Over the last few days there have been rumours and the odd front page press story, telling us Royal Mail, could still be looking to take strike action on the run up to Christmas. Now because the CWU, did not cancel everything, the only need to give Royal Mail 7 days notice to carry out any strikes.

As we all know Christmas is the peak time for Royal Mail, and they know this, and to be honest can use this to their advantage, but will they. That is anyone guess. If they do strike people will lose total support for them as gifts and cars being sent will not be received, there will be thousands of sad children on Christmas day as presents are cards will not be there, all because Royal Mail let them down. And for some families the presents they ordered from Amazon and ,in good faith were let down by Royal Mail and sadly they cannot just go out and buy another present.

As for sellers a lot will ditch royal mail for other companies who will deliver on time, who offer real tracking of items, who care about the clients who send and receive. And just my thoughts ……………………. if Royal Mail do strike,and companies move elsewhere, those who strike will be without any job, for the Royal Mail as we know it will be gone.

Please Royal Mail do not strike, think ahead and look to a bright future and work with all sides and everyone will have a happy Christmas.

As we approach the big holiday selling season on eBay most of us need to take a step back and see what needs to be done to our eBay shops/stores. You may need to add a few catagories (or take some off) update a page or two. But there is also some great help at hand in a membership site called OSI Rock Stars. At OSI Rock Stars there are well over 450 hours of webinars and podcasts that take you by the hand and show and tell you how to take your eBay business to the next level.

News is starting to hit the streets that Royal Mail  will be going on strike on the 22nd and 23rd October. This is a Thursday and Friday, so will effect mail deliver on those days and will also effect deliveries at the start of the week as they have to cope with backlogs.

As yet this is not an all out strike, and one will pray and hope it will not come to this.

Please keep your customers upto date and when you email them just let them know their orders could be delayed.

There is good news, if your item is over 500g you can use other firms to send out your items. There is one Courier Broker who is fantastic, they have great rates, a very fast service, and yes I have used them loads of times.

Will keep you upto date on this Royal Mail strike action.

As we move into the busy selling period, make sure you have enough :

• Boxes
• Jiffy Bags
• Parcel Tape
• Shipping Paperwork

The last thing you will want is to run out of the above items, for it could take you a few days to get the items back in stock, and that could mean some very unhappy customers.

Another area you need to look at and write down, are the last posting dates for items to reach your customers in time for Christmas. If you ship overseas each country will have a date that you need to send items out to. Also this is very different if you send them via Air or sea. Again plan ahead and be prepared.

Hope this short blog post will help you,.

Here in the UK some of our Postman and Postwoman are taking strike action due to new work patterns etc at Royal Mail. Now as many of you know most sellers on Royal Mail relay on the postal service to run their business. Both as buyers and sellers, and these one day strikes at different delivery and sorting offices can prove fatal for some eBay and other e commerce platforms.

At the moment the delays are only a few days here and there, but if it was to become a national strike then it will hit sellers and buyers very, very hard.

Please keep your customers up to date. When you email them to thank them, remind them about the delays. Keep an eye on the eBay boards and also at Royal Mail http://www.royalmail.com .

Listen out for the news and always be pro-active with your customers and keep them up to date.

Hope this helps

eBay does listen to the sellers and when it can eBay gives us a big help, and today was one of those days. For the people who use Giving Works or want to but have thought the $5.00 minimum donation was too high for the product they were selling, well the news on the street is eBay have reduced this to $1.00. They have also changed from when we pay MissionFish from the second week to the fourth week. This will allow us to collect the money from our customers, be paid by paypal. So good news all round.

For more details please click here

News is filtering through the world that eBay blogs will be no more after the end of September. Now let me make this is clear………………………. This is eBay blogs, not blogs about eBay.

eBay blogs have been around sometime but to the most part never hit the mark, and because of this eBay took the decision to remove them. I always find it funny, people do not use the eBay blog system, but as soon as word hits the streets they are to go, people are crying and moaning how could eBay do this.

Well eBay run a company, blogs take webspace, time and if they are not doing what they started out to do, then eBay made their minds up and closed them down.

Ladies and Gents the same should go for your business or businesses, you start a project or idea, it looks good and seems good, but after time your buyers or clients just do not like it…………………. you have two things to do, either keep at, and fight a losing battle and I would guess make you lose money.

Or like eBay just, call it a day, and move on.

Just some thoughts from Andrew

Christmas is Coming

Well it is the end of August 2009, the year has seemed to fly by. Do you seem to think the seasons have just rolled into one?

Well I hate to be the one to tell you, but Christmas and the Big Holiday Season is almost on us again.  Why am I telling you this today, well we need to be thinking Christmas and Holiday season everyday now.

People are already doing searches on eBay for Christmas and the Holiday Season and I do not want you to be left behind.

I shall be given you tips and ideas on how to make the most of this the biggest buying season.

But before December we have things like ThanksGiving, Halloween, and some other major holidays. These holidays all mean cash in our accounts.

So go and make a difference today to your business you will not be sorry I promise you.

eBay Partner Network Update

This is just to remind people who are part of the eBay Partner Network (EPN), that a short time ago eBay told us to remove links and widgets from sites we do not own. For example if you have widgets , links on squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, blogs hosted with wordpress then you need to go in and remove them sooner or later.

You are still allowed to have links and widgets on Wordpress blogs you self host, and on any of your sites that you own.

Yes it will take work, but if you set to it will soon be done. I removed all links and widgets from my 33 Squidoo lenes today, and replaced them with squidoos own eBay widgets (these are allowed) and it took around an hour.

Changes at eBay

Well as promised by eBay the changes have happened. Now from looking at them very briefly and from my viewing they do not seem as bad as a lot of people were making out.

Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of hype, story lines on blogs and forums that this is happening and that is happening and most of it has not happened.

If you have not yet seen the changes that are taking place please go along to this page at eBay Seller update July 2009 here you can read all the facts.

Later when I have heard my mentors pass comment I shall do a further blog post, and until then, it is business as usual.

Happy Selling
AndyUk