Are you the type of person who waits to the last minute, or just has no clue what to buy and just settles for a Gift Card? That way they can get what they want, right?

Or Maybe you buy gifts for your best customers, or vendors, or associates and always struggle with finding something that is not quite as boring as last year.

Need a new way to get your website in front of new eyes?

Visa has just introduced GiftCardLab.com where you can create Personalized Visa Gift Cards. Its Easy!

1. Choose “Upload Your Own” or “Shop Design Gallery” to get your Visa Gift Card
   (Normal people may want to “Shop Design Gallery” but Brilliant Marketers like those at OSI Rock Stars will want to “Upload Your Own”, with your web address added.) [at least 840x840 but less than 10MB]
2. Add your selected Visa Gift Cards to your shopping cart
3. Personalize your Visa Gift Card with your recipient’s name, a selected message and packaging
4. Send or give your gift in person
5. Have your recipient activate their Visa Gift Card online
6. (I added this one myself!) Everywhere your Gift Recipient shops, Your Website gets noticed!

If you want to use your company logo it takes a few extra steps for approval. All the details are on GiftCardLab.com

Create & order a unique gift card online - using your own images at GiftCardLab.com

Have Fun!
Mike

Using eBay’s RSS Feeds for Instant Notification.

Several weeks ago I was at an estate sale and bought a vintage Pioneer Audio Rack System with several components. When I listed the first piece, the rack shelf, I mentioned that I would be listing the rack itself in a week or so.

A couple of weeks later I got a message from a potential buyer asking when I was going to list that rack. I had to break the news to him that he had missed it. It had sold two weeks earlier. I also briefly told him how to use my RSS feed to keep informed about my new listings.That question made me realize that there are many eBay users out there, both buyers and sellers, who don’t know that eBay provides RSS feeds, much less how to use them.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. A feed is a summary of website content that updates regularly and it can be utilized to keep users informed of the latest changes. eBay provides feeds in RSS 2.0 format for search results, Stores, Announcements, discussion boards and more. Just look for the orange RSS button to subscribe.

The first thing you need to do in order to utilize RSS feeds is find yourself a good RSS aggregator or “reader”. Personally I use Google Reader but there are many others available, both free and paid, each offering its own set of features. Just experiment to find what works best for you.

As a Buyer who is waiting for a particular item or just wanting to know when your Favorite Seller lists new items there are a couple of ways to subscribe to an RSS feed that will keep you informed. If the seller has an eBay Store and has enabled his RSS feed (more on that later) you can just scroll to the bottom of any store page and click on the RSS button. If the seller does not have an eBay Store, you can add them as a “Favorite Seller” or do an advanced search for items just from that seller and then use the RSS button at the bottom of the search results page. This can be done for any type of search, by the way.

As a Seller, if you have an eBay Store you must turn on your RSS feed before your buyers can subscribe to it. If you go to Manage My Store, you will see on the left, in the Marketing Tools section, under Store Marketing is Listing Feeds. When you go into Listing Feeds you will need to choose the radio button for “Activate your Store Inventory listings via RSS” and click apply. Once activated, a RSS button will appear at the bottom of your eBay Store pages. If you do not have a store just have your buyers add you as a Favorite Seller and they can subscribe to a feed from your item listing page.

Now you can keep up to date with your Favorite Sellers and your buyers will know when you list new items.

Have Fun!
Mike

The 2 biggest questions you must have answered if you want to run a profitable internet business are..

1. What do I sell?

and

2. Where do I get it?

It doesn’t matter if you sell on eBay, Yahoo stores, or your own website. Finding hot products to sell is something you’ll always have to do for your business. I know companies who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year just to source products.

You don’t have to do that.

Worldwide Brands will handle the heavy lifting of product sourcing for you and let you concentrate on growing your business.

If you don’t already know who Worldwide Brands is, let me tell you about them…

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Everyday, many eBay seller use these and other acronyms in their Auction Titles thinking that they are providing the most information in the least amount of space. On the one hand, they are, at least to the buyers who know the meaning of these groups of letters. To many buyers though, they are just confusing. I’m not saying that sellers shouldn’t use them. There are a lot of savvy buyers out there searching for these terms. I am just saying that for new buyers, a little help may be needed.

Whenever I have three spaces left after filling my auction title with keywords (another subject entirely), I will add “NR” at the end if it is a “No Reserve Auction”. Several times I have had people email me asking about the meaning of the “NR”. I usually respond by telling them it means “No Reserve” and apologize for the confusion. I am considering adding the explanation to my listings where I state it is a No Reserve Auction.

Now back to the title of this post. Do you know the meaning of all of the acronyms? Are there others that you use frequently? Maybe there are some you could be using to save space but didn’t even know about. You can find more information about these and more on the eBay Acronyms page.

Go, decipher.

Have Fun!
Mike

UPDATE:

2008 eBay Hall of Fame winners, Uncle Joe Adamson and Danna Crawford have recently written a book listing all these acronyms in a handy desk reference called Words For Auction.

At the time of this update, Danna is donating a portion of the selling price to First Book.

eBay calls Feedback “your permanent reputation as an eBay member” and it is a valuable tool to be used both before and after your transaction on eBay. You can get an Overview of Feedback on the eBay site. Below are my thoughts on how to use Feedback to your benefit.

Before the Transaction

As a Buyer: You should always check a sellers feedback before buying from them for the first time. Even if they have 100% positive you should read the comments and look at what was sold before making your decision to buy or bid on an item. The new Detailed Seller Ratings give more information to consider as well. If a Seller has less than 100%, it is even more important to read the comments and check the DSR. Check the Recent Feedback Comments box and look for the number of Negative and Neutral Feedback and when it happened. If it was over 1 month ago it may no longer be relevant but you can still look for the comment. Sellers with high scores will take longer to go through, but at the bottom of the page you can choose to view up to 200 comments at a time so that can help speed up the process.
Once you find the Negative comment read it and determine whether or not it was justified. As we all know there are some folks out there who will leave Negatives just for spite. (You can go one step further and look at the feedback for the person who left the Negative. Do they leave Negatives frequently or is this an isolated incident.) Did the seller reply to the Negative Feedback? How did they handle it? Sometimes you can learn more about a seller by his reply to a Negative comment than from the Negative itself.

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Welcome to eBay eBiz Tips! A new PartyVegetable blog to help you succeed on eBay and other online ventures.