Running out of real stories in the days before Christmas, the press has been full of advice on how to sell your Christmas presents on eBay. What journalists fail to tell you though, is that your granny is going to be seriously upset if she spots that Rudolf-design sweater up for sale the day after she gave it to you. Make sure you get away with it, with our handy guide to guilt-free gift selling.

Have a secret ID

Never, never, NEVER let your family, friends or work colleagues find out your eBay ID. You don’t want your boss to know about your penchant for Dilbert. You don’t want your trendy friends to know about your Bridget Jones pants. And there might be a million things you don’t want your mother to know about!

If by some act of carelessness on your part, your eBay ID has become known, then register a new one; you can have as many as you like, all they need is different email addresses. Believe us, this will save you grief in the long-run.

Don’t let your own home be visible in the photos

You will not be able to deny it’s Auntie Doris’s plaid pantaloons you’re selling if your living room can be seen in the background of your photograph. Photograph larger items against a plain, neutral-coloured wall. For smaller items, a light tent makes your photographs so much better, or use a plain sheet.

Have a tidy out

Bored with mince pies, sherry and TV holiday specials already? Us too. Have a tidy out. That Des O’Connor CD won’t show up nearly so badly if it’s part of a job lot of discs you no longer listen to.

Leave it til Easter

Let’s face it, by Easter, everyone’s forgotten about Christmas. Give it a few months, and no one’s going to spot your ingratitude, you undeserving traitor

But if you really think eBay’s a no-no…

Give it back to them next year

“I loved mine so much, I got you one just like it! Merry Christmas!”

Lots of eBay sellers – especially those who work on their own – shut up shop between Christmas and New Year. Royal Mail won’t be collecting until 29th, so orders won’t go anywhere – but will that matter to a rabid bargain hunter?

Will you be closing up shop, or trading through as normal? And what about buying: does your computer get switched off on Christmas Eve and not powered up again til New Year’s Day? Be part of our totally unscientific polls: two for the price of one this time…

 Loading …

 Loading …

Via Internet Retailing.

I like the end result, but I’m not sure that my wrapping skills will match an Origami expert – I defy any normal sane person to wrap an awkward shaped gift like a teddy bear as neatly as in the film! It’s not a bad advert for eBay in general and it’s a great advert for The Entertainer (who lent the toys for the film).

UK

Parcelforce

International Airmail

International Surface Mail

Sales of tinsel are up 240% and with four Christmas stockings selling every hour as it appears buyers are preparing as early as ever for Christmas this year. With money tight as the recession continues it appears that buyers are happy to snap up bargains in advance, even if there are still 190 days until Christmas.

From the 16th September 2009, they will stop accepting new sellers in the Toys & Games category and from the 16th November. Existing sellers who do not meet their performance criteria will not be able to sell in Toys & Games again until the first week of January 2010.

Starting on 16th November Amazon will also be monitoring the performance and listings of all sellers who are approved to sell in Toys & Games and reserve the right to cancel listings, suspend accounts and prohibit the selling of specific products during the holiday season to maintain a seller platform that is safe for buyers.

The restrictions only apply to toys and games and sellers will be able to continue selling in other categories as normal.

Well now there’s a solution, why not Skype someone a video card? Simply choose a card cover, record your message with a webcam and you’re ready to send to your friends. It’s even easier if you’re on Facebook as Skype have built a Facebook app for video cards as well.

I really like this idea for people who won’t be home this Christmas, and want to send a personal message to family or friends. Plus it’s a neat idea to get a few more people using Skype to communicate.

We’re not going to be buying that many presents so we’ll send 5 sheets for free to the first 10 readers that post in comments below, saying why they’d like some! We’ll contact you (using the email address you enter when leaving your comment) to request your mailing address.

While we’re willing to post world wide (we know eBay love those cross border transactions) we’ve already passed the final posting date for Christmas for readers outside Europe, so you might not get the paper in time for Christmas but it’ll be perfect for birthday gifts.

If you’ve bought someone a Christmas present on eBay why not finish it off by presenting it in Guess What wrapping paper?

Hope it wasn’t anything we said

And here, for your fun and delectation, is the tree. Lovely.

Here we have fun happening at London’s Euston Station this morning. Nice tree, shame about the shoddy branding: couldn’t someone have checked the height of crash barriers before the printing was done?!

In all, elves will be handing out more than 120,000 shopping bags with shopping guides featuring sellers and items, wrapping paper and other goodies. And a team of ‘adwalkers’ are out on busy streets giving live site demonstrations to Christmas shoppers.

If you want to catch the eBay Elves yourself (in which case, please take a camera and capture the fun for us), they’re at Glasgow and Manchester Piccadilly stations at rush hours this week, and Waterloo and Paddington next week.

… an uuuuugly Christmas tree.

Alex Bellinger from SmallBizPod spotted this monstrosity at Charing Cross. If you wanted to spread the message that you can buy tacky crap on eBay this Christmas, you’re doing it right.

I’m still looking for the fun events.

For those who

1. missed the logo,
2. didn’t already know that eBay UK’s Xmas slogan is “guess what” and
3. couldn’t read that execrable writing as they were sprinting for their train,

this cake frill round a tree is meant to make you do your Christmas shopping on eBay. Just so you know.

click to embiggen

At the spendiest time of year, eBay UK are promoting not their sellers, not even something related to their sellers like PayPal buyer protection or some kind of holiday giveaway – they’re promoting an off-site deal for a mobile phone company to, as far as I can tell, every single person who visits the site.

Experienced sellers, I know, will be itching to comment that they never visit the home page but go straight to My eBay. But this is the time when – we hope – new buyers might just be visiting the site, checking it out to see if those tempting ads about eBay being 25% cheaper than the high street are really true. Wouldn’t it have been nice to show them some eBay content rather than sending them straight off to a different site altogether?

Would it have been so much to ask to have had some nice promotional creatives featuring different areas of the site in which Christmas presents might be procured?

eBay is on average 25% cheaper than the high street on like for like new items

“eBay is cheap” was very unpopular with sellers last year; will this credit crunch Christmas be any different?

Meanwhile, over the pond, Greg Fant from the Marketing and Buyer Experience team has details of what eBay.com will be doing. “Millions of eligible customers” are to receive coupons for money-off their eBay purchases; the coupons will appear throughout the site and in buyers’ My eBay accounts. Presumably there’s some targetting going on, as the actual percentage discounts offered will vary; several UK members I know have received vouchers for 10% off in specific categories. The coupons will be valid for both auctions and BINs, “for a very limited time” to get shoppers out spending as soon as possible.

from top rated sellers

The Daily Deal will also highlight a deep-discounted product again with free shipping; a different product, available in limited quantities, will be featured each day. So far, this promo appears to be entirely of buy.com.

Frankly, Mr Fant’s AB post is, at best, disingenuous. These promotions are not for all eBay sellers: they’re of specific, selected sellers, whose IDs are coded into the links from eBay’s home page. Presenting this to eBay sellers generally as “special deals to increase excitement, drive buzz, and keep buyers coming back to eBay for more” is missing the point entirely: what’s being driven is buyers straight from the home page to the listings of eBay’s favoured merchants.

Figures released last week showed that Amazon beat eBay.com in the US for the first time ever. What ought to be read into this depends on your point of view, with ex-seller Randy Smythe believing that Amazon is just better, while optimistic shareholder OnlyeBay thinks that the rise in the use of BIN is responsible for the fall in eBay’s traffic.