bubbajay.com

I know, I know – it’s been quite some time since I wrote about eBay – the original content of this Blog. But, like the poltergeist…I’m baaaaaaack.

If you’ve been around eBay for a year or more you may remember when eBay changed the search function so that any items listed in one’s eBay Store would not be displayed unless there were less than 30 of the searched term in the fixed price/auction categories.

This was devastating for many eBay Store owners forcing them to pay more for auctions style listings just to get the exposure they needed to sell their wares. It didn’t help that eBay raised the fees for Store owners at the same time – but that’s another story.

Now, when buyer conducts a search on eBay, at the top left of the page there is a tab named “Stores” (see image below). Previously if you clicked it, it just took you to the eBay Stores Hub where they would have to enter their search term again. But, with the new changes, when the tab is clicked it shows the results based on the search they performed.

The big question is whether or not shoppers would even realize that eBay has added this new functionality.

Regardless, there’s no down-side to it, so in my book that’s a plus!

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.

How do you find the best deals on eBay? Well one of the best ways is to be the only bidder, or have very little competition.

“And how do I do that Jay?” Well, as you may know I have a website called http://www.sweetdealfinder.com . It has lots of cool links and tools for doing business online and finding great deals. But one of the lesser known tools is the “eBay Misspelling Tool”. You can find it in the top left hand corner of my site.

The super simple explanation: People misspell words in their titles. If they spell Apple Ipod Appel Ipod, it might not ever get seen by 99% of eBay shoppers. But you can find it easily.

Anyway, I could explain how to use the tool, but my friend Chris from www.3riversauctions.com has put together a sweet video that explains it so much better than I ever could.

He even tells you how to have eBay email you when someone has made a mistake on the spelling of one of the words in their title so you can swoop in and buy it cheap!

Check out the video, totally FREE here:
http://www.3riversauctions.com/videos/not-just-another-ezine.htm