Protecting your ebay dropshipping account(s) is equal to protecting your income. ebay Dropshippers are working hard, investing money and trying to build or already built a reputed account which takes years, lots of sales, customer services and many other things which deserve to be protected.
What will you learn?
- Prevent The Crisis & be ready for the crisis.
- Diversify your ebay accounts the safe way.
- PayPal & managed Payments (any payment processor) is a top priority.
- What restricts/suspends the account and solutions?
- Again, Diversify but not on ebay
Prevent The Crisis & Be Ready For The Crisis
In order to be ready, you need to know in advance what will you do in that scenario and you need to be READY when that crisis happens. I know you are wondering what crisis? There are many of them but not limited to Account Restriction, Account Suspension, Violations & VeRO violations. As you read you will discover more.
The worst thing that can happen is that you lose your account, are you ready for this moment if it happens? If no please keep reading.
The best thing you can do is to prevent it by knowing the pitfalls and risks to avoid them.
Diversify Your ebay Accounts The Safe Way
I learned this the hard and painful way, after working on my account for almost a year, lots of hours invested and my hard-earned money.
What to do to to diversify ebay accounts the safe way?
Answer: Create multiple (unlinked) ebay accounts. Focus on the word (unlinked). When you create another ebay account using the same IP address for example, ebay will connect both accounts (the new and old one) and will attach it to you, if one of them gets suspended/indefinitely restricted the other account gets suspended as well.
I advise you to learn how to create unlinked ebay accounts and you can start from here for free. It will not last for free for a long time.
PayPal & Managed Payments (any payment processor) Is A Top Priority
Without PayPal no sales can be generated. ebay is moving forward to replacing PayPal gradually with a new payment processor called “Managed Payments”. I am quoting from ebay about Managed Payments:
“Managed Payments means that eBay will manage the end-to-end payments experience on the eBay platform. Buyers will be able to complete their purchases on eBay, and sellers will be paid directly to their bank accounts. eBay works with a partner to facilitate this process. “
Notice they said ” and sellers will be paid directly to their bank accounts“
This rises several questions:
- Do I have to be ready for identity verification?
- Does my account have to be ready by improving its performance?
- For sellers outside the United States who are selling on ebay.com , can you open a bank account? if not can you use the bank account given to you by Payoneer? ebay will check if this bank account exists or not as they stated in their policy.
The answer to the first question is YES and the second question is YES as it will decrease the risk of the inspection will happen on your account and for the third question here is the answer:
For opening a bank account in the USA for sellers outside the US and selling on ebay.com:
- Consider opening a bank account under the name of your LLC
If you cannot travel to USA, you need to have someone INSIDE the USA to open a bank account and please note he might be assigned as an employee or a business partner on your LLC document. Please double check this with the respective bank - If you cannot open a bank account consider Stripe Atlas program, please Google it, Stripe is a payment processor where they help international entrepreneurs have a bank account in the USA.
- Last suggestion I want to make for those cannot travel to USA, use US checking bank account given by Payoneer. However, until now no confirmation received from any seller I know or on social media and no confirmation from ebay confirming it works.
What Restricts/Suspends The Account And Solutions?
These are the things that are restrict/suspend your account:
- Account Performance: Rate of orders cancellations, the higher the cancellations the higher the risks, the lower the cancellations the lower the risks. Sorry, no confirmed rate our of number of orders you receive.
- Account Performance: Cases closed with no resolution and to the advantage of the customer. If a customer opens a case against a seller and no agreement was finalized, ebay will intervene and decide whose mistake, if the mistake is on the seller according to given information to them, this will affect your performance.
Bottom line is, reduce cases and close them UNLESS you believe the customer is attempting a fraud and you have the proof, then you can take the risk and let ebay decides.
- Account Performance: Uploading validated tracking numbers on time within the handling time promised.
- VeRO: VeRO violations is not something I can cover in few sentences but the bottom line is :
Prevent VeRO by avoiding VeRO items you find and REMOVE VeRO listings you have on your ebay store BEFORE ebay removes it.
You cannot do it manually, you need to use tools. For avoiding VeRO items you find, use ZikBooster chromse extension and DSTitans
For scanning and removing ebay listings on your store, use a chrome extension called VeRO checker. Please google them. - Verification failure: Failing to pass the verification process by providing the documents they need. However there ethical and unethical means for providing documents and it’s your decision.
- Policy Violations: Any policy violation will affect your account, it is important to read and understand all policies on ebay. For example are you aware of Duplicate Listings? What makes it duplicate? What are the banned products and dangerous goods to avoid?
This is not comprehensive and I advise you to join facebook dropshipping communities, check ebay updates and read more.
Again, Diversify But Not On ebay
Do you need financial freedom? Diversify your income sources, do not make ebay the only source. This is my advice. OWN something that makes you money. Think about Amazon FBA and running your store. Yes, I understand if the budget is low, you can start with ebay and Amazon FBA on a low budget.
