If you want to keep your buyers, then you need to provide good customer service. Our next email will show you exactly how to reduce eBay buyers' complaints.

How to Reduce eBay Buyer Complaints.
Buyers are funny creatures, aren't they? One minute they're over the moon because they've got themselves a bargain, and the next they're upset because their bargain seller doesn't provide first-class customer service. There's only really one way to reduce complaints: give these people what they want!

Post as soon as you can: The number one cause of eBay complaints are impatient or anxious buyers, who want to know when their item is going to turn up. If you get an order on Monday and wait until Saturday to post it, that's bad customer service. Try to post items at least twice a week, to avoid making your buyers wait too long.

Make the description crystal clear: You need to make sure that your buyers know exactly what they're buying, so they won't be surprised when it turns up and isn't exactly what they expect. Don't be afraid to describe small defects in your description - it's better to list it there than have buyers discover it for themselves later. If you get a lot of confusion about something, say it twice or even three times, and say it in a large font.

List all costs up-front: Don't hide away your shipping costs if you think they're too high - nothing will annoy buyers more than keeping costs secret until you expect them to be paid. If you really don't want to display your shipping costs, just offer 'free' shipping and add the shipping costs to the item's price.

Pack well: Spend as much as you need to on packing materials, and be careful with it. Remember that your item is going to have to travel through the post, and you want it to arrive in the condition it left. Wrap things securely in a few inches of a material like bubble wrap or stryofoam, and be sure to use a sturdy box. If you go around using boxes from the supermarket and old newspapers, expect things to break in the post.

Tell them to complain: This might sound a little counter-intuitive, but one of the best ways to stop your customers from complaining is to tell them to contact you if they have any complaints. Most people only complain if they feel a seller is unresponsive and confrontation - asking people to complain is more likely to get you shy and polite enquiries than complaints. You might not believe it now, but try it for a while and you'll see your customer relations improve.

Respond to emails promptly: Check your email as often as you can, and never leave an email around to respond to later or tomorrow. Having to wait days to have their email answered upsets customers more than anything, especially if they're already waiting for their item - it makes them feel stranded and powerless. Always respond to emails as soon as you can, and certainly within a maximum of 24 hours.

However much you might try to stop your buyers from complaining, though, someone will sooner or later.

How to Respond to an eBay Buyer's Complaint.
At some point in your eBay selling life, one of your customers is going to send you a complaint. As long as you respond to it properly, however, it's easy to keep a complaint from turning into a crisis.

Respond Immediately and Grovellingly.
Someone might complain to you directly, or they might do it through eBay. Whatever happens, you need to email them immediately. Here's a template to use:

"I have just received your complaint and I would like to say that I am very sorry you aren't satisfied. If you would like, I can send you a [replacement/refund] for the item, as part of my 'no questions asked' guarantee. I apologise again for our mistake."

Whatever you do, don't start making excuses for yourself. "Oh, sorry, I didn't get around to posting it yet because I've been busy at work and I'm going on holiday next week" - no-one cares. If the buyer isn't satisfied, then you screwed up, and you need to apologise repeatedly and do everything you can to make them happy again. Besides, is it really worth your time to go through eBay's long-winded dispute process when all it's going to do is alienate your customers?

This an attitude that will give you a massive advantage in eBay selling, for the simple reason that many smaller sellers are confrontational, unhelpful and out for every penny they can get. If buyers are rude to you, it's just because they're used to dealing with rude sellers.

Responding politely, promptly and being willing to do anything for your buyers will mark you out as different. It's so rare that you might even manage to turn your complaining buyer into one of your most loyal customers!

Let People Phone You.
Don't insist that everything is done with email - allow frustrated buyers to phone you and have a chat about their item. The chances are that they will never have talked to a human voice before about an eBay complaint, and will be even more impressed with anything you offer them to solve their problem.

Neutralize Negative Feedback.
If it really comes down to it and your complaint ends up as a piece of negative feedback on your record, make sure you post a response - and don't make it something like "buyer was impossible to work with, avoid"!

Instead, post an apology, and detail what you did to put things right, for example: "Very sorry for the scratched item, I have sent a replacement". You may also find that some buyers leave feedback before you have the chance to put things right, in which case you could write a phone number in the response space, or something like "I have emailed you about a refund".

This will let anyone looking through your feedback see that not only are negatives very rare, but the few that there might be aren't really worth counting.

In the next email, you'll learn how to turn your shipping costs into a profit center.

Turn Your eBay Shipping Costs into a Profit Center.
You might think that shipping costs are simple: surely you just add up the price of your item's postage and the price of packing materials, and charge that - right? Well, you could do that, but there are better ways to make your shipping costs work for you.

Find Cheaper Materials.
The key to making profit on shipping is to use the cheapest materials you can get for packing, without compromising on quality. The great thing for you is that many eBay PowerSellers have made a business out of providing sellers with quality packing material in bulk at really low prices.

To get an idea of what's out there, take a look at this category: Business & Industrial > Office, Printing & Shipping > Shipping & Packing Supplies. You might also try paying a visit to a big-box office supplies store.

Buy in Bulk.
Always buy hundreds of the same sized packing boxes at the same time. Since you should be selling the same items over and over again, you'll need the same sized boxes each time. You will always be able to get discounts for bulk - if the place where you're shopping won't give you any, go somewhere else.

Streamline Your Packing.
Try to pack every time using the same amounts of the same materials in the same way, so that you don't need to think about it too much. Have all the labels for the packages printed up in advance, and do the items in that order. The less time you spend on the packing, the more profit it is for you.

Round to the Next Dollar.
Let's say you're buying items for $2, and selling them for $4 + $1.50 shipping. Rounding the shipping to $2 would make you an extra 40 cents on each sale - considering you're currently only making $2 profit, that's a percentage profit increase of 25%!

You see, this extra money will be far more important to you than it is to the buyer, because it's on the margin. For you, it's extra profit for nothing, and for the buyer, it's too small an amount to bother caring about. Everybody wins in this scenario.

The Ideal Price Point.
Find out what your rivals are charging for shipping, and try to just undercut them while still making a profit. If you managed to buy some cheaper materials, this shouldn't be too hard for you - most of the sellers on eBay are buying envelopes and boxes one-by-one, which is a very expensive way to do things. If you work things out correctly, you should be able to offer shipping at a price point which makes your rivals look silly, and still be making a good profit on it!

If you're running the kind of operation where shipping is a big concern, then the chances are that you're listing a significant proportion of your items using 'Buy it Now', instead of going through all the trouble and uncertainty of using real auctions every time. But wait! Using 'Buy it Now' isn't always the right thing to do. Our next email will give you a few tips on when to do it and when not to.

When NOT to Use "Buy Now".
As you get more experienced on eBay, you might be tempted to use fixed price auctions, just so you can budget better. It's often more reassuring to know that either you will make a small profit on an item instead of having to wait and see whether it makes a big profit or a big loss. However, you should be aware that there are some times when you really shouldn't use 'Buy it Now'.

In the Holiday Season.
The market goes absolutely crazy just before the holidays - and that's why you shouldn't list items using Buy it Now. Do you really want to wake up one morning and find that all your stock has been bought up, the current highest bidders on your rivals are bidding double what you just sold them for, and the people who bought your item have relisted it with a starting price higher than what they paid? Of course you don't.

I would recommend that you stop listing anything as fixed price as soon as you get into December, unless you have a lot of accumulated stock that you want to get rid of for low prices.

When an Item is In-demand.
If an item is selling within a few hours each time you list it using Buy it Now, then you really ought to consider using a normal auction format instead. The chances are that the final price you'd get would be much higher than whatever you're charging now.

When You Have the Only Item on the Market.
If you have a hard-to-find item that no-one else is currently selling, then it makes no sense to use Buy it Now. You'll be surprised just how high buyers will go on things that are truly rare, and how upset they'll be if someone snatches it away from them using Buy it Now. It's only fair to give everyone a chance to pay you more and more money, isn't it?

If Your Item Doesn't Sell.
If you keep needing to relist your item because it consistently fails to sell, that might be the time to give up on listing it in the fixed price format. Buy it Now only works for things that people always want - traditional auctions involve them more with things that they wouldn't usually buy. You might end up with a slightly lower price than you wanted in the end, but at least that bad item will be off your hands.

If No-one Ever Buys From You With It.
It's simply not worth having a Buy it Now button on every one of your auctions if nobody ever touches the thing: it's just sitting there, costing you money for each listing. When it comes down to it, Buy it Now is expensive, and you should only use it in auctions where you really think it will help the item to sell.

Now you might not have noticed, but there's another 'alternative' auction format that often goes ignored: the multiple-item, or 'Dutch' auction. In the next email, I'll show you how these auctions work, and explain why they could be good for your business.

How do Dutch Auctions Work on eBay?
A multiple-item ('Dutch') auction is an auction where more than one of the same item is being sold at once. There are two kinds of Dutch auctions.

Without Bidding.
The most common Dutch auctions are actually a combination of two auction types: they're multiple-item fixed price auctions (Dutch Buy it Now auctions to you and me). This just means that you can offer more than one of an item at a time for a fixed price.

This is very powerful if you're selling something small in large quantities. You can just say how many of the item you have, and the Buy it Now auction will stay there until its duration is up or all the items have been sold.

Buyers aren't limited to only buying one item at a time, either: they can enter how many they want and then just click Buy it Now to get them. If you're selling small things loose, then this can be really great - instead of selling them in packs of 50, you can sell 24 to one person and 95 to the next. It lets buyers save money by buying exactly what they need, and it lets you offer them the flexibility to have as many or few of an item as they want.

With Bidding.
Dutch auctions can also be done by bidding, but the process is rather complicated. Buyers bid a price and say how many items they want, and then everyone pays the lowest price that was bid by one of the winning bidders. Let's say there are 10 of an item for sale. Anne bids $5 each for 4, while Bob bids $4 for 6. Anne will get her 4 and Bob will get his 6, but they will both only pay $4.

Here's another example. If there are 5 items for sale and Anne, Bob, Carol and Dean want to buy 2 each, then obviously someone is going to lose out. Whoever bid the lowest will only get one of the item. If Anne bid $5 each, Bob bid $4 each, Carol bid $3 each, and Dean bid $2 each, then Anne will get 2, Bob will get 2, Carol will get 1 and poor Dean gets nothing. So then: how much they pay for the items?

Starting to sound like a particularly evil math problem, isn't it? The answer is that everyone will pay $3, as Carol's bid was the lowest one that won anything. If you have trouble getting your head around that, then don't worry - everyone else does too! That's why Dutch auctions with bidding are so rare.

In fact, even eBay's normal one-item auction format has all sorts of problems, not least of which is auction sniping. Snipers are buyers who come along at the last minute to bid a few cents more than the highest bidder and win the item. Your buyers will find this infuriating - and you're the only one with any power to help them out by stopping it. The next page will show you what you can do.

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