A managed service is functionality that is provided online, and that you usually access by connecting to the service with a Web browser. Rather than having to download and install software that needs to be updated on a regular basis, you subscribe to the service for a monthly or yearly fee. It’s up to the service provider to update the software and make sure it works correctly. Managed auction services companies that provide services online that you can use to create auction listings, get your sales on eBay, upload and store images, and manage sales are even more plentiful than software programs. Such services give you a number of advantages:

- Image hosting After you post one item image online, eBay charges you for each subsequent image per item. By paying a flat monthly fee to a managed auction service, you can access its other auction features, including image hosting. In the long run, you can save money by using the outside service.

- Auction statistics Some auction services report on statistics such as the number of visits your auctions have received in a particular day or even a specified hour in the day. They can tell you how much money your auctions have generated over the past several weeks.

You’ll find an extensive (though not comprehensive) list of managed auction services on the AuctionBytes web site (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/ pages/ams). You don’t need to hire an auction service if you have the time and energy to do the work yourself, of course. But I think it makes sense to use a managed auction service if you offer a substantial number of sales each month (perhaps 50 or more, though this is not a hard-and-fast rule) and you don’t have family or friends to help you create listings, send e-mails, and keep your accounting records.

Create Your Own Web Pages

One nice thing about eBay is that it allows you to start your own e-commerce business immediately, without having to build or stock a real brick-and-mortar store. But your eBay sales can be helped by the presence of a virtual store a digital, text-and-image store on the World Wide Web. Chances are you’ve already got aWeb page out there somewhere in cyberspace. Maybe you use it to talk about yourself and your hobbies, or to show off photos of your family or your pets.Well, you can also use theWeb to talk about your business. You can create a simple Web page called an eBay Store that links to your current auctions. The eBay Store page, in turn, can list the URL of a full-fledged e-commerce site that enables shoppers to make purchases. The synergy that results from linking eBay auctions to an eBay Store or Web site can build credibility for your business and boost your sales, too. If you’ve already created auction listings and completed transactions with satisfied customers, you’ve done much of the work involved in creating a business Web site. You only need to take one more step: creating a set of Web pages devoted to your commercial activities. You’ve got plenty of options for creating pages: You can create a simple About Me page on eBay; create an eBay store; or launch your own full-fledged Web site. As an entrepreneur, you owe it to yourself to take the next step and create Web pages that boost your eBay sales even further. It’s not necessary to set up an eBay Web page or a full-fledged e-commerce Web site to back up your auction sales, of course. Plenty of successful sellers never set up a Web site at all; they let their sales descriptions and customer service do the talking. Starting up an e-commerce Web site makes sense if you already have a business operation and your eBay sales are intended to supplement it. It’s also a natural step forward if you are finding enough success on eBay that you want to sell through a Web site as well. Whether you want to set up another sales venue through an eBay Store, or set up your own Web-based catalog and shopping cart, you can use your eBay auction experience as a starting point for further development.

MeBay: Create an About Me Page If you sell on eBay, there’s really no excuse not to create an About Me page. It only takes a matter of minutes in fact, it’s about as easy as creating your first auction listing. About Me is a feature that eBay offers to all of its participants and that promotes the community atmosphere that eBay is continually touting. eBay really does work by people getting to know and trust one another.

Gather Your 411 The name About Me says it all: it’s a place where you talk all about you personally why you use eBay, what you sell, what you’re interested in, or where you live. You can use an eBay Store or aWeb site to focus on your business rather than your personal side. Of course, these aren’t firm dividing lines: You can use About Me to promote your business, and your eBay Store to promote yourself and your business. No matter how you make use of these resources, however, they are sure to help drive people to your auction listings and the all-important Submit Bid button. Before you start to create your About Me page, you just need to gather a little information. The amount of detail you provide depends on how active a seller you are, how many different kinds of items you sell or collect, and whether your page is about you personally or just about your auction activities. The best way to find out what to say on your About Me page is to search the About Me pages of other sellers. Unfortunately, there’s no eBay page that gathers all the About Me pages in one set of links (you’d probably have tens of thousands of links in one place, which wouldn’t necessarily be helpful). Rather, you find a seller who’s reputable and presents sales items in a professional manner, and click that seller’s About Me link. You’ll discover that typically, eBay sellers tend to include information such as:

- The name of your business.

- A mission statement: a few sentences that describe the purpose of your business, the type of merchandise you sell, and the kinds of customers you want to reach.

- Your names and the names of your partners or employees.

- Whether you sell on eBay full time and, if you don’t, what you do for your “day job.”

- What makes your business distinctive or noteworthy. Don’t be bashful; promote yourself enthusiastically. Tell people that you are committed to providing quality merchandise, excellent customer service, and the like.

- Your most recent feedback.

- Your background. If you’re fortunate enough to have any honors, awards, or professional affiliations associated with your auction sales, by all means mention them.

- A set of links to your current auctions. You might also include links to any other Web pages or Web sites you have created.

- Contact information. Your Web site needs to list all the ways in which buyers or prospective customers can reach you if they have a question or need some information. You don’t need to publish your actual street address, of course; some eBay sellers prefer to use a post office box for extra security. But you should certainly include an e-mail address and possibly a phone number as well. That’s quite a list. Frankly, if you have any more to say, you should create an eBay Store or a Web site for yourself or your business. For now, just take a few minutes to think about and write down what you’re going to say. Jot down some biographical notes and have a friend look them over, or suggest additional tidbits you can convey to the world. If you have more to tell the world about your hobbies, your family, your business history, or your thoughts about society in general, place a link on your About Me page that leads visitors to a Web page that contains more information. You’ll learn how to create such pages later in this article.

Create Your Page When you’ve got your content in order, follow these steps to get your About Me page online:

1. Make sure you’re connected to the Internet, start up your Web browser of choice, and enter the URL http://members.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI .dll?AboutMeLogin to go to the About Me login page.

2. Read the instructions, then click Create and edit your page.

3. When the “About Me – Step 1” page appears, review the Web page layouts that are available to you. Then click the button next to the arrangement you want: Two column layout, Newspaper layout, or Centered Layout. You might choose the two column layout if you want to address a variety of different subjects, such as you, your family, your hobbies, and your business. The newspaper layout works well if you want to present various bits of information about the same topic (the different items you sell online, for instance). The centered arrangement is a good choice if your content such as a brief description of your store is short and sweet.

4. When the “About Me – Step 2” page appears, you fill out a form that helps create the contents for your page. Choose a title for your page and add some information in each of the boxes. Also select the option that indicates how many eBay feedback comments you want the page to contain. When you’re ready, click Preview Your Page to see your page and make sure it looks the way you want.

5. If you don’t like your page’s layout, click Start Over to try one of the other two options. You’ll be asked to confirm that you want to delete by clicking Delete, and then you’ll return to the “About Me – Step 1” page, where you can pick a different layout. Otherwise, if you’re happy with your work, you can click Edit Some More, Save My Page, Edit Using HTML, or Start Over. Once you click Save My Page, your page goes on the Web where everyone can see it. The Silk Road Trading Concern’s About Me page. Silk Road Trading Concern created an About Me page at the same time it created its eBay Stores page (see “Set Up Shop” later in this article). That’s why it has the Stores logo at the top. Most About Me pages don’t contain the Stores logo. More typically, About Me gives an individual seller a place to talk about him or herself. Chad Gibbons’About Me page is more typical. Typically, when you create an About Me page, you are assigned a URL that looks like the following: http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/[Your User ID]. You can refer to this URL in your Web pages or e-mail messages. Consider adding it to your e-mail signature file so people can find it more easily.

Edit and Spruce Up Your Page Suppose you have created an About Me page and you want to make some changes. Perhaps you’ve changed the focus of your business or started to sell a new line of merchandise. Editing an About Me page used to be easy: you went to the About Me Login page and clicked Create and edit my page to retrieve your current page and edit it. Not any more. Now, you only have two options:

- Create a new About Me page from scratch

- Edit the raw HTML for your current About Me page If you want to edit your About Me page, you’ll have to be subjected to looking at HTML code, which can be intimidating if you haven’t worked with it before. (I don’t understand why eBay doesn’t make this process easier for its members.) You go to the About Me Login page, click Create and edit your page and, when the page appears, click Edit some more. The HTML version of your page appears. The nice thing about working with HTML is that you can do some spiffy formatting, such as adding images, creating headings and subheadings, and the like provided you know what you’re doing. The bad thing about working with HTML is that, well, you have to work with it at all. You might just prefer to re-create your page from scratch; save the contents as a text file beforehand so you can cut and paste when you want to remake it.

Create an eBay Store Big-time retailers know that to maximize your income and reach the greatest number of customers, you need to sell in more than one way, using more than one type of sales technique. Auto dealers have known this for years. Look at all the ways you can purchase a new car: you can buy it outright; you can put down a down payment and finance the rest; you can lease it for a fixed period of time. You can go to an auto dealership, shop online, or visit a place where a number of auto dealers are gathered under one roof, called an auto mall. By marketing your products in a variety of ways, you attract the widest range of customers. In much the same way, you can supplement your eBay auctions with items you put up for sale for a fixed price in an eBay Store. Setting up an eBay Store is much the same as renting space in a shopping mall, but with two big advantages: eBay is likely to be cheaper, and likely to attract more shoppers than most other malls due to its sheer popularity. Shopping malls have never proved very successful on theWeb. Early attempts at gathering shops under a singleWeb site umbrella so people can find them more easily just didn’t work. The Web makes it easy to find Web-based retailers through userfriendly search engines and easy-to-remember URLs like http://www.walmart.com . Only a fewWeb-based malls remain, such asMSN Marketplace (http://marketplace.msn.com , and Yahoo!Store (http://store.yahoo.com ). Why, then, would you consider setting up an eBay Store in addition to your eBay auctions? I’ll give you three reasons:

- eBay attracts more than 13 million visitors per month, according to Neilsen/ Netratings’weekly Top 25 Parent Companies list (http://pm.netratings.com/ nnpm/owa/NRpublicreports.toppropertiesweekly).

- You can drive regular buyers to your store with the Stores logo that appears next to your User ID.

- The cost is only $9.95 per month for a basic subscription plus nominal listing fees.

- If you really want to sell some items at a fixed price, and you find that Buy It Now doesn’t attract buyers, you might have better luck with an eBay Store. You need a minimum feedback of 20 and an ID Verify listing to open an eBay Store. See Article 16 for more on eBay’s ID Verify program. The following sections discuss each of these points in more detail.

Save a Few Bucks To set up your ownWeb site with a hosting service might cost $50 a month or more. Even if you rent space in an online mall that gains a large number of visitors, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee as well as listing fees or fees charged for each item you sell. eBay Stores compare favorably to other malls as indicated, as far as the basic monthly hosting fee. But keep in mind that an eBay Store, unlike the other hosting options, doesn’t give you any ability to collect credit card payments from your customers.

Gain Eyeball Space The idea behind shopping malls, whether they are down the street or on the Web, is that they attract a higher number of visitors just because they gather multiple sales outlets under one roof. If you pick a marketplace that is particularly “sticky” (in other words, that has enough resources and services that visitors tend to stay around for a while) you’re more likely to get shoppers.

Attract Your Own Customers One advantage of setting up an eBay Store, to my mind, is that you do the marketing in many ways. If you build up a steady clientele through your regular auction sales, you stand a good chance of having those regular customers visit your eBay Store. The more bidders you attract to your auctions, the better your chances that someone will stop by your store.

Do Buy It Now One Better Buy It Now has its pros and cons. On the plus side, it’s not a hidden price like a reserve price. You know exactly what the seller wants to charge for an item, and you can buy it immediately. Buy it Now is also highly popular and a good way to make sales. On the other hand, offering a Buy It Now price on something as well as the option to bid on that same item at auction is a contradiction, in my opinion: it contradicts the original purpose of the sale. People shop for auction items in the hope of getting a good deal. They want to save a few bucks, and they hope to find something unusual or rare at a good price. Buy It Now takes away the feeling that bidders are somehow “beating the system” by making them pay a set price that’s not necessarily as much of a bargain as an auction would be. At an eBay Store, people are shopping with a different set of criteria. Sure, they still want bargains, and they’ll never buy something if they feel like you’re overcharging them. But they’re primarily there because they are already familiar with you or your business, and they want to see what else you’re offering. If they are loyal to you and they feel they can trust you, they won’t mind paying a fixed price if they find something that’s really desirable. If you already sell at auction and have your auction sales gathered on your About Me page, there’s no reason why you can’t sell through an eBay Store as well. Silk Road Trading Concern has a number of items for sale through its store. Of course, eBay Stores can help you reach new customers, not just people who have already purchased from you at auction. They might find your store on the eBay Stores home page (http://www.stores.ebay.com ) provided you pay $49.95 per month to get yourself placed in that prime real estate. What, you ask, is the downside to the rosy picture I’m painting? It’s the same as with any store: there’s no guarantee you’ll get enough business to make the store worthwhile, and it takes work, time, and commitment. If you’re already spending 30, 40, or 50 hours a week on your auctions, expect to add several hours more for your store. You can’t just put your merchandise up for sale and then let it sit there for weeks at a time. People will assume that the selections never change and they’ll stop coming altogether. You’ve got to put new items up for sale regularly and ship items out quickly, just as you do with auctions. You can close your store if you go on vacation, but you’ll have to wait 30 days before you can reopen it once again. There’s another downside to selling via eBay Stores: the items you sell aren’t retrieved by users who use eBay’s popular Search page. They only appear in response to a Seller search.

Set Up Shop Once you have convinced yourself that an eBay Store is right for you, it’s easy enough to get started. If you don’t already have a business name, you should decide on a name for your store; it needn’t match your User ID. Identify a group of items you want to put up for sale, and settle on the prices you want. You should, in fact, use the same business name and graphics for all of your sales, including your auctions, your About Me page, your eBay Store, or your Web site if you create one. A consistent presentation helps you establish an identity and builds trust among your customers, who will be able to recognize you that much more quickly. Once you’ve got the preliminaries covered, go to the eBay Seller Landing page, and click the conspicuous OPEN STORE NOW! button.