eBay update -- what's changed over the last few years and how you can take advantage as a seller: details that pay

Copyright © 2002 Richard Seltzer All rights reserved. To correspond with the author, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com Comments welcome. 

Since then, in the wake of  the dot-com crash, most of the auction management companies floundered, but eBay itself has continued to thrive. How do they do it? By listening to customers, working hard, and paying attention to all the details that matter to customers -- making it far easier and less time-consuming to sell through their service -- moving to the point where they now do just about everything that the third party services used to do, and more, and do it very well.

So what have they done?

Customer service -- In the past, if you had a question about eBay (and with millions of people participating in what for many is a bizarre new experience, they must have received an enormous number of questions), there was no way to phone anyone to ask. If you couldn't find the answer in the online help files, you had to send email. Then, if you got an answer at all, it would be a long, long wait. Today, they use an online application known as "LivePerson", and usually within a couple minutes you can chat live with an eBay support person. It's very effective. I suspect that lots of people who before would have gone away confused, and never returned, are now converted to loyal eBay sellers and buyers.

Online payment -- The typical model in the past was 1) auction ends, 2) seller sends email to winner stating the total cost (including shipping charges), 3) buyer sends check to seller, 4) on receipt of check, seller sends merchandise to buyer. That process would typically take 1-2 weeks. And the auction itself typically took a week. So, if nothing went wrong, it might easily be three weeks from the time an auction started to the time the merchandise was sent.

Now eBay owns PayPal, an easy-to-use online payment service and is integrating it into the overall functionality of the eBay site. PayPal has numerous options, but basically it enables people with credit cards to pay you without you having to have a merchant credit card account. Sellers who opt to accept PayPal can quickly put a PayPal logo on their auction description with a link that makes it very easy to pay right away once you have "won" an auction. Now many goods bought at auction are paid for immediately online this way, and the goods can be shipped that same day or the next (if the seller is efficient), making the whole experience much more satisfying and profitable. (NB -- There is no charge for buyers using PayPal. Sellers pay a small fee to collect the funds, comparable to what you'd pay a merchant credit card service).

Scheduling auctions -- Early this week I got email from eBay seller who had read an old article of mine talking about the capabilities of AuctionRover, especially the ability to schedule when your auctions would start. I replied with regret that such services no longer exist. Then that very afternoon when checking my ongoing auctions at eBay and relisting an item, I saw that eBay had just initiated that very service (with no fanfare at all -- it was simply, quietly added to the list of choices when you post an item). Now you can pick the date and the time (to the quarter hour). Previously, an auction automatically started the moment you posted it, and it ended at that time of day, 5, 7, or 10 days later. So if you wanted your auction to end at 9 PM on Saturday night (a good time for collectibles), you'd want to start it at 9 PM the week before -- which might be very difficult for you. This new capability is a huge improvement.

Making it far easier to handle the logistics and record keeping -- Now on your "My eBay" page, you can see a full summary of all your buying and selling activity at eBay, with links to the individual listings. When someone "wins" one of your auctions, from your "My eBay" page, you can with a click send an "Invoice" to the buyer; and three days later you can with a click send a payment reminder. And on the other end, the "checkout" process for the buyer has been streamlined as well. There is no need for composing or copying/pasting personal emails back and forth, but there is the opportunity to add a few personal comments or detailed instructions to the standard message (which includes all the relevant facts, like item name and number and the closing price). They also make it very easy to "relist" an item or to list a new item that is similar to one that you posted in the past -- carrying over all the past choices and text and letting you quickly make whatever changes are necessary.

In addition, to add photos, all you have to do is browse your hard drive to find the file, then click to upload it. (In what now feels like the distant past, you needed to post your picture at a personal Web site or at a third party service and link to it.) It's even much easier to post feedback on sellers and buyers.

For those who have never sold at auctions, these details may seem insignificant. To serious sellers, they are the difference between having a profitable, pleasurable experience, and wasting hour after hour in tedious tasks, in a mode where even if you make money, it isn't worth the effort. Overall, brilliant attention to detail by eBay's site designers has simplified many essential steps that used to be annoying and time consuming, and that you might otherwise forget.

Marketing tools  -- You can use HTML markup in your listings, and even include links to personal Web pages of yours, where you might post additional detail and additional photos. eBay also makes it very easy to build a bio/profile page at the eBay site, where you can explain who you are and what you are trying to do, and where (automatically, without you doing anything) links appear to all your current auctions, and all your feedback appears. As a buyer that makes it easy to see other auctions that the same seller has going on at the same time. You can also, with a simple click from your My eBay page, add Andale counters to all your auction pages, and then click to see the resulting stats -- how many people have visited which of your auctions.

Buy It Now: more like an online store than an auction -- In addition to bidding-style sales, eBay now allows you to set a fixed price and sell items as soon as someone is willing to match that price. This approach is excellent for companies that sell merchandise through online stores -- eBay becomes an additional online sales channel, with a large audience of potential customers. If you have multiple identical items to sell (manufactured goods, as opposed to collectibles), you can post them in bundles, so as soon as one sells, another is offered, or you can list and relist, selling them one at a time.

The fee for posting a single item depends on the price you set (for a price of around $20, the current insertion fee is 55 cents). The current fee for posting a quantity of the same item to sell one after the other is the price times the number of items up to a maximum of $3.30. Once an item sells, you also get assessed a final value fee, which varies according to price. For items in the under $25 range, you wind up paying 5.25%, which feels like sales tax. And if they pay by PayPal, you pay another fee, which for a $20 sale currently amounts to about 90 cents. So the fees add up, but if you set the right price, you can do quite well, with very little hassle.

If you sell one at a time, your auction runs out in seven days, unless you opt (as I did) for ten days, for ten cents more. So, unlike with a store, you need to keep coming back to eBay to relist when they sell/run out, and or when the auction time ends without a sale. On the one hand, that's a nuisance. On the other hand, it's an opportunity. I use eBay to experiment with price. I typically have nine items for sale as "Buy It Now" at any one time -- all books on CD ROM. I posted them there originally with $5 discount "for a limited time". Each time an item sells, I raise the price $1 when I relist. Each time one fails to sell in the ten-day window, I reduce the price $1. I've been doing that for several weeks now, and have discovered (at least for the products that I sell) that the market seems insenitive to price; it appears I could charge as much as the regular retail price without reducing the number of sales.

If the merchandise you want to sell is books or CDs, as an alternative, at no cost for listing and with an incredibly fast listing process, you can sell through half.com (a company owned by eBay). At half.com, to list an item, you just enter its ISBN or UPC number and indicate if it's new or used; and if used, what its condition is. If the item was manufactured in the last 10-20 years, the chances are excellent that they already have all the info about the item, including a photo of it, in their database. And here items stay on sale until sold or until you remove them. This is a very low-maintenance sales channel; but, unfortunately, it is also low volume, with nowhere near the traffic you get at the main eBay site.

If you tried selling at eBay a few years ago and gave up in frustration, or your enthusiasm waned as you realized that the time you were putting in taking care of logistics and recordkeeping and listing and communicating with customers simply wasn't worth it, you should give it another try. And if you already sell merchandise online in other ways (such as through your own online store), you should seriously consider using eBay as an added channel or as a marketplace where you can test prices and special offers or as a way to sell closeouts and excess inventory. They have done very good work. Find creative ways to take advantage of their brilliance.

• October 3, 2002 -- Update on selling at online auctions, especially eBay
• October 10, 2002 -- Where and how to buy things to sell at online auctions

My Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities by Richard Seltzer, on CD, includes four books, 162 articles, and 49 newsletter issues that will inspire you and provide the practical information you need to build your own personal Web site or Internet-based business, helping you to become a player in this new business environment.

Web Business Boot Camp: Hands-on Internet lessons for manager, entrepreneurs, and professionals by Richard Seltzer (Wiley, 2002). No-nonsense guide targets activities that anyone can perform to achieve online business success. Reviews.

Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. Click here for details. or send email to seltzer@samizdat.com

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