( Table Of Contents )

1. Introduction
2. Volcanic Software News
3. eBay changes and additions
4. Online auctions in the news
5. Cool Auction Site of the month
6. Auction tip of the month
7 . Closure
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Introduction

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Volcanic Software monthly newsletter. Summer's officially over and Fall is upon us. For most of us, soon the weather will be blustery and it'll be a good time to stay inside and surf online auctions! Several portions of this newsletter have been removed at least for now (due to lack of viewer response and not enough viewers). In the future the three small portions of this newsletter that were removed may be put back, but as it stands right now I will only be having the seven sections as listed in the contents from now on. With that said, here comes issue number four!
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Volcanic Software News

Not much has been changed with any of the utilities or the Volcanic Software website since last issue. There have been a couple of requests for tutorials, and they are available with all others and can be found at http://www.volcanicsoft.com/support.htm . The two new tutorials include how to get a sidebar image to properly align in Dominant Ad Creator listings, and also how to submit your ad created with Dominant Ad Creator using eBay's new Turbo Lister. Dominant Ad Creator has received a few more 5 star ratings since the last newsletter I believe. Other than that, I feel that the website and software I have made available are complete as they stand (with the exception of new tutorials and such being added), but I am always open to suggestions if you have any.
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eBay changes and additions

One large enhancement to the eBay/PayPal system that will certainly make both sellers' and buyers' lives easier is the ability to combine payments (or payment requests) so that if you purchase or sell multiple items to the same person, you can combine the total automatically and send the payment/invoice to the other party. If you are still confused, please visit http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/combined_payments/index.html for a complete tutorial on the topic. At the time of this writing, the feature has not yet been released to the public but within the next day or two it should be available.

Another new feature just recently added to eBay's website is the new 'Pay' link found on the main header of the website. When a logged in visitor clicks the 'Pay' link, they will be taken to a page which displays all items that they have won but not yet paid for (via PayPal anyways). This feature will make buyers' obligations more apparent to them and hopefully will reduce the number of non-paying bidders!

One last feature that eBay has implemented which will hopefully decrease the non-paying bidder problems is the addition of a educational pop-up. This pop-up will appear after you send a user a 'non-paying buyer' alert, whenever the user signs in to eBay (for the first seven days afterwards anyways).
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Online auctions in the news

Have you ever purchased or sold an item on eBay, and became good friends with the other party afterwards? What would you do if you sold an item on eBay, only to find out that the winner was your long-lost sibling you never knew you had? This same scenario happened to Bob Kunath this past month, when he purchased a cookie jar on eBay and discovered the seller was indeed his long lost brother (of over 40 years). The seller had no idea that he ever had a brother. Rather than me explaining the entire situation, just read this highly intriguing article!

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-917brotherquest,0,2973701.story?coll=sfla-news-florida (http://tinyurl.com/ozlv)
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Cool Auction Site of the month

The awesome (IMHO) site I have to show you tonight allows you to view the statistics of how many items are listed on eBay at a time. You can sort by day, week, month, or see yearly reports. At a glimpse you can see a visual graph that illustrates eBay's selling habits. Its tough to explain, yet very easy to understand once at the site! http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND
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Auction tip of the month

EBay introduced a new feature (not too long ago) that saves all of the items you looked at recently in a list, that is viewable at the bottom of any search result page. Although this does have its uses, there are a lot of people who run through MANY auctions before finding one they want, and thus this feature may simply become a distraction. Luckily, eBay allows you to disable the function... Simple follow the instructions below:

1.) Login to the 'My eBay' portion of eBay's website.
2.) Click on the 'Preferences' tab.
3.) Click on the link tilted, 'Change my Recently Viewed settings'.
4.) If asked to login again, do so.
5.) Finally, click to enable or disable the feature, then click 'Save Preferences'
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Closure

Here's the end of issue number four. I realize this issue was shorter in length than most of the previous ones, I guess there just wasn't much auction-talk to discuss this month. Either way, I hope you enjoyed this issue and you'll hear from me again at the end of October!

Sincerely,

Matt
http://www.volcanicsoft.com