Powerwheelerchris’s Blog

PWC Blog – June 12, 2009

Have you ever checked out my eBay news roundups? 
I post them weekdays between 9 and 10 am CDT to my website at

http://news.powerwheelerchris.ocom/

What will you find in my news roundup?

I strive to put up on the website news stories
that will be of interest to all levels of eBayers – from the occasional buyer to
the powerseller. 

I of course will provide links to any eBay
announcements that could impact your business on the site, I also have stories
that have an impact on sellers (or buyers),

I even post some offbeat stories, for example
the cheeto that a seller was calming was a likeness of Jesus.

You will even find news that might come across as
"this could only be of interest for stockholders or those in the stock market". 
Why do I add those stories?  I add these because I believe if you are going
to trade on eBay, you need to know everything you can about the service. 
Sometimes these stories gives us a glimpse into what might be coming down the
road.

This has been true when about a year ago it was
reported that the eBay Austria site went to a PayPal only payment system. 
I saw the writing on the wall and later the same year eBay.com went to ePayments
only.

PWC Blog – June 11, 2009

Recently PayPal started adding reserves to some
sellers PayPal accounts.  The reserve is set up to minimize risks that are
associated with selling online and the possibility of chargebacks. 

Although I have not heard an actual percentage of
PayPal account holders who are affected by the PayPal Reserve program, I would
say frmm the impressions I am getting it is a small percentage.

PayPal’s Bill Clark addressed the reasons and
explained this policy change on
the PayPal Blog in
a post entitled:

Seller Reserves. 

Basically, regardless of if you sell on eBay and
use PayPal or sell elsewhere online and use PayPal, you account may be profiled
into the Seller Reserve program if it is either relatively new and/or you sell
items in categories that are a deemed a high risk of chargeback (such as
electronics and intangible goods).  

The reserve (which are common in the payments
industry) is a rolling reserve and Clark explained it as follows:

Here’s an example to put it in perspective. If a merchant
sells $2,500 per month, and has a 5%, 30-day rolling reserve, then about
$125 per month will be held in reserve. This equals about $4 per day being
held and released 30 days later. If the seller is enrolled in the PayPal
Money Market Fund, then this money will continue to earn interest while it’s
in reserve

The idea behind this change is to share some of
the risks with sellers that come along with online payments.

Currently if a buyer is issued a chargeback and
the seller does not have any funds in his or her account. PayPal covers that
chargeback for the buyer and then spends time and resources to recover the money
form the seller.   The funds used to cover chargeback’s (where the
seller does not have money in his account) comes from PayPal.  To offset
this cost PayPal is asking (okay you could say is making) sellers accept some of
the risk.

Now here is the part of my blog I am sure some
readers will take issue with: I know that sellers dread the idea of chargeback’s
or having to refund money, but it is part of business – you are not going to
make every customer happy.  I feel that every business owner should be
prepared for such situations and have a reserve available.  I understand
why PayPal is doing this and I feel regardless of if you are a seller on eBay
(or anywhere for that matter) you should have a rolling reserve so you are
prepared when a buyer wants a refund or is issued a chargeback.  It should
be part of your business.

The concern some might have, and I admit I have
some concerns as well, is that the PayPal Reserve and the

Payment Holds for eBay Items could overlap on an eBay sellers
account.  I can see both sides of the coin on this one. 

PWC Blog – June 10, 2009

As more and more sellers (I am even seeing it
when I am in the buyer role) are being exposed to the new view item page, there is something missing
on the page that some may not have noticed.

The
link to a sellers About Me page is gone.  There is no graphic link to the
about me page.

This changes begs the question "What is the
future of the About Me page?"

I do not have an answer to that question. 

I can tell you that I have heard that eBay may be
trying to mainstream the view item page and un-clutter it from images (I would
hazard a guess that if this is true it might be to
improve load time – although the about me logo is small and should not impact
load time.)

I have heard rumors and some speculate that the
About Me page and your My World page would somehow merge or be the same.

Nothing official I have heard or seen from eBay.

What are your thoughts?

PWC Blog – June 9, 2009

eBay has made it easy for you to promote your
listings on your Facebook page.

Here is how you do it:

• Make sure you are logged into your eBay
  account

• Go to your My eBay page

• Click onto the accounts tab

• Click on site preferences on the left hand
  menu

• Click on "edit" to the far right of the line
  that reads: "Share your eBay items with friends"

• Click onto the link entitled "FaceBook"

• Log into your Facebook account and follow the
  directions from this point.

Note: I learned the hard way that your email
address on eBay MUST BE THE SAME on facebook for the link to work properly.

Once you have set up a link the next time you
list something on eBay it will automatable appear on Facebook (see example)

True, the font is a bit smaller than the rest of
the font on your posts on facebook, but it is also less intrusive to your
friends and less "pushy".

PWC Blog – June 5, 2009

Last Tuesday I published a blog entitled:

How to download QIF file format from the New PayPal look and
other issues I have found
.  In the blog entry I sated:

The other issue I have with the new layout is that it no longer
will give you a running balance o the history page – which was helpful when I
did import the data from the QIF files to find any mistakes when the ending
balance did not match up.

While downloading my data from PayPal to Quicken
last Friday I discovered there is a way you can view a running total within
PayPal.  It is from your history page within PayPal and the link is located
above the history under your current balance.

Click on the link that
reads "All Activity (with balance).

I am sorry for any
confusion or inconvenience my previous blog may have caused.

PWC Blog – June 3, 2009

Today I would like to send a big Thank you to RBH – Richard
Brewer-Hayes of the eBayinkblog for the mention in a recent blog post on his
blog:’

eBay Ink hits the road; New goals, Old goals & Lessons Learned

http://ebayinkblog.com/2009/06/01/ebay-ink-hits-the-road-new-goals-old-goals-lessons-learned/

I had a bit of an epiphany at some point over the
weekend. I had gone into the events selfishly looking forward to
extrapolating information that I could then use to improve what we’re trying
to accomplish here with our eBay Ink blog and family of blogs. However, at
some point I found myself thinking like a small seller or online business
owner. For instance, what would
Kat’s Kloset LLC or an eBay education specialist like
PowerWheelerChris get out of
these events? Then, as I started compiling my takeaways and key quotes, I
realized that the takeaways were pretty much guided by the same principles.
So, here’s what I took away from the events