It looks like they’re finally clearing the way for small-to-medium-sized sellers to make money again. FYI, here’s a quick rundown of the changes they’ve just announced.
Starting in September you’ll get better exposure in eBay’s search results AND get a 20% reduction in fees if:

eBay Logo by Flickr user liewcf

• you’re selling $3000.00 a year with 100+ sales
• you don’t get 1 and 2 ratings on the Detailed Seller Ratings
• you maintain a 4.6 or higher DSR average

You’ll also be rewarded if your listings have a high conversion rate — in other words your listings may not get a lot of views, but they consistently sell your items. Good news for sellers who take time to write a good title and item description; bad news for the giant Diamond sellers that don’t bother because they’ve got so much inventory!

Our eBay Mentoring Team are really excited about these changes. They say the just-introduced Top-Rated Seller designation is “realistic and achievable” for people who follow our system and use our strategies.

Coincidentally, we’ve just released the brand-new, online version of our Insider Secrets to Selling on eBay course. It’ll cover all these changes (the big advantage of being online instead of in a book) and any new ones eBay comes up with.

So if you’ve been frustrated with eBay lately, NOW IT’S A WHOLE NEW BALLGAME!

After a couple of years of making it harder and harder to make money, it looks like eBay is rewarding the sellers who made it such a powerhouse in the first place.

What do you think? Is this what you’ve been waiting to see on eBay?

Sellers who are willing to put in a little effort to learn the new rules are seeing better results. So you’ll likely come out ahead of your less savvy competition if you implement a few changes of your own.

So, where to begin? Let’s talk about the Best Match search criteria.

As of the beginning of March, the default for all item searches on eBay is now "Best Match" (it used to be "Time: Ending Soonest").

Buyers can change this default, but you can assume they most likely won’t do that, so it’s important to know what makes an item a Best Match.

eBay explains these search criteria:

• It sorts the listings based on Time Ending, Relevance, Seller Performance, and Shipping & Handling.
• "Relevance" is based, in part, on past successful buyer behavior for similar items (eBay notes what items are clicked on most by buyers when they run searches, and this means heading keywords will be extra important).
• Sellers with buyer dissatisfaction rates greater than 5% in the last 30 days will see their listings appear lower in search results.
• Sellers with the lowest Detailed Seller Ratings for Shipping & Handling Charges will also see a decrease in exposure.
• Sellers with Detailed Seller Ratings of 4.6 and above within the last 30 days will get higher ranking in search results.
• The time remaining on an auction is still taken into consideration, but it isn’t the main criterion any longer.

This can obviously have a huge impact on your sales. In fact, sellers with a DSR or 4.6% or greater will now likely have up to 20% more exposure on their auction listings than their competitors.

Just check out this screen grab of a search for webkinz (they’re popular on eBay right now) to see what we’re talking about.

We took this from page 6 of the search results…

Some sellers here only have a minute or two left, yet they’re lumped in with the 2-hour auctions way back on page 6 where no one is going to find them.

We clicked on the profile for one of the poor-ranking sellers. This is a high-volume seller with a 99.1% positive feedback rating, but his average DSR is 4.4. Not so bad, you might think…

… But compare the page 6 seller to a seller who ranked at the top of the same eBay Best Match search, whose average DSRs and Negative feedback results are slightly higher…

Obviously a few fractions of a percentage point make a huge difference here! A difference, in fact, of being ranked at the top of the search… or back on page 6.

And it doesn’t stop there. Shipping costs are now a really big deal on eBay as well — and that doesn’t just include buyer feedback on your turnaround time. Best Match will soon also take into consideration how the shipping cost for an item compares to other items in the same sub-category, and also whether the shipping price is specified.

Items with shipping costs significantly above the average cost for other items in the same sub-category may receive less exposure from now on.

So this is the Best Match default search in action.

What can you do to make sure you’re not shoved way out on page 6 with just minutes to spare on your auction?

Don’t panic! Our Advanced eBay Mentoring Team gave us some fantastic strategies you can use to propel your listings to the top of those searches. And since this is new territory for everyone, you can use this change as a great opportunity to get the jump on your competition.

Keywords are, as always, key

The keywords you use in your item listings are going to be more important from now on, so you need to make sure you’re getting them right.

The good news is that you don’t have to be psychic to figure out what keywords your buyers are searching for. Just do your own search for items you’re thinking of selling and pay careful attention to the listings that are making it to the top.

For example, when we go back to the search, we found that "unused tags, new, webkinz, and rare" seemed to come up in all the top featured listings. Those are the keywords you would start with in this case.

Do your own searches to make sure you’re getting your keywords correct, and include those words in your auction listings.

Test, test, test!

Here’s a very handy tip… you can test how effective your keywords are!

Post your item, then make a note of where it ranks. Go in and change your heading… eBay will rank it again within just 5 minutes. Check to see if this improved your listing or not, and revise your heading again if you need to.

You can do this as many times as you like up until the last 12 hours of the auction.

Shipping secrets

Shipping is always going to be a bit of a tricky area to address… especially when you have to rely on your postal system to make sure your items are delivered in a timely fashion. There isn’t much you can do about delays beyond your control, but you do need to remember that communication is the name of the game when it comes to shipping your goods.

Here are some top tips you can use to make sure your customer knows when to expect your items so they’re not up in arms because their package is a few days late:

1. When you make a sale, leave positive feedback for your customer that also states your shipping times. You can say "Thanks for buying my product! You can expect to receive your item on April 17th," so the buyer has an exact date they can aim for. The more detailed information you can give them, the more likely you are to receive positive feedback yourself.
2. Be careful when you calculate your shipping times… add a day or two to your estimates to avoid disappointment. Then if it arrives earlier, you’re golden!
3. Include details of your shipping costs on a sheet of paper in the package so the customer sees it when their package arrives. This way you can explain that, for example, although postage may only have cost $1.50, you charged $3.00 because you needed to buy bubble wrap ($0.75) and a post pack ($0.75) to make sure the item was delivered in good shape.
   

   Again, this gives your customer all the information they need to see you’re being reasonable with your charges. You can even print these details on a bright pink sheet of paper if you think it will help attract their attention!

4. Ask for positive feedback from your customer! You can include a written note with your item, add it to the feedback you give to the buyer, or send a follow up email to them, but make sure you politely request that they give you positive feedback, or at least let you know what you can improve on if they’re not happy.
5. Remember that your DSR is based on the last 30 days only, so you can work to improve it all the time!
6. Add a specific shipping service and price in the Shipping Details section of your listing, and making sure shipping costs are competitive with what buyers see in other auctions. And put your shipping information in the body of your item description too so there’s less chance people will ignore it.
7. Check out eBay’s Shipping Best Practices for more info… http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/shipping.html#best

If you’re looking to start an Internet business…

• WITHOUT a website
• WITHOUT a ton of start-up capital
• WITHOUT being a computer techie, and
• WITHOUT a ton of business experience!

… eBay is the perfect place for you!

PLUS — if you have an EXISTING Internet business —
you’ll learn how to boost your sales by expanding into
eBay’s giant online auctionplace of 2,000,000 shoppers
a day, with over $1 Billion in purchases made in 2006!

So if you’re keen to earn life-changing wealth in the
world’s largest marketplace (I’m talking 241,000,000
registered users who are PSYCHED to spend money online),
then check out my new Insider Secrets to Selling on eBay!

You’ve probably got $3,100 worth of stuff lying around your house that you don’t use anymore… or maybe you never did!

An eBay-sponsored Nielsen survey found that the average US household has 52 orphaned items — including clothing and accessories, TVs, cell phones, computers and hardware, sporting goods, toys, and furniture — worth $3,100.

That pair of in-line skates you stopped using after your first scraped elbow? That yellow handbag that never did quite go with the shoes? The old cell phone that can’t do anything but send and receive phone calls?

Gather them up and sell them on eBay.

The survey found that more than half of the respondents who did that made more money on eBay than they anticipated, often from unexpected items like old computers, cell phones, and video games.

Selling household items is the best way to get started if you want to make money on eBay, especially if you want to build a sustainable business.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:

Sign up for an eBay account and create your eBay User ID.

If you’ve never used eBay before, bid on a couple of inexpensive items so you can get to know the ropes and build some feedback. Take notes on what attracts you to certain auctions.

Choose an inexpensive item for your first auction. Then go to eBay Seller Central to find selling tips for your product category. Search for similar items that are already listed, and again, pay attention to which listings attract you and which ones don’t. Look at the category, the starting price, the words used to describe the item, and the photo.

Go to the Sell Your Item page and follow the steps of listing your item. Use what you’ve learned from looking at other auctions to create a listing that will attract buyers. Be sure to include a Gallery photo — it’s free and it will increase the number of bids you get.

Put up your auction and see what happens.

Once you’ve successfully bought and sold on eBay, it’ll be easy to do it again with the 51 other unused items you’ve got taking up room in your house.

photo by Cosmic
Kitty

Get our newsletter for more eBay tips here

Back in the early days of Internet marketing, there wasn’t much you could do to get started with marketing your business online until you actually launched your own web site.

Before you could make money, you had to:

• Choose a domain
• Set up your hosting
• Design your web site
• Put it all online
• Optimize and test your web site

But maybe you want the chance to "get your feet wet" before you commit to building a web site and getting really serious about marketing your business online.

Or maybe you’re trying to discover your online business niche: the problem you want to solve, the people you want to sell to, and the best possible way to create a viable business. Maybe you don’t want to commit to a web site until you’ve had a better chance to experiment with different ideas.

Well, fortunately for Web newbies, there are more options for getting started with e-commerce than ever before! Now you can actually market and sell products without ever creating your own web site.

Today we’re going to take a look at some of the easiest ways to get started online today:

• Start selling on the world’s biggest e-commerce site: www.eBay.com

• Start a blog in under five minutes and reach a whole new market on the Internet!

… as well as the quickest way — once you’re ready — to start up a fully functioning web site of your very own.

So can you take advantage of these tools to make your first online profits today? Keep reading to find out!

Start selling on eBay and get access to millions of potential buyers!

eBay.com is the hottest e-commerce site on the Web today, and for good reason:

• More than two million people visit eBay.com every single day, spending an average of TWO HOURS navigating through eBay’s pages and listings

• More than $1,000 in sales happen on eBay every single second!

• 72% of eBay users have incomes in excess of $50,000 per year — so they come ready to spend!

And — most important to you — 95% of eBay users are individuals or small businesses. eBay is clearly a place where newbies can go to find instant profit and success.

Getting started on eBay will take you LESS than one hour in total.

Within minutes, you’ll be ready to set up your new auction listings. That means you can see your first online profits TODAY!

And while those listings will cost you only pennies to place on eBay’s pages, you gain immediate access to millions of buyers who are looking for items just like yours.

To get started selling on eBay today, go to: http://cgi5.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SellHub2.

But what items are you going to sell?

This is the real beauty of eBay: there is a market for practically everything on the giant online auction site!

The easiest way to get started is to sell off some old items you no longer need from your basement or storage space. This will allow you to get the hang of writing up a description and creating a listing without having to invest in a product to sell. After all, everything you make from these sales is pure profit — so you have nothing to lose!

If you have a product you are already interested in selling on eBay, check out how other sellers are marketing these products. How much are they going for? What makes their auctions appealing? How many bidders do they attract?

If you’re not sure what you want to sell, try checking out what products are popular at http://pulse.ebay.com.

While you might not want to sell the items that everyone is searching for — guaranteeing you some serious competition — you can sell items RELATED to those products and generate a ton of interest in your listings.

eBay offers free tools for setting up and promoting your listings. Your only expenses on eBay are are your listing fees, plus a small percentage of your selling price.

Getting started on eBay is easy — anyone can do it in less than an hour. But to build a hugely profitable eBay business takes some advanced strategies and techniques.

Once you’re ready to take your eBay business to the next level, I recommend you check out the "eBay Millionaire" secrets we reveal here:

http://www.AuctionTips.com/course.html.

Create your own web site in less than five minutes — and for free! — by starting a blog

Blogs (or weblogs) are frequently updated web sites that show the newest content at the top of the page. The other content usually follows in the order it was posted.

Business blogs have become one of the hottest tools for marketing on the Web today. And while some companies use them to promote their products in addition to their main web sites, you don’t need to have a web site — or even have a business yet — to start a blog.

Anyone can create a blog for free and have an active, functioning presence online in just minutes! Even complete Internet "newbies" find the set-up process simple and easy to understand. You don’t have to know anything about web design or pay a single cent for a domain name or web hosting.

And once you’ve got your blog online, you can start making money instantly! Here’s how…

• Start a Google AdSense campaign to generate advertising revenue from your blog. It’s easy to set up an AdSense account, and have targeted ads displayed to your online readers. This can be a great source of revenue, though of course the amount of income you can expect from your AdSense ads will depend on the amount of traffic to your blog. The more traffic you receive, the more people are likely to click through the ads displayed on your site — and the more revenue for you!

• Join an affiliate program — or a few affiliate programs! — and start promoting their products on your blog. You don’t even need your own product to get started! You can place ads for your affiliate products on your blog, or write articles or product reviews that contain your affiliate link. You receive a percentage of each sale made when readers click through your links and make a purchase.

• Sell products directly from your blog: If you do have a product that you’re ready to sell, you can write articles on your blog telling readers about the benefits of your widget. Once they get excited about what you have to offer and decide to take action, you can direct them with a sidebar button to your PayPal account (which is free and easy to set up.)

  With PayPal, they can order your product and pay for it in seconds — even with their credit cards! And it only takes you a few moments to get set up to take payments.

You can create a blog in five minutes, absolutely free, with a free blog hosting service. These are considered the top options for blogging beginners:

• Blogger (www.blogger.com)
• Yahoo! 360 (http://360.yahoo.com)
• MSN Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com)
• LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com)

If you’re looking for more tips for generating traffic and profits with your blog, check out www.MarketingTips.com/trafficsecrets.

Of course, if you’re getting serious about starting a business online, we always recommend that you create a web site of your own…

We’ll be launching an incredible web business creator this spring… so stay tuned.

Final thoughts

It’s never been easier to build an e-commerce presence online than it is now, with the rise in popularity of blogging, auction web sites like eBay, and quick web hosting solutions like Google Page Creator.

Each of these options offers you the opportunity to determine the viability of your business model, test your strategies and salescopy, establish a ranking in the search engines, and gain credibility and a reputation in your industry.

Best of all, you can get started making money online TODAY.

And once your business is underway and you’re ready to set up a web site of your own, you can also use all of quick start options we’ve talked about today to continue to market your products…

• Use a blog to grab a great position in search engine rankings, and then drive traffic to your sales web site!

• Use a Google Page to drive another stream of traffic to your site!

• Use eBay to test new products, sell off old or damaged inventory, or create a new revenue stream for your business!

It’s never been easier to get started on the Web than it is today — so let us know why you haven’t started yet…

Making money on eBay is extremely easy — even if you’ve NEVER tried it before. 
Follow these steps and you’ll be on your way in a day.

All you have to do is:

Step 1:
Open a FREE eBay account. (Takes less than 5 minutes and costs you nothing.)

Step 2:
Decide what you’re going to sell. (Start with the old stuff in your closets or basement!)

Step 3:
Take a picture of your item. (Make sure the lighting is good!)

Step 4:
Put your item up for auction. (It takes about 10 minutes for a ‘rookie’ to create a listing!)

Step 5:
Watch the bids — then collect payment! (This part is FUN… You watch people fight over your item, then collect money from the highest bidder!)

Step 6: Read our CURRENT ISSUE of the eBay Auction Tips Newsletter!

And it really IS that easy!

It’s a great way to "get your feet wet" at this whole eBay game, AND make a nice little profit while you’re doing it.

Be sure to check out "The Insider Secrets to Selling on eBay"… our step-by-step system contains
literally EVERYTHING you need to start making serious money on eBay
TODAY.