How to Market Your eBay Listings on Twitter
Filed Under How-To's, Sellers' Insights | Leave a Comment
Twitter is all the rage these days and many sellers are successfully using the social media tool to market their eBay listings. In fact, eBay sellers were promoting their listings at a rate exceeding 1200 “tweets” an hour yesterday. It follows that the rest of us eBay sellers might want to join in, but, as with most things, to do it effectively, it’s not as simple as it looks.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read other users’ messages called “tweets.” Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user’s profile page. Users may subscribe to other users’ tweets—this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers. Read more
The eBay Trading Assistant Program – Sell on Consignment or Not?
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What is an eBay Trading Assistant?
eBay Trading Assistants are online merchants who sell on consignment for people who either:
- Don’t want to deal with the hassle and time required to sell on eBay,
- Don’t have the computer skills or confidence to sell online,
- Don’t have the time required to sell on eBay,
- Know that an eBay Trading Assistant can fetch a better price (even after commissions) for their item due to experience on eBay, expertise in a particular niche, increased exposure in the search results due to Top Rated Seller status, and credibility as a seller.
The eBay Trading Assistant charges a fee (percentage of final sale price, flat rate, or some combination) to list the item (including taking the photograph and writing the description) and handle all the interaction with the buyer including answering questions, collecting payment, shipping the item, handling returns, and leaving feedback.
Why Sell on Consignment?
For many sellers the idea of becoming an eBay Trading Assistant is appealing for many reasons. Three of the biggest issues facing eBay sellers are 1) developing sources of inventory, 2) coming up with the capital required to invest in inventory, and 3) managing the risk associated purchasing inventory that may or may not sell. Selling on consignment alleviates these issues but presents several others for the seller. Read more
Proper eBay Grammar
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 1 Comment
“eBay” is a funny word. Even when I start a sentence with “eBay,” I don’t capitalize the “e” even though I often see it printed that way in the mainstream media. I often feel a twinge of panic when the Wall Street Journal uses the upper case “E” when they begin a sentence with the name of the popular auction site — but I don’t change my ways.
Sometimes you see authors write ebaY with the upper case Y. This seems reasonable considering that’s how they spell it in their logo. However you never see it spelled that way on eBay.
I finally found the definitive guide on the Trading Assistant Program terms and conditions:
Details are important. Even the way we write the word “eBay” can help add consistency to our brand and reinforce brand attributes. That’s why in the majority of cases the name “eBay” should be written with a lower case “e” followed by an upper case “B” even when it begins a sentence.
Crises averted – we can all go about our business now!
Terapeak (read my Terapeak review) has made their “Title Builder” eBay keyword tool available free to the public. It’s pretty simple to use.
Simply start typing a keyword and the tool will automatically suggest twenty related keywords to include in your listing title. The tool details how many listings (from a sample of 100 recently closed listings) include the keyword in the title and the average, maximum, and minimum price items including these words in their title sold for.
Unlike the keyword tools provided by eBay, Terapeak’s Title Builder will provide data from eBay sites beyond eBay.com. It currently supports the UK, French, Australian, Canadian, and German sites as well as eBay Motors.
Here’s a link: http://data.terapeak.com/titlebuilder/
Download my free Best Match Book and learn the secrets to getting found in eBay’s search results.