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.

“Outlets are the fastest-growing retail channel, and we’re excited to bring that shopping experience and value to our shoppers – anywhere, anytime, anyhow”
- Miriam Lahage, eBay Head of Global Fashion Brand.

One of the advantages for Fashion Outlet retailers is the replacement of the eBay Top Rated Seller badge with the retailers own logo. This appears both on the view item page as well as in search results.

The eBay.com Fashion Outlet has launched with 12 Outlet stores on eBay, but they haven’t made the mistake which the UK did of excluding fashion items brands from non-Outlet eBay sellers. The Fashion Outlet is part of the Fashion tab in the eBay navigation bar and although the Outlet is prominently highlighted on the site shopping by brand, Womens, Mens, or Kids & Baby will take you to site wide searches for the products you’re interested in.

In addition to the Fashion Outlet eBay.com also have the Fashion Vault. The Fashion Vault offers limited time (2 or 3 day) exclusive online events wtih substantial discounts on brand new designer fashions from celebrated brands.

What will be interesting to see is how the new eBay.com Fashion Outlet impacts the US Deals program. In the UK the daily and weekly deals are dominated by Outlet sellers (In the UK there are Outlet sellers who don’t sell Fashion). However the US deals program doesn’t currently major on fashion items anywhere near as heavily as UK deals.

One thing is certain, the success of the eBay.com Fashion Outlet will be measured against the UK. The UK fashion Outlet has had an enormous influence on the site as a whole and eBay have focused heavily on fashion to draw new buyers to the site. The eBay.com Fashion Outlet has been set a high bar to meet to match the success of the UK.

eBay.com have just unveiled their first TV adverts for two years. They’re focussing on mobile shoppers purchasing new fixed price impulse buys with the tag line “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay”.

Mobile shopping is on the up so targeting buyers who will shop anywhere, anytime with a mobile device for what will be eBay’s largest mobile shopping season ever makes sense. The ad series features both tablets and mobile smart phones with the eBay mobile apps installed.

“But it new. Buy it now” is the message in the adverts created by San Francisco ad agency Venables Bell & Partners. Using the simple call to action the campaign is intended to reflect the shopping experience on eBay today. 63% of the more than 200 million live listings at any given time are fixed price and 70% are new products. Mobile sales on eBay are expected to exceed $4 billion by the end of 2011, and eBay’s suite of mobile applications have been downloaded nearly 50 million times, with one purchase made every second through mobile, showing a strong demand for shopping on the go.

There’s a distinctly American flavour to the adverts so I’m not expecting our UK readers to love them, however it would be interesting to hear the reactions of US readers. How well do you think that the new ads will attract new buyers to eBay for the holiday selling season. Would they prompt you to reach for your smart phone the next time you want to purchase something on the go?

This solves the dilemma of how to ensure your items aren’t removed by eBay, as well as filling in holes in eBay’s catalogue. If your product is released in a later model or a new colour you can simply add it and carry on listing as normal.

There is of course a word of warning, make sure that if you do add a new product it really is new to the product catalogue. For example just because a device has more memory doesn’t make it a new product if memory can be upgraded. This would then simply be an item specific – if you create new catalogue entries and you are the only person to list against that product then your item isn’t likely to fair well in search as eBay will probably surface the more popular item. Also ensure that the data is 100% correct and as complete as possible to give buyers the maximum (and correct!) information.

We’ll let you know if this comes to the UK or if we see more categories added where you can add new entries to eBay’s product catalogue data.

You can look back in history at what the eBay world were interested in on a day by day basis, along with news served by Yahoo! The data is provided as a net with related key word searches and alongside are suggestions of products to purchase on eBay related to that theme. A nice feature is the “Surprise Me” button which picks a random day from the past and shows what the eBay buzz was about at that point in time.

Although this is historical data it could make sense for eBay to use this information to tailor Daily Deals to products and themes that eBay users were searching for last week, although in truth they probably have a much greater lead time to prepare Daily and Weekly Deals. It would also make sense to build a weighting in to eBay search results to highlight products that much of the eBay community are actively interested in.

Over the last four days we’ve looked at a number of eBay’s experimental search research prototypes. What I find interesting is that apart from search terms and categories none of the tools rely on complicated item specifics. They rely on how users interact with the site – either trends of search terms or purchases.

If you were designing eBay’s search to surface the unique one off items which features would you build into the main site or do you have other ideas of how to make sure the unusual and one-off items are found?

eBaySaurus is a semantic network giving an insight into the search terms and vocabulary of the eBay community. Rather than offering traditional search results it displays new search terms by adding in words associated with the original search string based on what the eBay community are looking at.

In this example the search term “Harry Potter” shows that eBay users also look for “Harry Potter Lego”. Double clicking on the “Harry Potter Lego” search term reveals more items and you can carry on clicking search terms to expand your net revealing more and more items of interest.

In the sidebar eBay display four items related to the last search term you clicked on. These change as your search net expands as you explore items of interest.

I doubt if this semantic based search net will ever make it onto the eBay site as a mainstream tool, but it’s still interesting and gives an insight into how eBay are exploring search and ways to improve it in the future.

Doubtless eBay will find ways to use the data though, for instance when you type into the search box eBay will try to double guess what you’re looking for with search suggestions. If eBay learns what other users were looking for, then the same items can be suggested when a buyer starts to type in their initial search string. Notice how the first search suggestions on the right are the same as the most relevant search topics in the semantic network above.

I don’t know if this semantic network technology has worked its way into Best Match (I suspect that it has), but if it hasn’t I would be very surprised if it doesn’t in the future. eBay are trying to find ways to understand what users want without showering them with a load of loosely related items which just happen to have a matching keyword. eBay Saurus demonstrates just one way eBay can learn the search term vocabulary of the eBay community and start to refine search results. Ultimately if they get it right will result in more sales for sellers and happier buyers.

eBay Discover is another search tool, similar to Niche Markets, that offers buyers a serendipitous way to explore eBay’s amazing infinity of long tail inventory. However it’s a more polished complete offering than Niche Markets and also learns what type of items are of interest to you.

There are three main ways to browse – Interesting, Deals or My Likes. You can choose to browse interesting items by category or type in keywords of interest. As you explore the inventory you can mark items “like” or “dislike” and can share interesting items with others. Sharing is enabled through email or through facebook and twitter.

eBay Discover has a personalization feature which learns from the user’s behavior and accordingly personalizes the experience which should mean that the more you use it the more likely you are to discover items of interest. In addition you can manually customise the experience if you wish by choosing the categories that are of interest to you.

Similar to eBay Niche Markets, eBay Discover is only currently available for eBay.com. However if it were to be rolled out as an alternative to the standard search box (or built into search) it would be a valuable way to highlight the unique inventory eBay’s fortunes were built from.

eBay are however working on many ideas, and some of these are new ways to search and to enable buyers to stumble across the interesting and unusual. The first of these is eBay Niche Markets Finder but we’ll look at some of the other experimental tools eBay are working on over the next few days.

Niche Markets Finder

The Niche Markets Finder uncovers little known items that sell extremely well but may be in short supply on eBay. The identified niche items suggest opportunities to sellers or can be used by buyers to promote or discover interesting products.

It operates across several categories including Toys, Collectibles, Antiques, Pottery and Home & Garden. Items displayed by the Niche Markets Finder are previously sold listings on eBay. Clicking on the picture of the sold item takes you to similar sold items on eBay. However clicking the “See only active listings” at the top of the completed listings page takes you to similar items which are still live on eBay.

The Niche Markets Finder also shows representative keywords for the product, The maximum and average selling prices, number of users who searched for the item, and the quantity available and sold on eBay.

Currently this tool is aimed more for seller research than for buyers and is only available on eBay.com. However it does demonstrate how eBay can use past selling history to surface the more unique and interesting items on the site – All they need do now is find a way to surface similar items in search results so that those buyers who would be interested in them find and buy them.

If you don’t currently ship to what is often considered one of the worst countries in Europe for lost parcels make sure you have Italy excluded in your postage options. However if you’re happy to ship to Italy (and many are) then so long as you specify the postage costs and are top rated you should see more sales coming from Italy.

eBay say that this is a test and depending on the feedback received, they may, in time, expand this feature to other markets. However it’s worth remembering that the UK and US already have greater visibility on eBay Australia.

If eBay continue to expand the number of sites that listings appear on in natural search results it may be time to reconsider your use of the International Site Visibility listing enhancement.

photo credit: *_*

From today eBay Australia are opening up number of listing categories on eBay.com.au to include relevant listings from eBay.com and eBay.co.uk in search results.

This is being done in selected (but unspecified) categories where eBay Australia has inventory gaps or where Australian buyers already have a high rate of purchasing from overseas-based sellers.

To help Australian buyers eBay will be incorporating additional messaging to help buyers identify when they are purchasing items which are of overseas origin and alert them to the potential downsides of importing some goods.

eBay have been quick to allay the fears of Australian sellers facing increased competition saying:

• According to Forrester research commissioned by PayPal, Australians prefer buying from Australian sellers
• Local sellers have a geographic advantage in offering faster and in many cases cheaper postage
• Local sellers have the ability to allow pick-up, and to process returns more quickly and cost effectively
• More sites are included by default in listing search results on other eBay sites (such as eBay.com or eBay.co.uk), so Australian sellers offering international purchase and postage can benefit from more buyers viewing their listings

For eBay UK and eBay.com sellers if you already offer postage to Australia then there’s nothing you need do, apart from hopefully sit back and see more orders flood in from the Antipodes. If you don’t offer either worldwide postage or at least postage to Australia then you should consider doing so in order for your eBay listings to appear on eBay Australia.

The app uses Red Laser technology to allow you to scan the VIN numbers on your vehicles and the app will fill out and store the details. Creating your Garage will make it easy to search for the parts & accessories for your vehicle when you need them – The app will have your vehicles details in the Garage so you can search eBay Motors for the right parts for your vehicle.

The app also fully supports your regular My eBay, allowing you to view all your eBay bidding, buying, watched items and other activities anywhere, anytime.

If you’re buying a car there’s peace of mind with free vehicle reports from AutoCheck. The eBay Motors app displays the AutoCheck report for each vehicle in order to give you the full report.

It’s no real surprise that eBay have launched a dedicated app for eBay Motors. As Keith Bird CEO of eSellerPro said “Instead of relying solely on traditional means, such as through a garage or through a dealer, people have started to find other ways to shop for their cars and motor parts. They are looking online to grab a bargain and shop at a time that suits them. An app aimed just at cars and parts makes perfect sense as online retail is all about convenience – and for brands that means taking their product to the customers and to where they want to shop”.

If eBay release a mobile app for eBay Motors in the UK I’ll be opening a virtual garage on my phone and adding my cars – there always seems to be something going wrong with one of them. However it’ll need to be an Android app as I’ve not got an iPhone.

To make it easy for retailers to upload products eBay is providing retailers who use QuickBooks a way to easily upload their inventory onto Milo and eBay through a new inventory management plug-in.

By opting in to the eBay local search beta, eBay users can access a new local shopping tab to check a product’s local, or in-store. Product pages for MP3 players and GPS devices now also include a local shopping tab.

Milo covers over 140 retailers with 50,000 locations across the US and new retailers can sign up at Milo.com.

In recent years eBay have strived to encourage retailers to place all of their inventory onto the site with mixed results. A large number of retailers do list products on eBay, but very few if any list their entire inventory. With the Milo Local Search integration it sidesteps the listing process and adds millions of products with no additional input from the retailers.

From eBay’s perspective, if the site becomes the venue for both online and off-line buying then buyers who can’t find an item locally should be able to find the products online. However this isn’t a development which is likely to please many eBay sellers. Every time eBay drives traffic off the site sellers wonder just how much value there is in the fees that they pay.

The big news in the US is that the 5% Final Value Fee discounts for PowerSellers who are not Top Rated Sellers will end, for the first time Final Value Fees will be applied to shipping charges as well as the item sale price, payment holds will be introduced for new sellers and global seller standards will be introduced.

eBay.com fee changes

eBay Top-rated sellers continue to earn a 20% discount on Final Value Fees. If you’re not a Top Rated Seller then the current 5% PowerSeller discount ends as of your June invoice this year.

Store subscribers will see no change in Insertion Fees, but there are changes to final value fees which see rates segmented by category. Final Value Fees are down from the previous fee schedule by 1% (2% less in Media, Clothes Shoes & Accessories and Motors Parts & Accessories), which should for many sellers take into account the extra fees charged by charging fees on the shipping costs as well as the final value.

Those who sell low cost items with relatively high shipping costs in comparison to the sale price will be hit the hardest. The change is good news for those already offering free shipping as they’ll enjoy lower Final Value Fees without being impacted by fees on shipping costs.

This appears quite simply a ploy to end fee avoidance by overcharging on shipping, although it may also penalise sellers who ship heavy items with costly shipping and those that provide premium shipping services in contrast to those who ship by the cheapest possible method.

Non-store subscribers Insertion Fees will be free for the first 50 auctions per month regardless of start price along with the option to add a BUY IT NOW price for free. This will kick in on the 19th April along Fixed Price Final Value Fee rates reduced and applied to the total amount of sale (including shipping) from the 6th July.

After 50 items non-store subscribers, Insertion Fees will be charged at the same rate as Insertion Fees for eBay Store Subscribers.

Payment Holds

Sellers with little or no selling history and sellers performing below eBay’s minimum standard will see buyer payments show as pending in their PayPal account and not be available to withdraw or spend.

If you have a Standard or Above Standard performance rating and an established selling history, or you’re an eBay Top-rated seller then you’ll see no difference and funds will be available when your buyer pays.

If you have a limited selling history (90 days or less from your first sale, 25 or fewer sales transactions or $250 or less total sales since your first sale) or if you have a Below Standard rating in your Seller Dashboard then funds will be held.

Funds will be available 3 days after eBay receives confirmation of delivery when you upload tracking information, 7 days after your latest estimated delivery date if you don’t upload tracking but mark the item as shipped. If no shipping information is provided to eBay (you don’t upload tracking information or mark the item as shipped) then funds will be available 21 days after the buyer pays.

Sellers with funds held will be able to pay postage and print shipping labels on eBay or PayPal. Benefits are that tracking information is uploaded automatically and funds for the cost of shipping will be made available from the held money. This will give new sellers the ability to ship items without having to self fund postage for up to 21 days.

Global Seller Standards

Starting in May 2011, minimum selling standards will be put in place across all eBay sites around the world. From the 20th May, to sell into other countries sellers will be required to meet new minimum Global Standards and sellers already have to meet minimum standards to sell into the US, UK and Germany.

Sellers will also be able to achieve Top Rated status in Canada, Australia, France and Italy in addition to the US, UK and Germany.

Shopping Cart

As previously announced the Shopping Cart (known as the Shopping Basket in the UK) will be rolled out to eBay.com will be rolled out by the summer and become the standard way to buy on eBay over the course of the year. Initially only PayPal will be supported but by summer all accepted forms of payment on eBay.com will be supported.

The eBay Shopping Cart eliminates virtually all unpaid items for Fixed Price listings, the only exceptions being items offered on a negotiated sale such as Best Offers and Second Chance offers.

Catalogue in Electronics

If you sell electronics then you need to start listing using the eBay catalogue. The new shopping experience already live on eBay.com for DVDs, GPS systems, and MP3 players will be rolled out to more categories. Listings that don’t use the eBay catalogue in these categories receive limited exposure on the Search Results page and thus impact sales.

Starting on the 16th May you’ll be required to list and revise listings in these categories with the catalogue when there’s a product match. Best practise will be to start listing with Product Catalogue immediately so that your products are ready when it becomes mandatory.

Mandatory Item Specifics for CSA

From the 9th May Brand, Style, Color, Size Type and Size item specifics will become mandatory for all listings in listings in Clothing, Shoes & Accessories.

Both “Colour” and “Exact Colour” will both be required and eBay say that new colour treatment will help establish consistent colour across categories.I’ll be watching this one with interest as eBay have changed “colours” in clothing on eBay countless times over the years and each change means existing listings then have colours specified which no longer appear in the product finders that buyers use for search.

Motors Parts & Accessories

All listings in eBay Motors Parts & Accessories categories will be required to specify a return policy, handling time and item condition. This is basic information all ready required for other eBay categories.

New communications hub

Starting in May, you’ll be able to manage your communications with buyers from just one location within My eBay. You’ll be able to see the emails that eBay sends to buyers after a transaction, manage your buyer-facing Automated Answers and access your Store newsletters all on the one page.

International Shipping

From June sellers will be able to specify more international shipping carriers and costs in their listings. Later this year, items offered internationally that specify international shipping information could receive increased exposure by being displayed in the main search results for eBay sites in Australia, Canada and the UK.

Specifying international shipping details on items offered to buyers in Australia, Canada and the UK will be required starting in August 2011.

There will be two auction fee schedules – Standard fees for sellers without an eBay store and another set of auction fees for sellers with an eBay store. Fixed price fees insertion will not change but final value fees will be reduced and remain specific to the category you list in.

The big change is that Final Value Fees are applied to the total amount of the sale including shipping. If you’re shipping heavy items with costly shipping you’ll need to factor in the additional fees.

However don’t forget you will also pay 1% lower final value fees (2% less in Media, Clothes Shoes & Accessories and Motors Parts & Accessories) on the item itself. Also if your buyer pays for a next day service or an International shipping option is selected, the first domestic shipping service offered other than next day will be used to calculate Final Value Fees. This makes it imperative to offer a choice of shipping as even if next day is your default service Final Value Fees will be calculated on your next cheapest delivery option.

eBay.com Standard Auction Fees

These fees apply to sellers listing auction style listings who do not have an eBay shop subscription.

eBay.com Store Subscriber Auction Fees

These fees apply to sellers listing auction style listings who have an eBay shop subscription and for sellers who don’t subscribe to an eBay store when the exceed 50 auctions in a month.

eBay.com Fixed Price Fees

Insertion Fees for fixed price aren’t changing, but final value fees will be reduced as the cost will be applied to both the final value and the shipping charged by the seller.

In Q4 2010, 74 percent of vehicles sold on eBay Motors were interstate transactions, where the vehicles were delivered to buyers outside the state of the sellers. This means buyers either had to travel to collect their car, or arrange to have it shipped to their home from another State. With a car selling every 1.6 minutes on eBay.com that’s a lot of cars which need to be delivered or collected by the buyer.

When eBay Motors buyers request a custom vehicle shipping quote, they will receive an email allowing them to view upfront “Ship It Now” quotes from uShip’s top transporters and book their services instantly. They can also list their shipment in the uShip marketplace to get additional auction-style bids from uShip’s network of thousands of feedback-rated vehicle shipping companies.

uShip specialise in transporting large, unusual and heavy items, and their website connects people with customer-reviewed delivery companies that can move hard-to-ship items. Transporters place competing bids to win a customer’s business, which brings down delivery costs and makes transport more affordable and efficient.

Launched in 2004 uShip operates globally with local websites in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, European Union, Germany and Australia. eBay.com Motors now uShip’s “Shipping Price Estimator” as a vehicle shipping option for all of their U.S. vehicle, motorcycle and powersports listings.

As well as shipping vehicles you can also use uShip to source deliveries for items such as for items such as motorcycles, heavy equipment, household goods, boats and even horses.

eBay and Triad say that they will “display ads that takes customers “beyond the banner” and engages them with new brand experiences that are complementary to the eBay experience”. They’ll be creating banner ads where users can view content without actually leaving eBay, and the content will be category specific so it’ll hopefully be more relevant.

eBay say that the partnership will allow them to “integrate new experiences from popular brands and cross-category “content centers” – sponsored landing pages on eBay that will highlight seasonally relevant and interactive content, and inspire new purchases through integrated merchandising with eBay listings”.

The ultimate aim is to show users engaging content from brands that they already know and trust as well as opening up the eBay community to the advertisers.

This news is unlikely to sit well with fee paying sellers who regularly get annoyed with buyers being diverted away from their listings. However at least the new ads aim to delivery the content within eBay and not result in off site clicks, and of course eBay needs to generate profits. All this advertising revenue should (at least one can hope) keep eBay sellers fees down. We’ll wait for this years seller releases to see what happens there.

There are the normal restrictions with some excluded categories and of course if your start price is below a dollar you’ll pay the normal 10¢ instead of the 25¢ promotion price.

This promo makes a lot of sense – getting as much inventory on eBay in the final selling days before the Christmas holidays should maximise returns. If you’ve got all your items on fixed price listing it’s probably well worth starting some auctions between the 7th and 10th December as auctions will rise to the top of search results unlike fixed price listings which are dependent on Best Match.

The Buy It Now price must be at least 10% higher than the auction starting price and will appear on your listing either until someone purchases your item instantly or until a buyer places the first bid on your auction.

There are a few restrictions so make sure that you check the full promotion details before you list your items, and remember the promotion is only available on eBay.com for sellers who don’t have an eBay store.

The new eBay.com DealFinder compares the current selling price on eBay to the lowest price they can find the item offered on alternative sites. The sites for comparisons include Amazon, Walmart, Target, BestBuy, Newegg, NeweggMall and Barnes & Noble. eBay say that when they find a better deal on eBay they display it on DealFinder and display the percentage saving based on the best next price they find.

Of course it does mean if the item you’re searching for isn’t on the DealFinder site there’s a pretty good chance it’s either not available elsewhere, or that it’s available at a lower price on another site. It also appears that you’ll have to be a Top Rated Seller for your items to be included on DealFinder.

Even though you’ll only find the item you want if it’s cheapest on eBay it’s still rather cute and DealFinder currently has almost 20,000 product deals live spread over almost 4000 pages. You can narrow your search by category and only then will a search box be displayed which searches DealFinder – on the home page only a general eBay search box is displayed.

Buyers should appreciate this new shopping comparison feature and eBay are even including live links to click through to competitors sites to verify the savings available. I’m not sure how pleased Amazon et al will be at being used as a comparison to eBay prices, especially as their item prices will only be highlighted when they are more expensive. It’s also worth noting that the price comparison does not take into account any shipping or handling fees.

Anything that increase buyer activity on eBay is good news, so if the new DealFinder encourages shoppers to spend more on the site it should be welcomed by sellers.

Discounts vary but are up to 40% and cover a wide range of goods including clothing, music, video games, DIY, toys, photography, golf, computing and consumer electronics. There’s a landing page with all the offers listed so go save yourself some money when you do your Christmas shopping.

Unlike recent listing promotions in the States this one is open to those who have an eBay Stores subscription as well as non-stores subscribers. Sellers who do’t have an eBay Store subscription are still eligible for 100 free Insertion Fees per month, up until January 7. If they list more than 100 free listings that’s when the 25c listings will kick in.

There are a few category restrictions, and the promotion really applies to auctions with a start price greater than $10 as that’s where the savings are to be made.

The shop will offer officially licensed Ford merchandise covering everything from Ford Mustang neon signs to Fiesta hoodies. As well as Ford merchandise they also intend to offer restoration parts and vintage shop manuals in the future. Their aim is to make their eBay presence a one-stop shopping destination for Ford fans.

Ford’s entry into eBay is yet another recognition that eBay is just too big an ecommerce venue for Global brands to ignore. Over the last couple of years there has been a dramatic shift in focus from the smaller independent eBay seller to the larger high street retailers and if that direction continues we’ll see ever more larger retailers joining the site.

Large retailers have different needs to the smaller sellers which is why the Ford store is launched using ChannelAdvisor as the back end engine. Ford have also taken the somewhat unusual step of actively promoting their eBay directly from their own website. Most large retailers have yet to fully embrace eBay and use the site to dispose of end of season and excess inventory but Ford are fully promoting eBay.

At the week long Specialty Equipment Market Association show, running from November 2nd to 5th, they are displaying the Ford Mustang Pool Table with computers on surrounding tables so that delegates at the show can place bids on the table. eBay Motors are also at the show and they too have screens monitoring the auction which is timed to end as the show comes to a close.