The Ten Keys to Success on eBay

[mandy]

I have been privileged to hang out with a lot of eBay sellers, many successful, some struggling. In the process I've drawn a few conclusions. There are, I believe, ten key ingredients required to run a successful eBay selling business, regardless of its size.

One: Commitment...
Two: Sufficient Start-up Funding, Well Spent...
Three: Effective, Persistent Marketing and PR...

full article: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m03/abu0162/s04

[landofsmiles]

Don't forget: The willingness to revise hundreds of listings on a weekly basis.

[xppman]

Seems the author needs to tell eBay this.
I can easily turn all this right around on ebay.

Sufficient Start-up Funding, Well Spent
Now we all know ebay spends the money they get from us well don't we?
They create department after department who ends up
sitting around day in and day out trying to create
something to "justify their jobs that usually ends up negatively impacting many
segments of the selling base. 


Effective, Persistent Marketing and PR
If ebay was doing "Effective, Persistent Marketing and PR",
there would be no need of ad words or CPC campaigns by sellers
in attempts to drive traffic to their ebay listings. 


Give Great Customer Service
Hello ebay? 

Never Sell Junk
Well ebay does seem to be trying REAL HARD to get rid of what they consider "junk sellers".
You know the ones that made the place an interesting site to begin with,
that made the buyers curious want to see more.  :blinkie:

Create an Efficient, Pleasant Facility
How about that from ebay as well,  instead of an overblown, glitch ridden,
hard to navigate site full of useless features / carp.
Remember ebay... KISS is what works.  (Keep it simple).  :

Create Polished Listings & Photos
ebay's third grade graphics overblown headers and links on every page
help make the site look. Well third gradish and way overblown to me.

Clean up the pages we pay for and get all your advertising junk, links
and carp out of it. I'm paying for that space.
When someone clicks into MY listing
All they need to see is MY stuff.
I don't want YOUR search function on my page.
There is no need for you to tell MY buyers shipping times.
There is no need for your third party suppliers logos.
There is no need for over 51 links on the page I pay for,
that take the buyer away from me.
For instance if someone wants to jump from ebay US to ebay UK.
They can go to the top left. Hit the ebay logo to the home page then scroll down to all the other links to countries / sites.

(The above bothers me a lot. Over the years our pages have turned
into a small WINDOW and has become INCREASINGLY dressed / surrounded
with all this useless carp that SEEMS to take the focus OFF the listings. IMO)

Pay Attention to the Details
Yea ebay PAY ATTENTION:
Like when your customers are telling you what you are doing
is hurting their sales, not helping. 

Do Good Recordkeeping
Just like ebay does with overblown numbers and figures?
OK
If I presented figures like ebay presents in their SEC filings.
I'd be audited in a heartbeat.

[landofsmiles]

Sooooooooo true, Xman!  Go heal thyself, ebay!

[amy]

A very accurate assessment of eBay the corporation. 

[bargainbloodhound]

They create department after department who ends up
sitting around day in and day out trying to create
something to "justify their jobs that usually ends up negatively impacting many
segments of the selling base.

That one is very true and is the primary reason for the never ending glitches.  Organizing your workforce into "teams" to increase productivity is good up to a point, but if you're not careful (i.e. you create one too many teams) it winds up hurting your company's overall productivity and you wind up with a bunch of employees whose knowledge of the company's operations doesn't extend beyond their "team's" group of cubicles...as is proven during eBay's monthly eBay Stores Brown Bag Lunches
 

I do think  the main reason for many of the "enhancements" is that one team needed to produce something to justify its existence.