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I don’t see us as an Amazon-like business. We were selling on eBay for about 4 years before expanding to sell on Amazon. We sell NOS (new old stock) auto parts which typically fit 1990-2010 models, with some parts for older and newer models. I’m pretty sure the typical eBay or Amazon customer has never bought or is interested in what we sell but there is a definite demand.
We source and buy what would otherwise be scrap (trash) and make it available to folks who need or want it.
I am one that dislikes paid shipping as a shopper because it makes it harder to compare prices. For one-off more unique/vintage/expensive items like many here sell, I can see that paid shipping could be a better model.
About 99% of my items have free shipping, or free to the continental U.S. shipping, and I have been doing that for over 5 years. It works for me but I have a different type of product line (NOS auto parts).
I was able to pick out the URL from the page source code. https://imgur.com/yS8kUuu
I’d like to see the other side of that part and the dimensions.
You will find out that way if Sears, or more likely Craftsman, is a restricted brand when you try to complete the listing. I think you are OK but Amazon seems to want to keep the restricted brands a secret, so much for transparency.
Ther is an unofficial list in this Amazon seller forum thread, https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/latest-list-of-pay-to-play-restricted-brands-and-its-growing-daily/187172
That was started in 2016, so don’t just go by the first post other brands have been added as responses as they were discovered. I’m sure it’s not 100% accurate.
I strongly recommend listing those as Used-Like New or Used-Very Good instead of new. That hurts sales a little but I sell parts with those conditions all the time. If there are no other sellers you will do well anyhow.
Not all UPCs for all products exist in the Amazon catalog, either active or inactive, so if you are trying to list new products solely based on UPC that sometimes doesn’t work and you will need to create a new ASIN by completing all the required information and uploading photos.
Do you have the basic Amazon seller account or the Professional? There are restrictions on what a seller can do on the basic plan, I don’t know all of them.
Some categories are restricted and require approval to list. Many brand names are restricted as well.
Pay attention to what Amazon defines as new, by their criteria arbitrage items are not new even though the have never been worn and still have tags. Many sellers fly under the radar with this, at least for a while, before getting the smackdown.
You might want to check the Amazon seller general forum at https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums. Some members there can be snarky with newbies asking questions that can be answered from search, but there is a wealth of knowledge available from browsing. If you are intending to continue selling on Amazon then monitoring the forum can increase your general knowledge of selling on Amazon and avoiding the pitfalls. Amazon also has fairly good seller help pages if you can navigate your way through that maze.
@Jess, You’re welcome. Keep the faith, things will work out. I find small-town folks, while usually friendly, are slow to include new people but they will in a short time with enough contact. I was just thinking of another outlet, my wife really enjoyed her volunteer work at the local hospital and that helped her make a lot of new friends after we moved here. Her situation wasn’t very much different than yours.
Before I went to thermal labels I used to get my labels from buyrightlabels, https://www.ebay.com/usr/buyrightlabels. They’re not a big seller but have been around for a long time and I never had any issues with them.
I don’t recall now which specific label I bought from them and it’s been more than 3 years so nothing in my purchase history to clue me in. I wouldn’t hesitate to message them if I were needing sheet labels again.
@IndySales, I’m at the opposite end of the age spectrum, age 70. The same thing though, my peers aren’t interested in the same things.
Hi Jess,
I hear what you’re saying, I live by myself and feel undersocialized at times (if that’s a word). Even loners get lonely sometimes. I live in a small town of about 1100, which makes it both easier and harder. Easier because I know a lot of people I see around town and rural folks like to stop and chat (blocking the grocery store aisle, etc.). It’s harder because there aren’t always as many groups with common interests.
You can check with the various civic organizations, they seem to always need volunteers and its a good way to feel productive by giving back. For instance the Optimists club here does a lot of beneficial projects in our town. I used to meet with a group of guys for coffee in the morning until the local cafe closed down. That was always fun and keep me up to date on the local “news” (old men gossip as much or more than women do, lol).
What kind of interests do you have? Maybe you can build on those.
Bill
I think that we can still create multiple standard feedback messages without a store, and send multiple feedbacks manually using a random selection of those. Without a store, it just can’t be done automatically.
It doesn’t matter to eBay if you follow up on their feedback reminders, but I think you should do it even if it is just a Thank you for your business. I would not spend any time crafting custom feedback remarks for each order, buyers don’t expect that and probably few even pay attention to their feedback as a buyer. You can set up multiple generic feedback comments and leave all your feedback at once by selecting the option to apply those comments at random. If you have a store you can set this up to be left automatically at the time of purchase if you want. I do that for my primary eBay account, but I have an old smaller selling account which is now too small to justify a store and I submit feedback there about once a week or whenever I think about it, using the bulk feedback option.
I set up a set of standard feedback comments that are selected at random to give buyers feedback automatically at the time of purchase. For me, I think its a waste of my time to do anything else.
Maybe the sellers who wait until the buyer leaves feedback are a throwback to when sellers could leave negative feedback for buyers, or they intend to craft a negative sounding positive feedback if the buyer leaves a negative (which is a good way to get slapped down by eBay if reported). They fail to realize that feedback as a buyer is really meaningless. Perhaps they think they are somehow punishing the buyer for a bad experience by withholding feedback.
My philosophy, avoid non-productive tasks and negative energy.
You can request the buyer remove the feedback, https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/BayISAPI.dll?ReviseFeedbackInitiate. Be careful, you can’t offer any incentive for removing the feedback. Keep it short and professional while still mildly begging.
Can I ask you for a personal favor? If you can see your way clear to remove the negative feedback you left for this sale I will greatly appreciate your aid.
I tripped over a scam seller on eBay a few weeks ago. I thought the lead time for shipping was a little long but went ahead with the purchase. When I went back to check on the order after a week, there was no tracking but their feedback had stated filled up with red donuts for not shipping products. The really irritating thing is I then had to wait until the end of the delivery window to open a case, and now wait another 7 days to give the seller time to respond. Hello? It’s obvious they aren’t going to ship this, by the time the case is closed I will have been out the money for almost a month.
I don’t buy a lot on eBay; this reminds me of the Wild West eBay. There needs to be a better process to rein in these scam sellers and immediately refund the buyers who are affected when a seller goes rouge. Yes, I know, this is a very isolated instance, but to the buyers that it happens to it isn’t trivial, for sure.
Getting back to the thread topic, I checked before buying and this was supposedly a U.S. seller, now I see he is actually from Vietnam, an eBay member since Jan 2019. I peeked at feedback before buying, didn’t notice Vietnam, at that time is feedback was OK, but now a steady stream of negs since then (including mine).
Interesting to see this order is now missing from my purchase history. Maybe that’s normal.
