The Corvette was a favourite amongst the astronauts of the day and Armstrong’s car delivered to him on the 15th of December 1966. A year later it was purchased by a NASA employee who drove it until 1981 and it’s been in storage ever since. Sadly storage has left it pretty dirty and rusty so if you want to restore it to pristine condition it’ll cost you a pretty penny, although with the bid price that probably won’t bother you too much if you can afford to buy it in the first place.

Of course the downside of this promotion is that you probably already have all of your items listed on eBay. The people this will benefit the most is those who have additional inventory either on their own website or in retail outlets which they can easily port onto eBay.

Bear in mind that all normal selling restrictions still apply including the duplicate listing policy so make sure your listings don’t fall foul of eBay’s rules. You’ll also have to meet eBay’s minimum seller performance standards to be eligible. Full details are on the free listing promotion page on eBay

Today Tamebay reader David explains what it means to him. Whilst we don’t necessarily agree with all his points, but he makes a very good case for being allowed to enhance images with additional information.

The Gallery Photo – The all important “Money Shot”

eBay’s decision to eliminate explanatory text and graphics in the gallery photo is a devastating blow to all experienced and professional eBay sellers who have been using these powerful communication tools to differentiate ourselves with a unique brand and a highly effective aid to all eBay searchers in quickly finding the goods and services that they are looking for.

After 40 years (13 years on eBay) as an inventor, manufacturer and marketer of professional technical products with sales in the multi-millions of dollars, I have a very deep understanding of human perception as it applies to marketing and conversion – the process of finding potential customers and converting them into paying customers.

My time (and 50,000+ sales) on eBay has taught me and every other eBay seller that the majority of eBay lookers and buyers prefer not to read anything! How many emails have you received from eBay buyers with questions regarding your listings that are already and clearly answered in the photos, title or long description?

A few months into my eBay adventure, I realized that if I wanted to communicate to potential customers salient or important information about the product or terms of the sale, I needed to spell it out in the gallery photo because that’s the only thing these buyers were looking at.

In my case, the gallery photos for all of my listings include the words: “GUARANTEED PRODUCTS” and “CALL OUR FREE 800# LIVE HELP LINE”, both statements clearly communicate that I’m a seller that stands behind my products and is customer service friendly. These eight words immediately improved the number of hits to my pages and continue to allow me to sell my top quality technical products at prices far higher than other sellers.

Think about how most of us search on eBay: we select key search words, hit enter and quickly scan the returned gallery images looking for what we want–and just maybe we glanced over at the price. After clicking on a selected thumbnail and opening the listing, the larger image has to tell the rest of the story in less than a half a second. This is where the term money shot comes from – a clearly defined and comprehensible image with words and graphics that instantly communicates to the potential buyer: THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR!

Did we read the title? Did we read the long-desciption? Very unlikely until we have actually decided to purchase the item. Now we need to find and carefully R-E-A-D all the additional terms and conditions of the sale seemingly placed every-which-way in eBay’s confusing and poorly designed listing page format that utilizes various fonts, graphic styles and colors that we can’t change!

This is another example (in a never-ending stream) of eBay management’s lack of understanding of how the site functions at the buyer/seller transaction level, because the folks who run eBay are not engaged at any significant level in the labor intensive and restrictive process of selling on the site.

Apparently this new restriction is being implemented because eBay’s “bots” that are programmed to look for various taboo words on the site were not able to effectively find these dangerous hidden messages in the photos so now all of the honest and hard-working sellers and buyers have to suffer.

Editors note: More likely eBay’s reason are to have clear photos which they can use for catalogue images and to ensure that terms and conditions are in the correct places on the eBay View Item page, but the loss of the ability to add information to images will certainly take away the advantages many sellers have enjoyed from enhancing their images with text, graphics, logos and borders.

Only sellers without an eBay store and whose accounts meet eBay’s minimum seller performance standards are eligible for the promotion and all other listing fees will still apply. Check the free listing promotion page on eBay for full details.

When Top Rated Seller status was first introduced there were many sellers who thought it an impossible goal to achieve. Getting Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) high enough were for some an impossible goal, and yet those same sellers are now easily achieving TRS status and finding all their competitors are too. I’ve also heard complaints that sellers appear able to retain TRS status even if their feedback percentage drops from the typically high percentage that’s usual on eBay. Sellers who are TRS but have feedback scores significantly lower than reasonably common 99.9% really aren’t providing great service.

If eBay were to raise the TRS standards then those at the very top would retain the status and have less TRS competition. So what does TRS status get you?

TRS Benefits

• Final Value Fee discounts: Whilst this is the benefit most sellers are currently complaining about I’d suggest that it’s the benefit you should discount first. There’s only one way discounts are likely to go and that’s down and it wouldn’t surprise me to see them disappear entirely or at least be further reduced over the course of the next few seller releases
• eBay Top-rated seller badge: It’s not just having the TRS badge on your listings, eBay also display it in search results and give the ability to narrow search results to TRS listings only. They also have additional marketing from time to time including promotion of TRS on the eBay home page:
• Protection from one off feedback blipseBay have made it easier than ever to retain TRS status with a grace period to protect your business from one off issues that may arise. If your feedback drops below TRS status you get time to recover and in the mean time keep your TRS badge and benefits.
• Access to eBay “Value Box” on product pages: TRS gives you the opportunity to appear in the Value Box when listing with a matching product from the eBay catalogue in Technology.
• Access to Featured First: If you’re not TRS then you don’t get access to the Featured First listing promotion. Although there’s a cost implication this is still one of the best ways to kick start sales on your new listings.
• An average 20% boost in visibility in Best Match search: I’ve saved the best for last – this is the biggest benefit of TRS status and as with everything on eBay sales are what keeps sellers on the site. eBay have previously said that TRS gives around a 20% boost in search result placement resulting in around a 15% increase in sales compared to sellers who aren’t TRS. This is the real reason that sellers would prefer less of their competition to be TRS.

New eBay.com TRS service requirements

We’ve only got to look to the eBay.com 2012 Spring Seller Release to get an idea of how eBay may tighten the TRS criteria in the future – The answer is service. eBay say that buyers expect their items to ship without delay once they pay and they want to be able to see when their order has shipped. If you want to be TRS on eBay.com that’s what you’ll have to do.

US sellers will soon have to ship 90% of their items with tracking and upload the tracking information to eBay within their stated handling time in order to qualify or retain TRS status.

Visibility will also be lowered for TRS sellers who don’t offer the very best levels of service. eBay.com sellers need to offer 1 day or same day handling and a 14 day or longer return policy to get the greatest boost in Best Match and qualify for the final value fee discounts.

There’s been much discussion in the US about the new TRS requirements, especially the tracking requirement. It’s been pointed out that very low weight items (typical products would be Stamps and Postcards) have in the past been posted as letters costing just $0.25 to send with USPS. The lowest price for tracking appears to be $1.64.

Will we get tracking and fast shipping requirements in the UK?

If eBay listen to the sellers calling for more stringent TRS requirements then mandatory tracking for all shipments and a 1 day handling time could be introduced in the UK in future seller releases.

DSRs are largely becoming irrelevant for the best sellers. In the UK you can now get auto five star ratings on two of the criteria and as more sellers routinely qualify for TRS status DSRs are no longer able to differentiate between the good and the outstanding. Rather than tweak the DSR requirements eBay could well decide that service will be the next way that sellers in the UK are measured and differentiated.

Fees for listing upgrades and final value fees will still apply and unlike the recent promotion of 50,000 free listings for eBay.com sellers without an eBay store this time you’ve got a whole week to get your 50,000 listings listed.

To qualify for the promotion you’ll need to meet eBay’s minimum selling standards and there are a few other restrictions so check the 50,000 free listings promotion page for more details.

Curiously, eBay has been warning buyers who haven’t provided these details and also those sellers who are not required to pay tax related to their selling activity because they are too small. Quite understandably, sellers who have been blocked from selling are miffed. Several have noted that these sanctions should come from PayPal and not eBay.

This is distinct from the UK where historically eBay has resisted all attempts from HMRC to get access to eBay selling records.

You can read the full story, and the considerable background, on Ecommercebytes.

Now the limit on the 5000 auctions of 1, 3 or 5 day listings makes sense – every seller that was feverishly listings 6 days ago will have a ton of ended auctions just gagging to be relisted and (so long as you’ve not deleted them or already relisted them) it’ll cost you a maximum of $50 to send the whole lot live again.

Check the details on eBay for the full terms, but there are very few restrictions so long as you’re not a below standards seller.

The only restrictions are that the listings must be for 1, 3 or 5 day listings, but seeing as you’re not paying for them the duration isn’t a huge issue. What may become a problem is of course if the majority of your free listings end without bids. If your close rate is too low there’s a good chance that eBay will dump ALL of your future auction listings to the bottom of search and effectively your account will be scuppered for the near future.

If you want to take advantage of the promotion full details of how to qualify for 5000 free listings are available on eBay.com

This is leading to a raft of complaints from buyers and sellers alike. Both want to be able to verify the product matches the images. If you have a number of similar used items you want to be able to check the pictures to check exactly which product to despatch. If you’re the buyer when the item arrives again you want to be able to check it to make sure you’ve got the item you paid for.

Terapeak first highlighted the issue of missing pictures on ended items, explaining to their users that “Terapeak does not control this content”, and that it’s a change that eBay have made.

eBay have in past years placed growing importance on images, and increased the attractiveness of using eBay’s gallery images by including them all (not just the first image) in eBay search. In clothes, shoes and accessories you can display up to 12 gallery pictures for free, in other categories you have to pay for them and then pay again for Gallery Plus to display them in search results.

Removing images once an item sold makes eBay Gallery pictures an unattractive option and will drive sellers back towards self hosted pictures embedded in the item descriptions.

Both sellers and buyers want to be able to view images after a listing has ended. eBay need to find a solution for this and fast, in the mean time for any ended items on eBay.com that are missing their images you can view the same listing on eBay.co.uk and the images will be shown as demonstrated in the image on the above.