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.

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.

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!!

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!

An enterprising group of eBay sellers have even started a campaign called “BlingMyBra” where custom decorated bras are up for auction with 100% of the proceeds going to the Susan G. Korman ~For the Cure.

Check out all the Great BlingMyBra Auctions!!!

And check out the entire list of item on eBay benefitting the Susan G. Korman for the Cure Charity.

Happy Bidding!!

In response, Vendio is excited to introduce a Special Edition of the Vendio Reviser. This special edition has a ONE PAGE option for revising handling time and return policy. Simply sign up, set you eBay token (so we know who you are), select your handling time and add a return policy and we will bulk revise all your eligible eBay items.

The special edition is a flat-rate of $20.00 a month for unlimited revisions!! And it works no matter how or with who you listed your items!

As an added bonus, this offer includes the Vendio Reviser which allows you to revise your items three ways:

1. Bulk Revise Individual Items – revise up to 100 of your items which are displayed on one page (either in list format, filtered or searched by keyword), and you can make common revisions (including descriptions) from this one page. For instance, you can search all items with “DVD” in the title – make description edits on one page and click revise to submit your changes. There are many options to filter and search your items to bring up the items you wish to revise

2. Find and Replace – Find specific criteria and replace it. For instance, you could “find” all the items that have “BLUE” in the title and revise them “PERIWINKLE BLUE”. There are many find and replace fields that you could use to make revisions to your items.

3. Set Auto Reviser Rules – Auto Reviser rules lets you set strategies. Think of these as automatic revisions. For instance, you could reduce the price of your item by $1.00 every day until it sells, or you could change the category of your item after 3 days and so on.

Reviser provides many methods for you to enhance and edit your existing eligible eBay listings (in addition to allowing you to create specific strategies you design for you specific business requirements) and now with the Vendio Revise Special Edition, you can bulk revise your handling time and return policy in one easy step.

PLEASE NOTE: If you use Vendio to list your items, good news! We are automatically updating your handling time and return policy!

Also, If you are already an existing Vendio customer who does not use Vendio to list your items, please contact customer service to have this special addition added to your account.

Sign Up for the Vendio Reviser Special Edition

Just wanted to drop a note about some possible credits to your eBay account. eBay is testing buyer traffic before they roll out their upgraded search engine.

If you use Featured First, Featured Plus, Highlight, Border or Gift Icons during the test, you’ll be seeing a 20% pro-rated credit.

Since this test will only apply to 20% of the buyers, it’s an equitable credit..Unless of course, you were counting on those features to net you more than the 20% pro-rated credit.

When eBay announced the recent upcoming changes, there was a small blurb under one section on Seller Policy that states: “Also, comments that undermine confidence in eBay sellers or misrepresent a seller vs. buyer’s responsibility in a transaction will not be allowed in listings.”

I cannot tell you if that means that eBay will be removing listings that have such statements as “Do not Bid if..” (I still see many listings with “I will leave negative feedback if..”), or what “exactly” they mean by undermining confidence in eBay sellers.

So, if you find that you have to edit your eBay listings for one reason or another, consider doing some or all of the following:

1. Remove any terms that have any negative connotation, such as “Do not bid”, “I won’t ship”, eBay makes me do x”, etc.
2. Use a white background for your images (this is not anything eBay requires (yet), however, it allows you to use your image on Amazon)
3. Don’t try and circumvent ANY eBay rules, such as “hinting your take checks or money orders).
4. Just the “facts”. Remove any text other than the facts about the item you are selling.
5. Put your company and/or personal messages on your About Me page (this could save future edits)
6. With the introduction of eBay product pages, you can see that eBay is going to streamline listings, so review your listings and create a description that is catelog-esque
7. Feedback. Don’t mention it, unless you have something positive to say. For example, don’t say “I leave feedback when feedback is left for me”. Yes, it’s not in eBay rules YET. Better yet, just don’t mention feedback (see #4). Make feedback discussion a part of AFTER the sale process.

If you start implementing these changes with all your edited listings, new listings, and relists, you will find that over a small amount of time you will have updated all your listings without having to spend hours or days editing.

Now, the above are ONLY recommendations. Your mileage may vary.

To shop on Craigslist, no registration is required whatsoever.  This lack of a barrier to entry allows poor quality browsers to message sellers.  Every listing has a publicly displayed random contact email address that forwards emails to the seller.  So once someone finds an item they would like purchase, they simply email the random email address that is displayed in every item listing.  No verification or login is required.  This often results in lots of unwanted inquiries about an item that is for sale.  In particular, many people that are running phishing scams will send you emails.  For instance, “I am in Nigeria.  I will pay $150 for shipping on top of asking price to send it to my kid for his birthday.  Please take the listing down and setup the transaction via PayPal.”  Well, that “PayPal” at the end is a link to a fake PayPal site that attempts to get your login and password.  There are also some categories of listings where legitimate offers come but are probably unwanted.  For example, when listing gift cards, a seller is more likely to get a trade offer rather than someone willing to purchase the card.  Some people will even offer a card of lesser value and make up the difference in cash.  This could be fine in some cases, but most likely the seller just wanted to liquidate the card.  On eBay, sellers won’t run into either these problems.  Registration is required to message a seller, and there is a well defined expectation of how a transaction works.

As mentioned earlier Craigslist is an online classifieds website.  As such, it is setup that when someone lists an item for sale it is listed by geographical location.  It’s very similar to listing an item in the classifieds of a local newspaper.  Items will get limited exposure equivalent to the newspaper readership and circulation.  It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if you could search the whole website at once.  However, you have to click into certain geographically areas, again limiting exposure to something similar to a local newspaper’s circulation.  Rumor is that the site was designed like this on purpose to help build community interaction, but it’s a major factor that stops it from being an eBay alternative.

Even though many sellers have had their disagreements with eBay, it does offer something Craigslist does not – protection.  This works for sellers in two ways.  They cannot get stuck with a fraudulent payment after already giving the merchandise to a buyer.  It also instills confidence in buyers.  They know that they have a means for recourse if the item they receive is fake, broken, or not as described.  On Craigslist this is not the case.  Take the gift card example.  What would happen if someone paid for a card with a $50 balance, but the card had less on it?  Nothing.  The buyer couldn’t dispute it anywhere and would be out some cash.

Transactions on Craigslist also require an extra level of effort and risk typically not seen on eBay.  On Craigslist it’s the norm to have to meet the buyer in person.   Selling something through eBay typically provides a level of insulation from the buyer.  It’s almost always done completely online via messages and email.  Sellers don’t have to meet buyers.  When a transaction is setup on Craigslist, most people don’t want strangers visiting their home.  Therefore, they meet the buyers in public/neutral areas for safety reasons.  At an extreme, there have been some very bad cases of Craigslist transactions where someone will list an expensive item; and when someone comes to buy it, either the buyer will steal it or the seller was a fraud and robs the legitimate buy of his/her money.  Although this typically doesn’t happen, it’s something that should be noted.

Craigslist has its purposes and serves as a fantastic medium for some types of transactions.  However, it has its limitations when it’s considered as an alternative to eBay.  Sellers don’t receive the same type of traffic because of the site’s design and the lack of buyer recourse.  The traffic that it does get often can be of lower quality. It also requires increased effort and risk for transactions to be completed.  So before any seller switches completely over to Craigslist, they should realize all that they are leaving behind at eBay.