How to sell my first item…
April 30, 2007
I had an interesting call from a friend tonight that wanted to list their first item on eBay. Their son’s car is up for sale and where better to advertise it than eBay for motors? Of course being the local “eBay expert” they asked me over to assist. First thing was to show them how to set up a “seller account” but amazingly although they profess a total ignorance in the ways of eBay they not only have an account set up, but they’ve at some time in the past set up a seller account and made previous sales!
As with many eBay accounts they have a “Family” account, it’s not used just by the account owner but the entire family use it for bidding and buying. Which one of them actually set up the selling account remains a mystery, but all that remained for me to do was to show them how to update their payment preferences to add a current credit card.
Listing the car (a Peugeot 205) was a snip - it’s a long time since I’ve used the SYI (Sell Your Item) form instead of TurboLister. It’s so much easier than when I listed my first item on eBay with the old SYI layout. The part of the listing that took longest was taking the photos, followed by composing the description, clicking the boxes for item specifics, price, payment and postal options (It’s a car…. payment on collection only!) was the work of seconds.
I left the family with the promise that they’d check their email at least daily during the course of the auction, and with possibly my lowest ever fee for consultancy - a couple of beers at the pub next week. The biggest thing I took away though was how the whole family were involved in listing the car, even if it was just looking over my shoulder at the screen amazed at how easy selling a car on eBay really is!
Find it, buy it, pay it
April 30, 2007
Dan Wilson continued his series in the Guardian today with how to buy on eBay. Dan himself, an avid Dr Who collector, is pictured with some of his eBay purchases.
The article covers everything to look for from seaching and finding potential item to buy, to checking out sellers and deciding which to buy from. Not only that but also advice to use comparison shopping sites to make sure you don’t get carried away and bid too much for that must have item. Dan gives more advice on what to do after the sale with advice on paying safely and troubleshooting in the rare event you have a problem with your purchase.
We look forward to tomorrow’s installment from the author of “Make Serious Money on eBay.co.uk“
Costly trading assistant request
April 30, 2007
Today I received a Trading Assistant request to contact another eBayer and potentially sell on their behalf. The email included a telephone number to contact the prospective client on, but with an 07024 number. This number falls within a range set aside as “Personal Numbering Services” attracting a charge of 47.5p per minute. Needless to say I declined to contact the sender of the email.
eBayers should be aware of numbers sent to them in ASQ and other communications, if it’s not a standard landline number consider whether you really want to place the call, and just how much you might be charged for doing so. If someone wants you to contact them the very least they can do is to supply a telephone number which can be called at standard UK charges.
Half-price auctions on Thursday
April 30, 2007
Just days after the ten-day listings from the last CLD ended, there’s another cheap listing day on eBay UK. This one offers half-price insertion fees on auction listings only - similar to the offers seen on eBay.com and .ca recently. eBay’s previous efforts to persuade buyers and sellers to return to the “core” auction format are obviously not having the effect they would like: personally I think they would be better to admit that for a large number of their categories, buy it now is what everyone wants, and get on with promoting that.
Right to cancel
April 30, 2007
I just, finally, upgraded to Sky Plus, which inevitably meant that I looked at my Sky package. I realised I’m paying £6 a month for Sky Sports which I never, ever watch, so I went to Sky’s website to downgrade. I can’t. Banners for *upgrading* my account are all over the place, but then I come to a page that says I have Sky Sooper Dooper or whatever the most-expensive-includes-everything package is called. I have nothing to upgrade to - so, think Sky, there’s nowhere else for me to go.
I know it’s one call to the call centre, but that’s not the point. By making it difficult for me to *downgrade*, Sky have ensured that I’ll never *upgrade* again. When my brother and my brother-in-law and other sports lovers I know come to stay, I won’t upgrade for a month or two to cover their visits, because I know it’ll be hassle to downgrade again.
So here’s my point: make it easy for your customers to change their minds. Because minds change back in your favour too.
“I use eBay every day and I’m not alone”
April 29, 2007
It makes a nice change to be able to say that a national newspaper has some positive coverage of eBay. It’s even nicer to be able to say that it’s a series running over a week, and that it’s being written by Dan Wilson, ex-eBay Community Manager, top attraction at eBay University, and of course, TameBay guest blogger.
Yesterday’s introductory piece focuses on finding your way around the site, making your very first purchase, and also makes an excellent point about fraud:
The sensational tales of eBay fraud often create more heat than light, and rarely focus on how these problems could have been avoided in the first place.
More of this in the national press, please!
We’ll be posting links to future articles as they come online.
WAGs GOSH hoodies now available online
April 28, 2007
Following the enormous success of WAGs Boutique Nicola T has set up a website to carry on selling the Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital (GOSH) hoodies and other clothes that she designed for the show. She said:
The WAGs Boutique Bows raised over £320,000 for Great Ormond Street from selling hoodies in their Marshall Street Boutique and in their eBay shop. Buyers were so eager to purchase and support the charity that they were constantly sold out and additional supplies were still being manufactured just a couple of days before the shops closed for the final time on Saturday 21st.
You can find the GOSH hoodies to purchase online at Nicola T’s Boutique. We wish Nicola every success in her new venture to raise money for GOSH.
The reality of the loss of eBay.com visibility
April 27, 2007
Nick has been affected by the unanounced changes to visibility of UK listings on eBay.com and today shares how it has affected his business and the steps he’s taken to minimise the impact.
US Visibility, two words that now send a shiver down my spine and bring me out in a cold sweat.
Let me take you back a couple of months to February. Our eBay sales were growing by 20% on the previous year and we had just had our best Christmas sales period since I started the business in 2003. Plans were in place to increase the product range on offer to our customers and maybe employ some staff to cope with the expected growth to come. In short everything was going as well as we had hoped and planned for.
Then, overnight our US sales stopped! This was a serious blow as 30% of our sales went to our US customers.
Faced with the real possibility that my business would not survive a 30% drop in sales I contacted our auction management provider Marketworks for a solution. I was informed that it was not possible to list items to both eBay.co.uk & eBay.com with the same eBay user name with one Marketworks account.
I then contacted Channel Advisor (CA) as I had already made contingency plans to change our auction management provider from Marketworks to Channel Advisor due to support and reliability issues.
CA confirmed that it was possible to list to both sites with the same eBay user name with one CA account. So I decided to jump ship and move the business to CA. This was not an easy decision to make bearing in mind the huge amount of extra work this would entail.
I am happy to report that we now have our US customers back. Sales are back on track but there are still issues.
As we are listing items in both Pounds Sterling and US Dollars, customers that buy multiple items in both currencies find that they can’t checkout. This means a lot of extra work contacting customers and manually adjusting orders.
Our UK sales have also dropped. I am not sure why this as happened but I suspect that some UK customers now think that we are based in the US as many of our items show a Dollar price.
The financial cost to my business has been very high. Lost sales for two months, set up fees for Channel Advisor and our merchant account. We are also duplicating listings as our most popular items are being listed on both sites, which of course means, an increase in our eBay fees.
We have been trading on eBay long enough to know that eBay policies and the market changes frequently but we usually get some period of notice. On this occasion eBay did not inform its sellers or buyers until after it had taken place! Which quite frankly is unacceptable.
I watched the interview with an eBay representative on the BBC Programme working lunch but I am afraid that the reasons behind the decision and worse, the lack of notice just did not stack up for me.
Fairness. UK sellers were getting two bites of the cherry.
First of all, this has been the case for years so why dump it on the community without any notice?
Secondly eBay.com has far more registered users than eBay.co.uk so many of us could not survive by selling on eBay.co.uk alone. Sellers based in the US have a much larger customer base so being able to sell to the UK is not an issue.
Looking after US Buyers. The .com site is being flooded with unwanted UK goods.
Again, no real reason to bring this change without notice.
If the .com site is being flooded with unwanted items eBay could simply make a small charge for opting into US visibility. This would cut out most of the unwanted items, as no seller would willingly pay extra to have items listed if they were unwanted and were not going to sell.
I do hope that eBay changes its policy. To allow UK sellers, which have a demand for its products in the US, to sell to that market.
Finally, if I could, I would give eBay a negative and zero stars out of five for its lack of communication and forethought.
Google Checkout £10 for £30 not available to all
April 27, 2007
Google have made much of their Checkout promotions where they’re basically buying market share. Spend £30 and Google will bung you a tenner so you’ll only pay £20 - a great deal for buyers and retailers with the promotion in place have reported great results. Rather than place a large order buyers are making multiple purchases of just over the £30 limit. Google have no limit on the number of transactions you can make with a particular retailer, or the number of £10s you can receive back. The more you spend the more you get.
However it’s not all great for retailers struggling to attract custom and jump through the checkout hoops. On the Checkout website it states that “merchant sites are selected for inclusion in promotions based on Google Checkout sales and the overall Google Checkout experience they offer“. Signing up for a Checkout account isn’t the universal panacea for sales rolling through the door from delighted customers with an unlimited £10 discount card.
Unless you’re invited to participate (or my take is “Unless Google think you’re going to get them enough new signups to checkout”) you’ll be hard pressed to fulfil all the criteria, which are so nebulous there is no sure way to tell if you’ll qualify or not anyway. Below is a typical email being sent out to merchants requesting more information on how to promote checkout with their promotion:
Thank you for your email.
I understand that you would like to {participate in a Google Checkout promotion/list your website XXX in our store directory.} I forwarded your information to our marketing team, who will review your website and Google Checkout account to determine your eligibility. Among other criteria (which may vary from promotion to promotion), we select sites based on their Google Checkout sales and the overall user experience they offer. To improve your chances of being selected, you may wish to try the following:
1. Place a Google Checkout button immediately beside, above or below every existing checkout button or link on your website. (Learn more about button placement at http://checkout.google.com/seller/checkout_buttons.html.)
2. Display ‘or checkout with’ between the Google Checkout button and your existing checkout button.
3. Display a ‘What is Google Checkout?’ link below the Google Checkout button. Direct this link to a page where you can explain Google Checkout benefits to your buyers.
4. Use a Google Checkout button that is the same size as your existing checkout button. If possible, make sure that these buttons are side-by-side.
If you are selected to participate in a future Google Checkout promotion, we will contact you by email. Please do not market any Google Checkout promotions unless you have received an invitation from Google.
Thank you for your interest in Google Checkout.
Transparency and straight answers about the promotion are what retailers are calling for. If anyone has more information on how to ensure a retailer qualifies for the checkout promotions please add a comment below.
RM strikes loom
April 26, 2007
The postal workers’ union is to ballot its members on strike action over the closure of a Derbyshire sorting office. Officials of the CWU say they have not been consulted over plans for the Heanor office, which is to transfer its staff and business to the Ilkeston office eight miles away. Royal Mail say that this will improve things for customers, as they will now be able to collect parcels as late as 6.45pm, instead of having to do so before 12.30 as currently. The CWU say that in other areas, service quality has fallen when sorting offices have closed, and that the way that staff have been treated is “an absolute disgrace”.
Meanwhile, Hellmail report that union leaders are meeting on Tuesday to discuss a national strike ballot over the recent RM pay offer. Dave Ward, CWU Deputy General Secretary, said “Unless there is a dramatic change in Royal Mail’s attitude there is no prospect of us reaching an agreement and a major dispute is inevitable.”
5126 times ouch
April 25, 2007
People who know me in real life, who can’t just ignore a blog post :-D, are probably bored by now by my saying that the biggest problem eBay face is that it’s too easy to get started. People start businesses (as I did) completely by accident, with no clue where they are going, where they want to be going, where they *should* be going (even if nowhere).
Today I found the flip-side of that coin: James Dyson’s 5,126 failed protoypes before he got it right. “You should admire the person who perseveres and slogs through and gets there in the end,” says Dyson.
He’s right. You should also admire the person who knows when to give up. And more than either of those, the person who knows how to tell the difference.
Feedback 2 launches on .com
April 25, 2007
eBay have announced that Feedback 2 will launch on eBay.com next week. The system, which allows buyers to rate sellers anonymously on accuracy of description, communication, speed of dispatch and reasonableness of shipping charges, was introduced in the UK and seven other countries in March: it will now roll on .com and all other eBay sites globally.
I have to admit that while I originally thought FB2 was a disaster for eBay, I now largely fail to care about it one way or the other. It’s typically buggy in its implementation: my own total number of star ratings received varies by about 150 either way from hour to hour, and I’m not the only seller to report this. Moreover, as a buyer myself, I’ve largely found that I really can’t be bothered to click on all those stars on the majority of my transactions, an attitude I know my buyers also share.
The belief was once expressed by some in eBay’s management that FB2 would allow buyers to distinguish between sellers, but this seems to be largely fluff. I’ve rarely seen a seller who scores lower than 4.5 on any criterion, and because scores are averaged by the half-star, it takes very little to up your score if it does fall lower than you’d like.
Where FB2 *might* have succeeded is in allowing disgruntled buyers who daren’t leave a neg for fear of retaliation, a platform for expressing their unhappiness. I’d argue that an anonymous, non-specific comment is fairly pointless, but if it cheers buyers up and keeps them on the site, I don’t think it hurts anyone.
Celebrity auctions for Oxfam
April 23, 2007
On Tuesday April 24, Oxfam will launch its biggest ever celebrity and public auction to help raise money for its £5 million appeal for Darfur and Chad.
A host of stars from international pop legend Elton John, Oscar-winning actress Dame Helen Mirren, acclaimed artist Tracey Emin, Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin, and actress Sienna Miller have donated treasured possessions, as well as singer Corinne Bailey Rae and Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz.
The celebrity auction is part of Oxfam’s appeal for Darfur and Chad, which was launched on April 16 and has already raised £750,000. It is hoped that the 10-day celebrity auction will generate at least £500,000 more. The public can also join the stars by offering their own valuable items like books, clothes and antiques with ebay for charity to raise funds for Oxfam’s lifesaving work in Darfur and Chad.
Read more
An Interview with Scot Wingo
April 23, 2007
Last week I attended the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Conference and then eBay University on the Saturday. I’ll be posting my thoughts on both over the course of this week.
At Catalyst I had the opportunity to interview Scot Wingo, President and CEO of ChannelAdvisor and he shared his thoughts with me on many topics of interest to eBay traders and ecommerce in general. Timing for our interview couldn’t have been better - eBay released their Q1 results the night before. Scot’s take is that the results were better than expected across the board, with only the growth in active users and number of listings lagging. However if eBay can produce higher profits on fewer listings either selling prices are up or a higher percentage of listings are finding buyers - either (or both) should please sellers. With growth Internationally at 38% and within the US at 18% eBay.com continues to lag behind in it’s contribution to total revenues.
Read more
$25000+ to go fishing on eBay
April 21, 2007
When I first logged on to the Internet it was on a laptop running Windows 3.11 with a BT dial up connection with a 28k modem. Slow and clunky, but then so was the Internet in those day. In todays connected world most Internet connections are broadband or faster and the Internet bears little relationship to my first experience. When I first learnt to type on a BBC Master, or even my first 286 Intel based machine it was hard to imagine one day I’d be able to power up my laptop and hold a phone conversation over Skype.
Intel is arguably the company whom without the Internet as we know it today wouldn’t exist. Although software companies such as Microsoft are often touted as those that shaped the user experience without the hardware to run on it wouldn’t be possible. Now there is a unique opportunity to spend a weekend with the Chairman of Intel, Craig Barrett. Barrett joined Intel in 1974 working in the materials and manufacturing side of the business. Along side technology he lists all outdoor pursuits as his interest including skiing, hiking, horseback riding and flyfishing. The winner of the auction on eBay will be able to enjoy these activities with him.
The auction will raise funds through eBay for Charity for the National Forest Foundation which Craig Barrett serves as Vice Chairman of the Board for. He will take you fly fishing and on a horseback trail ride through the Rockies with him as your guide.
Phone support for Silver PowerSellers update!
April 20, 2007
We have been contacted by eBay who wanted to inform us that Phone Support for Silver PowerSellers will be available to eBay.co.uk members from the 30th April and not as from today as the PowerSeller Portal would currently suggest. The new service has been mistakenly posted on the portal and is currently, we’re informed, in the process of being removed until the appropriate date.
eBay would like to apologise for this and any confusion caused and suggest that in the meantime Silver PowerSellers continue to use the dedicated email service that they can find by logging into the PowerSeller Portal and clicking on Benefits and then Customer Support.
Ticketmaster suing StubHub
April 19, 2007
Ticketmaster are suing eBay’s ticket sales subsidiary StubHub for violation of contracts between venues and Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster are apparently the exclusive ticket agent for the Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hank Williams Jr. “Rowdy Frynds” tour, but the Wall Street Journal reports allegations that StubHub “effectively extracted tickets from various client venues by threatening that if tickets weren’t made available, those venues ‘might not be considered as venues for future live-entertainment events.’ ” At the time of writing, StubHub has thirty listings for tickets for the tour.
Phone support extended to Silver PSs
April 19, 2007
eBay have announced that from 30th April, phone support will be extended to Silver Powersellers in the UK. Sellers who turn over £1,500 or 300 items per month qualify as Silver PSs. Those qualified can find the Support phone number by logging in to the Powerseller portal.
Paypal, Yahoo stand together against Checkout
April 19, 2007
Yahoo and Paypal are promoting merchants who advertise with Yahoo and offer Paypal’s Express Checkout with a special logo. The new Yahoo! Paypal Checkout service offers merchants free Express Checkout processing until the end of the year, and US$100 worth of advertising on Yahoo: it’s all very reminiscent of, and presumably designed to compete with, Google Checkout’s offers. The new service is part of an ongoing partnership between Paypal and Yahoo. Under an agreement struck last year, before Google had officially launched their Checkout service, Paypal provide Yahoo’s Wallet service, where users can store billing and shipping information.
What Meg actually said
April 19, 2007
Various blogs, TameBay included, and eBay message boards have been buzzing today with the suggestion that eBay wanted to shed “commodity” books and DVD listings. It seems, however, that this was playing Chinese Whispers with what Meg Whitman actually said: here’s my transcript of part of the actual speech:
However, the growth rate of overall listings and therefore GMV are not what we want them to be in the US and Germany. So let me spend a minute addressing the factors we think are specifically contributing to the growth rate in these two countries. First, as we told you last year, we continue to focus heavily on improving the buyer experience, by advantaging our auction listings and discouraging lower quality, poorly priced listings. This is absolutely having the desired effect of a cleaner site. However, as expected, this is putting some pressure on our listings and GMV growth in the US and Germany. But we still think this initiative will continue to substantially improve the buyer experience.
Also in line with the evolution of the internet and the changing environment around trust and safety, we have agressively stepped up our efforts around the identification and removal of bad sellers, with a variety of new measures. Some of these initiatives are impacting on GMV growth, but based on feedback we have heard from our buyers and rights owners alike, they are having an overall positive effect on the health of the marketplace.
In order to accelerate growth, we will continue to improve the user experience on eBay sites around the world, with state of the art search technology, especially around product based search and improved search relevence. And we will continue to advance our trust and safety efforts to make our sites the safest places on the internet to conduct business. I’m confident that we’ve identified the areas we need to focus on to reaccelerate growth in the US and Germany, but this won’t be achieved overnight and I believe we’ve put the right teams and the right strategies in place to make this work. Looking beyond the US and Germany, eBay around the world continues to be an impressive story.
In Europe, the UK showed strong growth in its acquisition of new users, hosting a 26% increase in the number of registered users from the previous year. France and Italy continue to be success stories in their own right, with very strong growth, while marketplace Belgium and Spain continue to drive high awareness rates and even higher user acquisition and activity metrics.
Though the technology categories were singled out for special praise in the Q&A section after the call, no specific categories were mentioned as problematic, only “lower quality, poorly priced listings”.
I think this is yet again going back to the changes to SIF pricings last year, and perhaps the ongoing move away from reserve prices too. In a question asking for her reaction to the news that fixed price goods now make up 39% of eBay GMV, Meg said that the fun of auctions and the convenience of the shopping experience can both be combined on the eBay site: I’m not hearing that there’s a crusade against any particular group of sellers, simply against overpriced goods that don’t sell.
Strike call over WHSmith’s Post Offices
April 19, 2007
The postal workers’ union has called for a boycott of WH Smith and possible strike action over plans to move 70 post offices to within WHS branches. CWU spokesman Andy Furey called the move a “devastating blow” for “specialist highly skilled staff”, who will now be offered voluntary redundancy or jobs elsewhere with RM or WHS.
WH Smith have been running post office branches as a trial in six stores since last year. Chief Executive Kate Swann said that the deal would secure “the future of Post Office services in the towns served by these 70 stores”. All services currently offered by the Post Office would be provided in the new stores, whose opening hours would match those of the store. Sunday trading was also being considered, she said.
While change at work is always difficult, there can be little doubt that Ms Swann is right, and that moving post offices to within other stores has to be better than seeing the PO network pruned and pruned some more with every fresh round of closures. Longer opening hours will be more convenient for everyone, and being under WH Smith’s umbrella might even give those “specialist staff” a little more longer-term security.
I would like to point out to any eBay buyers reading, though, that POs opening on Sundays does *not* mean your parcels are getting posted that day 
Thanks to Dan for the link.
eBay getting rid of books and DVDs?
April 19, 2007
Randy Smythe reports a rather shocking comment from Meg Whitman during the Q1 earnings conference call. Quoting business2.com, “two initiatives to improve the quality of the marketplaces - getting rid of commodity listings like low-priced books and DVDs, and booting fraudulent sellers off the site - are holding back growth in gross merchandise value, Whitman says.”
Even if this is true, it’s an astonishingly crass statement to make. eBay have been forced previously to deny they have a policy to remove unproductive listings - so is this now a public about-turn? And what now for the thousands of sellers of other items who have built successful businesses on the “sell huge volumes of product for pennies on eBay” model? eBay need to clarify this as a matter of urgency.
Updated to add:
The Associated Press report of the call which appeared in Forbes and elsewhere has a different list of items under fire:
Whitman said Wednesday she was disappointed with the tepid listings growth. She said it was the result of an ambitious effort to reduce the amount of overpriced commodity items that have increasingly clogged up the site - such as thousands of cell phone chargers, outdated MP3 players and other electronic devices, often with high starting bids and reserve prices.
eBay Q1 2007: biggest increase in five quarters
April 18, 2007
eBay have announced figures for the first quarter of 2007, dubbed “a very strong one” by Meg Whitman. Net revenues were US$1.77 billion, 27% up the same period last year. 588 million items were listed over the three months, up 13 million from Q1 2006. Paypal’s revenues grew 31% to US$439million, and the total number of accounts increased 36% to 143 million worldwide. Skype revenues grew 123% to US$79 million, with registered users up 107% to 196 million worldwide. In a rare moment of pro-eBay feeling, Blogging Stocks comment that reports of their death are greatly exaggerated.
Date set for BIN patent hearing
April 18, 2007
Auctionbytes point out that judgement day for Buy It Now approaches. eBay and MercExchange will appear in court on June 12th, MercExchange arguing for a permanent injunction against eBay’s BIN, and eBay arguing for a stay of proceedings in view of the US Patents Office’s reexamination of MercExchange’s patents.
Auctionbytes also has a guide to the history of this case.
Child pornographer used eBay to find customers
April 18, 2007
A man has admitted using eBay to build a customer network for his child pornography business. He used “low-level material” to attract buyers, and then offered them explicit images from his own extensive collection. Blackfriars Crown Court heard Giles Forbes, aged 41, admit three counts of distributing child pornography. The prosecution said that Forbes’ personal store of images almost filled his home. He was convicted of similar offenses in 1992, 1994 and 1999.
Recent Comments
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If anyone has one and wants to spend it with me... - northumbrian: the only fault with that bling thing is if anything it makes the item look to good
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