Rob's Blog

I quite often sell my old stuff (mainly DVD box sets once I’m finished with them) on eBay, but I know you can also sell your stuff on Amazon and Play.com (and probably elsewhere).

I’ve created this simple tool which I’m calling “Make the Most” to help be (and you) calculate which site will let me make the most profit.

It’s pretty simple. You decide what you want to sell, tell it how much posting it will cost, have a look at each site to see how much they are going for, and it will calculate all the fees and tell you how much profit you expect to make on each site. It has to make some assumptions, but it should give you a good idea.

Currently it only has data for CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays, but I may add more shortly (let me know if there are any requests).

Of course there may be bugs, so let me know your comments and suggestions below. I accept no responsibility for any errors etc.

I’ve spent most of the afternoon today listing items on eBay.

It’s a great idea getting a bit of cash for your unwanted junk (not that anything I sell is junk of course!), but it does take a surprisingly long time putting them up there (and then of course a long time packaging and posting them once they’re finished).

The part that can take the most effort is getting decent photos. There are so many items on eBay with crap photos, and I don’t want to do that. The main problems with other peoples pics that I want to avoid are:

Bad Lighting

There are so many listings on eBay that have really poor lighting, often to the extent you just can’t see what you are buying.

Out of Focus/blurry

A lot of this is also due to the bad lighting – exposure is so long that there is a lot of camera shake. It may also be that the camera doesn’t know what to focus on.

Glare from Flash

I have rarely seen a good photo on eBay that has been taken with Flash. A flash is great for lighting up a family snap, but it doesn’t show of a product well. Either there are strange shadows, or more often (because they’re normally close-ups) there is a lot of glare from the flash which ruins the photo.

Distracting Background

If I’m buying a product from you I don’t want to see a corner of your tatty sofa, or your messy kitchen table.

Hanging Clothing

It’s very hard to tell what an item of clothing is like when it’s on a hanger, or lying on a bed, especially in conjunction with all the above problems.

The method I used today worked quite well. Firstly I took advantage of the nice weather, and took the photos outside. This meant the items were lit nicely from lots of directions, and I didn’t need a flash.

Next I set up a dark blue fleece blanket on our decking, hung over a table lying on its side. I got rid of the creases and folds to give me a uniform backdrop. This of course was in a sunny place, with no odd shadows.

I set up my camera with a tripod. This probably wasn’t needed given the light levels, but in slightly lower light means you can get good photos without using the flash.

That was it really. Framing the well to show off the product well is important, but can also be helped by cropping.

For one item of clothing I get Abby to model (it was a maternity top so it was ideal), but a pair of trousers that don’t fit had to be hung from a hanger.

I’m no photography expert yet (as much as I’d like to be), but I think I got some pretty good results, which you can see when my listings start at 7:30 today (or I might post the pics here later). Certainly better than a badly lit, blurry, camera phone photo!

Note: There is now a potential solution for this – see the bottom of the post.

Today when browsing the web, I started to get notifications from Norton Antivirus telling me a malicious worm was blocked. I get these occasionally, so thought nothing of it the first time, but they kept coming up, and I realised I was only browsing sites I trusted (eBay, Wikipedia etc). I clicked on “More Details” to look at what was going on.

The Risk being reported (and blocked) was “HTTP Acrobat PDF Suspicious File Download“. The sites supposedly making this intrusions attempt include:

• eBay (My Ebay)
• Wikipedia (Only when I’m logged in – I have Popups installed on my profile)
• My WordPress “Write Post” page (I had to disable the antivirus to let me write this!)

Symantec blocks the Javascript which makes certain things not function correctly (the Popups on Wikipedia, the WYSIWYG editor on WordPress).
I can fairly confidently say that these three sites aren’t trying to attack my computer! I think Symantec need to adjust their definitions pretty urgently – I can’t be the only one getting these false Positives!

[Update]: I’ve found it also affects Google Maps!

[Update 2]: This seems to affecting loads of sites, and this post is getting hundreds of hits no it’s appearing on Google. Scott Clark has posted a screenshot of the problem on Flickr.

[Update 3]: JasonC has posted a possible solution. I have a slightly different version of NAV, and this is how I fixed it:

1. Opened Norton Antivirus (double clicked on the icon in the system tray)
2. Clicked “Settings” on the internet section
3. Clicked “Configure [+]” next to “Intrusion Exclusions”
4. Scrolled down to “HTTP Acrobat PDF Suspicious File Download”, and unchecked it
5. Clicked “OK” on all open screens.

Note, this may leave you open to this particular worm, do so at your own risk. (See update below – this shouldn’t be required any more)

[Update 4]: Symantec claim to be working on a fix for this.

[Update 5 (2008-12-11)]: This now apears to be fixed in the latest Live Update. If you have applied the fix suggested above, I suggest you undo this (after running Live Update) to ensure your computer is fully protected.

I bought a couple of items on eBay this morning, and despite having just cleared my inbox, I suddenly found it full again! I normally ignore most eBay emails, or at the most glance at them, but I thought I’d analise exactly why so many need to be sent.

The item I’m going to concentrate on was a ‘Buy it Now’ auction, so there was no need to get bid confirmation emails and such. I also paid for the item immediately using PayPal. Let’s look at the emails I received:

1. From: eBay, You won eBay item…
   Confirming I’d “won” the item, and asking me to “Pay Now” (including appropriate links)
2. From: Auctiva, You have won eBay Item…
   Essentially the same as the eBay email. Tells me I’ve “won”, and asking me to log in to eBay to pay. Also advertising the seller’s Auctiva store.
3. From: PayPal, Receipt for Your Payment to…
   Standard PayPal receipt for payment
4. From: eBay Member, Ebay item Purchased eBay item…
   Telling me I’ve “won” and asking me to pay. Essentially the same as (1), although gives me instructions for sending payment through the mail. I’ve already paid by this stage however.
5. From: eBay Member,Thank you for your payment. eBay item…
   “Thank you” email, including links to other items. No details on how it will be despatched or anything else!

All these emails were sent within 3 minutes! It strikes me as an excessive quantity of emails for one small transaction (around £5).

If this had been an auction format I would get even more, although arguably these would be justified.

Would it be very hard to put a small dellay into the process that sends emails 1,2 and 4 so that if payment is sent imediately, these are skipped (or at least changed). Can eBay not also put a field in their emails to allow the seller to send a message, rather than sending out a separate one (and so getting rid of email’s 4 and 5).

I understand that eBay and PayPal are officially separate organisations and so should send separate emails, but given how integrated they are these days they could quite easily share emails (although in my case my eBay and PayPal addresses are different).

Email 2 is just blatent advertising from Auctiva – no reason for it whatsoever!

So, to sumarise, in the case where a Buy it Now item is “won” and paid for within say 10 minutes, the number of emails could be kept down to two:

1. From eBay: You won item…
   Thank you for your payment etc. Including optional custom message from seller.
2. From PayPal: Receipt for your payment…
   Standard receipt. If the email addresses are the same, I don’t see a reason this can’t be integrated into the first email though. It would be good if the seller could add to this too, to let the buyer know when the item will be despatched etc.

Of course if payment is dellayed more emails may be required, although since eBay doesn’t send a payment confirmation email anyway, it could still be kept to just two, with the first one asking for payment.

Of course if further emails say something useful (such as “Your item has been despatched”) they are justified, but having so many almost identical emails makes information hard to organise and find – especially if you buy a lot.