Over the years, eBay has introduced all sorts of different auction types, in an effort to give people more options when they buy and sell their things on eBay. For every seller who doesn’t like the idea that their item might sell for a far lower price than they mean, there’s another who wants to shift hundreds of the same item quickly. eBay tries to cater to all tastes. This email gives you an indication of the different kinds of auctions and their advantages for you. Normal Auctions. These are the bread-and-butter of eBay, the auctions everyone knows: buyers bid, others outbid them, they bid again, and the winner gets the item. Simple. Reserve Auctions. Reserve auctions are for sellers who don’t want their items to sell for less than a certain price – a concept you’ll know about if you’re recognizable with real auctions. They work just like normal auctions on eBay, except that the buyer will be told if their bid does not meet the hold back price you set, and they’ll need to bid again if they want the item. If no-one is willing to meet your price, then the auction is cancelled, and you keep the item. Fixed Price (‘Buy it Now’) Auctions. Buy it Now auctions can work in one of two ways. You can add a Buy it Now button to a normal auction, meaning that buyers can choose either to bid normally or to simply pay the asking price and avoid the whole bidding process. Some sellers, though, now cut out the auction process overall and simply list all their items at fixed price. This lets you avoid all the complications of the auction format and simply list your items for how much you want them to sell for. Recently, eBay added a twist to fixed price auctions: the ‘best offer’. This means that buyers can contact you to discuss a price, which could be a good way to get sell some extra stock at a small discount. The only downside to reserve and fixed price auctions is that you pay a small extra fee to use these formats. In general, it is more worth using reserve auctions for higher-priced items and fixed price auctions for lower-priced ones – but remember that you can combine the two formats. Multiple Item (‘Dutch’) Auctions. These are auctions where you can sell more than one of a certain item. Dutch auctions can be done by bidding. Buyers bid a price and say how many items they want, and then everyone pays the lowest price that was bid by one of the winning bidders. If you have trouble getting your head around that then doesn’t fears – everyone else does too! These auctions are very rare. What is more common is when a seller has a lot of one item, and lists it using a mixture of two auction types: a multiple-item fixed price auction. This just means that you can just say how many of the item you they have, and offer them at a fixed price per unit. Buyers can enter how many they want and then just click Buy it Now to get them. Now that you know about the different types of auctions, you should make sure that the items you plan to sell don’t violate eBay’s listing policies. The next email will let you know what’s allowed and what is a big no-no.
And let's not forget the biggest advantage over selling on eBay. The majority of users have money in their hand just waiting to find the right item.
So if eBay's so great why would you want to drive traffic AWAY from your auctions?
Well there are a few reasons why you'd be better off selling from your own website, rather than though eBay. Firstly & most importantly, think of all the listing fees & final value fees you could save if everything you sold on eBay you could sell on your own website. Personally it would save me thousands of dollars per year alone in listing fees .For more details visit to www.auction-entrepreneur-kit.com. Secondly, you'll be protecting yourself from eBay policy change. Imagine you were selling thousands of e-books weekly and then suddenly eBay policy changed to prevent any e-book listings.
Overnight your business would simply disappear & your income would vanish. It's the same with listing fees - A sudden hike in fees could wipe out your business & profit overnight.
With any business, especially an online one you need to safeguard yourself against measures that are out of your control. So by driving traffic away from your auctions to your own website you'll slowly start building up an alternative source of revenue. The following methods can be used on eBay. Some are on the borderline of eBay policy & you should check out any policy violation before using them. Saying that, a huge proportion of sellers use these on a daily basis.
1) Image Hosting
All the best sellers have auction templates developed to maintain a professional listing. And of course those sellers ALWAYS use images or graphics to accurately show the condition of the items their offering.
eBay itself allows you to upload the images to their servers; other commercial & free services are available. However really you want to store any images on your own server. Not only will search engine robots follow the links from your listings to your site (helping in improved visibility in any search engines), but many browsers will show the address of where the images are loading from in the status bar.
2) Feedback
Many sellers include their own website in the feedback comments they use. Strictly it is against eBay policy but many Power sellers use comments like "Thanks for your custom from http://www.....com. This is perhaps one of the widely violated policies on eBay. I've never known of anyone receive a warning for this policy, but use it with caution as you could be the first.
3) Email Address.
eBay allows your listings to contain one email link address, in addition to the "Ask The Seller A Question Link" they already provide. The only condition about showing your email address is the one shown must also be your registered email account with eBay. Before you list it, make sure they match up.
4) About Me Page
eBay actually allows you to link to your own website from your About Me page, as long as the actual page does not directly offer to sell items. Therefore make it an information or about us page that you link to, BUT one where visitors can easily navigate to your catalog of items for sale. Additionally drive traffic to your About Me Page by including a link on every listings, for more information logon to www.mining-auction-gold.com. for example "Click here to learn about me". An average basic shop on eBay will get over 1500 item views within a month. If you can drive just a small proportion of these to you're about me page & then to your site you'll certainly see a difference in your non-eBay sales.
5) User Id
While eBay does not allow your user id to be that of an website, you should have it as closely to resembling your site name as possible. You CAN NOT attach .com, -com or *com to the end of your user id - this is strictly against eBay policy. However nothing would stop your id being VisitMyShop. The idea is to get your eBay visitors comfortable with dealing with you away from eBay.
I hope these tips help you drive traffic away from your auctions towards your site & lessens eBay's grip on your business. Remember, Ignorance is not an excuse eBay accept if you do violate their policy. While you initially get a warning for policy violation continuous offences may result in your account being suspended. Having said that, eBay mostly rely on policing from other users to enforce their policy so as long as no reports you should be in the clear.
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