Give Your eBay Listings a New Year's Tune-up

The eBay Seller's News, January 2009, Volume 9, No. 1

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

In This Issue:

Musings

1. Give Your eBay Listings a New Year's Tune-up
2. Does an eBay Store Still Make Sense for Small Sellers?
3. eBay Wins The Online Holiday Traffic Race
4. Jumpstart Your eBay Sales with Simple Quick Videos in Your Listings
5. eBay ProStores Offers Pay-Per-Sale Marketing Feature
6. New eBay Wholesale Sources for January 2009

"Life is not about your situation. Life is about
what you do with the situation you find yourself in" 
~Skip McGrath

Musings

Well 2008 is finally over! That is one year I would like to forget.

First some news:  In the last issue I told you about the upcoming seminar in Las Vegas to take place in conjunction with the ASD/AMD seminar. Unfortunately we had to cancel the event. The hotel was demanding immediate pre-payment and guarantee for all of the rooms before we knew how many people would attend. We asked them to extend that until the end of January by which time we would know how many people would attend but they refused. Given the current uncertainty about the economy, that was just too big a risk to take.

But all is not lost. I am considering putting on a small, low-cost ½ day workshop for any of my readers who would like to attend.  Please note the word "considering" in the prior sentence. I have not yet made a final decision. My plan is to survey my readers to see how much interest there is.  The cost would be $199 per person (or couple) and would include the workshop only -no airfare, meals or hotel. Basically you would be on your own for all your personal and travel expenses.

If you have any interest, please click here for more details and to sign up for a special mailing list for those who are interested. Once I see how much interest there is, I will make a decision and let everyone on the mailing list know. Basically my decision will come down to how much interest there is. If I think I can get at least 15-20 people then we will probably go ahead.

We will also be attending the show the day after the seminar and perhaps we can arrange for a few of you to tag along with Karen and me and see how we work the show.

Back in July, I first raised the concept of eBay splitting into two sites: eBay Classic -the traditional eBay using the auction format for the sale of unique items, used items and art, antiques and collectibles -and eBay Shopping for the sale of new consumer goods merchandise at a fixed price.  This concept has been discussed on the eBay boards and in several blogs and forums for the past few months.  Just before the holidays I spoke with some folks inside eBay and they confided in me that the concept is being discussed internally. I honestly don't know how serious those discussions are, but I am please that the concept is being taken seriously.

I think this would be a good move for eBay. It makes economic sense and it solves several problems.  We (sellers) are often quick to criticize eBay -and some of it has been justified, but we also have to realize that eBay faces real problems that are not of its making.  Online shopping behavior has changed and eBay is facing competition they did not face 2, 3 or 4 years ago. eBay is a public corporation and their management has a responsibility to keep growing the company and taking actions that will increase profits and the stock price for stockholders. As much as you might hate Wall Street these days -it is a fact that eBay's management works for the stockholders -not for us.  So, what to do?

Since last year eBay has been trying to thread a needle between the traditional eBay (auctions) and a new eBay (fixed price selling).  These markets and how they operate are so different that this is an impossible task.  So splitting the platform makes sense.

If you read the eBay message boards, folks are calling the old eBay; eBay Classic -a takeoff on the Classic Coke marketing scheme in the early 90s.  I have seen references to the new fixed-price eBay being called different names such as eBay BigBox, eBayzilla, eWalBay, eBayzon and others.  Who knows what eBay will call it, but I am pleased to learn that the concept is finally getting serious consideration within the eBay management team.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

January is the month when eBay traditionally announces their annual fee increases, but I think you can forget about the increases this month. The simple fact is that eBay lacks pricing power in this economy.  In fact, not only will eBay not increase fees, they announced that the fee promotions for power sellers and those who use free shipping are being extended through the end of March. And earlier this week, eBay announced a 50% off sale on 1-day and 3-day auction style listing fees.  However, in a strange move, the fee sale excluded collectibles and media. This has sellers perplexed as most fee sales only exclude items in the Business & Industrial category and eBay motors.

I would like to thank all of you who visited our new publishing venture when we announced it last month. In case you missed it, it is called the Official Geezer Guide at www.officialgeezerguide.comm. This is a new website where we specialize in helping seniors, retire folks and those about to retire find ways to supplement their income with various online businesses.  Just before the end of the year, we launched our first two products,
The Official Geezer Guide to Starting an Online Home Business (by me) and The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Amazon by my friend Steve Lindhorst.

This week we launched our third title: The Official Geezer Guide to Creating and Selling eBooks, by Julie A. Fast.  Julie is the real deal. She has made her living for the past 7 years writing and selling eBooks, so she speaks from experience.

If you fit our target market (over 55), I hope you will take a few minutes to visit The Official Geezer Guide.  Besides the books we sell, we also have lots of free articles and information about making money online. Even if you don't fit our target market, you may find the information useful if you sell online, but we did start the website to address the needs of seniors who are looking to make extra money with an online business.

Let's get started with this month's newsletter.

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1. Give Your eBay Listings a New Year's Tune-up

We all like to make New Year's resolutions -some are kept and many are not, but the New Year is also a good time to examine your business, your tactics and your sales technique.  Every January I spend about an hour a day for the first few weeks just reviewing and updating my listings.

I look at my titles to make sure I am using the best keywords. I review my descriptions -look for any errors or corrections and determine if there is any information I can update.  I also take a look at my photographs -Are there any photos I should reshoot?

Next I review my pricing. The first thing I do is look at my slow-selling items. If something isn't moving, I reduce the price to move it out and use the money to reinvest in products that are selling.  I also check my eBay fees -Are those optional feature fees like bold and subtitle working and delivering the performance I am paying for?

When I review listings by my readers I often see simple mistakes that if corrected could increase their sales overnight. And this isn't limited to beginners -I often see experienced Power Sellers making the same mistakes. Even professional airline pilots use a checklist before every takeoff and landing. So why not employ the same professional techniques for your listings?

Here is an auction checklist you can use to check your listings before you launch. I have created it as a PDF file so you can download and print out.  Click here to download the Auction Checklist.  The document is copyrighted so you may not sell it but you may share it with anyone you want or give it away freely.

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2. Does an eBay Store Still Make Sense for Small Sellers?

One of my readers asked me to address this question. Given the current economy and sellers under pressure to reduce costs and fees this is a good question.  Unfortunately the only good answer to that question is: It depends.  Every seller is different. We all sell different products, different price points, different sell-through-rates (STRs) and have different business models.

Part of the answer lies with the number of items you have to sell. If you are a very low-volume seller then the costs of opening and running a store are somewhat hard to justify. Another factor is the recent introduction of the new fixed-price auction pricing and quantity program.  In the past if you wanted to sell an item at a fixed price you listed the item for 5, 7 or 10 days. Now, for a much lower listing fee (but a higher FV fee) you can list an unlimited quantity of items for 30 days for one low listing fee. So if I were a low volume seller (less than 50 listings per month) I would probably opt for fixed-price listings rather than a store.  On the other hand, this depends somewhat on your price points. If I were a low volume seller of very expensive merchandise, then I may indeed keep my store because the store final value fees are lower than the fixed price fees.

It also depends on what you are selling. If you are selling unique items where every listing is different, then I don't think a store makes sense unless you have hundreds of items of the same category. For example, if I were selling collectible glassware I would probably not use a store. But if I were selling sports cards I might.

Another product factor is product variety. Obviously if you were selling apparel and offered various colors and sizes then it really makes sense to have a store.

About the only way to really answer the question is to try it and keep very good records.  At the end of 30 or 60 days, sit down and enter all your cost and fee information into a spreadsheet and perform an analysis. Calculate all of your fees and costs for all of your selling formats and determine if each one is profitable. Try them all -auction, fixed-price and eBay stores.

Lastly, remember that store listings are not searchable unless someone specifically searches eBay store listings. There are two ways to get traffic to your store:

1. Promote your store off of eBay with keyword advertising or links from other websites you operate
    
2. Promote your store from within your auction style listings. With this technique you run auctions for items that get a lot of hits. Then you tell people what you have in your store right in the listing description with a clickable link to your store.  For example: If you were selling kitchen knives, you would run an auction for your hottest selling most popular product. Then in the second or third paragraph of your listing you would place a sentence like this: 
   
   I carry a wide variety of professional kitchen knives, knife cases and knife sharpeners in my eBay Store.
   
   The words "eBay Store" would be a clickable hyperlink direct to the knife category page in your store.

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3. eBay Wins The Online Holiday Traffic Race

According to Comscore, a company that tracks online traffic, eBay was the traffic winner during the hot holiday season, but down 4% from last year.  Given the state of the economy that is actually not too bad.

Here is what Comscore reported:

"Despite soft online sales this holiday season, consumers continued to shop online for the best deals. In the period of December 1-24 vs. the corresponding shopping days last year, several top retailers achieved growth in visitation to their sites.

eBay remained the most visited retail site with 85.4 million visitors but saw a slight decline of 4 percent in visitors, while three of the top five  most visited sites recorded gains. Amazon grew 7 percent to 76.2 million visitors, followed by Wal-Mart - up 4 percent to 51.5 million visitors, Target - down 1 percent to 46.8 million visitors and Apple Inc. - up 19 percent to 35 million visitors."

Of course any decline is not good, but you have to look at this in relative terms. With about 10 million people out of work during the month of December, I expected far worse numbers. This shows that there is still life in the American consumer and that eBay, despite all the negative publicity of the past year is still a favored shopping destination.

We won't know how eBay did in sales for another month or so, but traffic usually translates into more sales. So eBay's numbers may be down a little from last year and their stock price may take a hit -or Wall Street may see eBay's strength in the face of the economy as good.

These results certainly tracked with our own. Our sales for the month of December 2008 were up 8% over the same period last year. Part of this was certainly due to several new products we brought on that sold very well, because the products we sold last year were flat with the exception of one product which did increase.

According to Comscore, some product categories did better than others. "

Through the first half of December, spending on the sports and fitness category increased some 31.0%. Book and magazine sales were up 18%. Sales of videogames and related accessories increased 17.0%."

Conversely, says Comscore, sales of consumer electronics are slowing:

"Music, movie and video sales are down 24.0%. Spending on office supplies -- no doubt a result of small business belt tightening -- decreased 19.0%, and spending on jewelry and watches was off by 17.0%."

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4. Jumpstart Your eBay Sales with Simple Quick Videos in Your Listings

Last year I wrote about using videos in your auctions and I showed you one of the videos we did for a garden fountain. It was nothing more than 15 seconds of video, uploaded to YouTube and linked in the body of my eBay description. Prior to using the video I had listed that particular fountain three times without a sale.  I was getting plenty of hits so I knew my title was good, but I was not getting any bids -zero-zip-nada.  I realized that the photos just didn't show how really cool this product was, so I decided to shoot the video.  The result was I sold all dozen units within 3 weeks at an average selling price of $112 --$52 over my wholesale cost.

I should have jumped right in and made videos on more of my products -but like most people I am both a little lazy and get very busy with higher priority tasks.

This year Karen and I went to the Seattle Merchandise Mart (a wholesale gift mart in Seattle) and we found a really cool product called the Graviti pepper mill.  This is a super product. It is a pepper mill that works automatically with a gravity switch. All you do is turn it upside down and it starts grinding. So you can grind fresh pepper with one hand.  And it has other neat features such as a ceramic grinding mechanism that won't rust if you use it over steaming pots.

Once again I was faced with lots of hits but no sales. So I decided to do a little video.  When I visit the state fairs I am always attracted to those sales tables where a barker is wired up to a microphone and speaker and is demonstrating the latest kitchen gadget or super tool or whatever.  I am the ultimate sucker. I always end up buying whatever is being sold.  It is so bad that Karen won't let me go to shows and fairs alone because I always come home with some weird device.  So I decided to do my own little barker video.

I put on a chef's jacket I once bought on eBay, set up the camera on a tripod and had my daughter-in-law film a short 1 minute video where I demonstrated the pepper mill. I acted just like those sales guys at the fairs. Nothing professional; the lighting is poor, I made some mistakes but hey --I was in a hurry. We uploaded the video to YouTube, grabbed the link and placed the link in my item description near the top. The whole process took about 15 minutes.

So how did we do?  The Graviti comes in two models -a budget model and a higher-priced model.  I sold my entire inventory of the budget models in about 10 days -most of them from fixed price listings at my maximum price. And we sold about ½ of the higher-priced models in the two weeks leading up to Christmas.  I have more of the budget models on order and the higher-priced model is still selling fairly well.  But the best news is that I am selling them at a slightly higher price than my competitor which goes to show you that you don't always have to be the lowest price seller on eBay to do well. The video combined with a good description and photos and my good feedback and DSR scores allow me to command a higher margin and more sales than my competitors.

Here are a couple of listing numbers where you can see the video. Just type these into the eBay search box and it will bring up the listing:

370116331395

200278088317

Here is a link to see all of my listings on eBay: http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/mcgrrrrr

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5. eBay ProStores Offers Pay-Per-Sale Marketing Feature

To be honest I have never been a big fan of ProStores, eBay's website builder.  I think there are many cheaper and better eCommerce website builders on the market. But ProStores does have one huge advantage for the eBay seller. You can easily link all of your eBay listings to your ProStores website.

This week eBay released ProStores Version 9.2. The latest version includes a whole new way to drive potential buyers and sales to your web store. ProStores 9.2 includes the new Pay-Per-Sale Marketing feature (Beta), where ProStores will advertise on your behalf and you pay only for traffic they drive to your store that results in a sale. eBay hasn't released too many details and the Pay-Per-Sale is still in Beta. What it looks like they are doing is buying Google AdWords and taking a commission on every sale. Unfortunately the announcement on the ProStores site didn't give a lot of details, except that the minimum commission rate is set at 8% per sale and it says you can increase that. I suspect that increasing the commission would result in eBay bidding on higher price keywords to get you more traffic.

The new version also includes improvements to the Logo Generator and added enhancements that provide more details during the transfer of shipping and tax information to PayPal.

In addition to the 9.2 release, ProStores merchants who are also eBay sellers can now take advantage of integration with eBay Blackthorn listing and sales management tools.

If you currently have an eBay store you can save 30% on your ProStores fees -and you can get a one-month free trial.  Here is a look at the current ProStores pricing:

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 6. New eBay Wholesale Sources for January 2009

One of the product types that do well in a slowing economy are what is known as surplus and liquidation goods. These are manufacturer's overstocks and shelf pulls of perfectly good items that did not sell.  Given the poor performance of brick and mortar retail this Christmas, the first quarter of this year will be an absolute boon to sellers who want to source liquidation merchandise.  I have a whole section on this market in the wholesale sourcing section of The Complete eBay Marketing System, but if this market interests you, then there is a better and large resource.

There is a fellow by the name of Chad Maslak, who has years of experience in this market.  Last year he wrote a great book called The "ULTIMATE" Insiders Surplus, Liquidation & Wholesale Bulk Buying To Resell.  This is a great book and it includes all the ins and outs of buying surplus including hundreds of sources.  He has just released a new edition that also includes overseas sources in Canada and Europe for those readers who reside outside of the US.  Here is the link to read about the book and Chad's service.  Note: This is a temporary discount price and it will increase $10 by the end of January.

HGG Distribution sells a very unusual product. It is called the Grill Topper. It brands the name of your favorite college team onto your hot dogs, burgers and steaks.

Baby Products continue to do well despite the economy.  Here are a few niche suppliers:

Cloud B sells a great link of very unique and pretty hot products in the infant market.

Flexifeet sells Funky Fun Shoes for Little Growing Feet. Their shoes are not only fun to wear but good for developing feet.

Arielle Adelia sells over 100 bracelets and necklaces for baby girls, young ladies, mothers and grandmothers. Arielle Adelia utilizes only the best components including genuine Swarovski crystals, sterling silver and freshwater pearls. Deluxe signature gift packaging is free with every order.

Here is a great niche: Don's Furniture Restoration sells hardware, wholesale & retail, for brass beds, iron beds, cupboards, dressers, desks and more.

Here is a great product I have actually used. Daddy Van's All Natural Furniture Polish is blended by hand in small batches using the finest natural emollients and botanicals. Made with unrefined beeswax and pure lavender essential oil, this paste wax nourishes and protects as it cleans, giving furniture, floors and cabinetry a rich, deep glow. It is naturally chemical and solvent-free.

Treasured Body takes care of your wholesale bath and body care needs. They produce moisturizing body butters and lotions in exotic spa fragrances and offer a Brown Sugar scrub as well as a specialty line of decadent chocolate scents. They have products for men as well as little girls. Treasured Body also offers a Drop Shipping service.

That's it for now. See you in a couple of weeks.

Skip McGrath
The eBay Seller's News

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