

Here it is: we do business with people we know, like and trust.

I told you it was a simple secret!

Honestly, I didn’t get this for a long time. I’m not the most social person, and I’ll usually choose to be with a small group than a large one. I used to believe that I didn’t have to cultivate relationships in order to promote my business. I was dead wrong. Relationships are key. As the old saying goes, it’s not what you know it’s who you know. How true that is.

Interestingly, I read two articles from well known bloggers in the last few months who both raised this very point, and that’s what prompted me to share it with you.

If you’re already a social butterfly then carry on, you’re probably doing a great job already. But if you’d like to get your website and business noticed, I have some tips for you to help you cultivate those all important relationships I’ve been referring to.

Firstly, if you don’t already have it on your bookshelf, go and buy ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie. It’s an old book, might even be in the public domain now come to think of it. Anyway, it’s one of my favorite books because it’s so practical (and entertaining too). Dale hits the nail on the head with every aspect of human nature as far as I’m concerned and you’ll learn some very important lessons from that book if you haven’t already read it. A lot of it is common sense, but we still need the reminders to prompt us to think about these lessons.

Now, remember how I said that most people pitch me via email with something that reads like an ad? No no no! That’s a terrible way to try and get attention.

You need to make friends first.

Let me repeat that…

You need to make friends first. How do you do that? By providing something of value to the person, without any request for something in return. Imagine that!

Complement the person on something you genuinely appreciate about them – it could be an article they’ve written, a presentation you saw, a video etc. You could also direct them to a useful web resource or other interesting news item that they’d appreciate. Keep doing that.

Sooner or later, what’s going to happen? Logically the recipient will feel grateful for the HELP you’ve given them, and the natural law of reciprocity will come into play. They’ll be interested in you and ask you what you do.

If the person is local, invite them for a coffee or lunch. Get to know them without forcing your message onto them. Focus entirely on how you can HELP them, and the rest will take care of itself, trust me.

If only more people did this, our lives would be enriched beyond anything we can imagine, we’d all have a lot more friends, and we wouldn’t have to worry about promoting our businesses.

Word of mouth recommendation is the best form of referral. We all know that, but we tend not to conduct our businesses in a way that reflects that we really believe in that.

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Website / eBay Listing Review - Fun4Pets

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

This eBay store ‘Fun4Pets’ is great:

http://stores.eBay.com/fun4pets it’s very nicely done. It’s a shame you can’t see it in color because it’s a very colorful design.

As you can see, they sell products for cats, dogs, fish, and reptiles.

Working from the top down, they haven’t included many keywords in their descriptive text, so that’s an area that could be improved.

Next, there are some text links to different areas of the store, which is important, but again they could make better use of keywords in this area. As it stands they’ve used a lot of generic terms such as ‘clearance and ‘closeouts’, ‘new’, ‘best sellers’ and so on. These could easily be changed for example, ‘pet clearance items’, ‘new items for your pet’, ‘best sellers for fish’ etc. Including keywords is so important to get better search engine rankings.

The banner below is nicely done, with an attention grabbing headline: ‘two for the price of one’.

If we click through to a listing, this is what we see:

Clearly, the theming continues through to the listing pages. Note the cartoon style graphics around the text – it conveys fun.

My only observation here would be to change the font in the middle main listing blurb. Currently it’s Times New Roman which is an easy to read font, but it doesn’t fit so well with the rest of the design because it’s a formal font. Better would be arial or verdana.

This seller does something interesting to invite questions. When you click on ‘have a pet question?’ it takes you to an eBay group that the seller has setup specifically for this purpose. Nice idea to keep buyers coming back.

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

Archive for February, 2009

15 More eBay Quick Tips You Must Know

Why Your Choice of Words in Selling Matter ( a lot)

Website / eBay Listing Review - Salsa Crazy

The BIG Lesson of the Month - Why You MUST Be Patient

There are Still Undiscovered Niches to Exploit on eBay

A Major New Breakthrough for the H3 System

Your Pet as a Marketing Tool?

14 eBay Quick Tips You Must Know

How to Get Noticed Online

Website / eBay Listing Review - Fun4Pets

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