So there's an enormous bunch of resources and features available that most eBayers are completely unaware of sadly.

It's time to get you up to speed, and since they're so ?secret' we'll call them renegade resources. Let's focus in on eBay Stores.

Firstly, no one needs to be educated about the fact that seasonal and special sales by conventional shops are very appealing to customers.

The functionality now exists for eBay store owners to have a sale! Any eBay store or fixed price items can now go on sale for the period of your choice, and it's a very easy process to implement thanks to eBay's ?Markdown Manager' feature.

You can create seasonal sales, sales for specific categories, or perhaps just to clear excess inventory.

I really like the way eBay indicates sale items. They put a line through the regular price, indicate the sale price in a bold font, and even show the percentage discount you specified for that item, so the buyer can see at a glance how much they'll be saving.

Listings can be discounted either by a percentage amount or by a specific monetary amount. As an example, a listing that is selling for $20 might be discounted by 40% or, alternatively $8. It's your choice.

The sale price of the item appears as a ?Buy It Now' anywhere on the site that your listings would normally appear.

This is an excellent innovation, and the fact that it's free makes it even more commendable. Management at eBay deserve a pat on the back for this one?

Another little known aspect of eBay Stores is ?store referral credit'. This means that when you direct someone from a website outside of eBay DIRECTLY to one of your eBay store pages, when a sale is made eBay will refund you up to 75% of your final value fee for that sale!

That's an enormous incentive, how can you use it effectively? My suggestion is to register a domain name and use an automatic, masked redirect to take customers to your eBay url.

Yet another little known tool is the ?promotional flyer' that can be used as an insert when items are shipped out. This is another topic entirely really, but suffice it to say that eBay makes it easy to create this flyer ? there's a link on the left hand side of the store management panel to ?create promotional flyer'.

As you can see, in some areas eBay have their act together nicely, they just don't do a good job of communicating these benefits to users.