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07/28/2017 at 9:05 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20955
They are trusting their own data for years on what the times are, and they are having their own weekly talks with USPS to make this work.
And eBay has a large stick. If they get a special rate from UPS or FedEx like Amazon…
07/27/2017 at 5:32 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20939Yep. This what they did a demo on at eBay Open yesterday…
07/27/2017 at 4:33 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20936Exactly. Made think that we may be too tied to the wrong end of the 80-20 rule. We will never stop collectibles, and eBay will always support it, but since I am the high-volume lower-margin side of the house, it makes me want to up my game on sourcing…
This has been a great trip. Tons of great info, sat down with SixBit and got all my plans laid out, got lots of technical issues answered with eBay, and they are taking in lots of feedback from sellers on how to improve. Worth the money and time.
07/27/2017 at 10:04 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20910And as another bit of information that we say at eBay Open, they are rolling out eBay Image Search – which is a program where you can take a picture of something (shoes, outfit, lamp, etc.) and have eBay search for similar products that you can buy. This could be a huge item to drive casual buyers to the eBay platform.
The main thing for us as sellers to capitalize on this is to take quality photos, and make sure to use the Item Specifics well, filling all of them in and using new ones if you need.
and a PS on the photo side. We found out that Google Shopping will not show any photos of items unless they have a white or black background…
07/27/2017 at 9:57 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20909PS – Jay, Trash Elf Nation is strong. We ran into some other people here at eBay Open that are Scavenger Life listeners.
07/27/2017 at 9:55 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20908So, it is official, we are in the eBay Guaranteed Delivery (EGD) program. We were invited to early adopt this program, and after talking with a lot of the technical people on the program, we are looking forward to it.
We are in the Handling Time program, which means that as long as we meet our handling time (0-1 days) and we get the scan at the USPS, then if the package arrives late, eBay will pay the recompense to the buyer.
For more information on how it works:
On the Handling time program, if you opt-in, only items that are marked with 0-1 days handling, returns are accepted, and no restocking fee will be part of Guaranteed Delivery.
Starting in September, our items that are part of EGD will have a green text added to them that shows the Guaranteed Delivery date (similar to how Fast & Free shows on your items). The buyer will be able to see this as they scroll through the listings. There will also be a toggle button on the top right of the screen where buyers can filter to only see Guaranteed Delivery items. After turning this toggle on, there will be options on the left of the screen to select items for 3 day, 2, day, or 1 day arrival.Based on the delivery options you provide, eBay will determine the time it takes for items to reach the buyer based on the zip code of the seller. They have analyzed all the shipping data from point to point for the past several years to develop their own algorithm for delivery time point to point.
Buyers will see the date that an item will arrive (avoiding any confusion on # of days). Guaranteed Delivery items are 4 days (1 day handling + 3 days shipping time).
Since we are in the Handling Time, all we have to do is meet our commitment on handling, and eBay takes care of the rest. If the item is late, the buyer can either ask for refunded shipping price (which eBay will cover) or to return the item. If they buyer asks to return the item, eBay pays for the return shipping, the buyer gives a full refund, and eBay refunds the seller the original shipping cost (so the buyer is whole, the seller is whole, and eBay covers the extra cost).
eBay has been working with USPS a lot on this, and they continue to ask us for any information on USPS offices that are consistently under performing (not scanning packages being the #1 item). If we provided that information, they will bring this up with the upper levels of USPS in their weekly meetings (eBay and USPS meet weekly to discuss issues).We will keep people informed on how this works for us. If you have any questions for us, just let us know.
07/26/2017 at 12:18 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20815Veronica and I sat with an eBay rep today at the eBay Open reception. Amazing conversation and insights.
81% of items sold on eBay are new.
New items are a growing market on eBay.
eBay buyers are a devoted, but aging demographic.
Amazon has set a new standard for buyer expectations in online commerce.
Veronica and I have been contemplating these nuggets as we look out over the glitz of the Vegas Strip and imagine the future…
07/25/2017 at 1:46 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20774Amen brother. What really gets me is when that attitude is in someone over 30. They really should have learned by then…
07/25/2017 at 11:49 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20762Mike, absolutely fabulous post. I loved your last paragraph about being able to move platforms. That is huge as a risk mitigation. All your hours of work is saved. Low money to pay for “insurance” in many forms.
Completely agree!
07/25/2017 at 9:55 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20755Jay, one item I forgot to mention. You can put the SixBit database in the Cloud, so that you can have remote access. I didn’t choose this, as I wanted to be able to continue to work even if we lose internet access. Something that you may like…
07/25/2017 at 9:52 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20754At the basic level, it is basically a subscription service for the tools that the software provides (similar model to Microsoft 360, where you pay to have the use of the software, and they constantly maintain the software).
For us, the decision to move to the enterprise edition was for the Auto Relist feature. For us, we want to maintain 30 day listings, to keep the boost in search that occurs during the first and last 24 hours of a listing. However, now that we are over the 1500 listings mark, doing relists takes too much time. We tried to do mass relists via eBay, but we noticed that when we would do that, we would have very few views of the listings after we did that. So SixBit gave us the best of both worlds: 30 listings without the time involved to relist items one at a time. The Enterprise version also had some analysis tools that I find very useful, being able to query the database for specific listings, see when the listing was originally made, when it was last modified, how many views and watchers each time it was listed (to help with when to refresh the listing), etc.
We also like the feature that if a listing ends, has had many previous listings with low views, we know that it will not do well in search, and needs to be reworked AND be seen by eBay as a NEW listing. SixBit has a feature to make sure that when you send a listing to eBay, it strips out any previous sales history and the listing is fresh. We have seen that useful already, as we have had many old items that had low views in the past have had higher views and sales in the past few weeks.
Overall, we enjoy the ability to set up our listing screen the way we like, we can schedule listings in the future (for free) through SixBit, we get the auto-relist feature, the ability to analyze our listings to see where we need to tend the garden, we can change handling time for all listings with one click, and the ability to work if our internet connection goes out (since you are working on a database). Plus, when I return, I will be working on setting up the Description Wrappers and Templates so that I can list clothes even faster. They have the ability to write out your Item Description based on the information you put in your Title, Item Specifics, and other Snippets that you can customize.
I am calculating that with the time we are saving and the improved features to increase listing speed, this has already paid for itself. And down the road I see us moving up to the max version to add Etsy and other platforms to the mix, with the ability to list on multiple platforms with a single listing, and the software handles the inventory levels across all channels. That can really be a game changer, so that we are efficient with our time, and have our items on as many platforms as possible.
Overall, we are very happy already, and we are excited about the future that this software can bring.
07/25/2017 at 8:01 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20748Thanks Mike, very much appreciated! TeamViewer is getting done when we get home! We have a week in Montana over Christmas and another AZ house scouting trip in January, so this will put me more at ease when on the road.
I love always improving…
Thanks again!
We agree Jay. We have done the same for the same reason multiple times…
07/24/2017 at 11:39 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20730Wow. So sorry this happened. Like you said, the good thing was that everyone is safe.
We will keep you in our prayers tonight…
07/24/2017 at 11:36 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 320: Spinning Plates, Keeping It All Going #20729Thanks Mike. WL just didn’t feel as good. Like I mentioned, Coke vs Pepsi.
I kept the database down by keeping the pictures out of the Database (so SB just references the location on the drive), so I seem to be good for now. At some point, our business will be needing to upgrade to a larger database driver anyway, so I’m not as worried. Having a look and feel that I would enjoy every day was more important.
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