Category — eBay Store Design and selling on eBay

I keep getting calls from clients, potential clients, and of course my mother. With the exception of mom, many clients want to use a particular system to run both auctions on eBay and their website. This is all well and good. I’ve analyzed various huge powersellers for traffic, linking, and PR Rank with Google and made some discoveries that are important if you really want a website venue that sells on it’s own, without regard to eBay traffic.

First and foremost, realize that when you are talking to auction managers that they are selling a bundle of products and services, some better than others. Go look at the #1 seller on eBay and the #1 seller in your category. Are they running a website from an auction management tool? The time you save using these systems will be the cost and time you’ll spend later in Pay Per Click on Google, or the lost revenues that you’ll deal with if you go this route. I’m not saying that those services are not valid or good, but figure out if you are #1 or #500 and make a decision. The listing manager company is there to make money, and to sell you their products. They are not independant consultants. They are not going to tell you where to go, except to go with them. Now on some of them, I concur. Some of them have an excellent package. But you have to do the homework to find out for sure.

Auction management listing tools offer you an advantage in inventory management, but don’t get lazy. The time that is spent daily or weekly on updating inventories is only a few minutes. Integrating the sales into your back office system is a one time deal. After that you get the sales, and you fill the orders. If you work on Amazon, you’ve already had the opportunity to merge two channels, now merge three.

The issue comes in when you try to get independant traffic from your eBay buyers. Sure you’ve got plenty of traffic there, so why bother with a website? Most store owners will say they want more traffic, the abundance of traffic out there. So don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Using an auction management companies standard website offering will have some issues when it comes to PR rank on Google. Most of the rank acutally goes to your auction manager, and not to your website.

How can you tell if your auction management tool is good for your website too?

When analyzing traffic rank, get the google toolbar.Go to your favorite “huge eBay seller” and take a look at his PR rank. Is it over 4, or better yet, over 5? If not, this is not good. Nearly anyone can,with a bit of trying get a PR rank that is a 4, especially on a product site. Get the Alexa toolbar, is his rank lower than 200,000? If not, it’s a sure bet that his is not going to be reaping the benefit of a stand alone website. Although you may admire him because he looks great, his wonderful marketing has worked on you! That is what sets him apart from the other sellers that you compete with. But take a look at the inside workings and analyze his traffic rank. If his rank is nearly the same as yours, then likely you have bought the goods from his beautiful templates and branding and not based upon reality in sales and conversions.

Then there was my other favorite Bill Cobb moment from eBay Live!

If you’ve ever attended the Gala event at Live, it is a sight to behold. Who could resist walking through a greeting line of hundreds of eBay employees all cheering you on? I have to tell you this is one of the great things about eBay’s Gala night. It’s almost a throwback from the 80′s group dynamic seminars. When you walk into the hall, there are litterally hundreds of staffers who have spent the better part of two hours cheering every single person who walked in those doors. They clap until their hands are red. They cheer until their voices are hoarse. It’s a great warm feeling for every eBay seller and buyer to walk in and be famous for that one moment in time.

Anticipating yet another great time at the Gala, we stood in line, rather than go to dinner with our powerseller buddies, and we stood in line and stood and walked and stood and finally just a mere mile from the entrance to the gala event, it hit me. There’s a bathroom right over there and I can make it. I can run in and run out and get back in line. So off I flew. I came running back out, expecting to jump back in, but no. One of our friendly eBay staffers said, no cuts missy, get back in line.

I guess by now I was the second to the last person in the parade of people who entered the hall with the cheering and screaming eBay staffers. By now I would have been overcome with anger (and I was) watching my group up there at the top of the escalator and me at the end of the line… but just as I entered the line, I was greeted by that oh so wonderful face of Mr. Wonderful. That’s right it was Bill Cobb. I shook his hand, he remembered me from days of late, and a big smile came across my face. (damnit – I was planning to be miserable, mad and angry, after all wasn’t I just about the last person in the door!).
Nevertheless, that was a fine Bill Cobb moment.
Thanks for that Bill, you’re a trooper. I have to applaud any CEO, or VP for standing in a group of staffers cheering on customers. I guess if I made a gazillion bucks a year I would do it too. You can always get bandaids for those tired feet later on, eh.

Don’t forget next year, hope they do that cheering thing again. Just love that!

For those who couldn’t make it to eBay Live this year, fear not. We have the scoop.
We walked, and walked and walked and we still didn’t feel that we were that close to anything until we saw those goldenpalace casino guys handing out tickets. What’s this? Do they actually have a booth? No, but who cares. All is well that ends well.

Bill Cobb is really one of my favorites. He’s a gentle man, has integrity, stands tall, is friendly and I really like him. So why was he booed at the keynote address? Well that was the pesky little fiasco called search in stores. Everyone loved it and they took it away. Why? Well because of buyer confusion. Buyers were apparently confused when too many choices were offered. I guess that means that buyers on eBay don’t like choices. What?! Are you serious! That is the joy of eBay and something that kills every seller there. A bone was thrown out with that one and then it was taken back like candy from a baby, like a piece of meat from a pit bull. There will be no search in stores, it was just too much fun for sellers to reap profits off of that at the expense of eBay’s bottom line, or so it is said. Since eBay said one thing and lots of people guessed another thing, no one knows for sure, but that is the joy of eBay. We shall never know what really happened to search in stores. But what we do know is that eBay sellers want it back and eBay isn’t giving.

Well that’s a story for another day.

Now back to eBay Live. We walked and walked – oh right, I already said that. Walking was fun. The exhibitor hall was good. Many vendors there selling their eBay related wares. Sellathon did a hell of a business I hear. Marsha Collier was grand with her friend accompanying her, signing her autographed books at Buysafe’s booth. Buysafe is good. We recommend it to any seller needing a boost in integrity.

Now eBay has gone wiki, and eBay has gone with blogs and that is a good thing. It’s more of the Google authoritative thing. I guess I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth repeating. If you have an authoritative site, you’ll do well with natural search. eBay is on the right track here with many sellers touting the eBay Guides as a good way to SEO (search engine optimization) for those newbies out there. In fact from what I gather, doing a guide will give you almost instant gratification as an authority from eBay coupled with Google search results. Wallah! Note to self: Start writing those guides and do it now.

… well until next time… we’re off to write a guide, or .. um.. okay, gotta go do some web pages for customers that are waiting.

See you next year at Live!

There are several tricks that we use to build templates for eBay. Eventhough it is said that you can not use script items in your listings this is not entirely true. In fact, most of our templates use both script items and formatting tricks that change html to respond differently than your normal run of the mill webpage. In addition using ascii code can allow you to code into an ebay listing which greater flexiblity to get over the eBay search maniupulation issue. You can find some conversion tools by googleling the words ‘ascii conversion’. Most of the auction management systems, such as ChannelAdvisor and Marketworks support these script items, but be careful as some of them only take the some of the tags in what I like to call reverse ascii code. This is simply that not only content areas but also inside html tags need to be coded in ascii type.

You can also change the entire eBay page using .css (cascading style sheets)rendering the eBay look quite different from what it actually is. Not all of these changes are that great, but the fact is that you can mess with the entire auction listing page. For starters we often use form css which makes the form submit button look different, changes the color of the button, etc.

We also use a font style that nearly ensures that no matter what is used by the person who is submitting the auction that the template will retain it’s integrity and the look that was originally crated. Other sites, like Overstock Auctions also allow for styles although their tags differ from those on the eBay templates. Instead of the ‘a name’ tag you can use a ‘div’ tag at Overstock. Overstock will otherwise strip out some html tags making it much more difficult to use standard html tags on the site. Quite a bit can be changed in your auction listing throught a listing template with style sheets and scripts creating a marketing template that will surely outshine your competition. Take a look at our services – we create eBay templates.

Some of the  eBay Power Sellers have noticed, and made a big deal about, the falling stock prices of eBay. It’s a surprising development, but are the stock prices at eBay really going to affect eBay sellers?

I had the pleasure of attending an analyst dinner with folks from Piper Jaffray and took away a few notes. The dinner was attended by some of the major shot callers for stock pricing for eBay. As I understand it the price will stay as a buy. Eventhough many are squaking about it, the fact is that eBay is diversifying their business to include their payment system (Paypal) and VOIP product (Skype). The auction business may have matured, but in fact there are many other avenues to make money on the internet, most noteably Pay per click, and why wouldn’t any public company enjoy those avenues.

Skype is a product used by millions of users and although it is still not fully developed by eBay - they are certainly looking for ways to improve their pocketbook with this product. Bringing to the table pay-per-click, ads on the Skype platform, and eBay visibility will play well for eBay. This might even bring more buyers to the eBay auction site, and eBay Express.

I wouldn’t discount eBay as the largest ecommerce platform out there, because in reality it is! Alexa ranks as the top 5 sites, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, MySpace and eBay, and while Yahoo certainly has ecommerce, it does not have the available buy it now mentality and the volumes of listings that eBay has. None of the others come close.

Take a look at all the ruckus about GBase. Here is something that is said to have the capability to rival eBay, yet in reality, it is nowhere close to the ecommerce portal that eBay is, and honestly, I don’t see much there when I look at other Google attempts to go, like Froogle. Froogle is a search for product entity that doesn’t contribute but a minor portion of any etailer profit. In fact I’m hard pressed to find any ecom site that has good results from Froogle and a good conversion.

What many may not realize, especially sellers on the eBay platform, is that eBay is more than just an auction site anymore. It now has interests in many markets and the most profitable is likely to be the Skype and Paypal areas, not the core auction business that it has been in the past.

While sellers are clamoring and disgruntled over this, the fact remains that eBay can only justify to their stockholders moving forward and reaping a fortune. If the core site has matured, they are smart for going out to other avenues. As a seller, that should be the key as well. Diversification is where sellers will continue to find new opportunities for growth while still maintaining their base. This is what eBay is doing and this is what eBay sellers should be doing too.

Working on eBay is a great business if you can maximize profits and minimize the time you spent doing it. If you are faced with growth there are many things that you will want to consider before hiring assistance to save costs and make life easier. Consider a listing program.eBay has fundamental tools, like Turbo Lister and Selling Manager that do backend work, like invoicing, ad creation, and payment collection, but there are several others that are noteworthy. In addition, note that when you use a listing program you will not only save on man-hours but you will also save on features such as image hosting, with the ability to use multiple images in each ad. The cost of these programs outweighs the money vs. time equation with added features that will save money on eBay listing fees as well.ChannelAdvisor:

1. This sytem is a compelte auction management program online with a short startup for those who want better services than the standard services offered by Selling Manager, and Selling Manager Pro.
2. Contains Ad Templates that can customize and conform your listing to look very proffessional
3. Will do Inventory management
4. Can launch auctions instantly or schedule ads to launch
5. Has an inherant checkout system that can take payments and upsell from your ChannelAdvisor Store.
6. Has Image Hosting included
7. Generates invoices, shipping notices and auto feedback.
8. ChannelAdvisor Pro starts at $29.95 per month

Sign up with ChannelAdvisor and get 14 days free.

SpareDollar:

1. Has Ad Templates
2. Has Image Hosting included
3. Generates invoices, shipping notices and auto feedback.
4. Has Gallery feature to add cross sell to your ads
5. Is very inexpensive at only about $8.95 per month

Try SpareDollar

There are many others, but these are just two of the options available. For more information and eBay consulting, contact us.

Recently eBay has put in an entirely new structure to combat fraud on the site. New sellers who do not get verified need to do this in order to stay online. One recent client reported that after he had uploaded several auctions and had over 7 bids on each, he was pulled because he had not been ‘seller verified’.To become verified, make sure you click on myeBay account, and enter both a credit card and bank account.