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Penny auctions. Anyone had success in recent times?
 

Has anyone in the last few months been able to successfully fuel your new seller accounts with the ebook feedbacks or does it always make an auto-ban?

i had no luck with penny auction. I always get banned doing this way. plus penny feedback does not look good for buyers. you look more like a scammer.

my advice: try to sell something cheap to build feedback.

Are you purchasing ebooks or selling them? I see a ton of new sellers listing ebooks, etc. and are racking up a ton of feedback. I think the secret is you have to keep it under 10 or so for the first 3 or 4 weeks. The same may apply to buying but I'm not sure. If you rack up 10 or more in a few days and then you start selling I think you're a goner. If someone can confirm everything I've said post it here.

I always buy 5-6 ebooks $0.99/each just enough to get buy-it-now and never had a problem.

At the risk of looking stupid, where are you finding these e-books? I've never had luck searching them out, and every now and then I wouldn't mind a little padding of the account on the cheap. :p

Just run a search on Ebay for ebook and you'll find thousands.

Mayne, I wouldn't even risk buying them cheap ebooks until after you bought some more moderate priced items.

You're better off selling them.

Most of the ebook sellers are scum or else just refuse to do the listing right.

First most like to tack on a hidden shipping.

Then of those that don't, they just like to go and sell penny ebooks to collect positive feedback while never giving any back. I look at a lot of the feedbacks of them and they get dozens of positives daily but haven't left anyone feedback for months. And even those that do will only leave 1 or 2 a day ignoring all the people who bought the penny items.

Then almost all of them won't make the listing private so it will say "1 cent ebook" right in your profile for all to see.

Then there's those who put requirements like paypal or buyit now that require a linked paypal account.

Then there's those that do things like file unpaid item disputes on these when they're 1 cent so there's no final value fee to refund and there's a store item with 999 quantity so there's no listing fee to refund. And then it costs more to receive the payment than the payment itself. These people are just sadistic who do this and they even neg for non payment, too.

That costs more for a store and everything. The ones who do I see they for instance sell cars and then they sell penny ebooks on the side with a ratio of 1 car per 99 ebooks.

Man, I think I might do that. It looks like ebayers are buying cheap ebooks buy the ton? and also it look slike ebay doesnt suspend user for selling ebooks.

Hold on. i'm thinking.. This might work..

Set up a paypal account to get deposits for the cheap ebooks sale. I don't think paypal will freeze your account over penny auctions becuase it will take a while before you even get a dollar in the account. So you can withdraw the money or leave it in there. but the point is to sell the ebooks to get tons of feedback!

i'm going to try that on a seperate account. i got alot of ebooks on my computer. I might just sell them for .10 cents..

what do yaw think?

I remember paypal charges 30 cents plus 2 to 3% per transaction. So I'd assume you'd either be losing money or getting nothing.

Ebay seems to like ebook sellers that make the process unpleasant like those I described, such as those that leech positive feedbacks, and then leave no feedback for several months, and later come back and give negatives for everyone who left them positive.

This has been in place in other regions for a while now, and it isn't looked on as a favorable change (if there ever are any with ebay). While it has some advantages, it also means competitors can easily snoop out prices and buyers can complain about what something sold for a week ago. Not to mention the huge disadvantage of giving a buyer free reign to pick apart every single aspect of the transaction, whether it is your fault or not (shipping times, handling fees, etc). It hasn't effected me as of yet, but plenty of others.

Ebay creates a climate of distrust on their site and more or less cater to the stupid. Alot of ppl actually believe if you even suggest anything but paypal you're attempting to rip them off.

When in reality, using paypal is often an invitation for others to rip YOU off. I found a great alternative when dealing with international areas. But it does rely on the buyer trusting you to fulfill your part. It's almost foolproof though otherwise as you have the payment within a day.

Someone said somewhere that paypal was originally run by criminals. I read The PayPal Wars and they were more against when it was bought by eBay.

That is true. I had trouble trying to get a seller to pay other then paypal. But I called his ass up and he sounded like he worked for beay. he had a Cali number and all

But I disgress, he then says paypal is the safest way to pay....I laughed right hten, I told him to go to paypal sucks.com and etc... he then tried to justify but it was over with... It was funny the way he was brainwashed..

The he said my feedback wasn't high enough, so i said"when you got ripped up what was the seller feedback, and he said 415 rating...I laughed again" I then said " So what you are really saying is feed back doesnt matter huh"..But i just basically told him to **** off and I sen him a mutually dispute to withdraw..


Buyers are stupid, paypal has so many loop holes where a seller can easily scam a good $2,000 and get away with it easily and the buyer wont see a lick of the money back