The rookie syndrome

Pre-paid legal plans are fraught with the rookie syndrome: the providers usually resort to employing newly licensed or trainee attorneys in a cost-cutting exercise. Someone who does mostly wills, trusts, and sample contracts is probably not a good fit for a more complex legal issue like the custody of children. In this day of age of increasing specialization, it is better to ask someone with specialized knowledge and years of experience than it is to rely on a novice with a limited professional track-record.

If you go down the traditional way, then there is restricted pool of attorneys you can choose from. Your research will be easier and a lot more comprehensive. You can set up interviews with lawyers, ask for referrals from friends, previous customers or check your local bar association.

You are more likely to get a top-notch lawyer with who to build rapport get competent advice and trust the judgement. In their lifetime, people are most likely to use legal services that fall into four categories: civil defense, civil plaintiffs, criminal defense, and legal help that involves a variety of transactional or business law. Your liability insurances already cover you for the legal pertaining to civil defense.

Your insurer hires the lawyer who will defend you and have every incentive to defend you well since they are the ones who bear your legal costs irrespective of the outcome. In that respect, you already have pre-paid legal coverage in place and a legal plan would not add much to the coverage. Civil plaintiff attorneys in the Unites States work on a “no win no fee” basis.

This means that they will not charge you unless they win you damages in an insurance claim or lawsuit against someone who caused you physical injury. Their contingency fees are calculated as a “commission” on any money won, so there is every incentive for your plaintiff lawyer to defend you and defend you well: the more you win, the more he wins. There is no need to pre-pay for a service where you stand to lose nothing, and where advice is readily available to you from plaintiff lawyers eager to work on your case.

On the rare occasion you need to bring criminal charges if you are involved in a serious accident or defend yourself against criminal charges brought against you, lining up a lawyer to represent you in advance is not the best of decisions. In these situations, client-lawyer rapport is crucial: you need someone whom you trust, build a rapport with, and competent enough to defend you in a court of law. You rarely get the chance to talk to your attorney face-to-face in a pre-paid legal plan, and most of the attorneys in the network do not do criminal defense work.

Transactional and business law is the area where you will most probably find pre-paid legal services most effective. If you frequently need to someone to draft your wills, review simple contracts, and set up advance health-directives or simply want competent legal advice at your disposal, then going pre-paid will save you the trouble of searching for an attorney and paying “a la carte”. Many people believe they need the services of a lawyer, under a pre-paid legal service scheme, to solve a legal problem or resolve an intricate situation.

Often, your lawyer’s most valuable help could be before you get involved in legal trouble. When you sign up for a pre-paid legal plan, you have the right to unlimited toll-free telephone access to your attorney. The sound advice and consultation given to you by your lawyer will help you take the necessary steps to detect and resolve any potential legal problems before they take more dangerous proportions.

Do not shy away

After you receive your referrals, do not shy away from setting up interviews with attorneys in the network. Most do not mind receiving enquiries about what they do and how able they are. Choosing a particular enrolment method can be very important in determining the benefits, costs, and conditions of coverage of your legal plan.

A voluntary enrolment refers to a membership of a legal plan where people voluntarily subscribe to a pre-paid legal service in response to a direct email offer, during an employer’s open enrolment period, or during individual sales representations. In this arrangement, you pay the prepaid charge, get the standard discounts open to all other members of the plan and get the coverage as per the terms and conditions of the plan. In a group plan, all members are automatically included in the plan because of their status as a group.

For instance, many employees enjoy a 100% participation in legal plans sponsored by their employers. They do not have to pay any pre-paid charge or premium, as legal coverage in the workplace is now regarded as an employee fringe-benefit. Some universities also provide legal coverage for their students, financing the plans from their general tuition fees.

The attorney would draft, review, and update your will every other year, make phone calls and write letters on your behalf to negotiate your contracts, and represent you in court. If you are traveling in another state and need any form of legal advice, he will refer you to a competent attorney in that state at no extra cost to you. This all seems great on paper, but the mere thought of paying hundreds of dollars an hour to put an attorney on retainer is enough to persuade most people not to seek legal coverage.

You will be surprised to know that such coverage does indeed exist under an arrangement like your health or insurance plan. Pre-paid legal plans offer you access to all these legal services, for a monthly charge of $10 to $25. If you are employed, you may incur no charge if your employer provides legal services as a fringe benefit.

Pre-paid legal plans are promoted under the promise of cheap legal coverage, an attractive alternative to the high fees charged by regular attorneys and law practices. But under the gloss of accessible legal services for the public, lie several limitations. There is a limit on the scope of the legal services provided.

Most of what is provided on an unlimited basis is phone based: calls to your attorney for advice and consultation on legal matters, or phone calls made on your behalf to third parties. Other benefits bundled in the plan are limited: regular visits to your attorney’s office are restricted to a dozen or so hours per month, the wills you want drafted or sample contracts reviewed will be carried out on two or three copies per year. More complex legal matters involving more time and effort on the part of your attorney are not provided outright.

If you need representation in a court for a lawsuit on the recovery of damages, or a complex lease contract reviewed and approved, then you must pay regular lawyer fees. Some discounts of up to 25% apply, but you could get the same discounts if not better by the simple virtue of simple negotiations and clever comparison shopping. There is also a restriction on your choice of attorney and the quality of legal work provided.

Although you are free to choose your own attorney, client-lawyer relationship and the building of rapport are harder to come by in this scheme.

To minimize the risk

To minimize the risk of poor service and plummeting employer satisfaction, an employer should conduct both requirements analysis amongst its employee base to cover for their difference needs, and a due research to select the most appropriate legal plan to fit those requirements based on experience, integrity, and track record. Group legal plans in the workplace have experienced rapid growth recently because of their usefulness to both employer and employee alike. For the employee, a group legal plan is a cheap way to get legal coverage in much the same way as other traditional benefits.

For as little as $20 per month deducted from payroll, an employee is put in touch with an attorney who can draft his will, buy or refinance a home, adopt a child, and plan an estate. Unlimited legal advice is offered at no cost to the employee. The benefits for the employer include increased efficiency and productivity from their workforce, and reduced administration costs to handle personal matters.

Another very attractive benefit is the very low cost involved in researching and implementing a group legal plan. In fact, such plans cost employers very little in terms of time and investment. Group plans are structured on a voluntary basis, paid for through payroll deductions from the workforce.

Additionally, the carrier handles all the claims, redundant paperwork, and customer service related to the plan. Throughout the course of your legal problems, you will have to make some tough decisions. If you were involved in an accident then you must choose between bringing criminal damages or press with a plaintiff case, if you have a small business and you were involved in a deal, then you must decide whether to sign it or let it pass.

There is no clear-cut answer in many of these dilemmas, and getting the right lawyer is crucial to you. The number one criterion has to do with a lawyer’s legal ability. You need a lawyer who lays the law down for you, present you with options, explain the ramifications of each decision you make, and give you recommendations on the best course of action.

In this day and age of complicated legal matters, many lawyers are increasingly specialized, and you stand to get better information from someone with a practice focus in a particular area of the law than a generalist who deals with a broad spectrum of legal issues. Building rapport is also very important. Your relationship with your lawyer can make or break your case.

You need a lawyer who gives you candid advice and council you can trust, someone with enough perspective to step back from an issue and look at it from all perspectives. Client-lawyer relationships are very limited within a pre-paid legal plan. Because of the preventive nature of most plans, your contact with your lawyer will be limited on many occasions.

You seldom get to talk to your lawyer face-to-face as most of the consultation is done over the phone. And even when you get to talk to them, it is difficult to build rapport when your office consultations are limited to a dozen hours a year. The good news, however, is you still have some options left.

When you sign up for a legal plan, you get to choose your lawyer and there are a few steps you can take to increase the likelihood of getting a good lawyer. First, you need to ask for referrals from previous clients. Ask around about good attorneys in the network.

Once you get a few names, check their educational background, their qualifications, and their professional track record with your state’s bar association.

The comprehensive plan

It is in the realm of more complex legal matters that require more time and effort from your attorney, that the comprehensive plan is more beneficial than a basic access plan. You can have your trust set up, instead of a simple will, and a more complicated business sale contract drawn up as opposed to a simple contract. Legal representation can equally be provided in court for some cases, such as child custody.

Comprehensive prepaid plans are most suitable for people who need business advice, have family trusts, or own real estate properties. It is not uncommon to see the terms “legal plans” and “pre-paid legal services” used interchangeably. While they share a lot of characteristics in common, there are a few differences you should be aware of.

Both terms refer to an arrangement whereby you pay a fixed monthly or yearly fee in exchange for legal services. The idea behind them is to save consumers on high legal fees whilst offering a valuable service. The differences lie in what kind of service is offered and what is covered.

Pre-paid services cover for specific legal services such as free phone consultation and advice, drafting of simple wills and trusts, review of sample contracts and writing of letters on your behalf. Legal services not provided will get charged at regular attorney fees, but you may be eligible for discounts. Legal insurance, by contrast, works much like other insurance plans, like health or car insurance.

Although specific legal services are offered at times, your insurance provider will typically offer a policy that covers for all legal services. The policy will pay on behalf of you, the policy holder, or reimburse all expenses, costs, or fees that you pay for legal services up to the policy limit. For instance, your policy might reimburse any fees incurred in your court judgments or pay your bail money, a service not provided by most pre-paid legal plans.

Your legal insurance is also pegged to other insurance policies you may already have. If you run into legal problems involving your other insurance, then your legal insurance policy will protect you against loss or liability. For instance, if you are involved in a car accident when your auto insurance has already run out and you are subsequently sued for recovery of damages, you will be protected by a legal plan insurance.

The other difference between the two schemes is related to your choice of attorney. In a pre-paid legal service, you get to choose from a restricted number of the attorneys in the network. By contrast, a legal insurance plan provides legal coverage regardless of attorney.

You are free to set up interviews with any number of attorneys and choose the ones you think will provide the best service for your personal legal needs. Finally, pre-paid legal plans are much more accessible to the public. Legal plans are harder to come by as only a limited number of insurance companies offer such arrangements.

A properly developed group legal insurance plan can be the perfect complement to any employer’s work life initiative. Considering that many employees are nowadays increasingly swayed by benefit options when making career decisions, legal insurance is a viable product for many employers. However, there is no single fit-for-all group legal plan for all organizations.

For a start, each organization has a distinct list of requirements when contracting for legal insurance. A requirement built on the premise of reduced administrative costs will require a different set of legal services than requirements built on enhancing a benefits package or protect against liability. Legal plans also vary in what they offer: the quality of their customer service, flexibility of plan design, and finally the experience and professional track record of their panel of attorneys.

Stumbling blocks of pre-paid legal services

One of the stumbling blocks of pre-paid legal services is quality of service. Newly licensed attorneys, phone calls not getting answered, and that ointment on any client-lawyer relationship: fee disputes, typically involving bills made to your credit card to cover for services not included in your contract. This is just a specimen of the many problems people face with their plan providers.

Make sure you select a plan that has clear guidelines as to how to settle dispute when they arise. A company that has a good in-house mechanism to handle complaints will generally assign a senior attorney with the authority to handle customer complaints of and disputes with any attorneys in the network. Secondary sources of resolution may include your state insurance department or bar association.

Check their outlet for complaints against pre-paid services. You will need to do some homework before you select your legal provider. Some good places to start your background research are your state bar association, the Better Business Bureau, and the Consumer Affairs Office.

You have unlimited telephone access to a panel of attorneys regarding any legal matter of interest to you. You can also make brief consultation visits to your lawyer for up to 30 minutes per day at no cost to you. The only condition placed on these two benefits is that you enquire about a different legal matter.

This aspect of coverage provided by legal plans is one of the most beneficial because it promotes preventive law. Preventive law is very much like preventive medicine, it helps in anticipating potential problems and taking the appropriate legal steps so that unnecessary legal problems or risks are avoided. With a simple phone call to your lawyer, you can avoid getting embroiled in a hellish legal situation, and you can even identify legal rights you do not even know you had.

The panel of lawyers will write letters and make phone calls on your behalf to adverse third parties. Such follow-up service may be all it takes to solve many of your legal problems. Simple personal legal documents, such as your insurance policies, sales contracts, and leases will be reviewed.

Any questions of legal nature that you have about the documents will also get answered by your attorney. A will is a written document that regulates how you want your property distributed after your death. Your attorney will draft your will according to your state’s laws so that it is valid when you die.

Your lawyer will also advise you on any provisions you might want to consider, such as appointing a guardian and establishing a trust. Any additional services not covered in the written fee agreement will be at regular fees, either hourly or flat fees with a discount between 20 to 30%. These services generally include family matters such as divorce and the custody of children and court representation such as traffic tickets and lawsuits.

Some of the legal paperwork you need to read carefully, agree on, and sign include the Written fee agreement. This is an agreement that outlines what services are provided in the plan, how much it costs, and the methods of payment.

Grievance procedure details the procedures that will be taken by the provide to resolve any complaints about attorneys or disputes regarding service fees. If you are a member of a pre-paid access plan and are not getting the legal services you think you need, then it is probably time to upgrade to a more comprehensive plan. A comprehensive prepaid legal service plan is designed to cover for most of your legal service needs each year.

Access services, such as legal advice and information by toll-free number and follow-up service, are provided at no cost to you.

Cost containment is another benefit

With less time and resources to be used for personal matters, the company expects to make significant savings on administrative costs. Pre-paid legal services can be a very attractive alternative to hiring a lawyer for many people. You should consider the importance and relative priority of these benefits considering your own legal needs.

Pre-paid legal plans can take the sting out of hiring a lawyer. Lawyers’ fees are prohibitive for most people, you can run bills of thousands of dollars, and this is simply out of reach of most working and middle-class families. With pre-paid plans, what you get charged is more in line with what you pay for your health or home insurance.

Plans start as low as $9 per month and typically do not exceed the $30 mark. There are several very complicated sets of fees lawyers charge: contingency fees, flat fees, statutory fees, and hourly rates. In the case of contingency and statutory fees, you must get into the intricate details of how these fees are computed.

The other two types of fees can be as equally complex. Increasingly, attorneys choose to incorporate any overheads they incur, like secretarial expenses, parking charges, and travel fees into their flat and hourly fees. They can also set a minimum number of billing units, like three tenths of an hour, irrespective of how long it takes them to deal with your problem.

This is just a sample rundown of what might influence the various fees charged by lawyers, other factors and arrangements can apply too. Contrast this with the simplicity in which pre-paid legal services are priced and furnished. The process is simple and straightforward: you sign an agreement to pay a fixed monthly fee and that is about it.

If what you are looking for is not covered, your plan provider will give you a prior notice of a different billing so that you know exactly how much you will be charged. Pre-paid plans offer unlimited phone consultation and advice. This aspect of the service can save you a lot of trouble, money, and time in the future.

Most legal problems you are likely to face in your day-to-day life can be solved if you take the necessary steps in line with the law. With the right advice and consultation with your lawyer, you can detect legal blunders before they occur and hence minimize the risk of litigation and protection. Choosing a pre-paid legal plan is a good way to save money, but choosing a plan you need and a provider you can trust is a different matter.

Legal plans are offered in different models and differ in the specifics of what they cover. While phone consultation and simple drafting and reviewing of simple contracts are included across the board, more elaborated and complicated legal matters are not covered. It is best to review your own legal needs before you choose a legal plan.

Ask which legal services you will need most and then choose a plan that provides the best coverage given those needs. For instance, if you are a business owner, lawsuits, lease, and contract negotiations could be high on your list and you would be looking for a legal plan that provides coverage accordingly. Know what legal coverage you already have, do not pay for coverage twice.

If you have car insurance, then you are covered for liability and medical protection, home insurance covers you for injuries sustained on your property. Your existing insurance policies already cover some of your legal costs and there is no need to pay for that coverage when you select a legal plan.

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater

Opening a new account is like moving to a new town to get away from a few people who are spreading rumors about you. PowerSellers are not going to risk their reputation, after all, this is the power of a reputation. People know you want to keep it, and they know you will go to almost any lengths to do so.

You really will find selling on eBay so much easier, and there is only one way to get a good reputation: make sure you please your customers, every single time. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), Americans have come to view legal assistance as a necessity. Yet, most Americans have not used a lawyer more than once due to the sky-high attorney fees anywhere from $100 to $1,000 per hour and the trepidation involved in the search for legal services.

Prepaid legal insurance might just be the answer you have been looking for. The concept is simple: for a fixed monthly subscription, you get telephone access to advice from a lawyer. You pay a fixed amount in advance each month to defray the cost of legal services furnished in the future.

These services span various areas of the law, anywhere from reviews of simple legal documents and the writing of a simple will to more comprehensive coverage of trials, divorce, bankruptcy, and real estate issues. Pre-paid legal coverage is a very attractive proposition for people who do not have the resources to retain a lawyer on a regular basis whenever they need assistance. You effectively have a network of attorneys you can use as retainer to seek preliminary advice about what the issues are and how the procedures work whenever legal matters arise.

Services not covered by the plan are available to members for a discount on regular hourly rates or flat fees. A fact, however, is that more than half of new subscribers drop out of a prepaid plan after their first year. One reason could be that many members do not require any legal assistance during their first year, so they opt out.

Another reason is the scope of services offered, which are very basic and limited in nature. Most plans have certain caps or maximums as far as benefits provided are concerned, and purport to offer discount on standard attorney fees instead. However, by virtue of simply calling around by yourself you could probably negotiate a lower rate.

Another problem with pre-paid legal plans is the likelihood of getting assigned to a novice attorney. Because of cost considerations, many of the companies behind per-paid services assign trainee or inexperienced attorneys to handle phone consultation and drafting of simple legal documents. You are also less likely to build rapport and understanding, two of the most important attributes of choosing a good attorney, as over 90% of the work is done over the phone.

Employers are on the hunt, researching benefit tools that are low-cost, easily administered, and satisfy their employees’ needs. One such tool is pre-paid group insurance. The first benefit employers expect from legal insurance plans is increased productivity and efficiency.

Today’s employees are interested in a variety of benefits to balance their work with their life requirements. Given that most American household had an issue with law last year that might have led them to hire a lawyer, it is only normal that a legal benefit would increase employees’ morale and efficiency. Having legal benefit as part of a work-benefit package can help the company recruit and retain the best employees.

In this age of work-benefit hysteria, many prospective employment candidates base their career choices on the set of benefit package provided by employers.

When you think about what to sell

There are a few things to consider. The most important of these is to always sell what you know. If you try to sell something that you just do not know anything about then you will never write a good description and sell it for a good price.

You might think you are not especially interested in anything, but if you think about what kind of things you usually buy and which websites you go to most often, you will discover some kind of interest. If all else fails mention it to your friends and family, they will almost certainly able to tell you. Out of the things you know enough about, you should then consider which things you could get for a good enough price to resell, and how suitable they would be for posting.

If you can think of something of that you are knowledgeable about and it is small and light enough for postage to be relatively cheap, then that is great. Do not worry if you think the thing you are selling is too obscure, it is not. There is a market for almost everything on eBay, even things that would not sell once in a year if you stocked them in a shop.

You will probably do even better if you fill a niche than if you sell something common. If you earn enough money, you should be aware that you are going to have to start paying tax, and this will not be done for you. If you decide to sell on eBay on a full-time basis, you should probably register as a business.

There are going to be ups and downs when you sell on eBay. Do not give up if something goes a little wrong in your first few sales. The sellers who are successful on eBay are the ones who enjoy it and stick at it no matter what happens.

Anyone can sell on eBay if they believe in themselves. And if you do decide it is not for you, then the start-up costs are so low that you will not really have lost anything. Your eBay reputation is everything you are on eBay.

Without it, you are nothing. Your reputation is worth as much as every sale you will ever make. Buying from a seller with a low feedback rating makes you feel a little nervous and insecure, while buying from a PowerSeller with their reputation in the thousands does not require any thought or fear, it feels just like buying from a shop.

In fact, a bad reputation will lose you almost all your sales. If someone leaves you negative feedback, you will feel the pain straight away, as that rating will go right at the top of your user page for everyone to see. Your next few items will need to be very cheap things, just to push that negative down the page.

You might have to spend days or even weeks selling cheap stuff to get enough positive feedback to make anyone deal with you again. It is even worse if you consistently let buyers leave negative feedback. Once you get below 90% positive ratings, you might as well be invisible.

Besides eBay's rules about only having one account, there are far more downsides than that to getting a new account. You literally must start all over again from scratch. You will not be able to use all the different eBay features.

Your existing customers will not be able to find you anymore. Your auctions will finish at a lower price because of your low feedback rating.

If it still has not arrived

You should assume it was lost in the post somehow and offer to send a replacement if you have one or give them a full refund otherwise. If the item has been damaged in the post, you must offer to replace it or take it back for a refund without hesitation. If the item does not match the description, take the item back for a refund, and edit your description if you need to, to make any confusing points extra clear.

Offering a refund will make almost any problem go away, and it really will cost you less in the long run. Remember, one piece of negative feedback will stay with you forever, while having a 100% positive rating is like owning a bar of solid gold. You should always handle customers' complaints before they complain to eBay.

In fact, you should email them pre-emptively to ask if they have any complaint. Going through the dispute process is time consuming, reflects badly on you, and is downright unnecessary. The higher the price of the items you sell, the more your reputation is worth to you.

Trying to make excuses for complaints is not the only thing you need to avoid. There are a lot of pitfalls that you need to avoid if you do not want to kill your business before it is even started properly. Some of the jargon is obscure, and you cannot be expected to understand it until someone has told you what it means.

Even the most common jargon is only used relatively rarely. You will find more specific jargon related to whatever you are selling. If you cannot figure one out from your knowledge of the subject, then type the term into a search engine, followed by the word 'eBay'.

The chances are that someone, somewhere will have seen fit to explain it. While it is good to be able to understand others' jargon, avoid using it unless you really need to. Many people on eBay are not experienced buyers and you will lose them if you write a load of gobbledegook all over your auction.

While you can sell most things on eBay, quite a few things are banned. If you try to sell any of those things, then eBay will remove your auction and all bids will be void. Almost everything that is on the list is there because there is law against selling it.

Some of the reasons, though, are a little strange. eBay will remove any items that it believes violate copyright law, but they do not have that many people to monitor the site. You will generally only find that your auction gets removed if someone decides to report you.

And even then, they might not get around to it. Really, buying and selling on eBay can sometimes feel more complicated than it really is, thanks to all the rules surrounding it, not to mention the jargon. If you know what you are doing, the easier you will find it to be found.

Be specific. Where you can, though, leave off the type of item altogether and title using brand and model. There are a few things that you really need to know before you go and throw yourself in at the deep end.

First off, you need to know what it is you are going to sell. You will do far better on eBay if you become a great source for certain kind of products, as people who are interested in those products will come back to you again and again. You will not get any loyalty or real reputation if you just sell rubbish at random.

They do boring business things

Such as keep inventories and budgets. They know what they are going to be selling, how much they buy it for, and how much they expect to sell for. Just like a real shop, there can be hard times sometimes, but their income is stable, and their business can grow slowly.

Do not take long-term risks for short-term gain. Look after your reputation, manage your selling properly, provide good customer service, and the rewards will come to you in due course. One possibility that you might have realized so far is what eBay can do for any other businesses you might have.

Most of the people who make money from eBay do not actually make all that money on eBay. There are all sorts of ways you can use eBay to give your existing businesses a helping hand. If you have any leftover stock or used items from another business you run, sell them on eBay.

You can make this a regular thing, using it to get rid of things that will not sell for the premium you ask for in a shop, or items that are no longer in demand in the town or city where your business is based. You can really make a lot of money this way if you know what you are doing. You will, of course, already be an expert in the items you are selling, as you use them in your business, and you will know that the items are of high enough quality to be sellable.

This is a whole new market for your old inventory. eBay give you an 'About Me' page, where you can write anything you like and link anywhere you like. This means that you can get traffic to your business' website by linking to your website from your About Me page and linking to your About Me page from each auction.

To create an About Me page, just click on 'Community' on the toolbar, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'Create an About Me page'. You then get the option to either enter your own HTML or let eBay guide you through the process. All you need to do is write a little about your website, link to it, and you are done.

You will notice that more people start to come to your site straight away. All the traffic you will get will be targeted because the people who click through were interested in your auction to begin with. This can be a powerful technique, especially if you have already got an e-commerce site.

Now that you have seen how to drive visitors to your website, maybe you would like a little help getting your auction in front of buyers. The customer is always right. If you want to be a successful eBay seller, you should go miles out of your way to make sure every single one of your customers is 100% satisfied, however much time or money it might cost you. A dissatisfied customer will leave negative feedback, and negative feedback is to be avoided at all costs.

That one piece of negative feedback will always cost you more than it would have to deal with the complaint, whatever the value of the items you sell. You should consider any positive feedback percentage under 100% to be an absolute disaster, and a personal failure on your part. There is no situation where you, as a seller, should get into any dispute with a buyer.

If the item never arrived, politely ask the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it turns up, and then email you again if it still has not arrived.

Listing items in the wrong categories is against eBay's rules

eBay will remove any auctions that are wrongly categorized. They do not often actually do this, but it is not worth the risk. Especially since breaking any rules can cause them to penalize your account, including losing PowerSeller status if you have it.

eBay will suggest categories for you when you sell your item if you type in a few words to describe the item on the category selection page and click 'search'. You can make the best of this feature by typing in exactly what your item is, with brand name and model number (if any), so that eBay can find the best category for you. If that does not work for you, then search yourself for items like yours, and pay attention to which category most of them seem to be in.

You can see the item’s category near the top of its description page. Try different words and see which ones come back with the most results. You can also browse through all the available categories from eBay's front page.

Remember that the more specific the category is, the better. Use as many subcategories as are appropriate. Do not worry about your item as it will still appear in the main category, as well as subcategory, because items listed in subcategories are always listed in every category above.

Take some time to look through all the categories and get familiar with eBay. For a small extra fee, you can list your item in an extra category, to increase the number of potential buyers who will see it. This is not always worth it, though.

Some items only really fit properly in one category and listing them in extra categories is just a waste. Once you know where to list your item, the next step is to write your auction's title. The title is the most important thing about your auction.

The difference between a good title and a bad one can be the difference between $10 and $100. PowerSellers are the people on eBay who have made it. You have probably seen these people around. And to succeed on eBay, you want to think the way they do.

eBay gets to decide who can be a PowerSeller and they have strict requirements. To get in at the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rating of at least 98% positive and sell at least $1,000 worth of items every month for three months in a row. There are different levels of PowerSeller: $1,000 is bronze, $3,000 is silver, $10,000 is gold, $25,000 is platinum, and $125,000 is titanium.

If PowerSellers ever fail to meet the required amount of sales, or their feedback falls below 98% positive, then they lose their PowerSeller status. In short, the only people who get to be PowerSellers on eBay are the people who have been successful for a good while and are on track to stay that way. The Shop and the Marketplace are the most important parts of understanding how PowerSellers think.

They do not see what they are doing as being some random bazaar, or a hobby. Instead, they see themselves as a business. If you run a stall in a marketplace, the chances are that you have a general area of business, but you mostly just sell whatever you can get your hands on that week.

This might be fun, and when you have a good week, you will have a really good week. But it is no way to run a real business in the long-term. PowerSellers think far more like shops. They sell the same things again and again, every week, regular stock for regular customers.