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Watch out for this new breed of auction fraudsters
publication date: Jul 17, 2008
eBay Confidential eZine
10 July 2008
Hi,
I've had a spate of queries lately from eBay Confidential
readers all focussing on one main topic: the growing
number of refunds requests received by eBay sellers,
usually because a product has allegedly not arrived at its
intended destination.
Now these people aren't always telling the truth.
Sometimes people will say they haven't received goods
when they have.
Right or wrong, without acceptable proof of posting
sellers are expected to refund dishonest buyers as well
as losing their product and refunding the cost of original
delivery to the winning bidder. A certificate of posting,
even a Recorded or Insured Delivery slip will not always
sway eBay or PayPal in your favour. You may still have
to refund the individual.
The problem has escalated in the last few weeks,
affecting many eBay Confidential readers, including me.
Until recently a claim for refund for alleged non-delivery
was about as rare as a hot British summer. Nowadays I
receive such claims, backed by claims for refund, at
least twice a week.
The reason? I believe, having talked with other
PowerSellers, the reason is eBay's new feedback rules,
mainly the fact that sellers can no longer leave negative
feedback for rogue buyers. Buyers, no longer fearing
negative feedback, can lie and cheat their way out of
paying for hundreds of thousands of pounds of goods
misappropriated from honest sellers.
Do you think I'm being unfair? Do you think it's possible
buyers aren't cheating sellers today?
Well I put it to the test. I had two buyers, both claimed
their product had not arrived and they wanted their
money back fast. I checked their feedback for negatives
received in pre-seller-unfriendly days and found both
were new buyers without established feedback. So
there's no way to check if these people are telling the
truth or just using eBay's new feedback rules to rob
honest sellers.
I set a trap. Each of my daughters uploaded items
similar to those these two people had purchased from
me. One of those people was the highest bidder on
something listed by my youngest daughter. She duly
posted the item and guess what? Two weeks later
there's a claim made to PayPal about non-delivery of the
item. We used Recorded Delivery and Royal Mail says
the item was definitely delivered, and signed for, making
this one of the worst buyers I've personally encountered.
We've informed eBay and PayPal and we await their
comments on whether we will be forced to refund this
man! I'll keep you in the picture!
So what can you do?!
There's no way via the eBay system to warn other
sellers about this new breed of auction fraudster, but
other organisations are coming to the rescue with ideas
and scripts, even complete web sites, dedicated to
protecting eBay sellers against rogue buyers on eBay!
One such location is Toolhaus.org where today I
discovered a neat and very simple idea being developed
by eBay sellers to warn other sellers about buyers who
should, under perfect two-way trading conditions, be
given negative feedback.
Toolhaus talks of 'False Positives', 'FPs' for short, and
basically the system involves sellers leaving negative
comments in the location reserved for positive feedback.
The seller leaves a coded message, such as 'FP' or
'False Positive', even 'Negative' and using scripts at
various sites, including Toolhaus, sellers can search for
auction buyers with high False Positive points from
which to grow evidence to support a seller's case
against claims made for refunds to eBay or PayPal. So,
for example, if my daughter and I leave 'FP' feedback for
our 'friend' mentioned earlier, those comments will be
available to others through an easy search at some of
these sites.
These comments from the Toolhaus site might help you
better understand this neat idea:
"eBay has indicated that in May, 2008, sellers will no
longer be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for
buyers. The merits of this will probably be debated for a
very, very long time, but in the meantime, some sellers
have suggested that they would leave 'false positive'
(FP) feedback. Specifically, they would leave positive
feedback containing the word 'negative' or 'neg', as an
indication of the type of feedback they wanted to leave.
Toolhaus will endeavor to remain neutral on the merits
of that tactic, but we've added a new option to the Negs
tool: A checkbox to enable searching for 'false positive'
feedback, and reporting the total number of those items
found. The report is at the end of the Negs tool's output,
with the counts of Negative, Neutral, and Withdrawn
feedback items."
It's still not certain if eBay is happy for codes and
negative comments to appear in feedback but, as
Toolhaus says, they'll cross that bridge when they come
to it!
I'm not sure how it will all pan out in practice but it could
help sellers grow a case against having to constantly
refund dishonest auction buyers. What do you think?
email me with your comments and see if we can come
up with solutions for ourselves to combat this rising wave
of dishonesty!
********************************
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***
Four Ways to Market Affiliate Products
Through eBay
***
There have been big changes at eBay lately, such as to
feedback, and also to digital products being banned at
the site. Those digital downloads, in most cases, were
designed to grow a mailing list for outside eBay sales,
notably of affiliate products. There were other ways,
also, that allowed sellers to grow a mailing list with intent
to sell other products, notably affiliate products, outside
of eBay.
The biggest shock, for many people, has been the
recent change to how 'About Me' pages work. In
another of their very confusing statements eBay says it
is no longer possible to link to outside sites via 'About
Me' pages. Additionally, sign up pages, for newsletters
and mailing lists, for example, are also banned from
'About Me' pages.
That just about means all avenues for growing an
outside mailing list 'on' eBay have been effectively
closed. But notice I said 'on' eBay, not the same as
'through' eBay, because there are still ways to grow a
mailing list via the eBay system.
These ideas will help:
* You can create a signature file, detailing affiliate
products such as available at ClickBank, and append it
to all outgoing answers to questions asked by eBay
members. WARNING: You must not do this via the
eBay message system; that is totally against the rules.
Instead, bear in mind that all questions sent through the
eBay system are duplicated in sellers' outside eBay
email boxes. This is the place to answer those
questions and add the signature file containing affiliate
offers or invitations to sign up for your newsletter or
mailing list.
* Create compliments slips featuring Internet sites
selling products that earn you a commission on all sales.
The secret to success here is to have several
compliments slips created, and several web sites
featuring lots of different products, following which you
personalise compliments slips to feature products
bearing close relation to whatever someone has just
purchased from you on eBay.
* You can't highlight an outside web site in your listings,
'About Me' page, or elsewhere, overtly that is, directly
through the eBay system. But you can create a
company logo featuring your web site url and use this as
the graphic for your eBay shop.
* You can also add a copyright notice with url to
illustrations, somewhere unobtrusive and unlikely to
obliterate essential parts of your graphic. So if you sell
pet medicines, for example, and your outside site is
www.avrilpetmeds.com, you could add 'Copyright:
www.avrilpetmeds.com' to scanned images and
photographs used in your listings.
Go on give it a go, all it takes is a little creative thinking,
and it could increase your profits considerably.
Happy eBaying!
Until next time,
Avril
***
Top Selling eBay Items You Should Know About
by Michael Bay
***
One of the fundamental questions people ask when they
open a store on eBay is what are the top selling eBay
items out there. In actual fact, it is very hard to determine
which the top selling eBay items are; fortunately, eBay
has certain functions that can help you to find out what
are the hottest selling items for the time being.
Anybody from the business world would know that there
is no one item that can sell well all the time as people
change and trends change from time to time. It only
takes probably 1 day for a craze to end and it can
happen very abruptly, thus it is so important to know the
trends that occur in people's buying habits.
One way of determining the top selling items on eBay for
the day is to look for eBay Pulse. This page allows one
to see what items are searched for the most on eBay
daily. On top of that, you will be able to access the top
eBay stores that have these products and thus you can
take a look at the rough pricing of these products. Also,
the wonderful thing about this function is that you can
see for different categories which are the most frequently
searched terms. For example, you can go under health
products and find out what people search for in health.
This function gives you the option of seeing what is in
big demand and would definitely help you in deciding
what products you may want to sell.
Another method is to research and slowly catalogue the
trends that you observe from the various eBay stores.
Organize whatever you have collected and try to see a
pattern in trends. This helps you predict the next trend
and you can be the first to start it, before others follow.
This way, you ensure that you be the 'pioneer' and thus
would enjoy maximum profits.
Alternatively, you can organize your research in such a
way to spot what products are always high in demand.
Chances are that these products are things such as
beauty products, health products and self-improvement
products. The desire to look good and be healthy does
not really die down and thus it seems to be a hot market
especially if you can provide products that show results
in a short period of time and results that last.
It is not hard if one were to want to find out what are the
hottest selling products in eBay, however the procedure
takes time and requires you to put in some effort before
you can have reliable results. However, do not give up
halfway, having information on what may be the next
best-seller can potentially help you earn a lot of money
and can give you an edge over your competitors.
Michael Bay is an eBay expert providing valuable
auction selling advice at:
http://www.AuctionMasteryCourse.com Go there to get
your FREE report on the 'Four EZ Ways To Make Money
On eBay'.
***
How to Make the Most Out of Selling Your
Multimedia Information Products on eBay
by John Thornhill
***
As we all well know eBay has changed its policies on the
selling of digitally delivered items, not only eBooks but
everything else including the sale of digitally delivered
photos and other similar products. But what does this
mean? Are our eBooks still eBooks?
What does the word eBook make you think? To me it is
a digital product for around $1-$2 which will tell me what
I want to know in a certain niche, for example, how to
train my unruly dog. However, due to the new rules
selling these products will no longer be possible. To
continue selling you must convert all of your digital
products into physical products. This will usually mean
putting 3 - 4 eBooks from the same niche or about the
same subject onto one CD or DVD, which can be
packaged professionally and shipped around the world.
This means your products and your name are still known
and you can continue to hold or even gain for the first
time PowerSeller status.
Because of having to take the time to build these
products I would not place them under the heading
'eBooks', I would use the term 'Multimedia Information
Product' meaning they aren't expected to sell cheaply
and allowing you to charge the right amount to still make
a profit.
Now most people may be wondering how to set out
these products professionally to make the amount of
money expected. Well, think of them as your own
website on a CD you can place all the links and other
products you want without breaking any rules as this is
outside of eBay. Also this provides a massive
opportunity to make a profit on the backend as you can
promote any or all of your other products in the same
niche as bonus items on your CD.
Another way to generate a higher income is to send
people to your other products on a thank you page.
Imagine this; you have just purchased your brand new,
how to lose weight in 90 days multimedia package
complete with recipes and also videos showing how to
cook the meals. You are forwarded to a thank you page
which reads: 'Thanks for your purchase. While waiting
for your product to be delivered why not read my free
report on losing weight'. They have already bought from
you meaning they believe your products will be good and
now they have the added bonus of a free report. In this
report you can advertise any amount of your other
products. With these new products the chance to up sell
and also create an income on the backend is enormous
which can be a good thing even though your business
will require more work to set-up. Once this is done you
may find yourself having more profit coming into your
account each month.
Want to know more? John Thornhill trades on eBay
under the username planetsms and constantly earns
over $1000 per week on eBay selling digital multimedia
products. To learn more about how to make the eBay
digital download ban work for you download a free report
John has prepared for you at:
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