Are Amazon WebStores A Good Alternative to eBay?

The eBay Seller's News, August 11, 2008, Volume 8, No. 13

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

In This Issue:

Musings

Are Amazon WebStores A Good Alternative to eBay?
Can New and Small Sellers Still Succeed and Make a Living on eBay?
More Changes to Best Match Search - This One Could Actually Help Small Sellers
PowerSellers: Are You Taking Advantage of the UPS 23% PowerSeller Discount
New eBay Wholesale Sources for August 2008

"Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all that he can."
~ Henry Drummond

eBay has promised lots of new announcements in early August including more info on feedback and DSRs. But a surprise announcement came a couple of days ago when eBay suspended DSR calculations and everything they connect with including Best Match search results and fee discounts. It seems eBay has been calculating DSRs incorrectly for a while and finally reacted to seller complaints and suspended the system while they figure out a fix.

We will be watching for a fix and the new announcements and comment on them in our blog. One of them includes not counting neutrals as negatives, so some sellers with neutrals within the past year should see an improvement in their feedback scores.

eBay also announced that sometime in the Fall eBay will introduce a system whereby sellers can work out resolutions with buyers and get negative feedback removed. I would look for this sometime after Labor Day.

In another major disappointment for sellers, eBay did clarify the links policy -the clarification came on July 31 in an announcement from John McDonald of eBay's Trust & Safety. Simply put: NO Change. The links policy stays the same despite concern from not only sellers but many of the third party providers who supply various eBay services. Here is the salient part of John's announcement:

"After my announcement, we received questions and concerns from sellers about this change. At eBay Live!, our staff made it clear we would be going back to reconsider some aspects of the policy around how third-party links would be treated.

As promised, we've been reviewing all the different types of situations that our sellers have brought to our attention, and we've been meeting with additional stakeholders to understand how our policy update would impact them. After this additional research and discussion, we've decided to leave our Links Policy as it was before my May announcement. There will be no Links Policy updates at this time."

The last words of the quote "...at this time," leaves eBay some wiggle room, but I don't see them making any changes that will benefit sellers. Although the policy is cloaked under the guise of Trust & Safety and improving the buyer experience, it is all about the future of eBay designed to cloak seller indentify and contact information as much as possible from buyers. Here is a link to a page with all of the links policies spelled out: http://pages.ebay.com/help/index/L.html It pays to read these as there are a lot of traps that can get your account suspended if you goof up or break the rules.

Rumors abound that eBay will soon announce a pay-per-click (PPC) keyword program similar to the one they used to have a few years ago. That program was administered by an outside third party and never worked very well. Since then eBay has partnered with Yahoo in advertising and Yahoo has a lot of expertise in this area, so sellers are hopeful that they can help eBay come up with a good program. So if you can't get your listings found in Best Match, eBay will take your money to help your listings be found with PPC advertising.

I often receive emails addressed to Griff. Griff is Jim "Griff" Griffith (aka Uncle Griff) who works for eBay. He is the author of The eBay Bible and the host of the Power Seller Hour on eBay Radio. I often appear on the Power Seller Hour and I am a contributing editor to eBay Radio, but I do NOT work for eBay (as I am often accused of on the eBay boards).

Griff and I are about the same age, but Griff works for eBay and I work for myself. Griff is the guy with the beard. As you can see from the photo at the top of this page, I do not have a beard.

Griff is a very nice guy. He is essentially a spokesperson for eBay and this has been a very tough year for him dealing with critics and lots of unhappy sellers. I know Griff and I know he has a soft spot and a lot of respect for sellers -but as an eBay employee he has to respect and work with their position on issues and policies. Yet Griff has always been a voice for sellers within eBay and for that we are all appreciative.

My latest book, How To Make Good Money Selling Used Books on eBay, Amazon and the Internet has been selling very well -in fact it has been the best selling eBook I have written to date. One of the things people kept asking about was how to price books on Amazon and they had lots of questions about book selection. One of the free bonuses with purchase of the book is access to a series of free reports that update the information in the book. I just uploaded the third bonus report. So if you recently bought the book, go to your download page (I did tell you to bookmark it) and you can download the report. If you haven't bought the book and have some interest, you can read about it here.

Enough musing around --let's get started with this month's issue:

top]

1. Are Amazon WebStores A Good Alternative to eBay?

It's no secret that a lot of eBay sellers are struggling. Some categories are swamped with listings from large sellers; people are struggling with Best Match, Feedback and DSRs. So, many sellers are looking for other channels to sell in. One of my long term sellers is Steve Floyd an eBay seller of sports collectibles and memorabilia. Steve spent last weekend setting up an Amazon WebStore. As with any new website he wasn't expecting much -it was more of an experiment. But he was in for a pleasant surprise. When Steve told me about his results, I asked him to write a short report about his experience. Here is what Steve had to say:

I started selling online in April 2005 and I read everything that Skip had written to get a good start. Within a short time I was making a profit on eBay. I made Power Seller a short time after and went with any changes eBay came up with every July. Even while making a profit I still felt the need to have alternate sites of income. I tried stand alone sites, sites within other market places and a Yahoo store. I was never successful with Pay-per-click, I have blogs, Squidoo lens's, facebook and stumble upon accounts, but still one thing was consistent, it is hard to generate traffic!!!

When I had heard that Amazon had passed eBay in traffic and sales recently I became very interested and took another look at Amazon. I had tried selling there before but didn't like how they held payments for 2 weeks, or how I had to use someone else's images and descriptions to list my products on their market place. So I was never successful on Amazon. Then I heard about Amazon's new WebStores. They had 3 features I really liked and couldn't find anywhere else in my past experiences.

Customers could use their own Amazon accounts to pay for products and didn't need PayPal.

Anything I would bulk upload into my Amazon Webstore would automatically be fed into the Amazon marketplace for an additional fee.

I could bulk upload images by listing the http address for that image.

I was looking for a place to put around 20-30,000 products and it needed to be seen!!

On July 25^th I started building a basic site on the Amazon Webstore, using their generic templates, a logo made by a friend and a goal to load as much inventory as fast as possible. I read something a long time ago that seems to work for me, "Products don't have to be perfect to make money but they have to be available"!! The site still needs some work, but I will redesign the site later after all the inventory is loaded.

On July 26^th I submitted my domain, www.thesportscollectiblesshop.com to the 3 major search engines. I had my first sale on the 26^th and by the 31^st --less than 1 week after I built my site, I was getting traffic from Google when people typed keywords that matched my products.

In my 3+ years of working online and studying eBay, retail sales, niches and internet marketing I had never had any of my sites or blogs indexed that quickly by any of the search engine spiders. This new domain has NOT been blogged, linked to Squidoo, has not been stumbled....just a manual submission to the 3 major search engines -yet I am getting great traffic -and sales after only a few days.

Amazon technical support is at the top of the list in customer service."

Steve Floyd

The point of sharing Steve's experience with you is not to convince you to leave eBay. Steve still sells on eBay. But all of us today need to look into additional channels to sell.

[top]

2. Can New and Small Sellers Still Succeed and Make a Living on eBay?

It is no secret I have been critical of the new policies emanating from eBay over the past year. I am not unsympathetic to the problems and issues facing eBay, but many of the policies have been implemented at the expense of the smaller seller. eBay is in the habit of firing a howitzer cannon at the problem when a few well-placed rifle shots would have worked as well.

eBay's new management seems to be taking eBay in an entirely new direction and I think the jury is still out on whether these changes will help eBay restore some of its lost luster. Wall Street seems to agree with me, as eBay's stock has been depressed since the changes rolled out.

Having said that I want to make it clear that I am not abandoning eBay as a selling platform and I have nothing but hope that eBay will succeed in bringing buyers back to the platform.

I have invested the last 9 years in building my eBay business and my eBay education and training business. Yes, I am expanding beyond eBay and will continue to do so. It is never a wise business decision to put all your turtles in one aquarium (I get so tired of the phrase eggs in one basket).

eBay is still the largest online shopping venue, has the most members and still offers the easiest path for the new or small seller to start an internet business. I know it's not as easy as it was a few years ago -but compared to starting a website and competing for customers among the millions and millions of other websites, eBay is still by far the easiest way to get started selling online. And, yes, although I have been critical of eBay, I am not a full-time eBay critic. The giant PowerSellers have plenty of resources. My role is to help new and small to medium sized sellers maximize their eBay experience.

The changes that eBay has made have pretty much killed the opportunity for the smaller sellers to sell hot or popular brand name consumer goods. The large sellers dominate the listings and the search results and eBay is now doing deals with some of these big sellers to bring in more listings. So what to do?

There are three good opportunities for small sellers today:

New products - The single best opportunity on eBay today is to work in a narrow niche market with some type of specialty product. The more you specialize the less competition you will have and the easier time people will have finding your listings.
Your own products - this has always been a good area for eBay sellers as long as you can create a product someone wants. This can be anything from handcrafted jewelry, your own photographs, music or artwork to handcrafted gourmet food items.
Used Products - The sale of all types of used goods on eBay is huge. It can be almost anything that is allowed to sell on the site from cars to clothing and anything in between. This includes all types of collectibles, antiques, vintage items and just used stuff. I sell used books on eBay and have recently sold used, small appliances, a motorcycle, building materials, jewelry and some great 1980s vintage Nikon camera equipment that netted me over $3000.

If you can find the wholesale source for the latest Wii games or X-box player or iPhone and you can buy them in sufficient quantity then good luck to you. You'll need it because there are so many sellers selling those items that the profit margins are tiny.

But when it comes to eBay, my money is on those small niche markets and finding those vintage items where I can make a 200% to 500% markup. Yes they take a little more work to find, but when you do the profit potential is much higher and the risk much less.

[top]

3. More Changes to Best Match Search - This One Could Actually Help Small Sellers

eBay announced some changes last week that may actually help small sellers -especially if you are working in a niche.

Back in May, eBay announced changes to the multiple listing and choice policy:

The removal of the Choice policy gets rid of the restriction that has required sellers to list individual listings for each size, color or configuration of the same item.
The removal of the Multiple Listings Limit policy ends the 15-item rule that has governed how many identical listings a seller can have listed at the same time.

The problem has been however, that more identical listings -from mostly larger sellers have had the effect of swamping the listings and making it hard for other items to stand out. So last week, eBay made the following changes:

Starting this week, the display of multiple identical items from the same seller will be limited to one in Search results. An item is considered identical if it has the same title and the same listing format, and the listing chosen for display will be determined by the sort option that the buyer chooses. We will be rolling this out to all sort options by next week. When multiple auction-style listings with the same title have a different number of bids and different prices, these are no longer considered identical and will all be displayed.

Also, the number of unique listings (listings for different items) per seller will be up to ten per page. In a case where a seller has a number of items-for instance 20-that could potentially show up in the same search results, 10 will be shown on the first page, and the other 10 will be on the second page. (These improvements go hand in hand with the removal of the Multiple Listings Limit policy.)

These changes should help your listings appear against the multiple listings of larger sellers. But, of course it is still affected by the vagaries of the Best Match search results.

[top]

4. PowerSellers: Are You Taking Advantage of the UPS 23% PowerSeller Discount

Here is another reason to work towards achieving PowerSeller status. UPS has a special discount program for all eBay sellers -but frankly it isn't that great. However if you are a PowerSeller you are eligible for an additional discount under the new program.

PowerSellers are eligible to request enrollment in the program, which provides enrollees a discount of up to 23% off UPS Ground Daily Rates. These savings are in addition to savings you may already be receiving through the UPS Special Pricing Program (which offers UPS Daily Rates to all eBay sellers). eBay PowerSeller are eligible to request enrollment in the program. If successfully enrolled in the program, your savings under this program will be based on UPS service selected, weight of each shipment, and value of your weekly UPS shipments. Additional details, including information on which shipments qualify for savings, are available in the "How Much can I save" and "FAQ" links at www.ebay.com/UPSPowerSellerSavings.

To request enrollment in the program, visit www.ebay.com/UPSPowerSellerSavings You can enroll in the program using an existing UPS account or, if you don't have one, a new UPS account may be opened for you with your enrollment. Within five to seven business days after requesting enrollment, you will receive an email regarding your request. The message will include your enrollment status. If successfully enrolled in the program, the message will also include the date your program rates will be effective and the UPS account number to which any applicable discounts under the program will apply.

In their information, eBay doesn't exactly make clear why someone would or would not qualify -I guess you have to apply to find out.

If you ship from PayPal, it is important to note that once your discounted rates are effective, PayPal will only display published UPS Daily Rates. However, the correct discounted rate will be deducted from your PayPal account when the transaction clears.

If you open a new UPS account, follow these steps to add the new UPS account number to your PayPal account:

Log into your PayPal account.
Under the "My Profile" tab, click the "Profile" tab.
Under Selling Preferences, click "Shipping Preferences."
Under UPS Information click "Add UPS account number."
Input the new UPS account number sent to you via email.

If you already receive discounts with your existing UPS account, when you submit your program enrollment form, UPS will look up your account information and work with you to decide which discount plan saves you the most.

For questions or help getting started with the UPS Savings Program for eBay PowerSellers, check out www.ebay.com/UPSPowerSellerSavings These discounts are not available at The UPS Store locations.

[top]

5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for August 2008

Now is the time to place your orders for seasonal merchandise for Halloween and Thanksgiving. Terry's Village is a great supplier of this type of merchandise. A lot of these goods tend to be small, low-cost items, but they do lend themselves to selling in groups or lots. Terry's Village is running a special for the next month. If you place an order for $100 you save 15%. Order $300 or more and you save 25%.

I came across a couple of new wholesale apparel sites. I don't know anything about these companies, but it looked like there were some pretty good deals. The first site is Wholesale Fashion Square. They are offering a special of free shipping on orders of $200 or more. The other site is 1Best Deal 4 Less.

Smart Blonde is one of the largest wholesale merchandise suppliers of novelty aluminum signs, novelties, and license plates in the country.

Empire Discount is not a real wholesaler -they are a deep discount selling site, but they do have great prices on name brand toys at below wholesale on a lot of Mattel, Fisher Price, Hasbro, Lego, Milton Bradley, Little Tikes, Ertl, and many more. And they offer 50% to 60% off on Special Bulk Deals.

I am often asked for suppliers of pet products. RetailPets.com sells to Pet Product Retailers, Vets, and Non-Profit Groups. RetailPets.com - Wholesale Pet Supply & Pet Product Distributor of wholesale pet supplies including dog toy, dog, pet, dog breed, cat, kitten, Nylabone, Kong, Booda, Kyjen, VO Toys and Ethical.

American Pet Pro provides wholesale pet grooming supplies and equipment to pet care professionals.

Rover Reps is a group of Pet Products manufacturers reps who offer pet supplies to resellers.

The Wuu Jau Sales Company of Edmond OK is a large wholesale distributor of all types of knives, swords, airsoft guns and other products related to that genre.

The Vertex Company sells a large line of Airsoft guns and they have a dropshipping program.

All types of scales are big sellers on eBay and the web. One of the best suppliers is Awesome Wholesale - They sell Digital Pocket Scales, Digital Table Top Scales, Ohaus Scales, Calibration Weights & Batteries .

Well that's it for August. In September we will be back to doing two newsletters a month. (Yes - we are taking some time off in August too). In the meantime, be sure and check our blog for the latest news, tips and tricks about eBay.

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

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