Don’t Become A Negative Feedback Magnet!

Some people will think, “What I'll do to get my feedback up and to get practice is to start selling all the junk that I have around the house.”

Now, I have nothing against selling your junk around your house, but not at this stage of the game. What you want to do at this stage of the game is you want to start getting your feedback up first.

Here’s the problem: some people think that they have stuff around the house that they could just sell like an old VCR, old DVDs, old CDs, old comic books, things like this. They say, “I don’t care if I get a dollar or two for it because it’s going to give me my experience.”
What you need to consider - and we're going to focus a lot on this later on - is the value of an hour of your life, the value of your time. So you might sell a VCR for a dollar and then what you do is - it took you maybe an hour to take a picture, to write an ad, maybe a half an hour to find the old box and your packing peanuts, do the label and get it to UPS or the post office. You probably lost money and had to spend valuable time!

This is a fairly poor way of building up your feedback. So don’t in the beginning sell junky items. You're probably better off just throwing them away.

eBay’s Feedback System

eBay was designed with a feedback system that members can use to get a sense of how secure they can feel buying (or selling) with another member.

Everyone who joins eBay has a feedback score. In each transaction, the buyer and seller can give the other person either:

•POSITIVE which gains you one point

•NEUTRAL which doesn’t change your score

•NEGATIVE which lowers your score by one point

Every new eBay member starts with a zero feedback score.

(Note: You do not join eBay as a buyer or a seller. When you join you can do both and your feedback score reflects your rating as both a buyer and seller)

Below is a random snapshot of an actual eBay auction

Above you can see that the eBay members name is “etechtronix_direct”. Their feedback is 3166 and they are a powerseller. They joined eBay back in July 2002, so that also helps instill confidence.

Although not perfect, the eBay feedback system does keep bad auction experiences to a minimum.

In fact, most people that I know of had their first negative feedback come from selling an item for a buck, something they should have thrown away.

What happens is that they attract the attention of some lunatic who hunts for low priced items. The type of person who wants everything (and more) for as close to free as possible. Unless they ‘stick it to you’, they’re not happy!

Believe me, this type of customer is not very pleasant to deal with. They’ll waste your time, rob your sanity, and quite often hit you with a negative feedback. I know several family members and friends almost gave up on eBay because they had to deal with a negative left by a wacko who bought a $1.00 item!

Do yourself a favor. Don’t sell low price items when just starting out.