• Novelists Inc, or Ninc, Proposes Fee On Used Book Sales; Bad For Authors, Bad For U.S. Economy | Matthew Wayne Selznick - Even as a writer I have to oppose this one! (December 30th)
• Micro Persuasion: Re-Tweets Comprise Two Percent of All Twitter Volume - (December 30th)
• Twitter as a Terrorist's Tool? - Washington Post Investigations - (December 30th)
• Twitter / Tips, News & Status: ☼ WHO'S HERE? Twitter stat … - My brother told me that he pictures Twitter as a bunch of geeky middle aged men and me. Who knew he was right? (December 30th)
• Project Wonderful Talk - Unofficial Project Wonderful Bidding Engine - Want to make the most of Project Wonderful? Download this free bidding assistant to Auto-Bid on inexpensive ads whenever they are made available. (December 23rd)

Did I miss a good news item this week? If so, submit it below.

He imed me and asked if he could bid on some of my items. I told him, of course, and he ended up winning one of the figures (I sadly don’t remember which one). Mind you, it took him like 3 weeks to pay me which is even more pathetic since I saw him every day, especially since when he did finally pay it was via PayPal which I consider to be a party foul since he made me pay fees. I naturally ribbed him about this.

After shouting across the quad at him, “Don’t make me file a non-paying bidder report on you! Don’t think I won’t do it!” he finally paid me that day and I walked over to his dorm and handed him his item (fastest and easiest shipping ever).

So the next day I am looking at my feedback and my buddy had left me feedback and it was a positive and all it said was, “Enjoy the eggnog!” I’m like, what kind of feedback is that? Then, on a whim, I walk over to the fridge in my apartment and there is a carton of eggnog with a post-it note on it that says “for Hillary.” I consider this a more than fair trade for making me wait and pay PayPal fees.

Sadly, that feedback is so buried back in my feedback list I couldn’t even find it to get the exact wording or date but it will stick forever in my mind as my favorite feedback ever.

So consider this a little wish from me that you and yours have an excellent holiday, whichever holiday you celebrate, and a wonderful, and successful, New Year!

• 7 Things to Do with your Blog when you take a Vacation - This is a really helpful (and timely) article! (December 21st)
• MySpace v. Facebook Advertising Showdown. Which Platform Is Better? - (December 21st)
• The Daily Follow — Because who you read is as important as who you know - This is a cool blog. Each day they feature someone that you should be following on Twitter, kind of like a personality profile. (December 18th)

Did I miss a good news item this week? If so, submit it below.

I appreciate the extra traffic, I suppose, since there are decent number of hits on that listing but I am afraid that most people are going to think that I created this post which I most definitely did not. I am pretty convinced that its against eBay policies as well as she isn’t actually selling anything and has external links and I am also a little wary of being associated with a listing in violation of policies. Especially against my will and in such a very random way. On the other hand, I suppose there is no real harm to it.

What mystifies me the most, though, is what does the seller get out of it? I mean, he/she paid 35 cents to basically drive traffic to some other random sites.

I guess I just don’t get it. Can someone explain this one to me?

If you are like me, it burns you to have to give up those dollars or cents left on that card. But never fear! Even if there are only a few cents left on your gift card, you can apply any amount to your eBay account, thereby making sure that you get use out of every last drop of your gifted money and that the bank doesn’t get to keep a penny of it.

This process can be a little tricky so I am going to walk you through it step by step below.

Please note that the following method will work no matter how your eBay account is set up to pay your bill and will also work regardless of which bank or credit card company issued the card. It also works for both gift credit and debit cards, no matter how little money is left on the account.

1. First, determine exactly how much is left on the gift card. If the gift card is unused, this will be pretty simple as it will say it on the card itself. If you have used a portion of it (or if it is past the expiration date and they have started to take some of the money back) you will need to check with the issuing bank how much is left. Take a look at your gift card. They all feature either a website, phone number or both where you can check how much money is left on the card. Write this remaining amount down exactly to the penny. (Note: these cards put a “hold” on the money for each failed attempt to use it. If you try to come home and do this process after just having the card fail at a store, this may not work until a day or so has passed and the hold is off.) My $25 gift card has $7.35 left on it so I am going to write that down.
2. Log into your eBay account.
3. Go to My eBay > My Account > Seller Account.
4. Under eBay Seller Fees, click the link called “You can make a one-time payment using PayPal or another payment method.” (Please note that it is best to do this right before your usual auto-payment happens as eBay will give you a hard time with this process if your balance is zero.)
5. On the next screen, there is the option to pay via PayPal. Ignore this. Below this box, there is a link called “Pay with your credit card.” Click this link.
6. You may be asked to log in again. Do so if asked.
7. The next screen will be pre-filled in with your current credit card on record. Under the payment box, click “Use a different credit card.”
8. In the payment amount box, write in the exact number that we got in the first step. For me, that is $7.35.
9. Now fill in all gift card details below like you would for any other credit card purchase.
10. Continue and then authorize this one time payment.

You are all set. Now eBay has taken my $7.35 and I can finally throw this annoying card out with the satisfaction that the bank didn’t get that money back. If you have additional cards, you can go back and repeat this process as many times as you like. This will not affect whatever your normally scheduled eBay payment method is as eBay will just bill the remaining portion of your invoice after the funds from the debit card.

Any questions, other suggestions or thanks, please post below.

I was looking at my items and I noticed something interesting. I had one item listed at $9.99 with free shipping that eBay had a big notice on that looked like this:

(The red circle is mine, not eBay’s). Isn’t that nice, I thought, they are marketing my stuff for me. I hopped over to one of my other listings, this one costing $1.99 with $2.34 shipping. Now, that item was $4.33 total which, on this version of Earth at least, is even cheaper than the aforementioned item. But this was not, in eBay’s mind, a deal. There was no deal alert on this item even though the cost of the item and shipping was still under $5 much less under $10. No love at all for the value on that listing.

This really irritated me. Is eBay really that stupid that they think buyers care more about free shipping than paying the lowest price? After all, the price of the item is really the total of the shipping plus the item cost.

Instead of pushing free shipping, why doesn’t eBay combine the two prices. The aforementioned item above would, instead of showing $1.99 in big numbers and the tiny $2.34 shipping would just show as $4.33. Plain and simple. Then the buyer doesn’t know what items are free shipping and which are charged shipping because he or she is only seeing the total price and the seller doesn’t have to worry about free versus charged shipping because all the buyer sees is the total anyway.

Let’s take these search results below as an example:

What I am proposing is that those three listings show instead as a single price of $44.79, $44.94, and $44.99 respectively. Then free shipping becomes a mute point because the buyer is only seeing the single price that is the total.

Using the other day’s example, I have an item I sell that costs $3 to ship. I normally charge $9.99 for it but, to offer free shipping, I now offer it for $12.99.

You might want to sit down because I am about to blow your mind. $9.99 + 3 =$12.99. Did you see that? That just happened!

Here’s the problem, though. Guess which one of those two listings is the better seller? If you guessed the $9.99 one with $3 shipping, you guessed right. Just like $9.99 looks much cheaper than $10 even though it’s only a penny, people seem to always go for the cheaper one, even if it means paying shipping. (What’s really crazy is that if I make that $9.99 listing an auction with charged shipping, sometimes they even bid that item higher than the cost of the item with free shipping, but that is a story for another time.) That’s the whole reason people started charging something .99 for things, it’s retail 101, people. You can offer free shipping but, physiologically, people will always go for what their brain thinks is the better deal which, in this case, is the one that is charging shipping.

My husband was comparison shopping an item on eBay and I was watching over his shoulder. He was deciding between an item that was $.01 with $24.99 shipping and an identical item from another seller that was $24 with $2 shipping. His mouse reached over to buy the second one and I said, “What are you doing? The first one is cheaper.”

“But look how much he is charging for shipping!” my husband protested.

“So what?” I replied. “The first one is still cheaper.”

“But it’s the principle of the thing!” my husband whined, reluctantly ordering the first one.

It didn’t matter to him that the total price of the first one was lower as much as the fact that he was looking at a total discrepancy between the two sellers item price and sale price. But, to me, that is irrelevant. The total cost of shipping and item price is, in the end, the price so why not just show the total and stop playing games with the shipping cost? I think buyers would be happier for it in the end.

What do you think? Would this ever work? Would you like this as a buyer?

Everyone has their own pet peeves that will cause them to unfollow or, worse, block you on Twitter but here are what I consider the 7 deadliest sins you can commit on Twitter.

Lust

You follow everyone on Twitter and then offer everyone cheap Viagra, Tokyo Brides or barely legal co-eds. You are a spambot and you are the most hated in all of Twitter.

Gluttony

You follow hundreds of people a day and ask them all to follow you back. You aren’t fooling anyone. You cannot possibly be reading the updates of that many people at once, especially if you are brand new to the site. You are just stuffing your followers list with as many people as possible regardless of who they are hoping most of them with follow you back. Just as important as your followers on Twitter is who you follow so be choosy. A few high quality followers are worth thousands of bots and time wasters.

You also post way too often. You send out hundreds of messages a day. In my book, that is no better than spam and it makes you too much work to follow.

Greed

Buy my stuff! Digg my blog post! Vote for me in this contest! You are needy and greedy and you want all the attention for yourself. If you are a valuable additional to the discussion and community, people will give your content its due on its own merits, not because you demanded it. Stop being so greedy with the favors!

Sloth

You signed up for a Twitter account because everyone was doing it but you never post anything. Or maybe you only post one thing a month to keep it active. You are just too lazy or maybe you just don’t know how to use Twitter yet. You are adding nothing to the conversation, your last post was from two weeks ago and so you aren’t worth a follow.

Wrath

You are negative and angry all the time. You swear excessively and always see the glass as half empty. You attack other users and 90% of your tweets involve the word “pissed.” I don’t need you bringing me down, man. If you cannot add to the conversation in a positive way with useful instead of detrimental information, I have no interest in reading your updates.

Envy

You make passive aggressive comments about other Twitter users, @ reply celebrities excessively to trash talk on their shows, songs etc, beg for more followers. We get it, you wish you were one of the big dogs on Twitter. You are really jealous of the people with all the followers and are terrible at hiding it. You feel persecuted when they get praise and you don’t. Get over it! Has it occurred to you that they are more successful because they spend their time creating useful content instead of attacking and envying other users. Be someone who others would envy and the followers will, well, follow.

Pride

All you do is talk about yourself, your products, your services. It’s
all Me Me Me with you. Ugh. If you all you talk about is yourself,
you’ve turned me off as a follower. How can you make your communication
useful for your followers instead of just The You Show. Interact with people, don’t just broadcast!

When it comes to Twitter, be a user that you yourself would want to follow!

Oh and if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can do so here.

I think it only fair to mention that most of my friends from school and beyond haven’t a clue what I do for a living so this friend didn’t know that I had eBay, let alone that I am on the site as much as I am or that I have a blog about it. (One of my best friends since childhood has been known, when asked what I do for a living, to only reply, “You know she . . . works. . . ”) So this is not meant to ridicule my poor friend who had just “discovered” eBay and was trying to pass on a good thing to another friend, not having any clue that said friend was an eBay PowerSeller. But this was a really great moment for me to get a sense of the customer experience without the filter of insider knowledge like we all have.

The bulk of my friend’s praise was on shipping cost and time. She was excited that shipping costs were cheap (not free, thank god, otherwise I would have blown my cover and gone on a rant) and was especially excited because the item had gotten there, in her words, very quickly. They were both so great, in fact, that she has been doing nearly all her Christmas shopping on eBay.

As she was telling me this, something hit me. This was her first ever eBay experience and she was happily buying more on the site and, even better, doing word of mouth advertising and telling her other friends how great it was to buy on eBay all because she had a good experience. Now, this is not to say that there weren’t thousands of sellers out there giving a great customer service experience before Detailed Service Ratings. But with the introduction of DSRs, eBay has increased the likelihood that a buyer’s most recent experience will be a positive one. While my friend may have gotten cheap and fast shipping on her item before DSRs, DSRs greatly increased the possibility that her transaction would be a positive one and, because of that, she went from an eBay watcher to an eBay buyer that wants not only to buy more but to also spread the word. Take into account that, because of DSRs, her next transaction is more likely to be a smooth one, and eBay just won a customer. And that, my eBay selling friends, can only be good news for the all of us.

I was talking Christmas gifts with my husband (this was pre-talking to my friend) and we were panicking because the shipping deadline for a lot of stores is coming up and we usually do nearly all our shopping online. Without thinking about it for even a second before I opened my mouth, I said “This year is the first year I’m not worried because, thanks to DSRs I know we’ll get all of our eBay bought gifts on time .” Now, that was the seller in me talking because I know that us sellers are living in fear of DSRs and trying to give the best customer service possible. But, as a customer, it has given me much more consumer confidence in shopping on eBay for holiday gifts and that is sort of the point, isn’t it? (I usually do about 50% of my shopping on eBay and 50% on Amazon for the holidays, in case you were curious.) I am putting a lot more trust in seller’s shipping promises this year because, unlike past years, there is a real and immediate need for them to delivery on those promises.
Don’t get me wrong, DSRs are a pain in the neck for me as a seller. But while I think a lot of how eBay rolled them out was very stupid and the verbiage is terrible (If your shipping costs are reasonable, your shipping time quick, and your description accurate, you are restricted from selling which, of course, makes perfect sense. On Mars.), I am starting to think that maybe it’s not all bad. Before you e-stone me, hear me out with one more example.

My own mother, who started my eBay business with me and has a PowerSeller for a daughter, won’t use eBay because she is scared of it (she makes me buy things for her which is annoying as heck). Imagine my mom finally decides to buy something on eBay. Pre-DSRs it was really a crap shoot whether she got one of the good sellers or one of the bad ones (and don’t pretend there weren’t bad ones because, hoooweee, yes there were) and if she got a bad seller, she would likely have never touched eBay again. But on a post DSR eBay, the chances that her very first sale is a good one are much greater and, if that one is good, she is much more likely to buy there in the future. For a timid buyer, that first sale is key to turning them into a more confident and frequent buyer in the future and an increased likelihood that each sale will be good, increases the chances that she will be along for the long haul.

I might be willing to buy on eBay again after a bad sale if I have had hundreds of successful transactions already but if I have limited experience, the first bad sale would send me running for the hills. I kinda like the fact that DSRs decrease my chances of running into a seller that most people think are bad.

And to the sellers that couldn’t keep their DSRs high enough and had to leave? I’m sorry, but, good riddance! Every time you ticked off a customer, that’s a sale that I lost. Yes, you and I know that eBay is a collection of individual sellers but the average buyer doesn’t. If you give them bad service and I give them great service they are only seeing the “eBay” banner over both our heads and making their decision to use the site again based on that. I wish that wasn’t the case and you can work to brand and distinguish yourself but, in the end, that is how most people see it. My friend didn’t tell me what seller she got this item from, only that she got it on eBay. Heck, I am informed about this issue and if someone asks me where I got something, I still say eBay and not the name of the seller.

So I guess what I am saying is that, while they may not be doing in the best way possible, having minimum standards of quality in customer service (which, in the end, is what DSRs really are) is a good thing for everyone in terms of getting more buyers for the site and, if you want to be broader, internet selling in general. If it means us good sellers need to work a little harder to prove that we are good and that the bad sellers need to step up their game or go home, I think I might have to be for it.

But, as always, feel free to disagree below. . .

• HarperCollins puts books on the Nintendo DS — Boing Boing Offworld - Boing Boing - Some really cool potential for publishers and writers here! (December 13th)
• eBay, VeRO and the Scientologists - Tom Cruise and the Scientologists are trying to block the sale of e-meters on eBay? This sounds like something out of science fiction! (December 11th)
• Fast-Fingered Domain Squatters Flip Bush Library URL For $35K - Is it wrong that when I read this article I felt nothing but admiration for the people who turned the quick profit? (December 11th)
• The Complete Guide to Creating Effective Square Banner Ads - This article is basically recommended reading for anyone who advertises online. In addition to giving you lots of examples of what works and doesn't work in banner advertising, it also review some common ads to see how they could be improved. Really useful stuff! (December 10th)
• Read Wikipedia offline install on windows desktop | Blog Solute - This is a really interesting idea, though I am not sure that I would personally have a use for it as I am always "plugged in" but a small download allows you to read Wikipedia without have access to the internet (December 9th)
• E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: Amazon: Armed to Beat the Recession - (December 9th)
• Chispa's Shorts - 10 Reasons to be Antisocial - This list is like the curmudgeon's guide to social marketing. Here are reasons to NOT engage in social media. (December 9th)
• Stand Out! « The BrandBuilder Blog - This is a really great blog post that is a must read no matter what you do. On the web, mediocrity kills! Make yourself stand out in some way or you'll never make it. Great stuff! (December 8th)
• Driving Traffic to Your Websites - Some of these strategies sound a little shady (correct broken links to other sites with your own link?) but some are decent (December 8th)
• Hot Products this Holiday Season - Unlike my more general list last week, here is a list of exact products (December 8th)
• Nine Big Things in ‘09 - If blogging is supposed to be dead, how come it made this list, hmmm? (December 8th)

Did I miss a good news item this week? If so, submit it below.

Let’s say you live in St. Louis Missouri. A reasonable, well known place, right? You plunk your address into PayPal, typing St. Louis, and PayPal sends you your little confirmation postcard and, once it arrives at your door, you confirm the address, viola, you have a confirmed address on PayPal.

So now you purchase something from me. I use PayPal shipping to ship to your confirmed address and I get the following message in bright red.

Please note, the shipping address is different from the U.S. Postal Service’s recommended address. The U.S. Postal Service recommends this shipping address:

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Saint Louis, MO 63109
United States

We suggest contacting the buyer to confirm their correct shipping address.

Obviously, I am x-ing out the address of my buyer in this example for their privacy. “The U.S. Postal Service recommends” part makes it seem like this change is optional but, no, I cannot proceed until I change the addresses you have given me to read Saint Louis.

Can we stop for a moment and address how ridiculous this is? It’s your confirmed address so obviously that address works and the post office delivers to that address (isn’t this the whole point of having a confirmed address?), otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten the confirmation postcard. Even so, is there a postal works or, for that matter, person in all of the USA who wouldn’t be able to figure out that Saint Louis, MO and St. Louis, MO are the same place?

This, sadly, is not the only example of this, though this is the most obviously stupid and the one I ran into the most recently. It is often astonishing what the address verification objects to from simple and widely used abbreviations, such as above, to spacing, order of words (North Main Street versus Main Street North) and all manner of things that would never trip up a human being.

Now I don’t object to the address verification. Heck, I want them to make sure the address I am mailing a package to is valid before I waste money on postage.

But the question is, why aren’t they running this address verification on the address you type in to be your confirmed address? Why didn’t they force you to type in Saint Louis from the start to avoid this situation?

Ready for the conspiracy theory? (The eBay foil hatters will love this). They have made the address verification intentionally ridiculously nitpick-y to invalidate the Seller Protection Policy on as many items as possible.

Because, in the end, this situation is more than an annoying step where the seller needs to edit your address. Once I edit your address, even for something as tiny and silly as the above, I get the warning that I am no longer shipping to your confirmed address and, as such, am no longer protected by the Seller Protection Policy. (Now, if you are a PowerSeller, with the new rules on ship to address, you are still protected in this case but for the average seller, this is a huge problem as they are not protected.) So if you want to claim you didn’t get your item that St. versus Saint issue can stand between PayPal protecting my money or your getting an automatic refund.

So my choices are either change the address and cross my fingers that whatever PayPal rep I get will see the issue and be sympathetic if this transaction leads to a claim or to annoy my customer by asking them to change their confirmed address to what amounts to the exact same thing. Of course, I’m going to take my chances and change the address rather than annoy my customers.

Now, I was kidding with the conspiracy theory above. Honestly, I believe this is just a stupid inconsistency in the programming and, for all I know, they could have fixed this recently and I am just catching the old addresses submitted before they introduced address verification on confirmed ship to addresses. But I do know that I have always gotten a few of these a year and I continue to get them so it is still something that gets me annoyed each and every time it happens.