Typically, in a cross promotion program, some do better than others and you’ll need to determine if it benefits your business or detracts from your items. Here are a few questions you could ask yourself before you make a decision:

1.  Are your prices in general lower or higher than your competition?  If your prices are lower, then you could benefit from the Cross Merchandising.

2.  Are you images compelling?  Do you images really shine?  If your images are clearly better than your competitors, then you could benefit from Cross Merchandising.

3.  Are you a Top Seller?  Top seller badges are displayed in the Cross Merchandising Panel, which could be a benefit to you.

4.  Can your items be sold multiple categories?  For example, if you sell sterling nurse charms, getting “shown” in medical categories could be helpful.

There are a growing number of complaints about the program, so we would suggest considering your options before you make a decision.

1. Watch Insertion Fees: When listing in the Auction format, pay attention to the insertion fee chart.  A book listed at 24.99 will cost you $.35, but a book listed at 25.00 will cost you $1.00. Doing a quick search today, there are about 1240 books listed in auction format with a starting price of $25.00, which means, eBay collected $806.00 in insertion fees for an additional $12.40 in extra pennies to the seller. I can’t stress this one enough. It’s totally in your control and it takes literally seconds to glance up at the insertion fee chart.
2. Consider Selling in Lots – In most categories, selling in lots is a great way to reduce listings fees AND increase the success rate. Using Vendio Research, the below chart shows that listing single books is much more costly than selling books in lots. This is true in many categories.

For example, on average, Non-fiction books run at a 10% success rate, which means that you will need to list that book about 10 times for it to sell. Listing a book 10 times costs much more than listing a lot of books once or twice. And it’s likely you’ll get more bids on lots because bidders may be after different books.

3. Watch your Features – eBay listing features such as listing designer, scheduled launches (10 cents each) can be mitigated. If you want templates or want to schedule – Consider a third party listing software. Vendio Platform includes scheduled listings, and a huge number of templates, and it doesn’t cost an extra 10 cents each. Really, stop wasting your money for these 2 features.

Other features, such as gallery plus or subtitle *might* help your success rate. Research (and yes, Vendio Research) will tell you what features drive successful sales for your item.

And one other caution – When using extra fee features, make sure you pay attention to relists.  If subtitle didn’t work the first time, make sure it’s worth the extra $.50 (or $1.50 for Fixed Price)

4. Increase your Success Rate

Here is one that takes a bit of work. You’ll want to make sure your item is optimized. Here’s just a few things that can have a major  impact on your success rate. (Note -for all of these below items, Vendio Research provides the data to help you make the correct choices)

a. Format – Is it listed in the correct format (fixed price or auction). It makes no sense to list an item in Fixed Price if it’s a one-of-a-kind item and it will not be seen in search results. Consider your DSR ratings and how you place in Fixed Price search results.

b. Keywords – Make sure that a buyer can find your item. Think about what a buyer would be searching for and what search terms they would use. Research keywords to make sure you are using the ones that drive success. There IS a difference between using Season 1 and Season One.

c. Listing Time – Especially important for auction listings, you’ll want to have your items ending when people are buying. Quite often, I hear “Sunday Night is the Best Night”. Research shows that’s not true.

5. Build YOUR Business

These are the hard ones. They will take work. They will  take time and the rewards come slow. But there are great rewards.

a. Build a customer list. If your items are not found in search or you have a low sell through rate, or if you want to grow your business, it’s important that you leverage your past customers. Imagine having a Brick and Mortar store where the only customers that ever entered were NEW customers. Repeat business is worth the extra effort

b. Open an off eBay Store. Vendio has a 100% free (no listing fee, no final value fee, no fee for images) store. It’s so easy to fall into a trap of list, repeat, list, repeat and so many folks never move beyond that. But in order to grow your OWN business, you should really consider creating your OWN presence online.

When I talk to sellers, I often find that they carry a lot of excess inventory. Using the term “carry inventory” is no mistake, you might not be physically lugging around the inventory albatross, but excess inventory can be a heavy burden. This is particularly true in the cases of one-of-a-kind sellers who equate having a lot of extra inventory as “money” or even “insurance” (color me guilty) and depending on how you handle your accounting, it might not be either.  It might be time to reduce your inventory.

eBay is having a 50% off listing sale in some categories until November 22^nd.  There are two schools of thought and both have merit – Get your popular stuff listed and out there OR List your unpopular items at the cheaper listing cost.

If you use cash base accounting, you don’t have to worry about a physical inventory -however you can’t deduct the cost of goods until your items sells. In this case, the impetus to sell would be that there is money tied up in inventory that can’t be deducted

If you use accrual based accounting, you will typically need to do a physical inventory but you can deduct the cost of goods. In this case, the impetus to sell would be that you don’t want to have to spend days doing a physical inventory.

One thing to consider is to get rid of your obsolete inventory. Previously, we posted about “Letting Go of Obsolete Inventory”, and this may an opportunity for you to have an inventory reduction sale, or reduce your inventory by using this opportunity to list items and reduce your physical inventory.

As Always, Happy Selling!!

$300 is significantly cheaper than the $600 people had to shell out for the 60 GB when Sony first released the PS3. The Slim also comes with a hard drive that is twice as big and will be lighter on your electric bill. However, there now is a very big secondary PS3 market. In particular, the 40 GB version of the PS3 is still sold actively on eBay. It will play all the same games, DVDs, and Blu-rays as the Slim, so no core functionality is missing.

More importantly, its price has been affected dramatically by the announcement and release of the new 120 GB version. On August 18, Sony announced the new version. Since that date, a 40 GB PS3 has been selling for $132 on average, which is down from $177 pre-announcement. That’s $168 less than the new 120 GB Slim. If those extra gigs aren’t needed, which for many people they won’t be, those saving can equate to quite a few extra games or controllers and then some. So is Slim really better? Based on the eBay market research, fatter is sometimes better.

If you would like to learn more about eBay transaction data concerning PS3s or anything else, check out Vendio Research. It was used to populate the graph above by analyzing millions of eBay transactions and can provide strategic recommendations on when and how selling on eBay can be profitable along with the saved time from Vendio’s auction listing software.

Well, you can use Find and Replace to do those changes in bulk.

Let’s suppose you wanted to put all your red sweaters on sale. Just go to My Items, and select the Find and Replace button, Find “red sweaters”, and change the price either by % or dollar amount.

You’ll want to find the same items again and set a sale date, and again for sale end date.

Find and Replace is a method to replace fields that you used or did not use when you were creating your items so while it does take above three steps to put items on sale, find and replace allows so much flexibility that the possibilities are endless.

Below are step by step instructions for putting items on sale and after you do this once, it will be a snap and you’ll be having sales and attracting new business in no time!!

Find and Replace for Vendio Store Sale Items

Step One: Set the Sale Price

a.    Select the Items:  From Items > My Items, select items

by clicking the check-boxes next to them, or use the Find and Replace button to find a specific group of items.

b.    Set the Sale Price:  Click the Find and Replace button, select Replace and select Price: Sale Price

c.    Select one of the following:

i.      Change to:  Sets a specific price

ii.    Increase by:  Increases the already specified sale price by a specified  amount

iii.   Decrease by:  Decreases the already specified sale price by a specified amount

d.     Set the sale price by doing one of the following:

i.      Defining the exact dollar amount of the sale price.

ii.    Defining the sale price based on a dollar or percentage amount over or below one of the item’s other prices (Default Item price, Item cost or Store price).

iii.   Defining the dollar or percentage amount by which to increase or decrease the sale price.

Example:

In the below example, we use Find and Replace to locate all items that have the word “sweater” in the title, then set the sale price on all items to be decreased by 10%.

Step Two – Set the Sale Start Date

a.    Re-select the same items:  From Items > My Items, select items by clicking the check-boxes next to them, or use the Find and Replace button to find a specific group of items.

b.    Set the Sale Start Date:  Click the Find and Replace button, select Replace and select Sale: Start Date

c.    Select the sale Start Date from the calendar.

Step Three – Set the Sale End Date

a.    Re-select the same items:  From Items > My Items, select items by clicking the check-boxes next to them, or use the Find and Replace button to find a specific group of items.

b.    Set the Sale End Date:  Click the Find and Replace button, select Replace and select Sale: End Date

c.    Select the Sale End Date from the calendar.

So in case you procrastinated and are still looking for a costume, it’s good news. Laziness trumps zeal! Now make haste and buy that designer Mickey Mouse costume at half off; you will not be taken the cleaners – unless you really want to be a fire fighter (more on this later).
What if you are in the business of selling costumes? There obviously has to be something to it if all those “scary” costume stores keep on opening up temporarily every year. It doesn’t appear that there is much of a premium being created by the Halloween season. In fact, it almost looks as though merchants are going to get a lot less for their merchandise compared to months prior. That’s not really where the money is to be made. More people want costumes and more people are willing to satisfy that desire to be Edward Cullen or Jack Sparrow for one night – or even a few…

Buyers get their costumes at little to no mark up, and sellers make a ton of money off of volume. It’s win-win for all parties involved, except if you bought your costume months ago or want to be a fire fighter. In the case of the premature purchase, you are out some cash. However, in the case of the fire fighter, there is a silver lining. Reliable female sources agree that fire fighters are hot, and the trending shows that there has been limited fire fighter sales volume. Presume the trending applies to the general population and do the math:

Step 1
(Perceived Hotness) X (Low Expected Rate of Competition from Other Fire Fighters)) =
(Higher Expected Perceived Hotness!!!)

Step 2
(Higher Expected Perceived Hotness!!!) => (Increased Fair Market Value)

Looks like I will be accepting that Nobel Economics Prize decked out in full fire fighter gear. If you would like to learn more about eBay transaction data concerning Halloween or anything else, check out Vendio Research. It was used to populate the graphs above by analyzing millions of eBay transactions and can provide strategic eBay research recommendations on when and how to sell items most profitably on eBay.

When selling online, the image is the most important piece of sales collateral that you can “hand” to your potential customer. It is the first thing that a potential buyer sees.

You do not need to be a professional to recognize a good image, and you don’t need to be a professional to take a good image.

Here’s some tips to improve you images:

1. Make sure your item and camera lens are clean. This might seem like a no-brainer, but if you use your camera often, you may forget to check the lens for dust.

2. Light your item. You can create your own inexpensive photography box (or even buy one). For inexpensive lighting, you can purchase clip on lights at any home improvement store. Shine the light onto the product and stand behind the lighting.

3. Unclutter the area. It is not good practice to take an image with other items in the photograph. If you are selling a vase and want to display it with flowers, take an additional photograph, but your main photograph should be of the product and the product only.

4. Take several photographs. Vendio image hosting is inexpensive and having multiple images help sell your product. You will want to take images from several angles. If you sell collectibles, take an image of any makers mark.

5. Resize and crop your image. Make sure that your product is what is seen, not the background.

7. Include a visual reference to size when appropriate. For example, use a ruler or a coin for visual reference to item size.

8. Try not to use a flash, but use lighting instead. If your item is reflective, don’t use a flash at all.

One other tidbit to note – the best way to determine if your images are up to par, is to view similar items and compare your items with your competitors. If you have Vendio Research, it will display the images of completed items, so you can see at a glance if your images are better (or worse) than your competitors.

Happy Selling!!

Found in this batch of templates, will be the fall holidays – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas.

The holidays are approaching fast, so go ahead and take a few minutes and spruce up your eBay listings!!

Happy Selling!!

On October 5, a hacker published a counterfeit secure socket layer certificate for PayPal.

Microsoft is holding an online webcast today at 11 am PST to provide an overview of this months security bulletin.

This month’s security bulletin addresses 33 vulnerabilities in Window, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. This is the most bulletins Microsoft has ever released.

There is a lot of concern over the eBay Top-Rated Seller program, and today, I spoke with a Vendio Merchant/eBay Seller who liked the program and was benefiting from it, so with all the negatives being posted and discussed, I thought we should take a minute, look at the positives.

If you are a Top-Rated seller, congratulations!! In many cases this will mean that you have better exposure for your listings, fee discounts, a special top-rated seller search and an icon in your auctions.

If you are a Top-Rated Seller it probably means you offer exemplary customer service, have a great product at a great price and many repeat buyers.

I cringe at the discussions where it is suggested that folks who did not make the program harm these Top-Rated Sellers in any way. So I do hope THAT movement dies an early and quick death. I know that its hard NOT to be envious if you did not make the program, but I’m sure that harming other sellers is not action you should take to help yourself.

Now, if you are not a Top-Rated Seller, there are some things you can do. All is not lost! First, try to determine how you can improve your rating to become a Top-Rated Seller. Second, run auctions – Remember auctions still get a boost when they are ending. Another option is to NOT relist your items. Newly listed items with Fixed Price also get a boost. Free Shipping (if possible can still propel your listing upward) and make sure you comply with all eBay’s policies).

To qualify to be a Top-Rated seller, you’ll need 100 transactions and $3000 in sales in a 12 month period (which differs from the Tier based Power Seller Program as there is only one level). Additionally, you’ll need a low amount of 1s and 2s in your DSR ratings, comply with policy and maintain high DSRs.

We’ll probably see some changes to the program as wrinkles are worked out, but DSRs and Top Rated Sellers seem destined to be around for awhile, so take a deep breath and determine your strategy.

Happy Selling!