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Amazon are a company who constantly look for new ways to help their sellers grow and reach new customers. They’ve now announced the extension of their international fulfilment service adding the ability to deliver non-Amazon orders to your customers in all 27 EU member states.

When you sign up to use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) Amazon takes care of picking, packing and delivering your products sold on Amazon’s European sites to customers throughout the EU from just one seller account. With FBA, your inventory and orders are processed leveraging one of the most advanced fulfilment networks in the world, allowing you to focus on selling, not shipping.

With Multi-Channel Fulfilment, FBA sellers can choose to use their inventory in Amazon’s fulfilment centres to fulfil part or all of their orders originating from their own website, other third party platforms (Yes that includes eBay!), catalogue or even in-store sales. With FBA Export for Multi-channel, you can now offer your customers who order from outside the UK a smooth and reliable delivery almost anywhere in Europe using Amazon’s highly-efficient and extensive supply network. Once you submit a multi-channel shipment request, you will see the estimated delivery date which can then be shared with the customer.

Amazon FBA sellers now have the option and flexibility to fulfil domestic Amazon and non-Amazon orders as well as EU Amazon and non-Amazon orders from one single, local inventory pool.

There has never been a better time to let Amazon help you expand internationally and grow further in 2012. Join the many FBA merchants already benefitting from increased sales, lower costs, and time savings.

Also FBA Media sellers can now adjust their export settings when using FBA to have their products sold on Amazon.co.uk exported to customers across the whole world. This brings FBA on a par with Amazon’s own online retail sales. There are currently no extra charges for the seller – eventual delivery costs are borne by the buyer.

Previously FBA sellers were limited to export their products sold on Amazon’s European platforms to the 27 EU member states. With this feature, Amazon gives sellers the option to export their Media products worldwide. Sellers can activate this additional region on their FBA Export settings page in their seller account. As part of the activation, Amazon will collect their signature which will be printed on the customs label on all shipments exported to non-EU member states.

If you don’t already use FBA then it’s well worth trialling the services with a few product lines. Once you’re familiar with FBA you can either expand if it suits your operations or simple use FBA for selected products or at busy times of year to ease the burdon on your own warehouse operations. Why take on extra temporary staff and have to train them or rent additional warehouse space when you can use Amazon FBA to handle picking, packing and shipping your orders for you?

CLD

eBay are holding a free listing weekend on Saturday and Sunday 21st – 22nd January for private sellers. Any item listed with a start price of more than £1 on auction-style format will have free insertion fees. Any listings with a start price between £0.01 and £0.99 will be excluded from the promotion and will count towards the private seller 100 new listings/month limit.

I largely ignore free listing days for private sellers as my eBay account is obviously a business account, however this time there’s something of slightly more interest that the promotion itself – eBay have revamped the free listing promotion page on eBay. It’s now laid out with a much cleaner look and the terms and conditions all held under separate tabs if you need to check them. Take a look at the new page – I like it!

If you list your items the slow way, you can bagsy up to 100 free auction listings on eBay.co.uk this weekend. No Turbo Listers allowed.

Check out the announcements page for full details and terms.

Another free listing weekend for private sellers. For this weekend Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th private sellers can list auctions for free on eBay UK.

There’s a limit of 100 free auctions with a start price of £1 or more and of course private sellers can already list 100 items a month with a start price up to 99p.

The now familiar rules apply – no professional listing tools, use the Sell Your Item form or the iphone, ipad or Android mobile phone apps to list your items.

Full details are on eBay to get set to start listing auctions for free tomorrow.

If you sell on eBay.com then you can qualify for 20% off your final value fees until Christmas. The only caveat is that you have to offer a free, expedited shipping service or a free, one-day shipping service option with 1-day handling.

If you already offer expedited shipping then you’re quids (dollars!) in, if you don’t I suspect you’re about to tell me that the cost off offering free shipping far outweighs a 20% discount from your selling fees. The thing is though that the nearer we get to Christmas the more likely it is people will want items shipped fast. They may be more than willing to pay a little more on the cost of the item if it’s going to be delivered quickly.

On the other hand they might be more interested in paying the lowest possible price and then adding in the cost of shipping… but that way you won’t get a discount of your fees.

Full details of the promotion are on eBay, so make sure you qualify before you list.

Site Changes

I didn’t know whether to chuckle or cry at the latest post on the eBay Ink Blog announcing a new “Bring it. Sell it. Ship it.” program to encourage eBay employees in San Jose to sell on eBay. It strikes me as bizaare that they’re not all selling on eBay already.

I can remember hearing rumours that (in the old days) at eBay UK staff meetings they had to announce their feedback score and could even be called upon to explain any negative or neutral feedbacks they’d received. I can remember when eBay employees were proud of their feedback record and would compete to see who had the most. At the very early eBay universities some eBay employees had more feedback from me, and theirs numbered in the thousands.

The most telling part of the eBay Ink blog post was the comment “For those employees selling for the first time, each Wednesday from 2pm to 4pm, employee Power Sellers will be on hand in the station to help folks get started“.

I find it pretty sad to think that there are people working for eBay that have never sold anything on the site. Maybe I’m doing them a disservice and they’re simply avid buyers and are amassing hundreds of feedback… but you would have thought they had something laying around the house that they could have sold.

Google and Microsoft are reknowned for the internal use of their own software products. They wouldn’t dream of using a competitors product instead of their own, it’s called “eating your own dogfood”, So why not eBay? What are these employees doing with their discarded posessions?

I’m all in favour of the “Bring it. Sell it. Ship it.” program eBay are running (although I can’t help wondering who will be first to sell something that “all the free packing materials they need” isn’t sufficient for). If it gets eBay employees selling on eBay it’s a good thing.

If any eBay employees want to share their feedback score it would be great to have some reassurance that, in the UK at least, you guys are using the site you run for us (feel free to comment anonymously, we wouldn’t expect you to disclose your User Ids).

Selling Tips

Terapeak have unveiled “Terapeak 9″ the latest version of their eBay marketplace research software along with a brand new look and feel to the website. They’ve reinvented Terapeak to be easier to use, faster to navigate, and provide users with more meaningful results.

The first thing you’ll notice when you log in is that key research tasks are highlighted on the home page, and if you’re after a specific type of research then you’ll find them by clicking the “Show Tasks” tab on the relevant section. There are a load more feature upgrades under the hood that will delight existing users and if you’re not a customer we highly recommend that you sign up for Terapeak.

Terapeak are the only company that licence eBay data so if you want to know what sells at what price, or if you want to research your competition and discover what their hot selling products are and where they’re making the most money then Terapeak is the default place to go.

Terapeak eBay marketplace research costs from as little as £19.96 per month for a single country site, or £32.96 for all International markets and eBay.com motors.