Speaking of Mark, Doug said “Under Mark’s leadership, the eBay business has performed strongly. The UK business has maintained its position as the number one e-commerce site, with the number of items bought on the site up by almost 20% year on year”. Doug went on to add “I am personally very sorry to see Mark leave the company he has led with such commitment, but I understand completely his reasons for seeking out a new challenge”.

Mark will be replaced by Clare Gilmartin who returns from maternity leave to become EU Marketplaces Vice President. Clare has been with eBay for six years and has previously held a role with similar responsibility across the UK and German eBay sites.

We wish Mark good luck in his next role and look forward to the future with Clare at the helm.

There are some big differences between the percentage of TRS listings for all and for used products. In Art, an exception new/used makes almost no difference at all. In Music (CDs) there’s another anomaly where there are a bigger percentage of TRS listings for used products than for new items. At the other end of the scale in categories which are notoriously difficult to trade in such as Phones and Mobile Phones, just 1.68% of listings for used products qualify as TRS.

Across all eBay categories just 13.45% of listings for used products are from TRS sellers compared to the 21.73% for all products which gives a base point to measure your category against, to find out how hard it is to maintain the top level of standards.

It’s reasonable to expect TRS sellers to be businesses and so list in greater volumes than casual sellers who won’t qualify, but even taking this into account it definitely appears less likely that you’ll be a TRS if you trade in used goods.

It would appear reasonable to assume that buyers are likely to rate you higher and that it’s simply easier to gain TRS status in some categories than others and easier to reach high standards for new products than it is for used. The products you choose to sell could have a big impact on how your customers and ultimately eBay rate your business.

Calculations based on Number of TRS Listings/All Listings and Number of TRS Used Product Listings/All Used Product Listings
Items not tagged as “Used” in Item Specifics were not included in the Used TRS data
Data collected on 21st February 2010 from all eBay UK categories

As many of you know I’ve traded in second user computer products for many years, but last year was tough economically. Due to the need to maintain my income I set up a totally separate eBay business with a new User ID and a new eBay shop selling 2nd hand clothing. For several months trading was brisk, supply was (and still is) practically unlimited, and I quickly gained PowerSeller status and when Top Rated Sellers were introduced both my eBay selling IDs qualified instantly.

Once eBay started measuring low DSRs it was a different story however. Whilst my computer ID has no low DSR scores, my clothing ID had a couple of low scores and quickly lost Top Seller status. These were low DSR scores from July 2009, well before eBay announced that they’d start measuring low DSR scores.

Now I’m faced with the predicament that as of April 1st, based on the DSRs from July 2009, the account will be below standard and be demoted in search, because of the DSRs received before eBay changed the rules.

There’s only really three options open to me:
1) I could up my number of sales to be measured over 3 months, but that would mean doubling a revenue stream that’s already proven to be difficult to manage. For sure I won’t be selling low value items at no profit just to make up numbers to reach 400 transactions a quarter!
2) I could use one of my many dormant eBay User IDs, switch the listings and be a Top Seller within a month. I’m not keen on this idea because I don’t know how long it would be before eBay change the rules again and ruin that ID as well.
3) I could suspend the business until July when the old DSRs drop off the trailing year and start selling again.

None of those options are attractive so the account will be dropped and it’s eBay shop closed.

There’s a couple of lessons to be learnt though, the most important of which is the need to diversify. Don’t rely on a single eBay account for all of your business as you don’t know when they’ll change the rules. Fortunately I’ve a couple of new revenue streams coming online this year so closing one business won’t impact me financially and I’d recommend all eBay sellers diversify off-eBay to protect yourself from site changes which could close your eBay business.

The other lesson is one that eBay need to hear. Different categories appear to attract customers with different expectations. Whilst my DSRs on one ID suggest I give superb service, DSRs on my other ID (trading identically apart from the product) suggest otherwise. I suspect it would be very revealing to see average DSRs on a category by category basis, and also on a new goods vs 2nd hand goods split.

If eBay don’t start measuring average DSRs on a category by category basis I suspect they’ll drive many more sellers off the site, or at least force them to change the products they supply.

To contact support in the future you’ll need to visit http://www.ebay.co.uk/contact where you’ll be provided with a phone number and in the near future a temporary PIN number to automatically identify yourself rather than manually identifying yourself with account details.

Billed as an improvement to Personal Account Managers eBay are also offering a “real” improvement with longer support opening hours of 8am-10pm Monday – Friday and from 9am – 6pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.

The text of the email reads:

Dear Customer,
I’m pleased to inform you that we have enhanced our customer support in order to better meet our customer needs.
Effective immediately, you have access to two new services to help you with any queries you may have in the future. You can contact our Top Customer Care line with queries or questions relating to your account and our Claims Processing team for any queries on unpaid items (UPI) &/or items not received (INR).
You will find our new Top Customer Care contact number & a temporary PIN number at the following link: www.ebay.co.uk/contact . The temporary pin will enable us to automatically verify your details so that you do not have to do this manually over the phone with an agent.
To contact our Claims Processing team simply call the following number: 0800 3586551.
To further improve our service to you, we are extending our opening hours to ensure that you can avail of support when you need it. Our Top Customer Care support line is now open between 8am-10pm Monday – Friday and from 9am – 6pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.
As a result of these enhancements, I will no longer be your point of contact going forward so I would like to take this opportunity to let you know how much I’ve enjoyed working with you & wish you continued success with your business on eBay.
Kind regards,
xxxx xxxxxxxxx
eBay Customer Support

I’m struggling to see how losing an eBay contact who was familiar with my business and who I’d built a relationship with, and replacing them with a general support line is an improvement. The longer opening hours are definitely welcome though, as eBay selling is a round the clock business and we don’t all stop work at 5.30pm.

Thankfully the support line number is an 0800 dial code, so the calls will be free, but I’m seeing the same number for both my main selling accounts as well as for casual buying accounts. It will be interesting to see what the quality of support is if it’s to replace Personal Account Managers who by and large specialised in the particular categories a PowerSeller traded in.

Updated to add: We’ve had it confirmed from multiple sources that some sellers WILL be keeping their Personal Account Managers. If you’ve had the email you’re out of luck, but if you haven’t then you may be one of the lucky ones who will keep a named support contact.

12/2/10 Updated to add: We’ve heard from eBay what’s officially happening with support. There are no redundancies although some are moving to other departments, anyone leaving is doing so through their own choice. All support will still be from Ireland for the UK, with new hires and the support center will be a European Center of Excellence.

There will still be some accounts who have Personal Account Managers but many will now use Top Customer Care. Calls will still be routed according to the type of business you run, so if you sell predominantly in a particular category whoever you speak to should be familiar with that category. The bad news is that many now won’t have a named contact, the good news is that the opening hours for support are considerably extended.

Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought to myself, if Best Match was clever enough to see that I hadn’t specified a season, even though tWW has seven, and to figure out that what I’m *probably* looking for, then, is the complete complete set, rather than any one season, and show me those first.

And then, coincidentally, Adam Nash wrote a post about the same thing. If you don’t know Adam, he used to work for eBay, and he is exceptionally smart, so when his colleague Ikai unfavourably compared the prices of Deep Space 9 DVD sets available on eBay and Amazon, he set out to figure out why eBay looked like such a bad deal.

Here’s what he found (republished with permission).

Those in favour of the proposals argue that b&m stores make a significant investment in the brands they’re selling – for example, in staff training and in-store promotional materials – and that allowing ecommerce businesses to piggy-back on this is unfair.

Not so, says Mr Greeley. With customers increasingly using the internet to research all purchases, whether online or off, you might argue the high street’s piggy-backing on the internet. And why shouldn’t retailers with lower overheads pass those savings on to consumers? I’m with Mr Greeley – I don’t think that giving an orange-painted saleswoman a bottle of perfume to shoosh on me as I go into Debenhams represents much investment in a brand, and if I can buy that cheaper or just more conveniently on the net, I will. In any case, I haven’t seen much evidence of trained staff in any of the shops I’ve been in recently: they’re all too busy hangning up banners saying “have you visited our website?”

Mr Greeley concludes

Manufacturers should remain free to determine their own distribution strategies and to choose their retail partners, but only on the basis of objective and non-discriminatory criteria. European policy makers, including the commission, should adopt rules that are neutral to business models and which do not permit arbitrary discrimination against pure-play retailers.

But as many small business owners could tell him, that’s an incredibly optimistic view of wholesale. The harsh reality is that many manufacturers already *do* discriminate who they supply to on the basis of where they’re going to sell it. “Not online” is not so widespread as it once was, but “not on eBay” is still common. And even if you stop discrimination, you can’t really stop it: orders go missing, things are mysteriously out of stock, or you get put on hold forever.

In some sectors, eBay sellers themselves are entirely to blame for this. In the rush to the bottom to be cheaper than anyone, margin on some products has been cut to, or even below, wholesale price. No manufacturer wants to see that happen, and I can’t exactly blame them for saying “no more”. But there are other ways: insisting on a minimum order quantity that cuts out the people who are playing at shops, for example.

And longer term, I think the issue will resolve itself. Online shopping currently accounts for 10% of all retail sales in the UK – and is predicted to grow from £38bn in 2009 to £42bn in 2010. Online is where it’s at, and no amount of protectionism is going to change that.

Image credit: © Marco Lensi | Dreamstime.com

PowerSeller program and new minimum performance standards for all sellers

At the same time as lowering the entrance requirements for PowerSellers there are new minimum performance standards for selling on eBay. From April sellers can receive no more than 1% or total of three low ratings for “Item as described”, and no more than 2% or total of three low ratings for “Communication”, “Dispatch Time” and the “P&P charges” DSRs. Falling below this level will incur sanctions such as demotion in search and selling restrictions.

Selling Practices Policy for all sellers

Along with higher selling standards a Selling Practices policy will be introduced which is summarised as:
* Sellers are responsible for ensuring a smooth and professional transaction with their buyers.
* This includes setting buyers’ expectations by providing accurate and consistent details about items and the terms and conditions of sale.
* Sellers also must offer excellent customer service from the time of purchase to item delivery. This includes reasonable postage & packaging charges, clear statement on dispatch time, prompt and professional communication, and ensuring the item is delivered to the buyer as described.
* Business sellers need to offer a return policy which is included in the listing description
* Sellers are expected to live up to their stated terms through all stages of a transaction.

Mandatory Business Information displayed on listings

All business sellers will have to display their business contact information on their eBay listings by the end of March. This will be compulsory but introduces a number of issues, not least of which is that it’s added to the item description as text and can not be bulk edited. Any changes such as a relocation to new premises, change of phone number or email address and change of VAT status will result in every single one of a sellers active listings being incorrect.

Many sellers, especially those that trade from home, will be concerned about having their contact details displayed for buyers to see. My main concern is that the way the contact information is inserted into listings means that there’s no way to make a single edit which will update every live listing on the site and in the long term that’s simply unworkable. eBay need to fix this and allow sellers to make global changes to their Business Seller Information in eBay preferences to make this program viable.

International Site Visibility reinstated

At last the International Visibility listing upgrade is returning to eBay UK, from the end of March sellers will be able to use a listing enhancement to display fixed price listings on eBay.com and eBay.ca. Currently that’s only available for auctions, although US and Canadian sellers are able to use the listing enhancement to display their items on eBay UK.

I imagine for sellers who previously used the feature will be pretty happy that this is returning for fixed price listings, and will be able to save money and simplify stock management by not duplicating listings on multiple eBay sites.

The end of mandatory free postage

Mandatory free postage has been scrapped and is a thing of the past, and will be replaced by shipping caps. From March postage caps will apply to a number of categories and eBay have published a list of maximum shipping charge for each category. The postage caps only apply to the first domestic postage option for UK sales. Postage caps will not apply to overseas sales.

Mandatory free postage has undoubtedly put pressure on margins and restricted the type of postage service sellers have offered to buyers. This change will enable sellers to once again offer a premium postage option as default instead of being forced to offer the cheapest possible and of course it’s the end of paying eBay’s final value fees for free post.

Ending old Good Til Canceled listings

From the end of March a new process will be introduced to end Good Til Canceled listings which haven’t had a sale for 16 months. These listings will appear in your eBay unsold items and are available to be relisted. I like this move, it gives sellers a prompt to review their items to make sure the title is relevant, that the listing still has pictures and that the price is still competitive. It will also prompt sellers to update item specifics for listings which have been affected by category changes or other updates.

Multi Variation Listings in more categories

Multi Variation Listings will become available in more categories, and from the end of March will appear in some Home and Garden, Sporting Goods and Baby categories.

Watermarking images

There will be enhancements to the way that images in eBay listings are watermarked. In the future instead of eBay’s default camera image a seller will be use their eBay user ID as a watermark. This should mean the end of stolen images from sellers who spend the time to produce quality pictures.

Sellers’ product photos in catalogues

eBay will be improving the quantity and quality of images in product catalogues, and will do so by using photos from sellers’ listings. All sellers will be opted in to the program as default, but are able to opt out if they wish. If your photo is used as a catalogue image a credit to your eBay ID and link to your My World page will be added as a credit.

Summary

There’s not too much in this announcement to disrupt how sellers do business on eBay, but plenty to please them. Concerns are most likely to be around the display of Business Seller Information, eBay’s use of sellers’ images and of course the new minimum seller standards. There’s much welcome news though, such as the end of mandatory free postage and the re-introduction of International Visibility. Overall it looks pretty good news and more a tidying up of the site and standards than a radical overhaul of the way sellers do business.

Qualification criteria for entry-level Bronze PS status is being dramatically lowered: sellers will have to have

• a minimum of 100 transactions* over 12 months (currently 100 items per month for three months), or
• minimum sales volume of £2000* over 12 months (currently £750 per month for three months)

In addition, there will be new minimum performance standards for all PowerSellers:

• average DSRs of 4.6 on all four criteria (currently 4.0)
• 1 or 2 star ratings for item as described DSR: maximum 1% or 3 total*
• 1 or 2 star ratings for other three DSRs: maximum 2% or 3 total*
• have no policy breaches in the last 90 days
• have no breaches of the Feedback Manipulation, Shill Bidding and Counterfeits policies in the last 180 days
• comply with the Selling Practices Policy

* Only transactions with UK and Irish buyers count for these criteria.

There are FAQs on the changes if you need more information.

What’s really interesting – or will be, if they enforce it – is that Selling Practices Policy. In short, this requires sellers to give buyers their legal rights and to comply with relevant legislation, as well as undertaking some eBay best practice. If eBay put the effort into enforcing this policy (they might start with some Outlets), it will go a very long way towards cleaning up the site. Richmond, over to you…

Now you see me…
If you can’t spot the new content on the PowerSeller portal, don’t panic. Some people have reported they could see it earlier this afternoon but not now; in the absense of an AB post, we might speculate that this one’s been released a little earlier than it should have been ahead of next week’s UK seller release.

The end of Store Inventory Format (SIF)

SIF listings will cease to exist on eBay.com as of March 30th this year simplifying the choice of listing format for US sellers. Now all listings will appear in the main search results and existing Store Inventory Format listings will automatically become regular Fixed Price listings.

New Stores subscription costs and listing fees

As of March 30, 2010 the eBay.com fee structure will mirror the UK with low upfront costs and the bulk of fees being success based payable only when an item sells.

For fixed price listings the fees are:
No Store Subscription: 50¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, no monthly fee
BASIC: 20¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, $15.95/month
PREMIUM: 5¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, $49.95/month
ANCHOR: 3¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, $299.95/month

Casual sellers will be able to list up to 100 auctions with 99¢ no reserve start price for free on eBay.com and only pay if their item sells. The final value fee will be 9% capped at $50.00. Insertion fees for higher start prices will be the same as those for Store subscribers, although subscribing to a store will lower your final value fees.

Store subscribers will get up to 12 pictures on their listings for free!

For most sellers the fee changes will mean significantly lower up front fees so less risk, with final value success based fees largely unchanged. Sellers can subscribe or upgrade their eBay Store now and pay no additional monthly subscription fees until April 2010

New Buyer and Seller protection

eBay buyer protection is rolling over from PayPal to the new eBay resolution process along with automatic final value fee refunds when you refund your buyer. For sellers unpaid items can be opened in the resolution process as few as four days from the date of sale giving faster resolution with eBay handling communications with the buyer.

Top Seller and PowerSeller status

Top Seller status is being expanded to more sellers, eBay Motors traders will be able to qualify and US based sellers will be able to qualify as Top Sellers based on sales on eBay.co.uk, eBay.ie, eBay.de, eBay.ch and eBay.at. To qualify as a Top Seller in EU countries sellers must be registered as business sellers.

From mid April new seller requirements will apply to all sellers, not just Top Sellers and new PowerSeller discounts will come into effect. In addition sellers need to remove all PowerSeller icons, logos and references from their listings.

Multi Variation Listings expanded

Multi Variation Listings will be available in more categories allowing sellers to consolidate products with colour or size differences into a single listing. This not only reduces insertion fees but also as the listings receive sales will boost the listings position in Best Match.

The effect of the changes

No doubt there’s going to be plenty of conversation around the changes for eBay.com sellers, but in truth although the changes are complex for UK sellers they’re almost mundane. UK sellers have already been working for a year with more expensive eBay shop subscriptions, lower insertion fees, higher (in some cases) final value fees and no shop inventory format listings. The net result for many sellers has been a cut in their total eBay invoice, although for UK sellers who sell mainly or exclusively on auction format did see a fee increase.

So if you’re in the US what do you think of the changes? If you’re in the UK are there any clues in the latest US announcement as to what changes could be coming to us when eBay announce changes for the UK?

Ebay needs to quit their corporate paranoia. We’ve seen this for fifteen years or more in the ways they’ve sought to interrupt buyer/seller communication. We’ve seen My Messages become more and more useless – to the point now where if you request a reminder of your eBay ID, that doesn’t go to your email address, just to My Messages – where you can’t see it until you sign in. How pointless. What a ridiculously closed system it has become.

We saw it too with Skype – that I still maintain could have been a great purchase for eBay if they’d made it the basis of an integrated communication system. But they didn’t. They spent $2.6 billion on it, and then for months told sellers they couldn’t include their Skype ID in their listings. Again, pointless.

Most especially, eBay need to consider that they have information which would be amazingly useful to sellers, and that sellers should be given that information.

We saw this with Adcommerce, which was running for close to a year before we even got a beta version of conversion data. Only eBay could think that their customers would be daft enough to buy advertising for which they had no measure of success. Their closed-lippedness about how the EPN affiliate scheme pays out is another case in point.

But nowhere have we seen this more clearly illustrated than with the free postage issue.

eBay have at least the virtue of consistency with this policy (until now) – that they’ve insisted that “buyers like free postage”. And they’re basing this on *something*. More than one ex-employee has mentioned to me that eBay are “obsessive” about collecting statistics, and there is surely a huge collection of data relating to postage prices on eBay, sell-through rates, where the pain points are, and exactly how much free postage makes it more likely that a buyer will buy.

Where is this information? And why do we not have it too?

All eBay need to do is post some blog or forum posts saying “look, isn’t this interesting, the sell-through rate on free postage items is double what it is on paid-for postage items, oh and by the way, we’ll give you this FVF incentive if you list with free postage”, and sellers would be queuing up to list with free postage. They didn’t need to get sellers’ backs up. But they chose to, because their secrecy level is set somewhere around Kremlin 1955, and no one seems able to break that.

Break that secrecy barrier, and we’ll all work better together.

Because that’s how it should be: if buyers and sellers are working together to achieve successful sales, then sellers and eBay management should also be working together to extract every last possible penny from our buyers. Data would help us do that. Better communication all round would help us do that. Let’s have it, please.

Have I finished? You bet your little cotton socks I haven’t finished. Part three coming up shortly….

Outlets are held up by eBay as the creme de la creme of their sellers, with a highlighted link from the top of every page on the site, special ads on the home page and pushes from other areas of the site. You’d think these big, heavily-promoted names would be offering the best service possible, but as we’ve seen again and again in recent months, many of eBay’s favourite sellers are offering a second-rate service far inferior to their smaller competition. You’ve seen them, the 97%s, the DSRs sliding towards 4.0, the literally hundreds of negatives left for people who are still trading on the site, still labelled the cream of the crop. By every convention of the 15 year history of the site, some of these Outlet sellers are TERRIBLE. What can eBay be thinking of?

My guess is this: they’re thinking “wow, our buyers are demanding”. And they’re right. eBay buyers are the most demanding people on the internet, and if you need proof of that, go read those Outlet sellers’ feedbacks again, this time imagining it’s your business. Most of them say things like “item out of stock, seller refunded me”. If you run your own website too, you know that happens: stock control isn’t an exact science, and when you’re trading across multiple channels, it can become a truly dark art. On your website, you apologise, refund, the matter is over. On eBay, you get negative feedback.

Rather than lamenting this craziness, we could try rolling with it. eBay is the only site on the internet where everything you see is guaranteed to be in stock, you could say. If we’ve got it, you can have it. Yes, eBay will hold some of the biggest names in UK retail to account, for you, and make sure you get treated the way you want. You send them an email, they mail you back. And yes, we’ve checked their terms and conditions are legal. Shop on eBay and you’re guaranteed a pleasant experience.

This would take work, though. My guess is, it would take more realism from eBay’s business development team than is currently happening. It would certainly take more guts than eBay’s management are currently showing, to say to these huge, huge names: get off our site. You’re not good enough. You’re not offering the kind of customer service that tiny little one-person companies in back bedrooms can offer, who manage to keep 100% of their buyers happy. So go away. Come back when you want to play by the rules.

eBay’s uniqueness isn’t about format or fees – it’s about feedback. It’s time to take feedback seriously again. We should stop messing about with ridiculous tenths of a star controlling fees that make no difference to the quality of the site. Bring back the power of the red dot: too many negs and you’re off. And I don’t care how big you are.

I was asked a few weeks back, what I’d do to improve eBay. This is it. I would make it the best damn place to shop on the whole internet. Because everyone would play by the same rules. Buyers would know that whomever they bought from, they’d have a magnificent experience on eBay. You could call it, oh, I don’t know, a level playing field or something…

Part 2 of this post will follow Monday-ish

Image credit: © Avesun | Dreamstime.com

For starters cheap listing days are irrelevant to business sellers. Any seller who has an eBay shop is on a permanent cheap listing day paying as little as 1p to list fixed price items, most are paying 5p with a featured shop or at worst 20 with a basic shop. There really isn’t much more eBay can do to incentivise businesses to list more on the site.

Private sellers also have permanent free listings for auctions with a start price of 99p or less. Being as that’s the best listing format to attract the highest end price again there are few incentives eBay can offer to attract more listings.

It seems a shame though – free or cheap listing days do more than simply bump the number of listings on the site. The very fact that an email arrives in users inbox with a promotion reminds casual sellers that eBay is here and that they should be selling. The bump in listings (although often a pain for businesses) means that there are some great bargains for buyers – I know I’ve often had a browse after a cheap listing day just to see what deals that have attracted few bids I can snap up.

Is this the end of cheap or free listing days in the UK? Or do you think price promotions can still play a part on eBay? Are you relieved that the annual post Christmas listing promotion didn’t happen or would you like to see it revived next year?

Good til cancelled (GTC) listings are for lazy people. They’re the worst listing format for keeping control of your business and the easiest way to lose control.

The big problem is that (unless you run out of stock) your listings will never ever end. You may or may not be getting sales and you probably don’t even know if you are. The chances are that your listings are way out of date and either the price is wrong or the product itself simply isn’t desirable to buyers any more.

The most shocking fact I ever heard regarding GTC listings was that there were some GTC listings over five years old on eBay UK, that had never had a sale. These were the old Shop Inventory Format GTC listings that have now been retired and rolled over into 30 day fixed price GTC.

When researching a new product or checking prices on eBay it’s not unusual to see competitors with pricing way above the norm. Now there’s a lot to be said for not being cheapest but if the average sale price is around £25 – £30 there’s not much point having a listing at the £90 – £100 price point that the product sold for when it was released a year ago. The price might have been competitive when the listing was created, but a year or so later they’re at the bottom of Best Match and unlikely to ever attract a sale.

30 Day Fixed Price listings force you to review your listings and pricing every month. If an item ends without a sale you’re prompted to ask yourself why before you simply relist it. Is it the price? The product? Have you got the wrong desciption or wrong picture? Have you deleted the picture from your webspace? Has eBay changed the categories or Item Specifics?

There are many reasons why a product might not be selling and almost always there’s an easy way to start it selling again. GTC listings hide this vital information and leave stock sitting idle on your shelf costing time and money instead of making money for you.

There is only one advantage that GTC listings have over 30 day listings, and that’s the ability to use Mark Down Manager to hold sales. Few sellers use Mark Down Manager though and if you’ve not used it in the last three months don’t use it as an excuse to keep GTC listings running.

To regain control of your listings bite the bullet and end all of your GTC listings. Any GTC listings that have had sales in the last 30 days can be relisted as Fixed Price 30 day listings and the remaining items need a spring clean.

Go through the GTC items without sales one at a time and research why they’re not sold. Use Terapeak to check average selling prices and sell through rates. For old stock, especially if you only have one or two items remaining, liquidate the stock using auction format.

All sellers are aware what’s selling and what products are making them money. What most sellers don’t know is what’s not selling and what products are costing them money.

Ending your GTC listings and changing to fixed price 30 day listings will force you to kick start your sales on items that might not have had a sale for many months. More importantly it will give you back control of your business for the future and ensure you know what’s not selling just as well as you know what is selling.

Remember back in July when the Top-Rated Seller program was announced? Part of that announcement was that the currently-existing PowerSeller discounts would be phased out, to end in January – and yes, to be replaced with a new and still more confusing discount system.

As of January, there will be three classes of seller on eBay UK: TRS, the new Above-Standard PowerSeller, and ordinary mortals. Here are the FVF discounts they will receive:

Sellers who do not qualify as either TRS or ASPS will no longer receive any discounts on their FVFs.

So if you haven’t made it to the heady heights of TRS – or you are, like so many sellers, dipping in and out of that program on a monthly basis depending on whether you’ve had a couple of grumpy buyers or not – will you qualify as an ASPS? You’ll need:

• All DSRs to average 4.6 or higher
• Item as described DSRs: no higher than 1% (or 3 total if that’s higher) 1 and 2 scores
• All other DSRs: no higher than 2% (or 3 total if that’s higher) 1 and 2 scores

(As with TRS, DSRs scores are looked at over 3 months if you’ve completed more than 400 transactions in that period, and over 12 months if you haven’t.)

ASPSs are not boosted in search, nor can they use Featured First. They don’t even have a spiffy badge like Top-Rated Sellers, so as far as buyers are concerned, they look just the same as ordinary sellers. The FVF discount is the only advantage.

Even at Christmas, it would be wrong of me to start a rumour that Below-Standard PowerSellers are getting a badge all of their own, so I won’t…

The “Great savings from eBay sellers” box sits at the top of the product page and highlights an offering from one seller along with the discount compared to typical prices available on eBay. Although currently we don’t know the full criteria to appear in the value box doubtless it’ll increase sales and sellers will be competing to win the position on the page. Generally it’s expected that priority will be given to competitively priced products with free shipping and Top Rated Sellers.

The value box will appear for popular items in some categories like Music or Electronics. Rather than a basic page of search results buyers will be presented with a page that displays the products associated with their search terms. The product pages are likely to be expanded to more categories with pre-filled catalogue information used to match products.

eBay say that product pages have a higher sell-through rate than search results pages and that it’s not possible to buy the value box position, it’s awarded based on the value proposition each listing has to offer. In this example the 11th listing out of 15 was promoted with the value box.

Click to embiggen

One of the reasons for this is that it would result in less TRS than keeping the status quo. I can sympathise with eBay here as if they changed the rules again and took away TRS status from those who currently hold it there would be uproar. However it can only mean that those who would suffer if the rules changed have more recent low DSR scores than those that would benefit.

Leaving the status quo continues to penalise sellers who have low DSRs from before August when TRS was announced. There are only two viable options if you’ve got low ratings last summer and still have six or seven months before they drop off the radar:

1) Up your selling volume to become a volume seller – if you sell more than 400 items in a three month period you’ll be measured on the most recent three months sales only.

2) Open a new eBay account and scrap your old one – If you have a buying account more than two months old you can qualify as a PowerSeller and TRS within a month. Simply sell more than £2250, at least twelve items and get 100 feedback and you’re there. If you don’t have an existing eBay account opened at least two months ago then it’ll take you three months to qualify as a TRS.

Compared to waiting until the middle of next year to be a TRS on your existing account, option 2 above is the most attractive course of action. Don’t forget that if you start selling on an existing buying account today you could qualify for discounts as a TRS in January. If you stick with your existing selling ID then your discounts will be slashed by 15% or more in the new year compared to those that qualify as a TRS.

Why eBay would be happy for you to abandon your existing account transfer your listings to a new selling account and qualify for TRS but won’t let you qualify on your current selling ID is beyond me. If you want to be TRS open a new selling account today, it’s easier than reviving your existing selling ID and if you don’t eBay will financially penalise you with the drastically lower discounts.

Finally if you don’t have a spare eBay ID that you’ve been using as a buying account go and open a couple of new eBay accounts today. Sell a few items on them and then continue to use them as buying accounts – you never know when the next eBay rule change will trash your selling account and you’ll need an emergency selling account already set up and ready to go.

eBay say that they have done their utmost to respect the injunction and block French users from even being able to view the LVMH specified by the company. LVMH produced 61 ‘bailiff’ reports from July 2008 to July 2009, assessing the number of items they believed breached the injunction of which only 1,341 listings were fully detailed enabling eBay comply with the court order.

 
eBay say that despite their best efforts to put systems in place to block the relevant LVMH products 81.4% were not described accurately enough to identify them and this is in spite of eBay manually viewing 199,331 listings in addition to the thousands automatically blocked by their filtering software. It appears likely that some sellers set out to deliberately circumvent the extensive systems that eBay had put in place in order to list their perfume on the site.
 
The good news for eBay is that the fine could have been even higher (up to €50,000 per day a banned item appeared on the site) and tends to suggest that the court recognised that eBay worked hard to prevent the items being viewed by French users.

Today’s outcome hurts consumers by preventing them from buying and selling authentic items online. The injunction is an abuse of ‘selective distribution’. It effectively enforces restrictive distribution contracts, which is anti-competitive.

We believe that the higher courts will overturn this ruling and ensure that eCommerce companies such as eBay will continue to provide a platform for buyers and sellers to trade authentic goods.
Alex von Schirmeister, General Manager of eBay in France

How suppliers are blocking online trade

The head of the postal workers’ union has written to members saying that unless Royal Mail give in to more of his demands, the union “will have no alternative other than to return to strike action before Christmas”.

The letter sent to CWU members says

Royal Mail positioned the agreement as a strike-free Christmas – but they know this is not the terms of the agreement.

At the time the agreement was struck, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, who chaired negotiations between the union and RM management, said

The delivery of the terms of this agreement means that Royal Mail services will be free of any disruption up to and through the Christmas period.

and the CWU’s own announcement said

The interim agreement also ensures postal workers will work normally during the Christmas period, ensuring they get the chance to earn extra money.

The union will not need to ballot its members again on strike action, as the previous ballot is still valid: the CWU letter states that “Royal Mail has also accepted that our national and local ballots remain enacted”. Assuming this is correct, the union would simply need to give Royal Mail seven days’ notice of any intended strike. With three weeks to go before the last posting date for first class mail (21st December), there is still plenty of time for disruption.

Currently in Beta, eBay International Markets will fully launch on February 3rd 2010 at eBay.eu to Russia, Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Denmark and Sweden providing full language translation and customer support.That’s a population of over 182 million Europeans that will be able to access eBay in their own language for the first time.

The good news for sellers in the three biggest eBay marketplaces is that the buyers will be directed to listings from eBay UK, Germany and eBay.com increasing sales for businesses that offer international shipping.

Key benefits for buyers in eBay International Markets

• Fully translated eBay site – the only things not translated will be sellers item titles and descriptions. Registration, Search, Checkout and of course My eBay will be in the local language
• The ability to search all 16 existing eBay country sites, but only see search results where the seller will ship to their location
• Localised currency and time zone
• Customer support in their own language (based out of Berlin)
• Localised marketing
• Weekly deals at deep discounts (mainly products sourced from Asia Pacific sellers)

The focus in these six new countries will be on buying, with the aim to drive sales to UK, German and US sellers. From the full launch in January new buyers in these countries will be able to register on their own country site in their own language.

This should be exciting news for sellers who ship internationally, generally buyers in the new eBay International Markets are early adopters of the Internet. They’re multi-lingual and comfortable with cross border trade, international shipping, customs & taxes such as VAT and payments (which will be PayPal only). Also a key statistic is that a new buyer in these territories generally is more active than a new eBay user in established countries like the UK.

These buyers are looking for luxury goods, products that either can’t be sourced or are significantly more expensive in their own countries and of course authentic goods. If you want to attract these new buyers things you need to know are:- only fixed price items will be included; You’ll need to ship world wide and specify postage costs; be PayPal verified; and of course to offer PayPal as a payment option.

Ever since feedback was first introduced people have worried about competitors “feedback bombing” them with negatives to destroy customer confidence. With the introduction of DSRs it became an invisible threat and then with the launch of the Top Rated Seller program the threat to a businesses sales became even greater.

In reality though feedback attacks are very few and far between amongst competitors. It’s much more likely a seller will suffer at the whim of an unhappy customer than a competitor maliciously buy in order to leave poor feedback.

eBay are closely monitoring feedback and will take action with buying or selling restrictions when feedback abuse is identified. They are also sending emails to buyers leaving a larger number of low DSRs than average to educate them on how feedback is valued. The email will appear in My Messages as well as being sent to the registered email address.

The email starts out “We noticed that you’ve left positive Feedback with low Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) for several sellers lately. There may be times when this is appropriate, but in most cases DSRs and the overall rating should be consistent. More importantly, leaving low DSRs with positive Feedback could be viewed as an attempt to intentionally hurt a seller’s reputation.” and goes on to add “You aren’t allowed to leave inaccurate Feedback just to harm a seller’s reputation. If we find that this is happening, we’ll take action.“ 

Things to do if you suspect a feedback attack

If you are concerned about a feedback attack, either actual or potential, talk to your account manager. There is also a link to report suspected feedback abuse and you’re encouraged to use it, even if the fear turns out to be unwarranted. If it turns out that a competitor is intentionally feedback wrecking and the buyer account is linked to a selling account eBay will skip education steps and move straight to account restrictions as well as removing low DSRs.

eBay say that they’ve only seeing a trickle of cases where feedback abuse is occurring and that the fear is, at least in most cases, greater than the reality. However they are stepping up the sanctions they impose for feedback abuse and will police feedback abuse strongly. eBay are determined to protect Top Rated Sellers from attack by competitors.

If you have any concerns about feedback abuse report it as soon as possible, even if you just “think” a competitor may be intending to leave low DSRs. You concerns will be taken seriously.

Complementing Bricks and Mortar

Andrew Rowson who took over his high street family business selling towbars, cycle carriers and roof bars in 2003 is one who’s business was saved by the Internet. Taking over from his father he spent a year of struggling to grow his business before he decided to open an online shop. In addition to his bricks and mortar business he’s added over £1.2 million per year turn over on the Internet.

Andrew calls it “the best of both worlds”. Adding an online presence meant that they could retain the physical shop and keep the business alive. The business was founded by Andrew’s father Roland and has been in their family for decades but was struggling to remain competitive. Rather than contributing to the decline of the High Street, the Internet is helping to keep businesses like Andrew’s afloat.

Online businesses shun the city

Rural areas are particularly well represented in the online world. 44% of online businesses are based in rural areas but only one in five online traders are city based.

The Internet is enabling people living in the countryside not only to attract more customers than they could with a bricks and mortar business, but is also stimulating and boosting rural UK economy. Lets face it there’s not a lot else to do in the countryside and jobs are few and far between these days. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Internet is enabling people living in the country to kick start a new career in online selling.

Vat change didn’t help us, but please don’t put it back up

VAT is due to change again on the 1st January and three quarters of businesses want VAT to be held at 15% in 2010. Last January eBay found only 17% expected a VAT cut to help their business, but ten months later 42% found it had made a difference.

Over half still say the VAT cut made no difference at all suggesting that opposition to a VAT increase on New Years day is more about the timing. Rather than feverishly revising prices with Auld Lang Syne ringing in their ears, the New Year is traditionally the time for businesses to hold sales. Consumers will be looking for bargains in January and the last thing they’ll expect to see are price rises due to a VAT increase.

The economic outlook for sellers

69% of business expect sales to rise over the next three months, three quarters of businesses expect prices to remain stable and about the same expect to grow their profits, or at the very least protect margins and remain stable.

Just over half of online businesses expect a stronger Christmas trading online and are ordering more stock than last year.

The full Online Business Index is available for download as a .pdf document.

Dan, formerly Community Manager for eBay UK, has a wealth of knowledge and experience and I caught up with him yesterday to find out what’s new in his book, what he’s been doing since he left eBay and his advice for businesses that want to make serious money on eBay.

Throughout the long drawn-out round of industrial action – let’s not forget that local strikes have been going on for months now – eBay sellers, other online traders and plenty of industry commentators have been saying that once merchants leave Royal Mail, they won’t go back: that they’ll stick with couriers who’ve offered reliability where RM haven’t.

Others, of course, have pointed out that for many merchants, RM is the only viable way to ship very small and light items, so sellers have no choice but to stick with them.

So let’s have another completely unscientific poll: what will you be doing?

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I’ve been reading the press releases and the (quite frankly boring unless you’re a geek) technical information, but I wanted to bring a flavour of what the new PayPal platform can offer so will cut straight to one application of interest to online businesses which was announced yesterday.

Payvment

For the first time anyone can open up a webstore on Facebook. Payvment enables you to create a store, load it with products, accept payments. If you have already created a page on Facebook for your business you’ll now be able to create a shopping cart so that customers can actually buy from you.

It’s more than just a static webstore though, customers can add purchases from multiple merchants and if they’re buying one item from you they can add items from other retailers to the same shopping cart. By enabling search across the whole of Facebook they’ve created a global selling platform that every retailer can add inventory to.

Ultimately Payvment are turning Facebook into an online shopping mall with multiple retailers but the benefit of a single shopping cart. That’s something that eBay need to sit up and take note of – the ability to add and remove items to a shopping cart from multiple merchants and then make a single payment via PayPal is what eBay has lacked for years. Now it’s available on Facebook which isn’t even known as a destination site for ecommerce.

There are a ton of other PayPal X applications either announced for release yesterday, or that will soon be released. If you’re a developer please do add a quick two line synopsis of your product in comments below and a link to where readers can find more about it. PayPal X is only of interest to our readers if it’s a practical useful application – so what will your PayPal X application do for us?

The guys at myHermes are putting up 10 free deliveries for the first 10 sellers to post a comment below saying “I want to Beat the Strike with myHermes“. Basically we’re going to hold a race, with the person who shipped the first parcel to reach its destination being the winner of some free eBay goodies.

If you’re expecting to have a product sold on eBay and can book a delivery on Wednesday (4th November) this week for collection on Thursday (5th November) then you can enter “Beat the Strike”.

“Beat the Strike” Prize

We’ll raid the TameBay goodie cupboard and if you are the winner of “Beat the Strike” you’ll get a decent stash of eBay merchandise as your prize. I know we’ve got an eBay pen, eBay pad, eBay 2Gb memory stick and an eBay baseball cap but we’ll drop in whatever else we can dig out as well. Even if you’re a collector of eBay merch we’ll get you some stuff you definitely won’t already have.

“Beat the Strike” competition rules

1. There are 10 free deliveries available, one each for the first 10 UK based eBay sellers to enter the competition.

2. You must be one of the first 10 to add a comment below saying “I want to Beat the Strike with myHermes” to qualify for a free delivery and (as per normal TameBay comments policy) use your real email address so that we can send you your free myHermes delivery voucher.
3. You must book your parcel collection with myHermes for collection on Thursday 5th November.
   (NB you must book by 8pm on Wednesday for a Thursday collection so book early to ensure you don’t miss out)

4. Once you’ve booked your collection you must email us your myHermes tracking number and the destination postcode so that we can verify your delivery.
5. You’re welcome to enter even if you miss out on one of the 10 free delivery vouchers, however only one entry per person and you still need to email us your myHermes tracking number and the destination postcode by Thursday morning.
6. Who ever has a parcel collected on Thursday 5th November and is first to add a comment on this post to confirm that it’s been delivered to their customer wins.
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