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Minimizing Chargebacks

Chargebacks can kill a business, and customers will file a chargeback request for numerous reasons. Learn how you can minimize chargebacks, and prepare yourself to dispute a chargeback if the need ever arises.

Avoiding Fraudulent Orders and Unscrupulous Customers

Recognize fraudulent activity and protect yourself from unscrupulous customers.

Busting the Bad Guys: Reporting Online Fraud

Find out how to join the fight against online con artists by turning suspects over to the authorities.

Protecting Yourself Against Online Fraud

Ten tips that can significantly reduce your exposure to online fraud and your chances of becoming victimized by it.

Exploring Online Fraud Resources

Learn where to obtain information about online fraud. Becoming educated is the first step to protecting yourself.

Detecting, Preventing, and Reporting Online Fraud

Learn the basics of online fraud and implement prevention strategies that can protect your business.

Raising your page rank with one-way links

SEO specialists have been trying to influence search engine page rankings ever since the introduction of search engines. This article discusses the role one-way links play in increasing your site rank, and offers simple steps you can take to acquire and benefit from one-way links.

Attracting SEO attention on the Web with Squidoo

Squidoo enables you to set up a single page, called a lens, related to an issue or topic you know and care a lot about and then pack it full of what you consider to be the best that the Web has to offer. Squidoo lenses are like magnets for search engines, which means that as an online retailer, you too should take the time to create one.

Marketing on MySpace and other social networking sites

This article introduces you to the marketing opportunities available through social networking websites like MySpace and LinkedIn, and shows you how to take advantage of them.

Web Success: does anyone know about your website?

The promise is always the same: If you build it, they will come. This article covers the important role Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays in making sure your website shows up in the search engines and attracts the targeted visitors you want to attract.

Curb Shopping Cart Abandonment

Online retailers estimate that 30 to 35 percent of shoppers leave their shopping carts behind. A well-designed checkout process can reduce these abandonment rates significantly. This article offers some suggestions.

Simple Exposure through RSS: Letting Customers Subscribe to Your Site

How do you market your business and keep your customers informed of your latest products and services when your clients are worldwide and your budget isn't so vast? RSS is the answer

Erecting a Billboard on the Information Superhighway

Everyday users are screaming by your website like a car on the Autobahn, making split-second decisions about whether or not to stick around. Learn how to convince any speeding Internet surfers to slow down and stay awhile.

Driving Traffic to Your Website with Simple SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is a science to some, an art to others, and a necessity for any online retailer. Learn the quick and easy things anbody can do to better optimize their webpages for search engine optimization.

Virtual inventory versus owned inventory

Whether or not to carry inventory as a strategy seems like a fairly simple question but can be tough to answer in practice. For this month's article, I wanted to explore the topic and explain why it's not always as simple as we initially think. For our purposes, I will refer to products the retailer owns prior to the consumer sale as "core" inventory and products that are ordered from suppliers after the consumer orders as "virtual" (or "drop ship") inventory.

"Why are some products priced the same as retail or higher than MSRP?"

While we have millions of products in the catalog, there are a small few that get more than their share of attention. The products are iPods and gaming consoles (Xbox, Wii, Playstation, PSP, etc), or variations and accessories for these products. The feedback is always the same: â€œThe price on this item is the same as retail or even higher then MSRPâ€. The sentence is usually followed by a statement of disbelief, a number of â€˜!â€™ marks or a disparaging explicative in a lot of cases.

Create a purchase experience with sample orders

A retail transaction is more than just an exchange of money for goods or services. As a customer, you are not just buying a product; you are buying a purchase experience. As a retailer, you are not just offering a product for a price; you are offering a product for a price of what the whole purchase experience is worth.

Choosing your market niche

This article discusses the importance of picking a product niche and researching your market, and offers insight into why selling what you know is a great business strategy for online retailers.

Raising your page rank with one-way links

Attracting SEO attention on the Web with Squidoo

Cashing in on Father's Day sales

As an online retailer, you may be able to share in the wealth by adjusting your product line and marketing to take advantage of this seasonal selling opportunity. And to do that, you need to know what people are planning on buying for their dads.

Marketing on MySpace and other social networking sites

This article introduces you to the marketing opportunities available through social networking websites like MySpace and LinkedIn, and shows you how to take advantage of them.

Helping customers decide to buy

The most successful salespeople don't sell. They ask questions, so they can assess the needs of their customers. They offer solutions and make recommendations. They facilitate the purchase of products. They never sell.

Giving Away the Store, Part II: Competing on something other than price

If you're competing on price alone, you may was well just fling open the front doors of your store and let people loot the place. To earn a profit in retail and build a successful business, you have to discover other areas where you can gain a competitive edge. Identifying those areas, can be quite a challenge, but this article offers some ideas to get you started.

Giving Away the Store, Part I: Competing on price alone

If you made the mistake of trying to compete on price and price alone, don't feel bad. You're not the first, and you certainly won't be the last. Just stop doing it. If you need some convincing, that's what the first part of this article is all about.

Web Success: does anyone know about your website?

Ramp it up, retailers, it's Mother's Day!

According to the National Retail Federation's 2007 Mother's Day Consumer Actions and Intentions survey, this Mother's Day is shaping up to be a bonanza for retailers. Savvy retailers should prepare by reading this timely article.

Curb Shopping Cart Abandonment

Entrepreneurial Marketing: Getting Noticed on eBay and Beyond

Reach out to your customers to attract their business, brand yourself as the product expert, and prove to customers that you're as reputable as the Amazon's and Wal-Mart's of the world.

Simple Exposure through RSS: Letting Customers Subscribe to Your Site

How do you market your business and keep your customers informed of your latest products and services when your clients are worldwide and your budget isn't so vast? RSS is the answer.

Erecting a Billboard on the Information Superhighway

Riding the Waves of Major Marketing Events

Great marketing costs a lot of money, but it doesn't always have to be your money. Learn to ride the waves of excitement that swell with major events, big marketing campaigns, or extremely successful products.

Giving Shoppers a Reason to Believe They're Getting a Good Deal

Learn what buyers really want—belief that they are getting a bargain—and how to give it to them.

Driving Traffic to Your Website with Simple SEO

eBay Fixed Price Listings: New Pricing Structure

eBay made an announcement on August 20th 2008 regarding a new pricing structure for Fixed Price Listings. A reminder announcement was made September 15th, stating that the new pricing structure will go into effect starting at midnight on September 16th.

"Decoding eBay's Best Match"

With eBay's announcement of recent changes to their marketplace, sellers have become concerned about the placement, traffic, and presentation of their listings when filtered through the new eBay Best Match algorithm. We came across an excellent article from AuctionInsights that discusses eBay's Best Match algorithm and how to approach it. Click the link below to view the article, "Decoding eBay's Best Match."

Understanding eBay's New Fees, Rewards, and Standards

In January, 2008, eBay CEO Meg Whitman announced her resignation, but that is not the only change at eBay or the one that will affect sellers most dramatically. Since then, eBay's incoming CEO, John Donahoe, has initiated sweeping changes that affect all eBay sellers. The changes can be broken down to three main areas:

Riding the long tail of e-commerce to increased profits

The key to increasing online retail sales and profits lies in your ability to pick products in high demand and low supply and products that fit your overall marketing strategy. Tapping into the "long tail" of e-commerce allows you to do just that.

Sprucing up your product listings with HTML - Introduction

Whether you sell products through your own webstore or list them on eBay or other auction sites, you want your listings to be at least as attractive as the products you're selling. This four-part series introduces you to HTML, shows you how to edit raw HTML in a text editor like Windows Notepad, and reveals the power of two eBay listing tools—Description Editor and Listing Designer.

Sprucing up your product listings with HTML, Part 1: Understanding HTML

This series shows you how to use HTML to make your product listings more attractive and easily accessible for online shoppers. This first part of the series covers HTML basics and is designed to leave you with the framework required to understand Parts 2, 3, and 4.

Sprucing up your product listings with HTML, Part 2: Composing HTML listings

One of the best features of HTML is that you don't need a $500 piece of software to create attractive web pages or product listings. You can simply type the text and tags into a text editor or word processor. In this part, we introduce you to the most common tags for creating and styling web pages and product listings.

Sprucing up your product listings with HTML, Part 3: Using eBay's Description Editor

eBay's Description Editor is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor specifically designed for eBay Sellers. If you're selling on eBay and you're not using this tool, you are missing out on a great opportunity to catch buyer interest. In this part of our three-part series, we introduce you to eBay's Description Editor, show you how to access it, and point out some of its great features.

Sprucing up your product listings with HTML, Part 4: Using eBay's Listing Designer

If you want to add backgrounds or move text and images around on your eBay listings, consider using eBay's Listing Designer--an add-on feature that costs pennies more per listing. This article introduces eBay's Listing Designer and shows you how to access it and use it to spruce up your listings.

Competing on content

In the world of publishing, content is king. The same can be said of product listings and webstores—content is king. Unique, interesting, useful content that speaks directly to the shopper trumps a bland, boring presentation that puts shoppers to sleep in the aisles. This article covers the basics.

eBay To Go: Promote your eBay auctions on your blog

Got eBay? Got a blog? Then, you'd better have eBay To Go—an eBay widget that enables you to quickly and easily display a live auction in your blog posts or on any Web page you choose.

Product Sourcing 101: Tapping eBay's "What's Hot" Page for Product Ideas

More tips and tricks on using eBay as a place to get product sourcing ideas and to help you find your niche.

eBay Strategy: Don't Get Stuck with Bargain-Priced Goods

Have you found what appears to be a great bargain and are ready to buy a bundle to sell on eBay? Be sure that the bargain you found can still be sold on eBay for a bargain while still making you a profit. Guest author Michael A. Banks shows you how.

Closing the Sale, Simple as A-B-C

Converting an interested shopper into a paying customer (closing the sale) is not simply something that happens at the very end. It unfolds over the course of the transaction. Learn how to make it happen.

Driving More Traffic to Your eBay Listings

Improve the visibility of your products and increase the number of potential buyers looking at your eBay listings.

Blogging to Boost Your Business - Part II: Maximizing Your Blog's Potential

A blog won't do much good unless it draws the attention of consumers. Fortunately, the Web offers numerous promotional opportunities to steer prospective customers to your blog. In this part, we reveal several of these opportunities and show you how to skyrocket the visibility or your blog and, ultimately, your business.

Spotting Hot-Selling Items before the Competition Heats Up

Because of the volume of products sold on eBay, it's an excellent place to do market research. However, if you're an eBay seller you've probably come to realize that by the time you discover an item that's a hot seller on eBay, it's already too late to take advantage of that knowledge. Learn how to find out what's hot today, not yesterday.

Blogging to Boost Your Business - Part I: Understanding Blogs and How They Can Help Your Online Business

In Part I of this article, we show you how blogging can help grow your online business. Essentially, our point is this: If you design a blog that attracts readers and earn their loyalty (thanks to your fount of knowledge, charming wit, or stellar writing skills), you should be able to capitalize on the intrigue and convert these viewers into paying customers.

Pumping Up Sales with Product Photos

This article reveals several tips and strategies for snapping high-quality photos that increase sales and often enable you to ask a higher price.

Writing Product Descriptions That Sell

When brick-and-mortar retailers market their products, they rely on an attractive storefront, full-color ads, and prominent displays. As an online retailer, your web storefront and product descriptions are all your customers see.

Listing Drop Ship Products as eBay Pre-Sale Items

To protect buyers from not receiving the items they order, eBay sets a strict policy for listing items you don't have on hand. As you might guess, this includes drop ship items.

99 tips for buying and selling on eBay

Learn about buying and selling on eBay from PowerSeller Skip McGrath.

Alternate Sales Venues

While the majority of our members attempt to sell on eBay as their exclusive outlet, our most successful members have internet stores, some of which don't sell anything at all on eBay or other online auctions.

Website Research

In doing your research as discussed above, be sure to try several variations of terms. Search for specific products. It's a good idea to keep track of the results so you can easily compare different product niche ideas.

Online Auction Research

An important part of doing proper research on eBay is finding out what is selling and for how much. The simplest way to do this is to utilize eBay's search engine to do completed item searches.

Product Research Basic Principles

Of all the questions we receive here at Doba, that of what to sell is far and away the most asked. More specifically, many ask us to tell them exactly which products to sell.

Using eBay to Drive Traffic to Your Web Store - Part II

Part 2 of this series reveals more methods of mining traffic from auction giant eBay.

ion giant eBay. Using eBay to Drive Traffic to Your Web Store - Part I

With millions of unique vistors hitting eBay every month, the online auction giant is a perfect place to "mine" targeted traffic from. I'll show you how to do it, without getting in trouble with the eBay policy police.

Giving Shoppers a Reason to Believe They're Getting a Good Deal

Learn what buyers really want—belief that they are getting a bargain—and how to give it to them.

In the U.S., eBay draws more customers per day, by far, than any other online shopping site, but it's not the only game in town. Developers have conjured up a host of ways to sell merchandise online, ranging from relatively lo-tech classified ads to eBay clones to hi-tech comparison-shopping toolbars. Each virtual sales outlet has its own business model, fees, and features. Some are a little more Doba friendly than others.

We've taken a look at the top dozen or so sites you can sell on and assembled a 1-page dossier for each of these sales venues. Each dossier briefly describes the featured eBay alternative, reveals its pros and cons, ranks its Doba friendliness, explains its current fee structure, and highlights its main features.

The following matrix enables you to quickly compare the sites. To access the 1-page dossier for a site, click the site's name.

* This indicates the marketplaces ability to accept uploads of product-data files, allowing for quick insertion of products in bulk. In the case of eBay and Yahoo! Auctions, it indicates the ability to upload auctions in bulk using third-party auction management software.

** The indicated marketplace(s) are integrated with Doba's Push to Marketplace tool, which allows you to send product directly from the Doba catalog to the selected marketplace.

*** Indicates eBay Express where shoppers can shop from multiple sellers at the same time. However, listing on eBay Express is not something that can be chosen. It happens automatically for eBay listings that meet the criteria.

CPC: Cost per click. You pay a pre-specified amount when your listing is clicked on.

Pay for Performance: You pay only when a sale is made as the result of a referral from the indicated marketplace.

Closed-Sale Fee: You pay a fee when a sale is made.

Insertion Fee: You pay a fee to have your item listed in the indicated marketplace.

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