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How She Got the Nerve to Sell Something on eBay                         Jump to Previous Week's Article
       ...(or How Much is That 10-Cent Pack of Kool-Aid?)

Vol 2, No. 2, February 8, 2007 - Oklahoma News Weekly, (918) 827-7774

        In the previous column, my wife Jayne told you about her first eBay buying experience (that column is available here if you missed it). For a few months I’ve encouraged you to start buying and selling on eBay.com, the “world’s largest garage sale.” Certainly buying is simpler than selling. But selling is where you make money so I encourage you to get started selling. Find a few things around your home that you don’t use and put them up for sale.
 

   “Where do I start?” is always the question we hear. Sell anything you think has a good chance to sell at your next garage sale. It’s important to begin selling and learn about the experience and see how simple it really is than to take a bunch of classes or subscribe to online courses. Selling on eBay is simple or eBay wouldn’t be the success that it is. Don’t put it off; once you’ve registered up for an eBay account (a free video at BidMentor.com/Reg walks you through the process) you’re ready to sell.
 

   You might be surprised at how much you make. After buying a few items, I encouraged Jayne to sell something to learn the process. Fewer than five years ago, Jayne knew nothing about computers or eBay. She moved from eBay Novice to eBay Pro, crowned by writing her first book entitled “I Married An eBay Maniac” published by Sams Publishing.
 

   Once she successfully bought some things, she decided to try her hand selling. I hope you are encouraged to sell once you hear Jayne’s own words about the first thing she sold:
 

   Our home-based eBay business involves selling items on consignment for friends and family who know about our eBay success. Before I began helping, my husband’s eBay business was getting far too much for one person to handle. Greg asked that I help him. I was hesitant. I knew nothing about the selling side. I wasn't all that thrilled to learn. I figured it was tough.
 

   But then, a funny thing happened one day and as you’ll see, it was a sweet experience! I had offered to help Greg's mother clean out the cupboards above her oven. When I got up there and saw all the things in that cabinet, I was taken aback. It was obvious to me there were things there that had been put in that cabinet when they first moved into the house 30 years earlier! Most of those things hadn't seen the light of day until I pulled them out.
 

   One such item was an unopened packet of Funny Face powdered drink mix. These cost a dime when I was a kid. I don't believe they've been sold for many years. When I saw the drink packet, I showed Greg how long things had been in the cabinet. When I saw him, I greeted him with a “You won't believe what I found today!” and presented him the drink mix packet.
 

   “Cool,” he said, “let's put it up on eBay!” I should have known what his response would be. It was his response to everything! After all, he is an eBay Maniac.

   I told him nobody in the world would look at an auction for a 10-cent pack of drink mix from the 1960s. My curiosity was piqued, however, so later I searched eBay for anything related to these Funny Face items. I found some. I found a lot. I couldn't believe it - one packet somewhat like the one I found had sold for over $20!
 

   I decided research was called for. I scoured the Internet for information on the drink mix and was able to determine when this specific packet was produced. I wrote up a description, Greg added to it, we took pictures, and we got that drink mix listed. I was thrilled when we got our first bid, because until then I still doubted that anyone would even look at the auction.

   I watched with growing excitement as the 10-cent packet of drink mix slowly crept up in price. There was real interest in this outdated packet of powder that I had nearly thrown away. The auction ended with a winning bid that surpassed $100. My life changed. I suppose my husband might say that was the day I'd become an eBay Maniac too!

   Whether you’re an eBay pro or newcomer, I’ll answer your questions. Send them to eBayCorner@BidMentor.com. If you’re new to this column I post past ones at BidMentor.com/eBayCorner so you don’t miss a thing. Now start looking around your house for things to sell!

How She Got the Nerve to Buy Something on eBay                         Jump to Previous Week's Article
       ...(or How Jayne Became an eBay Maniac Too!)

Vol 2, No. 1, January 11, 2007 - Oklahoma News Weekly, (918) 827-7774

        For the past few months I’ve encouraged you to start buying and selling on eBay.com, the “world’s largest garage sale.” I’ve set you up an Internet link to a quick video that walks you through a simple eBay sign-up process at Bidmentor.com/Reg. Yet, you may still be hesitant. Much hype surrounds the Internet and safety concerns everyone, especially when money is involved.

        To encourage you to start, you might like hearing how my wife, Jayne, began her excursion into eBay. Fewer than five years ago, Jayne knew nothing about computers or eBay. She moved from eBay novice to eBay Pro, crowned by writing her very first book entitled “I Married An eBay Maniac” published by Sams Publishing. (I’m still unsure what she really means by maniac…)

        To help bring you into the eBay fold, you night be interested to hear Jayne’s own words about her first eBay experience:

        One day I told Greg that I was looking for a CD that had just been released. He said, "Buy it on eBay!" My diagnosis of “eBay Maniac” was now official because until then, he had never suggested ways for me to spend money.

        eBay was the last thing I wanted to do. I was new to computers although I had sent a few emails and visited a few Internet pages.

        I went to eBay and searched it to see if the CD I wanted was there. It was there, many times over. More than 100 of them were selling. Greg showed me how to log into his eBay account and place my first bid.

        My husband suggested I put my maximum bid in place, the highest amount I wanted to pay for that CD, taking shipping costs into consideration. Because I was a little hesitant to trust all this, I decided that my maximum bid would be about half of what I could buy the CD for in a store.

        I watched that auction for the next couple of days as it neared its completion. There were other bidders, but my bid was consistently highest.

        I won the CD! I won the CD for less than half of what I could purchase it at a retail store. I didn’t have to pay sales tax but I did pay a reasonable shipping charge.

        When you place a bid, you might get the item for less than your bid as I did. eBay's bidding system is done by something called proxy. This means eBay adjusts your bid as needed to ensure that you only pay the minimum you have to in order to win.

        Say you bid $10 on something that currently has a $1 bid. eBay changes your bid to $1.10, and you'll be the new high bidder. If others bid higher than $1.10, eBay keeps raising your bid at the preset increments, keeping you the highest bidder automatically until someone bids higher than $10.

        To get the CD quickly, I told Greg I'd put a check in the mail right then. He said he already paid for it. "How did you do that?" He explained that 85% of all buyers and sellers use PayPal.com, an online payment system that eBay now owns. Once you fund a PayPal account, or link your PayPal account to a checking account or credit card, you can make or receive instant payments after an auction ends.

        I was a little hesitant to accept this PayPal thing fully at first. I was glad, however, that my CD was paid for already and that the seller didn't have to wait for my check before sending the CD. I told my husband I'd let him worry about the risk of this "instant online payment" called PayPal.

        Within an hour or two of paying through PayPal, we received an email from the seller telling us that my CD had been shipped, and the email contained the postal delivery confirmation information so I could verify it had shipped and was on its way. That mail was enough to convince me that Greg was right; eBay is a wonderful thing!

        In the next eBay Corner, I’ll let you hear about Jayne’s first selling experience. It was quite a sale! Without revealing too much from her story too soon, you will be fascinated how she sold a 10-cent pack of drink mix for more than $100!

        Whether you’re an eBay pro or newcomer, I’ll answer your questions. Send them to eBayCorner@BidMentor.com. If you’re new to this column I post past ones at BidMentor.com/eBayCorner so you don’t miss a thing. Now start looking around your house for things to sell!

Is eBay Safe to Use? Not Just Safe... Profitable Too!              Jump to Previous Week's Article

Vol 1, No. 3, December 14, 2006 - Oklahoma News Weekly, (918) 827-7774

    eBay.com brings millions of buyers and sellers together who don’t know each other. As a buyer, how can you trust the seller of that clown lamp shade you won for $23? As a seller, how do you know that the person who placed the winning bid for your old college tennis racket will send you the $44 they bid the racket up to?

   If the trillions of dollars that exchange hands electronically each year were generally unsafe, such transactions wouldn’t have grown to their current levels. The truth is that financial transactions are extremely secure as long as you know the source. Major web sites such as eBay, online banking transactions, Wal-Mart.com, Internet stock brokerages, and other shopping and financial web sites are extremely secure and they encrypt your data well that travels between your home and their computers.

   Still, you’re dealing with people and not computers on eBay. Even though eBay takes precautions to guard your personal data, once the auction ends it’s up to the buyer and seller to complete the transaction.

   When you weigh the risks, sellers have slightly more leverage than buyers. When you sell, you don’t have to ship until you get payment. It’s perfectly acceptable and prudent to wait until a check clears before you ship as long as you state that you do that in your auction. Still, sellers can be left unpaid having to pay listing fees and then must relist the item again, all of which costs money and time.

   Buyers don’t really know if sellers are legitimate. Once you pay, will the seller ship the item? Will it be in the same condition as described? Will the seller refund if it’s not or if the item arrives damaged?

   Buyers and sellers on eBay gain trust among one another with eBay’s feedback system. Once an eBay sale completes, both the buyer and the seller can leave feedback about the other. eBayers guard their feedback and want as close to 100% positive as they can get. The higher the feedback, the more you can usually trust the seller or buyer. If a seller has 99.5% positive feedback and over 1,000 auctions, for example, that seller’s history means more than someone with a 100% positive feedback from a history of only 2 auctions.

   If you shop for holiday gifts on eBay, and you should consider doing so, before you place a bid with someone who has questionable feedback, click the seller’s feedback number and read what previous buyers said about their transactions with this seller. Sure, a seller with a fantastic feedback record might take your money and never ship the item. You must remember, though, eBay has been around for a decade and millions of buyers and sellers transact business each week. If the vast majority were fraudulent, eBay would have never been the major success that it is. (Also, determine if the shipping charge is fair, that should be stated clearly before you place a bid.)

   Out of 4,000 auctions, we have been sent a bad check one time. In the numerous auctions we’ve won as buyers, there too we’ve had only one seller ignore us after we paid. Ask any business owner you deal with if they would consider 2 bad transactions out of 4,000 to be good and that owner would immediately say that is an almost unbelievable high percentage of good transactions. (You can see our current auctions at BidMentor.com, click our feedback number to see what buyers say about us.) The small number of glitches are really just a cost of doing business. Don’t worry about them; they rarely occur as long as you are careful to check feedback ratings before you bid.

   Given that buyers pay quickly to build a good feedback rating and sellers describe there items accurately and ship promptly to protect their good feedback rating makes eBay one of the most successful online sites in history. It’s a way that eBay members police each other. eBay’s feedback system works wonders and tells you far more about a seller than you know about the store down the street. How many unhappy customers did the store have that you shopped at last month? You don’t know but you know how many unhappy buyers any seller on eBay had last month – just check the feedback.

   Whether you’re an eBay pro or newcomer, I’ll answer your questions. Send them to eBayCorner@BidMentor.com. If you’re new to this column I post past ones at BidMentor.com/eBayCorner so you don’t miss a thing. Now start looking around your house for things to sell!

New to eBay? The Best Way to Choose an ID and Register                                 Jump to Previous Week's Article

Vol 1, No. 2, November 15, 2006 - Oklahoma News Weekly, (918) 827-7774

    eBay.com is a website where millions of sellers sell things to millions of buyers. eBay is known as an auction site due to the thousands of bids that buyers just like you place each day on things sold by sellers just like you.

    eBay is not only about auctions. People buy and sell at fixed prices too. If you have an antique dish you don’t want to sell for less than $45 you don’t have to risk an auction’s final, low bid. Instead, you can list your dish on eBay for a flat $45. If you describe the dish well, use a good picture of the dish, and a buyer wants the dish and knows it’s worth $45, the buyer click’s your Buy It Now button and pays you $45 (plus shipping). Not only do you get your price but you don’t have to wait a week for the auction to end.

    Such a fixed-price listing, also called Buy It Now, is one way you get enough for your item but you can get the best of both worlds: start with a high minimum bid of $45 but sell the dish in an auction format. If only one person bids she must begin at $45 and others might bid more. The great thing about eBay is that you set the rules for things you sell. (Buying on eBay can be easy, safe, and secure too; we’ll discuss buying soon.)

    Sometimes when you start an auction with a high minimum bid, you may not get many bids. It’s a paradox but starting with a high minimum bid may not make as much money. With a low start bid, several people might bid who otherwise wouldn’t bid at a higher starting price. Auctions are funny because bidding wars begin easily and as the seller you like bidding wars!

    All of eBay’s selling strategies have their good points and bad. One of the fun aspects of eBay is learning what works and what works even better. We’ll discuss ways to maximize your income here. Just remember you don’t have to know all the selling strategies to get started. All you need is an eBay account which is free.

    Right now, register with eBay if you haven’t yet. You only need Internet access, an email address, and a credit card. When you sell something eBay wants a 5-7% commission. eBay bills you once a month and eBay needs a credit card on file to charge your monthly fees. You can use a checking account if you prefer. You can remove or change the card for payment at any time. (If you only buy, you never owe eBay a penny.)

    One more thing: you need an eBay ID. Remember the old CB radio handles everyone used to have? eBay IDs are a lot like those. People you interact with on eBay, other buyers and sellers, know you by your ID. Choose an ID that identifies the things you sell if you’re thinking of selling a specific line of products such as MissCoolAntiques. Nobody knows your real name. When you sell something, the buyer does learn your name and address because buyers need to know where to send payments. Getting paid is the real fun and you’ll get payments from all over the world. Don’t worry about mailing to Italy and other places as it’s much easier than you might think as you’ll see in future columns.

    If you’re computer savvy, you probably can register on eBay by going to eBay.com and figuring it all out. You don’t have to do that, however. eBay put together a wonderful how-to-register video you can watch and it only takes a few minutes. I’ve put an easy link to that video on a web page for you at BidMentor.com/Reg (don’t use hyphens even if one appears in this article due to the column size). Go there and click the video link. Then, return to that page and click the registration link I’ve put there that takes you straight to eBay’s registration page. It takes about 10-15 minutes and then you can buy or sell on eBay. Once you register, come back here next week and you’ll learn a secret way to bid on items that helps you win with far lower bids than otherwise possible!

    Whether you’re an eBay pro or newcomer, I’ll answer your questions. Send them to eBayCorner@BidMentor.com. If you’re new to this column I post older columns at BidMentor.com/eBayCorner so you don’t miss a thing (again, don’t use hyphens even if they appear here). Now start looking around your house for things to sell!

Introducing eBay: The World’s Largest Yard Sale                                  Jump to Top of Page

Vol 1, No. 1, October 18, 2006 - Oklahoma News Weekly, (918) 827-7774

   eBay has been called the World’s Largest Yard Sale and for good reason. In a single year people buy and sell more than $30 billion worth of items on eBay’s web site, eBay.com. Each hour 3,500 people sign up for a new eBay account. eBay has approximately 5,000 employees. More than 700,000 sellers make a full-time living on eBay.

   In spite of those dizzying statistics, eBay does not have any inventory. eBay never touches anything you buy or sell there. Those 5,000 eBay employees rarely meet their customers. eBay’s true power is this: eBay brings buyers and sellers together and then gets out of the way.

   Ten years ago, Pierre Omidyar created a web page that he wanted to name EchoBay.com. His wife had some used Pez candy dispensers she was going to sell there. He saw that the name EchoBay.com already taken as a web page so he decided to use eBay.com. Today, eBay is so popular it’s become a verb as in, “You should eBay that.”

    eBay is a web site where people like you sell things. eBay is a web site where people like you buy things. These things are often items just like you’d buy or sell at a yard sale. Many new items are sold on eBay too such as when someone gets a gift they don’t want so they sell it on eBay. Money-saving items such as gift certificates and gift cards are sold on eBay, often far below their face value. People buy and sell sporting and concert tickets, computers, furniture, clothing, food, and even cars on eBay. Typically, someone lists an item to sell and it’s on eBay a week for people to bid from their computers. At the end of the week whoever bid the most wins the auction. Just like an auction barn except you don’t have to get dressed to sell your stuff.

   Whatever you have too much of there is probably someone who has too little of it. eBay is the place where you both get happier.

   eBay is better than a yard sale. When the entire world bids on something you sell for a week, the final price is often far higher than you’d get at a yard sale where only a few local people ever see it. eBay also commands higher prices for your items than a yard sale would bring because when someone looks at what you’re selling, they got to your eBay auction because they were looking for the thing you’re selling. Corporate America calls these kinds of customers “targeted buyers.” eBay sellers call these kinds of customers “more money.”

   If you know nothing about eBay, you can sell on eBay. If you don’t know a lot about computers you can sell on eBay. If you don’t have fancy inventory to sell but you have extra items around your home that you were going to sell in a yard sale Real Soon Now you can sell them on eBay. It’s easy.

   You will learn about eBay in this and subsequent columns and you’ll see that you don’t have to be computer savvy to be a successful seller. Unlike places like consignment shops where you might have sold used clothing, eBay’s commission rate is tiny, usually between 5 and 7%. Your item is safe too because when you sell something, you don’t mail it until you get the full payment from the person who wins your auction. That buyer pays all the shipping too.

   In the next column I’ll walk you through the eBay sign-up process so you can get started. The eBay Corner column isn’t only for the newcomers; if you already buy or sell on eBay but have a question, I’ll answer your question here. Just send questions and comments to eBayCorner@BidMentor.com and if others might benefit I’ll answer you here. My wife Jayne and I have been buying and selling (I usually sell and she usually buys– it’s in the genes) on eBay for 7 years. I’ll tell you what we do and we’re so successful eBay gave us a fancy-sounding title: PowerSellers. Our primary eBay ID is BidMentor. I’ll give you lots of tips warn you of traps to avoid.

   The most important thing you should know about eBay is that eBay is fun. Unlike a yard sale, you don’t have to sit in hot or cold weather to sell your used mixer or DVDs. Mailing things you sell is far easier than most people think. Buying safely is also simple and secure. If eBay didn’t make everything simple then millions of eBayers wouldn’t be buying and selling hundreds of thousands of items each day. You’ll learn all about eBay here. Welcome to the world of online auctions.