Warning to New Ebay Sellers or Sellers w/ Low Feedback

Over the last year or two, I have noticed a growing trend on Ebay (and also Amazon), where Ebay is harder on new sellers. Essentially, over the last ten years, I have learned how Ebay operates and on this page, I will explain their general approach and philosophy, so you know how and what to do, to avoid problems with them.

Ebay's approach is this: If you have a lot of feedback, a lot of sales history, or a lot of money flow towards them, they leave you alone and/or allow you to do whatever.

Essentially a liability / profit approach.. If you are making them a lot of money, they do not worry about the liability as much. However, if you don't make them any money, even if you are doing everything correctly, they automatically assume you could be a potential liability.

RECOMMENDED APPROACH:

1. I would recommend a seller to start slowly for the first week or two. Sell only safe items (recommended dropship items, items around your house, etc)
2. Since Ebay treats you like someone they don't trust, they will sometimes freeze your payments for 14 days, and require you to submit a tracking number for the order. I provide tracking numbers on all expensive items, and on the very small cheap items, there is an option for buying a tracking number from me. If you have the tracking number or get feedback from the customer on which your payment was frozen, paypal will release the money to you quicker (about 2 to 3 days time, instead of 14 days).
3. The good news is that after about a week or two of this (once you have proved yourself) Ebay will generally stop doing this to you.
4. Once you are past this initial stage with Ebay, you have two options:
   1. Sell at a slow pace (recommended) and over time build your account.
   2. Sell at a fast pace (has the risk of Ebay not trusting you).
5. I have seen both the fast and slow pace work. However, with the fast pace, generally, what I have seen is a seller will make TONS of sales and all of a sudden has one or two disputes and Ebay will not trust them and will cancel their items that had disputes and send their customers an email saying not to do business on this product with this seller (which can make more disputes). The way to solve such a situation is to act as quickly as you are selling and basically write ALL your recent customers of that item and tell them there was a misunderstanding between you and Ebay on a technicality and that there is nothing wrong with their order and that it has been shipped and will arrive soon to them and that you just need to fix some technical error in your listing and that is what Ebay was refering to. If you do this, you can avoid problems in such situations and continue selling.. However, you have to be as quick as you were selling, so it is high paced. So lots of potential reward, but there is the added risk.
6. With the slow pace, it is sort of like you make money, minimal problems (assuming you are following my crash course). You just have to keep your nose clean and avoid common mistakes people make. However, the downside is it takes longer to get really good profits flowing in this route. So, of course, to counter this, you can sell on other websites and just slowly build up your account on all the websites at the same time (ebay.com, pricegrabber.com and amazon.com). Also, there is the factor of having multiple ebay accounts (as I discuss in the stealth methods here)

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. As a newer seller, do not list a lot of expensive product daily. Rather, list a couple a day and also more lower priced items. And then over time increase the amount of items you are selling.
2. Look at your account as a building. You want to start with a good foundation. And you want to start slowly.
3. After you have some feedback, some sales under your belt, start speeding up the process and listing more over time..
4. TECHINIQUE I USED ON EBAY:
   1. After a week start to increase the amount of items you are listing to one a day.
   2. After another week, make it two listings a day.
   3. And continue to add more and more listings a day every week until you have 5 or more items listed a day.
   4. To maximize sales, realize that 50% of the sale is on the last day for an auction.
   5. So, here is the breakdown: 1st Day: 15% power; 2nd - 5th day: 5% Power; 6th Day: 10% power; 7th Day: 50% power.
   6. Therefore, if you have good auctions ending everyday, you get sales everyday. A good healthy number is 30% sell rate for an auction. So, if your item sells 1 out of 3 times it is listed, that is the minimum you are looking for.
   7. So, if you have an average of 35% sell through rate and 3 items listed a day, you will have basically 1 item a day selling. If you have 21 Auctions a day and 35% sell through rate, we are talking 7 items selling a day. And the higher the profit margins, the better for you. But, as I said, you have to start slower and work your way up

MORE EBAY SELLING TIPS:

1. If Ebay cancels your auction and tells you that you violated a rule, figure out what it is you violated and observe it, even if it does not make sense, however try to find loopholes around the rule. ALSO, make sure to write all your recent customers of the same product auction that was canceled and reassure them that their product is good and on the way to them and that if they received an email from Ebay, it was just that you had some technical error in the listing and it did not effect their sale at all.
2. Do not list an item again the same way after it has been canceled by Ebay. Likely, it could lead to you being suspended. However, if you make a change to it, attempting to correct the matter and they still cancel it again, they do not count it as a second strike.. I had one time where I corrected an item about 3 or 4 times, before I got it right, as Ebay does not exactly elaborate on the problem a lot. So, you are safe if you are trying to follow their rules.
3. Ebay sometimes changes their viewpoint on a rule. One quarter or year, they will think one way. Another quarter or year, they will change how they interpret the rule. Also, each Ebay site has a different governance. So, Ebay Australia has different workers than Ebay Canada. If a listing is canceled on Ebay Australia because of some rule violation, it does not mean you have to change the auction on Ebay Canada (unless they also cancel). Each Ebay website is separate. If you violate a rule twice in a row on the same month in the same type of situation on the same Ebay site, it can mean suspension. However, if it is a different rule violation, a different Ebay site, or a different category of product or situation, it will not get you suspended, as it is not a violation twice in a row of the same thing.