More EBay news

In October, eBay enforced limits on shipping and handling charges for what eBay calls its most competitive categories: Media - Books, DVDs & Movies, Music and Video Games. Sellers listing these items, after the limits go into effect, will be required to offer at least one shipping option within eBay's specified limit. Sellers may also provide other options that are above the maximums for expedited or international shipping. These maximum shipping charges apply to the first flat-rate shipping service within or into the U.S. Merchants are required to offer at least one shipping option within the maximum.

Lorrie Norrington, President of eBay Marketplaces, has previously said that enforcing shipping limits is designed to protect buyers from excessive shipping charges.

But one of the biggest concerns expressed by sellers is that they will lose money with set shipping limits, as not all CDs and DVDs, for example, are the same size. At times, vendors may have a specialty box set, or an antique book, for instance, that will require them to go beyond the set shipping limits for those types of items.

EBay has addressed this concern in a public announcement discussion forum by saying that sellers with an unusual media item that is too heavy or too valuable to fit within the shipping limits can use the Shipping Calculator instead of the shipping max limit. When listing an unusual item within a media category that will require extra for shipping, sellers will need to clearly describe why the item is non-standard to prevent having the listing removed for excessive shipping.

Lastly, we all know that shipping is tied to Best Match search results. And while eBay has accommodated sellers who list unusual items in media categories, they have not changed Best Match search functions to "forgive" sellers with these unusual items in a category that requires higher shipping charges.

Don't forget to visit the initial posts,Earning money online to start from.

More about eBay DSR-3

In the last post I had discussed about a minimum DSR level of 4.3. So the question arises “What Sellers Can Do If Their Level Drops Below 4.3”

Sellers who do not meet the minimum required DSR will be blocked from listing on eBay.com, eBay Motors Parts & Accessories and Half.com. It's important to note, however, that being blocked does not means suspended, it means you will be prevented from listing new items until the DSR goes back up. Any items you have listed at the time will remain active, and in many cases, successful completion of those listings resulting in high DSR scores being awarded by the buyer may be enough to put any DSR score back over the 4.3 threshold.

Sellers should also note that if the 12-month DSRs are above the minimum standard, you can wait for low DSRs over the last 30 days to roll off until the 30-day DSRs are above the threshold or a full 30-days have passed. If 12-month DSRs are below the threshold, you can also wait until the low DSRs expire.

Sellers have the next three months to work on their DSR scores to ensure they remain above the new 4.3 minimum. For those concerned mainly about the possibility of their shipping time and shipping and handling DSR falling, eBay suggests sellers do the following:

• Ship as soon as possible after you receive payment.
• Specify your shipping policies in the shipping details section of your listing; specify when you ship after receiving payment.
• Be specific about the shipping services you offer, including delivery time for each service.
• Offer a shipping service that provides tracking numbers.
• Specify details such as service and cost in the shipping details section of your listing.
• Use calculated shipping to determine actual shipping cost to your buyer's location.
• Offer discounts for shipping multiple items in one order. Your customer will see other items you have for sale, be happy to save on shipping, and most likely leave you a great rating.
• Provide details about any handling or packaging costs in the item description.

More on this topic in later posts.

More about eBay DSR-2

DSR is an area that has many sellers worried about how frequently their items will be seen in Best Match searches and how they will be viewed by a prospective buyer. A seller's DSR is made up of ratings in four areas; item as described, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges. Using DSR lets buyers rate the seller on a one-to-five-star scale in these four key areas. Buyers and sellers can only access a seller's score; they cannot see the exact score or comment left by an individual buyer.

Changes to the DSR, dubbed "DSR 4.3" will require sellers to maintain a minimum 4.3 DSR rating across all four DSR categories, over the prior 30-day or 12-month period — depending on volume — to list on the site. For example, sellers with less than 10 DSRs over the past 30 days will be evaluated on their DSRs over the last 12 months.

For most sellers, the main issue is how they are rated by buyers on shipping charges and delivery time. Many eBay merchants are frustrated over shipping issues because, to some extent, they have no control over what happens to the product once it's out of their hands. In short, once the item has been shipped, and is in the hands of the carrier, a seller cannot physically get the item to the buyer any faster.

Unfortunately, in the eBay discussion forums, sellers are reporting that despite doing everything they can to boost shipping, some buyers will score them low here, even when a seller is working the shipping process in an honest and speedy fashion. There are also some sellers, even those maintaining DSR scores well above the new 4.3 minimum, who just say the DSR system is too much. Scarletslounge (who has excellent positive feedback and 4.6 to 4.8 DSR scores) is one seller who posted in the public forum, saying that anything four and above shows a good seller.

Meanwhile, eBay says that right now only a small fraction of sellers fall below this threshold, but the same small percentage of sellers below a 4.3 DSR are actually responsible for a high percentage of customer complaints. So, to penalize this tiny percentage of sellers, eBay decided to implement the strict rules for all sellers. The problem with this, according to many sellers using public forums to discuss DSR, is that by enforcing a 4.3 minimum, sellers are being forced into doing things they really can't afford to do, such as offering free shipping and taking the loss simply because they are afraid a buyer will score them low enough on shipping and handling charges that they may see their DSR drop below the 4.3 minimum.

More in my next post.

More about eBay DSR

DSR is an area that has many sellers worried about how frequently their items will be seen in Best Match searches and how they will be viewed by a prospective buyer. A seller's DSR is made up of ratings in four areas; item as described, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges. Using DSR lets buyers rate the seller on a one-to-five-star scale in these four key areas. Buyers and sellers can only access a seller's score; they cannot see the exact score or comment left by an individual buyer.

Changes to the DSR, dubbed "DSR 4.3" will require sellers to maintain a minimum 4.3 DSR rating across all four DSR categories, over the prior 30-day or 12-month period — depending on volume — to list on the site. For example, sellers with less than 10 DSRs over the past 30 days will be evaluated on their DSRs over the last 12 months.

For most sellers, the main issue is how they are rated by buyers on shipping charges and delivery time. Many eBay merchants are frustrated over shipping issues because, to some extent, they have no control over what happens to the product once it's out of their hands. In short, once the item has been shipped, and is in the hands of the carrier, a seller cannot physically get the item to the buyer any faster.

Unfortunately, in the eBay discussion forums, sellers are reporting that despite doing everything they can to boost shipping, some buyers will score them low here, even when a seller is working the shipping process in an honest and speedy fashion. There are also some sellers, even those maintaining DSR scores well above the new 4.3 minimum, who just say the DSR system is too much. Scarletslounge (who has excellent positive feedback and 4.6 to 4.8 DSR scores) is one seller who posted in the public forum, saying that anything four and above shows a good seller.

More in my next post.

Detailed Seller Ratings at eBay

In early 2007, eBay introduced a new twist to the feedback system called Feedback 2.0. As part of Feedback 2.0, eBay introduced Detailed Seller Ratings – four new ‘Criteria' that buyers can anonymously rate sellers on. The Criteria include:

• Item as described
• Communication
• Shipping time
• Shipping and handling charges

Each DSR is rated on a scale of one to 5 stars. In late 2007, eBay announced that they will begin advantaging sellers with high DSRs in the search results and disadvantaging (and even taking trust and safety actions) for those sellers with low DSRs.

DSRs are going to be as important, if not MORE important than overall feedback starting in 2008.

You can learn more about DSRs on eBay here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/detailed-seller-ratings.html.

EBay's Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) have probably managed to irk more eBay sellers than any other changes the auction giant ever implemented. From the year 2008 a new minimum Detailed Seller Rating requirement will be implemented. This new minimum will require sellers to have at least a 4.3 across all four DSR categories, over the prior 30-day or 12-month period, depending on volume, in order to list on the site.

Lastly, a quick reminder that as of yesterday neutral feedbacks are no longer counted as a part of a seller's Positive Feedback percentage. Due to the timing of this change, neutrals will not impact PowerSeller eligibility for August.

More on DSR in later blogs.

The use of Checks and Money Orders on eBay

EBay says that checks and money orders will no longer be accepted on eBay after this fall. The company's reasoning: it says that check or money orders are 80 percent more likely to result in an "item not received" (INR) than those paid with credit card or PayPal. However, buyers can still use these payment methods for item pick-up, at the seller's discretion. EBay also says this change is prompted by its upcoming checkout system that will only support electronic payment methods, including a seller's own Internet merchant account for direct payments. Obviously merchant accounts will be a huge benefit to many bigger and business-focused sellers, but this still leaves the many casual and part-time sellers out in the cold.

Currently eBay's Mature Audience category is one that prohibits the use of PayPal, but on the eBay Discussion forums, some sellers are speculating that by the time eBay removes paper purchase options in favor of electronic payments, PayPal may very well be accepted in this category. EBay has long said that it will never make the auction site PayPal-only, however, by removing the ability for sellers to accept checks or money orders, eBay has removed all payment options that are cheaper than PayPal.

Shipping Limits Introduced in Media Category

Again, eBay is blowing the free shipping horn by offering free shipping incentives in all categories, plus introducing new shipping charge limits in the Media category. Shipping costs are seen as a problem for many buyers, and eBay has been getting tough on sellers they think charge too much for shipping.

While eBay is offering several shipping incentives, it will also introduce limits on shipping and handling charges in one of the auction site's biggest and most competitive categories — Media — which includes Books, DVDs & Movies, Music and Video Games. Under the new rules, sellers listing these items will be required to offer at least one shipping option within a specified limit.

The dollar limits set by eBay were based partly on what e-commerce competitors typically charge for shipping. This, according to eBay, will ensure that buyers encounter fewer excessive shipping charges. Some examples of shipping limits are as follows:

• Audiobooks: Max shipping price of $4
• Children's Books: Max shipping price of $4
• Blank Diaries & Journals: Max shipping price of $5
• Wholesale & Bulk Lots (Audiobooks): Max shipping price of $10
• DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray: Max shipping price of $3
• VHS: Max shipping price of $3
• Wholesale Lots DVDs: 101-250 Items Max shipping price of $3

EBay's complete shipping limit chart can be read here.

More updates in other posts.

A summary of annual updates at eBay

This year EBay announced new fixed-price listing fees, new media shipping charge limits and gets tougher with new DSR minimums. Plus, the auction giant plans to cut paper payments and enable merchant accounts for direct payments in a new checkout system this fall.

This year eBay has really shifted its focus to buyer satisfaction — often at the dismay of many of its sellers. Today's big eBay announcement shows that eBay is still on track and fully committed to keeping its buyers happy.

Starting Sept. 16, eBay will be changing its pricing to reduce start-up costs for sellers. To do this, eBay will lower the listing fee for all items sold in the fixed price format to only 35 cents in all categories, except Media which has been reduced to a 15-cent insertion fee.

Sellers can also take advantage of a special 5-cent rate on Buy It Now listings in the Media categories using pre-filled item information until year-end. The listing duration of all Buy It Now fixed price listings is also being increased to 30 days, up from seven, with an option for automatic renewal. With the new fees this enables sellers to list in Buy It Now fixed price listings for 30 days at 35 cents.

There is the decreased listing fee which is good news for sellers, but unfortunately there will also be changes to Final Value Fees (FvF). EBay is shifting the costs to sellers by way of final fees instead of listing fees.

More in another post.

Some more e-commerce sites-4

Continuing from the previous post, I shall discuss here more about E-junkie in this one.

If your business offers non-digital goods, you can set the quantity and time limit for any product that you promote, which is a great for selling goods such as calling cards, event tickets and more.

To assist with shipping, E-junkie calculates the total weight of the purchased products and applies customizable rules to determine the most efficient packaging to ship them. E-junkie then refers to USPS for U.S. merchants or a configurable shipping table to estimate the shipping cost based on the weight and destination.

E-junkie's cart also calculates and charges sales tax by matching a buyer's location with its taxable region. If you use the VAT option, prevailing rates will be based on a customer's location relative to that of your business. To work internationally, E-junkie supports various currencies that include the US Dollar, Pound Sterling, Euro, Yen, Canadian Dollar and Australian Dollar.

Some more e-commerce sites-3

Carrying on from where the previous post left, when customers visit your site, they'll see E-junkie's "Buy Now" and "Cart" buttons and can click on them to purchase items. And after making a sale, E-junkie conveniently accepts payments via PayPal, Google Checkout, 2CheckOut and ClickBank accounts and offers built-in shipping, sales tax and VAT calculators when working with non-downloadable products.

You can sells goods on any number of sites and manage them through E-junkie's administration site. And once you have pasted the button code into your site, you should never have to change it even if you alter prices or other details.

If your company sells downloads such as e-books, MP3 files, software or digital images or artwork, E-junkie can store your products on its server so you don't have to deal with hosting space. The company's storage facilities are separate from publicly accessed Web folders, which should make them quite secure.

After payment, buyers are sent an e-mail that includes a link to download the product. The links are designed to be hack-proof and expire after a designated number of downloads or a time limit that you set.

The program also supports PIN codes. This is handy, for example, when selling phone cards or programs that require a registration code for activation. Another strong capability, E-junkie can call a script and apply a code that's generated by it.

Some more e-commerce sites-2

There is another site called E-junkie which offers powerful capability to quickly create and integrate sales features into a Web site. The service is particularly good for selling downloadable products such as software and MP3 and video files. And what's particularly buzz-worthy is that the service has no transaction or bandwidth limits and no setup or transaction fees. Its low price starts at $5 per month and tops out at $125 per month, depending on the number of products that you sell.

The company recently released its "FatFreeCart," its next generation online shopping cart that is browser independent, works inside a site without relying on pop-ups or the installation of additional software and supports leading payment systems such as PayPal, Google Checkout and 2CheckOut. It is indeed a seamless way to add e-commerce features to your site, as well as sell products on eBay, MySpace, Google Base and Yahoo Stores.

To incorporate E-junkie's sales features, all you have to do is define and describe your products in a form and then paste the resulting code into your sites. The code defines a button that can also be integrated into a stand-alone blog or Myspace profile. Each product that you wish to sell gets its own E-junkie "buy now" and "add to cart" buttons. There's no programming involved and it can take less than three minutes to define the product and generate the code.

Buttons are easy to create. In E-junkie, simply go to the administration ("admin") page and click the "Add Product" option. After entering the name and price for a product and customizing its accompanying e-mail message, which can offer instructions, warnings, thank-you notes and more, the service generates the button code, which you may then paste into Web pages through editors such as Macromedia Dreamweaver.

More about this site in the next post.

Some more e-commerce sites

There is another site called as PayLoadz which provides means to market and sell downloadable products such as music, software, e-books and other files. PayLoadz offers an easy and powerful e-commerce service. It also manages the transactions through eBay and provides the server space to store the files.

After uploading and configuring your products, PayLoadz generates software code that you simply paste into your Web site and that adds a "Buy Now" button. And beyond secure storage and transactions, PayLoadz carries out file delivery and handles product key registrations. Overall, it's a seamless path to selling digital goods on the Web.

Setting up a PayLoadz account is a simple matter of defining your name, e-mail and PayPal account. If you don't already have a PayPal account, you'll need to create one and then configure PayLoadz to work with it. The service does a great job of walking you through this setup process. If you've already worked with eBay and PayPal, you should encounter no problems here.

With the accounts configured, you're ready to enter the products that you wish to sell. A product page asks for item name, ID number and selling price and allows you to write a "thank you" note that will appear in a customer's e-mail along with the download instructions.

You define the file format (pdf, exe, mp3 and so on), delivery file format (for example, "zip") and file type (video, music, e-book). After that, you can add product descriptions and link images as well as define keywords that will optimize Web searches and help customers find your site.

After defining each product, an upload function guides you through the process of uploading your digital files onto PayLoadz' servers. With files in place, PayLoadz generates code that you paste into your Web site that defines and presents a shopping cart button.

More Places To Sell Digital Goods

If you have a skill of your own which you can teach to others through the digital media, there's a place for you to show off — and sell — your stuff called as Zipidee, looking to provide the storefront and tools to allow you to publish, protect, promote and profit by selling your original digital content.

The platform currently supports videos, audiobooks, podcasts and music, with e-books, games and ring tones coming in the near future. Ebay allowed people to take what was in their attic and turn it into an online store. We are doing the same thing, but for digital goods. There's a market that exists offline where people are already selling to a large audience. This site provides everything they need to sell online and set their own pricing and payment model. The company will convert DVDs and such content to digital download format for free and lets you set your own pricing model, whether it be rental, subscription-based or a flat fee for a download. Wong said sellers can also choose how to sell their content. For instance, they can decide to offer an entire video or e-book, sell individual chapters or bundle together different formats, say, an e-book and a video.

Reporting and Promotion
In a format similar to eBay, sellers have a "My Zipidee" page with a control panel that lets them list items for sale, set pricing and insert meta tags, descriptions, titles, keyword tags and so on. They can create thumbnail video captures so customers can preview content, and set it for a selected time-frame or for the first two minutes. For content that may need it, sellers can also place ratings, such as PG-13.

The "My Zipidee" page also shows the history of sales for each buyer, so you can see how much you've sold, what profit was generated for each sale and so on, and this data can be exported to Excel.

And, if you already have a Web shop or page in a social network, you can use Zipidee's promotional and affiliate widgets.

In addition, Zipidee also offers a proprietary digital rights management platform as well as digital watermarking, Wong said, "so you don't have to worry that your stuff ends up on YouTube." Vendors simply choose to opt in or out during the registration process.

More about selling digital goods

If you want a fast and secure option of a service for handling electronic payments and secure digital product delivery and have the space to host your own files, ByteCommerce is the answer for you. Once you have your files online you can then use this service to redirect your customers from your own Web space to ByteCommerce for checkout. ByteCommerce handles the electronic payment thought PayPal and the customer can then download the purchased electronic goods or get the registration code for the product from a secure ByteCommerce page.

Once you have registered on the ByteCommerce Web site, you are able to access an author dashboard that lets you add products to the ByteCommerce catalogue. To add a product you must provide a product title, price and the URL to the product page. You can also specify a serial code to be provided when the customer pays and also specify special discount coupon codes. Once you have your product added to the catalogue you can then generate the HTML code that renders the button that customers will click to purchase your products. This code can also be sent to a customer who has purchased your item from an online auction or Web store.

ByteCommerce doesn't physically host your files, except when it has been purchased by a customer. This means you will need to provide the URL of where the file is hosted on your own Web site, which should be in a secure folder with a to prevent unauthorized file downloads. When an order is received for the digital item, the file is dynamically downloaded by ByteCommerce from the URL you specified. It is then stored on their server for the customer to download. The file is kept on the ByteCommerce server for a certain amount of days, and if there are no more sales, the file is deleted until the product is ordered by another customer. If you do not have your own Web site you can also store the files with one of many free Web hosting services.

Since there isn't a physical hosting of files, using ByteCommerce is cheaper than many of the digital goods e-commerce services. ByteCommerce forgoes set-up and commission plans in favor of a single straightforward commission plan. Payments for sold digital items go directly to your own PayPal account. For every 20 copies of a file sold, the 20th order is directed to ByteCommerce as payment for their services. ByteCommerce does not set any time length restrictions on sales and its commission.