Lie about an item: Say it works fine when it sometimes doesn\’t work. Say it\’s in perfect condition when it has a scratch. Your customers will hate you!

Post whenever you feel like it: Make sure to leave your customers hanging around, wondering when their item is going to turn up. This makes sure they buy from someone else next time.

Let items end anytime: Few people will be around to care about your auction if it ends in the middle of the night. Why go to the trouble of working out whether auctions will end at a good time?

Don\’t bother with email: Customers are just timewasters anyway. eBay businesses are supposed to run themselves! Never give informed responses to questions about your item.

Sell rubbish: Really, it\’s just eBay. You can just sell any old tat from the market for a 200% profit. Let quality be someone else\’s concern – I mean, really, what do they expect for that price?

Refuse to give discounts: You know what your items cost, you know what your profit margin is going to be, and you\’re not going to negotiate. Remember that giving customers special deals might make them feel good and come back to you again.

Make your listings ugly: As many colours, flashing lights and animations as possible will really give those customers a headache. Write as much in CAPITALS!!!! as you can. Preferably big, red capitals. Be sure to use the fonts Impact and Comic Sans. For an extra special touch, see if you can figure out a way to add some music.

Don\’t take photos: It\’s such trouble, after all. If buyers are picky enough to actually want to see items before they bid on them, then screw \’em, that\’s what I say.

Write short descriptions: Be as brief as possible, and use lots of mysterious abbreviations. This obviously makes you look very cool. You can even just write the title again in the description box. Think of the effort you\’ll save!

Use reserve auctions: Now, this is a fairly controversial final choice, but it really is one of the best ways to scare away your customers. They\’ll see \’reserve not yet met\’, and click that \’back\’ button before you know it. Luckily, they can always bid in a normal auction for the item somewhere else.

Now that you know the ten ways to kill your eBay business, how about we explore what to do if you want to do the opposite, and make a success of it? The next email will give you ten steps to successful selling on eBay.

Lie about an item: Say it works fine when it sometimes doesn\’t work. Say it\’s in perfect condition when it has a scratch. Your customers will hate you!

Post whenever you feel like it: Make sure to leave your customers hanging around, wondering when their item is going to turn up. This makes sure they buy from someone else next time.

Let items end anytime: Few people will be around to care about your auction if it ends in the middle of the night. Why go to the trouble of working out whether auctions will end at a good time?

Don\’t bother with email: Customers are just timewasters anyway. eBay businesses are supposed to run themselves! Never give informed responses to questions about your item.

Sell rubbish: Really, it\’s just eBay. You can just sell any old tat from the market for a 200% profit. Let quality be someone else\’s concern – I mean, really, what do they expect for that price?

Refuse to give discounts: You know what your items cost, you know what your profit margin is going to be, and you\’re not going to negotiate. Remember that giving customers special deals might make them feel good and come back to you again.

Make your listings ugly: As many colours, flashing lights and animations as possible will really give those customers a headache. Write as much in CAPITALS!!!! as you can. Preferably big, red capitals. Be sure to use the fonts Impact and Comic Sans. For an extra special touch, see if you can figure out a way to add some music.

Don\’t take photos: It\’s such trouble, after all. If buyers are picky enough to actually want to see items before they bid on them, then screw \’em, that\’s what I say.

Write short descriptions: Be as brief as possible, and use lots of mysterious abbreviations. This obviously makes you look very cool. You can even just write the title again in the description box. Think of the effort you\’ll save!

Use reserve auctions: Now, this is a fairly controversial final choice, but it really is one of the best ways to scare away your customers. They\’ll see \’reserve not yet met\’, and click that \’back\’ button before you know it. Luckily, they can always bid in a normal auction for the item somewhere else.

Now that you know the ten ways to kill your eBay business, how about we explore what to do if you want to do the opposite, and make a success of it? The next email will give you ten steps to successful selling on eBay.

A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs. That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part.

But What If…

But nothing! There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer. Here are a few common situations and how to handle them.

They say the item never arrived: Politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still hasn\’t arrived. If it still hasn\’t arrived, you should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one, or give them a full refund otherwise. No, I don\’t care what that costs you. Are you serious about selling on eBay or not?

The item has been damaged in the post: You must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation.

They say the item doesn\’t match the description: Resist the urge to email back with \”yes it does, you just didn\’t read the description properly\”. Take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

I\’m sure you\’re spotting a pattern by now. Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold.

You should always handle customers\’ complaints before they complain to eBay – in fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you and is downright unnecessary.

Are you still not convinced? Think this would only work with cheap items? Well, you see, the higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you. Let\’s say you were selling $10,000 worth of items each week, for example, and making a $1,000 profit per week overall. You might think that refunding one customer\’s $1,000 purchase would be a tragedy, losing you your whole week\’s profit. It\’s far better to look at it this way: if you don\’t give that refund, then not only will you lose the next week\’s profit, but you\’ll probably lose a few weeks\’ profit after that too. Now which option looks better?

I absolutely can\’t emphasise enough the importance of really believing that the customer is always right. But trying to make excuses for complaints isn\’t the only thing you need to avoid. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you don\’t want to kill your business before it\’s even started properly – and I\’ll show you in the next email what they are.

If you\’ve ever bought anything on eBay (and the chances are you have), then think about your own behaviour. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands doesn\’t require any thought or fear – it feels just like buying from a shop.

A Bad Reputation Will Lose You Sales.

In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Who\’s going to want to do business with you when they\’ve just read that you \”took a month to deliver the item\”, or that you had \”bad communication and sent a damaged item\”? The answer is no-one.

Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page. You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again.

It\’s even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback – once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.

You Can\’t Just Open a New Account.

Besides eBay\’s rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a new account. You literally have to start all over again from scratch.

You won\’t be able to use all the different eBay features. Your existing customers won\’t be able to find you any more. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating. Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumours about you: it\’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

A Good Reputation Will Get You Sales.

When a PowerSeller tells me something, I tend to believe them. They can be selling a pretty unlikely item, but if they guarantee it is what they say it is, then I trust them – they\’re not going to risk their reputation, after all. This is the power of a reputation: people know you want to keep it, and they know you\’ll go to almost any lengths to do so.

This is true even to the point that I would sooner buy something for $20 from a seller I know I can trust than for $15 from someone with average feedback. It\’s worth the extra money to feel like the seller knows what they\’re doing, has all their systems in place and will get me the item quickly and efficiently.

You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there\’s only way to get a good reputation: make sure you please your customers every time. But some customers can be, well, just a little difficult to please. In the next email, we ask: is the eBay customer always right?

1.Do you have something of value to sell on auctions? Internet can be a great and easy way to sell products that you are not using and to generate some cash. Go to Ebay.com, the biggest online auction in the world. There is a great opportunity for you if you have resell rights to digital products such as eBooks, articles, videos, audios, software, templates etc. With reselling rights you would be able to legally sell someone other people’s products and charge whatever amount you desire. As compared to other affiliate programs, where you typically get 50% on digital products, and an even lower 10% on real products.

2.You can also earn money by offering professional services to other people. Are you good at web design, data entry, research, transcription, article writing, translation, or any other form of virtual assistance? Some of administrative jobs like data entry do not require any professional training or specific skills. That’s why I think they are the sure way to make money online, by trading your time for money. If you think that you are good in designing, writing, or anything where is a high demand for these services then you should create a profile on Guru.com or Elance.com and offer your service.

3. The third way to earn money online easily is by creating a blog. Registering for a blog is very quick and simple to do. You can set up your blog right now on either on Blogger.com or WordPress.org. I prefer WordPress as it has more functions. You can then make money from Google Adsense ads on your blog, banners, affiliate referrals, text links, sponsored reviews, paid posts and other form of website advertising. There are many opportunities on the Internet for you to earn a solid income from your blog. Make a blog about the theme that you are related to, know and like. It can be your hobby or interest like cycling, rock climbing or photography. Remember that on the Internet, content is a king. Write quality and original posts, focused on your key phrases or keywords within your articles.

4. If you have a camera, or have a lot of photos in your computer, you can make money online selling them. You don’t need to have a fancy and expensive camera, what is more important is high resolution pictures. You can set your camera to take high resolution pictures to sell online. If you already have a big collection of good photos, you can register at iStockPhoto.com and begin selling them!

5. Affiliate Marketing. This is the best form of making online online, and is the method which I personally use. You can make a descent amount of cash by selling other people product. It can be eBooks, membership sites, software, audios, templates. This is called affiliate marketing and I recommend you to go to Clickbank.com. Clickbank is the biggest affiliate network offering digital products. The advantage of being an affiliate is that you do not need to worry about delivery, payments or card processing. Through Clickbank, everything will be handled for you, all you have to do is just to promote these products which you can find in their ‘marketplace”. You will be rewarded with 50-75% commission for each sale!

Have you found out everything you possibly could about your items? Try typing their names into a search engine – you might find out something you didn\’t know. If someone else is selling the same thing as you, then always try to provide more information about it than they do.

Do you monitor the competition? Always keep an eye on how much other items the same as or similar to yours are selling, and what prices they\’re being offered at. There\’s usually little point in starting a fixed price auction for $100 when someone else is selling the item for $90.

Have you got pictures of the items? It\’s worth taking the time to photograph your items, especially if you have a digital camera. If you get serious about eBay but don\’t have a camera, then you will probably want to invest in one at some point.

Are you emailing your sellers? It\’s worth sending a brief email when transactions go through: something like a simple \”Thank you for buying my item, please let me know when you have sent the payment\”. Follow this up with \”Thanks for your payment, I have posted your [item name] today\”. You will be surprised how many problems you will avoid just by communicating this way.

Also, are you checking your emails? Remember that potential buyers can send you email about anything at any time, and not answering these emails will just make them go somewhere else instead of buying from you.

Do your item description pages have everything that buyers need to know? If you\’re planning to offer international delivery, then it\’s good to make a list of the charges to different counties and display it on each auction. If you have any special terms and conditions (for example, if you will give a refund on any item as long as it hasn\’t been opened), then you should make sure these are displayed too.

Have you been wrapping your items correctly? Your wrapping should be professional for the best impression: use appropriately sized envelopes or parcels, wrap the item in bubble wrap to stop it from getting damaged, and print labels instead of hand-writing addresses. Oh, and always use first class post – don\’t be cheap.

Do you follow up? It is worth sending out an email a few days after you post an item, saying \”Is everything alright with your purchase? I hope you received it and it was as you expected.\” This might sound like giving the customer an opportunity to complain, but you should be trying to help your customers, not take their money and run.

Being a really good eBay seller, more than anything else, is about providing genuinely good and honest customer service. That\’s the only foolproof way to protect your reputation. Of course, you might be wondering by now whether it\’s really worth all the hassle to get a good reputation on eBay. Won\’t people buy from you anyway, and couldn\’t you just open a new account if it really comes down to that? Our next email will set you straight.

Have you found out everything you possibly could about your items? Try typing their names into a search engine – you might find out something you didn\’t know. If someone else is selling the same thing as you, then always try to provide more information about it than they do.

Do you monitor the competition? Always keep an eye on how much other items the same as or similar to yours are selling, and what prices they\’re being offered at. There\’s usually little point in starting a fixed price auction for $100 when someone else is selling the item for $90.

Have you got pictures of the items? It\’s worth taking the time to photograph your items, especially if you have a digital camera. If you get serious about eBay but don\’t have a camera, then you will probably want to invest in one at some point.

Are you emailing your sellers? It\’s worth sending a brief email when transactions go through: something like a simple \”Thank you for buying my item, please let me know when you have sent the payment\”. Follow this up with \”Thanks for your payment, I have posted your [item name] today\”. You will be surprised how many problems you will avoid just by communicating this way.

Also, are you checking your emails? Remember that potential buyers can send you email about anything at any time, and not answering these emails will just make them go somewhere else instead of buying from you.

Do your item description pages have everything that buyers need to know? If you\’re planning to offer international delivery, then it\’s good to make a list of the charges to different counties and display it on each auction. If you have any special terms and conditions (for example, if you will give a refund on any item as long as it hasn\’t been opened), then you should make sure these are displayed too.

Have you been wrapping your items correctly? Your wrapping should be professional for the best impression: use appropriately sized envelopes or parcels, wrap the item in bubble wrap to stop it from getting damaged, and print labels instead of hand-writing addresses. Oh, and always use first class post – don\’t be cheap.

Do you follow up? It is worth sending out an email a few days after you post an item, saying \”Is everything alright with your purchase? I hope you received it and it was as you expected.\” This might sound like giving the customer an opportunity to complain, but you should be trying to help your customers, not take their money and run.

Being a really good eBay seller, more than anything else, is about providing genuinely good and honest customer service. That\’s the only foolproof way to protect your reputation. Of course, you might be wondering by now whether it\’s really worth all the hassle to get a good reputation on eBay. Won\’t people buy from you anyway, and couldn\’t you just open a new account if it really comes down to that? Our next email will set you straight.