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Update to The Complete eBay Marketing System Now AvailableThe eBay Seller's News, September 3, 2008, Volume 8, No. 14 Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The
Newsletter for Professional
eBay had promised lots of new announcements in early August and they came through. eBay invited me (and some other bloggers and newsletter writers) to the eBay campus in San Jose the day before the announcements were made to get a briefing on them and to have a chance to speak with several high-level eBay execs. I covered the announcements in my blog and just finished a free eBook for my readers that you can download. The announcement details and the link to download the book are in the first item below. I am a frequent guest on eBay Radio. I haven't been on eBay Radio since the new policies were announced, but there have been two really good shows regarding the new policies you may want to listen to. The first one is with John McDonald, head of eBay US Trust and Safety who talks about the new electronic-only payment policy. You can listen to a recording of the interview here. The other important segment is with Todd Lutwak, Senior Director of Seller Development who talks about strategies sellers can use to adapt to the new policies. You can listen to Todd at this link. Each interview is about 15 minutes and they are both well worth listening too. The new My eBay Beta Test is pretty much a flop. I was one of the eBay members who were originally selected to participate in the beta test of the new My eBay page. Last week eBay opened it up to everyone. If you would like to see the beta, look for the link that says Try The New My eBay Beta, that appears in the upper right of the page when you open your My eBay page. Buyers seem to like it, but so far it is pretty much flopping with sellers. You can read the comments from sellers and even vote on the format at a special discussion board for the new My eBay Page. There is another beta test that is going well. It is the new Search format (what eBay calls Finding 2.0). This one I am a fan of, so eBay seems to be batting .500 in major platform tool changes. If you would like to play with the new search experience (Finding 2.0), just perform a search on eBay and when the results page comes up, click on the link in the upper right of the page that says Try It Now. There are still some minor glitches, but all-in-all I really like the new search experience. There are two products I would like to plug this month: Google Snatch and Auction Acrobat. I have managed to negotiate a discount for my readers on both programs. I mentioned these in my blog over the Labor Day Weekend, but I know many of you were away enjoying the last of summer so I thought I would list them here as well. Let's talk about Auction Acrobat first. As you know eBay changed the rules so that they no longer allow eBooks, videos and other electronic products to be delivered electronically thru eBay listings. If you want to sell information-based products, you now have to deliver them physically in printed form or on a DVD or CD. Auction Acrobat is a really cool system. I contacted the originator, Paul Ponna and asked him if he would set up a special deal for my readers and he agreed. If you act now, Paul is offering my readers $30 off. But, you must use this link to get the discount. A few weeks ago I purchase a system called Google Snatch. Although my web sites are ranked fairly high and I get a good amount of organic traffic, I still spend a ton of money on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Google Snatch is saving me a fortune. This guy Latif, who wrote this, lives in the UK but his product works well in the US too. He came up with a system to get tons of free traffic to your website or blog without spending a dime on PPC. I bought it and tried it and it's already working -and I am still only half-way through the techniques. So if you have a website, or would like to set up a website to make money with affiliate marketing on generating traffic to make money from Google AdWords, instead of spending money with Google AdSense, check out Google Snatch. I spoke with Latif and he agreed to a very temporary discount for my readers. This link will only give you the discount for a few days. If you see this later and have to pay full price, I still suggest you go ahead as I did when I got the product -and still got my money's worth. Best of all, if for any reason it doesn't work out for you, Latif offers a full money-back guarantee. Click here to read about Google Snatch. That's all the short items for now, so let's get started with this month's topics: [top] 1. Update to The Complete eBay Marketing System Now Available I last updated the Complete eBay Marketing System with a major revision in March of 2008. I also did a few small revisions in May, so anyone who has purchased since that time has the latest issue that incorporates the latest eBay fees and policy announcements up to the new ones announced last week. eBay announced several major changes last week including announcements about new fixed-price listing fees, search, seller standards, and electronic-only payments. I covered these in my blog with one post on the first day that summarized the changes and then I did one post per day on each of the policies. I was about to revise the Complete eBay Marketing System to include these but decided to wait because there are still more changes coming from eBay over the next few months. Instead, I created a 30-page eBook that explains the changes and how they affect eBay sellers -along with some additional information. The book is called The Future of eBay - An update to the Complete eBay Marketing System incorporating the new policies announced by eBay in August 2008 and comments on the near-term future of eBay for eBay sellers. So if you have not yet obtained a copy of the Complete eBay Marketing System, you can get one now and grab a copy of this free eBook, that will effectively update all of the information. You can click on the link below to download your free copy. I have set it as a PDF file that will allow printing if you want to read it offline. I also decided to make it free for my readers and affiliates to give away. You may not change it or sell it, but please feel free to give it away as a stand-alone item or a free bonus item for something you are selling. Here is the link to download your free copy of The Future of eBay If you are a member of my affiliate program, here is the link to put into an email to someone or a blog or website: <a href="http://www.skipmcgrath.com/products/future-ebay-new-policies.shtml?img=32&kbid=XXXX">Click Here</a> Just replace the XXXX with your affiliate number. [top] 2. How to Improve Your Seller DSR Scores Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) have been with us now for several months. Sellers are still grousing about them -and there are some inequities in the system, but it's now the system and I can assure you they won't be going away. Let's take a moment to review the four areas that buyers rate sellers on:
Getting good ratings is critically important to your eBay business for three reasons:
So what are some of the best practices used by sellers with high DSR
ratings? Here are my Top
eBay also has a page with some best practices to improve feedback and DSRs that you may find helpful. You can link to it here. We do all of these things and we still get the occasional poor rating, but overall we have managed to keep our ratings above 4.7 and this month we went up to 4.8 so we will get the 15% fee discount. So these steps will work to improve your ratings. No matter how well you do, there will always be wacky buyers, things that happen beyond your control, and you will make the occasional mistake -even the best of us screw up once in a while. But don't get discouraged if your ratings take a dip. Just keep working at it. The other thing you should do is keep the mathematics of the system working to your advantage. Even if you are a small seller, try and launch at least 10 auctions per week. [top] 3. The Future of eBay - New Policies Not Yet Announced Predicting what eBay is going to do has always been a hazardous undertaking. I can't remember the number of times I have been wrong -but I have also been right a number of times. So why stop now? Here are a few things I am pretty sure of and a couple of "out-there" possibilities that you may want to mull over. eBay Express will go away. This one is not a big a secret. eBay will "end-of-life" eBay Express by the end of the year. eBay Express was designed to attract new customers looking for fixed price goods, but in the end it only attracted existing eBay members. eBay will introduce a multi-seller shopping cart - eBay Express was not a big success, but one part of it was. Buyers liked the ability to purchase items from more than one seller in one session and pay for it with one checkout payment. In other words, a buyer could buy one item from me, one from you and one from someone else and checkout with one payment. eBay would then send each seller their share of the payment. This idea has a lot of currency within eBay and I suspect development is already underway. eBay Mandated Shipping Rates will expand to more categories - One of the announcement last week was the notice that eBay will begin mandating fixed shipping charges in several of the media categories (books, movies, games, etc). Amazon has been setting fixed shipping rates for some time and I fully expect eBay to roll this out over time. One problem is that you can sell anything on eBay and many goods are used goods, whereas on Amazon you can only sell items that have an ISBN number or UPC code. eBay will have to figure out a way to do this. It will be fairly easy with categories where all of the products weigh about the same -for example, shoes. But this will be more difficult in other categories where the size, weight and value of items varies widely -example Barbeque Grills. We sell a product called the Freedom Tailgating Grill that sells in the $300 range and weighs 70 pounds. There are several other BBQ grills in the $300 range that only weigh about 20 pounds. So that presents a challenge. And you can't just base it on weight, because my grill comes in three separate boxes, where the others come in only one. This can get pretty complex, very quickly. The trend towards Fixed Price Listings will grow - Fixed Price listings are growing for one big reason -buyers like them. I think it is safe to say that eBay will continue to make changes that attempt to give buyers what they are looking for. eBay will continue to be a huge marketplace for collectible, used and vintage goods but I can see the day coming when eBay will segment and buyers will have a choice of the types of merchandise they are exposed to. This is already happening to some extent with the Item Specifics search utility whereby buyers can search for new or used items separately. But the day could come when eBay actually further segments or even splits the platform. Frankly I would welcome this. Fees will remain stable for now - eBay's current competitive market position and slowing growth has reduced their pricing power. There may be some minor tweaks to fees, but I don't see any large fee increases on the near term horizon. If the new policies can attract buyers -and therefore sellers -back to the platform, eBay will regain their pricing power and continue to raise fees. Fee increases aren't some kind of nefarious plot, they are done in the normal course of business. But even fees on eBay are susceptible to the laws of supply and demand. If eBay can deliver the buyers then can -and will, charge more for their services and access to the platform. Expensive Art, Antiques and Luxury items will migrate to other platforms - This is already happening to some extent. In the past eBay had visions of being a worldwide online market that could compete with the major auction houses. I even remember a conversation with a high-level manager at eBay a few years ago who predicted that soon you would see Picassos selling on eBay for $40 million. Well I don't see that happening. There are already some alternative auction sites for fine art and antiques and sites for expensive jewelry like www.bidz.com which have been very successful. And the big auction houses like, Christies, Butterfields and Sotheby's are getting into the online game. I still see eBay as being a place to sell art, antiques and collectibles in the low to moderate price range, but the number of expensive items is declining -and probably will continue. Keyword Advertising will come back to eBay - I am surprised that it has taken so long. When eBay signed up with Yahoo a couple of years ago, I thought eBay would use Yahoo's expertise in keyword advertising to replace the old keyword program that eBay killed in 2006. Advertising has always been a great profit center for eBay. eBay gets millions of visitors a day and companies like HP, Classmates.com, Free Credit Report, and others pay eBay high rates for banner advertising on the search results page. This has always been a bone of contention among sellers. eBay has strict rules against us doing anything to take business away from the platform, yet when buyers come onto eBay they are serving up ads that take people away from eBay. I did a search for Digital Photo Light Tent which is one of the items I sell on eBay. My listings came up pretty well -several on the first page. But right above my listing was a large banner advertisement for AT&T cell phone service. When I refreshed the page it changed to a banner for a hotel chain. Why not let me buy keyword generated advertising that points to my listings on eBay instead of selling the space to AT&T or Hotels.com. I spoke to some folks when I visited eBay a couple of weeks ago. No one would confirm anything, but I did get some pretty strong hints that eBay is looking at a plan where eBay sellers could once again purchase PPC ads on the site. Stay tuned for more details on that one. Who will eBay Buy Next? - I can't predict who but I can predict it will happen. eBay is sitting on a huge pile of cash. They haven't made a big acquisition since Skype and that one was one of the things that led to Meg retiring a few years sooner than she perhaps would have. For the past two years, with the exception of some minor acquisitions, eBay has been using their cash to re-purchase their own stock. Companies often do this when they think their stock is undervalued. But that is a hard case to make when eBay's Price to Earnings (PE) ratio is 65 to 1. Compare that with real high-growth companies like Google at 30:1 and Amazon at 58:1. It looks more to me like eBay is buying its own stock to support the price. This is something the shareholders approve of, but not exactly a long term strategy. Despite slowing growth, eBay is still a cash cow and it is just a matter of time until they put that cash to work. [top] 4. Required Shipping and Return Policy goes into Effect Sept 1st. eBay's previously announced policy on specified shipping went into effect a couple of days ago. If you use any type of auction management system (Vendio, Auctiva, BrightLister, InkFrog, etc.), be sure and go into your system to set your shipping preferences and update your listings. Basically the policy states that you must list a shipping service (how you will ship) and a cost to ship. In surveys, buyers have told eBay that they want to know the exact shipping price for an item before they place a bid. Knowing the exact shipping price at the time of bidding or purchase on eBay is an important driver of buyer satisfaction. When sellers specify the shipping price and service in the Shipping Details section of their listing (not just in the description) this information shows up for buyers in key places during the purchasing process -- on the Search Results page, at the top of the Item page, and in the Shipping Details section at the bottom of the listing. Listings with shipping specified in this way are more likely to sell and attract better DSR scores. The other policy eBay will now require is stating a return policy. Most sellers used to specify a return policy in their description if at all. eBay has had the functionality to select and display a Return Policy in a special section of the Sell Your Item form. When someone clicks on your listings, there is a tab that says Shipping & Handling right above the description. When someone clicks on that they are shown several boxes, one for shipping cost and another for return policy and payment policy. Here is what the box for Return Policy looks like in one of my auctions.
I am sorry this is a little hard to read. It's a pretty wide image and I had to reduce it to fit here. In the past, a stated Return Policy in the eBay form was important to rank higher in Best Match search results, but from now on it will be required to list at all. When you fill out your policy, you select from a drop down box that gives you four choices for the time you will accept returns -3, 7, 14 or 30 days. Then you select how you give credit. The choices are Exchange, Merchandise Credit or Money Back. I predict that soon eBay will start ranking the choices in Best Match with those who offer a Money Back guarantee getting a higher score in Best Match. Our policy on used goods is pretty much "as-is." We will take something back if we miss-described it or if there was something wrong that was our fault. But on new goods -even expensive items, we have always offered a money-back guarantee. A lot of seller are afraid to do that, but it does increase sales and over the past 9 years I think we have had less than a dozen returns total. [top] 5. New eBay Wholesale Sources for September 2008 Before we get into sourcing, my regular readers know that I have recommended Worldwide Brands for several years now. In fact, other than my own service, they are the only sourcing information service I recommend. If you haven't bought their service yet, here is your chance. They are running a Labor Day Special. Until midnight, September 8th, they are offering a $100 off special if you USE THIS LINK. Electronic Digital scales are a great niche for eBay sellers. Your biggest market is other eBay sellers who need a postage scale. Other markets are beaders, jewelers, and ammunition reloaders -basically anyone who needs the ability to precisely measure small weights -anywhere from a few grams to a few pounds. One of the best wholesale sources who works with eBay sellers is Awesome Wholesale in Vincennes, Indiana. I am not currently selling scales, but I have done business with these folks before and they are great to deal with. You will have to register to get access to the prices, but this is very simple and only takes a few minutes. People always laugh when I tell them that I often sources products at Costco (or a Sam's Club or Big Lots). I don't do it that often -but I could. I am not going to tell you what I just bought, but if you look at my auctions as we get closer to the holiday season, you will see me selling a few things we bought there. Just a couple of months ago, a friend of mine bought several dozen pressure washers and professional-quality paint sprayers at a Big Lots store. He sold them all on eBay within a 3-week period and just about doubled his money. Szco is an importer of a large line of knives, scissors and tweezers. Some of their products are licensed including Harley Davidson, Colt and others. You will have to register first to see the prices (this is normal for most legitimate wholesale sites). USA Exporter is actually an importer. They sell Kitchen knives and accessories. Whoever designed their website ought to be shot at sunrise, but if you persist you can actually find some interesting products there. There is a little sound logo in the upper right corner of the page to turn off the irritating music. Compass sells a large line of brand name knives, tools, flashlights (incl. Maglight) and other goods. You have to register and they will send you a pricelist. Be sure and click on the link to their closeout site for other deals. Rajasthan Art is an online gallery of Rajasthan Handicrafts, Rajasthan wooden Furniture, Rajasthan Paintings, Rajasthan Marble Handicrafts, Jooties, Rajasthan Silver Handicrafts, Stained Glass Panels and Silver jewelry from India. Back To Africa sells a large line of African handicrafts. They are a wholesale-only site with a minimum order of $100. Another large African handicraft and collectible wholesale site is New York Trading Co. Silver Bazaar Manufactures and Distributes Mexican Silver Jewelry and related products. AZ Charms And Links wholesales Italian Charms and Italian Charm Bracelets They carry a large selection of Italian charms. charm watches, Italian charm necklaces, birthstones, Italian charm megalinks, key chains, flip flop necklaces, magnetic bracelets, mood rings and many more. Traditions Doll Collection Wholesale Site -- Wholesale porcelain limited edition collectible dolls. Featuring Native American, Victorian, child and baby dolls. Great selection, top quality. Harmony Wireless is a wholesale distributor of Cell Phone Accessories , Face Plates, Carrying Case, Hands Free, Keypads That's all for now, Skip McGrath P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it. |
 
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