The 10 Best Resources for eBay Sellers
January 1, 1970
Want to make a mint on eBay? Thought so. Here are the best sources to help you on your way, based on our years of experience writing books and articles about eBay. They’re in no particular order.
1) AuctionBytes—Online newsletter that covers the auction biz—and not just eBay. Full of great articles, a searchable archive, and two (count ‘em) types of newsletters you can subscribe to. If you’re not reading AuctionBytes now click on this link immediately http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab (then come back and read the rest of this article).
2) eBay’s Site Map—eBay can be a real challenge to navigate, no doubt about it. Here’s a quick way to get to whatever area of eBay you’re interested it. Use this once and you’ll be using it all the time. http://pages.ebay.com/sitemap.html
3) Auction Software Review—Do you list more than 10 items per week? If so (or you just aspire to one day) you should be looking at ways to make listing as easy as possible. You should be looking at auction management software. This is a great site for getting a good fix on what’s “out there.” Updated often. http://www.auctionsoftwarereview.com/
4) Negative Neutral Feedback Tool—This one is for buyers and sellers both. It doesn’t take too many times paging through screen after screen of feedback comments before you wish you had a tool like this one. This handy site lets you enter an eBay member’s ID, and then go right away to any negative or neutral comments he or she has received. What a timesaver. www.toolhaus.org
5) Nortica 500 and Nortica 200 lists. These lists compile eBay’s top sellers as ranked by feedback (Nortica 500), or the number of positive feedback comments they’ve received in the past 30 days (Nortica 200). Review these lists to get a feel for who’s doing things right. The seller’s IDs are hyperlinks so you can easily go immediately to their listings. We know PowerSellers who track this as closely as stockbrokers track what’s said in the Wall Street Journal. www.nortica.com/userarea.
6) eBay Financial Information--If you sell on eBay you better also care how well the company’s doing financially. You’re an employee of sorts (but don’t count on getting those sweet stock options just yet). Even more important than the financial stuff are the eBay services and products eBay’s putting muscle behind (eBay Express, Skype..?). eBay’s Investor Relations area provides easy access to recent analyst presentations by Meg herself, as well as annual reports and other information goldmines. http://investor.ebay.com/index.cfm
7) eBay Radio--Reading from a screen all day is hard on the eyes, as if you needed to be told that. That’s why it’s a good idea to get your information through other means sometimes, and eBay Radio is as good an example of that as any we can think of. The host is the avuncular Griff who often has eBay experts on with something to say besides “buy my product.” http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio/network.cfm/station/eBay-Radio.html
8) Terapeak—eBay’s been around since 1995 and millions (billions?) of items have passed through it. So there has to be more information available some place about what’s selling and who’s selling it then what you’ll find on the site. Terapeak is one of those places. Here you’ll find data on what’s selling, when it’s selling, what listing enhancements successful sellers used and a whole lot more. Trust us. It’s worth checking out. It’s not free, but it’s not expensive either. http://www.terapeak.com/
9) The Seller Sourcebook--Once of our favorite PowerSellers, Stephintexas, told us about this site featuring easy-to-use eBay tools. We’re talking about auction templates, listing generators and the like, that aren’t expensive and don’t require multiple college degrees to get the hang of. http://www.sellersourcebook.com/
10 Amazon. Sorry, we write for a living and we're going to plug books as learning tools. Not just our own, such as eBay PowerSeller Secrets, eBay Million Dollar Ideas, and How eBay Really Works (sneaky, eh?), but the others out there that will help you in your quest to be an eBay Titanium PowerSeller (sound the trumpets)! http://www.amazon.com/. Good luck!