Hi Andrew,

Right here is my problem. Last year I tried to sell something to someone who basically messed me around and top it all off he left me bad feedback calling me a liar and a cheat, which I was not happy with as I bent backwards to try and sort the issue out with him. Now this incident was the last thing I sold on eBay in December and before that I had 100 percent positive feedback with everything I sold.

Now that I have bought your Easy Auction Business 2.0 video course, I was going to start selling properly on there. Now the only thing I am worried about is that people won’t buy off me due to that bad feedback and they will look elsewhere to buy the product of someone else with good feedback.

So I was wondering would it be advisable to open a new eBay account or shall I stick with the one I have got and if so do you have any hints and tips to get the buyers on my side to start purchasing stuff off me again as I am sure once a few buy of me and leave me good feedback things should be ok then.

The only probs with starting from scratch is that I need to collate loads of good feedback.

Regards,
Luke

Hi Luke & Thanks for your question!

There’s one very important missing piece of the puzzle – what’s the feedback score of your account? I understand that it is 100% positive, which is good but if the number of feedback is very low – say 25 or 30, it’s not a very huge asset to fight for. Just open up a new account (create user ID based around products you’ll sell now), make 10 to 20 small purchases (less than £1 each) to gain some feedback as a buyer.

Once your feedback as a buyer is 10 to 20 positives, sell off some un-wanted items from your house. Again – 10 to 20 items would do the job! By un-wanted items I mean – DVDs, books, old mobile phones etc. – anything really you could sell off CHEAP and won’t feel bad about it.

By doing this, you’ll effectively have a positive feedback score of around 30 entries – half coming from the sellers and other half – from buyers. This is the easiest & best way to gain positive feedback in a timely manner. It will take you just 2 or 3 weeks to get this done. And once you have 30 positive feedbacks, you can start selling whatever you want to sell and don’t worry much about trustworthy issues.

Sure, there will be people who prefer to buy ONLY from sellers with a feedback score of 100+ but in general – the difference in conversion rates is much higher when we compare a seller with a feedback score of 2 and 30 than 25 and 150. If buyers see that you have a good, recent feedback history from buyers (not only sellers), in most cases you’ll be ok!

On the other hand – if your feedback score on the current account is 100+ (from buyers) and only this one – negative, I would recommend you to keep that account and work on getting it back to shape! How? Using the same steps explained above – buy 10 to 20 items, sell 10 to 20 items (Cheap, under the market’s price so that you can get a fast deal even with a negative feedback record) and off you go!

An established account is a good thing to have. Not only feedback score matters – with an established account people also notice how long you have been trading on eBay and feel much more comfortable dealing with a seller who’s on eBay for 5 years + than a newbie.

Important Tip: When you buy items to build your feedback score, always make sure that the seller uses automated feedback system and leaves feedback right after the purchase is being made. How to do this? Just check seller’s feedback and click on the last few user ID’s. Then look at their feedback – if the seller leaves automated feedback right after the purchase, it will reflect in the date & time of the feedback entry.