eBay Changes: Meet the Seller

Are you ready for the new changes at eBay? Here is an example of one of them: Meet the Seller.

It appears that if you have a low star rating for shipping time, shipping price, item as described, or communication eBay will warn your potential bidders.

With this new auction format in the works, bidders will no longer have to click the feedback button to read your feedback. EBay will point out all of your faults for you.

If you sell on eBay, and you have less than a 4.5 on any star rating, I really suggest that you try to find out what the problem is and fix it. Otherwise, this type of change will obviously make your bidders think twice about buying an item from you.

USPS To Raise Prices in May

The USPS has created a yearly "Price Adjusting" Ritual. The USPS just announced that it is going to raise its prices on May 12. The price of a First Class Stamp is going to be raised to 42 cents.

But it does not stop there. The USPS will be "adjusting" all of their prices. Though they have not announced the rate increase for Priority or Express mail yet.

Here is a taste of some of the changes they are making now:

• Large envelope, 2 ounces, $1, up 3 cents.
• Certified mail, $2.70, up 5 cents.
• First-class international letter to Canada or Mexico, 72 cents, up 3 cents.
• First-class international letter to other countries, 94 cents, up 4 cents.

Let's hope that these increases are not as high as they were last year.

Good luck eBay Sellers, the Feedback and Fee Changes combined with raised shipping fees are not going to help anyone. Hopefully your transition into June will not be too bumpy.

eBay Alternative: Finding Auction Sites like eBay

There has been quite a shake up in the eBay selling community. Now that eBay is implementing changes, unhappy sellers are trying to find an eBay alternative.

Unfortunately for its competitors, eBay has a very large stake in the online marketplace. However, there are some auction sites like eBay where you can sell your goods.

The two main alternatives to eBay I use are Amazon.com, and Craigslist.

• Amazon.com is a great place if you are selling books, music, DVDs, video games, or other electronics. It is very easy to use compared to eBay. All you have to do is find the item you want to sell, write a couple sentence description about its condition, and set your price. One of the best things about Amazon is that it is very straight forward, and you have to spend almost no time answering emails from buyers. This is my number 1 alternative to ebay!
• If you want to sell a small number of items on a personal level without having to deal with eBay fees, or PayPal holding your money, then I recommend Craigslist. It is very easy to use, you get paid in cash, and you don't have to ship anything. I like to use craigslist for all of my larger items.

There are several auction sites like eBay that are increasing in popularity as eBay sellers flee:

• Bidville is the second largest online auction site after eBay, and is a true eBay alternative. They do not charge you a listing fee, so you can list as many items as you like. They do charge a Final Value Fee, but it is low at 5% for items that sell for less than $25. If you love the auction format, but hate eBay, Bidville may be right for you.
  
• eCrater is the third largest online store front. They are very easy to deal with, everything is completely free, and they help you set up an online storefront in minutes that will connect to froogle.com
• Blujay is the fourth largest, but fastest growing online marketplace. The items posted their also show up on froogle, and it is free. Sellers on Blujay can post unlimited ads, 4 photos per ad, with up to 180 day listing periods all for free. And like eCrater, every blujay member gets an online webstore to showcase their items.

Just remember, when looking for an eBay alternative, make sure to do your research and find somewhere you can really be happy with. The best thing about eBay is the free traffic. With most of these other sites you are going to have to work harder to get eyeballs on your listings.

If you have any experience with these eBay alternatives, or use other auction sites like eBay, please let us know about your experience.

More Thoughts about eBays New Feedback System

In the long run, it seems like the new change in feedback is making eBay work a lot more like Amazon.com. It is similar in that the feedback does not count toward your score after 1 year, and that you can not give bidders negative feedback.

What everyone is afraid of is that this is going to make it so that you can not retaliate against bad bidders. But at Amazon it is normal for great sellers to have about 97% - 99% positive feedback rating. Everyone comes across a bad bidder, it is a universal experience.

The feedback changes won't just affect some sellers, they will affect all sellers. The only way these random negative feedbacks will negatively affect you is if your only way of keeping 100% positive feedback is to hold feedback hostage (giving negative tit for tat).

However, if you have good selling practices, and work hard with your customer service, you should not experience any problems. A great seller might get some bad feedback, but a bad seller will get a lot of bad feedback, and will be forced out of the competition!

This is actually a good thing, as sellers that try to please their customers will shine (even with a lower than 100% feedback rating).

Remember, now all of the honest sellers will be getting unwarranted and impossible to avoid negative feedback, so even though you might get a negative feedback you will not be able to respond to, you will still be on a level playing field!

Good luck, focus on customer service, and you will be fine.

Changes to eBays Feedback: Buyers Will Only be Able to Receive Feedback

eBay's change to feedback will undoubtedly lead to a decrease in the number of sellers with 100% positive feedback. Now that buyers are only able to receive positive feedback, there is no way for a seller to hold their feedback hostage.

This means that now, if a buyer gives a seller negative feedback the seller can not give the buyer negative feedback in retaliation. I know of many power sellers who rely on this system to keep their feedback at 100%. Giving feedback to get a mutual feedback withdrawal is no longer an option.

Now if you want to guard your feedback, you might want to sign up for Square Trade. However, this is a service you will have to pay for, increasing your cost to operate even more.

Changes to eBay's Feedback System

Things are really changing over at eBay! Today they announced a new way to reward sellers with positive feedback.

eBay Writes:

Search visibility will be tied to customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is reflected in a combination of DSRs, Feedback, and fewer complaints filed of an item being "significantly not as described" (SNAD) or "item not received" (INR). In March 2008, Best Match will become the default sort in search to give more buyers the results they want and will:

• Increase exposure for sellers with DSRs 4.6 and above and at least 95% customer satisfaction in the last 30 days.
• Decrease exposure for sellers with low customer satisfaction or Shipping & Handling DSRs.

Now that feedback is playing a role in getting your items to show up in searches, it will be even more important to please your customers. If you don't want to get left in the dust with this feedback change, you might have to alter your selling practices. If you are getting complaints about high shipping, you may have to lower it. If you ship only a couple times a week, and people notice, you may have to step it up a notch.

Customer service is key in this game, and in order to become a PowerSeller on eBay, you are going to have to bend over backwards to make sure you stay at the top of the searches.

How will I be Affected by the New eBay Fees?

Ebay just announced some very large changes in their fees. I will break down the main points for you below:

• Reduced eBay fees: the fees have been changed so it costs less to list, but this is really just a fee increase, as there is a higher final value fee. eBay does not lose at all in this situation, they just shifted their source of income.
  
• If you used to list a 7 day auction item for $20, with a gallery picture, it would have cost $.95 for the insertion fee, and if it sold for $20, an additional $1.05 would be taken out in final value fees (FVF). A total of $2.00 paid in fees.
• Now with the new fee structure, if you do the same listing, gallery pictures are free, and insertion prices dropped, so it would only cost $.55 to list the item. But once it sells, the FVF has raised from 5.25% to 8.75%. So it will cost you $1.75 in FVF, and $2.30 total.
• If you used to list a 7 day auction item for $100, with a gallery picture, it would have cost $2.75 for the insertion fee, and if it sold for $100, an additional $3.75 would be taken out in final value fees (FVF). A total of $6.50 paid in fees.
• Now for a $100 item, it will cost $2.00 to list, and the FVF will be $4.81. The total for new fees will be $6.81
• Store fees have increased as well, from 10% to 12%.

Take a look at eBay's new 2008 Fees for yourself.

Steve Weber, just wrote a new book about selling on eBay. I will let him explain the rest of the changes at eBay :

1. Rewards for seller performance
   There will be discounts and incentives for sellers with the best customer satisfaction rates according to the anonymous five-star Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs).
   • More search exposure through Best Match
   • Fee discounts for PowerSellers
   • Increased protection for PowerSellers
   
   
2. Feedback Changes
   The strategy is to "increase buyer confidence" and "showcase good sellers."
   • Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.
   • Positive repeat customer Feedback will count and Feedback more than 12 months old won't.
   • Negative and neutral Feedback left by the buyer will be removed for transactions in which a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) or if the member is suspended.

From: Selling Books: eBay bans negative feedback for buyers, cuts listing fees

Things are changing at eBay

I was over at Steve Weber's blog today, weberbooks.com, and saw that it looks like there are going to be some big changes at eBay!
Weber writes:

A new chief executive is on the way in, and Meg Whitman is on the way out.

At the top of the agenda:

Shifting eBay's emphasis from auctions to fixed-priced listing, which could make the experience of buying on eBay more like the one customers have come to expect from sites like Amazon.

Fixed-price sales now account for 40 percent of eBay's revenue. Who knew?

An announcement on a new fee structure is expected next week. I am guessing -- I'm way out on a limb here -- that fees for sellers will be higher.

If eBay can improve its search function and repeat-business action, higher fees might be worth it.

One area where eBay is expected to CUT fees: image hosting. That's long overdue, if you ask me. The more product images on eBay, the more sales. Encouraging multiple photos for listings without a fee penalty makes a lot of sense.

There's a lot of speculation about what this means for eBay Store sellers. For those of you who sell on eBay, how do your costs compare to Amazon when you add up insertion, final-value, and PayPal fees, compared to Amazon's 15-percent Marketplace commissions?