Control When Your Auction Ends on Ebay

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Suppose that valuable porcelain lamp you just put up for sale takes a tumble off the shelf and shatters in bits on the concrete floor of your basement? Suppose your aunt, who gave you that painting to sell, suddenly decides to donate it to an art museum instead? In such cases you can cancel your sale. eBay provides you with a form that allows you to explain the reason for ending the sale early. The form lets you choose between canceling all bids or selling to the high bidder and canceling all other bids. After you fill out the form, an e-mail message is automatically sent to any bidders explaining that the sale was ended early. On the other hand, you can also extend the end of your auction if your item has not yet received any bids. Sometimes, when sellers conduct a three-day auction and their item does not receive any bids during those three days, they extend the auction one day. The moment a bid comes in, the auction must either end at the currently advertised time, or you must cancel it. Some sellers will list for 3 days, and if they get no bidders will extend the duration one increment at a time until they reach 10 days (this is done via the item revision link on the description page).

Control Your Emotions You’re bound to run into problems during your time as an eBay businessperson. Someone will e-mail you and leave negative feedback because they’re not happy with what they purchased. Or the item you sent got lost or delayed in transit and your customer is understandably displeased. What’s the best way to respond to such problems? Longtime sellers know it’s best not to get emotionally involved. Even though you are involved in a person-to-person sale, this is a business transaction. Keep cordial at all times when you’re communicating with someone who is unhappy. File a complaint in the Rules & Safety Support area (http://pages.ebay.com/help/ basics/select-RS.html) and let eBay pursue those bidders who turn out to be deadbeats. Other than that, try to resolve disputes yourself in an effort to avoid negative feedback. Consider coming up with a stock response when you run into an unhappy camper. That way, bidders will get some money back, you keep your positive feedback, and you dodge a dispute: My Auction Company, Inc., puts costumer service first and is committed to keeping you happy. If you are unhappy with what you have purchased, we will refund your purchase, less a shipping fee. You can’t give a refund to everyone who complains, of course nor should you. I’m only saying that sometimes, it’s better to resolve disputes yourself and write off a moderate financial loss once in a while. You can cancel someone’s bid if you notice that they have received substantial amounts of negative feedback and have not followed through with other sales. If a bidder contacts you and asks to be taken out of the sale, or if he or she is located overseas and your description clearly states you will not ship overseas, you can also cancel a bid. When you do so, you should e-mail the individual to explain the reason for the cancellation. The bid cancellation form is located at http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/ seller-cancel-bid.html.

Resell Items When You Need To If something doesn’t attract any bids, or you had to cancel your auction early, or the bidders didn’t meet your reserve price, simply wait a week or so and then relist the item. You can relist by returning to the completed auction page and clicking the link Relist item. You get a small bonus the first time you relist: If your item sells the second time around, eBay refunds you the Insertion Fee. If it doesn’t sell the second time, however, you will have to pay the Insertion Fee. Don’t simply repeat the original auction description when you relist something. Look around at other eBay sales descriptions of similar items and try to identify some adjectives that might generate excitement, or add some phrases that suggest how people might be able to use what you are trying to sell. Consider going no reserve, or lowering the opening bid price when you relist.

Buy Strategically So You Can Resell Once you’ve got the routine of selling down to a regular system, the big challenge isn’t actually making sales on eBay. Rather, the challenge is finding merchandise you can resell. Many of the sellers I spoke to spend a considerable amount of time each week gathering merchandise at garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, auctions wherever they can find it. As anyone who has tried to make a purchase at a conducted sale (a sale of someone’s possessions that is conducted by a professional dealer rather than the homeowner) knows, such sales are likely to have great bargains, but the competition for them is fierce. Often, you have to stand in line for hours before the sale opens just so you can have a chance at finding treasures. If a sale opens at 9 A.M., for instance, you might have to get in line at 6 A.M., 5 A.M.…who knows? There aren’t many tricks to obtaining inventory you can resell online. It requires a lot of commitment and “sweat equity.” Here are a few suggestions I’ve discovered in my own bargain hunting over the years and from talking to eBay sellers:

- Don’t do it alone If you work as a team, you can find more merchandise than you could alone. You’ll also have help hauling away what you buy. Some sellers hire college students to go to sales before the sun is up and wait in line for them; they show up at a more reasonable hour, ready for the hunt.

- Buy off-season Often, resale shops have plenty of winter clothes in spring and fall, and summer clothes in winter, for the simple reason that most people don’t need them at that time. Buy off-season and store your inventory so you can sell it at a time when most of your customers will actually want it.

- Become a dealer yourself If you become a licensed auction seller or if you are an antique dealer, put out advertisements suggesting that people who are retiring or moving out have you conduct their house sale. You never know you might be able to find a bargain or two for yourself.

- Try dollar stores One of the most interesting trends in the world of bargain hunting is the proliferation of stores that sell all, or most, of their wares for a dollar of less. All too often, the shelves are full of junk, but once in a while, you can find pop culture memorabilia or good articles you can pick up for a bargain.

- Join a warehouse club Costco, Sam’s Club, and other warehouse stores deal in volume; sometimes you can find DVDs or computer games at two-for-one promotions at these brick-and-mortar discount warehouses.

- Look for bargains online Some discount outlets hold their own online auctions, and you should definitely check them out. The Sam’s Club auction page (http://auctions.samsclub.com) is a great place to find bargains you can resell on eBay. You can shop online at Costco (http://www.costco.com ) and at other bargain outlets like the 99¢ Only stores Web site (http://www.99only.com ). Know when the garbage pickup days are for your own neighborhood and any neighborhoods where people who are well-off live. Be sure you start scouring alleys either the night before or early in the morning on garbage day. I, personally, am not above “garbage picking” or “dumpster diving” in order to uncover bargains that others are discarding. For a primer on this popular activity, read the online diary “Dumpster diving: an Introduction” at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/1/29/215523/088.

Drum Up Some Free Advertising Everyone who sells online needs to drum up business by doing some form of marketing and advertising. By choosing to sell on eBay, you take a big step toward getting lots of attention for you and your merchandise. You can go even further by marketing your eBay sales. For example, you might include links to your eBay Store, your About Me page, or to a specific sale in a posting you leave in an Internet newsgroup that’s related to what you are selling. That’s how I first found out eBay ever existed, back in the mid-1990s. I subscribed to a newsgroup for individuals who collect and sell antique fountain pens. In the course of reading postings, I frequently saw listings by dealers that contained links to pens they had up for auction on eBay. I clicked one of the links, and instantly became an eBay junkie.

Link to Your Web Site, and Vice Versa If you have a Web site, whether it catalogs the members of your family or the items your business has for sale, use it to promote your eBay auction listings. Selling on eBay is a remarkably personal activity. Buyers remember sellers, and if they have a good experience with you, they are quite likely to check you and your sales out once in a while to see what you have to offer. Many eBay sellers include links to their eBay auctions on their Web sites, and their auction listings or eBay Stores/About Me pages include links back to their Web sites.