I've noticed an uptick in articles written about eBay businesses. (A welcome alternative to online fraud stories.) In fact, in October alone I was interviewed by a local Fox TV station (airing in Boston November 12), Smart Money magazine (January issue) and Minnesota Public Radio's Marketplace program (November 6 or 7) about operating an eBay business.
You may be able to leverage the public relations benefit from this increased interest in eBay businesses. Read local newspapers and magazines and see which reporters are doing feature stories about interesting people or businesses. Send them an email outlining your background and inquiring whether they would be interested in doing a story. Be sure and mention any interesting angles, for instance, if you sell an unusual product.
A mention or interview in the paper will not necessarily translate into lots of sales. Ask for permission to reprint the article on your Web site or About Me page. This will give you credibility with customers that haven't dealt with you previously.
Consignment sales have been picking up steam, and auction drop-off services are the latest craze. In this issue, I take a closer look at these services. Just before going to press I heard of another service, Door to Door Auctions
http://www.doortodoorauctions.com, which picks up items from your home and sells them on eBay for you.
If you are new to online selling or want help improving your auction photos, check out the 2nd edition of David's new book, "Snappy Auction Photos: The Online Auction Seller's Guide to Digital Photography." (Now you know "what we did last summer.")
We were so impressed with The Auction Sellers Resource we asked them to distribute the book on CD. I met owners Skip and Karen McGrath in person, and I think they have some of the best eBay selling guides around. Their money-back guarantee is a sure sign of quality content. You can get more information about the book at:
http://www.auction-sellers-resource.com/products/snappy.shtml.
We have many international readers. Last week, a reader from Belgium wrote asking about an eBay site outage. You can help each other and me! If you are trading internationally, post useful information in the forums (the News forum in particular), and consider writing for AuctionBytes-Update. In addition to U.S. writers, we've had writers from Canada, UK and Australia (and an American living in France). Author guidelines are here http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/pages/write.
Thanks for reading, wherever you are. And thanks as always to the services that advertise with AuctionBytes. Their sponsorship allows us to continue to publish AuctionBytes at no charge to readers.
About the author:
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
