My regular readers will know that one of things I highly recommend doing with any online business is automating as many of your day to day tasks as possible.

From a personal point of view, one of tasks that takes up a lot of my time is answering emails. It isn't just answering email that eats up hours - sorting through and deleting spam and junk mail absorbs a lot of time too. In good old days, I used to get a couple of spam emails a day. Now it is closer to 1000 a day!

In fact, when you look at it, email isn't always best form of online communication. Not only is there junk mail issue to contend with but also fact that email is not 100% reliable. Emails do 'go missing' far more regularly than you might expect. Often this is simply because recipients email software has decided that a particular email is junk and has transferred it directly to 'Delete' folder. Other times it may be because recipients ISP has decided that email is junk and deleted it BEFORE it has even been seen by recipient! (Yes this really does happen - imagine if your postman sorted through your mail and made decision of which letters you want and which ones he should throw away?!)

One way to help avoid spam problem when dealing with customer support enquiries is to make use of a contact form on your website instead of posting an email address. This will certainly help to cut down on spam but it still means that you have problem of emails not getting to their destination (and when you have a frustrated customer waiting for assistance this is not ideal).

Therefore, probably best option on market presently is a full-blown helpdesk system. Setting up a dedicated helpdesk is a superb way of automating your customer support and speeding up process of dealing with enquiries and support emails. Not only that but if you use a system that allows customers to create 'tickets', you don't have to rely on email as your customers can login to a special web page and view both their tickets and your replies online.

Another feature of many helpdesk scripts is an 'FAQ' or 'Knowledgebase' section. This is simply a collection of most frequently asked questions/queries/problems along with answers and solutions. This means that customers can search knowledgebase and hopefully find answer to their question without having to contact Support at all.

Some of more advanced scripts will even scan customers support ticket prior to submitting it and then list a few possible answers to their questions just in case they didn't read through knowledgebase before typing ticket out - very clever stuff.

Duplicate listings occur when a seller posts more than 10 listings for identical items. The best way to list identical items is through eBay's Storefront, Fixed-Price or Multiple Item listings formats. Although there are reasons to list identical items at same time, enabling a single seller to list too many identical items at one time hurts buying experience.

If a seller lists in more than one category, categories must be relevant. Any additional identical listings will be ended by eBay. There are a few exceptions: Sellers who list general admission tickets in Tickets category may list up to 20 identical listings, and sellers of vehicle light bulbs may list up to 25 listings simultaneously.

No kids allowed: eBay requires that all users be at least 18 years of age.

Unpaid items: Winning bidders or buyers who fail to follow through with transaction face consequences. Nonpaying bidders receive two warnings from eBay before they are suspended. When a bidder doesn't pay, seller may request a credit from eBay for their Final Value Fee by filing an Unpaid Item alert.

Nonperforming seller: Significantly misrepresenting an item by not meeting terms and item description in listing, or failing to deliver an item for which you accepted payment, is a violation of eBay policies and may also be considered criminal fraud.

Outages: When eBay system experiences service outages, there is a structure in place to compensate users with credits on listing fees and/or listing extensions, based on type and length of outage.

Profanity: The use of language that is racist, hateful, sexual or obscene in nature in a public area is prohibited.

Prohibited and restricted items: As an eBay user, you are ultimately responsible for making sure that items you sell on eBay are legal according to all applicable jurisdictions and permitted by eBay policies.

Soliciting off-site sales: You may not circumvent eBay fees by using contact information obtained from eBay or any eBay service to complete a sale outside of eBay.

Threats: eBay policies prohibit making threats of physical harm to another user.

If you violate an eBay policy by either your action or content of your listings, you will typically receive an informational alert explaining violation and detailing any further action to be taken on your part. When deemed appropriate, eBay will end listing, and your listing fee will be refunded.