Yesterday was supposed to be the final day that The Auction Rebel hosted The Carnival Of eBay Sellers. I never received the content for the issue. Tom had contacted me last week and said submissions weren’t coming in as he’d expected, so I’m guessing he may have decided to terminate the project.

Whatever the reason, January is over and it’s time to award the gifts that I talked about at the first of the month.

Only two bloggers submitted articles that were related to the specific topic of the week, so Tom Murphy and Thatedeguy will each receive a free copy of “Profiting From Garage Sales” when it is released in two to three weeks.

No Carnival readers submitted qualifying comments to any of The Carnival Of eBay Sellers articles during the month so the two free copies of the ebook reserved for readers are unclaimed.

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Apparently it didn’t take long for eBay to take action against bidancient, the seller who admited to using friends and customers for placing shill bids, but didn’t think eBay would do anything about it because of the high ebay fees he paid each month.

Guess again, friend.

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The fourth, and final, week of The $1000 A Month Thrift Store eBay Challenge auctions ended last night and it’s time to take a preliminary look at whether I succeeded or failed in making a net profit of $1000 or more just from items purchased in local thrift shops in a four week period.

Of the thirty-two thrift store purchases listed last week, twenty sold for a sell-through rate of 62% and gross sales of $629.15.

Here’s what my gross sales, expenses, and net profit look like after week 4 so far. Once again, not all the items that closed last night have been paid for yet, so it will be necessary to make some minor adjustments to the PayPal fees entry. All the figures for weeks one, two, and three are now correct since everything has been paid for.

As can be seen from the above table, it isn’t going to matter what the final PayPal fee adjustments are, I didn’t reach my goal of $1000 net profit in four weeks time. When everything is finally paid for I will probably have fallen $90 to $100 short of my $1000 goal.

Does this mean I failed to show it was possible to make a $1000 a month profit from thrift store purchases?

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Becoming an eBay trading assistant can be a good way to increase your income from eBay, but I’ve seen too many people jump in head-first without realizing what is really involved if they want to succeed.

To help you decide if being an eBay trading assistant should be part of your eBay business model, here are a few questions you should ask yourself first. Knowing the answers to these will help you decide if the program is actually for you and will help avoid some potential headaches and problems down the road.

Do you have eBay selling experience? - This may sound like somewhat of a silly question, but if you haven’t learned how to write headlines that draw bidders in; write descriptions that grab a bidder’s attention; and take photographs that present what you are selling to it’s best advantage, you have some things you need to become proficient at before offering your services as an eBay trading assistant.

Does your state or province have any special licensing requirements for businesses that sell consignments for other people? - Some do and some don’t. If yours does, you need to know what they are and be in compliance with them right from the start. Six months into the business, a response of “I wasn’t aware I needed that” isn’t going to draw any sympathy if your state’s licensing agency or tax department comes knocking at the door.

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eBay’s recent decision to remove actual User IDs from the bid histories of auctions that reach $200 or more has many people concerned that the decision will encourage shill bidding on eBay. Here’s an interesting article from The Sunday Times about a UK Titanium PowerSeller who apparently admits to shill bidding and doesn’t believe eBay will do anything about it because of the renvenue he generates for them.

You can also listen to excerpts from the actual interview here and here.

What do you think? Is shill bidding more of a problem than most people realize, and will eBay’s new policy cause more harm than the good it may do?

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Typewriter ribbon tins are currently one of the hot sub-niches in collectible advertising. While collector interest has been growing steadily for several years, it was fueled recently by the sale of a large collection over several weeks on eBay.

Like any collectible niche, some items are quite common and don’t attract much attention when they appear on eBay. Others attract some serious bidding.

The Ritter’s Stag Brand ribbon tin shown at the left had a few minor condition problems, but they didn’t stop several collectors from bidding the tin up to $510.00.

Typewriter ribbon tins can be found at flea markets, antique shows, and antique shops/malls and can be very lucrative if you spend some time researching closed sales so you know which ones sell and which ones don’t.

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Today we are going to look at one seller who looks as though he spent some time thinking outside the box when deciding what to sell on eBay. His eBay ID is hershey-on-line and while he sells a couple other items, his main inventory is consists of two things - a one hour DVD taken in a Pennsylvania junkyard and another one hour DVD taken in a different junkyard.

This seller is obviously an outside the box thinker when deciding what to sell on eBay. Let’s take a closer look at how he’s doing with these two DVDs.

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What to sell on eBay? That’s a question that all of us have asked ourselves at one time or another.

Today Darren Rowse, who writes one of the premier blogs about blogging, wrote about “How To Think Outside The Box And Develop Attention Grabbing Content” that has nothing to do with eBay but, at the same time, contains some great advice about deciding what to sell on eBay.

In part, Darren says:

“It’s quite easy to get lost in the sea of voices. However, there’s one often-overlooked way to instantly grab attention: thinking outside of the box.”

Way too often, when someone tries to decide what to sell on eBay, they end up in one of the many huge boxes on eBay. It may be the drop shipping box; the wholesale list box; the easy money box; or one of many others. What is sad, is that once in one of these boxes, most people never escape. The few that do usually end up jumping straight into one of the other boxes.

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I recently acquired the rights to a short report called “Cracking The eBay Store Traffic Code” that talks about different ways to drive more traffic to your eBay store.

Any Auction Rebel readers who would like a free copy can download it by right clicking eBay Store SEO and then clicking on “Save Target As”. The report is in PDF format so you will need Adobe Reader to view it.

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This week’s Carnival had the topic “eBay auction lengths and ending times - what works best?“ and we had 7 submissions which you will find below.

Remember that this is the third week for The Auction Rebel to host the Carnival of eBay Sellers. We’ll be doing it for the rest of the month of January.

Tom at PGA-Auctions has picked Ty Tribble of ebay.business-opportunities to be our February host but if you are interested in hosting in March, let him know! The Carnival is an excellent way to increase the readership of your Blog … (I can attest to that) and through your blog you should also be increasing you eBay sales. If you are wondering how, have a look at my article on “Building an eBay Blog“

So here we go with this week’s 7 submissions:

Silicon Valley Blogger presents Avoid The Next Internet Scam: Tips For Selling Safely posted at The Digerati Life, saying, “Hope you’ll be able to consider this article even though it’s about fraud.”

Tom Murphy presents eBay auction lengths and ending times .. their effect on selling price posted at PGA Auctions, saying, “The decision as to ending date and time is really a personal decision based on many factors.”

Brian Brown, CPA presents IRS Insight - Tax Responsibilities for Online Auction Sellers posted at Your Money Matters, saying, “CPA Brian Brown follows up with some insight from the IRS on the tax responsibilities for online sellers.”

Matthew Paulson presents Saving Money Through Coupon Arbitrage posted at Getting Green.

Gary Hendrickson presents eBay Auction Lengths & Ending Times posted at The Auction Rebel.

Will Chen presents Snipe an Ebay auction, save a fortune. posted at Wisebread, saying, “Paul reveals how eBay users can save a fortune with price sniping services. From a seller’s perspective, these sniping services may make auction lengths less relevant given that the buyer is able to rely on an automated service to game the system.”

Matthew Paulson presents 7 Tips to eBay Selling Success - Associated Content posted at Associated Content.

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