eBay Fee changes start tomorrow
In this Success Newsletter:
- New classes for this week including: PowerSeller benefits, Profitable Photography and more
- I have to brag (& she is one of our Stars in the ESP show noted below)
- Replays are up for “Using research to lower your eBay Fees” (wow, that was a cool webinar – I even learned a thing or two), our very own amazing Auction Listing Coach Carol (wow!) and a very powerful 2-hour class that has the ESP board over on eBay going wild!!…, “Success With Cindy - additional revenue products for ESP’s”
- New motivational movie
- Show and Tell competition
- Help
- Responses to “Support the Buyers, Not the Boycott” (you aren’t going to believe these…)
Remember, you can read the previous Success newsletters in the OSI Rock Star archives at http://osirockstars.com/?cat=5
All right…tomorrow it all starts…the 20th…are you ready to claim your extra share of the buyers? If you are a Rock Star, we still have some very special VIP classes coming up just for you to Successfully deal with the fee/site changes. Don’t forget to head over to www.BuyersNotBoycott.com and claim your free logos for this week.
New Classes for this week…
Hey…get registered ASAP for this week’s classes. All OSI Live classes are fr-ee to attend and instructions are included during the registration process for both the podcasts and the webinars. Remember, you can either ask a question for our special guest or simply put “I Choose Success” in the question box.
2/20/08, Wednesday at 1pm pst/4pm est – Another Rock Star Exclusive training - Learn about the new benefits for becoming a PS, tips on getting that status, and how to keep your PS status.
2/21/08, Thursday at 3pm pst/6pm est – Another Rock Star Exclusive training – Ask Janelle – 2 hours of Success Coaching just for you.
2/21/08, Friday at Noon pst/3pm est – Another Rock Star Exclusive training – Another class in our eBay Fees/Site changes series. With everyone’s gallery images now free, how will YOURS standout among the crowd? Join our fabulous photography expert Cindy Shebley as she gives you some brilliant ideas on doing just that!
You can find out more about these classes, as well as register, at: www.osiRockStars.com (scroll to the bottom of that webpage for upcoming classes, details and registration information).
Way to go to our very own Rock Star Melissa
She is a PowerSeller, Mom of 4 whom she homeschools, a newly minted eBay Education Specialist AND the owner of over 128 DSR’s ALL above a 4.9!! – looks like you can teach us a thing or two Melissa!!
WOW – send Melissa a HUGE congrats on that through her beautiful eBay Store www.InfantTraveler.com .
I just received this hysterical story about Melissa’s first ever eBay class she taught…hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Adventures of an Education Specialist…
It was four degrees above zero which seemed like a heat wave after staying at ten below. Driving in the dark alone in the winter is something I normally avoid. There was a little twilight and the first six moose I saw were behaving by staying off of the highway. Number seven, however, decided to sprint across the path of traffic. Fortunately, it was daylight then and all four cars saw the moose and stopped.
Once in town, I took note of the digital sign to check my car clock. The good news was I was on time, the bad news it was twenty-five below zero. Yes, twenty-five below. Following the directions to the school, two more moose in someone’s front yard were chewing on the shrubbery. Why didn’t I bring my camera?
The woman who scheduled the class for me was on time and cheerful. My husband and fellow eBay selling friend had assured me that all the beginners in my class would be wowed by my extensive knowledge of eBay and internet and software tools. I am a Rock Star after all! My confidence had been lifted when I realized I could teach everything in the class without the manual and all my notes. The only part I really had to read were the disclaimers and history of eBay. Again, I had been reassured that no one would really want a detailed explanation of how a Dutch auction operates which I struggle with.
My PowerPoint CD works and the sun is shining. It was going to be great…
My first student walks in and introduces himself. Very nice man who happened to own a local sports team and had purchased about $250,000 worth of items on eBay. Yes, 250 K. He had printouts of several real estate auctions and that was what he wanted to learn. I have never been to the real estate side of eBay unless you count clicking on a few tropical dream houses from the home page.
We get to the part of the class which strongly recommends never to use
The class only had four confirmed students and seven showed up. I asked everybody to introduce themselves to the class and tell us about their eBay experience. My next student has purchased 30K worth of items from eBay. He has access to special phone numbers at eBay due to his buying volume. He knows Paypal’s phone number, too. Where are the beginners?
We get to the part about Paypal’s wonderful buyer protection plan. Star student number two relates how he returned a $2,000 broken piece of equipment and Paypal would not pay him back. He sent the item back insured, but not with delivery confirmation. A pearl of wisdom from his experience, always use delivery confirmation, the Paypal rules state the package must be trackable on the computer. Postal insurance is trackable at the post office. Also, pay with your credit card, the credit card company gave him his money back.
One student was a beginner. She was about to retire from her bookkeeping job of twenty-two years and move to
Another student wearing a beaver skin coat did not tally up her purchases for us, but was very knowledgeable. Before you pass judgment about the fur, there was wind chill, too. She had seen many Dutch auctions. Another student had seen English auctions, I am still working on the Dutch, have no idea what the English have come up with!
Another student was smiling so happily, she had used her computer to research completed listings and found an Oboe just like hers, same case and everything. Maybe, I helped one person. She also knitted a beautiful hat during class which she forgot. It looked just like the expensive ones from REI. My class of overachievers!
Another student was deeply interested in the mechanics of Second Chance offers, guess I will start working on an email for her after I study for a few more hours to cover all her what if questions. She was happy to know she could have two eBay id’s. One for buying only to protect her sources on eBay!
And so my beginning class which I had scheduled for five hours to have extra time at the end for questions lasted six and a half hours. Yes, 6 1/2 hours. I learned a lot. Everybody was super nice. Rock Star knowledge really came in handy. BlingIt and UShip caused everybody to grab their pens and check their spelling. I told them I would send the links, along with the links to the price changes, (forgot to hand out the cheat sheets I had printed from PowerU), and essays on all the advanced questions I could not answer.
A dog also crashed my class, not once but twice. Turns out not everybody is a dog fan. A student escorted Goose out the first time, I took him out the second. I blocked the door with a trash can. Shutting the door would have been a good idea, however, with central heating sometimes certain parts of the building are very cold and some are very hot. Yes, despite the cold outside, my classroom would have melted glaciers.
This was my first class, cannot wait to see who shows up to my next class, Ross Perot, Warren Buffet…
My star students, the real McCoys, one woman commented on how she knew one was very familiar, his face is on his dental ads in the local paper. The other gentlemen really does own the sports team and other entities. His mineral company gave him in depth knowledge of drop shipping. Wish I’d taken his course!
The most important thing I learned from my Star student, he will be starting his real estate auctions this week, he is a cancer survivor and stated you should not wait to do things.
My drive home in the dark on black ice watching for track star moose is normally a white knuckle experience. After my adventure as an Education Specialist, it seemed kind of dull!
You probably get tired of hearing people say THANK YOU! lol If I had shown up to this class with the minimum requirements eBay requires to teach, it would have been awful. The class seemed to cut me some slack on not knowing things like all the rules regarding listing designer purses, etc. Things learned from being a Rock Star really helped with their questions and allowed me to share valuable information that they could use.
I had a lot of fun teaching despite the fact that my class was full of very knowledgeable people about eBay. Next time this happens, I will know to speed through the beginning info. and get to the part they actually wanted help with, uploading photos and the SYI form. We did not get to spend as much time on that. Also, I would like to have shown live examples of some of their questions.
I do not know how the students felt about the class. They were all very gracious running out the door to be where they needed to be. The link to class evaluations would not work on the blocked school computers. I will send them the link with a thank you and other links I think they would find helpful. I also extended the email support to a month since I did not get to show them some live examples at the end.
Another thing I learned is that I need to set up some info. on private teaching and travel. I am sure my Star student would have paid me to teach him to set up his land auctions. He knew about me from PowerU, but did not want to travel to my small part of the world for a class.
My goal is to get the ten positive feed backs so I can take the next level of training from PowerU, so when I do travel, I can schedule two classes to help offset the hotel costs. I still have not purchased a laptop or projector. This class provided those items so I can research some more, the projectors are a learning curve. I have to think my husband may be right that is a better alternative to a projector. The HD televisions at Costco have far better picture quality and are less expensive than the projector and screen. Of course, it’s all heavy and to get to parts of
Janelle, Thanks for everything and I hope the rest of 2008 exceeds all your wildest dreams.
All the Best,
Melissa :-)
Using research to lower your eBay Fees
An educational experience, as always, with Denise and Janelle. We’ve been using Terapeak for awhile now and DO love it; but learned some tricks and clicks we had not explored as yet. If you take the time to do the Terapeak homework, it can definitely make a difference in your bottom line, especially with the new fee changes taking place this week and we ALL need help here! Listen & learn! Thanks for giving us this podcast!
Jim & Barbara - Grandpa’s Trading Company
Join Denise Hogue of Terapeak as she takes you back to the basics on our favorite research tool. With eBay’s new fees, now is the time to clearly understand the marketplace. By doing your research correctly, you could save yourself quite a bit in overpayment of fees.
Denise shares some great examples of how to do just that!
Rock Star Auction Listing Coach – Feb
Sing Carol Hearns Praises !!!
What a phenominal webinar on 2/19/08 - So insightful - excellent advice. How fortunate I feel for attending this Listing Coach webinar. Definitely time well spent.
Maryann - http://onecrazyredhead.poweru.biz/
Carol Hearn, the Auction Listing Coach answers some hard-hitting questions during this powerful webinar including:
- What is a profitable title
- How long should my descriptions be
- Do I need more pictures
- What should I have on my custom pages
- Do I need an About Me page
- Profitable keywords to use in your titles
- The most important keys to a good description
- How to save money on fees with photos
Success With Cindy - additional revenue products for ESP’s
An incredible 2 plus hour show with 3 great guests. All are at different points of their ESP adventure. Cindy & Janelle helped answer questions like:
- Why ESP’s should have revenue products
- What ‘back of the room’ sales are
- The 3 types of revenue products
- The #1 one marketing opportunity you have as an ESP
- How to get your foot into colleges
- What to do if you don’t want to create your own products
- The best answers to the ‘always asked’ student questions
- Dealing with retention rates
- What rate to charge your students
- The loophole listing that ALL esp’s should have
Motivational Movie
Just received this email from our Motivational Forum Manager at Rock Stars, Jamie of www.DreamBuilderCDs.com … (thanks Jamie – I loved it!!)
I just finished watching a two minute inspirational movie on the defining moments in our lives.
It is truly moving, stirring words and breathtaking images. I want to share it with you as I think you will really enjoy it as well.
Here is the link: www.successmagazine.com/definingmoments
Show and Tell
Remember Rock Stars…keep a tally of all of the exciting changes you are making to your eBay business and Store having to do with the fee/site changes and post them up at http://osirockstars.com/topic.php?id=212&replies=2 We’ll be posting the best ones in an upcoming newsletter. Don’t forget your links!! As some recent ESP’s recently found out, being promoted through the Success Newsletter and OSI Rock Stars has moved their name into the #1 position on Google!! (& usually #2, 3 and 4 are from Rock Stars as well!)
Response to ‘Support the Buyers, Not the Boycott’
Wow, has this been overwhelming…while I am usually deluged with numerous responses when I take a stand like this, they are also usually responses that I would never show my mom. What a wonderful surprise to find my mail box filled with support and kindness and excitement over giving people the opportunity to Choose Success. So happy. Here are just a few I received (the first one has kept a smile on my face all day):
Seems as though a lot of ebay sellers are at the defining moment right now in how they respond to the recent changes. Thanks for helping the Rock Stars stayed focused and aware of the opportunities. As a real estate mentor of mine used to say, “Don’t worry about the mules going blind, just load the wagon.”
Jamie, our motivational guru at Rock Stars – www.DreamBuilderCDs.com
Oh my goodness! I didn’t even know there was a strike. I just adjusted my selling strategy somewhat (lower insertion fees and no gallery fees allows for more trial and error to bomb without costing very much). I hopped over to a couple of the boards. The usual hysteria that occurs every year at this time. Since I only do this part time, I’m not overly concerned. Besides, eBay has been improving both the seller and buyer experience continuously over the years. And with the competition becoming stronger outside eBay, it’s very important to make buyers happy. As you said, without happy buyers, not much business!
thanks for all your help, as always.
Joan (jackzelda)
Also wanted you to know that in honor of the ”Support the Buyers, NOT the Boycott” campaign, I am choosing this week to finally re-open my eBay store and get my auctions (both store and auction style listings) loaded up!
Now if I can just find me camera to take the pics! LOL! Another goal this week is to listen to your class with Laura Leist to help organize my office and eliminate the chaos in my life! :0)
Right before I got booted off eBay last year, I had purchased a lovely “ME” page from “Sitting Boo” and never had the chance to use it. Well, I’m searching my email for it right after I send this to you and it should be up soon.
Thanks Again Janelle. As always, you ROCK!
Deb :0)
Debbie Young
I had already been sending out my messages to my students..not to boycott, but to list twice as many items …thanks for the confirmation that you too think this boycott is the dumb and not well thought through.
Have they done the math?
Carolyn “CJ” Jacinto
eBay Education Specialist and Certified Business Consultant
And…in all fairness, I should probably share the one email that DOES NOT want to support the buyers…I am sorry, but am still humored over this one – I can’t even make stuff up like this. Although in all honesty, it does make me sad that there are people who go through their life this angry. My thoughts are below.
I don’t Support the buyers!!! There are some really nasty ones out there and they spoil it for all the buyers. I try in every way possible to get good feedback, and most of them give me really great feedback, but that few that are so nasty and unreasonable have spoiled my feedback completely. Also since I am a widow, living alone and working alone, even before this crap that eBay put out this time,there was no way I would ever get to be a power seller, but at least before this there was an evey playing field for the power sellers and the little guy, now I don’t have a chance on eBay and am actively looking for a better place to sell, where everyone is treated equally. To be forced to give those nasty buyers that give me a bad feedback, because they are unhappy about shipping cost, (I always use eBay’s calculator) so if it is wrong, I shouldn’t have to be helt accountable for it. But those buyers will give a very badfeed back anyway, and now that they know we can’t express how nasty they are, who needs this..
Let’s redirect that anger a bit…
This seller has listed 37 items in the last 30 days – exactly ZERO of them have sold. Yep, the seller is right – they won’t ever get to be a PowerSeller doing that. Here are some reasons why their auctions didn’t sell:
- Titles are wrong – Fashion Jewelry Beautiful Stretch Bracelet
- Descriptions – yelling at your buyers isn’t too appealing… If you want this item then you need to accept my conditions as described. If you bid and win it, then pay for it right away if possible, or within 7 days of close of auction at the latest. If not then at least contact me with the reason, keeping in touch is always a good idea. If it isn’t paid for by the 8th day, and you have not contacted me, then I will consider it as an unpaid purchase, leave feedback accordingly, and then put it back up for auction the next day. NO EXCEPTIONS!! So please be considerate when dealing with other Ebayers. Thank you..(this is actually in a BIG, red font on the listing)
- Seller overpays in fees (nice of the seller for getting mad at eBay about changing the feedback, but obviously the fees don’t bother them since they are handing money over to eBay left and right) – uses Fixed priced on every listing (gee, obviously not what the buyers wanted), many items had BIN’s of .99 – which means…insertion fee of .20, gallery photo of .35 and a FVF (IF the item had sold) of .05. We are already up to .60 in fees for a .99 item. Hhhmmm, maybe that is why the shipping is so insanely high. And you know how much buyers love that!
- Of course they have no About Me page, Store, Reviews & Guides, eBay blog, professional/consistent auction template, etc…
- And my favorite part…their feedback…96.2% with DSR’s of 4.7, 4.6, 4.6, 4.3. Now I know there are looney tune buyers out there – not just on eBay, but everywhere. I get the occasional negative feedback from one of these (heck, my first negative feedback came from someone who was mad at eBay for something – lol). But a 96.2%??? egads. You almost have to work at screwing up that much. Plus, this is my favorite…here are some of the sellers ‘replies’ to people who never received their products and left negative feedback:
IF YOU KEEP THIS UP, MEN IN WHITE JACKETS WILL COME AND TAKE YOU AWAY FOR GOOD.
bfd, I am still not going to sell to someone that threatens b/4 transaction done
I want to thank this ‘ex-seller’ who sent this in as it proves my point much more eloquently than I could have done myself. If you are going to treat our buyers this way then PLEASE leave…we support the buyers and realize how very important they are to our business. Quit being mean to our buyers.
Now…compare that to how THIS seller feels about her buyers…fabulous story! (SO very proud of you Mimi!)
Janelle,
First of all I have to say, I truly praise the LORD for you because…
“Every good gift and every perfect (free, large, full) gift is from above; it comes down from the Father of all [that gives] light…” James 1:17 (Amplified Version)
and to you, I say, “THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!”
And yes, I am shouting! Thank you for always giving us the positive perspective - I just knew I could count on you to come in fighting for the right!
My mind is just swimming with all that I need to do…I am definitely praying about where to begin!!!
But before I jump into all that I need to do, I just have to share a story about one of my AWESOME customers! She bought a set of books from me on January 1st; I shipped on January 2nd (without insurance but with delivery confirmation) Unfortunately, the item did not arrive for several weeks and USPS’s website showed that I had indeed printed the label but that was all. Because of dealing with another situation over Christmas, I knew USPS would do little other than tell me to file a missing item claim. Since there was no “evidence” that I had even delivered the package, I just emailed my buyer how sorry I was and offered a full refund (it was under $20 so I could afford to do it and felt it was the right thing to do). My buyer quickly emailed me back that it was too much and could we just split the difference? I said, “Yes,” and issued her a partial refund with a note that said should the item show up, please consider it paid in full. Well, today, I get an email from her that the books had indeed arrived from the “dead mail” office in GA (7 weeks late!) and she even sent me the amount I had refunded her!! I am just flabbergasted that she would go to that measure — but that’s the type of customer I deal with over 99.9% of the time and the very reason I am so glad you are once again leading us to do the right thing!!
I do pray many blessings will continue to be yours!
Mimi
www.mimis-discount-boutique.com
Hhhmmmm…pretty easy to see who will be Successful with Delighted Buyers. I wish ALL of you HUGE Success always…but especially this week as we start the ‘Support the Buyer, Not the Boycott’ campaign. Go Get ‘Em
Fabulous blessings,
J
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