The gray zone -- be creative, but watch your step

As you begin to get creative in your promotion, some tactics will occur to you that eBay prohibits. Be sure to read the eBay community rules carefully.

Since eBay provides you with the email addresses of everyone who bids on any auction -- not just yours, you may be strongly tempted to build mailing lists of people interested in the kinds of things that you have to sell. For instance, you can click on "bid history" and get a list of the usernames/"handles" of all the bidders; then click on an individual handle and, after entering your own eBay username and password, see that person's email address. The temptation may be very great, but don't go down that path. As a rule of thumb, never add anyone to an email list without their explicit permission. Otherwise, many recipients of your promotional messages are liable to consider them as "spam" -- unsolicited and unwanted advertising. Some will probably be mad enough to send you nasty messages in return, to remember you and not bid on your auctions in the future, perhaps to give you negative feedback at eBay, and perhaps to complain to eBay management, who frown on "misuse of bidder information." They don't want their members subjected to spam, and will take steps to prevent a recurrence.

In general, it is not a good idea to initiate contact with an unknown person who is a bidder at eBay for the sole purpose of selling something to them off-line. But there's a wide gray area, involving personal rather than mailing list messages, that you might want to explore. For instance, if you have more than one copy of an item that you put up for auction, when the auction ends, you might want to contact the second highest bidder. This message could let them know that you are starting a new auction with the same kind of item. That kind of message would be perfectly acceptable to eBay management. Or you might want to ask them if they would like to make a deal off-line for a similar item. eBay management would frown on that because they don't get posting and transaction fees for your off-line deals. But what matters most is how the recipient of your message would take your suggestion. If the bidding was intense, and this person really wanted that item, your message may be very welcome. On the other hand, if you were sending the same kind of message to someone who was the second highest bidder at someone else's auction for an item similar to what you have for sale, that would be taking a step out of the gray and into the dark side.

At the other end of the gray spectrum, when I conduct business at Ebay, I build relationships with repeat bidders and buyers. People email me with questions while an auction is going on. They ask me if I have a certain related item and would be willing to sell it to them off-line. And when someone repeatedly bids on or buys items of mine, and we repeatedly correspond on the subject, I feel no qualms about letting them know about other related items of mine that they clearly would be interested in. The auction takes place within the community. But what I do in other ways with folks that I met there is really my own business.

But keep in mind that the acceptability and desirability of a given tactic depends on the kind of item that you are selling. Personal off-line communication is common and generally welcome with regard to collectibles, especially rare items. But if someone is selling brand name, mass manufactured merchandise, the temptations to over promote and the reactions of potential buyers to their messages are likely to be quite different. For instance, someone might try to operate like a vulture, watching other people's auctions and offering the very same merchandise to bidders at a lower price. While some people might welcome such a bargain offering, such behavior disrupts the auction environment an is a clear violation of community rules.

On the other hand, if you are a regular seller at eBay, with many items in the same general category, you can expect that frequent bidders will occasionally contact you and ask for an "off-auction" price for a similar item. As Ron Rothenberg noted in one of our chat sessions, "Some people find the idea of auctions just awful and don't have the patience." Those kinds of people might use eBay as a way to identify sellers and then make their own separate deals, quickly and simply.

 

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