Ebay — lots of details and lots of devils; trying to figure it out as a seller

I’ve written lots of articles with practical tips for sellers at Ebay (you can get to them all by was of http://www.samizdat.com/auc.html ) But Ebay is a moving target. They keep adding services, adding features, and changing fees.  I have a heck of time trying to keep base for my little business, publishing book collections on CD and DVD.

I’d like to share some of my experiences and insights.  But please keep in mind that the tips I deal with here relate to a business that manufactures its own products or has a limitless supply.  The approach would be different for selling collectibles and items that you have only one or a few of or that you have to buy from another vendor.

First, Ebay added Ebay Express.  From my perspective, that is a service devoted to products that you can put in the mail within 24 hours.  If you include a fast turnaround time in your listing, your items should turn up in Express in addition to the standard listing, at no extra cost to you.  (Check Ebay for details).  I was delighted through searches to discover that nearly all my items show up in that new format. Here’s what I find when doing an Ebay Express search for items for sale by me  http://search.express.ebay.com/merchant/richardseltzer

Next, I discovered that I had been wasting many hours per week unnecessarily.  Yes, I have an Ebay store, which for about $49 per month lets me have all my items “permanently” listed, with listing fees of a few cents each per month. But store items don’t normally get included in Ebay search results (WHY???). That means to be found, and for people to find my store auctions through the cross-promotion that comes free with the store, I need to also run open auctions for some, if not all of my items. Open auctions last a maximum of 7 days. So when an auction ended because the time ran out or because of a sale, I went through the tedious processing of relisting it by hand (about five minutes per item when response time is good).  But by signing up for Sales Manager Pro (for a small monthly fee), I am now able to set automated relisting rules for each of my items. I choose to relist all of them whether they sell or not.  At first I chose to relist the slower selling ones at various delay times — a day later or three or five or seven days later.  Then I realized (duh!) that Ebay added an extra fee for “scheduled” relistings.  So I set all my items with immediate relisting and distinguished among fast selling and slow selling items, by having my best sellers as 1 day auctions and the others as 3 day, 5 day, or 7 day, at no extra cost.

The 7 day saves me a lot on listing fees, but, at first I thought that limited how many copies of a given item I could sell, because at best I’d only sell one every 7 days.  Then it dawned on me (duh! again) that Ebay lets you end an auction at any time, with the highest bidder at that point being the winner.  It’s rare that people bid up the price of my items.  So in many cases, when I see that there are bids in the “selling” section of “My Ebay”, I cut those auctions short, record the sales, and relist immediately.

Great.  But with one Ebay glitch — when you end an auction that has automatic listing, the automatic listing fails.  You have to relist the item manually and then go back through Sales Manager Pro to once again assign automation rules.

By the way, Selling Manager Pro also lets me set up to automatically provide positive feedback to the people who buy from me (that too is a major time saver; it’s also good for customer relations, since in the past, I often forgot that important step).

At various times, I stumbled on other new Ebay features — second chance offers (if there were several bids on the same item, when the auction ends, you can send messages to the “losers” offering them the same item at the last price they bid; that brings additional sales without any additional listing cost), and “accept offers” which means you can put a relatively high price on items for sale in your store and consider offers to buy at a lower price.

Then a few months ago, Ebay made an offer to Ebay store owners for free phone consultation.  I signed up right away. And soon had a very helpful conversation with a knowledgeable support person.  That way I learned that now my cross-promotion listings could include 12 items, that I could choose to have my items appear at international Ebay sites, that I should improve the names of my store categories (more informative names with “keywords” that potential customers might be looking for), that I could opt to change the basic format of all my listings so links to my store categories would appear near the top,

On the negative side, Ebay recently did away with its keyword advertising program, which had been the best way to drive traffic to an Ebay store. And they raised the fees they charge for listing and relisting at your Ebay store. That’s bizarre.  You’d think they’d go out of their way to help their store owners make more sales.  But they are doing the opposite — making it harder and harder for Ebay shoppers to find store items; making it less and less profitable to run such a store at all.  The free phone consultation was great; but these new changes are terrible.

And one suggestion for Ebay (if you happen to know someone who works there — they have ignored my emails) — they should make it easy for sellers to make special time-limited and rule-limited offers, such as “two for the price of one”.

Feedback welcome.  It’s not easy trying to figure out how to sell repeatedly and profitably at Ebay.

Resources:
My eBay store http://stores.ebay.com/bandrsamizdatbooksoncd
My Yahoo store http://stores.yahoo.com/samizdat
My eBay bio page http://members.ebay.com/ws2/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=richardseltzer
Other articles about selling at eBay http://www.samizdat.com/auc.html

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.
 

A library for the price of a book.

This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com

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