eBay[c] The Missing Manual

You've successfully listed an item, but you can't just sit back and wait for a buyer to send you money. You need to manage your auction while it's running. Keep track of auctions you're running from your My eBay page, where you can see the current price, and, if appropriate, how many bids have been placed, the current high bidder's ID, the number of people who've added your item to their Watch list, and the number of questions you have waiting about the item. Check your auction page to make sure it looks right, respond to buyers ' questions, and maybe lower the starting price if you're not getting any bids. This section explains what might come up during an auction.

5.5.1. Finding Your Item

It's easy for one listing to get lost among eBay's millions upon millions of auctions. If you want to check your auction while it's running but can't find it, try one of the following foolproof ways to locate it:

• My eBay . Go to your My eBay page and click All Selling. Your auction appears under Items I'm Selling. Click its title to go to the auction page.

• Item Number Search . Click the Advanced Search link, then type the item number in the text box and click Search. You can get the item number from the confirmation email eBay sent when you listed the item.

• Seller Search . Click Advanced Search Items by Seller. Type in your own eBay ID and click Search. The results list all of your current auctions.

If you can't find an auction by any of these means, check to make sure that you actually got all the way through the listing process. A quick way to do this is to go to the navigation bar and click Sell. If there's a link that says "Complete your listing," you started a listing but didn't finish it. It could be the missing auction. Click the "Complete your listing" link and follow the required steps. Be sure to click the Submit Listing button on the last page when you're finished so that eBay can register your auction and put it up.

It can take a whileup to several hoursfor your auction to appear in shoppers' search results. And if you go back and make changes to your listing, the clock starts ticking all over again. So avoid tinkering with your auctions, changing them two or three times a day, or else buyers will never be able to find them.

5.5.2. Answering Buyers' Questions

You might get some questions about your item while the auction is running. Typical questions include asking for more details or extra photos, asking about shipping costs or your return policy, wanting to know whether you'll reduce shipping for multiple items ( assuming you have more items to sell) or accept a payment method not specified in your auction terms. Every time a buyer clicks the "Ask seller a question" link on your auction page, eBay sends you an email containing the question.

eBay gives you two ways to answer a buyer's question:

• Respond to the buyer's email address . Even though questions come through eBay, they arrive with the buyer's email address in the From: field. To answer the buyer directly, just hit Reply as you would when answering any email. (This reveals your email address to the buyer.)

• Respond via eBay (eBay sends an email to the buyer) . Click the email's Respond Online button, which opens a browser window containing the Respond to Question page. As you can see in Figure 5-10, this page looks a lot like the Ask Seller a Question page, only with a couple of additions.

  If the question is one that will be of interest to a lot of buyers, turn on the "Display this question " checkbox. You can display up to 100 questions and answers on your auction page, but you can't display any new questions or answers during the auction's last 12 hours. (You can still answer those questions via email, of course.)

  Note: Be careful not to violate a buyer's privacy by displaying questions that contain any of the buyer's personal information (full name , email address, and so on). Once you display a question and its answer in a listing, you can't delete them.

  If you want to keep your email address private at this stage of the auction, check the "Hide my email address " box. (The winning bidder, of course, gets your email at the end of the auction.)

  If you don't like clicking links in emails (a good policy with so many spoof emails flying around the Internet), you can use another method to get to the Respond to Questions page. Open a Web browser to www.ebay.com, click Sign In, and sign in to your eBay account. Then click My eBay to go to your My eBay page and look at the My Summary section. The Selling Reminders section lists all your current auctions that have questions waiting. Select one and click the Respond button. Doing so takes you to the same Respond to Question page shown in Figure 5-10.

Be prompt and courteous when answering buyers' questions. Answer a question even if the answer already appears in your item description. Remember, you're interacting with someone who just might put money in your pocketso try your best to make a good impression .

Warning: Even if a buyer asks, don't agree to cancel an auction and sell an item off eBay. Not only is this against eBay policy, you could be dealing with a scammer who wants the transaction to be completely off eBay's radar. If you go off eBay, you lose eBay's protection policies. For example, you can't file an Unpaid Item dispute (Section 5.7.2.1) if the transaction didn't happen through eBay.

5.5.3. Revising the Listing

If your auction has been running for a few days and there's no actionno bids yet, no questions in your email, no watchers (or only a couple)consider making some changes to your listing. For example, maybe a juicier description would spark some interest in your Carrot Top poster. eBay lets you change your listing until you receive a bid or the auction is in its last 12 hours.

To change a listing:

1. From the navigation bar, click My eBay .

   Your My eBay page (Section 1.4.9) appears.

2. Locate your auction. In the Action column next to the Sell Similar link, click the arrow, and then click Revise .

   The Revise Your Item page opens with the item number already filled in.

3. Click Continue .

   The page that appears should look familiar; it's identical to the Review & Submit page you used to submit your original listing.

4. Click the section you want to revise, make your changes, and then click the Save Changes button .

5. When you're done, click Submit Revisions .

Here are some strategies you might consider if you're thinking of revising your listing:

• Extend the auction . If you don't have any bids, giving buyers more time to find your auction is a logical choice. Auctions can run for up to 10 days (eBay charges 20 cents for a 10-day listing; other lengths are free).

  Tip: Because some buyers search by looking for auctions that end soon, try extending your auction several times to make it keep coming up in searches sorted by "Time: Ending soonest." Start off with three days; if there are no bids by the beginning of the third day, extend to five, then to seven. Just remember that you can't extend the auction when it has 12 hours or less left to go.

• Change your description . Reread your item description and see if it's missing anything. Is there some way you can make the item sound more exciting? Consider adding a small bonus, like batteries with an electrical item or a sheet of stickers with a kids ' book, to make buyers feel that your auction offers extra value.

  Tip: To add a little more to your description, go to My eBay, find your auction, and click the far-right drop-down arrow; then click Add To Description. The text you add appears at the bottom of your item description, along with the date and time you added it.

• Revise your title . It could be that no one's bidding because they can't find your auction. Take a good, hard look at the title and see if you can change it to make it come up in more searches (see Section 6.2 for title hints). View similar items that have sold in the last 30 days for the price you want; look for any patterns of keywords in the titles that attracted buyers to these auctions.

• Lower your reserve price . If you've set a reserve price and no one's bidding, try lowering the reserveand revising the item description to say so in big bold letters : "New! Lower Reserve!" Or consider revealing the reserve amount in your item description. Many buyers don't like to bid when they don't know the item's real price; they'll just find another auction.

• Add a BIN button . This strategy can work if you've got a lot of people watching the auction but no one's bidding. A Buy It Now price that offers a good deal might lure one of those watchers to buy your item.

5.5.4. Ending a Listing Early

Sometimes something happens that prevents you from following through with an auction: you come home to find that your dog has chewed the leg of the reproduction Chippendale chair you were selling, or your spouse has bagged up the lot of designer clothes and donated them to Goodwill. If you need to end your listing early, follow these steps.

1. From the navigation bar, click My eBay .

   Your My eBay page (Section 1.4.9) appears. Locate your listing.

2. In the far-right Action column is a link that says Sell Similar; next to the link is an arrow (you can see it back in Figure 5-8). Click the arrow, and then select End Item .

   eBay asks for your ID and password, and then for the reason you want to cancel the listing, as shown in Figure 5-11. If there are bids on your auction when you end it early, eBay gives you the option to cancel those bids. Otherwise, the highest bidder wins when you end the auction.

3. Select a reason, and then click End My Listing to cancel the listing .

   eBay cancels the auction immediately.