Sometimes things happen to remind you of what's important in life. When a colleague's mom got cancer recently, he put his career on hold and spent time with her before she died. He seems to have an added appreciation for life now, and I have to believe his mom was really proud of him for putting family first.
Before I heard this news, David had suggested we ask readers what they do when there is a crisis in their life. When you have circumstances arise that delay delivering items you've sold online, whether it's sickness, injury, death in the family, a natural disaster, how did you deal with it? Were your customers understanding? Did you learn anything from the experience that would help you in the future? If you want to share your story, please send it to me.
Then last week, a long-time eBay seller wrote me to say she had lost her husband recently. "I was thinking that it might be a good article for a future newsletter, about having an Emergency Plan in place for what to do with your business if something happened to you unexpectedly. I'm sure a lot of sellers' spouses don't know the first thing about how things are done, or passwords, or anything like that." My sympathies go out to her and to any readers who are coping with the loss of a loved one, including my friend who recently lost her dad.
I think the article suggestion is a great one, and I would appreciate hearing from you if you have developed an "eBay seller's emergency plan" for your family and would be willing to talk to one of our writers about it.
Last week, Brad and Debra Schepp wrote about eBay Express, and it ranked up there with our most popular news stories (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i01/s01). If you don't subscribe to the AuctionBytes Newsflash newsletter, you can see the day's headlines on the top of our homepage.
David also added a new feature called "More News." If you click on the yellow More News button on our home page, you'll be taken to a page with a week's worth of news stories (less the day's current headlines).
I'm also adding a new feature to the Newsflash newsletter called Vendor Monday. Each week, I'll run an article submitted by a vendor or marketplace about a topic helpful to sellers. It is our policy not to let vendors write about themselves or each other, and we are keeping that policy in place. However, vendors have a wealth of information that can be valuable for our readers. I won't be editing these pieces (I will format and check for typos), so you will hear straight from the horse's mouth about industry issues they think are important and useful.
Scot Wingo, CEO of auction- and ecommerce-management service provider ChannelAdvisor, is kicking off the new feature tomorrow with a piece on multi-channel selling. Let me know what you think of this form of "user-generated content," and I welcome story submissions from vendors in the industry.
There's a lot to keep up with in this industry, and my thanks to David and to our freelance writers who contribute some excellent coverage to keep us all up to date. We've got some great content in today's issue. Lissa McGrath tackles the sometimes sticky issue of PayPal refunds, and Trevor Ginn writes a great primer on how to increase traffic to your eBay Store by using search engine optimization techniques.
We're heading into one of the busiest times in an eBay seller's life - the holiday shopping season. Not only do you have increased sales (hopefully!), we have the added stresses that come with the holidays. It's good to remember what's important in life, and I wish you all health, happiness and success in your business in the coming months.
Thanks for reading.
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.
