- This topic has 17 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
I’m hoping for at least a few good tips and hopefully a few announcements about upcoming changes. A status report on how far along ebay is with getting everyone into Managed Payments would be nice too.
Obviously, this isn’t going to be on the same level as a real world event, but if I come away with a few tips or useful info, I’m happy. Especially since it’s free.
-
I see you sign up here: https://sellerevents.ebay.com/events/details/ebay-ebay-seller-conferences-presents-ebay-open-online/
Dumb question: is it free? It’s not clear.
-
-
eBay UK gave me a status report yesterday- “80% of items on eBay are 100% new”. I also got an invite to sign up for a 3-day hybrid “eBay Open UK 2021” event. To sign up, I have to add a “profile” to my eBay account:
Ready to use eBay Open UK? Great! To share info about your eBay account and let eBay Open UK act on your behalf, we need your consent first. Don’t worry: We won’t give the application your eBay password.
I’m then presented with
Please select all of the content sessions that you are interested in from the below list, these will help us give you the best event experience based on what you like.
Underneath is a list of topics which actually look useful; for example “Vehicle Parts & Accessories”.
-
“80% of items on eBay are 100% new”.
I wonder if the majority of items by volume are new, but there are more sellers that sell used items.
One eBay seller may have 100,000 new items listed on eBay because its all just catalogue photos of multiples. Then there’s the 100 of us that have 20,000 used items listed collectively because we have to take photos one by one.
-
-
-
-
For those who might be interested:
Here’s a link to all the video replays currently available from ebay Open 2021. I don’t know if they’ll be making more available later.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHVEVK6whrNbg_vbVUhwFsproCtkCYEoU
-
I didn’t get to attend all the sessions, will watch videos as time permits. A few things to note:
ebay is working on a way to add immediate payment to best offers, might have that launched within the next few months. And expect immediate payment to be added to auctions sometime in 2022. No details on just how this will work.
ebay is working to add more payout flexibility to Managed Payments, and also to make it a “wallet”, so we can not only use it to pay for ebay shipping labels but also to buy stuff on ebay (and maybe more). Not sure of a timeline here.
A number of design changes coming to stores, some very soon, some probably within the next few months.
No timeline for this one, but they are actively working on it: if a store owner provides a link to his ebay item on social media, and a buyer buys the item due to that link, the FVF will be a flat 2.56% (plus the 30 cent transaction fee). Again, no details, and my guess is the devil, as he so often is, will be in the details.
As some of you know, I had a Zoom meeting a while ago with an ebay employee working on the packing Slip Coded Coupon changes, and many of the things we discussed were incorporated in those tools (no, I’m not taking credit, just saying the discussion was worth having.
I’ve been invited to Zoom with a Stores Team member about store changes…not sure if and when that will actually happen. BUT….would love input from you guys. What would you like to see changed when it comes to ebay store design and functionality? (This isn’t about store subscription levels, it’s about store design and functionality.)
-
ebay is working on a way to add immediate payment to best offers, might have that launched within the next few months. And expect immediate payment to be added to auctions sometime in 2022. No details on just how this will work.
Adding instant payment when you accept an offer would be HUGE. Just make customers connect a credit card to their account.
Seems incredible inefficient currently if buyers can send out 100 offers and just pay for the ones they want to. If a buyer sends an offer, he commits to buying if accepted. Just like an auction bid.
-
-
Jay, Agreed. I’m hoping they can have that live before Q4….it would make the Holiday Season a lot smoother.
Do you have any suggestions about store design/functionality for me to forward to the Stores Team? I know they are looking at a few things right now….making it easier to work with social media, adding video to listings and the store’s “about me” section (without the need to first load to YouTube), adding optional banners to the store home page to announce if you are running a sale, or just want to highlight a particular category (right now I have a public coded coupon promotion going, but you’d never know it looking at my store home page). There’s other stuff too.
I think the basic idea is to give store sellers more ability to “brand” themselves…
-
I’m really glad they’re talking to you about Stores. But we dont have any advice since I just dont see us having a “brand” that we would promote on social media.
-
Don’t know about the brand thing- I’ve just spent ten minutes on Amazon trying to purchase a pair of women’s jogging pants for a friend. I enter what she told me (Danskin women’s drawcord pants) and I get a wall of pants none of which are Danskin; they got names like Vertvie, Hniunew and Happy Sailed. Yeah, that’s the dropshipper’s “Let A Hundred Brand Names Bloom” sales strategy at work.
Then I get blamed for making the shopping experience ‘confusing’. 🙂
-
-
-
-
Maybe “brand” is not the best choice of words?
ebay is not talking about the “branding” that some Amazon sellers do , basically slapping a brand name of their own on some unbranded AliBaba stuff…and this isn’t about having a brand the way “Coke” is a brand. It’s more about giving your store a recognizable name, logo, and so forth, maybe a backstory. But this is just basic business stuff. For example, if I have a “billboard” on my store, probably a good idea to use the same design on my Facebook business page….for “brand consistency”.
This is my take on where ebay is trying to go with this. Under Donahoe and even more so Wenig, ebay was all about the LISTING andf the ebay CATALOG, not the individual store or the seller. Sellers (as on Amazon, to a great extent) existed merely as inventory suppliers, with little ability to actively market their own business. Now, under new management, we can at least try to impact our own sales: seller initiated offers, coded coupons, etc. In short, we can function more as independent retailers rather than shelf stockers. And that’s what I think the Stores Team is aiming for: increase our ability to develop our own customer base by distinguishing ourselves from other sellers. (This might also help stop some of the “race to the bottom” on prices).
I realize that this is easier for a store that serves a definite niche. If I sold only nineteenth century photos, for example, I could “brand” myself a little easier than “I sell whatever I can find to flip” But, I don’t think it’s impossible to do this, and I think ebay is trying to give us more tools so we can try to do this (if we want to).
So ebay is revamping store newsletters, is working to change store design so we can do more to attract buyers , and making it easier to use social media.
The foundation of any scavenger type business will always be: List, list, list. That’s just the nature of selling primarily long tail one-offs, rather than multi quantity popular items. And I think an ebay seller can be successful with: keep listing. But I think what ebay is trying to do is provide us with the tools to increase our sales velocity even with long tail one offs.
Hope this makes sense.
-
To me all marketing is just noise, including stores. Either somebody is specifically looking for and finds my long tail one-off or they don’t. They don’t care what my store looks like and it’s unlikely they’ll ever see it. It’s extremely rare for me to get repeat customers. I’ll pay for a store to save money but the less time I have to spend dealing with it, the better.
Of course I am a part-timer and I’m the kind of seller who wishes eBay would go back to their easy 1997 user interface (I love the simplicity of Craigslist) so my comments are probably not helpful. But I think it’s good for eBay to know there is a segment of sellers that couldn’t care less about stores other than clinging to the hope that their lives and their buyers’ searches are not made harder by eBay fiddling with them.
-
To me all marketing is just noise, including stores. Either somebody is specifically looking for and finds my long tail one-off or they don’t. They don’t care what my store looks like and it’s unlikely they’ll ever see it. It’s extremely rare for me to get repeat customers. I’ll pay for a store to save money but the less time I have to spend dealing with it, the better.
Im on the same boat. But I do understand what MyCottage is saying.
I think eBay has just done a poor job with stores etc that its easier for us to just keep it all very simple. I really just want eBay to stay out of our way and keep the basic things working corrcetly. I’d be interested if they can find a way to look better as long as its not more input values we have to change/update.
.
-
I agree with the basic principle when it comes to long tail one offs. However, one thing I suspect has been happening, especially with promoted listings, is buyers who are NOT actively looking for my item end up buying it as more of an impulse buy. And this is really similar to early day ebay, when the amount of stuff on the site was low enough that buyers could just stumble across something they might never have heard of, and suddenly decide they want it. Basically, it’s what I think of as the difference between “search” and “discovery”.
In any event, I’ve never really done anything effective with social media, but just yesterday I was put into a beta test ebay is running…I’ll skip the details, but essentially if I direct a buyer to one of my items through social media (limited to certain sites and how I create the link), and the buyer buys the item within 30 days (or other items of mine that can be traced back to my social media link), I’ll get an FVF credit and a credit of the 30 cent transaction fee as well. So, especially with the Summer Slow Down still going on, it seems like a good time for me to try to develop my social media efforts.
I know there will be a learning curve, but once past that, if I can limit the amount of time I need to spend on social media work (which shouldn’t be hard), I will be happy to try to both increase my sales velocity and reduce my fees. Right now sales have been slow enough that it’s a good time to focus on this stuff.
Still, I do see what you guys are saying….keep it simple, list, and list some more. Nothing wrong with that. And I might eventually decide that that is still the best approach for me. But for now, for me, I’ll give this a try.
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.