When Does Doing Well Financially Really Mean Doing Very Badly Financially?

publication date: Feb 20, 2009

eBay Confidential eZine
18th February 2009

Hi, 

When Does Doing Well Financially Really Mean Doing Very Badly Financially?  And What Does It Have to Do with My Feedback Rating Going Up and Down Faster Than a Fiddler's Elbow?

Quick Nic (eBay Confidential's publisher), move away, I'm going to moan and preach, and I know you don't like me moaning at your subscribers, but there's a very good reason I'm going to do it today and I'll also be finishing today's eLetter with some very positive words and recommendations for our readers.  

I know moaning and preaching isn't good in any eLetter, usually because very few people like being told what to do and why.  But there's a reason I think it's a good idea today, mainly because I've had at least a dozen subscribers email me asking why they are making less money on eBay than they were just a few months ago.  Everyone, be it a man, or a woman, asked if I thought the recession was to blame!  In fact, I don't personally think the recession is to blame, but I did see a pattern emerging from every one of our readers who emailed for advice during these last few weeks.

Now I'm going to be honest here, I am not the greatest expert on eBay, I'd be employed by eBay and on a seven figure salary if I was the world's top auction expert. As everyone knows an independent assessment of another person's business will always throw up ideas and answers to problems that might help make that business more profitable.  It works even where that advice comes from someone who doesn't even sell on eBay, or whatever the business concerned is.

So I do feel qualified enough to tell those people why I consider they are not making much money on eBay right now and I can do it in one sentence, and this sentence might sometimes apply to every one of our readers, it applies also to me most of the time.  That sentence is:

Why does that advice apply to me personally?  It's because I had one negative feedback comment a few months ago from a really stupid individual who thought I was selling original Van Gogh paintings for a fiver apiece, and got very upset when he discovered my print came from a magazine published in 1901, while he considered it should have been dated much earlier.  "Van Gogh wasn't even alive in 1901", he said, "So he can't possibly have painted that picture you sold me!"

This man left a negative which knocked my long-standing 100% feedback down to 99.9%.  Now we know that percentage positive feedback is based on the number of negative points appearing in the last twelve months as a percentage of the total number of feedback points achieved in those twelve months.  This means I could reinstate my 100% positive feedback simply by increasing the number of items I sold in the short term, hopefully generating positive points all the way, until that one negative eventually appeared as a  statistically insignificant fraction of overall positive feedback.  That actually happened, I spent days listing hundreds of items on eBay, making very little money, and even losing money, just to make sales and grow feedback, until I was back on a 100% footing again.  Excellent!  Or not because...

... I have spent most of the last two weeks writing our main eBay Confidential newsletter, which meant I listed nothing on eBay during this period.  Today I logged into my eBay account and spotted my feedback had dropped again to 99.9%.  I'd been left another negative, or at least I thought I had received another negative point which had brought down my overall positive score.  In fact, I had not received another negative, what had actually happened was a huge chunk of my early positive feedback scores had dropped outside the twelve months cumulative total and had allowed this one negative point to wreak havoc again on whatever positive feedback points remain from the past twelve months.  The only way I would have avoided that scenario is by keeping sales figures at a permanent high level and that might mean no time for other activities, such as writing.  

The 99% calculation is accurate, I really have sold less these last few weeks than any other time in the past twelve month period on eBay, and that explains why my positive feedback rating is moving up and down faster than a fiddler's elbow.  

I've sold less, not because people say there's a recession going on, but because I've given up trying to sell in huge quantities purely to keep my PowerSeller rating high.  Today I sell little and often, and always for expected high profits.

So I have two choices to reinstate my 100% positive feedback:

1)  Hope the bloke who left negative feedback is responding to puncture wounds in my plasticine voodoo doll effigy and just accept people like this exist and will continue to leave negative points for no good reason.  That way I won't have to spend day after day listing items at below market value on eBay purely to make lots of people happy and generate enough positive points to thwart this evil man's wrongdoing.

2)  List more better items, more often on eBay, items with definite high value.  This way I will make money on a regular basis and I'll probably not even notice a recession taking place.  I take it there is still a recession going on?  The reality is 'yours truly' and all those people who emailed me are guilty of one main commercial crime, namely doing very well but not doing enough of it!  eBay like any other business is a bit like pouring water into blocked drains, where the more you put into the business in terms of listings and money and effort, the more you're going to get out of it.  

You can achieve the second objective using my favourite moneymaking activity, namely deciding on a specific profit margin that makes it worth my while listing a product and then trying to sell as many of those profitable products as possible, on and off eBay.  

I like to work in fivers, I love products that take very little time to list, which attract multiple bidders, and always fetch a minimum £5 net profit, that is after all eBay and PayPal fees are deducted.  I also like products with repeat selling potential which in turn means having to create just one listing for those products which acts as a template for future listings for the same and very similar products, the latter needing just a few changes to the original to create their own unique copyable template.

So, whenever I have a few hours to spare, I take pencil and paper, draw a table with ten, one-inch squares across the page and ten down, numbering 100 in total.  Then I start daydreaming for items that might easily fetch £5 pure profit from every listing and hopefully plentiful Second Chance Offers also.  Each idea is written into its own individual square.  I look for 100 at any one sitting, but I'm never disappointed to find just a handful.  Money is money when all's said and done.

Once done I begin looking at other people's completed auctions for similar products and I normally remove from my list any products that fail to match my objectives, but not always, because sometimes that other person selling 'my' product is selling it differently to how I might promote it.  For example, their pictures might be grotty, while I'd do my best to create stunning illustrations; their wording might be amateurish, while I'd try to sound professional and knowledgeable about the product and I'd check my work for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors which some people do not.  Any other person's completed listing with mistakes and poor sales I'd test in my own business and leave it on my list if testing proves profitable.  Any other sellers' listings with spelling and grammatical mistakes AND a good selling prices I'd mark with an asterisk - * - because these products are likely to sell so much better from a professional listing.

Products added to my list recently:

• Any pound shop items that look particularly good value which can also be combined into job lots.  Lipsticks, for example, and pen and paper packs, small toys for children's party packs, and so on.
   
• Reproduction photographs and prints from public domain postcards, photographs and prints for which my original item attracted multiple bidders, purely because most collectors will buy a copy of a view for which they don't yet  have the original version.
   
• eBooks on CD, not necessarily business opportunity titles; in fact I've found my best sellers are pet related, usually cats and dogs, and they're all from the public domain.  Using multiple product listings, priced £5 plus cost of CD and posting, they fly off the shelves at the rate of two or three orders per subject per week.
   
• Also... oh go look for your own, it's very exciting, and once you find them you won't have to share them with anyone!

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Forgotten Promise

Some weeks ago I promised you all a copy of a book I wrote about winning prize competitions during the time I was a competitions editor and journalist.  I forget to send it your way and no one reminded me!  Which either means you don't want it or you are too polite to pick me up on my mistakes!  I'll go with the latter option, if that's okay, and I apologise if I've upset any of you, and I'll also tell you the book is available for you to download now at: http://www.canonburypublishing.com/eccompetitions It is a tad out of date but it's still all you need to begin winning fabulous prizes to keep or resell on eBay.  Go get it now!

Until then

Avril