Oh my, have you ever been there too, I am sure you have. You take your carefully wrapped package to the Post Office, put it on the scales and the postage far exceeds what you charged. Glang :-(. Worse still, you may get a low rating from the customer. In the UK, prices went up last month. Still, its down to us to ensure we ask for the correct amount.

Hope everyone is looking forward to the Summer.

Dave

C-M-R is the name of my eBay shop. It is derived from the area in which I live plus my enthusiasm for researching. How do others choose the name of your eBay shop? I have seen some clever names.

Now that the winter is behind us I am going to look into adding more items to my shop. I have let the stock run down and there are few items for sale at the moment. Spring is just around the corner and I suspect many people will be thinking about the great outdoors. I have just the thing, a series of old maps from my collection.

Happy walking, eBay-ers :-).

For anyone who has not heard about the English summer weather, it can be summed up in one word - rain. A few weeks ago, parts of the North of England experienced unprecedented levels of rainfall that caused much flooding. Now, this week, it is the turn of the Midlands and the South to experience freak weather and flooding.

This week also marks the start of the English school holidays. The kids will probably be learning more about how to swim than sit around in the sun on a beach however. Sales are low at this time of year anyway, but the weather may have made them worse. Who wants to buy on eBay when their home is flooded or in danger of being flooded.

Of course, not all England is flooded. But the weather is bad all over and the sun has gone on it's holidays. Hope its back for August when I am planning to go North tae bonnie Scotland.

Every item on eBay is carefully scrutinised by buyers, but are items as carefully crafted by sellers? For me, the description of an item is as important as the price and that includes the images. This is how I approach an item for inclusion in my eBay shop.

The item is scanned, or if that is impractical, photographed. I take more than one photograph, including the item perched on top of scales if it is particularly heavy or bulky. For magazines or books, the contents are scanned as well as the front cover.

I use a Canon EOS digital camera and a Canon scanner. The images are cropped and resized (Microsoft Picture Manager). I select the best that describe the item best and upload them to Auctiva. I adopt an naming convention that allows me to find the image again and keep them in folders within Auctiva.

The item is prepared using Auctiva and I almost always include an image, some times chosing a different one for the eBay header and the Gallery image. I add an image to the desciption as well. All this takes time and effort. Is it worth it, I ask myself?

Dave - Crossgate Moor Research, June 2007.