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Turn on CNN or Fox News, read a column on the Internet or play your favorite all news radio station an you’ll become acutely aware of the “so-called” fraud online – specifically related to eBay.

Definition of Fraud: “In a broad strokes definition, fraud is a deliberate misrepresentation which causes another person to suffer damages, usually monetary losses.”

Like many, I have had negative experiences one eBay. However, I’ve also had negative experiences with unscrupulous people in the real world. The truth is that eBay is just a microcosm of real-life society where 99.9% of people are good nature.

Have you had a bad experience on eBay? I spoke with someone recently who said that a “fraudulent experience on eBay” ruined their desires to use eBay as a sales platform.” That seems just a bit immature, don’t you think? Just a few weeks ago my nine year old daughter left her board shorts on a lounge chair while swimming in the pool (at a nationally recognized vacation resort). When she returned, her shorts were gone. Someone stole her shorts. Fraud and theft. How should my nine year old respond? Should she never swim in a public pool again?

Of course not. But, she can learn a valuable life lesson of how to protect herself and her property. And to that we discover the purpose of this article. How can we protect ourselves from potential fraud on eBay?

Fraud on eBay, while small in proportion to the number of transactions that take place, is a real issue for the unsuspecting eBay member. Follow the following points to reduce the potential of fraud on eBay in your online trading adventures.

Fraud Tip #1: Understand Phishing

1. A new word to the Websters’ Dictionary for 2005, this has become #1 of the top areas of Fraud Alert in the history of the internet. Here is the definition from dictionary.com: “A method of identity theft carried out through the creation of a website that seems to represent a legitimate company. The visitors to the site, thinking they are buying something from a real business, submit their personal information to the site. The criminals then use the personal information for their own purposes, or sell the information to other criminal parties.“ In specific terms, it may relate to your eBay membership, PayPal account, bank account, credit card, or other account where you need an ID, password and/or personal information.

2. Fraud on eBay can occur when you receive a phishing email that sounds 100% legitimate. It might come from: support@… And looks like this: “Dear eBay member, You have received this warning because we have strong reason to believe that your eBay account had been recently compromised and it could be used by a third party without your authorization. In order to prevent any fraudulent activity from occurring we are required to open an investigation into this matter. To speed up this process, you are required to verify your eBay account by following the link below.”

a. Here’s what happens: when you click on the link listed, you are taken to a web page that looks exactly the same as the sign-in page — for example, you are sure you are at the eBay sign-in page. You are asked for personal information, including ID and password, etc.

3. How to protect yourself? You need to know that eBay, PayPal or any other secure site will NEVER ask for your personal, identifying information in an email. What should you do? Delete the email and tell yourself you’re not going to fall victim to a phishing scam.

A high percentage of online and eBay fraud is eliminated simply by understanding phishing and knowing how to deal with it.

Fraud Tip #2. Only Buy From Sellers With an Established Feedback Score

• Love or hate eBay’s feedback system, but is has its purpose. By doing your due diligence you can weed out potentially fraudulent eBay sellers simply by reviewing their feedback score. Pay particular attention to the last 90 days and be sure read all the comments posted on the first 3 pages. A sellers feedback score will is increasingly important if you are purchasing a high ticket item. Fraud on eBay can be dramatically reduced by following this Fraud Tip.

Fraud Tip #3. Do Not Pay With Western Union

• The chance of Fraud on eBay has been reduced through eBay’s own internal policing of buyer payment options. If you are going to pay for an item you purchase on eBay – always use PayPal as you are covered by PayPal’s buyer protection program.

• Here is eBay’s latest “Safe Payments Policy:

“Permitted on eBay.com: Sellers may offer to accept PayPal, credit cards including Mastercard/Visa /Amex/Discover, debit cards and bank electronic payments online for eBay purchases. Sellers may also offer to accept bank-to-bank transfers, often known as bank wire transfers or bank cash transfers. Sellers may accept COD (cash on delivery) or cash for in person transactions. Sellers may offer to accept payment through Certapay and Propay. Sellers may offer to accept personal checks, money orders, cashier’s checks, certified checks and other negotiable instruments.

Not permitted on eBay.com: Sellers may not solicit buyers to mail cash. Sellers may not ask buyers to send cash through instant cash transfer services (non-bank, point-to-point cash transfers) such as Western Union or Moneygram. Sellers may not ask buyers to pay with Stormpay. Finally, sellers may not request payment through online payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy.”

With regards to cash payments on eBay, “The U.S. Postal Service tells us it’s unsafe, and now eBay is telling everyone that it is unsafe,” said Matt Halprin, eBay’s global policy VP. “So if a seller solicits or encourages offers to accept cash, [they are] encouraging unsafe payment methods and we do remove that seller’s listing.”

eBay Fraud, which accounts for only a small fraction of one percent of all transactions can be significantly be reduced by your use of PayPal.

Fraud Tip #4. Preventative Measures - Tips For Your Protection

• The IFCC (Internet Fraud Complaint Center) has an excellent website that includes a tips page where you will read about Internet Auction Fraud, Non-Delivery of Merchandise, Credit Card Fraud, Investment Fraud, Nigerian Letter Scam, and Business Fraud.

In a perfect world, everyone would be honest and trustworthy, but, unfortunately, there are those who will try to take advantage of others. The Internet provides tremendous opportunity – like anything else, use it wisely.

Adam Ginsberg, international small business and online expert, speaker & trainer, has published the #1 best seller “How to Buy, Sell & Profit on eBay”. Auction Sellers Tips here: Auction Sellers Tips Also: AdamGinsberg.com

Black Friday is a goldmine for eBay resellers. On one single day there are more profitable items for sale than during the entire rest of the year. If executed properly, Black Friday can easily create thousands of dollars in profit. This article explains in detail how to find and buy deals on Black Friday and then how to sell them on eBay for a profit.

Preparing for Black Friday
In order to make the best purchases on Black Friday, it is necessary to start by gathering some supplies. Initially you will need the following:

- Money
- Transportation
- Advertisements

The first requirement is fairly self-explanatory, but keep in mind that the more money you can spend the more you can make. Don’t go out and spend $10,000 on your first trip though, as that is a lot to loose if you mess up. Prepare yourself to spend a set amount of money before leaving, that way you will know exactly what you are getting into. The second requirement is actually more important than it sounds. My friend and I went on our first Black Friday trip over four years ago, and boy were we under prepared. We went out with two sedans and came back with two sedans filled with products plus another sedan’s worth tied to the roof. I highly recommend that you at least attempt to find a rather large vehicle, though it isn’t imperative. Lastly, you will need to find yourself as many advertisements for Black Friday as possible. The sooner you get these, the easier it will be to do the research. I personally advocate searching online; there are many websites that post Black Friday sales ads well before they are printed. Look for deal sites and eBay selling sites to have these. Now that you have everything together, let’s get to the important part.

Researching Products for Profitability
It is ironic that the most important part of making money on Black Friday isn’t actually done on Black Friday. This is the part that separates those who will profit from shopping and those who will just buy things. It almost all comes down to the research. When the big day rolls around, it is important to know exactly where you are going and exactly what you are buying Also know how much money you expect to make from each product. Keep the importance of this step in mind as we continue.

The initial research begins with finding the material, a.k.a. advertisements. This can be done in two ways; the first is to go and get newspapers on the Wednesday before Black Friday, the second is to find ad-scans on the internet. I fully prefer the second method, as it allows me to research weeks in advance. A simple Google search for Black Friday will reveal many websites that are dedicated to providing ads as far ahead of time as possible.

Once your ad collection is assembled, you will need to sit down and look through all of them, paying specific attention to items you think will sell best. If you need to get a general idea of product value then vist www.selladeal.com/products and look at what items sell best. Next you want to write down a list of the products that you think will be profitable when sold. You will then check this list against the completed auctions on eBay to get an approximate selling value. To reiterate, you will be looking through ads to pick out valuable buys and comparing the price with their current value on eBay. This will give you a guess as to the amount of money you can make off of each item. I recommend repeating this process of finding an item and checking its eBay price several times so that your list will be fairly complete. At the end of this process, you should have a good number of products along with an idea of how much money you can make from reselling them.

Ranking and Scheduling Stores
Now it is time to plan out our shopping trip. Here we have this list of products and how valuable they are to us. The next step is to arrange the items by store and by profitability. This should make it apparent which stores are going to be more profitable than others - these are the stores that you’ll want to visit first. After you have the stores arranged based on profitability, you want to double check the hours of each sale. This will assure that you catch all opportunities because of differently timed sales (in a perfect world, each sale would start about 2 hours after the previous, in reality they will likely all start at the same time). The final step to this process is to write down an exact order of the stores that you will visit and an exact order of the products you will buy in each store. This list makes buying the best products a very straight forward trip. If you know what you want before hand, you will get there before the people who will have to think about it.

The Big Day - Black Friday
Believe it or not, this isn’t nearly as difficult as it is made out to be. Yes, there will be crowds. Yes, people will be acting like maniacs. This is why you will succeed - because you have already planned and researched everything and will not be acting crazy. The drill is simple: follow your schedule and buy as many of the profitable items as you can get. There may be times when you need to be assertive to stay at the front of a line, or even to push your way through a crowd to get to a product. The key is to remain polite, confident, and assertive enough to get to where you are going. Getting angry or causing trouble will only make things worse. If you cannot get one of your best products, it isn’t the end of the world. Remember that there are a lot of other items that you can get to resell for a profit. Here is a general set of guidelines for getting the best items:

- Always remain calm. You must be in control and thinking at all times.
- Be assertive. Say excuse me to get past people, don’t just wait there.
- Be polite. The moment you loose your temper, the sales reps will turn on you.
- Stick to the plan. Purchase the items that you can, and move on to the next store.

If all of these guidelines are kept in mind, there should not be any problems during Black Friday. There is one other thing to be aware of; up selling. Sales personnel will try rigorously to add on warranties, surge strips, antivirus software, and many other items that are not worth mentioning. Do not buy into their sales hype - stick with the plan and purchase the profitable items, nothing else.

Selling your Products on eBay
Almost there! Here is what’s next: cataloguing and selling the items online. This is pretty easy; the hard part is certainly over. Sell as many of the items as possible within the next two or three weeks, that way they will arrive by Christmas. Don’t panic or overload eBay in order to reach this deadline, the items will sell nearly as well the first week into January. I don’t recommend selling products during the weeks before and after Christmas, as this is usually a pretty slow sales period on eBay. I would highly recommend reading these selling guides if you need to brush up on your eBay auction technique. On the most basic level, you need to at least include a picture in each auction. That is about it - once everything is listed you need only sit back and deal with shipping. There are also some shipping guides in the above link if need be.

Let the Items Sell, and Count the Profits
This is the best part. Once everything is finished selling, it’s time to add it all up and see just how great Black Friday is. I personally made well over $2,000 on my first Black Friday. Give it a chance, do the research, and good luck!

Mason Hipp is an eBay powerseller and a regular contributer of selling guides, ebay products, and information to www.selladeal.com

I am still amazed how many photos in online auctions for sometimes quite expensive jewelry are too blurry and out of focus to let potential buyers see clearly what they are bidding on.

Would you bid hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a vague blob that is supposed to be a diamond ring?
Here is what you will need to take improved photos of your jewelry with your digital camera:

1. A tripod (holding the camera in your hand will introduce some blur!)

2. Two or three worklights with 100 W bulbs (can be found at a hardware store for under $10 each)

3. A translucent plastic storage box to set up as a “stage”, in which the object is placed on a display stand or jewelry bust

4. Several pieces of silky cloth as backdrops

You do not need to get a top-of-the-line digital camera with 5 Megapixels or more, but the camera should have a macro setting and should let you adjust the white balance to compensate for different lighting condition. Recharagable batteries are a must, as digital cameras go through batteries quickly, and you could easily spend a lot of money on batteries otherwise.

The plastic box setup, with worklights shining through the sides provides soft shadows, and you can use an extra worklight from the front or top when needed. Do not use your camera’s flash (it tends to make small objects appear flat), and set the white balance to the type of lighting you are using (see your camera’s manual). Some cloth (particularly the kind used for linings) in a nice neutral color (grey, light blue, etc.) makes for an attractive background.

These tips should improve your auction photos, and best of all, they do not require a large investment.

Pamela Bruce lives in Austin, TX. She has been beading since her teens. She is the owner of Love Beads Unlimited and sells the bead jewelry she designs and creates at http://www.lovebeadsunlimited.com

Am I the only person who doesn’t know what a 3 minute auction is? Looking for fresh content for my site, I discover that “minute auction,” or even a 5, 10 and 30 minute auction is a popular item. Some auction sites may refer to a minute auction as a “Live Bid.” The “minute auction” or “3 minute auction” actually comes the closest to duplicating the excitement (and anxiety) of a real auction. No, it is not the same as an Ebay minute auction.

I will give the example of Bidz.com. Bidz.com uses Flash technology to constantly update in real-time auction bids right before your very eyes! The price goes up, up, up and the time clicks away … down, down, down!. Add flashing green highlights for added new bids and red flashing for the ominous approaching 0 minute and to say the least, it is quite thrilling.

On the Bidz home page, there is a link that says 3-minute auctions. This is a separate category all by itself. If you click that link you are taken to the 3 minute auctions, usually consisting of jewelry. (Note: See end of article for “The 3 minute auction - too good to be true?”)

A word of caution: It takes a little finesse to bid at these fast-paced auctions - and I mean FAST! You must be EXTREMELY CAREFUL when bidding. The highest bid I came across on my visit was for $1500. My advice would be to practice on the dollar starting bids. Bids quickly escalate to $15 and $30. In the words of BidZ:

“If you are bidding on items in the 3 Minute Auctions category, you will not be notified if you are outbid. These auctions move very quickly, so you have to monitor your winning bids very carefully.”

Back on the 3 minute auction page of BidZ, what do you see? >From left to right: the product picture, the item number, title, price, bids, and time left. The “bids” and the “time left” are where the auction action is at. But just as its nearing 0 minutes left, it jumps up to more time left - what gives? According to Bidz.com:

“If the bid is placed during the last minute of an auction, the auction will be automatically extended for an additional 1 minute from the time of the latest bid. The auction will close once all bidding has stopped for a period of 1 minute.”

OK - I decide I am going to get in on this action. Registering is free (username must be a combo of numbers and letters). I have to click on the picture to go to the listing to actually bid according to Bidz.com directions below:

1) Simply use the “plus” and “minus” graphic keys to select the amount you would like to bid. The amount of the next bid is automatically one dollar more than the current bid. If you only want to place a one dollar bid, you can just click the Bid button without any adjustments.

2) Click the bid graphic button to register your bid. PROBLEM: I click the Bid! button and then find out I have to register my credit card in order to bid - but they didn’t tell me that when I was registering (even though I quite expected it).

Another problem I encounter is a sluggish modem. By the time I reach the listing page and the picture and bid button loads, the auction can be over (sigh…).

Its not hard to become giddy over the amazing deals of a 3 minute auction…too good to be true? 3 minute auctions “typically offer expensive items, such as Cartier watches, Beanie Babies, computers, and cars at prices that are low enough to dull the scam alarm in most people.”

This was taken from an auction fraud article. The same article reports that the Federal Trade Commission has identified a scam email that includes “Live 3 minute auctions” in the subject line. See the details of the 3 minute auction scam at www.chiff.com/a/fSCAMauc.htm

For a list of minute-auction websites, refer to: The 3 minute auction list http://shmyl.com/dpzison

My final words: The 3 minute auction and minute auction are the epitome of auction entertainment. So pop some popcorn, invite some friends over, and have yourself some Friday night auction fun!

About The Author

Renee Matt maintains AuctionTongue.com, a review site of auction tool, free auction templates, auction software, auction sniper and image hosting services. AT focuses on auction websites outside of Ebay. Sign up for their FREE Auction Freebies newsletter: http://www.auctiontongue.com/; renee@auctiontongue.com

Remember back when selling online was a new experience? Dealers tried everything to sell their vehicles online. Today’s market has expanded to include several hot online marketplaces. The largest online marketplace is Ebay. Ebay has evolved into an online solution for everything from whole towns to your favorite paperback book. Big or small it doesn’t matter, Ebay has everything for the savvy consumer.

Vehicles are plentiful on Ebay. Ebay sells a vehicle every minute for the savvy seller willing to invest his time and money in listing his vehicle online. Just how effective is selling on Ebay? Actually, less than 10% of the vehicles listed on Ebay actually sell. A selected few dealers sell at 80 to 100% of their online car sales.

Who are the auto dealers that are selling effectively on Ebay? Is there a secret to their success? Consider that a vehicle, digital camera and some basic design skills are all you need to sell on Ebay. Which vehicle and how much will it sell for? How to type up the description so that the internet savvy consumer will want to purchase your vehicle?

All of these questions are asked each and every day by savvy individuals and auto dealers all across the United States. A company has come along that can help with your selling situation and take the work out of listing for a car dealer on Ebay Motors. That is right! No work for you! They take the pictures and handle your vehicle sale from start to finish, while handling emails in a professional manner to produce a proven sales results.

A Consulting company called www.AutomobileClearingHouse.com has proven that they can sell cars on Ebay with a sell through factor much higher than the average auto dealer on Ebay. Take the work out of selling your vehicle on the world’s largest marketplace. Check out their website and see how easy selling a car online can be.

“Committed to selling online, put our extensive experience to work for you.” At www.AutomobileClearingHouse.com, their moto says it all!

About The Author
Cherie Szilvagyi

www.AutomobileClearingHouse.com © AutomobilleClearingHouse 2004

cherie@automobileclearinghouse.com