If you sell items on eBay then your reputation is everything. Without it you have nothing. Your eBay reputation is worth more than any sale you will ever make.

Have you ever purchased anything on eBay (I’m betting you have), then think about all the actions you took leading up to your purchase. You looked at the seller feedback rating didn’t you? When you buy something on eBay from a seller with a low feedback rating I’m sure it makes you feel a little insecure and nervous while buying something from a power seller with their positive feedback rating in the thousands doesn’t require and reason for insecurity what so ever. You just feel like you are buying from the corner store.

If you have a back reputation or a low feedback rating you will definitely lose sales.

As a matter of fact, having a low feedback score or a bad eBay reputation will most likely lose you almost all of your sales. If a customer leaves you negative feedback you will feel its’ effects right away. That negative rating will go right to the top of your user page for everyone to see. Now ask yourself this, who’s going to want to business with you when they have just read that you sent a “damaged” item or took two months to deliver the product. The answer is simple, no one. Even something as simple as not responding to customer inquires is enough for negative feedback.

The next few items you will sell will have to be very cheap things and you will definitely have to do a better job just to push that negative feedback down the page. You might have to spend weeks of selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback just to make anyone want to buy from you again.

You can not consistently do a bad job and keep letting buyers leave negative feedback for you. If you get below 90% positive ratings you might as well call it quits.

You will not be able to just open a new account.

Even though eBay’s terms of service only allow you to have one account, there are a lot more reasons than that to setting up a new account. For starters you will have to start all over from scratch. Now who want to do that every few months?

The customers you now have in place will not be able to find you. You won’t be able to take advantage of all of the features that eBay has to offer. Because of your low feedback rating you auctions will finish at a lower price. If you have to open a new account it will be the equivalent of moving to a new state to get away from people who are spreading rumors about you.

Your only option, a good eBay reputation. It will definitely get you more sales.

When a power seller says something makes a statement about a product you can tend to believe them. They can even sell some off the wall stuff, but if they guarantee it is what they say then you can usually trust them. They are not going to risk there hard earned good eBay reputation for one or two items. They worked too hard for it. That is the power of a good reputation: people want to keep it and they will go to any lengths to do so.

This is so true that most people would rather purchase something for $21 from a power seller than for $16 from someone with a less than average feedback. Most people feel its worth the extra few bucks if they know the seller has a pretty good feedback rating. They know the seller has a pretty good system in place and they will get their product efficiently and as fast as possible.

You will find selling on eBay with a good reputation is so much easier and there’s only one way to get a that reputation: make sure you do your best to make your customers happy on each and every sale even if it’s only a $1.99 sale.

 

Do you know where you stand in the eyes of your target audience? Some business owners do. Some don’t. Even the ones that are aware don’t always put any PR initiatives into action.

Here’s the rub. Even if your company doesn’t focus on Web-related marketing, you can still lose business from what’s being said about you online. Hence, it pays to monitor your online reputation regardless of your level of Web involvement.

But you’re here, reading this post, which means you understand the need for some level of online marketing (almost no one stumbles onto a blog accidentally). If you’re savvy enough to pursue online marketing, you have probably already used or have considered using a PR firm at one time or another. You’re trying to get mentions in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Excellent. But that’s not enough.

The Internet is the one place where what is published is permanent. One slip up, and mentions/complaints are available for all to see FOREVER. Traditional PR initiatives are great and extremely useful for broadcasting positive messages to the masses. But they don’t solve the more permanent issue of web forum, blog, IM, and article complaints online.

Imagine an ex-employee or ex-customer who slipped through the cracks and holds a grudge. They write a blog post or forum topic blasting a product or service, or they outright accuse your company of dealing unethically. They click “Submit” and it’s published. There for all to see.

Imagine dozens, maybe hundreds, of potential customers who read that accusation online. Do they dare risk their time, energy, and money on you, a company of ill-repute? Not likely. Chalk up another lost opportunity. Traditional PR campaigns simply can’t reach that person at the point of negative impact.

Enter online reputation management. The terminology hasn’t yet become as mainstream as traditional PR related terms, but there are dozens of reputation management companies, specialists, and services working every day to monitor and manage corporate reputations online.

What does a reputation manager do?

A reputation manager typically provides a combination of SEO (search engine optimization) and SMO (social media optimization) focused on your brand names, product names, corporate names, executives’ names, etc. Any word or phrase that is associated with your company that could be searched for is included. Essentially, a reputation manager or reputation management service helps you monitor the Web for negative comments and affords you the opportunity to quickly respond and avoid a widespread crisis.

Most corporate reputation crises occur because the company took too long to respond or didn’t respond at all. The rule of thumb is to never assume that a crisis will just blow over or “go away”. You’ve likely spent a sizable amount on branding your company and/or product. Reputation Management is too fundamental to any company’s success to ignore or save for a rainy day. A potential crisis can break across the Web quickly, and when it rains, it pours.

Daniel Dessinger, MarketNet