Figuring out eBay's Search System aka Making Money on eBay Step 2

Hello again! I bet you thought I forgot to post the next step in my series on making money on eBay by starting an eBay business, right? Fooled ya, didn't I?

So anyway, moving on, after you've gotten all of your accounts set up, I know you're going to be super-excited and ramped up, ready to take on the world (and by that, I mean "ready to start selling on eBay").  

BUT...take a deep breath or two, tell yourself to slow down a bit, and remind yourself that nothing in life comes easy, and that if you don't take the time to learn HOW to sell profitably and successfully on eBay first, you could stand to lose a LOT of time and money in trial and error and statistically, will likely give up long before you find long-term, stable success selling on eBay.

And in my experience, one of the most important, fundamental concepts you need to learn as soon as possible is the fascinating yet confusing eBay search system.  If you can master eBay search, you'll be well on your way towards knowing how to be successful on eBay and towards understanding internet search as well.

TASK #2 - LEARN ABOUT EBAY SEARCH

To help you get started with eBay Search, here's eBay's (very) basic Help page on Search:

Finding Items

In a nutshell (sort of), the main thing to remember is that searching on eBay is one of the most important concepts to understand in order to sell successfully on the site.  Only when you understand how most buyers search for things can you list your items in such a way that they will appear prominently in the search results. This, in turn, will give you a much better chance of selling successfully.

A couple of years ago, I was putting together a comprehensive eBay training program for a former employer, including making training videos, and I filmed no less than NINE VIDEOS regarding eBay Search before my boss finally cut me off and told me I didn't need to go into such detail regarding one single aspect of eBay.  Needless to say, he wasn't an eBay seller himself.

Important Aspects of eBay Search 

Here are what I consider to be the five most important aspects of eBay Search (for sellers, at least):

1. Keywords
2. Categories and Item Specifics
3. Product Information/Catalog
4. Sorting
5. Best Match 

Keyword Search vs. Category Search

The two basic types of searching on eBay are keyword searches and category searches. It's important that you understand both types, since both types are used frequently.  Be aware, however, that the majority of eBay buyers use keyword searches, so you should place a greater emphasis there.   

You can perform a keyword search by typing a few keywords into any search field on eBay, especially the main search field at the top of the eBay home page. You can perform a category search by clicking on any of the main eBay categories in (or from) the left column of the eBay home page at eBay.com.

After you perform an initial keyword or category search, there are several ways you can narrow down the search results even further by selecting various options in the left column of any search results page, which we refer to as Item Specifics (Refine Search) and eBay filters (Preferences). This is known as filtering the search results. 

To help you become even more familiar with these 5 aspects, here are some articles I wrote that were published online about a year ago:

Mastering eBay Search Part 1

Mastering eBay Search Part 2

And for additional information on how to filter, sort and customize eBay search results, visit the following page:

Managing Results

Advanced Search 

The last eBay Search concept I'd like to address here is Advanced Search.  eBay has an Advanced Search feature on the site to enable people to perform even more specific and targeted searches than the standard keyword and category searches that are used most commonly to find things on eBay.  

Advanced Search can also be used to find:

• All of a particular seller's items
• All of a particular buyer's recent bids and purchases
• Particular eBay stores and items within eBay stores
• Someone's User Id (when you only have their email address)
• Someone's contact information, if you're currently involved in a transaction with that person

You can get to the Advanced Search page on eBay by clicking the link that says "Advanced" to the right of the main search field at the top of the eBay home page. 

Advanced Search isn't as crucial as Basic search in helping you understand how eBay buyers search, because most people don't use it. However, it can be extremely helpful to you in managing your eBay business. 

It can help you find information on other eBay sellers and buyers, obtain contact information for other eBay buyers and sellers with whom you may be involved in a transaction, and much more. 

That's it for now, folks -- see you in Step 3!

Breaking eBay Ground aka Making Money on eBay Step 1

As promised, here’s the first step in my new series on making money on eBay by starting an eBay business.    

For those of you who’ve already started building your eBay foundation, these first few steps will be either a good review or insanely boring, however you want to look at them.  But if it’s any consolation, my next series will be more advanced, okay?  

The reason I’m starting from scratch is that I’ve learned over the years is that it’s much better to give people too much information than not enough!  And when it comes to making money on eBay, oftentimes the more information you can acquire, the better.  

Plus, for those of you who may be feeling slightly (or massively?) overwhelmed at the thought of starting an eBay business, you can complete this first step very easily and will hopefully feel pumped up at the thought of continuing this process and pushing through to the end.

Another little tidbit I’ve learned from years of coaching people on starting and improving their online businesses is that your attitude is EVERYTHING -- it’s the WHOLE ball of wax.  I don’t care how much or how little you know about the internet already, about ecommerce, business, marketing, accounting, or even computers. All of that can be taught.

What CANNOT be taught is determination, optimism, tenacity, and endurance.  And those qualities right there almost always determine who succeeds at this and who doesn’t.  I have helped elderly people who started out knowing absolutely NOTHING about computers create and build thriving, successful eBay businesses, websites, and affiliate blogs, and all they had when they started was the determination to succeed, the endurance to never give up, and the optimism to believe they could do it.

So if you consider yourself to have most or all of these qualities, by all means, keep reading!  Because now we get to the “all of that can be taught” part!

TASK #1 - JOIN, JOIN, JOIN!

Ok, now here’s what I meant about starting off very easily -- the first step in starting an eBay business, in making money on eBay, is to join the club(s), dude!

By that I mean, “Get out there and sign up already!”  Sign up on eBay, PayPal, and Gmail, for starters.  You need ALL 3 OF THESE ACCOUNTS, and this will gradually become clear to you as you go along.  In the meantime, trust me! :)

Signing up for all 3 of these accounts should be very easy and straightforward, but if you run into any difficulty, don’t hesitate for one instant to contact customer support on each of these websites -- that’s what they are there for!

The steps to making money on eBay by starting an eBay business aren’t always going to be this easy, so enjoy this one while you’re doing it!

Here are just a few helpful tips to (seriously) consider while joining the “clubs”:

1. Sign up for a PayPal Premier account, NOT a Personal account.  eBay won’t allow you to sell items on its website unless you can accept ALL forms of PayPal payments, credit cards as well as bank accounts, and you can’t accept credit card payments through PayPal unless you have a Premier account.
2. Be smart and forward-thinking when coming up with both your Gmail email address name as well as your eBay User ID.  Don’t use your first and/or last names, don’t use the word “eBay” (it’s not allowed), and don’t use the obscure combination of letters and numbers eBay and Google might suggest for you -- it will most likely be way too forgettable.  Think advertising, folks, think marketing -- come up with a professional business-sounding email address and eBay User ID.  Just don’t choose the same name for both, though -- that can be a security risk.
3. One very easy way to come up with a cool Gmail or eBay username is to take your initials and add something like “enterprises” or “ventures” to the end of it.  It works really well.
4. If, in a moment of weakness, you lose yourself and select a Gmail username and/or eBay User ID that is NOT ideal, don’t beat yourself up about it.  You can always open a new Gmail account, and you’re only locked into your eBay User ID for 30 days.

Have at it, younglings! I'll see you all on the other side (or when I post the next step)!

Welcome to eBay from the Ground Up!

So I would LOVE to post articles on here a lot more frequently, at least once a week or more, but sometimes it's difficult to always come up with new articles that are eBaysian or ecommercian enough to justify posting here.  

So instead, what I'm going to do, starting with my next post, is take you through my own, homemade, comprehensive, FANTASTIC eBay training course I like to call "eBay from the Ground Up!".

Each post will be one step in the process, and once I've finished posting all of the steps, you should have EVERYTHING you could possibly need to start and maintain a fabulous, extremely profitable, successful eBay business, and be on your way towards expanding from eBay as well, towards creating and maintaining a profitable, successful WEBSITE, and maybe even also a profitable, successful AFFILIATE BLOG too!

ENJOY!! 

Confessions of an eBay Top Seller Account Manager aka TSAM

I worked at eBay for 6 1/2 years.   The week before I started working there, in May 2002, I registered on eBay for the first time.  So I came to work knowing next to nothing about eBay, but after just 4 weeks of training, I was thrown into the fire, so to speak.  I was put into Live Chat almost immediately, and out of necessity, I learned about eBay very, very quickly.  

I learned it so well, in fact, that most of my co-workers and even my supervisors started acknowledging me as a bonafide eBay expert.  I prided myself on knowing eBay like the back of my hand, and it paid off.   

I had been at eBay less than a year when I was asked to train incoming classes of new employees, and then to join the internal employee support line, where eBay employees could turn to find the answers to convey to eBay users who were emailing, chatting or calling in for help.  

After a year of doing that, I was promoted to the Seller Outreach team, where I worked for another year proactively contacting low- to medium-volume Powersellers and helping them increase their sales and activity on eBay.  

On the Seller Outreach team, I had the opportunity of attending several trade shows, covering everything from industrial supply to musical instruments.  I also went to the first of 3 eBay Live (now called "eBay On Location" conventions I would end up attending during my tenure at eBay.  

But most importantly, in the process of contacting and speaking with hundreds of Powersellers, I began learning even more about selling on eBay, especially from the perspectives of its sellers.   

After a year on the Seller Outreach team, I became a member of the fairly-new Top Seller Account Management (TSAM) team.  I was assigned to personally manage and assist 218 of the top 1% of eBay sellers, all of whom were generating at least $25,000 a month in sales on eBay.   

I spent my last 3 years at eBay as a TSAM, and was able to help my sellers make even more money, as well as improve everything from their listings, search exposure, and policy compliance, to their marketing efforts both on and off eBay, their overall business strategories, and their expansion plans for their businesses.

The more I learned about my sellers and the secrets of their success, the better position I was in to assist them, since try as they might, most of them had trouble keeping up with 50% of what they should be learning about eBay.   

I continued to make a name for myself as an eBay guru among all of the Account Managers, and attended 2 more eBay Live conventions, meeting one-on-one with many of my own sellers as well as working in the Seller Scalability Center, performing on-demand eBay listing and store analyses for sellers who waited up to several hours for the privilege of our advice and expertise.

As time went on, I realized that, while I continued making more and more money for my sellers, I wasn’t seeing much of it myself.  Don’t get me wrong -- eBay could be generous at times, when it suited their purpose.   

In the early days of Seller Outreach, they were practically throwing money at us.  But as eBay’s explosive growth and overall traffic began to plateau in 2005-06, things slimmed down for us employees as well.  No more stock options, less traveling, and fewer opportunities for advancement.

So when I left eBay in October 2008, I realized that everything I had learned working eBay could be really valuable, not just to the Top Sellers who were already doted upon by their TSAMs, but to anyone and everyone who wants to be successful on eBay.  After all, there were a lot of things I had learned over the years that most sellers never find out.

Now that I’m no longer beholden to eBay’s well-known mystery and secrecy, I’m more than happy to share a few of the interesting tidbits I acquired over the years.  Not all of them will move mountains for you -- some of them are simply amusing.  But hey, we all need some entertainment from time to time, don’t we?
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Confessions of an eBay TSAM

1. eBay Account Managers are glorified firefighters --Ideally, eBay Account Managers are supposed to focus on analyzing their sellers’ businesses and helping them grow and scale them.   But obviously, it’s impossible to help a seller improve their eBay sales if they’re suspended.    And most of my sellers were often in danger of being suspended.  

So I spent the bulk of my time putting out fires, trying to help my sellers avoid getting suspended.   You would think that high-volume eBay sellers would be too savvy to get trapped by minor issues like eBay violations, but in actuality, eBay policies are the bane of their existence.

From keyword spamming to links violations, VeRO trademark infringement, shill bidding and even fraud on occasion, I felt like a schoolteacher, slapping my sellers’ wrists all day long, bending over backwards trying to prevent them from being suspended.   

Many of my sellers complied with policies on the basis of how much it would cost them in sales to comply with a particular policy.  If it was too much, they would freely break the policy until it was no longer cost-effective to do so, i.e. until they were threatened with suspension for multiple violations.

And then there were that handful of upper-echelon sellers, the ones that were so big it seemed no one could touch them.   I remember walking through one of the departments in Trust and Safety and seeing the following sign posted on everyone’s desks (name slightly changed to protect the guilty): “NO TOUCHY JOHN CHANG”.   You can imagine what that meant....

The easiest and best way to avoid receiving violations is to become  intimately familiar with eBay’s policies. 

There are several Trust and  Safety tutorials you can take regarding some of the most important policies on the site, and you should spend some time reviewing the  eBay Security Center at least once a week to keep updated on the latest policy changes.   

2. Segmentation - How eBay Cracked Down on Sellers - In about 2005-06, eBay conducted a huge study to try and figure out why almost half of their buyers had left the site.  To no one’s surprise, buyers spoke up and revealed how sick they were of getting ripped off, getting sent the wrong item or a poorly-counterfeited one, and after all of that, getting retaliatory negative feedback for their trouble.   

One of the surveys eBay conducted found that over half of all eBay sellers (52%, to be exact) admitted to leaving retaliatory negative feedback for buyers on a regular basis, while only 6% of buyers did so.

As a result, eBay decided they needed to act quickly and severely, and oh boy, did they ever.  They proudly introduced “segmentation”, in which sellers would be grouped into different groups, or segments, based primarily on their feedback scores, disputes, and DSRs (Detailed Seller Ratings), in proportion to their overall transactions, to see who the worst offenders were and get rid of them while putting the fear of God into all the others.  

Well, the main problem with this “ingenious” plan was that it left little wiggle room for common sense or understanding.   Some sellers were so large that they remained safe from suspension, even though they had dozens of negative feedback comments, low DSRs and buyer disputes on their accounts all the time.  

Yet other sellers were getting taken down for having just 2-3 negative feedback comments within a 6-month period, due to their overall sales numbers being smaller than other sellers.

During that time, I dreaded coming into work and finding out which of my sellers had been placed into Segments C or D, the “worst offenders” among sellers, since that meant I would have to call them and warn them how close they were to being suspended.

Although I have reason to believe that eBay’s segmentation program has loosened up somewhat in the past 2 years, it is still extremely important to avoid negative feedback, low DSRs, and buyer disputes at all costs.
 
Be kind, generous, and honest with your buyers, and go the extra mile to satisfy them.  Be flexible, negotiable, and responsive, and make your policies equally so, and you should never have a problem with segmentation.

3. The Excessive Shipping Dilemma - Before eBay began enforcing shipping costs, they had gotten out of control on the site.  It was a normal occurrence to see an expensive cell phone listed for 1-cent Buy It Now, but with a shipping cost of $299.  Not only were these listings extremely misleading and deceptive buyers, but they were considered to be violations of eBay’s Fee Circumvention policy, since sellers were making all their profit from the shipping charges, which weren’t subject to eBay fees.  

So at first, it seemed like good news when eBay began regulating how much sellers could charge for shipping.   The problem, though, is that once again, eBay tried to apply a strict, one-size-fits-all policy to a very large and diverse group of sellers, and many problems ensued.   

Just as they did with segmentation, eBay set up very strict guidelines and rules for the excessive shipping policy.   They researched shipping costs across USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. to the penny, and oftentimes, if a seller charged even one cent over the allowed amount to ship a particular item, eBay would take the listing down.

One major problem, though, is that once again, the policy was applied unevenly.  Smaller sellers were getting auctions removed left and right for having shipping costs that were only a few cents over the established limit for the type of item being shipped, while the policy didn’t apply to multiple-quantity purchases at all.  

Therefore, while sellers were limited to charging no more than $10.70 to ship one cell phone, for example, they were allowed to charge $107 to ship 10 cell phones, which of course is ridiculously expensive and excessive.  

Additionally, the excessive shipping policy wasn’t applied to international shipping costs, so while sellers had to be careful with their U.S. shipping costs, they could charge basically whatever they wanted for international shipping.  

Now to be clear, I don’t know if the policy is still being enforced this way, but it was up until I left eBay in October 2008.

In short, the best way to handle shipping costs and comply with eBay’s Excessive Shipping policy is to keep these costs completely separate from your profit calculations.  

In other words, don’t try to make any money from shipping charges, and stick to eBay’s requirement of only charging actual postage plus a couple of dollars for handling/packaging materials.   

Not only will this keep you in full compliance with eBay’s policies, but you’ll benefit greatly through happier, repeat buyers, higher DSRs and much less likelihood of suffering from buyer complaints and disputes as well as negative or neutral feedback.

4. Gaming The System - One of the most disturbing issues I encountered while working at eBay was how freely some eBay sellers engaged in underhanded and unfair tactics to sustain their sales activity on the site.  Instead of spending their time coming up with new, creative ways to market their products and promote their listings, many sellers made it their primary marketing tactic to try and get as many of their competitors suspended as possible.  Some of them would spend countless hours scouring their rivals’ listings looking for violations they could report; occasionally they would even ask us to submit these reports on their behalf.

One very large seller had a program created that would automatically report hundreds of a seller’s listings every few seconds, causing him to be able to bring down the entire inventory of many of his competitors within a day or less, sometimes for something as simple as a stray keyword in an item description that didn’t relate 100% to the item being sold.   

Once he happened upon a small violation in one of my seller’s listings, and was able to get all 50,000 of the seller’s listings pulled down within a few hours.

These sellers spread negativity and distrust among the entire eBay community, and nothing good ever came out of their efforts to hurt other sellers.   There’s one seller in particular (let's call him "Grey Gilson") who I will never forget, so vicious were his efforts to get his main competitor suspended.  

Grey and his competitor both sold Airstream trailers, and he contacted me at least 2-3 times a week for a period of over 2 years, writing massively long emails containing dozens of accusations, assumptions, and judgements he had made about his competitor.   He also faxed in over 100 pages to us on one occasion for the same purpose.

The last straw for me came when he sent me an email claiming that he had researched his competitor online and had found out that this man was a convicted sex offender in the state of Florida.   

He sent me a 10-page treatise via email explaining why this man should be suspended from eBay due to him being a convicted sex offender.  I mean, seriously.... 

Anyway, after I received this email, I told the seller that I could no longer take time out of my schedule to review his accusations about other sellers, and that I would only help him engage in positive, beneficial marketing techniques for his business.

This should be a no-brainer, but anyone who wants to engage in this type of behavior doesn’t belong on eBay, in my opinion.  There are enough of us who truly believe in the main ideas on which eBay was founded, that people are basically good, and that an open and honest trading environment brings out the best in people -- eBay doesn’t need people who don’t support those tenets.   

Although in the past there have been some extremely large, high-volume sellers who have profited greatly from their unethical behavior on eBay, most of them are long gone, and I assure you with 100% certainty, based on my own firsthand knowledge and experience, that the vast majority of top sellers are honest, fair, cooperative, and responsible, and that these sellers have been even more profitable than the sellers who don’t play fair.   

5. Problem Buyers - Although I’ve encountered many eBay sellers engaging in unethical and unfair practices and behavior, I’m the first to admit that eBay has its fair share of bad buyers as well, and they should be mentioned as well.

While I agree with eBay’s policy to no longer allow sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers, there are still many areas in which buyers can manipulate sellers unfairly and hurt their businesses with virtually no compunction.

Malicious bidding is one of the most insidious ways buyers can hurt sellers, and many times, these “buyers” are actually sellers themselves, and are often direct competitors of the sellers they’re harrassing.
  
They set up separate buying accounts on eBay, solely for the purpose of buying a few items from each of their main competitors so they can then leave negative feedback, file disputes, and wreak all sorts of other havoc with their competitors.  

What’s scary is that, if they’re careful about it and aren’t blatantly obvious about who they are and what they’re trying to do, they can often get away with it.         

Malicious bidding is extremely difficult to prove, since it’s so easy to make it appear like the purchases, concerns, claims, and/or negative feedback in question are legitimate.  

If you’re the victim of malicious bidding, the best thing you can do is to be very aggressive about adding unwelcome bidders to your Blocked Bidder list, maintain strict buyer requirements, and be dogged about contacting eBay over and over again until something is done about the situation.    

At the same time, though, realize that action most likely won’t be taken unless there’s clear evidence of malicious intent on the part of the buyers, so collect as much evidence as you can to submit to eBay.

Along with malicious bidding, many sellers are still beset by non-paying bidders, unfair negative feedback, and buyers who make unfair demands and/or threats.  

As far as non-paying bidders are concerned, the best thing to do, again, is to maintain very strict buyer requirements and to require immediate payment on ALL of your fixed-price items.  

And now that you can open an unpaid item dispute after only 4 days and close it after 8, it should be much easier to minimize the negative effects of non-payment.  

Now it’s true that non-paying bidders can still leave negative or neutral feedback in some situations, unless they fail to respond appropriately to unpaid item disputes, so I’ve found that it works best for me to be very assertive about trying to contact the buyer before filing an unpaid item dispute, but then cease trying to contact them in any way after filing it.  

By then, I’ve accepted that they’re probably not going to pay for the item, so at this point, the best thing for me to do is to “go silent” and hope that the dispute is opened and closed without their awareness or response to it.  That way, if they leave negative or neutral feedback for me after the fact, eBay will remove it.

When buyers make unfair demands or threats, I do everything in my power to take the high road and try to resolve their concerns to their satisfaction.  I bite my tongue and “kill them with kindness”, no matter how mean they are to me.  And if they still end up leaving negative or neutral feedback, at least I know I did everything I could to prevent it.   

Once the feedback has been left, I suggest immediately requesting feedback revision, but if that doesn’t work, at that point, you have to just let it go.   If you don’t, it can have a long-term negative impact on your reputation and even your success and profitability on eBay going forward.   

Specifically, I’m referring to what happens when a seller tries to lash out at a buyer by leaving angry, insulting feedback replies and/or follow-up comments, or by writing a negative comment while selecting a positive rating, which is incidentally another violation of eBay policy and will probably result in eBay removing the feedback comment.

Most sellers I’ve worked with never realize how horrible it makes them look to other eBay buyers when they post a rude, angry feedback reply or follow-up comment.  It won’t do much if anything to hurt the buyer in question, but it could possibly do a lot to hurt your future sales.   Whenever someone looks at those angry replies on your Feedback profile, the fact that you received a negative feedback comment won’t be nearly as important as how childishly and angrily you responded to it.  

Believe me, the best way you can minimize the potentially harmful impact of a negative feedback comment is to post a reply to it that is nothing short of saintly, something like this: “I’m so very sorry you were unhappy with this transaction.  Please contact me -- I want to resolve this for you!”

In closing, I want to say that I know for a fact that most eBay employees do indeed care about and genuinely want to help eBay users, both buyers and sellers.  I personally know hundreds of them who work long hours doing their best to help them.   

Sure, they’re not perfect, and neither are eBay’s policies nor management, but they truly and honestly care deeply for the success and well-being of their sellers, and they do everything possible to help their sellers succeed.   
 
When something negative happens to them on eBay, a lot of sellers are quick to not only blame eBay for it, but even worse, to quickly conclude that eBay intended to hurt them, doesn’t care about them, is out to hurt all of their sellers, etc., when that couldn’t be further from the truth.  

If anyone has any solid evidence to the contrary, I would be more than happy to review it and comment on it, but so far, I’ve never seen any evidence that eBay intentionally hurts or disregards its sellers, or that eBay doesn’t care for their sellers or their success.

And by solid evidence, I don’t mean one or two random one-off instances where eBay has made a mistake, but solid, concrete data proving that eBay doesn’t care about or has deliberately and intentionally hurt large, significant numbers of their sellers.

I no longer work at eBay, so I have no reason to be biased in their favor.  I love eBay because I KNOW from my own experience that it’s a great place to buy and sell, with great employees who care very deeply and work very hard on behalf of its sellers.