Also, eBay is looking to connect to more consumers locally. To that end, Durzy says there is already significant overlap in users. He points to a Dallas Meetup group formed for folks who sell on eBay. Says Durzy, "We see a similarity in philosophy."

Indeed, Meetup plans to use a portion of the investment to launch six conferences across the country not so dissimilar from the eBay Live conference the company holds annually to bring sellers together. Says Scott Heiferman, "We want to help organizers become great leaders." The first Meetup conference will happen in Houston in May.

Also, Meetup will use its new resources to launch an advertising campaign to draw attention to local groups. The first Meetup posters will hit New York City subways on Mar. 24, says Heiferman.

1. Set the starting price low (except for items you expect little interest in). Low starting prices stimulate auction traffic and get early bidders psychologically invested in the auction, leading to more completed sales and higher final prices. Professor Gillian Ku from London Business School and professors Adam Galinsky and J. Keith Murnighan from Northwestern found that Nikon cameras with starting prices of $0.01 resulted in significantly higher final prices than the average price for completed camera auctions.

An auction for a kitchen sink with a starting price of $225 ended without a single bidder. When re-auctioned with a starting price of $75, the sink sold for $275. The exception to the start-low rule: If you're selling an idiosyncratic item you don't think a lot of people will bid on, set a price closer to the item's actual value.

8. Don't end auctions during "eBay happy hour." Though it might seem counterintuitive, a University of Pennsylvania researcher found that auctions ending during peak hours on eBay are actually 9.6% less likely to result in a sale. The reason? More competition. About 35% of auctions end between 5 p.m. and 8:59 p.m., when 25% of bids are placed.

9. Charge for shipping—but not too much. Bidders don't pay much attention to shipping costs when placing bids, say professors at UC Berkeley and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. CDs listed with a starting price of one cent with $3.99 shipping averaged 21% higher final sale prices than CDs set with an opening price of $4 and no shipping charge. But when the professors listed CDs with a $2 starting price and a $6 shipping cost, five of the 20 CDs went unsold.

MySpace.com wasn't set up as a business site. But it's perfect for meeting new people and promoting oneself. For example, a musician can post a clip of a recent composition. So wouldn't MySpace also be great for publicizing an eBay Store or a group of eBay auction sales? That's what a group of enterprising eBay sellers have been discussing on the PowerSeller message boards and in other community forums. A growing number of sellers have created MySpace "spaces" devoted to their eBay businesses. They say they're benefiting in terms of increased traffic to their eBay Stores, better search placement on sites like Google, and better sales.

One such believer is an eBay seller who goes by the User ID BluKentucky and sells antiques and curios from the Bluegrass State. Not long ago, he spent an hour or so creating a profile that promotes his eBay business. (You'll find it at www.myspace.com/blukentucky). By way of introducing himself, he lists his eBay feedback rating (9,400 at this writing) and mentions that he has been an eBay member since 1999.

eBay's feedback system is, arguably, their most valuable asset. It provides the grease necessary to make complete strangers comfortable enough to buy and sell from each other. But it's a closed system -- only eBay transactions can affect a user's feedback score. And as much as eBay doesn't like it, these users (and more) buy and sell stuff through services other than eBay all the time, online and offline. There is tremendous demand for third party services to incorporate eBay's feedback system into their applications to make them more usable. But don't expect to see eBay embrace mashups any time soon, or ever.

Rapleaf allows any user to leave feedback for anyone (whether they are a user or not), based on a unique email address or phone number. Type that identifier into the search bar. If no results occur, you can be the first to leave feedback for that person. This can be someone you've bought or sold with, or just a friend that you want to endorse. Like eBay, a free-text area is included for comments in addition to a positive/neutral/negative rating.

A person's feedback rating is a raw score, with a point added for a positive review and a point subtracted for a negative review (just like eBay). Non-transaction endorsements are calculated and shown separately. Various stats are calculated and displayed based on feedback ratings by others (see screen shot below).

"The U.S. Postal Service tells us it's unsafe, and now eBay is telling everyone that it is unsafe," said Matt Halprin, eBay's global policy VP. "So if a seller solicits or encourages offers to accept cash, [they are] encouraging unsafe payment methods and we do remove that seller's listing."

eBay managers approved the policy in October, but the change wasn't widely publicized or enforced until this week. Recently, several longstanding PowerSellers who have traditionally accepted cash complained that eBay is trying to force them to accept PayPal. eBay purchased the payments company in 2002, and is aggressively promoting its use.

Not permitted on eBay.com: Sellers may not solicit buyers to mail cash. Sellers may not ask buyers to send cash through instant cash transfer services (non-bank, point-to-point cash transfers) such as Western Union or Moneygram. Sellers may not ask buyers to pay with Stormpay. Finally, sellers may not request payment through online payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy.

Violations of this policy may result in a range of actions including:

Listing cancellation

Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings

Listing cancellation

Limits on account privileges

Loss of PowerSeller status

Account suspension

Tax experts have good and bad news for eBay sellers. First the bad news: PayPal is actually a bank account. eBay sellers make deposits into that bank account, so they need to report the sales as income, said Eva Rosenberg, publisher of TaxMaMa.com.

The good news, she added, is that if you are selling used goods from around the house, odds are you are selling them for less than you originally paid and you'll have a loss. That means even though you report the income, you won't pay taxes.

"You need to decide if this is a business, a hobby, or you're just selling off collectibles. Each choice has different tax effects," Rosenberg told the E-Commerce Times. "If you're a business, you must have a profit motive, with plans to make the business turn a profit."

Credibility works both ways. iKarma makes it easy for visitors to your iKarma Profile to judge a poster's credibility by allowing everyone to see other comments left by that poster about others. This diminishes the credibility of the few chronic complainers everyone encounters, which helps to further reinforce the integrity you demonstrate by allowing both good and bad posts and ratings.

iKarma also takes steps to ensure that anonymous posting is minimized by verifying poster email addresses and by recording the date, time and IP address of every feedback post. This limits the impact of the occasional undeserved negative posting.

Prove it's genuine. It's important to have the dustbag, and if you had the box, that would be great -- anything to prove it's genuine, including the original receipt.

Start the bid insanely low: 99 cents. It's the psychology of the auction to get people involved in it early. At 99 cents, people think they have a chance to win. If the item is worth something, the market's going to bid it up, close to its real value.

Don't set a reserve (the minimal amount you will accept as a final sale price). A lot of times the auction closes and no one meets the reserve, but the high bid is just a few dollars short of what the seller would have taken.

inform your customers

give more information about merchandise

give your auctions/store items greater page rank

attract customers

earn money via affiliate marketing

combine all selling efforts in one place

The beauty of this is that I am able to link to each item in my store in my blog as well. This allows me to generate greater exposure and page rank (relevance) for the search engines, because my items are being linked from another relevant place on the Internet. If a customer does not find my mugs through my online store, they may find it through my blog.

The job of eBay trading assistant is easy to define, he said — "It means selling things for other people, on commission."

That could mean selling most anything, from collections of first-generation Cabbage Patch dolls to sports memorabilia. The Adamos and, eBay says, about 16,000 trading assistants across the country get rid of things their clients want to sell, under a variety of agreements on how the money is split.

"The trading-assistant stuff has really taken off," Cheryl Adamo said. She works about 30 hours a week on eBay, and has also taught courses for others on how to use the service. Martin Adamo is a certified public accountant by day. Together, they also have a link from their online store, www.onceuponabid.com, to www.ebay.com. Since they started selling on eBay a couple of years ago, they said, they've sold about 5,000 items.

Not everything is a gold mine. The Adamos generally work on consignment with items expected to sell for $50 or more.

"A lot of stuff's just not worth taking," Cheryl Adamo said. "Sometimes it's stuff that will sell for, like, five bucks, and it's not worth it for them to pay the fees on that or for us to make that little money, between the photos and the research and all that."

Now that you have to actually buy merchandise to sell, you need to consider selling what you know. Did you have a hobby as a teenager? Is there something particular that interests you? For example, if you loved drama in college perhaps you know a lot about Broadway shows and could sell Broadway memorabilia like old Playbills and posters. Did you collect coins? You can get back into what's hot and what's not by starting out bottom-feeding and buying coins from people who want to sell off collections.

If you're coming out of a career, think about selling items that would be of benefit to people with a similar job. Say you were in the nursing profession--weren't there a few items that made your job easier for you? Were there certain things you and your friends just had to have? That's what you should be selling.

Get it? Sell what you know! Sell what interests you. That way you'll have a leg up on the competition who has just randomly picked a group of items to sell. When you sell the same item as your competitors it's your personal experience that'll place you ahead. Your experience allows you to move with the trends far better than someone can who's not an expert in the field.

If you're still at a loss for an idea, look around your house. Check out products you use or you think add something special to your life. Check out the packaging and find out the manufacturer's name. Google them and make contact. Find out how you can sell their item online.

To sell things over eBay, Mark Nichols may be required to take instruction in rapid-fire speaking, breathing control and reading hand gestures, even though the transactions are done by computer keyboard and mouse.

MSNBC.com reports that North Dakota's Public Service Commission is exploring whether people like Nichols, who runs a small consignment store in Crosby, must obtain auctioneer licenses before they can legally use eBay to sell merchandise for others.

To get a North Dakota auctioneer's license, applicants must pay a $35 fee, obtain a $5,000 surety bond and undergo training at one of eight approved auction schools, where the curriculum includes talking really fast.

One of those methods is to leave feedback immediately after completing your transaction, even if to opt for the selection "will leave feedback later".

At least this way you've notified the buyer and/or seller that you've acknowledged the transaction and will follow it up after the sale.

Another alternative is to send a gentle reminder to the buyer notifying them that you have left feedback regarding their part of the transaction and request that they do the same upon receipt of their order. This method is generally well accepted and typically yields the desired results.

Let's face it, with today's busy schedules not everyone remembers these details until the next time they decide to buy or sell on eBay. Since feedback is how many buyers and sellers are evaluated for their ability to pay or ship items, it is equally important to provide it after your eBay transaction.

Once a buyer makes a purchase from you, they will first see promotions for your other items in places such as the Bid or BIN Confirmation page and the closed item page as they do today. And now, in a separate section, they will also see up to 5 items from sellers you have added to your connection network. This separate section will only display if you have added other eBay sellers to your connection network.

You can manage which sellers you are connected to, how their items are selected, and end a connection at any time within the My Account section of My eBay. If you don't want to receive any requests from other members, you can opt-out within your Preferences in My eBay.

However, you can certainly slip an unadvertised gift into every package you ship, without any restrictions from eBay. When you do this, make sure that you give a reason for the gift that indicates your expectation from the customer. This could be anything from "remember me the next time you purchase" to "please email your friends and tell them what a great deal you got."

Wingo says that large sellers -- most of which already accept the credit card option -- seem to be happy with the change. "The reaction we've heard is that they're very much for it because they see that consumers get a little confused," he says.

However, small sellers, who want to avoid the higher transaction fees that come with accepting card-based PayPal transactions, are grumbling, Wingo says.

Typically, small eBay sellers open personal accounts that allow them to refuse credit card payments through the processor, an eBay unit. Personal accounts carry no transaction fees.

Under the new eBay policy, sellers with personal accounts will be required to upgrade to a PayPal business or premier account -- both of which allow credit card acceptance -- if they receive a card-based PayPal transaction. Both business and premier accounts charge transaction fees ranging from 1.9% plus 30 cents to 2.9% plus 30 cents.

An alpha tester is someone who is willing to participate in an early version of a new product, or in this case, a new Sell Your Item online form. An alpha tester helps to "kick the tires" and provides valuable input that goes directly toward refining and enhancing the product features.

EBay, with more than 147 million users world-wide, has long been regarded as the dot-com survivor that could do no wrong. Mr. Wieber's story shows why the company may be losing some of that luster. Setting up an online store is so easy these days that sellers needn't rely on eBay as a source of customers. Advertising is simple and inexpensive, thanks to new technology from companies such as Google Inc. And multiple competitors, including Amazon and Yahoo, are pulling once-loyal eBay sellers into their orbit.

EBay executives say sellers often dabble in other marketplaces and with their own Web sites. "It's not an either/or," says Michael Dearing, eBay's senior vice president of marketing and merchandising. He says sellers typically return to eBay because it offers "extraordinary value."

PowerSellers are taking their spot in the world of American celebrity, and that spot is a bright one. Stories appear in print ranging from the small local newspaper to the business section of the Sunday New York Times. In October, the Times ran an article on the topic of eBay PowerSellers that featured Debnroo, also known as Deb and Andy Mowery. Happily, this was just the beginning of the successful couple's touch with fame and glory.