New Tools for eBay Sellers

The eBay Seller's News, March 18, 2008, Volume 8, No. 6

Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The Newsletter for Professional
eBay Sellers by:  Skip McGrath

In This Issue:

Musings

1. New Tools for eBay Sellers
2. Making Best Match Search Work for The New or Small eBay Seller
3. Niche of The Month, Vintage Music Tapes and CDs
4. Spruce Up Your Listing Copy to Increase Bids and Final Values
5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for Midmonth March 2008

"You can't leap a twenty foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps." ~ Old American Proverb

Musings

The newly revised and completely updated 2008 edition of The Complete eBay Marketing System is now shipping. We update our books about once a year.

The new edition contains all of the information related to the changes eBay announced in January. It has new fee schedules, information on DSRs, changes to the PowerSeller program and incorporates all of the new policies.

Whenever I release a new version, readers always come back to me and say they just bought a book a few weeks or months ago and can they upgrade to the new version. Just about all of the changes in the book have been addressed in this newsletter over the past couple of months. So if you purchased a book within the last year, look back through the newsletter archives and you will have all of the updates that I address in the book.

I have also recently updated my best-selling eBook, 10 Highly Profitable eBay Niche Businesses Anyone Can Do. We have replaced two of the niches that are no longer as profitable as they used to be with two new ones and added a new bonus niche.

In my blog last week, I reported on persistent rumors that eBay Live in Chicago might be the last eBay Live. I did hear back from eBay that this is not true and eBay plans to continue with eBay Live.

This is very good news, as eBay Live is the premier opportunity for people at all levels in eBay to meet members face to face and for members to interact with the people who control the buyer and seller experience.

If you are going to eBay Live, hotel rooms are going fast. eBay has some room blocks available and there are some really good deals on Hotwire.com. Registration just opened last week. Remember the sooner you sign up the lower your admission price to the event. Here is the link to register: http://pages.ebay.com/ebaylive

One of the new events this year is a wholesale sourcing event put on by AMD/ASD, the same folks who put on the big wholesale sourcing trade show in Las Vegas. So in addition to seeing all the eBay stuff you can also find wholesale products to source at eBay Live as well.

I will be speaking this year in a joint presentation with WorldWide Brands on the topic of wholesale sourcing for eBay. As soon as everything is nailed down, I will give the dates and times of my talk in a later issue of this newsletter.

The expanded safer payment requirements that eBay announced in January went into effect on March 17. Since January 2007, all new sellers have been required to offer PayPal or a merchant credit card as a payment option to their buyers. eBay has expanded this policy to sellers or items when they meet one or more of the following conditions:

• If you have more than 5% buyer dissatisfaction rate.
• If you have less than 100 feedback
• If your items are listed in categories with high rates of buyer complaints, including: Gift Certificates, Video Games, Cell Phones, Computers and Consumer Electronics

In addition to requiring PayPal, for transactions with a higher risk of buyer dissatisfaction, eBay may delay the release of funds paid through PayPal for up to 21 days. After 21 days the funds will be released if there is no dispute. The funds may be released earlier if the buyer leaves positive feedback, or if PayPal can confirm delivery of the item. However, your payments will not be held if you meet the following requirements:

• You have been an eBay member for 6 months or more, and
• Your total Feedback score is 100 or greater, and your buyer dissatisfaction percentage is less than 5%.
• Or, your average DSR is 4.5 or greater and you have received 20 or more DSRs in the last 12 months.

In reality this will only affect a very small number of sellers, and if you are serious about selling on eBay you should have a PayPal account. I don't see how anyone can survive as an eBay seller today that doesn't take PayPal.

Let's get started with this issue:

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1. New Tools for eBay Sellers

New Video Service - A British company called Vzaar has launched a free video service for eBay listings in the United States. Using Vzaar, eBay sellers can quickly and easily add video to their eBay listings.

The core service is available to all users for no charge. Special features tailored to the needs of PowerSellers are available for a low monthly fee.

Unlike other video services, Vzaar’s video player has been designed specifically to integrate with your eBay listing. Information, such as seller feedback and bidding time left on the auction is automatically displayed at the end of every video.

Vzaar makes it easy for sellers to add video into their listings, which has been proven to increase bids and final values for products where video is important. I asked the company if they would offer a special deal for my readers and they agreed to a 10% discount if you use this link: http://vzaar.com/info/skip_mcgrath and email vzaar at info@vzaar.com citing “Skip McGrath discount” to receive your savings.  (Offer good until April 18, 2008.)

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Reduce Your Shipping Costs – Did you know that between 5% and 10% of all shipments by the major private carriers are late –and when this happens, you are entitled to a refund of the shipping cost? Refund Technology audits shipments sent via DHL, FedEx, and UPS to determine if the carrier met their service guarantee.

When the ground or express package is late, Refund Technology gets your shipping charges refunded. There is no up front cost to you. They earn a commission on the amount refunded.

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I haven't written about Sellathon in a long time. If you want to know what this tool does, try and answer these questions:

1. How do most eBay visitors find your auctions?
2. What search terms are used?
3. What time (and day of the week) do they most often buy?
4. How much time do they spend looking at your items?

I am a big fan of the HammerTap eBay Research Tool to help you find this type of information about items selling on eBay, but the difference with Sellathon's View Tracker software is that is actually looks at your ongoing auctions.

This allows you to optimize your keywords (very important under Best Match) and see how your items are selling. For example, one of the items I sell, HammerTap told me the best time and day was Wednesday at 3:00PM. And that was true for the whole category. But Sellathon View Tracker told me that my best time and day for my specific item was Sunday and Monday at 4:00 PM. When I set my auctions to end at those times, my listing success rate went up about 12% and my final values increased by 7%.

Sellathon's View Tracker costs $4.95 a month or you can pay $49 for one full year of service.

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2. Making Best Match Search Work for The New or Small eBay Seller

Best Match is the new default for the eBay search engine and like many of the recent changes on eBay it has been very controversial. I could write about the controversy, but that wouldn't help my readers. eBay is what it is and if you are going to sell on the platform, you have to adapt.

I was struggling with best match so I reached out to eBay for some help and as it turned out they were very helpful. Once best match launched, the sales of my hand made steel firepits on eBay took a nosedive. When I searched for them using items ending soonest or sorting by price they came up pretty well. But, when I searched for them in best match, very few of my listings came up at all. One of the folks at eBay looked at my listings and pointed out two things. First was that I was missing a very important key word that buyers were using. I don't know of many people who use wood burning firepits indoors, so it never occurred to me to use the keyword outdoor, but it turns out that this is a very important keyword. I went to HammerTap to verify this and it turned out to be accurate.

The other important issue was the category. I guess I missed it, but some time ago eBay added the subcategory of fire pits to the Home & Garden>Patio & Grilling. I missed that and my firepits were listed in Charcoal Grills & Accessories. so I made those two changes and suddenly my listings were back on top. If you search the term outdoor firepit grill you will see that my listings now are at or near the top of the listings.

The other factor that has not yet taken affect is the counting of your DSR score seller satisfaction rating in best match. This will start in a couple of weeks. Since my shipping DSR score is 4.9, this will also help me come up near the top of the listings.

The exact algorithm that eBay uses for best match is only known to eBay, but if your items are not coming up well in the best match search, try these tips:

• Make sure you are in both the correct category and sub-category
• Research the best performing keywords. Besides using a tool like HammerTap and Sellathon, look at the completed auctions of your competitors and see what keywords they are using.
• Be sure and use Item Specifics if they are available for your category.
• If the item you are selling is widely available both new and used, be sure and use one of those words in your title.
• Ending time is one of the sorts, so you may wish to list more auctions so you always have one close to ending.
• Keep your customer service level high and charge a fair price for shipping so you keep your DSRs high.

Try these tips and see if they improve your search rankings.

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3. Niche of The Month, Vintage Music Tapes and CDs

The music category on eBay is very crowded, the margins are low, listing success rates are low and the category is dominated by some very large sellers. However, there are some great niches in the music arena. By far most of the CDs sold on eBay are for current and popular music and artists and music from the last 10 years.

Once you start looking at specialized music, you see fewer of the large sellers, more niche sellers, higher sell through rates and better margins. Here is an example. Earlier this week I listed a boxed set of Folk Music from the 1960s and 1970s. Here is the link to the auction.

I am not sure where this will end when you read this, but after the first two days, the listing had 70 hits, 7 bids and was up to $59.00. This set was $10 at a garage sale. So even if it sold now, I would make a 500% markup. I suspect it will end up selling for about $75 by the time the auction ends.

Boxed sets do the best, but it is not just boxed sets that do well. Earlier this year I sold a 10-year old Ray Charles CD for $12 that I bought at the local thrift shop for 50-cents.

The Ray Charles CD is an exception, but normally what you want to do is avoid highly popular artists and look for more obscure artists, and stay away from pop music. Instead focus on folk, jazz, ethnic music, and other obscure types of tunes.

Niche music is not an area I specialize in. It is just one of those things I keep my eyes open for when I travel around, visit thrift shops and garage sales. The other place I find older niche CDs is at the twice-yearly library sales in our town. I once bought a small boxed set of Spanish guitar music at a library sale for $2.00 that sold on eBay for $87.00.

Not every set or CD is going to sell for big bucks. A lot of them will sell in the $10 to $20 range. But when you consider you can often buy these for less than $2.00, it's worth experimenting with. Here are some examples:

One key thing to remember is CONDITION ! Whenever you buy a CD, inspect it carefully for scratches. If it is scratched DON'T BY IT. You can probably sell a scratched CD, but if you do, be prepared to receive a negative feedback. I go to the trouble of playing a CD before I sell it, just to be sure everything is OK.

Besides CDs, you should also be on the lookout for old Cassette tapes in good condition (and cassette players as well). Here are some examples of recent closed listings for cassette tapes.

They don't go for big money, but I have literally seen cassette tapes selling at garage sales for pennies, so the margins are pretty good.

The thing I like about CDs and cassette tapes is that they are small, lightweight, don't take up a lot of room and are easy to ship. This is a great business for someone with limited space and resources.

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4. Spruce Up Your Listing Copy to Increase Bids and Final Values

Mostly I sell on eBay and I usually spend a lot of time looking at competitors, but I also buy on eBay. I was looking for something on eBay this week and kept running across auction listings with incomplete or hard to read descriptions.

The descriptions I found were either too short, they contained too little information, or they had long, hard to read paragraphs in small type that were difficult to read online. The other extreme was descriptions in giant multi-colored type, centered on the screen that required me to scroll endlessly through the page to get all of the information I needed to make a decision.

Here are some tips for writing good descriptions. There are more in The Complete eBay Marketing System, but these are the important ones.

• State exactly what you are selling in the first paragraph. I like to start out with" "You are bidding on a ......" First of all that suggests an action to take and then you list exactly what you are offering. Don't worry if you repeat the title, but be sure and include important information such as size, color, new, used, any attachments, etc.
  
• Write in short blocks of type surrounded by white space (like the paragraphs in this article.
  
• Use bullets or lists to list all of the important information about a product. It is easier to read features, specifications and accessories in a list rather than a run on sentence.
  
• Write complete descriptions. When you sit down to write a description, ask yourself, "what information would I need about this product to make a buying decision?"
  
• Use bold, and/or colored type sparingly and avoid centered type. Only use these for very important information or the occasional headline.
  
• Use the spelling checker!
  
• Be very clear about shipping. How you ship, how much it costs, how long it should take to arrive and so on.
  
• Stress any benefits the buyer will derive from the product
  
• Be personal. What makes eBay unique from other online buying is that people are buying from other people --not an online megastore.
  
• Don't forget to ask for the sale. Put something such as "Don't lose out to a sniper. Place your best bid now," at the end of your listing.

Print this list out. (Highlight the list and hit Print. Then click the button that says print selection) Now go look at your auctions and use this as a check list. Tuning up your listing copy with these tips should bring you better results.

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 5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for Midmonth March 2008

If you are constantly looking for drop shippers and small quantity wholesale sources, your best long-term bet is WorldWide Brands OneSource. They still offer my readers a discount if you use this link, but I was told this might not last too much longer. Other than my own material, World Wide Brands is the only wholesale information source that I currently recommend.

Buy 4 Less sell overstock and refurbished consumer electronics, digital cameras, and GPS units in small lots --usually 25 to 30 or sometimes less.

888 Digital is a distributor of digital cameras including Nikon as well as other electronics. You will need a sales tax number and have to fill out an application before seeing the prices.

Another large photo distributor is Gamla Enterprises, Wholesale Distributors of Digital Cameras, TV's, Media Players, Photographic and Electronic Equipment. We carry a diverse assortment of items such as Digital Cameras, APS Cameras, 35mm equipment, Lenses, Binoculars, Flashes, Tripods, Cases and a whole lot more.

JD Yeats sells a nice line of home and garden equipment.

Iconeum is a wholesaler of Religious art and jewelry. They offer a broad range of religious products, religious giftware and services at wholesale prices.

Sharp Creations has a very unique product. they sell a line of Tooth Fairy pillows with little pockets in them for the tooth and the money the Tooth Fairly leaves behind. And --they will drop ship for online sellers.

PDI International carries a range of LED light products such as flashlights, camping lanterns, headlights and other LED products. Contact them through the web site for pricing.

Another similar company but with higher end products is Coast Cutlery. They sell knives and LED light products.

Shelter Distributors sells a nice line of binoculars, magnifiers, knives and other martial arts equipment.

Hot Records sells specialty music, instructional and entertainment CDs and DVDs and books. Their website is under reconstruction, but you can email them through the web site for product list and pricing. Another related company is World Trading Center. They sell their products in retail displays, but you can buy a selection of products and just toss the display packaging.

The Russian Source does not have a website, but they have an interesting line of goods from Russia and the old Soviet Union. Email Yury at russmil@comcast.net and ask for a price and product list.

Have you ever looked at the Gift Basket business? The Huckleberry People sell a nice line of products that you could us to make up gift baskets. Their website is also undergoing updating. If its not working, email them at hucklepeople@aol.com.

Trevco Inc. is a large wholesale distributor of licensed products including Zippo lighters, flasks, sportswear and home and garden décor.

That's it for this month. See you in April

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.