Good Listening

Startupnation podcast featuring Randy Smythe & Kevin Harmon on the subject of Change at eBay.

Listen to these two supersellers discussing the reality of eBay and e-commerce today. Click on the Startupnation graphic below to go there!







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Reading to the Dog

A little girl is sitting on a bench in the garden reading to her Jack Russell Terrier dog, the dog is paying attention. It must be a story about rats or mice.








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All Work and No Play

I thought it would be interesting to make a list of all the changes that eBay has imposed on and proposed to their customers in the last six months, February through August 2008. I never write about anything without verifying it and the project became a massive chore.

Not only was writing about change on eBay tiring it was depressing because every piddling little change involves hours of mind numbing back end work for sellers. There have been so many this year that often sellers have not completed one change before they have to start another.

I remember very well when eBay decided that buyers should not send cash in the mail. I don't have a problem with this policy overall, as always, it was the way it was implemented and phrased that irked.

At that time I had over 2500 store listings. Each one had to be edited. Many had sales, those listings had to be ended to edit them and then relisted. Simultaneously I was answering questions from potential buyers, picking, packing and shipping, taking care of my family, running my house, taking care of livestock, any small seller will be nodding their head at this point!

On the deadline for compliance I had maybe 200 listings to go and some nice person must have reported the violations. eBay took down every listing. Not just the ones in violation but every listing in my store. I was working on one which pouffed as I was editing. Every single listing, including those which had had the criminal phrase "cash, well concealed" removed, was permanently deleted, gone.

That was the first time I stopped selling on eBay, for almost a year, but I had all that inventory so I went back. This policy has since changed, now the listings are ended but stored, a good change.

We all know "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" and we can't have a dull Jack, or Jill either for that matter. Enjoy this amazing video from Alaska.



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Can eBay Get Worse For Sellers?

In one word? YES!

Auctionbytes Blog has a post and there is an article and a survey for you to check out.

Lots of rumors flying around. Points to ponder:

High sales season is approaching fast, and in keeping with eBay's customary 'squeeze the seller' policy this is a good time to apply the thumbscrews. If you are still committed to the eBay venue with no viable alternative "Watcha gonna do?"

Bear in mind that this is all speculation and there is no way for a rational person to predict with any certainty which way eBay will go. How could this be better or worse for you as a seller?

I have chosen an item which sold, Fixed Price for $9.99. Shipping on this item, which weighs 14oz packed is $5 and it will ship Priority with delivery confirmation, I will use PayPal and PayPal Shipping. I have not specified cost so there is no profit calculation. Subtract cost from net on sale to get pre-tax profit. Seller is not a PowerSeller.

Note that percentage of 'eBay take' will decrease somewhat for items which sell higher than $25.01 and further decrease for sales over $1000.01

eBay & PayPal 'take' as of today is 19.5% of sale price.















Plan 'A'- no Insertion Fee, 15% FVF on Sale price but not shipping.
eBay & PayPal 'take' is 22.3% of sale price, this is a 2.8% increase, for eBay.














Plan 'B'- no Insertion Fee, 15% FVF on sale price and shipping.
eBay & PayPal 'take' is 29.8% of sale price, this is a 10.3% increase, for eBay.














I have seen many posts today with the writers uttering cries of delight at the prospect of zero insertion fees. Here is one who has completely missed the point; eBay increasing their take on anything that does sell.

As a powerseller with over 20,000 feedback and great DSR. I would list list list and list some more. Everything in my store would be out on auctions. Thats about 15,000 items. Talk about flooding a catagory.

I am not totally convinced that free listing would cause eBay to be flooded. If that was the case why are all the other free to list sites not flooded?

We have to remember that eBay the auction site is a very small part of eBay Inc. Looking at Marketplace (which includes Kijiji, Shopping.com, StubHub, etc) earnings Q1 08, John Donohoe stated that advertising revenues were up 151%. I think advertising is where eBay is going now.

Finally a quote from an interview with Randy Smythe that Ina Steiner did almost two years ago where he asks eBay a speculative question.

What do you want to be? Do you want to be a shopping portal, or a shopping destination? Make up your mind.

They're saying, well we need monetize our null searches, right? We have millions of null searches every single day, we need to monetize that. That's fine. But tell your customers, your sellers, that you're becoming a portal, so they can go and buy keywords ... and move on to their website and not pay you to list product on there.

Points to ponder indeed. I think the evidence is clear, eBay wants to be a shopping portal. If Buy.com is a desirable seller despite a very low sales : listings ratio with free listings, more is better. More space for advertising will do the trick for the next quarter or so. What do you think?



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Advice For eBay Buyers UPDATED

Buying on eBay got a lot harder this year. eBay has been making improvements to their search engine. They have made so many improvements that it can be quite difficult to find what you are looking for. Here are a few hints.

Finding, or not

UPDATE: Keep the search simple. Think hard about words that describe what you are looking for and use them in your search request.

After you have made your initial search and noted the number of items returned, you may want to check the 'include title and description' box, this is a choice which may appear after you have entered your search terms the first time. A seller can not put every word that may be searched for in the title, many times the word which you associate with the item may only appear in the description.

Don't be surprised if the search page looks different each time you visit, eBay likes to make sure you are awake. Today many of the search options were in the left nav bar.

You must search using eBay's Best Match which eBay thinks is smarter than you are. You will probably get better results by using the Sort by: box right above the first item. Time ending soonest will make sure you don't miss the perfect item from the perfect seller while looking at other stuff eBay wants you to see first.

Choices choices choices!

When you have entered your search terms make a note of the numbers of items found. After checking the first page keep scrolling to the very bottom, past all the advertisements to find the next pages. Below the additional pages bar you will see in teeny tiny print three more options in a Get more results box. You have three options to check there to see items that eBay's very confused search engine thinks are identical, to check items listed at a fixed price in eBay Stores and thirdly if you want to shop internationally.

More choices

If you are able to find what you are looking for on eBay it does not hurt to run a Google Shopping or product search to see what other options are out there on the web.

Many good eBay sellers are now ex-eBay sellers including me! Quite often you will find we offer better prices because we are not paying 30% plus of our gross to eBay and we can pass those savings onto our customers.

Many current eBay sellers only sell old or slow moving stock on eBay and have websites for their better inventory.



Pick your seller!

* Don't assume anything.
* Read the whole listing, all the words.
* Read where the seller will ship to and how it will be shipped.
* Remember to add the cost of shipping to the item price so you know what it is really going to cost!
* If you have any questions ask the seller, if they don't get back to you before the item ends don't be sad. Chances are very good an identical item is already listed or will be listed very soon, most sellers of truly unique items are no longer selling on eBay.
* Read both the feedback received and the feedback left for others.
* Personally, I don't buy high priced or electronics items from sellers who are brand new.
* If in doubt, don't! If it looks too good to be true it probably is.


Big is not necessarily better.

The largest seller on eBay is Buy with over 800,000 listings. Buy is the eBay name or user ID for a company called Buy.com. Before you buy something from Buy you should probably do three things:

1. Go look at other customer comments
2. Search for the same item on Google, you will always find it elsewhere and usually for a better price. Remember to add the shipping cost to the item price so you are comparing apples to apples.
3. If you must buy from Buy pay with a credit card, not a debit card or PayPal for maximum buyer protection. I am not saying they are dishonest. They are just huge and have terrible customer service.

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A Message From Australia on Change at eBay

"To me, the biggest change in connection with eBay this year..."

Hmmm, yes, it really is only this year. It feels like half of the ten and a half year period that I have been on eBay, but it really is only this year. There have been adversarial issues in the past, but nothing that prepared eBay's actual clientele for the treatment they have gotten this year. I am sure that there were cheers from some sellers when it was announced that Meg Whitman was departing from the eBay corporate structure, but I suspect most of those who were cheering would welcome her back with open arms if she returned to eBay now - assuming of course that those who were alert enough to the issues that Ms Whitman presented, have persisted with eBay this far since.

Some of the shifts are downright bizarre in the business sense. It is one thing to accept that there is a need to keep buyers happy so that they will return to the site and spend money and keep the wheels of commerce turning, but this years shifts in attitude, have created an illogical aura that the buyer is eBay's customer, and the seller is a supplier who is not to be trusted even though they are the ones who pay eBay's bottom line from all angles. PayPal is free to buyers, the so-called "protection" insurance scam is free to buyers, and of course the sellers (rightly) pay the listing fees and commissions for the items they sell, but sellers who attempt to pass on their costs and fees at any point in the transaction are now to be held in contempt (even though the majority of buyers actually see through the flaws in this logic).

Sellers are now the enemy in eBay's eyes, and in order to stop off-site sales and to increase the use of PayPal, eBay is attempting to convince the buyers of this. If they succeed, though, why would buyers return to eBay at all?

So the eBay seller is now an outcast in their own marketplace. The current and recent changes have removed everything intuitive from the search engine on eBay, and punishes sellers for having the audacity to try to build a profit margin into their business, while eBay itself steadily increases the fee structures imposed on sellers. My own business is probably paying at least 25% more in fees this year to eBay, through the listing fee "reductions" and "free" gallery adjustments at the beginning of the year on the USA site, and through the enforced acceptance of PayPal on the Australian site, add to this the steadily increasing postage costs and the inescapable increases in fuel costs which both affect every eBay business but are beyond eBay's scope and control, and I am thankful that I sell old and unusual items which create auction competition and a decent profit margin - I don't know how anyone can "retail" new stock on eBay. At the same time as eBay reaps their increased fees though, they are "rewarding" and "incenting" sellers to REDUCE their prices and offer free shipping - those who don't are punished through poor search exposure and are effectively being labeled greedy and arrogant by, umm, the greedy and arrogant.

The change has been constant and relentless this year for both eBay's customers, and those who buy on the site. Buyers I speak to in person complain of constantly having to relearn how to use the site, how unnecessary most of the change seems, and some reduce the amount they use the site for these reasons. Having to re-adjust each time you buy is just hard work, and becomes hard to justify when it is so constant. Everything that made this marketplace work is being interfered with, and yet the marketplace still works in spite of the way that eBay manages it and interferes with it. How this business model can survive though is beyond me, other than it's mere market dominance meaning that it continues to steamroll through eBay's section of the overall marketplace, replacing it's cast off sellers and buyers at a fairly steady rate. In doing so though, even if it remains a place of commerce that is viable to some, eBay has trashed it's brand beyond recognition this year. Sellers like me continue because, at this stage, it is still viable for my own business model and lifestyle, but any sense of loyalty that I had to eBay has been killed this year. I have plans loosely in place so that I can walk away from the site as soon as it is either nonviable, or I am squeezed out overnight by either policy changes or just waking to find that I am not a registered user. So be it.

Ranting yet again, Kevin

The Nature of Change

Yesterday while I was being lazy watching reruns of Ice Road Truckers and napping, two of my favorite bloggers were busy, very busy.

Scott Pooler at Trading Assistant Journal has an immensely interesting (to me) article on changes eBay has recently made to its affiliate program, and potential consequences thereof.

Randy Smythe on My Blog Utopia! wrote on the subject of change which has been on my mind today. He also wrote a separate post comparing Amazon to eBay in apples to apples mode. Good stuff and food for thought, almost as much non ranting reasoned brain food in the early comments as in the post.

Onward; the nature of change...

Full disclosure: I am at the life stage where change, simply for the sake of change is unattractive. I tend to look at change very closely to see if there are benefits to ME.

Change on eBay this year has been and is continuing to be overwhelming. Not only the announced changes, and the revisions to announced changes but the unannounced quietly implemented changes have devastated sellers.

What is the biggest change?

To me, the biggest change in connection with eBay this year is not the changes to feedback, including DSRs, the fee decrease paired with the 'adjustment' or even the unfinding of Best Match, it is the divisive and adversarial tone that pervades the whole site. It is malicious, petty and almost gleeful from the upper stratosphere of executive offices through the Public Relations department right down into the telephone banks of Customer Service (for PowerSellers only) and it is aimed at sellers.

* eBay is no longer the seller's business partner.

* eBay is the guardian and protector of buyers from the bad sellers. Increasingly, bad sellers are defined as non PowerSellers.

* The real bad sellers are left undisturbed because the theory is that the DSRs will sort them out and route them off the site, meanwhile burned buyers are collateral damage who may be offered coupons as compensation. Good luck with that.

* PowerSellers are promoted as being eligible for all the discounts and goodies which causes resentment of them from the smaller sellers.

* Meanwhile PowerSellers are quietly loosing their perks because the goal posts shift and it is hard to make goals if you don't know what you are aiming at.

* Buyers are educated and encouraged to find fault with nearly impossible expectations of sellers.

eBay has become a stew of nastiness. Little sellers against big sellers, buyers against all sellers, all sellers wondering where the nice friendly buyers from the old days went and eBay stirring the cauldron with a big spoon.




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