Your Ebay Recovery Plans

Your Ebay Recovery Plans

I can give you a map on how to continued working and selling online. Their are hundreds of former sellers with different ideas of what you should do next, but in the back of your mind you must already have your own idea.

If it is to stealth your way back onto Ebay or to plead your way back into their good graces then I am not the one to aid you in that quest. I have been there and done that. Even when it does work it feels kind of degrading.

We are business people and we are forced by a company that we generate income for to ask permission to do just that?

Recovery is just that. You are trying to recovery from something that happened to you. Who recovers from a bad relationship by changing their name and face and getting involved with the same person again. Sooner or later the result will be the same.

We are here to talk about business. You are not a business person until you are in control of your business. How the business runs and how fast it grows. As long as you work at Ebay or even Amazon you are limited in that quest. You will always work for them instead of being in a relationship where you are at least equal partners.

What I am going to suggest again is that you take your online business on the road. You post your items for sale at other sites that would love to have you as a partner. You learn from these experiences and build your own website as a home base for all the things that you wish to market. The luckiest sellers to have been suspended by ebay or restricted by ebay were those sellers who had their own websites to fall back on. Those websites kept the cash flowing while they figured out the next moves. The next moves usually involved setting up shop at other sites and using their existing connections.

What are existing connections? Access to names and email addresses that we already have. That is going to be a future post. To conclude this post I would like to suggest that you go out and look at the new online marketplaces that are competing with ebay. Ebid is one such site. There is a banner link below for you.

If you want a walk through list of the best sites along with the basic information that you need to set up shop at many of these sites I have written a little book that you can find at iTunes, Barnes and Noble and Amazon for the low price of 1.99. The price is so low because I needed this kind of advice when I first left Ebay behind and every dollar was dear to me. The title of the book is Powerselling After Ebay.

Good luck with your online business and please take a moment to share this post with a friend.

New Online Markets

            New Online Markets

    Just because you spent months or even years working at Ebay this does not mean that they were ever the only place to work. I worked there because they were the most popular and were convinced for the longest time that Ebay was the only online marketplace.

    The experience of the last few years has taught me that this is not the case. There are many other online marketplaces to sell at. More and more come on line each week. Someday one of them will grow to rival the once great ebay. I say once great because there was a time when it was a wonderful place to conduct business. That was before they began to attack the small time sellers. The mom and pop home business owners. They did this with raised fees and new rules and endless restrictions and ebay suspensions for insane reasons. If you are reading this post you are here because Ebay went out of their way to make you feel unwelcome there.

    There are on the other hand many sites that make you feel very welcome. They not only want you to sell at their sites, they need you and the skills that you will bring.

    My advice is to sign up at a few of these sites and see how it goes. I am one of the former power sellers that has found a way to generate four figures a month is sells by selling at other online marketplaces.

    My second piece of advice is to review your sales history. You can do this by visiting paypal. Download a list of all of the emails that belong to those who purchased from you in the past and invite them to visit your new store fronts at the sites that you move to. You can do this mass emailing yourself or you can do it by using a clever little trick I have learned. You can sign up for a free trial with one of the email marketing services and use that trial as a way of marketing to all of your former buyers.  It works great and if you opt out before the trial is over you have reached all your past customers with a great marketing campaign and did it without spending any extra money only time.

    You can also visit sites like Ecrater and Ioffer and the only other auction site online that is seeing steady grown, Ebid. Below you will find a brief video about them and a banner link to their site. If you like the classic Ebay auction format rather than the fixed price format then Ebid is probably where you should set up shop.



    Okay that is it for today. I have added some social bookmarking buttons so please take a moment to bookmark this post or send it to someone else. Thank you and have a good day.

After The Ebay Suspension

    I have read your comment a few times. I understand the situation that you find yourself in. Many former ebay sellers have gone through something similar.

    First I do not work at ebay. I am a former Powerseller. There are thousands of us out here. I am one of the few who decided to offer aid and comfort to those who  face the restrictions and suspensions that ebay seems to dole out for reasons that become harder and harder to understand.

    I am going to try to offer you both aid and comfort. First things first. You are not dead, you are just badly wounded. If your paypal had been suspended as well you would be facing a greater challenge.
    Here are the steps I recommend before contacting Ebay again. (At the end of this I will offer phone numbers for customer service at ebay. )

1. Just incase all fails and you are not allowed as a seller at Ebay you need to set up shop at as many other market places as possible. Start with Amazon. You need to start there first because once you become a seller there you will need two weeks from your first sell to request a payout.

    Next I would sign up with Etsy and Bonanza. Selling on Bonanza is largely about networking and getting to know others who conduct business there. Next you will need to sign up with Webstore, Craigslist, Ecrater and Yardsellr.  Also you should sign up with Ebids. They are a promising new auction site. The traffic at none of these sites except Amazon can match ebay, but the combined traffic can help a seller survive while he or she seeks to grow business at their own website.

    Most sellers do no realize that they left ebay with a list of possible customers in hand. This list is the emails addresses of all your past customers stored at Paypal. If they have done business with you before they are likely to do business with you again. If you have something similar to what they purchased before contact them and make them a offer. You do not even need a store front to do this. If or when you have a deal you can send them an invoice using paypal tools and or google checkout.

    It will not be easy to overcome an ebay suspension or restriction, but it can be done. Too many believe that they are married to ebay. That they are the only place to work. Getting past this is the beginning of the path to financial freedom.

    Okay for those of you who wish to plead with ebay here are two customer service numbers that have gotten some results. Call between 9 - 6 during week days for best results.

866-540-3229 press# then enter zipcode, then press 0.  This is a number where you may actually reach someone who may call you back. 
Second number is 866-643-1607.   You may get a real person to talk to.

    Understand when Ebay restricts you as a seller, but keeps you as a buyer, they are doing what amazon has done for years. They are willing to take your money, but not willing to help you earn a living. When I first got suspended by ebay I tried to get that suspension lifted. Nothing I tried worked. Then I tried to go back on the site under different names and addresses. That only held up for a while. In the end the thing that has gotten me through the last five years is to do it myself. Selling at other online marketplaces while building my own. It has worked for thousands of us. It can work for each and everyone of you. I make more money now selling at ten different sites than I ever did at Ebay and the fees are far less. Not to mention if a suspension ever comes your way at any of them so what you have over a half dozen to fall back on and you have your own website as well.

    I know that running your own website sounds like sci-fi but it is not that difficult I have designed a page that can show you how to build your own wordpress site in about an hour. You can click here to visit it.


    Okay that is it for today. It has been such a while since I was suspended by Ebay that I forgot how it felt at the time. I thought the world was ending. Now I realize that a whole new world of possibilities were being revealed to me. Freedom is a scary thing, but never a bad thing. Freedom is the morning and the bread and the risen son. Freedom in what ever form or shape it takes is gods gift to everyone. Freedom forces us to make hard choices, but in the end they are always our choices and that can not be underestimated.

    Good luck and please keep in mind that hard work is its own reward and what you face now has been faced and overcome by others who have come before you.