What are good and honest selling techniques?

[scottish]

dogg - we both know that some sellers fail to describe books accurately OR (as in my case) forget to disclose some defects. Thankfully, only Stevie Wonder would fail to miss the date stamp on the Hulk 181. I agree, that date stamps and equally heavy problems should be disclosed.

 

In my example, whatever the reason the seller didn't tell me about the date stamp if they accepted returns on CGC items the buyer would be satisfied.

 

I also refund shipping.

[Rickdogg]

I need to buy from you more often Hopefully i'll be home in time to snipe a few of your auctions

[scottish]

Why aren't you there yet?

[Rickdogg]

I'm leaving right now to meet my classmates for a final group project

[scottish]

You don't need no schoolin'! Bid on my auctions dang it!

[Joanna]

I try to write an auction to appeal to me as a buyer. I put customer service at the top of the list. I always pack as safely as possible. I charge only cost of stamps for shipping. I have a full return policy. And in the text of my auction I try to be as honest and comprehensive as possible on condition. I also describe the stories in the comics, because that's what I bought comics for when I was collecting. A good story was always enough to get me to buy.

 

I allow zero bidders and low feedback bidders, but not negative feedback bidders. Have I been burned? Yes. But I've also noticed that low/zero feedback bidders can be the best buyers because they're desperate to build their positive feedback. Granted, there can be anxious moments, but proportionately, they've been very nice. (Naturally, I've got a NPB right now with a 7 feedback, so I'm not saying there can't be problems, just on average, there aren't).

 

Fast shipping: I always ship within 24 hours of payment (barring holidays and weekends), period. No excuses, no laziness, it just has to happen.

 

Personal dislikes: I hate auctions where the seller's rules take up the whole auction and there is little to no talk about the item itself. To me, this is lazy selling, as you know those rules are boilerplate. The seller is taking 3 seconds to write an auction and expecting to sell to me with minimal work. I like to see that the seller cares more about the item than his rules, and cares enough about the book to make me want to buy it.

 

I also hate dishonesty. Calling a book NM when it's obviously several steps below, and not giving any more information is lying, plain and simple. (not 'subjective', just lies). Calling a book NM and giving a detailed description of all flaws is different. Then the person might not know how to grade. The difference is that the former is hiding the flaws behind a grade, the latter is open about the flaws and trying to grade.

 

I like HTML, but I like it simple, not so over-produced that I can't find the info on the item. That's all I care about when I bid -- describe the item. If I can't find that easily, I'll look at a different auction. Good scans/photos are also very important.

 

-- Joanna

 

 

[ArAich]

 

Joanna..your policy is what I strive for (I wish others would too) but I would add one more bit of advice.

In 4 words: Buyers love good communication.

I find that the buyer just loves to know when payment is recieved, when the merchandise has been shipped,how it has been shipped and when it can be expected to arrive.

I am sure you already do this, as do many other sellers I have dealt with, I just wanted to be sure that it was mentioned...

[FlyingDonut]

I try to write real descriptions. I do NOT overcharge for shipping, as this is my biggest peeve there is. I (as evidenced by my feedback), tend to undergrade (which sucks, by the way, as I could be getting more $ for books). I use a little HTML to liven things up, have a nice big scan.

 

Oh, and I ship really fast. There's no secret to it, I just don't like having books in the house that somebody's paid for already.

[Rickdogg]

I've noticed that customers tend to come back on a regular basis b/c of fast shipping. They seem to LOVE it.

[PovertyRow]

I hate descriptions like "a nice above average copy". It means nothing for my genre. And also despise scans that only show the book but are too small to show detail.

[Rickdogg]

Roger that!

 

Freakin hate it when they put "Great book, some flaws, but still nice." and to top it off they use ebay's small ipix window

[Lockjaw]

Huh, are you saying you would prefer that a person sell all 10 books in one lot, or are you saying that they can sell the books individually...just pick one individual auction to note all the additional books they are selling?

[Joanna]

Buyers love good communication.

 

D'oh! I knew I'd forget something. Yes, absolutely. I give them shipping options (various prices on various methods and let them choose), I tell them when payment is received and when the item will be/has been shipped. I also give feedback as close to the time they pay me as I can, but I'll admit I do get lazy and sometimes have to play catch-up. But I try to give them feedback before they give it to me.

 

-- Joanna

[Joanna]

The one flaw in most of my auctions are small scans because I'm usually selling books too cheap to make the supersize option affordable. However, I always offer to email big scans and in fact, encourage people to ask for them. I send the scans the second I get the email and then ask if they need a higher dpi than my originals. If so, I rescan the book and send it. It's purely a cost thing with me. I know I need to get a web page, but I know zip about web page building/coding/whatever, and can't afford another bill, so I just use ebay's ipix and emailed scans.

 

-- Joanna

[Rickdogg]

Not on ebay, in the marketplace here on the boards.

[Rickdogg]

I understand your reasoning. What I was referring to was sellers that say that claim a book as being a MINT 10 with no flaws! Usually these types of sellers are the newbies or the guy that always overgrades his junk just like stickldfkWizard@aol.com or whatever his name is.

 

Your ISP shoud provide you with some webspace. Just check out your home page Since you sell a lot of raw books, hosting your own pics would definitely boost your sales.

[Joanna]

My ISP is connected to Yahoo (I'm with pacbell.net, and they are owned by SBC and now they're SBC/Yahoo). When I went to sign up for a home page I got shunted to Yahoo and they do not recognize me as a Yahoo ISP member since I'm pacbell not sbc. Basically, I'm cut out of the loop. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get any space. So I went to one of those free spaces on the web and it worked for a day, but when I tried to access it the next day, my password no longer worked. I have no idea what that was about, but I've never been able to go back there since. The other downside for free sites are the massive amounts of pop-up ads and there's no way I want to plague an auction with that dross! (um... would that happen? Would pop-ups fly around if I connected to a scan on a free-web page? I'm just not a web page person, so I don't know). I also found that nearly every free site I visited was geared for Windows people, and I'm on a Mac. All their software to build the page was MS friendly and for Mac people it was "sorry, but we don't like you."

 

In short, I'm sick of the whole darn chase! So I gave up and decided I'm doomed to use ebay's garbage ipix. I usually don't give up on this sort of thing, but a gal can only take so much.

 

-- Joanna

[notch_top]

Joanna,

 

 

Try a free Geocities account , starts out with 5MB of storage space AND you can get around any popups.

 

Sound like you have a good grasp of image hosting but :

 

For the beginner they have a utility called Pagebuilder.

 

Newbie steps for image hosting after you sign up for you account:

 

1. Launch Pagebuilder (This may take a second, just click it once)

2. Click on NEW in the top taskbar

3. CLick on Pictures

A new window will open

 

4. Click Upload, then browse. Find your image on your hardrive. DOUBLE click on your image file.

5 Click Upload once more (Allow time for image to load)

You will now see a preview of your image in the pop up window

 

6. Click OKAY

7 Click SAVE in the upper taskbar and name the file whatever you choose

8.Click SAVE in the new pop up wiindow that your image preview is in

9. You will then get a SAVE AND PUBLISH complete would you like to view your page. Click OKAY.

10. Right click ON THE IMAGE, go to properties. Copy the URL and past into EBAY'S optional hosting your own image line.

 

Any questions don;t hesitate to ask, and pardon me if I wrote out to many steps. Not everyone is image inclined

 

M

 

 

[Joanna]

Notch, thank you but here is the message I received after I signed up and tried to begin my new life as a web designer:

 

"Warning: You are using a non-Microsoft Windows operating system. Although limited testing has shown that Yahoo! PageBuilder does function in many Macintosh and Unix versions, we cannot be sure that Yahoo! PageBuilder will work on your specific system. You can click on the "Launch PageBuilder" link below to find out if your computer can run Yahoo! PageBuilder."

 

And naturally, it could not.

 

This is basically what every single free site says.

 

-- Joanna

[FlyingDonut]

Go to the Apple web site - they offer free hosting/home pages for mac users. My brother has a nice free site up there. I don't know what the hosting limits are, but it'll work with your Mac.

 

Fight the power!