Understanding eBay's VeRO Program

'VeRO'? What on Earth is that? Well, it's a very scary eBay program that can get your auctions shut down, that's what it is.

VeRO stands for 'Verified Rights Owner'. It is the eBay policy that deals with complaints about your auctions from companies who own copyrights, patents or trademarks on the items you are selling. Unfortunately, it is often abused to remove items from eBay that are perfectly legitimate to resell, simply because the copyright owner doesn't want people getting their hands on them.

If the copyright of something you're selling is owned by one of eBay's 5,000 verified rights owners, be prepared for trouble. eBay have given these companies the right to remove any auction from eBay that they see fit, and, say eBay, "eBay cannot require the rights owner to provide you with the exact reason of the request to remove your listing". Worse, eBay may even suspend your account, or give your real-world contact details to the company in question.

Why Do eBay Do This?

Basically, they do it to avoid getting sued, or even getting threatened with being sued. There is a law called the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) that means that eBay must either take these auctions down when it asked to or take full responsibility for them from that point on. eBay doesn't want to take any responsibility for your auctions.

It's not worth worrying too much about it - 99% of the VeRO program is aimed at stopping fake brand-name goods or pirated media being sold through eBay. Big companies also seem to get quite upset when eBay sellers take the company's ad copy, logos or professional pictures and use them for selling on eBay.

If you'd like to take a slightly patronising quiz about copyright to help you understand eBay's policy, go here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/tutorial/verotutorial/intro2.html.


So Who Are These Companies?

There's a complete list available here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/vero-aboutme.html. This list includes everything from the Microsoft and Adobe to Chanel and Nike, not to mention the RIAA (recording industry association) and MPAA (motion picture association). Most of the companies, understandably, deal in software, media or fashion.

eBay Say I Violated VeRO and I Want to Appeal.

Use the link at the bottom of this page: http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/vero-removed-listing.html. That'll get you to eBay's VeRO Seller Appeal Form, where you can put your case to them directly. You are supposed to take it up with the company that complained about you first, however - and sometimes you might find that they just back down, which makes the whole thing a lot easier.

If you have no luck getting any response from eBay by email, it's not really worth trying to phone them - you'll find they're most responsive if you use the 'Live Chat' feature or write them an actual, real-paper letter. You're best off being nice to eBay: they have absolutely no obligation, after all, to ever let you sell anything at all.

Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets, tips, and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 per month on eBay. His proven step-by-step system shows even users with little or no business experience how they too can make huge profits selling products at online auctions.

Claim Your Free eBook: "Top 10 eBay Secrets for Successful Selling" below:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

How To Get Repeat Sales On Ebay

Most people can make one sale on ebay, but very few people know how to make consistent, repeat sales--and even less know how to make those sales using mechanisms other than ebay.

The most important part of making these "repeat sales" is building a base of interested customers. This process starts with selling on ebay, but most people who sell on ebay don't know how to do it.

Once you complete a sale on ebay, you should always contact your customer to thank her for purchasing from you and to give her any follow up details she will need to complete the transaction. In addition to this, you should also ask your customer whether or not she is interested in receiving emails from you when your business is offering special deals, item lotteries, or product coupons.

This is where "building a base of interested customers" comes in. If you effectively pitch your email list idea to a customer (who has already purchased from you and therefore has a high probability of being interested), you have a decent chance of getting a positive response. If your customer says yes, add her to a database on excel, along with her name, email address, and what she purchased from you.


You will also want to save the email as a record of her response. As unsolicited bulk email is against the law, it is always crucial that you have evidence to prove that everyone you are mailing with offers has specifically asked to be added to your list.

You should continue to do this--make sales and record names and information.

Periodically, you should make special offers on your ebay store inventory. For instance, you could offer 20% off on certain items for one week. Or you could offer 25% off on all lightbulb sales in the future, provided they purchase a lamp within the next two weeks. Or perhaps you could excite your list by raffling of an expensive item from your ebay business, like a plasma TV.

Whatever offer you use to lure them in, just keep your goal in mind--and that is to drive repeat sales by directing them to your ebay inventory on a regular basis.

As I mentioned previously, unsolicited bulk email is against the law. So, along with each notification you send them, you should include a written explanation of how they can "opt out" of your mailing list.

One trick you can use to make this method particularly effective is selling low and then reselling high. This simply means that you sell inventory on ebay for low prices, so customers have a low resistance to purchasing it. If they see something interesting for a dollar, they might just grab it because it is inexpensive. You complete that dollar sale--and then use it to get an interested buyer who could potentially purchase something far more substantial in the future.

In addition to using different tricks to maximize your profits with this technique, there are also more effective methods you can use to collect large amounts of personal information and to conduct email correspondence campaigns. Autoresponders, websites, and name capture pages are a few of these tools. Once you become proficient in the simple tactics I explained above, you should spend some time researching the tools I just mentioned.

Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets, tips, and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 per month on eBay. His proven step-by-step system shows even users with little or no business experience how they too can make huge profits selling products at online auctions.

Claim Your Free eBook: "Top 10 eBay Secrets for Successful Selling" below:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

The Secret to Ebay Store Success

If you care to take the time to look, there is more advice out there on the Internet about how to be successful with your Ebay store than you could ever possibly read in a lifetime. Ebay itself offers plenty of advice for newcomers to the world of online auctions that can be quite useful. But at the end of the day everything will really boil down to just one thing: excellent customer service.

Living and Dying by Reputation

When you are first starting out in any business it is absolutely vital to generate positive feedback from customers. This not only helps you get their business in the future, but it also helps generate word of mouth advertising about your company. An Ebay business is definitely no exception to this rule.

A company offering the absolute cheapest product or service possible will still die if it treats customers poorly. Although you cannot please every single person that uses your Ebay store to buy something, it is definitely possible to keep the vast majority pleased with the services you provide.

Accurate Descriptions

Since the customer cannot physically touch or see the actual item you are trying to sell at your Ebay store, descriptions are absolutely critical. Misrepresenting an item may yield you a few dollars more on the winning bid but the negative feedback can absolutely destroy your reputation and any chances of true success using online auctions to make a living.


Also, you want to write your descriptions so that you anticipate most questions a customer may have about the item. You still have to respond to customer questions as soon as possible but you certainly don't want to be bogged down all day shooting e-mails back to people. Try to think of all the questions a customer might have before writing your description so you can write it so that almost all of these questions are answered in the description itself.

Clear Photos

Never be tempted to use trickery or odd angles to misrepresent your item with a photo. Again, negative feedback kills more Ebay business owners and their dreams than you would ever believe. Look carefully at the picture you plan to post with your listing and ask yourself if it accurately represents what you are selling. If it does not, take another picture that does.

Transactions

It can honestly be intimidating for customers to use the Internet to buy the things they want and Ebay auctions can be even scarier. People want to believe that they are buying from a reputable and honest seller who is professional in every respect. You send this very message by making the transaction as convenient as possible.

All of your terms should be clearly listed up front so that there is no chance for confusion. Inform customers about your shipping charges and consider including the Ebay calculator in your listing so that they can figure them out themselves and cut down on questions that you will have to respond to.

Be certain to include your return and warranty policies so that you did everything possible to inform the customer of precisely what they are getting should they decide to buy from you. You may want to consider making an occasional exception to your policies in the interest of avoiding negative feedback, but that is something you, as owner of your Ebay store, have to decide on a case by case basis.

Include as many payment options as you can reasonably accommodate. Fewer options generally means few bids and less profitable online auctions for your Ebay store.

By following these simple guidelines and being sure to make the customer feel as special as possible, you will build a great reputation on Ebay. In the end, this will help grow your Ebay business and keep your business thriving.

Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets, tips, and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 per month on eBay. His proven step-by-step system shows even users with little or no business experience how they too can make huge profits selling products at online auctions.

Claim Your Free eBook: "Top 10 eBay Secrets for Successful Selling" below:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

eBay Auction Starting and Ending Day Strategies

It's usually when auctions are about to end that they get half their bids - sometimes they even get their only bids. If you want your item to sell for a good price, then, it makes no sense to let it finish on a day and time when no-one's going to be around to care.

Selling to Business.

If you're selling business equipment and have mostly business customers, you should really aim to have your auctions finishing between 9am and 5pm on weekdays. It is worth, however, trying to avoid mornings and avoiding the 'lead-in' and 'lead-out' that takes place on Monday and Friday themselves.

Selling to Home.

If most of your sales are to private customers having it shipped to their own home, then you want your auctions to finish when these kind of customers will be around. Unfortunately, these times are the opposite of what they are for the business customers. The ideal time to catch a home customer is on a Sunday evening.


List for Durations.

In order to get your listings to end on a particular day, you can simply change the duration of your auctions depending on what day it is. For example, if you mostly sell to home customers and the day today is Thursday, then your auction needs to run for either 3 or 10 days to hit a Sunday. If you sell more to business and the day today is Friday, then:

a 1 day auction would be bad (finishing on Saturday),
3 days would be alright (Monday),
5 days would be good (Wednesday),
7 days would be good (another Friday),
and 10 days would be alright (Monday again).


You could draw up a little timetable of when you should and shouldn't be listing depending on the days of the week - make it red, amber and green, traffic light style, and stick it on your wall.

Schedule Listings.

Of course, if that all sounds like too much trouble then there is an easier - if more expensive - way of doing things. Simply use any of the many tools that let you schedule listings (almost all listing programs and sites do) - you can set the start date for any day and time you feel like.

Be aware that you might have to pay a few cents per listing for this if you do it through eBay. With some software, you may also need to leave your computer on all the time, so the software can start the auctions when it's supposed to. The advantage of this method, however, is that there will be no per-listing fee, since the auctions were scheduled through your computer and not through eBay.

Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets, tips, and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 per month on eBay. His proven step-by-step system shows even users with little or no business experience how they too can make huge profits selling products at online auctions.

Claim Your Free eBook: "Top 10 eBay Secrets for Successful Selling" below:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

Tips for Selling Collectibles on eBay

Yes, collectibles! Collectibles are where eBay started, and they're still one of its biggest areas - however much they might want you to believe they're not. eBay's most hardcore and long-time users are almost all collectors of something or other - it is quite common to post what you think is a mundane item, only to have collectors suddenly go to war over it because it is somehow linked to something they collect.

Collectors are the people on eBay who really do pay top-dollar for things that seem like junk to you and I - not to mention to the people you'll be getting your stock from! That's why you can make so much profit on collectibles. Here are a few tips.

Go to people's homes. People's homes are full of things that someone out there collects - they are the best and cheapest source of collectibles out there. Sure, you might find something if you hang around at enough garage sales, but you'd have competition. Getting invited to people's homes to look around should be a dream for you, and one you're doing your best to make a reality.


Buy on other auction sites. You'll be surprised how much money you can make if you buy the collectibles that people sell on smaller auction sites like Yahoo Auctions, and then list it on eBay. These sellers will often be perfectly knowledgeable about their item, but simply getting a lower price because they serve a smaller marketplace. Sometimes you can almost double your money.

List in non-collectible categories. If your collectible doesn't have a category of its own under 'collectibles', you might prefer to list it in a category that has something to do with the item but nothing to do with collecting. What you will often find is that people browsing a category for their favourite thing will pay more for your collectible than actual collectors would.

Do lots of research. Never list something you think might be valuable without searching and searching to dig up every piece of information you can on it. Everything you find out is likely to be useful when you come to list it.

List every tiny, tiny detail. Remember that collectors really care about the most seemingly insignificant things. An item from one year can be worth thousands while the one from the year before is near-worthless, or an item that is one shade of a colour can be worth far more than one of a subtly different shade. It's not worth puzzling over and it's not worth trying to pass your items off as something they're not - just make sure you put absolutely everything you know in the description.


Jason James is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran and an eBay Seller of 4 years. His website "The Auction Resource Network" reveals his inside secrets, tips, and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 per month on eBay. His proven step-by-step system shows even users with little or no business experience how they too can make huge profits selling products at online auctions.

Claim Your Free eBook: "Top 10 eBay Secrets for Successful Selling" below:
http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com