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Whoa – I’m outta’ control – 2 eBay posts in a row?

Summer may seem a long way off since we just celebrated New Year’s, but it’ll be here before you know it. And what comes with Summer? Ebay Live of course!

If you haven’t attended an eBay Live conference, I suggest you do.

What is eBay Live? Ebay Live is a once a year convention, held by eBay. The eBay community gets together to network, celebrate, learn and teach. They’re beneficial to those new to eBay as well as an experienced PowerSeller. There are hundreds of vendors offering tools to make your work easier as well as sourcing for merchandise. But one of the most popular attractions at the Live conferences are the classes. There are dozens and dozens of free classes on just about every topic from How To List to Advanced Tax Strategies for PowerSellers.

Of course there’s the ever-popular closing ceremonies dinner where all of eBay’s employees line up to applaud ‘us’ and there’s a great buffet dinner and live entertainment. The two years I’ve attended I saw the B-52’s and Davey Jones (The Monkey’s…yes The Monkey’s).
There is always a presentation given by CEO Megg Whitman and eBay President Bill Cobb. These are usually a ’sign of things to come’ type presentations and are always entertaining if not enlightening.

This year it’s being held in Chicago from June 19th – 21st at McCormick Place West. McCormick Place West is a new facility opening this year.

How can you register? Usually registration opens around April of the year. I’ll let you know for sure when it’s live and give you a link too!

Sunday night… it was a long day. I got up at 5am to go the the Swap Meet to try and sell some of the things filling my garage. Our house is on the market and I’m trying to get lean…as far as clutter that is. In general, I’m the anti-packrat. I throw stuff away almost too quickly and then wish I’d kept it. But, I still manage to collect enough stuff overtime to fill my Trooper from front to back floor to ceiling.

Anyway, after a 6-hour stint at the lovely Oceanside Swap Meet, I was $500 the wealthier and 24 boxes of stuff lighter! WhooHooo

I grabbed some Chipotle for lunch and headed over the the Boy Scout Space Derby event. This is a fun tradition held anually by my youngest son’s Scout Pack. They’re balsa wood rockets that fly down a fishing line race track propelled by ….rubber band powered propellers.

My son, being the knucklehead he is, decided he intentionally didn’t want to make it aerodynamic. He wanted it completely square, like block of wood it is when you get it out of the box. He also insisted we not paint it, or finish off nicely. He wanted to win the “Procrastinator” award (which is a real category), even though he planned well ahead to not finish the darn thing.

Amazingly he finished 4th overall out of some 60 rockets – beating many of the wafe like aero shaped rockets that obviously hours were spent on. It almost irritated people and only made our family chuckle. We spent literally 5 minutes on the entire project and he flew through 5 rounds with only 1 loss on the track before his final round for third place – which he lost. Anyway, it was fun.

I then hurried home for an online conference I was hosting for AuctionSelling101.com – our eBay education website. We coveed eBay stores today, where I instructed the attending students on how search is different for eBay stores than it is for fixed price and auction format listings.

Then we spent another hour where I literally opened up a store, and built it before them online in the conference room where I can share my desktop while talking to them in my headphones. Very cool stuff.

We had some dinner, and went over to Starbucks for an hour or so to play some Monopoly with the family. Then hit the grocery store and then home for the night.

Turns out we had a stellar day on eBay with the bicycle clothing! We sold 5 of our new cycling jackets and vests, several pairs of arm and leg warmers, toe covers and shoe covers and several pairs of shorts. Gross sales of over $350 for the day in just my bicycle clothing. Very good news!

We have an order already in that should be arriving in another week, and I have an order put together to submit next week. I sent out an email to my 400 plus past customers of cyling products directing them to my eBay store letting them know we had full inventory and lots of new items in stock. I guess it worked! )

If you own your own website you’ve probably heard of the ‘Google Dance’. If you haven’t, let me explain.

Google updates it’s search engine index periodically. This normally turns the whole ranking of sites on the world’s most popular search engine on end, wreaking havoc with site owners as their rankings are disrupted. This is the ‘Dance’.

Ina Steiner of http://www.auctionbytes.com/ reported that eBay will soon be delivering it’s search results by ‘Best Match’ results by seller quality (PowerSeller status and selling track record) instead of strictly by relevance. eBay did not explain what selling track record meant, but it seems likely to be based on Detailed Seller Ratings that were rolled out recently in Feedback 2.0.

Currently, customers see default search results by “Time Ending Soonest,” so everyone has an equal chance of showing up at the top of results as listings end. But I believe eBay may change the default sort to Best Match in an effort to serve up more relevant, quality listings. (Currently shoppers on eBay may select Best Match from a drop-down menu on results pages.)

This is apparently being tested in a few categories on eBay France.

I think this means, your item will show up, but rather than showing up at the top of results when your listing is about to end, it may be buried on a lower page throughout the entire duration of your listing.

Steiner says “If eBay implements Best Match as the default sort, I think some sellers will be devastated. Shoppers, too, may be annoyed, particularly in some categories, and it will be interesting to see if they change their preferences to “Time: Ending Soonest,” though eBay is not likely to share this information with us.

My advice is to be sure and do your best to optimize your listings for whatever changes eBay plans to roll out in the next few months, and get ready for a rocky ride.”

You can read the entire article here http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y207/m08/abu0196/s01

Preparing ahead of time sounds like the ticket. I’ve already begun myself. Pray for the best and Prepare for the worst.

Yup – it’s live! We launched a few weeks ago and have had a great response to our initial offer. We already have several hundred members and the discussion forums are active. This past weekend we also had our first live conference with around 30 members in attendance.

Very cool stuff. We’re getting ready to add another 8-10 videos in the next week or so. We have more convferences lined up in our virtual classroom, and will be breaking them up into ability levels. Check it out if you get a chance HERE .

eBay U…it’s just what is sounds like. A place to learn about eBay.

I’ve been teaching people how to use eBay for probably the past 6 years or so. For the past several years I got a lot of teaching referrals from my Trading Assistant listing on eBay.

We’d teach individuals, families or businesses how to buy & sell on eBay for $20 an hour. It was always informal and based largely on the individuals experience level and the topics they desired to know about.

For the past few years I’ve been seeing those “Learn How To eBay” class advertisements in the Learning Annex magazine and even local Community College handouts. I always marveled at the fact that whenever I looked at the Bio of the instructors, they always seemed to be business people, but with very little eBay experience. With only a bit of investigating, I found many have fewer than 100 feedback points, yet they’re teaching others as an “expert” in their field.

Well at the recent eBay Live event in Las Vegas, they had a seminar on the eBay Education Specialist program. For a nominal fee, eBay would instruct me on the art of teaching about eBay. They include videos, a Powerpoint presentation, handouts and student books.

After I got home from Vegas, I jumped in with both feet. I knew a lot about eBay, but I always like to learn new things, and I did learn quite a bit during the online class I took to become a certified eBay Education Specialist.

Now my name is listed on the instructor database, so I can be found by potential students looking for a “Basics of eBay” curriculum. I set up a simple website so my students can learn a bit about me and register for my classes. I’m ready to roll.

My classes will likely be held in small conference rooms at local hotels or schools. I’d love to work my way into the local Colleges. It has the possibility of providing a decent part-time income as well. I’m able to charge whatever I want, but I think a fee of $50 for the 4-hour class with a $10 materials fee (certificate and student manual) is a reasonable amount. With say 20 students on a Saturday afternoon, that’s $1000…not bad for 4 hours work.

Once I’ve had some student feedback (much like eBay’s regular feedback system), I will qualify to be certified for a “Beyond the Basics” class. Again, with more feedback I can teach a Business Specialist class as well.

I think it’s a great opportunity to share what I know about eBay, which I already enjoy obviously. I searched my area in San Diego & Los Angeles. There are maybe 50 people in all of San Diego and Los Angeles certified to be instructors and guess how many have a class scheduled in the next 3 months? No one within 50 miles, and about 5 people in the entire Los Angeles area. Sounds like potential to me!

Anyway, I’m fired up about it. Check it out, it might be for you too.