- This topic has 19 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 10 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
had my phone randomly playing through some Ebay podcasts and heard a pod-caster talking about Ebay beginning to lay the ground work for starting a Fulfillment By Ebay Program like Amazon. He covered topics about the upcoming Ebay Open Summer Convention in Vegas and some of the things to expect to hear about if you are going such as, the Spring Seller updates, the new Ebay policies and strategies and the ground work for Fulfillment by Ebay Program.
First time I have heard anything about that. Has anyone else heard of Ebay striding toward doing fulfillment themselves? If so, what are any of the SL members thoughts on Ebay starting or doing a program such as this. If it turns out like what Amazon has done it could be a tough, steep road for Ebay sellers.
Interested in thoughts on this or any research data you can find to support the notion.
-
It’s all about finding links online to see where people are getting their info. What podcaster was it? Link to the episode? How would he know inside info about eBay?
-
I found it Jay. It is RockStarFlipper.com Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb2irbf4LBE
He shows a screen shot from Ebay sent out polling the issue of Ebay doing a fulfillment program. he is not saying it “is” going to be done, just that Ebay is poking around the edges for interest on a program like this. Of course he goes on the offer just his personal opinion on a program such as this as well as the scrolling screen on the right shows his audience responses to this. He goes on to compare a hypothetical Ebay type program to the Amazon model.
I was just asking if anybody else [SL member] had seen or heard anything about this anywhere else.
Note that at the 11:01 mark he starts the conversation and at 11:54 is where he shows a screen shot of the Ebay email sent out asking about a program of this sorts. The rest are just coversations and answering viewer questions, which again is just his personal opinion.
He brought up a comment on cross listing, which we do, and that would be problematic with Ebay holding our inventory and doing the shipping. We like to have complete control of our inventory and a program like this would take that control away. especially since we are real close now to opening our own Online Store which is where we will be selling directly to traffic coming directly from Google searches.
So just wondering what SL members might think about a topic such as this.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
-
I wonder if an eBay fulfillment program would be useful for sellers like us who sell weird, vintage items. Or if it’s just useful to attract Amazon sellers who sell new stuff from Chinese factories.
I guess it all depends on storage fees, etc.
-
-
-
-
I just did a search on eBay valet to check up on that program. The information I found was that the program was discontinued and they stopped taking items mid-March. The valet program definitely had its issues since they would only list it for a month or two and then send it back to you (from what I heard).
All they have now is the luxury handbag consignment program. They also have a page where you can find a seller who is willing to take consignments.
Perhaps they discontinued the valet program in order to do a fulfillment service? I would think that a fulfillment service would be better for multiples and not unique items. It would also fit with their new focus on having product pages. It could be part of that strategy, but I would imagine that it would be more what Amazon does and not like a consignment program.
-
No Sharyn:. It was not about the Valet program. I have known about that effort for years. That is an old program of having drop of points like UPS stores where you take your items and they do the photography, create the listing and post and sell it for you for a large commission.
BTW that program though is getting some new juice with FedEx. FedEx and Ebay are talking about FedEx doing this for random sellers again.What I was hearing was a pod-caster talking about Ebay creating it’s own fulfillment program. This is a current discussion because he was talking about the Ebay Open Convention being moved to the Mandalay Hotel and the agenda and that is this Summer 2018. I was just asking if anybody else has heard about this.
But as Jay says above, who was it. So I will dig back through my pod casts lsitens this morning and get the link. I think I know who it was but have to find the link.
-
Mike,
I think in theory it is a great idea. You get your items to ebay and then they can ship them for you and maybe do a “Ebay Prime Free shipping” thing. But as we have seen at Amazon, things don’t quite go that well for sellers. They start charging crazy storage fees if things don’t sell fast, then they want to send the items back or dispose of them.
I would be all for it if I could drive to the ebay warehouse, drop off my containers and have assurances of set rates and practices for several years out. But I don’t think that is going to happen.
Mark
-
-
-
I think this would work best for sellers selling new items that they manufacture. Then they could send them 10 different shirts (or whatever) and then send more when those sell out.
But for sellers who are list it and forget it, I think storage fees would creep in and erode the profits at some point.
Mark
-
Hey Mark.. Well if you lsiten to all of the Q&A things in that pod-cast, they cover most of this. And as i personally feel and said, I want total control of all of my items because we cross list. I have a lot of our items on Etsy, some on local channels and soon all of our inventory will be in our own store so I surely do not want our inventory to be any place other than at my finger tips [our storage facilties] so we can ship to anyone who buys from us on any platform.
And as you know, WonderLister is our main listing and command central dashboard. Their Shopify module is now going live and Etsy will soon follow. We will be able to sell on multi channel platforms, get all our financials in one spot and have our own centralized shipping point. So an Ebay program like they are exploring would have no interest to us. But sure makes me wonder what the underlying thought process is for ebay. To help provide a Seller service or do like Amazon and use it to clean house by implementing all the things you mention.
-
Mike,
I have been wanting to get my vintage items on Etsy for a long time. Any idea on how long that may take Wonder Lister? When is Shopify going live?
Mark
-
Sure thing. have some updates.
My last feedback from the engineering team was Spring release for Shopify and Fall for Etsy.Well Shopify is about done. I got an app update about 3 weeks ago for testing. I started using and found some bugs. After a bunch of screen shots and about a week of communication and re-coding all of what I was seeing is now corrected. As of Monday of this week I can now highlight one line in WonderLister, right click for a drop down menu, click on send to Shopify and BINGO! everything moves to our Shopify Store dashboard as a draft. All Item specifics, all photos [has some real issues there-but all re-coded], the full desciption, condition, prices. Also WL now has a vendor and tags section and those get transferred also. Everything for a complete listing except for one or two fields specific to Shopify.
In order to test further for the WL team, I moved all 924 [st that time] listings over to Shopify and they all went just fine. Then deleted them and did them a second time. So, as of now, it is looking good. The support and engineering team are working internally on WL now, creating the Folders that will be needed to hold the “Listed on Shopify” items.
At this point I can go live with our Shopify store as far as WonderLister is concerned but I need to do some more design and organizational work myself inside of our Shopify dashboard. I can create my own WL folders for now manually. So maybe a few weeks +/- before a new update relaese that will go public, hopefully.etsy is coming along also, even though it is further behind than the Shopify module. In my version I am using, I see several commands that are showing functions for Etsy. There is a send to Etsy command button and a system folder that says “Send to Etsy” but as of yesterday, nothing is sent to Etsy. I have not been asked to do any Etsy testing yet so I would speculate still a few months out along with the fact that the Shopify module needs to get finished up first.
After I get our Shopify store online I will let you guys know and then you can cross reference our Ebay store to Shopify and see how things look. Would appreciate any comments on how things might be improved as far as the WL to Shopify transfer goes. Would be interested in feedback so I can pass along to the engineering team and help improve things for WonderLister.
WL as moving complete Ebay listings over to Shopify about every 10-15 seconds or so. So for 1,000 listings it would take about 2-1/2 hours or so. Also I could do them in smaller scheduled batches. Wonderlisters bulk editor is functional for changes on the listings within WL just as a normal function that we already have. It will just have to be submitted to Ebay as well as Shopify manually for now, but automatic submission to both channels is hopefully coming very shortly. I was asking for that just last week and they said it is coming.
Hope this info. helps somewhat.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
-
Thanks Mike!
That is some good information. Hope they get Etsy by October so I can cash in for the end of the year sales.
What do you expect to do with Shopify? How are you going to market it? I was under the impression that Shopify would not work well for the type of items most of us are doing on ebay. What is your take on this and should I be going to Shopify? What would be the best type of items to cross list on Shopify? Just any insights that you have on Shopify.
Mark
-
No problem Mark. :
Short on time today but will try to answer / shed light on your questions:
What do you expect to do with Shopify? >> First to have a complete total back up of our Ebay store as it sits with item specifics, descriptions, prices along with photos as a secure back-up to the Ebay and Etsy stores. Also to have a store of our own, which we run, our way without any Ebay rules. Sell to, ship to, and ship how we wnat. In other words total control of our store and also once sales build, to be able to listless on other platforms so we save on selling fees and the like.
How are you going to market it? We are building a 4th site that will be more of an informational site about all of the art, prints, paintings, editions, antiques, fakes, reproductions, how made, etc., etc. that we will use as what is called a “funnel through” site. Anyone visiting that site using any of the thousands of key words on those several hundred pages will see tons of links back to our Shopify store for “buying opportunities”. This is a technique that has been used for some time by more successful online sellers. Also we will be montizing internally within that info. site.
I was under the impression that Shopify would not work well for the type of items most of us are doing on ebay. Well that could be true depending on what you sell. We have built up items more about home decor, Asian decor, art glass, colletor art prints and abstract original prints and paintings. Much of this is not actually on Ebay or Etsy. We have been saving for our own store but some are going into the Ebay-Etsy stores shortly.
What is your take on this and should I be going to Shopify? >>> If you don’t have a background in SEO, using Google Tools [several for keyword research, ad campaigns, etc.] then a Shopify Store will just sit there and not much traffic will come your way. That is why we are going to use a funnel through site and a ton of SEO tools we have been studying over the past 5 years to drive traffic along with an email mailing list of thousands of customers who have bought from us through the years. we will be direct marketing to them.
What would be the best type of items to cross list on Shopify? >> We are going to mostly place high end over $75 and up to $350 art work, paintings, glass sculture, known names of home decor and such. As I said earlier if all you do is copy items to Shopify they will just sit. You have to have a feel for online marketing, traffic building, strong SEO skills. We have been studying and building a web site of our own that is hosted by us and that will be going live by end of year. That site has a ton of online utilities that is included in the tool kit we have at our disposal.
Many of the artists we have followed for years got there start on Ebay or Etsy but as there customer, collector base grew they gravitated away from Ebay and Etsy 100% and support themselves and sell there art through their own sites. That is sort of a long term goal for us. But we may always keep the Etsy / Ebay store as a back up also.
We have a complete art making, sculpture creation, wood working shop in our basement and now that we are retired, we are going to be making more of our own art work, home decor mirrors, clocks, table sculpture as mini mfg. and be buying less, and less of mass. mfg. items from the wild. Unless higher end items.
Just any insights that you have on Shopify. >>> Shopify is not a market selling platform like Ebay and Etsy. It will just sit there. It is a shell. Shopify is just like Wix, Volusion, Magento and others. It is a store hosting site and we can have our own domain name, our own domain email addresses, and direct communications with customers directly.
Also about these venues, if “you build it, they WILL NOT come!”. You will have to build the traffic. Very unlike Ebay and Etsy that has already done the work to drive traffic, but it drives it to their categories, not neccassarily “your” site. So if you want Murano Italian Art Glass Sculpture, the searcher will see everyone that has a Murano piece. On hopify, if they clcick on a Google feed they will only come to our site. So going to Shopify is very much like opening up your own Brick and Mortar Store only online. You have to do the marketing and have a marketing plan all on your own. That is what our informational site and the tools that come with it that we subscribe to provide. This is more of what we have been concentrating on than building a mega store on Ebay.
But as Jay says, we always have to feed the beast, but in the Shopify case, the beast we will be feeding will be our own beast, of our own creation. But as a contemporary artist and print maker, I am more interested now that I am retired or creating my own art, and home decor items and feeding the online venues with my “self made inventory”.
I think it was Christine that mention here on SL one time, that if I ever got a site of my own she would be interested in following it because of all the details I usually post about art work, how to distinquish real prints from repro prints, color, art paper, etc. We have over 40 years of expertise in the fine art area and art related home decor niche, and that is what got us thinking a lot more about doing our own web site and blog in a more “niched market”, not a general store, used, vintage items like our current Ebay store.
Guess it is going to be an interesting journey for a 69 year old, retired artist. A journey of more of personal interest and creative expression as we begin to go toward that horizon in the sky. We don’t have many years left to pursue our passion and to try to make money within it to boot.Our company slogan is Live to Create and Celebrate and that is what we are going to try to do over our final years here.
Hope this helps fill in some of your questions about Shopify and similiar sites.
Kindest Regards,
MDC Concepts, Inc.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta -
Mike,
Thanks for the info. That is kinda what I was thinking. Not an easy way to drive traffic to your Shopify site. I am not a SEO guy, so I think I should pass. I don’t think it would be worth my time (but maybe interesting). Right now I would rather pay ebay their fees and keep going.
But it may make sense in the future. I have some ideas for some things to patent and manufacture. Shopify may be a good place to sell them. But then again, I could also sell them on ebay.
Mark
-
-
-
-
-
Fulfillment by ebay is a terrible idea. I would rather see ebay create some sort of validation and escrow system for high value items. I’d be willing to pay higher selling fees for that.
Some examples, coach handbags, rolex watches, apple laptops, iphones, DSLR cameras, etc.
I have read that some retail stores that ship high value items have started putting locks on products such as handbags and the buyer has to call a phone number to 1. verify they received the item 2. get the passcode/combination to unlock the lock.
I have heard some ebay sellers doing this too, but I would guess its not very common.
-
Gompers, ebay has a program to authenticate high end bags. And I gather they will be expanding it to other categories.
ebay fulfillment is probably not something I’d use…I don’t use FBA either….not sure it makes sense for my long tail stuff. Or that my stuff would even be eligible if and when they do this. But I’m not opposed to it. Large sellers (many of whom use door to door Guaranteed Delivery) already have multiple warehouses. This could provide a real step up for smaller sellers to compete, especially those on the coasts. But again, it wouldn’t be for everyone…I know my buyers like speedy delivery, seriously, who doesn’t?, but I don’t think for most long tail stuff most of the time it’s any sort of “must have”
-
-
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.