Your feedback on eBay is an essential part of your reputation as a seller. Your feedback profile helps your bidders develop confidence in you, and gives them a reason to trust you when they purchase from you. In most cases, keeping your feedback public is the best course of action, especially if you haven't built up a name for yourself on eBay yet. But, there may be times when you need to keep your feedback private, and you do have a method of doing so.

To mark your feedback profile as private, log into eBay, and visit the site map at the top right-hand side of any eBay page. You will see an option to "make feedback public or private." Click this link, and you will be taken to the feedback section of your profile. Choose the privacy option, and save your settings. Your feedback should now be marked as private. Your rating will still be available, but no one will be able to see what comments have been left in your feedback section.

There are a few things to remember about marking your feedback for privacy before you decide whether or not to do it. For starters, you cannot sell any new items while your feedback is set for privacy. Any items that you currently have listed will continue to stay listed throughout the pre-determined length of your auctions, but you will not be able to list anymore items until your feedback is public again. You can, however, continue to buy items while your feedback is private.

Marking your feedback as private can also cause buyers and sellers alike to lose confidence in you. They may wonder why it is that you have marked your feedback as private, and possibly think that you have done something irresponsible as a seller or buyer. This could cause them to refrain from doing further business with you. You may want to consider explaining the reason why you have marked your feedback as private on your about me page for clarification purposes.

A reason for wanting to mark your feedback as private may be because you received malicious feedback, or feedback that is against the terms of service that needs to be removed. If your personal information is listed in a feedback comment, or a racial slur or other offensive material is seen on your feedback profile, marking it as private is definitely a good idea to do until eBay's representatives have had a chance to review the situation and can remove it for you.

Receiving negative feedback is not really a reason to mark your feedback as private. Yes, negative feedback can be frustrating, but it's not the end of the world, and it doesn't mean you are going to lose all of your business. Buyers understand that sellers will get the occasional unhappy customer, and unless you have a string of negatives from different buyers in a row, your reputation should be fine.