Tom Murphy brings us the Carnival Of eBay Sellers # 3 this morning. Once again, it appears as though Tom has spent a a considerable amount of time digging for helpful eBay selling related information to help seller’s build their eBay business.

Most blog experts recommend participating in blog carnivals as an excellent way to build traffic over both the short and long term. If you have an eBay related blog why not join in and participate by submitting an article for the next issue scheduled for December 12th. The deadline for submission is December 10th. The suggested topic is “Shipping: USPS, UPS, FedEx ??”.

Submitting an article is an easy to do, 3 minute, process and by participating you will expose your blog to sellers who otherwise may never find your blog. You can submit your article here.

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The holidays are fast approaching and many sellers on eBay are already beginning to see in increase in their sales as people begin to do their Christmas shopping. Depending on the kind of merchandise you sell on eBay, the Holiday season may be reason for a huge increase in your eBay sales or you may little or no change at all from the rest of the year.

The Holidays don’t produce a significant increase in my sales because the majority of the items I sell are purchased by collectors and not items that most people would normally buy someone for Christmas. Each Holiday season does, however, usually provide one or two interesting stories when mom, dad, or a spouse decide to buy something for the the collector they love.

I once had a husband who got into a bidding war with his wife because he was determined to surprise her on Christmas morning with a piece of Teco pottery he knew she really wanted. The selling price ended up more than two thousand dollars more than I had expected to get for it.

Three years ago I listed an early Lehmann tin wind-up toy in late October. The first bid placed on it was from a collector who had been buying from me for several years. The following day I received a phone call from his wife asking if I would cancel his bid and sell the toy to her off eBay so she could give it to him for Christmas. We settled on a price, I canceled her husbands bid and ended the auction.

That evening I received a phone call from him wanting to know what was going on. When I told him I’d chosen to accept an offer someone had made for the toy, I had a very vocally upset collector on my hands and our friendship cooled over the next two months.

Christmas morning I the phone rang and when I answered it both of them were on the line and we all had a good laugh over his Christmas present.

How do the Holidays affect your sales?

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Tom Murphy has listed links to several articles about what tools eBay sellers use for Week 2 of Carnival Of eBay Sellers. Stop on over and peruse this weeks articles. And, like last week, leave a comment while you’re there to let Tom know his work isn’t wasted.

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If you’ve been selling on eBay for very long you’ve probably come across a few services, tools, and utilities that you use to make listing and selling easier. I use several of them, but here are three of my favorites that I can’t imagine being without.

MarketWorks Auction Management Service

When I first started selling on eBay I used eBay’s own listing tools. It took me three weeks to realize there had to be a faster/easier way. I went looking for something that would streamline the process, and after stints with two other auction management services, I ended up with MarketWorks sometime in 1999. I’ve been using them ever since.

I originally started using MarketWorks because in 1999 they offered several time saving features I needed that weren’t offered by other management services. Today most, if not all, of those features are available with several other auction management services, but because of MarketWorks’ reliability it would take a lot for me to begin looking for a different service.

MarketWorks offers a lot of features that many eBay sellers may not use and as a result may not be for you. However, I recommend that anyone seriously selling on eBay give serious consideration to using one of the available online auction management services.

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Tom Murphy has decided to shoulder the load to get what is probably the first blog carnival for eBay sellers ever off the ground and running at his PGA Auctions Blog.

If you’re not familiar with what a blog carnival is, Tom provides a definition from Wikipedia in the first edition of the Carnival which is:

“A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.”

This could turn into a treasure chest of ideas for eBay sellers so why not stop in at the Carnival Of eBay Sellers and take a look. While you’re there be sure to leave a comment so Tom knows his time and effort isn’t for nothing.

Better yet, if you blog about eBay, join in and help make it a success.

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