The trials and tribulations of an eBay PowerSeller trying to work WITH eBay and follow all the policies

This story is so typical of eBay’s seller service. I get emails from people constantly expressing the same frustration. This is by eBay Seller, Walt Auctionwally. Walt is a very interesting guy. He runs a website that provides appraisal and other auction related services at services at:http://www.auctionwally.com/

Read his article here: http://budurl.com/pysq.  Warning – you will want to tear your hair out.

Skip McGrath

See Also

• How to Create and Sell Legitimate Information Products on eBay and the Internet
  Forget 99-cent eBooks and resell rights reports. Learn how to create and sell real information products people will auctually use and benefit from.

RSS Feeds & eBay

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  People subscribe to Feeds just like they subscribe to a newsletter you would get via email.  When the ‘Feed’ is updated, the subscriber is sent an email notice to check it out. 

You should have your RSS feed activated already, as eBay provides this to you automatically as long as you have an eBay store.  When you update your store listings, your feeds are automatically updated as well.  Again, this only works if you have Store Inventory.

To check to see if your Feed is active – go in to Manage My Store.  Under your Store Marketing – you will see Listing Feeds.

Select ‘Activate your Store Inventory listings via RSS’ and also select ‘Make a file of your Store Inventory listings available’.  Click Apply.

That’s it! You are updated and your feeds are active!  Let’s go submit your Feed to a couple places.  One place is Feedburner.com http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home which actually, was aquired by Google!  Free to join, but you have to register in order to submit your feed.

 Once you log in/register – it takes a few simple steps to get your feed burned. 

First – find your RSS Feed link on eBay. An easy way to find it is to go to your eBay Store Icon and click on it.  Then scroll down to the bottom of the page.  You’ll see the RSS icon in an orange box.

 Go ahead and click on the RSS icon, this will show your URL RSS Feed link in the browser and you will also be able to view what your Feed looks like to others subscribing to your Feed. 

Your URL should look similar to mine w/ rss in the begining, copy YOUR URL for Feedburner:

http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=StoreItems&siteId=0&language=en-US&output=RSS20&storeId=22585822

Next step is to head back to Feedburner.com and submit your feed in a few easy steps:

Select ‘Submit your Feed’ on the upper right of the screen and follow the 3 steps.  Paste your URL in the box. Select ‘Preview’.  You should see a page similar to what you viewed on eBay when you clicked on your RSS Feed icon. 

Finally, Submit into the Feed burner Directory!

Once you submit the feed, you can not submit it again. It will be updated as long as you keep listing items to your store inventory!  You can keep track of how many people view and subscribe to your feeds under the ‘MyFeedage’ menu, then by selecting ‘My Feeds’.  

This is just one prefered of getting your eBay listings out there into the cyber world.  It’s more of a ‘fix it and forget it’ method.  Once it’s out there, it’s taken care of and you don’t have to continually update it – because it’s in real time.

There are just tons, and tons of RSS sites to submit your RSS feed on, but you have to keep it targeted to your product or it won’t be accepted.  Feedburner.com has by far been the easiest and most organized.  And the best part about it is, you can also show up on Google in their ranking pages…I was SO excited when mine showed up on google!!

Have fun! 

If you’re not a techie, choosing where your website will live can be a daunting task. For you, making the right decision is paramount, because you’re not going to be able to pick up and leave like someone who knows how to backup a MySQL database, and that you don’t need a driver’s license to do it.

My #1 recommendation for choosing the right web host: Ask an expert.

And I don’t just mean any “expert.” Your friend’s brother who sells stuff on Ebay is not going to be the kind of web hosting expert that you need. Here are some qualifications for your expert:

• Needs to be a techie with experience in hosting websites like to yours. In other words, if your aunt sells a couple of hair ribbons in her Etsy shop, she’s not going to be able to help you sell $80,000 in products from your website each month without crashing the server. Ideally, your expert will have experience working with sites the same size (traffic, bandwidth, etc) as yours larger.
• Needs to have worked with more than one web host. I know, it’s tempting to go to that colleague who has a complementary, or even competitive site, and go with the host they are using. But if they’ve only used one host, and only hosted one site, they could be experiencing issues they don’t realize they have, like rude staff, or unusually long wait times for issues.
• Needs to understand the issues that can arise from bad hosting. If you end up with a bad host, you could find yourself without any customer service, customer support people who are rude, at best, and more downtime than uptime. (Downtime is where your site cannot be accessed from the Internet.) You could end up with a really slow website and no resolution from the company.
• Must understand your site’s unique needs. Do you need to host a podcast each week, with audio files that people will download and listen to frequently? Do you need a robust ecommerce solution that will put a lot of strain on a server? Make sure your expert understands these issues when recommending a web host.

When I talk to small business owners about their websites, I make sure I find out about their unique needs, how their website is performing now and what their goals are for the future. I then evaluate their website in terms of whether or not I feel that my team can provide the website hosting that they need. If not, I recommend that they go somewhere else.

Most often though, we can handle what the business owner needs, since we offer shared hosting accounts, VPS  and dedicated servers. Our support staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and we’re willing to go the extra mile to make sure you get what you need. We also offer at least two different options — we teach you how to do the task for free, or we offer to do the task for you for a reasonable rate.

If you have any questions about hosting your website, contact me today about your web hosting needs.

Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called “Spark an idea Thursday.” As part of this tradition, I’ll be sharing with you my experiences and interpretations for each week’s topic for those of you who sell products or services online.

I invite you to grab our image over there to the right and carry the tradition through to your own blog. If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

The theme of this week’s Spark an Idea Thursday is: Spark an Idea about Email.

This is a great Spark an Idea topic!  In one of my previous posts, I spoke briefly about the eBay DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) Scores. 

Communication (one part of the DSR score) is such an integral part of everything eBay, especially as an eBay seller. 

It all starts with your first email to the buyer who purchased one of your items.  This is the email that will ultimately win the future relationship of repeat sales.  You’ll want to walk through every step of the transaction from the begining, to the end and beyond.

Do you do a little Happy Dance when you sell something from your eBay store, or have an auction that has ended way higher than your wildest expectations?  I know I do a little dance! 

Well, so does the person who won that auction or found that something special in your eBay store!  They’re pumped and ready to receive their items as soon as they submit payment! 

Here are a few tips to follow up with, using email to create a lasting relationship.

When you start to build your email list, you will want to utilize the email marketing tool on eBay.  This is a wonderful tool and can be fully automated.  Mine is set to shoot out an email once a week, showing any newly listed items.  

Before you know it, you’ll begin to see repeat buyers and track your progress to see what is working best.

Happy Selling!