Why bother doing an eBay course?

Hi!

I have been an eBay education specialist in Adelaide, Australia, for almost 2 years now. I absolutely love teaching and have found it to be most rewarding, both personally and professionally.

The one question though that I keep coming across is whether the sorts of courses offered really are worth the money.

Obviously I am going to say, yes! I teach the classes, I'd look silly if I said no.

The eBay help section really is chock a block full of well...help. There is policy after policy, tip after tip, but finding out the info is another thing. The information is very clear to the person who wrote it, but it is not always clear to the reader. Plus if you are reading the tips and follow eBay's own advise on things like listing upgrades, you would be left believing that you needed every last one of them to have a successful sale.

By doing a class with a trained eBay educator, you can make sure you get the information you need from the session, you can go at your own pace and when you get to something that doesn't make sense a real live human being can explain it to you.

There are some eBay trainers around who have trained with eBay, but have never deal on the site in any real capacity. They don't know the ins and outs, the little tricks of the trade nor the fickle nature of the site, they can only teach you what eBay taught them and as I said before that is biased towards creating more profit for eBay, not for your own success.

If you choose your trainer carefully, they will have spent considerable time on the site, they ideally should have at one stage (if not still), gained their full time living off of the site, so they know all there is to know....because they had to learn.

Agreed you can learn yourself by trail and error, but when we are talking about selling and retail, mistakes can really be costly and time is money.

When I started out there was no courses you could take. I really did have to learn it the hard way and believe you me, it did cost me both time and money. The things I thought I knew after reading the help sections, but turned out completely incorrect could fill a book.

If you are interested in doing a course on eBay, the best thing to do, is once you have located an trainer closer by, you should speak with them via email or phone (preferably over the phone) and just see what they can do for you. Feel out someone who understands what you need from the session and who you feel comfortable with. Ask them about their own experiences and ask them why they would take their course if they were you.

Make sure you check out their eBay trading user id, and check out how they present their listings. Read their feedback comments, this will give you an idea of how they handle people or more importantly, how they handle their customers. One little tip for really working out someone's eBay personality, is to read the feedback comment they have left for others - this is normally far more telling than what they receive themselves. Steer clear of people who call their own customers, "liars, thieves or cheats" etc. You know how they will deal with you if something goes wrong.

If you are looking for recommendations of Australian eBay trainers, I can recommend to you;
NSW - Donna Kelly (donnashuggy) - donnashuggy.poweru.net
VIC - Marc Lubin (ozish) - ebay@ozish.com
QLD - Joanne Greenfield (buymebuymebuy) - class@pinkieonline.com

and of course if you are from Good old SA...me :-)

SA - Amanda Callbutt - (hanaonline) - www.helpmyauction.com/privateclass.html ebay@helpmyauction.com

Good luck and if you have any questions about the eBay education program, please don't hesitate to leave a comment on my blog!