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Hi all, I just received an email from eBay inviting me to join their “Cross Border Listing Program”. Looks like they have targeted six countries where they will post to the local eBay site and even translate listings into the native language of the location. I see on their description that this normally charges 2.5% for each sale, but they claim to offer for free to me. I’ve reached out to say I’m interested, but curious if anyone else has tried this and what your results might be?
https://pages.ebay.com/promo/lcp/webinterpret.html
Thanks, Mike
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Seems to involve PayPal, and “multicurrency”. I suppose managed payments would work the same way (i.e. the price displayed in the local currency and the buyer pays in same). There’s only three currencies involved (€, £ and A$).
(edit) It’s called European Sales Booster on eBay UK. I’ll sign up for it today.
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Hmm… signed up with no problem- it’s free for 100 listings. The eBay information page says that to be eligible the seller must have ”
- a Featured or Anchor Shop subscription (or have been invited to use this programme by eBay)
but also says that you don’t have to have a shop to take part, but you’re restricted to 250 listings. The French firm that runs this says a limit of 100 listings for a free account. Also books are excluded.
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@antique-frog – I guess I fall into the invite only group. As far as I’m aware, the program they’ve invited me to doesn’t have the limits you mentioned.
First thing I noticed different this morning was that the listing which have been posted to additional sites now show up as additional items on my active listings page. Fortunately they have a filter, but was a bit confusing first off. Filter allows you to filter by country that listings are posted in. Must be a slow process to translate listings as there is only one listing cross posted so far.
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Be careful with this. Webinterpret did a big marketing push a few years ago and caused all kinds of grief for several sellers. The problem (I think) was they would crosspost certain items that were restricted in some countries and accounts were being suspended and in some cases there were threats of being permanently banned. eBay and webinterpret threw their hands up and took no responsibility. Will (terminal99) got caught up in this and lost alot of money from a 30 day suspension on eBay. Here’s a video where he talks about it. EDIT: Video is a bit long and Antique Frog has a good suggestion to speed it up a bit.
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@incompetentpicker – Thanks for posting this. Definitely concerning if they haven’t worked out this bug already. I’ll pose this question to the eBay rep that reached out with the invitation and let you all know what I hear.
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Thanks for that! I think where it might affect the account is that Australia mis-categorisation thing; knives, perfume bottles and Nazi stuff I don’t have.
I sped the video up 1.5x to bring the word rate up to Brit standard. 🙂
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Will is a methodical talker! He had a lot to say and looked like he’d been through hell. He hadn’t posted in a awhile and it took him quite sometime to sort it out. I believe he’s a 20 year veteran on eBay with lots of money invested in a large inventory and eBay is a big part of his income.
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Just to update, my total listings has increased from 1132 to 2474 as they have begun to be duplicated across multiple ebay sites. So far only one sale, to Spain, which was unexpected as it was some prints from the late 1800’s, old west scenes. A long tail item I wouldn’t have expected to go overseas.
The program is confusing in a few unexpected ways. Since it duplicates all your listings, you have to filter your results to see your original listings. Not a big deal but a surprise the first time I logged into my eBay listings page.
After the sale the second issue arose. When the duplicate your sale they create a new item ID. That’s what I mainly use for inventory tracking so the IDs aren’t in my inventory to match. When I can’t match the ID I search on the title. With the listings translated to other languages title words don’t necessarily match either. Minor annoyances if it increases sales. We’ll see.
One other thing I’m concerned about is that it might cannibalize sales I would have gotten anyway. I had 45 sales last year out of North America last year out of 993 total. Should be easy to gauge.
I’ll let you know if I suddenly see big numbers. 🙂
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Thought I should post an update. I have pulled out of the Webinterpret Cross-Boarder Listing Program. Sales were few and far between, the process was unclear and confusing, and it was difficult to get answers quickly to questions. Several of the buyers I had via the program had questions or issues and my only way to communicate with them was via Google Translate. This slowed down the back and forth and added an extra layer of complexity that I didn’t enjoy.
Final straw came for me when I took vacation. I change my handling time via policies to accommodate the amount of time I’m gone. New required fields started when I was gone and the duplicate listings multiplied the listings needing updates by the number of countries they were in. Webinterpret cautions against editing the listings directly, so that left me with several hundred listings that I couldn’t update back to shorter shipping times.
I had seven sales for a total of $350 over a 3 month period. For me it just doesn’t feel like the added confusion is worth it.
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I never got beyond the first hurdle (can’t remember what that was, but they kept on reminding me that my listings weren’t suitable in some way.) I wasn’t tempted to fix whatever that was.
I had a long-running “conversation” with a Finnish customer some time back- GSP shipping to mosquito-infested marshes in the back country of Suomi is very slow; the reindeer amble along at 4 kph. He definitely wanted me not to use Google Translate as it “didn’t work” with Finnish. Perkele!
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I remember trying web interpret a couple of years ago. When my thousand listings turned into 4000 listings I got a bit freaked out and switched it off. I couldn’t figure out if I was about to be slammed with insertion fees for thousands of extra listings. I didn’t particularly like the loss of control.
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@Simon – I think you hit the nail on the head. The loss of control made me very uncomfortable. Not really owning the creation of the listings and not being sure the translations were accurate left me feeling I was at the mercy of the system.
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Their latest email to me was partly about the Polish site Allegro- they had a webinar on the “most important” categories on that site. Haven’t watched it; I’m helping a friend clear out forty years of clobber from rat-infested stables, and last week’s find was a set of watercolours of Polish cavalrymen (her family is Polish) so that could be something for Allegro.
But this apparent scattergun approach they’ve got is no use- a more targeted service would be useful.
I now know what the worst job I’ve done in my life is; clearing out rotting carpets and woodworm-infested furniture from a building carpeted in an inch-deep layer of rat droppings.
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@antique-frog – Have never heard of Allegro, not that I would have if it is solely for Poland.
Your clean out task does not sound like fun. Hope it is at least profitable.
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