Whether you sell on eBay, Amazon or your own eCommerce site, it is time to prepare for the Holidays. Do you know what products you will be selling this holiday season? What trends will drive more sales? When consumers will start shopping online for their holiday gifts?

Wordwide Brands and What Do I Sell™ have teamed up to bring you an informative video to help you prepare for your Holiday selling season and it starts sooner than you think. In a recent poll, 69% of consumers said they would start their holiday shopping online on September! Get the information you need to boost your sales by watching Part 1 of the 2008 Holiday Trends Video today.

Have Fun,
Mike

In today’s news from eBay, Lorrie Norrington made the  announcement that they are responding to the concerns of the Community about Feedback and are making more changes. Starting in late August, Feedback scores will be recalculated without Neutrals. Powersellers who fall below the 98% minimum in the meantime will not lose their status. Also, Buyers will be able to revise negative feedback left for sellers if the seller rectifies a problem afterward. Brian Burke gives more details in the Feedback Forum

To help sellers protect their reputation, new measures have been put in place for Buyer accountability including;

• New Buyer Requirements
• New Seller Reporting Hub
• Enhanced Protection for Unpaid Item
• Proactively looking for abuse and taking action against it
• Communication reminder
• Removal of negative and neutral Feedback from suspended buyers

To get all the details, just follow the links above.

I will go into more detail on the Seller Reporting Hub in another post.

Have fun!
Mike

Recently on Multichannel Surfer Steve Lindhorst wrote an article called “I won $35,000 of product on eBay while I slept” where he details how he remedied his eBay and PayPal account takeovers along with his Gmail and Amazon Seller accounts.

One thing that most likely would have prevented the eBay and PayPal takeovers in the first place is the PayPal Security Key. The Security Key is a small key chain sized device that provides an extra layer of secuity by generating a temporary six digit number to be used in conjunction with your user name and password when logging in to PayPal and can also be used on eBay. I signed up for mine over a year ago when they were first announced and have used it ever since. The only drawback, if you can even call it one, is that eBay has you log in again so many times when doing certain things or visiting certain areas and you have to add the six digit code each time.

PayPal was giving them away last year at eBay Live!, but they only cost $5.00, which is basically covering shipping and handling, so don’t wait till June to see if they give them away again.

To find out more, watch a video demo and order your Security Key visit the PayPal Security Key page.

Have Fun!
Mike

Last week, on April 01, 2008, Stephanie Tilenius, Senior VP & General Manager for eBay North America Marketplaces announced the release of ProStores 9.0 and a special offer for eBay Stores sellers. If you have an eBay Store you can open a ProStores Starter Store with no monthly fee through September 2008. Plus, when the monthly fees do kick in, eBay Stores sellers get 30% off the regular monthly subscription rates.

It is really easy to get set up. I opened my PartyVegetable ProStore in just a few minutes. In fact, Janelle Elms, Visionaire of OSI Rock Stars put together a step-by-step video showing just how easy it is

Even if you do not have an eBay Store you can get 1 month free to try out all the great features of the new ProStores 9.0. Just click the banner below.

Have Fun!
Mike

I just posted a comment on Andy Sernovitz’s post “The Little Things Matter #2″ and thought I would expand on it here. Why not, I don’t post enough here anyway.

When Andy spoke to the Education Specialists the day before eBay Live last year in Boston. The one thing I took and implemented right away was giving the customer something extra and unexpected. I began adding a little treat to each package I sent out.
Usually either a Tootsie Pop or 2 pieces of Bazooka Joe bubble gum. I get them at the dollar store and they cost less than 10 cents each. I started getting comments about them in my Feedback, so I kept it up. Until I ran out and kept forgetting to go back to the dollar store.

When eBay made the changes recently and tied PowerSeller Rewards to DSR ratings, I knew I needed to raise my Shipping and Handling score from 4.7 to 4.8 or above to get the 15% discount on fees. I went back to the dollar store and bought more Tootsie Pops. I also made a Thank You card template that I could attach to the Tootsie Pop and write a little note to the buyer. I have started getting comments again about the treat and the notes, so I can’t wait for the PowerSeller Dashboard to get here so I can see if my ratings have gone up enough for my 30 day score to be over 4.8.

What little things do you do for your customer? If you don’t do anything now, what can you think of to start doing to make yourself “Remarkable”.

Have Fun!
Mike

2008 is quickly shaping up to be a banner year for changes at eBay. The biggest being at the top. On January 23rd, eBay announced that CEO Meg Whitman will be stepping down at the end of March with Marketplaces President John Donahoe taking over. PayPal’s Rajiv Dutta will move into Mr. Donahoe’s slot with more shuffling going on down the line. Meg Whitman wrote a nice message to eBayers on the Announcement Board. I met Meg at eBay Livee 2007 in Boston, and found her to be very kind.

The week before brought the announcement of a re-launch of the eBay Trading Assistant Program. eBay Sr. Marketing Manager, Sharon Guldner and American Research Institiute (ARI), the team behind the amazing success of the eBay Education Specialist Program, are working their magic and bringing many changes and new features to the program (I will add details in a separate post). Because of the success of the Education Specialists, eBay will no longer hold the eBay University classes that had been traveling around the U.S.

If you listen to eBay Radio with Griff, you know he has been hinting at other changes to come, including one concerning Feedback. With so many changes coming early in the year, I can’t wait to find out what announcements are made at eBay Live in Chicago.

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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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.