- Don't run your business from your personal bank account. There are a number of reasons for wanting to keep a separate bank account as part of a smoothly-running eBay business (or indeed, any business), but the largest reason is related to the previous item—it’s just much, much easier to maintain nice, clean records, tax documentation, and a good sense for what your balance sheet looks like if you conduct your business with its own account. Another reason is the fact that it can be risky to link a high-volume PayPal account to your personal (i.e. living) finances, since PayPal may at times issue chargebacks for returned or disputed items.
- Don't ignore your customers' contact. Too many small eBay business have relatively poor customer service. Customer service, whether telephone or e-mail based, is often seen as a liability by smaller eBay sellers, since it is a form of overhead that can take a lot of time without explicitly generating much income. Don’t be fooled into thinking that customer service isn’t important, however—poor customer service leads to poor feedback and chargebacks (i.e. returns), both of which hurt your bottom line. Poor customer service is also virtually guaranteed to eliminate repeat sales, which are for some sellers are large source of revenue. Be accessible—offer a telephone number if possible and respond to email messages within a day or two after receiving them.
- Don't let your business equipment fall into disrepair. As an Internet-based business, eBay selling requires a certain amount of computing and technology equipment—computer(s) to post listings, interact with buyers, and maintain records; printer(s) to print invoices and shipping lists; even network infrastructure like routers and cable modems to keep you connected. If these go down, your business grinds to a halt. Some wear and tear is inevitable, but don’t let simple wear and tear turn into catastrophic failure. Keep backups of your data (i.e. a second copy of every important file or piece of data) on a flash drive or other removable storage device, so that if you suffer a hard drive failure you don’t lose all of your records. Be careful in your browsing and software installation habits and use an anti-virus and firewall application to limit your exposure to network-related “infections” from viruses, worms, trojan horse programs, or spyware that can put your customers’ data at risk, too.
- Know when to hire a staff and delegate. All of these ideas might seem simple at first, but they can grow larger and larger as your business volume increases. Growth is one of the most exciting things that can happen to a small business, but it can also be one of the most scary if you’re not prepared to manage it well. The most important thing to realize as you grow is that every aspect of business management is important—you can’t ignore good record-keeping or computer maintenance any more than you can ignore shipping items to auction winners or posting new listings. If you’re growing, at some point you will need help. When this happens, don’t try to do it all yourself—both you and your business will suffer as a result. Instead, hire someone to post listings, answer email, or ship packages for you. Just remember to keep your business registration or licensure up to date in such a way that the employment you offer is legal and proper.
These nine points are not exhaustive and are not meant in any way to be a guide to managing a small business. But nonetheless, ignore them at your peril—many already have, often resulting in the needless decline or closure of promising eBay small businesses.
