This guide is written for the new or casual seller on eBay. For you I have one word: Feedback. Buyers and sellers alike depend on the responsibility and consistency of another eBayer reflected in their feedback to determine if perhaps they may want to do business with the individual. Feedback of a seller can tell volumes about the seller's practices,  and sometimes nothing about the seller at all but rather the character of the buyer. Those kind of angry, impatient, or outright stupid remarks sadly will happen to everyone eventually if they stay on eBay long enough. Seasoned eBayers don't pay any attention to the once in a while wildcard negative. So what is the deal with those ugly red marks, and how can you as a seller help prevent getting one? The answer is simpler than you might think!

The golden rule of eBay selling is: Care about your customer the way you want to be cared about when you are a buyer! What does this mean exactly? Well, let's take Susie Shopper for example. Susie loves candles, and one early September morning while planning a dinner party for friends, she shops on eBay and finds her favorite votive candles to add the perfect touch to her party,  and Susie bids.  Susie wins the auction and is very happy! She sends her payment right away. Sam Seller is happy to get his money, too! Susie anxiously waits for her treasure to arrive. Sam places the candles in an envelope and sends them off the next day.  So far, everything sounds perfect, right? Wrong! You see, I didn't leave anything out of the story of the process, and to some people reading this, everything went exactly as it should. The problem is, the negative feedback "seed"  has just been planted. Lets see what happens next.

The day Susie's much awaited package arrives in her southern state, the postman places the medium sized envelope in her mailbox around noon time. Susie gets home from work a little after 5 PM, and rushes straight to her mailbox hoping to find her package has come today, and indeed it has! As Susie opens the sqeaky metal mailbox, the aroma from the candles is wonderful! Susie reaches in to pick up the envelope and the envelope feels hot, and there is an oily pink residue on the outside of the envelope and in the maibox, too. Puzzled, Susie opens the envelope to find a mass of softened and mishapen wax, moist with oils from within. Three of the wicks have slid completely out of their place, and the former wick hole has melted closed. Susie's hopes as well as her plans,  are dashed. Her treasure has arrived as trash, little more than unsightly potpourri. What a mess! Susie's thought turn to her dinner party this weekend, and what in the world will she do instead of burning these candles? There is no time to order from another eBay seller, and the candles are not sold locally. Susie feels that her plans have been ruined, all due to a careless seller.

At this point, the mistake the seller made was not caring about the item, nor the customer. Sam Seller should have protected the candles from being banged up as well as from temperature extremes.  A bit of bubble wrap and small box filed with popcorn  goes a  long way to do both. September is still very hot in the southern states, temperatures still average in the 90 degree Farenheight range, and Sam should have considered that as he wrote or printed out Susie's shipping label. Sam did a good job advertising the item, wrote a nice ad, posted a good picture, and shipped promptly, all of which are important for having succesful eBay sales and feedback. However, Sam treated Susie's item like trash, and that is the message she got loud and clear. Had Sam given some thought to how he packed the candles, treated them as the treasure Susie thought they were, more than likely the candles would have arrived safely, and Susie would be happy with her purchase and with Sam. Instead, she feels she wasted her time and her money. Sam very likely will hear about her discontent, and depending on how sympathetic he is to her, and whether or not he takes responsibility for the poor shipping, will make the difference now between good and bad feedback.  

I don't know about you, but I do not want to buy from Sam Seller! Even more so, I do not want to be Sam Seller!  Here are some basic tips for being an eBay all-star seller:

• If you always remember to care about each customer and about each customer's item and  use common sense,  you can avoid 99% of all would-be negative feedback.

• Treat each item you handle and ship as if it were treasure!

• Take the time to wrap the item in bubble wrap or at least tissue paper.

• Use a 1/10th of a cents worth of tape or even a small sticker to close the wrap, that tells the customer that you care.

• Add a packing slip. Susie may have purchased identical items from several different sellers the same day, and you want to be sure Susie knows exactly who to thank/give positive feedback to. Not including a packing slip (print it right from your eBay auction page or from your "print shipping label" page) encourages the liklihood of getting misplaced or undeserved feedback, or even an "Item not received" report to eBay if one of the sellers of the identical item failed to ship.

• Most seasoned sellers on eBay recommend shipping Priority mail at all times possible. Priority is guaranteed in 2-3 day delivery; parcel post can sometimes take a few days, but just as easily could take two weeks! (Your buyer will not be happy about that!) The post office takes extra care with priority mail, and often times a flat rate box will suit your size and can be shipped reasonably regardless of how heavy your item is! Also you get free tracking with priority mail if you print your label right from you eBay auction "print shipping label" button which allows you to us the USPS "click and ship" technology and the ease of your paypal account to take care of it all at once. You can even hand your package to your postman or request a package pickup by your postman the next day at your home! (Just don't use this option if it means candles will be sitting in the sun waiting to be picked up!)

• Here you will find links to get Free USPS shipping supplies ,  also you will find links to buy labels designed to self adhere the "click and ship" label.

• If you plan to do mcuh selling on eBay, make a small investment in a postal scale to weigh your packages so that you can prepare all your packages at home and avoid the lines at the Post Office, not to mention saving on gas! There are great deals right here on eBay! Postal scales .

I can't remind you enough,  care about your customers and care about their items and treat every item like a treasure! Even though you no longer want the item and it it may me near trash to you, someone out there wanted it, it is treasure to them!  If you do that using good old common sense, your experience on eBay will be a good one, and so will the experience of those buyers you come in contact with.

Now, I bet some of you are wondering what happened in our tale of Susie Shopper and Sam Seller. Susie did not run right to the computer and leave negative feedback in a childish fit. Instead, she took time to let her emotions calm and then she wrote Sam and told him what condition that she received her candles. Sam could have responded with "not my problem once it leaves my hands" but he didn't.  He and Susie worked  out a compromise that made both of them feel better about the whole thing. In any situation where a potential conflict arises, it is best to maintain the same caring attitude. Perhaps Sam offered a partial refund, or maybe another box of candles at a reduced price, or maybe Susie decided it was just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes, and Sam's caring attitude diffused her frustration and anger enough that they could talk it out. The important thing to remember is to care; care how you pack, care how you ship, and care about the customer from beginning to end with any questions or possible problems that arise. In the end, both you and your customer will feel you did a good job, and you will be able to sleep at night.