Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Wel­come to my second instal­ment of “Hints & Tips For Selling on eBay”. I bet you thought it was never com­ing, you were wrong.

In the first post, I covered the ins-and-outs of using PayPal to your utmost advant­age when selling and the best ways to make your auc­tion list­ings rock. In this post, I aim to cover free and easy ways of mak­ing you and your list­ing stand out, Seller-Buyer com­mu­nic­a­tion and how get the most out of P&P for both you and your buyers.

Hints & Tips For Selling on eBay [Continued]

Selling on eBay works in the same way as selling any­where else: Not only are people more likely to buy from retail­ers that appear pro­fes­sional, con­sist­ent and well run, but it could also be argued that they are more likely to trust and (more import­antly) return to recognisable/familiar brands.

You don’t have to be a weighty con­glom­er­ate to form a recog­nis­able iden­tity on eBay, you don’t even have to fork out monthly premi­ums for an eBay “shop front” or sign up to com­plex third-party ser­vices. A little bit of time, con­sist­ency and ingenu­ity can go a long way to estab­lish your­self as a reput­able and recog­nis­able part of the eBay com­munity and it could just be enough to set you apart from other sellers. After all, if 3 people are all selling the same thing at com­par­able prices with sim­ilar feed­back, who would you pick? Chances are, it’s going to come down to how exper­i­enced and pro­fes­sional the sellers and their list­ings appear. You might only be buy­ing 5 quid’s worth of table lamp, but at the end of the day, it’s your hard-earned cash you’re part­ing with — you want to make sure that you’re in with the best chance of hav­ing a smooth, hassle-free trans­ac­tion and your new lamp arriv­ing promptly and prefer­ably in one piece.

Don’t just be noticed, be recog­nised

The biggest ele­ment of your iden­tity on eBay is your user­name, so choose wisely. “Wendy_B_59784″ might very well be avail­able or work fine in an AOL chat­room, but it doesn’t really give an idea of what you sell, who you are (other than pos­sibly being named Wendy?) and it cer­tainly isn’t going to be remembered for future use. “CarParts_UK”, “BabyBits4U” or “Manchester­Music” on the other hand, are all both inform­at­ive and memorable.

Not selling any­thing spe­cific? Just odds and sods around your house? That’s fine, that’s what eBay is all about! Why not try some­thing like: “Dads_Shed”, “RobandTracysLoft” or “Box­Room­Buys”? You can use your reg­u­lar online handles, but I only recom­mend it if you are either very pro­lific online or have a handle that is decent, eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able, mem­or­able and prefer­ably without a string of num­bers or spe­cial char­ac­ters (e.g. “PinkEle­phant”, “FairyB­log­Mother” etc). If you have a cack user­name, but have an eBay account already with feed­back that you don’t want to lose, don’t worry. eBay allows you to change your user­name in the “My Account” sec­tion of “My eBay”. Easy-peasy!

Using con­sist­ent graph­ics, colour-scheme, logos and imagery through­out will also help to cre­ate a recog­nis­able a sense of iden­tity and a pres­ence unique to you. Key places to tar­get, play with and cus­tom­ise are:

• Your auction/Buy It Now list­ings. You could pay extra for a crap bor­der around the edge (cour­tesy of the ser­vices provided by eBay), you could even sign up to a naff third-party carry-on and choose a tem­plate that squil­lions of other people have. OR, you can school your­self in a bit of basic (X)HTML and CSS and cre­ate list­ings that truly reflect your seller iden­tity. Even bet­ter, you can go online, find your nearest web-design-knowledge-enabled-blogger (i.e. ME!) and ask them to do it. You get a cool list­ing tem­plate, I get some­thing pretty to put in my port­fo­lio! Win-win!
• Your page. eBay lets you cre­ate an “About Me” page, or as they call it on eBay: a page. This page is very import­ant as once you have one, the “me” icon is forever vis­ible wherever your user­name appears and click­ing it will always take a user straight to your page. It is your one per­man­ent “home” on eBay, remain­ing vis­ible and access­ible regard­less of whether you have any list­ings cur­rently live. As a res­ult, most users opt to treat their “me” page like a store front/advertisement/T&Cs page all in one; advert­ising who they are, what they do, what they sell and the con­di­tions under which each sale is made.Like your list­ings, they can be fully cus­tom­ised using (X)HTML, CSS and a vari­ety of “spe­cial” eBay-specific HTML tags, so why not model your page using the look and feel of your list­ings for greater con­sist­ency? (Or get me to do it…)
• Emails. Let the user-experience extend bey­ond the con­fines of eBay and into inboxes via “End of Auc­tion” and “Invoice/Payment” emails. eBay offers the abil­ity to cus­tom­ise the emails (that get auto­mat­ic­ally gen­er­ated and sent) to buy­ers with your own logo and brand­ing. Simply visit My eBay > Mar­ket­ing > Logos and Brand­ing sec­tion on eBay to spe­cify both the logo and a cus­tom message(s) that you wish to use.
• Pack­ing slips and Postal Paraphernalia. Should you have decided to use PayPal as a pay­ment method when selling (see PART 1 as to why I think this is a good idea), you may have noticed that PayPal provide a nifty little facil­ity that lets you print out handy pack­ing slips with all the trans­ac­tions details put together neatly. Bless. Handy as this is, it doesn’t carry on your brand­ing efforts. Why not print the PayPal pack­ing slip onto headed paper you’ve made that has your eBay logo/username on it? Or if that takes too much re-jigging to get it to line-up right, cre­ate a Word tem­plate with your header/gubbins on it and just copy-and-paste the con­tents of the pack­ing slip onto the tem­plate and press “Print”. Magic!
  Buy­ers on eBay make lots of dif­fer­ent pur­chases from lots of dif­fer­ent people. Pro­lific buy­ers tend to not really keep track of who sent what and what the service/buying exper­i­ence was really like from each indi­vidual seller, which then res­ults in the same muddy, mediocre, non-committal feed­back given to every­one regard­less. It’s not exactly fair, but it’s pretty unavoid­able if you buy reg­u­larly on eBay. For the most part, only the neg­at­ive exper­i­ences seem to stand out and I think that’s sad. Make your item really stand out to your buyer when the Post­man knocks, make sure that they remem­ber to asso­ci­ate the prompt and well-packed deliv­ery spe­cific­ally with you. How? Cus­tom­ise your pack­ing sup­plies. It doesn’t have to be any more expens­ive than reg­u­lar sup­plies, just be ori­ginal and shop around. For example, the col­our pink is key to my eBay iden­tity, so I always use pink bubble-wrap and pink poly­thene mail­ing bags when pack­aging my items and always tell my buy­ers to be on the look-out for the hot-pink par­cel is on its way. The buy­ers are then more vigil­ant when the post arrives and know that they have received their eBay pur­chase from me before they’ve even unpacked it. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s a fun, cre­at­ive way of mak­ing a state­ment and buy­ers always com­ment on it.

Talk your buy­ers through­out the process

If I had a pound for each time I’d bought some­thing on eBay and not heard a squeak until the item fell on my doormat no less than 3 weeks later with not even so much as an explan­a­tion, I’d have enough wedge to give Pais­ley Park a bell and get Prince ’round my gaff with a key­board under his arm to sing to me sweetly until the wee small hours. Ok, maybe I wouldn’t have that much money, but you get my drift.

Keep­ing your buy­ers informed and the lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion open at every step is para­mount. Not only does this min­im­ise the risk of problems/misunderstanding, buyer frus­tra­tion and (dreaded) neg­at­ive feed­back, but should any prob­lems arise, good com­mu­nic­a­tion may mean they’re more likely to be resolved in a way that is pleas­ing to both parties.

As a min­imum, you should make a point of con­tact­ing your bidder/buyer:

• Whenever they ask a ques­tion on an active/live list­ing (using the eBay Mes­saging facility)
• With an invoice once they have won the auction/Buy It Now listing
• With a dis­patch note (with track­ing details, if you’re fol­low­ing PART 1) once you’ve pos­ted the item
• With any follow-up con­tact, regard­ing delays/questions/problems (as and when necessary)

An extra note on the track­ing details: PayPal provide a link on the trans­ac­tion details page for you to add Tracking/Delivery ref­er­ence num­bers. Make sure you use this fea­ture when send­ing items via recor­ded deliv­ery (RD) etc. Not only does it help you keep all your proof of post­age evid­ence organ­ised (what sale went with what track­ing ID etc), but should their be any prob­lems, PayPal require evid­ence of online track­ing num­bers to settle dis­putes. Provid­ing this from the out­set should help everything get resolved quickly and fairly.

Although eBay gen­er­ate standard/automated emails when a list­ing ends, buy­ers can opt not to receive them so it’s not always good to rely on them as your sole method of com­mu­nic­at­ing winning/payment inform­a­tion. Using the eBay Mes­saging sys­tem is seen to be “safer” and more buyer-friendly than emails com­posed straight from your nor­mal email client/web-mail ser­vice, but can be cum­ber­some and you may feel like you’re writ­ing the same thing over and over for each sale (also, not every­one checks their messages/has them for­war­ded to their email inbox). You can solve this by sign­ing up to Selling Man­ager: it’s totally free and allows you to cre­ate, cus­tom­ise and send template-based emails to your buy­ers via eBay, so that your buy­ers know the mes­sage is from you and not some scam­mer. Selling Man­ager has lots of other nifty fea­tures too — and there’s no soft­ware, it simply integ­rates into your “My eBay” area. Squee!

How to avoid the P&P Controversy

P&P is a con­ten­tious issue on eBay. Want to start a barney on the for­ums? Bring up Post­age and Pack­ing charges. It basic­ally comes down to this: a per­cent­age of buy­ers will always want some­thing for noth­ing (a pro­fes­sional ser­vice with new, clean qual­ity pack­ing mater­i­als and next day deliv­ery for free/peanuts) and a per­cent­age of sellers will always be out for any­thing they can get away with (hik­ing up P&P to cover eBay/PayPal fees or just to make a big­ger profit mar­gin). Both hap­pen. A lot. As a buyer and a seller, I think both are pretty shitty.

Fees are part of the game. Even if you flog at a Boot/Jumble Sale you nor­mally have to pay some­thing for a pitch/table. If you can’t afford the fees, give your stuff to char­ity or use Free­Cycle. You won’t make a mon­et­ary profit, but you could help someone/make a good trade in the pro­cess. NEVER pass your fees on to your buy­ers, it’s just not worth it. You get a bad repu­ta­tion and a lot of grief, they get a rot­ten deal and a bad exper­i­ence. That’s not nice. Be nice. It makes for a change in this dark, cold world.

To Sellers:

#1 Charge real prices.When com­ing up with post­age rates, don’t just pluck sums from the sky. Look at what Royal Mail actu­ally charge, grab a tape meas­ure, a set of scales, you get the idea. It doesn’t have to be an exact sci­ence (it rarely is on home scales) and you’re bet­ter off get­ting everything thor­oughly weighed/priced at the Post Office whenever you send any­thing (don’t just balm on a fist­ful of stamps and hope for the best), but it should give you a sens­ible guide price.

As of today: Recor­ded Deliv­ery = The price of 1^st Class stand­ard post + 70p. Sev­enty pence, right? It really gets on my tits when I see list­ings that say some­thing like:

1^st Class P&P: £1.40
Recor­ded Deliv­ery: £3.99

What?! No it’s bloody-well not! It’s £1.40 + sev­enty bloody pence, which is £2.10 — and I’m no Carol Vor­der­man! Four sod­ding quid, I should Coco… *grumble grumble*

#2 Be thrifty. Feel free to do your bit for the envir­on­ment and recycle/reuse any old card­board Amazon pack­ing, cer­eal boxes and pad­ded envel­opes you might have — they can all make for great pack­ing mater­i­als. Choose things that are light­weight and keep the size of the pack­ing pro­por­tion­ate to the item, both will keep post­age costs down.

#3 Don’t be a tight git. Don’t use bubble-wrap that’s all popped and knackered or a pad­ded envel­oped that looks like it’s been gnawed on. Par­cels go on a long and bumpy jour­ney, ill-protected items = you hav­ing to fork out refunds. If your pre-used stock is in a state, it’s bet­ter to buy new than take chances.

#4 I said, DON’T be a tight git. If it’s a vin­tage magazine you’ve sold as “MINT” don’t plonk it in a bog-standard manilla envel­ope with a 1^st Class stamp and charge £3 for the priv­ilege. Sand­wich it between thick card, put it inside a padded/bubbled envel­ope and write: “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT BEND/FOLD!” in big red marker on every side. If you use cor­rug­ated card, turn one of the card lay­ers 90 degrees so that the grain of the of the 2 pieces of card go in a dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tions to one another, it helps to pre­vent folding/creasing. Same with CDs — the cases are a swine for crack­ing in transit. You can’t always pre­vent it, but you can try. Don’t just settle with a bubbled envel­ope; wrap the CD in bubble wrap first, tape it in a card-sandwich, then put it in a bubbled envelope/doubled mail­ing bag.

#5 Offer post­age dis­counts on mul­tiple items. If someone buys 2 DVDs from you instead of just one, it’s mean and unfair to charge full-price P&P for both unless you intend on send­ing them in entirely sep­ar­ate pack­aging and treat­ing them as two sep­ar­ate trans­ac­tions. In fact, this pisses buy­ers off. Make buy­ers happy by offer­ing dis­counts on post­age to those that buy more than one item form you. E.G. Full P&P for the first item and 15% off for every addi­tional item. The buy­ers will feel like they are get­ting a deal and you prob­ably won’t lose out as you’ll save on pack­ing mater­i­als by put­ting 2 DVDs into one envel­ope as opposed to two. You can spe­cify post­age dis­counts when you list an item for sale.

To Buy­ers:

#1 Don’t whinge about some­thing you just agreed on. You knew what the P&P cost was before you bid and in bid­ding, you leg­ally agreed to that price. If you don’t agree with the price, DON’T BID/BUY.

#2 Remem­ber P&P is more than just the stamp. Recently, I charged a buyer £2.49 P&P. The item was pos­ted the next day using brand new post­ing sup­plies (plastic pink mailer, bubble-wrap, thick card, par­cel tape and labels) and I even enclosed a 10% dis­count card for the buyer to use on a future pur­chase with me (Christ­mas Sea­son and all that). The actual Royal Mail charge was £2.08 Recor­ded Deliv­ery. This meant that I got a “whop­ping” 41 pence to cover the cost of the brand new pack­ing sup­plies and the cost to actu­ally get the items to the Post Office (reas­on­able hand­ling fee — espe­cially given that I have to rely on a third party as I don’t drive). Need­less to say, it didn’t cover those costs. The bas­tard then marked me down in my detailed rat­ing for the P&P charge, but then said I’m a “great” seller in the com­ments! What!? That’s not fair.

I state in every list­ing what my P&P charge cov­ers — I’m hardly char­ging a premium. Why buy if you don’t agree with the cost? Why say that it was “great” then mark me down in the detailed rat­ing, which affects my over­all average?

P&P stands for Post­age and Pack­ing, which includes a reas­on­able hand­ling fee. Decent, qual­ity pack­ing sup­plies don’t just appear out of thin air. They are imper­at­ive to the safe arrival of your pur­chases. Don’t you want your sellers to pack your goods really well so that they arrive to you in the same fant­astic con­di­tion they were ori­gin­ally sold in?

Buy­ers, next time you quibble about P&P costs, think about how much that brand new jiffy envel­ope with extra bubble-wrap and thick card would have cost.

The user­names given here are for example pur­poses only, any resemb­lance to a genu­ine inter­net iden­tity or eBay account is com­pletely coin­cid­ental and not inten­ded. The “me” logo is sourced from and is the copy­righted prop­erty of eBay.