1. Is it the MacBook deal for you?
Avoid buying on impulse. Take your time and do your homework before committing to the deal. Buy in haste, repent at leisure

2. Does the seller have good feedback?
Check the seller’s history and feedback rating. Be wary of sellers with zero or low feedback or a record of bad deals. If in doubt, contact them through eBay’s the ‘Ask seller a question’ link - your message will go through to the real account owner

3. Is there enough detail in the description?
Check the description carefully. You need to know the specs and the condition of the MacBook you’re interested in. If there isn’t enough detail, ask for more. It’s easy with the ‘Ask seller a question’ link and good sellers are happy to supply more info.

4. Is the photo adequate?
Photos are the only visual information you have to judge the condition of the MacBook, and wise sellers use good pictures. If you’re interested in a listing but the photo’s poor, don’t be afraid to ask for more. Again, good sellers are happy to supply more info.

5. What does the deal include?
Ideally you’ll get the MacBook with all its bits - charger and cord, remote, display adapter, install disks and manual, all in the original packaging. If it’s not clear in the description, ask.

6. Is the original receipt available?
This is useful to prove ownership and also in case of hardware issues if the MacBook is still in warranty.

7. Is the MacBook still in warranty?
If you buy one that’s less than a year old you still have the option to buy AppleCare for another two years’ coverage.

8. What are the shipping costs?
A deal may look cheap ’til you see the shipping fees. Don’t wait until after you’ve bought it to discover you’re being ripped off. If shipping is not stated, ask. If shipping insurance is offered, get it. If it’s not, ask for it. The small extra cost is worth it for your peace of mind while your MacBook is in transit.

9. How is payment to be made?
Pay by credit card or use PayPal as they provide another layer of protection in the event of a deal going wrong.

10. A word of warning!
Be wary of really cheap offers. Many eBay accounts get hijacked every year and you might be dealing with a scammer. As a rule of thumb, if it seems too good to be true, chances are it probably is.

To sum up
Don’t bid on impulse, do your homework and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Peter Strudwick writes for MacBookMart.com where you’ll find good cheap MacBooks. If you’re in the market for a cheap MacBook visit http://www.MacBookMart.com today.

Well, all this is true - all kinds of people are buying and selling all kinds of stuff on ebay every single day. Some of them make a lot of money, some of them lose a lot of money, and most just spend a little and make a little. But if you want to turn it into a business, you’d have to handle all the handling and shipping and customer care, right?

Nope.

And I’m not even talking about dropshipping if that’s what’s on your mind now.

(In case you don’t know: dropshipping is a way of selling something that you get at a cheaper than retail price, but another company is doing all the handling and shipping for you - so you never actually have to touch whatever it is you sell, you don’t need an inventory or to purchase a minimum amount of merchandise).

But as I said - it’s not even about dropshipping. I’m talking about making money when other ebay sellers sell stuff. (And I’m not even talking about finding cheap deals on ebay where you buy something cheap and sell it expensive to make a quick profit).

I’m talking about making money when other ebay sellers - successful and unsuccessful - sell stuff.

In any market whatsoever.

How can you do this?

Easy: With ebay’s partner network.

You can sign up at ebay’s partner network and get a commission on every sale that is done through you.

Maybe you don’t have a very clear understanding of how exactly this works - and I can totally understand that, this article really doesn’t go into much detail. I don’t want to overload you with information here.

Look, it’s simple: know you know it’s POSSIBLE. The next step is to make a choice: is this something that you want to know more about or not?

If not - that’s fine. There are many ways to make money. If you are dedicated and disciplined, I am sure you will succeed one day. Good luck.

If you want to know how this ebay partner network stuff is working, just visit my website on making money with ebay:

http://www.EbayMoney.6it.info

You know who I’m talking about here, ‘those’ people who actually stood up while everyone else stayed seated. You’ve made the first step, the next one is to educate yourself, which I why you’re reading this article now. You want to learn everything you need to know about making money on ebay, so let’s get started -

First of all if you haven’t already, head on over to ebay.com and sign up for a free account. If you’re not too familiar with how the site works, jump in their and play around with it for a while. Make a dummy bid on some products and check out some ebay stores so you can get an understanding of how people actually make money on ebay.

OK so once you have familiarized yourself with the way in which Ebay works, you now need to find yourself a particular product in a lowly competitive niche to sell. When working out a product you can sell on ebay, try to think of ONE thing that you can continue to sell for a long time into the future.

A lot of people get caught selling heaps of different items and inevitably cannot create successful business model from this type of venture. The idea is to first find a good product, then search for a supplier that offers dropshipping. Dropshipping is when you set up a direct link between you and the supplier. If someone buys from your ebay store, then the supplier will get word of this and send the item out to the customer. Usually you take 50% of the profit!

So try to think of something that would be easy to ship and is unique(niched). For example instead of targetting ‘blinds’, you would look for something a little more niched like ‘venetian blinds’. When you think you’ve found a good product, check to see how many competitors are also selling your product on ebay.

Usually you will be able to tell if a niche has become overloaded, just check to see how many results there are. If there is more than one page of results, stay clear. Less than one page, you may have a winner.

Get your daily dose of information on how to setup your own ebay business. Learn how to make money on ebay with free tips and advice.

A lot of businesses think that the only way to make a buck on eBay is through selling products on an auction. For a lot of businesses, there just isn’t enough profit in it, or the business is a service sector job and has nothing to sell. You’d be wrong to think of it that way.

The fact is that eBay has as many searches a day as Google, except all this people are actually looking for something to buy. Having people that are just looking to buy something is very good for business.

The first thing you can do is put up a classifieds ad. It’s just like the classifieds in the newspaper. It’s usually simple and straight to the point. “I’m selling *insert name*. Contact me”. People that end up searching for what you’re selling will find it.

Another amazing thing you can do is sell products and if you don’t have one to sell, make one. You have to remember that when you sell something on eBay, you officially collect this persons information. This is a very profitable tool because you know this person is interested in what you’re selling and they have proven to you that they will actually buy. That means you can send them a letter in a months time saying, “I got a new shipment of *product name* and I’m offering it to all my present clients first.” This is great way to build a customer database to profit from.

The eBay Code is an exceptional tool for profiting from eBay. It will teach you how to beat out your competitor and get more people to your listings. It will also teach you the tactics of driving potential leads off of eBay to one of your other business projects. Check out my review of The eBay Code

The questions have largely centred around eBay sellers receiving a growing number of requests for refund, usually because a product has allegedly not arrived at its intended destination. Right or wrong, without acceptable proof of posting sellers are expected to refund dishonest buyers as well as losing their product and having to fund the cost of original delivery to the winning bidder. A certificate of posting, even a Recorded or Insured Delivery slip will not always sway eBay or PayPal in your favour. You may still have to refund the individual.

The problem has escalated in the last few weeks, affecting many people I know personally, including myself, and until recently a claim for refund for alleged non-delivery was about as rare as snow in the Amazon jungle.

Nowadays I receive such claims, backed by claims for refund, at least twice a week.

The reason? I believe, having talked with other PowerSellers, the reason is eBay’s new feedback rules, mainly the fact that sellers can no longer leave negative feedback even for rogue buyers. Buyers, no longer fearing negative feedback, can lie and cheat their way out of paying for valuable goods misappropriated from honest sellers.

Do you think I’m being unfair? Do you think it’s possible buyers aren’t cheating sellers today?

Well I put it to the test. I had two buyers, both claimed their product had not arrived and they wanted their money back fast. Frankly I didn’t believe either person so I checked their feedback to see if they’d played the same trick on other sellers. I found both were new buyers without established feedback. So there’s no way to check if these people are telling the truth or just using eBay’s new feedback rules to rob honest sellers. But I’m willing to bet these ‘new’ buyers are actually long time buyers on eBay who are constantly opening new accounts when the old ones are closed down by eBay.

I set a trap. Each of my daughters uploaded items similar to those these two people had purchased from me. Whereas my sales had been for $100 each per person, these items were expected to fetch about 5 dollars. One of those people was the highest bidder on something listed by my youngest daughter. She duly posted the item and guess what? Two weeks later there’s a claim made to PayPal about non-delivery of the item. We used Recorded Delivery and Royal Mail says the item was definitely delivered, and signed for, making this one of the worst buyer types I’ve personally ever encountered. We’ve informed eBay and PayPal and await their comments on whether we will be forced to refund this man! Either way we can still ban people like this for bidding at our auctions.

There’s no way via the eBay system to warn other sellers about this new breed of auction fraudster, but other organisations are coming to the rescue with ideas and scripts, even complete web sites, dedicated to protecting eBay sellers against rogue buyers on eBay!

One such location is Toolhaus.org where today I discovered a neat and very simple idea being developed by eBay sellers to warn other sellers about buyers who should, under perfect two-way trading conditions, be given negative feedback.

Toolhaus talks of ‘False Positives’, ‘FPs’ for short, and basically the system involves sellers leaving negative comments in the location reserved for positive feedback. The seller leaves a coded message, such as ‘FP’ or ‘False Positive’, even ‘Negative’ and using scripts at various sites, including Toolhaus, sellers can search for auction buyers with high False Positive points from which to grow evidence to support a seller’s case against claims made for refunds to eBay or PayPal. So, for example, if my daughter and I leave ‘FP’ feedback for our ‘friend’ mentioned earlier, those comments will be available to others through an easy search at some of these sites.

These comments from the Toolhaus site might help you better understand this neat idea:

“eBay has indicated that in May, 2008, sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers. The merits of this will probably be debated for a very, very long time, but in the meantime, some sellers have suggested that they would leave ‘false positive’ (FP) feedback. Specifically, they would leave positive feedback containing the word ‘negative’ or ‘neg’, as an indication of the type of feedback they wanted to leave.

Toolhaus will endeavor to remain neutral on the merits of that tactic, but we’ve added a new option to the Negs tool: A checkbox to enable searching for ‘false positive’ feedback, and reporting the total number of those items found. The report is at the end of the Negs tool’s output, with the counts of Negative, Neutral, and Withdrawn feedback items.”

It’s still not certain if eBay is happy for codes and negative comments to appear in feedback but, as Toolhaus says, they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it!

I’m not sure how it will all pan out in practice but it could help sellers grow a case against having to constantly refund dishonest auction buyers. We’ll just have to wait and see!

Avril Harper is the author of A COMPLETE NEWBIES’ GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY WITH CLICKBANK which you can read about at: http://www.avrilharper.com/clickbank.html.

Offering a return policy might seem like a policy that would lower profits, not increase them. However experience says otherwise. By offering a return policy you as a seller are basically conveying two messages.

First it gives the buyer peace of mind; they rest assured that if something goes wrong they can always reverse the deal and get their money back. That peace of mind is crucial if your want the buyer to bid up high on your products.

Second it backs up the rest of your sales letter. A refund policy tells the buyer that you mean what you say because if you lie to them now all they have to do is call on you on it.

Picture two eBay auctions. One describes the glory of the product and the amazing implications it will have on the buyer’s life. Then the listing closes up with, “all sales are final, absolutely no refunds.” Now picture a second listing with the same description but it closes instead with “100% satisfaction guaranteed or every penny of your money back.” The second one gives buyers the confidence to bid up to high prices.

The truth is you don’t have to offer an absolute shipping-both-ways return policy. If your profit margin is narrow for whatever reason, try offering a refund where the buyer pays to ship the item back to you. Depending on the size and weight of the product a buyer might not find that to be too bad.

So what happens when a buyer invokes your return policy? Simple you follow through. The majority of buyers are usually happy with their purchase and rarely try to go back on their purchase.

Thus the result is perhaps a return here and there, and higher profits in the long run.

You may not realize that out there in cyberspace, are real people who always turn to eBay first when making a purchase. The purchase may be a consumer item like a computer, an intangible item like a how-to eBook, or a service such as web design. If you have a presence on eBay when these customers come, you have the potential to reach them, sell to them, or direct them to your own website for future sales.

Large retail sellers often use eBay as their bargain basement or clearance center, not to make huge profits. These sellers understand the power of post-transactional marketing opportunities. Sell an inexpensive or clearance item to a customer, he completes the transaction, ship the item to the customer, and you have his contact information in your database forever.

It may be worth your time and effort to set up an eBay store for this reason. All eBay sellers are allowed to place a link to their own website on their About Me page. You can also post ads for your product or service on eBay’s Classified Ads, which also allow outside links that can go directly to your website. eBay Classifieds start at an affordable $9.95 for 30 days, and any sales take place outside of eBay so no additional fees are involved.

Take some time to learn about using eBay as a lead generation tool and for building your customer base. After all, eBay offers 240 million users ready to buy on a single website.

Learn more about eBay selling by visiting my website at ebaysellingcoach.com.

Suzanne Wells is an eBay Power Seller, author of “The Stay-at-Home Mom’s Guide to Successful eBay Selling,” eBay Consultant, and mom of 2 in Atlanta, GA.

If so, you’re not alone. Read on…

The New “Coin of the Realm”

Regardless of what you’ve heard about collapsing currencies, investing in gold and commodity speculation, the fact is that going forward, information will be the new “Coin of the Realm” - for the world. There’s just too much information out there and not enough time to sift through it all. The demand for useful, immediate information is huge - and nowhere is this demand greater than when it comes to making money on eBay and other online auction sites.

The fact is that Internet sites such as the eBay store is the future of commerce. As fuel prices and the cost of driving spiral upward, more and more people will start doing their shopping online. Add to that mix customers from overseas coming to U.S. websites taking advantage of the collapsing dollar and the bargains to be had as a result, and it’s easy to see that the number of potential customers for an eBay store is virtually unlimited.

But that’s nothing compared to the number of those who want to know how to start an eBay business and what to sell on eBay…

Here’s Where You Come In

A wise person said, “If you think an education is expensive, try ignorance.” It’s a realization that more and more people seeking to work from home running an eBay store are starting to understand. Seeing at how many others have tried and failed at making money on ebay, they want to know how to avoid those same mistakes.

This is where you have a solid gold opportunity!!

A Valuable Service

For every person who is making money on eBay, there are a thousand more who want to know just how they did it!

Whether they’re just starting out and want to avoid costly mistakes or have tried and failed, they’re looking for that information - and you now have an opportunity to supply them with the course materials they need to succeed!

Here’s an historic fact: whether it is gold prospectors, homesteaders, treasure hunters, oil men or even soldiers-of-fortune, the people who make the real fortunes on a consistent basis are not those individuals.

The ones who profit are those who sell them the tools of their respective trades. (Is it any coincidence that the ones in Washington D.C. pushing the hardest for oil drilling are lobbyists for companies that manufacture oil drilling equipment?)

This is your opportunity to sell such tools to one of the largest groups of fortune-seekers on the planet: visit http://www.frizedynamics.com/ebayinfostore and find out how you can strike it rich by showing others how to strike it rich with their own eBay business.

Charles Frize is a marketer, author, an entrepreneur with a simple mission to help as many up and coming entrepreneurs make a great success of their businesses. click here to subscribe to his free informative newsletter.

http://www.frizedynamics.com/home.html