Nothing to do with eBay, but I think you'll relate to this rant. Have you ever been on vacation, out of town, visiting friends, on a business trip etc, and you need to find out where the nearest branch of your favorite store is? What do you do? I go online to find out. The frustrating thing is, it seems like almost every website asks you to enter the zipcode of where you are, in order to find the nearest store. Utter stupidity. Who's gonna' know the zipcode of the unfamiliar area where they're staying? How difficult would it be for them to just ask you for the name of the town and state? Okay, getting down off soap box now.



Have you downloaded the free eBay toolbar yet? If not, go and do it right away. There's plenty of features that make it useful. For example, a one click button to whisk you straight to eBay, a search box that searches all of eBay, a phishing / spoof protector, to warn you of unscrupulous sites that look like eBay to try and grab your user ID and password, and desktop alerts to notify you instantly if you win, lose or get outbid. To access it, just type ?eBay toolbar' in Google and it'll appear at the top of the results. Windows operating system only, sorry.

From time to time, eBay adds categories to the site, so look out for these. It's important to know this, because if there's not a good fit for what you currently sell, you can appeal to eBay to add a new category. Also, you can profit by being quick to list in the new categories ? it takes awhile for word to spread, and any category with just a few items will get more exposure when people browse those categories. For example, eBay recently added new categories for cookbooks, Apple iPhones and accessories, eBay stores designers (within services), and plus sizes for boys and girls clothes! Taking just one of these, if you know how to design an eBay store, there's a golden opportunity to market your services in that new category right now.