Latest News On My eBay Suspension
Morning everyone 
Ok here’s whats been happening so far.
On the 5th October I received an email from eBay informing me of a seven day suspension due to alleged ‘Copyright Violations’. Apparently a so called ‘expert’ who lists items in the same categories I do complained about my listings and because they are a member of eBays ‘Enhanced Member Reporting’ gestapo style hit squad I was guilty as charged (even though they had no proof whatsoever!)
No matter how many emails or phone conversations I had with Powerseller support they would not budge on the matter even though I think they know they had made a mistake.
As such I have had to re-apply to have myself reinstated. My application arrived at eBay offices in Dublin on the 13th October but so far I have still heard nothing.
In the meantime I vowed to change my business practices and make sure that eBay only becomes a small part of my online ventures. So in a way it’s been good because it’s given me a ‘kick up the ass’. If I get my account reinstated I will continue trading on eBay but my main focus will be to generate more income selling physical cd/dvd products using both online and offline promotion methods and Kunaki as my product distribution centre.
However to do this I needed some more knowledge on the subject. What I mean is I know how to put products onto Kunaki and sell them but I wanted more info on turning PLR ebooks into full blown multimedia cd’s and dvd’s.
Since being suspended I have spent over $300.00 dollars on two separate packages that I know will help me to do this. One was a three DVD set taken from a seminar in Australia. It’s a little old (2006) I think but the info contained is still highly relevant. This will help me to market my products offline.
The next product I purchased was Reseller Brainstorm by Simon Hodgkinson. This is pure gold information.
Why?
Because in it Simon showed me how he took a $20 ebook with Private Label Rights and turned it into a $40,000.00 a year membership website. You even get access to the site to see how it works.
There’s also a case study on how Simon took a product other marketers were giving away and tuned it into a $25,000.00 best-seller.
It’s a real eye opener and it’s something I’ll be going back to over and over again. After all I have at least 50 PLR ebooks on my hard drive so even if I only do a quarter of what Simon has done it will be immensely profitable.
Reseller Brainstorm cost me $97.00 plus postage and with it I managed to get the Resell Rights so I could offer it to you. But I’m not going to charge you $97.00 (you’ll get the Master Resell version too!). Grab your copy at the link below:
http://www.rlb-publishing.co.uk/brainstorm
Don’t let eBay do to you what they have done to me. Grab your copy of Reseller Brainstorm now and start making far more than most other marketers will with the same products 
Warm regards,
Richard
p.s. Reseller Brainstorm is not a product you can sell on eBay. You cannot sell it cheaply either. These are the conditions of the reseller licence you’ll get from Simon. If you cannot agree to those conditions don’t buy it.
Hi Richard
The proverbial kick in the backside is sometimes good to keep us at the top of our focus. I have also experienced problems - not with eBay but with Paypal logins and it is quite a pain when I discovered that others have had similar problems for many months.
What startles me the most is that PayPal only a few days ago promised they were working hard to find the error when others have received similar information many months ago. How difficult can it be to code so it works? I mean, if they can’t do it why not ask a fellow internet marketer such as Robert Plank - expert in PHP.
It seems online marketing has given both PayPal and eBay a huge income in fees, and yet those of us who have supplied their income just get the finger. To me that seems disrespectful, shows poor judgment and will result in their final downfall. When someone pees on their customers they are bound to lose them.
Personally, I am refocusing over to the AlertPay system and that has been the lesson for me
Thanks for a good blog, Richard.
Hi Richard, as you know, I have been hit with an ebay suspension too. I haven’t been selling anywhere near the quantities that you have but was hoping to get somewhere near the level you were at or at least gain Powerseller status.
But having learned of the way they have treated you, a Powerseller with over 7500 positive feedback, doesn’t give me any confidence in ebay or their Powerseller program.
The way they conduct their business is atrocious. Shutting sellers down without any warning or investigation. The ‘Enhanced Member Reporting’ system is wide open for abuse i.e. the ‘Enhanced Member’ could report their competitors, who are selling the exact same products in exactly the same way, the competitors are shut down immediately, no questions asked, leaving the category wide open for the ‘Enhanced Member’ to clean up! It stinks!
I’m not sure whether I’ll be using ebay again or not, I’m looking at other ways to earn my online income.
Anyway,that’s my rant over with!
I must say that Reseller Brainstorm looks to be a very good product, I like the fact that it has video and audio, I seem to learn quicker with those two mediums!
Colin
I have been interested in creating & producing my own physical products for some time now.
Having launched our first, original site (up now for three weeks), I can start concentrating on that aspect of business.
I only sell on eBay during the holidays to help clean up the house some more. I have not agreed with most of their newer policies & practices.
Best,
-K
Hi Henrik, I totally agree with your third paragraph. Ebay has seen 1000’s of sellers leave over the last few months because of the way they have been treated.
Hi Colin, thanks for the reply. I must admit I seriously toyed with the idea of leaving eBay altogether. If I get reinstated I’ll be listing my items again but I’ll be checking them with Powerseller support first. If I then have them removed again that will be it. Ebay is not the be all and end all some people think it is.
Cheers, Richard
I faced a similar experience in ebay india about an year back. I am still to understand my copyright violation as the PLR ebook which I was selling then is being sold by countless others. My many mails went unanswered. I finally decided to never ever do business on ebay.
Hi Rich’….Boy do you get the bad luck…. I remember when you had a similar backlash from ebay a couple of years ago… your name must be in their headlights
I left ebay in March folowing their changes but have been thinking of starting over again, so will be getiing your recommendation -
Reseller Brainstorm, before finally decicing yea or nea.
What would be very useful (to me) is if you could be a bit more specific as to what you were actually selling and, how that led to your suspension. Was the sales page classified as ’stealing’ someone elses product or ‘plagarism or suchlike.
In the meantime. keep your chin up budddy and I hope that you and your family are keeping well.
Take every care and I am lifting a glass of wine to your continued success….
You can’t keep a good man down and your still one of the best around
Pete
Hi Richard, a cautionary tale for many of us. eBay’s customer service speed of unthinking action is probably legendary, but I do find it unusual for a seller of your standing to be given the “treatment”.
I wish you well on getting reinstated as, despite all the hassle and all the downside, eBay is still a useful marketplace in which to make money online.
One of the tips I always give my eBay students is to open more than one eBay selling account. And I tell them to make sure they build up feedback on each of them. In this way, should one account get suspended, their business does not come to grinding halt.
Good luck, Brian
Hi Richard
I can only imagine how this must feel; the worse I had is a listing cancelled without warning ot notice.
Even though I am now mainly using eBay for lead gathering, I’m actually not enjoying it as much as I used to and I don’t think it’s worth the effort (although classifieds might be better). I’m even thinking of dropping it for business purposes as I have better things to do now.
At a personal level its great - sold a couple of very expensive mobiles phones with great success.
Hi Richard!
I’m a small bookseller mainly selling on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Half.com and a few others. I’ve been contemplating moving my main focus to creating CD’s/DVD’a and marketing them on Ebay & Amazon. Amazon has it’s own predatory practices they use against their third party Marketplace sellers, which I won’t go into here. Their new contact by phone help service is nice except if you have a complaint, they will give you no idea as to what they are going to do about it. Like asking a snail to do 70 MPH. I like the advice about having more than one account on Ebay and I have an Ebook that explains how to do it the right way. I’ll be trying it on a limited basis in the near future, but I am more inclined to set up my own website and market my own way. For the record, I don’t see how those who act the way these people do can stay in business. I fully expect them to be “history” in a few years.
Good Luck and Happy Days! Stan
Richard,
It is such a shame that in the middle of a world wide recession eBay would do everything they could to lower their sales and denigrate PowerSellers. My sales dropped into the pits last February, so I thought as you have - sell on several internet venues and get them going now.
I put together a 30+ page eBook plus 60+ video series called “Weaving With Blogs All The Way To The Bank”. You can read more about it at: http://www.WeavingWithBlogs.com.
You need a blog, an eCommerce site for your disks and a regular website, along with selling on eBay and Amazon. Amazon will put your item on CD or DVD, burn it, package it and ship it for you. A great program.
Take a look at my site SurvivingEbay.com to help you solve this problem - and you are right - stay with eBay - but, don’t count on them for 80% of your sales.
I hope this all works out for you. I am a big fan of yours and have included numerous screenshots of your site and eBay store in my videos as an example of how a smart seller operates. Good luck and keep me posted.
Sally
Thankyou everyone for all the support and kind words.
Pete: The items I was selling were the same ones I’ve always sold. Crockpot recipes, crochet patterns, cheesecake recipes etc etc. I have resell rights for each one. I have my own listing template to make them stand out from the others. The salespage text may be the same as others but thats only because most of the items I sell come with salespages. So as you can see nothing broke any of eBays rules. I certainly didn’t have any ‘Copyright Violations’ as eBay called them.
Srinivasan: I know exactly how you feel! What is worse is eBay do not tell you why they feel your item broke ‘copyright violation’. This is the maddening part for me.
Brian: I do actually have another eBay account (or the family does) but I was loath to admit it in case someone targets that one as well. The other account doesnt have any where near the same feedback though. I did list some items on it immediately and made some sales but nowhere near what my personal account was doing. It is a great tip though.
Sally: thanks for those kind words. You have some great websites under your belt. WeavingWithBlogs looks excellent and I’ve signed up for your newsletter at survivingebay.com as well.
Richard
I was nearly suspended for the exact reason. I had a product that one of the elite “stores” had and was cheaper. So, I got a warning.
Sorry to hear that you did also. but, you’ll survive without Ebay.
Cheers………..Pat
Hi Richard,
I have a solution for all of you that are selling downloadable products:
http://www.wightauction.co.uk/?nrs2=100198
This is an auction site based in the United Kingdom. I sell on this auction, ebay and some other auctions to get maximum views.
How was ebay made so big? WE made them big. I sell on ebay through Auctiva (free listing service). I got their newsletter and this was one of the questions asked ebay’s CEO and his answer:
Ask the CEO: Does eBay Want to Eliminate Small Sellers?
Auctiva boss Jeff Schlicht answers this and other of your questions.
by Auctiva.com staff writer - Oct 10, 2008
Q: Is there any truth to the rumors that eBay wants to eliminate the small sellers and go to a Wal-Mart-type retail model?
Schlicht: Yes, and no. I don’t think eBay ever wants to be a retailer that competes directly with sellers the way Amazon does. eBay’s offering a Diamond tier for sellers with sales of more than $500,000 or 50,000 items a month in an effort to compete with Amazon and attempt to bring more buyer traffic back to the site. Diamond-tier sellers must maintain a 4.8 DSR rating or higher, among several other requirements. Currently, the only Diamond-tier seller is Buy.com, (user id: buy). Here’s some sales data for Buy from the past 30 days, as of October 5th. Total Sales $2,948,389
Total Listings 1,113,272
Successful Listings 59,998
Total Bids 96,314
Items Offered 73,066,278
Items Sold 96,314
Bids per Listing 0.09
Sell-Through 5.39%
As you can see, buy has listed more than 1 million listings with only a 5 percent sell-through rate. That would put most sellers out of business. However since Diamond-tier sellers get to negotiate their fees, it’s widely speculated that Buy pays no listing fees and discounted final value fees.
It’s said that there are 10 or more other such companies waiting to come join the Diamond tier this holiday shopping season. The impact of these sellers on the marketplace remains to be seen. It could add vibrancy and more buyers to the site by offering a wider selection and good prices. Or it could flood the site with merchandise, making it more difficult to find items, especially those from the smaller sellers. At a minimum, it will be more difficult for smaller sellers to compete toe-to-toe on the exact items listed by Diamond-tier sellers given the discounts they receive.
This should tell you something. What will happen to the people that aren’t in the ‘elite’ group? You tell me!
jane
Hi Jane, the trouble with other auction sites is traffic. No other auction site gets the traffic eBay does. The site you mention has six auctions on the front page with no bids. Refresh the page another six pop up . . . no bids.
The rest of your post does make for interesting reading though.