Ebay Monday

For those of you "doing eBay," you may know that listing your handcrafted jewelry, as much time and effort as that takes, is only the beginning. You must first get those thousands of eBay surfers to notice your jewelry (easier said than done) then hope they place bids on your lovely jewelry, you are on the clock indeed.

You must follow the auction, check back to see if any customer has a question. By the way, a customer can post a question right there on your listing for all to see; and if you miss one day, there is bound to be a sticky, trick question you didn't address in time.

Once you get that first eBay bid, you must wait for the duration of the auction, make note of the winner (Hope enough people have found your auction to get into a round of lively bidding) pack your order, wrap it, then ship it by the time you said you would; otherwise you are destined for the dreaded ..... Negative Feedback.

Feedback?
Just in case you didn't know, a feedback rating is the eBay buyer's Holy Grail. Your feedback rating reflects your customer's buying experience, your product, your service, if you did what you said you were going to do and how fast you did it. Customers use eBay feedback ratings to decide if buying your jewelry might be a risky venture or a safe transaction.

But remember when you were trying to make that first step into a new career. You couldn't get the job you wanted because you didn't have experience; and you couldn't get the experience unless you already had the job. That's kind of like eBay feedback.

If you sell great products and give good service, customers give you good feedback and positive ratings. But strangers won't buy from you unless you have..... good feedback and positive ratings. Until your feedback ratings are consistently on the rise, eBay becomes a long and bumpy road; which is why so many eBay sellers dabble in it just a bit, then walk away.

Of course a seller gets to give customer feedback too; but with recent eBay rating changes, even if you have the worst selling experience ever, even if your customer never pays you for the merchandise they won at auction, your seller's feedback can only be positive or no feedback at all. There's a reason for that, but I won't go into that right now. It's Monday morning and I have lots to do.

What's That Got To Do With Monday Morning?
Some people do auctions every day, which means they probably make sales every day. That means, printing labels, packing, shipping and making a trip to the post office almost every day. That's a lot to do, especially since a lot of eBayers have fulltime jobs.

One way to minimize the daily eBay things to do grind is to list most of your auctions to begin on the same day, with ending dates on a day that's convenient for you. If all your auctions end on Sunday night, for instance, you can devote a single day, Monday perhaps doing all the tasks you need to do to wrap up those sales and earn those valuable feedback ratings.

So that's what I'm doing this Monday morning. I've had a cup of coffee and I'm ready for caffiene infusion number 2. Next it's checking my eBay listings for concluded auctions, sending out invoices, printing labels....... Well you get the idea. It's not a perfect system, but it works for me.

After creating jewelry on Saturday, listing it Saturday evening, and following auctions all day Sunday,Tuesday will be my welcome day of rest.

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