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Can eBay Rebuild Its Brand?The eBay Seller's News, February 2009, Volume 9, No. 3 Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The
Newsletter for Professional
We publish this newsletter twice a month, so our regular readers may have noticed they didn't get the early February edition. Don't worry -you didn't miss an issue. Karen and I took our annual winter vacation in February so this will have to serve as the February issue. That is one of the nice things about publishing a free newsletter. If you miss an issue no one is cheated out of their money. As you read on you will see that I have a couple of articles that may strike you as negative -and you may get the idea that I am suddenly down on eBay. I assure you that is not the case. As I point out in one of my articles below, we still do very well on eBay and I still think it is an excellent marketplace for the small seller who works out of the home, or the online entrepreneur who wants to build a large sustainable online business. But I also believe eBay itself and the larger eBay community all benefit when we face facts head on. All in all, I strongly support the eBay platform -but like most of you I would like to see eBay take more aggressive action to confront the realities of the marketplace. That will benefit all of us. If you are new to eBay or just starting to build your business, don't let these things worry you. Just focus on your business and you will do fine. After all, over 60,000 regular folks still make a living on eBay. Rumors are still circulating that eBay will make some announcements about major changes to the platform at their annual meeting in June. I don't know if any of you have ever attended an annual meeting, but they are very interesting and even fun. All you need to get in is one share of eBay stock which is selling at a 6-year low of around $12.00. This year's meeting will be held in San Jose, CA, the home of eBay and promises to be highly interesting. If you live in the San Francisco Bay/San Jose area and would like attend you will need to own at least one share of eBay stock. Just ask your stockbroker how to get an invite. We all know that eBay has been struggling -both with the system changes they made and with the tough economy. However, we are still selling and still making good money on eBay. Not as much as last year but still OK. So don't despair. Just keep working and building your business. Having said that; I am also a believer in not putting all your income eggs in one basket. If you are new to eBay and just learning how to sell, then I suggest you keep going until you master the basics and get to where you are making steady sales. This is not a time to lose focus. But once your eBay business is set up and running, I suggest the following progression to lower your risk and maximize your income potential:
The key to making all of this work is to focus on one thing at a time. Trying to do everything at once is a recipe for disappointment and disaster. I can't count the number of good folks I know who failed because they were always chasing the latest opportunity before they finished working on the first one. I often recommend selected business opportunities and tools. I try to be very careful in what I recommend, but please don't do something if the timing is not right for you. Almost anything I recommend will still be there a few weeks or months later when you are ready. We are entering into our third month since the launch of my latest venture, The Official Geezer Guides. If you haven't seen it this is our website publishing venture to create books and guides to help seniors, retired and about-to-retire folks find ways to make extra money. We have three Geezer Guides available now and two more in the works. Look for The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on eBay and The Official Geezer Guide to Blogging for Profits coming soon. The best way to find out when our new books are released is to sign up for the free Geezer Guide Newsletter. OK - Let's get started with this month's articles. [top] 1. Can eBay Rebuild Its Brand? I was watching the news earlier today when I took my lunch break and there was a story about a guy in Missouri who is selling his home which is actually a cave set on 2.8 acres of land outside of St. Louis. (Here is a link to the listing if you want to see it). When I watched the story it reminded me of the bygone days of eBay when you could find almost anything for sale and the site was loaded with entertaining, unique and fun listings. eBay used to run emotional TV commercials that stressed the fun of eBay. I still remember the commercial about the child who lost his favorite toy boat at the beach. Twenty years later it comes up in a fisherman's net. The fisherman listed the boat on eBay, and the boy -now a grown man, buys his boat back. Maybe I have been on eBay too long and am guilty of longing for the old days. There is some truth in that, but I am also a realist -there is no way eBay can return to 2002. Ecommerce has moved on. Online buyers have higher expectations -among them a strong commitment to preventing fraudulent transactions and just plain careless and sloppy sellers. Having said that, I think it is still possible for eBay to bring back the fun quotient. Somewhere along the line while eBay was growing and changing the site to remain competitive and build their business they forgot about building their brand. eBay went from a fun quirky community of buyers and sellers to a punch line for late-night comedians to a forgettable brand that new buyers relate to. The ascent of other brands such as Amazon, Overstock and the large shopping engines has muddled eBay's brand. The erosion of the eBay brand is not new. The first published article about this was by David Kiley in Business Week back in May of 2005 when he said: "Never mind eBay's business model or stock price. This is a company whose brand is in trouble." I didn't think it was that bad back then but it sure is now. It's not too late. There are plenty of stories about companies who brands were trashed and successfully rebuilt. But eBay needs to act. I am not going to pretend to be a brand consultant -there are plenty of companies and ad agencies who do a good job of this. Kaplan Thayer, the company that brought us the AFLAC Duck comes to mind. And there are others: -Maybe eBay could bring Regis McKenna (the marketing guru who launched Apple) out of retirement or talk to the creative folks at Chiat Day (now part of TBWA). There are plenty of creative resources in the marketplace and eBay has the cash and resources to access them. Doing so, however will take the courage of a recovering alcoholic -first you have to admit you have a problem. [top] 2. Amazon Passes eBay in Online Sales for the First Time As you know, last month both eBay and Amazon released their earnings report
for Q4 2008. eBay was first, and people were anxious to see how the changes of
2008 affected the "busy season" for the eBay Marketplace. Selling on 'the River has been updated and expanded for 2009. If you need to make more money, have considered Amazon as a second sales channel, and you need a jump start to understand the basics, check out Selling on 'the River. If you are retired or about to retire, Steve also wrote a version of Selling on the River for our new publishing venture, The Official Geezer Guides. Steve's book, the Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Amazon has been one of our best sellers. [top] 3. Job Losses Bringing More Folks to Online Selling As I was working on this issue of the newsletter the latest employment report on jobless claims came out and it wasn't pretty. The Dow Jones started off the morning in positive territory and after the report came out it sunk to a new low. Until a few weeks ago my business was also in the tank. We had a great Christmas on eBay -in fact our best ever, but our book sales have been really slow. But then about three or four weeks ago, they turned up. I am getting tons of email and calls from people who have lost their job or think they will lose it soon and want to get started making money on eBay or any way they can. I am not alone. I often speak to online trainers like Steve Lindhorst, Jim Cockrum and Mike Enos and they are seeing the same thing -more and more new folks are discovering that you can make money selling online. I am not going to tell you that eBay or any other online venture is some guaranteed path to easy street -like anything worthwhile it also takes hard work. But Thank God for the internet. It has provided opportunities that didn't exist during the last great downturn in 1980-81. I remember those days because I was one of the folks who was out of work. Unemployment was almost 11% and interest rates were through the roof. We had just bought our first home and were thrilled to get a 10.5% mortgage. Then I lost my job. I couldn't find one so I started my first company. I struggled and it eventually failed. So I started another one -and that one failed too. Then I found a job. There was nothing like eBay or the internet to turn to back then. Both eBay and Amazon and other online selling sites are seeing more and more sellers signing up as the economy has softened. Our eBay business has also softened during this period but we are still profitable. As bad as things sound, it is important to remember that although unemployment may hit 10% before this is all over, that means that 90% of people are still working. These people may be reigning in their spending a bit -but they are still spending. We are in a slowdown -not a STOP. So if you are struggling, keep going -even this will end. [top] 4. Automation Tools to Cut Your Costs and Boost Your Profits I am a big believer in automating repetitive tasks and in constantly finding ways to reduce my costs. If you are launching more than 10 auctions per week, you should look into an auction management service. For the past few years I have been using Vendio as my auction listing management service. I have been very happy with them, but now find they are a bit overkill for my needs. I run about 80 listings per week. When I was at eBay Live I discovered InkFrog. The more I learned about them and the more I spoke with sellers who use them, the more I was impressed. At $9.95 per month InkFrog costs far less than Vendio and other full-featured systems like ChannelAdvisor, and the $9.95 pays for itself. I typically use 4 photos in each listing. eBay gives you the first photo free, but after that they charge you 15¢ per photo. So that would cost me 45¢ per listing times 320 listings per month that comes out to $144 per month. Then there is the scheduling fee. eBay charges you 10¢ to schedule your auction to launch at a different time. Unless you want to be on eBay at the optimal time (instead of eating dinner or watching American Idol.) you will most likely use that too. And then there is the eBay Listing designer if you want your auctions to look more professional that will cost you another 10¢, so I am now up to $208 per month in fees. Well for $9.95 InkFrog hosts my photos, provides me with a large choice of templates and lets me schedule my listings -and that is just the start. I also get free inventory control. So give InkFrog a try if you want to save some time and money. Another popular system is Auctiva. Best of all Auctiva is free and you get many of the same services including the Auctiva scrolling gallery to help cross sell your listings. If you are new to eBay and only launching a few auctions, you can start with Auctiva. But as you grow you may want to switch to InkFrog as their offering includes more sophisticated services. And at only $9.95 per month you still save a ton of money. The other big factor is time. So far I have addressed cost savings, but these systems also save you valuable time. Whether you are doing eBay full-time or part-time, every minute you can save will eventually make you money. Time saved on repetitive tasks allows you to spend more time on the tasks that make you money such as launching more auctions, finding better products and honing your titles and descriptions
[top] 5. New Tool to Find Keywords and Build Traffic to Your Website Are Your Customers Finding You? How Do You Know? Is Your Competition Passing You By? One of my long-time readers, Bob Bronner has invented a great tool called Search Engine Tracker™. Search Engine Tracker a powerful keyword tracking tool that saves you countless hours of sifting through search engine result pages (SERPS). I tried it on two of my websites and was very impressed with the accuracy and speed of their system. This is a huge time saver! I asked Bob if he could come up with a special deal for my readers and he agreed to a 30-Day FREE TRIAL to test drive their system. There is No credit card required or strings attached. Just sign up and take it for a test drive.
If you have a website or blog this is a great system for figuring out what keywords to use in your headlines and content so people can find you. This is important for any eCommerce website, but if you are doing affiliate marketing or trying to make money from Google AdSense or by selling information products or other services, a system like this is critical. Best of all, if you like it after the trial, the cost is very affordable and will save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in SEO services. Click here for your 30-day free trial. [top] 6. New eBay Wholesale Sources for February 2009 Eating at home is the new "eating out." Since the recession started, restaurant business is down, but more folks are buying kitchen ware and gourmet foods. Mrs. Aulds manufacturers a wide range of gourmet food items for resellers and will even private label her products for you. United Distributing is offering a hot new product called the Snap Cap. This is a cap that fits over a can of beer or soda pop that makes it easier to drink from and seals to keep in the fizz. They come in several colors. Be sure and watch the video. Another unique product is called The Cup Garage. You will have to email them from the website to get wholesale pricing. Bella Cucina sells a large line of gourmet food products and is now offering The Tuscan Grill I am always looking for really unique niches that few people are addressing. This week I was searching for something else and I accidently came across Best Whip. Everyone loves whipped cream but the canned stuff from the market is no comparison to fresh whip. Best Whip supplies whippers and Nitrous Oxide and Co2 cartridges. Edwards of Surry Virginia is a distributor of specialty smoked hams, bacon and other gourmet food products. QT Dog manufacturers a wide range of specialty pet products. When you get to the website, look at the bottom of the page for dealer contact information. You can call or fax them for wholesale product and pricing information. Military Logistics Inc. is a wholesale supplier of all types of Military surplus, new and used equipment, police-law enforcement gear, paintball equipment, outdoor survival gear, military jeeps, trucks, Humvees, clothing, uniforms. Sanyork is a producer-importer of hand crafted artisan made Fair Trade products and apparel from Peru. They design and manufacture alpaca sweaters and accessories, organic cotton apparel and sterling silver jewelry. They also produce musical instruments, carved gourds, pottery, metal wall art, wool rugs, tooled leather accents, fur rugs, folk art in their facility in Lima, Peru. That's it for this month. The next newsletter will arrive on March 4th. Skip McGrath P.S. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.  Click Here. Double your traffic. Get Vendio Gallery - Now FREE! |
 
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