Hacks 1917 Industrial.. Strength Tips and Tools [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 81 Keep Tabs on the eBay Community

Use the Forums, Announcement boards, and New
Feature Previews to keep up with the eBay community.

eBay is constantly revising their web
site, policies, features, and associated fees; as a seller on eBay,
you have a vested interest in how these changes shape your business.
Since even the most minor changes can have an impact (positive or
negative), you should stay connected to the eBay community to ensure
that you're aware of potential problems and prepared
for upcoming changes.

General Announcements Board.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing.shtml

Go to Site Map News & Announcements for previews of
new features, new category announcements, policy changes, and updates
to eBay's various tools and services.

System Announcements Board.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml

Go to Site Map News & Announcements System
when something on eBay stops working, to see if
there's an explanation here. Scheduled maintenance
and unscheduled outages are also documented on this page.

Calendar.

http://pages.ebay.com/community/events/

Go to Site Map Calendar for a listing of this
month's workshops, tradeshows,
"Share your Wares" events, Street
Faires, eBay Live conferences, and eBay University seminars.

eBay Community Newsletter.

http://pages.ebay.com/community/chatter/

Go to Site Map News & Announcements
Newsletter to read "The Chatter," a
monthly e-zine produced by eBay staff members, complete with
articles, announcements, and even a Member
Spotlight.

Discussion
Forums

http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/

Go to Site Map
Discussion, Help and Chat Discussion Boards to
discuss nearly all aspects of eBay with other members. Among the
roughly 70 specialized forums are
"Checkout,"
"Search,"
"International Trading," and my
favorite, "Soapbox."

Use the boards to ask questions, offer help to other eBay users, and
voice your opinions (and objections) regarding eBay policies,
changes, and trends. For instance, when eBay's
controversial Checkout feature was introduced (see [Hack #49]), eBay's then-new
Checkout forum was crammed with thousands of complaints from members
(including several makeshift
"petitions" started by particularly
outraged sellers).

Forums are comprised of threads, each of which
starts as a single message. Any member can start a new thread or add
to an existing thread. When new threads are created or old threads
are updated with new additions, they're moved to the
top of the list.

Some people post to their own threads to move them to the top in the hopes of invigorating them, which is why you may occasionally see a post with nothing more than "Bump" in the message body.

When eBay staff members post to a forum (and they do), their names
are shown in a pink-colored stripe, which is why you may occasionally
see references to "Pinks" by some
of the forum regulars.

API Forums.

http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/community/forums.asp

This is
a special section of the forums for those working with the eBay API,
discussed in Chapter 8.