Matthew is an eBay Expert & consultant with over 10 years of experience on eBay. Has worked for two eBay auction management companies and has helped hundreds of eBay based businesses sell on eBay, including his own for 3 years.

Having run his own business on eBay UK for 3 years, been featured on BBC News 24, BBC Radio 4 “In Business” with Peter Day and also featured in the Sunday Times.

eBay Top Rated SellerHosting the very first eBay PowerSellers meeting of its kind in the UK, attended by eBay, which then lead to the eBay university program. Then working for the USA auction management company MarketWorks.com (now owned by ChannelAdvisor) here in the UK and then later on eSellerPro.com another eBay listing software company, Matthew has probably seen more eBay based businesses outside the confines of eBay than anyone else in the UK.

Matthew takes a different approach to eBay and it really shows in the articles he writes. eBay is just a sales channel, admittedly a rather large one at that, but this should never be forgotten and he knows that its all to easy to become caught up in a whirl-wind of noise that is generated by selling on eBay and does his best to help keep your feet on the ground and focus at the job at hand, making more profit.

Its unlikely you’re going to ask Matthew something he does not already know about eBay, you can contact him on his dedicated Contact Matthew page.

Work With Matt to Maximise Your eBay Shop For FREE

Last year I offered the opportunity for 5 businesses to work with me for free for two months, I was blown away by the response and it actually ended up being six and we had an excellent time with some outstanding results.

ebay Shops LogoThis time around I would like to extend another free invitation to you on the topic of eBay Shops for up to 5 businesses. Size does not matter, if you’re really small, just started or have been trading for years, I’d love to hear from you.

I have a couple of questions for you, if you are saying yes to any of them, the application form is at the bottom of this page & I’d love to hear from you.

  • Have you ever wondered how you can maximise your eBay shop to its full potential?
  • Maybe you set it up months ago and have it on your to-do list and would like to revisit it?
  • Would you find value in a personalised & group 101 session on maximising the potential of your eBay shop?
  • Are you about to hit the subscribe button and open your eBay shop for the very first time?
  • Do you have some free time in the evenings over the next two weeks to tackle these issues head on?

What Exactly I am Offering

I feel it really important to stress that I have no affiliations with any design company and will not try and sell you any products or services. I am solely interested in creating the best guide possible and I will be adding a video of the invitation just for you next week.

The invitation is to work with myself and the other selected businesses & individuals as a group to improve your the effectiveness & appearance eBay Shop. The course will span approximately three to four hours over a period two weeks in a schedule similar to the below:

  • Meeting 1 – Introductions & eBay Shop Discussion
    You’ll not be asked to complete any silly introduction games. We’ll meet as a group & introduce ourselves to each other, have a chit-chat, identify common issues, questions, and concerns and note them for action in the next two meetings.
  • Meeting 2 – One on One Time
    This is where we get to work together one-on-one and address any questions you may have around your eBay shop and work together to action them.
  • Meeting 3 – Strategy
    With the basics addresses, set up a guide for you to follow. Remember there is no magic bullet, just hard work on both our parts. I am working on a creating a guide for us to follow for this.
  • Meeting 4 – Final Call
    Meeting as a group again, to re-evaluate our progress as a group and to share our experiences.

Our time together will really be what you make of it, I’ll do my best to help you where ever I can in relation to your eBay Shop. The meetings will span two or so weeks and obviously you’ll need to be available to join in for the two group meetings and the two meetings directly with myself.

I will be asking you to complete a short questionnaire before we start, with questions like who you are, what your business does and how you currently feel about your eBay Shop. This will give us the base to work from and a reference point to come back to at the end of the course, where I’ll ask you to complete another short questionnaire.

The Purpose

Let’s be very clear here, I am writing a guide titled “The Ultimate Guide to eBay Shops” and would like several case studies to included.

It’s not going to be of those crappy half-cut affairs, its really going to be the de-facto-standard for setting up and leveraging the eBay Shop as a sales platform.  The guide is going to have my name and face attached to it, so obviously I have a strong desire that it’s of the highest standards as possible, after all, it’s going to be directly representing myself & abilities.

The guide will be given away free on this site and my aim is that there will be zero advertising included, any tools or applications included will be free or based upon merit, not paid inclusion.

Restrictions & Terms

There are a couple of restrictions and terms, they’re pretty straight forwards, but need saying:

  • UK, USA & AU businesses welcome!
    The invitation is only open to companies and individuals that have UK, USA or AU based eBay Shops
  • Its not a replacement for bespoke design requirements
    This is not a replacement for bespoke custom design services. I will help if I genuinely can, however the design element is only one part of the eBay shop setup.
  • Sorry no REALLY big businesses
    This invitation is not open to businesses that are either enterprise or strategic eBay accounts
    (If you have no idea what these are, it doesn’t apply to you)
  • No need if you’re an existing client of Matt’s
    Existing customers of mine need not apply, we’ll work through this as a matter of course.
  • Good Spoken English
    You must speak excellent English and have access to a computer that has a stable Internet connection and a headset/microphone or access to a phone line.
  • 4 Hours Total
    We could talk for hours on the eBay shop, so a sensible limit is 4 hours total, this includes group time as well.
  • Be available in the evenings 
    You need to be available in the evening around 19:00 GMT on weekdays (this is 14:00 EST)
  • You’re OK with this being used commercially
    You’re happy with your eBay shop being used in such a guide, both front end and backend views being included (obviously no financial information) and agree to sign a waiver to any rights to the included content that may be used commercially (this is just to cover my rear as I intend to create a specific version for the Kindle).

I am a Design Company That creates Designs for eBay Businesses & Would Like to get Involved

This part is just for design companies.

I understand that you may be interested in being featured in such a guide, however, my primary concern with this is that I do not wish for the guide to be biased in any shape or form. I will be including numerous examples and if your work is of mentionable “merit”, then it will be naturally included.

However, I do have one requirement that you may be able to help me with and that is the cover of the guide. The guide is being created in Word in A4 landscape and may be ported to In Design for the final stage before publication. If you feel that you will be able to assist me in creating the cover that such a guide deserves, then use the application form below.

Closing Date

The closing date for this opportunity is:

Friday 16th March at 17:00 GMT

I will work through the applications on that weekend. If the response is anything like the opportunity last years attracted, this will take me some time to work my way through them.

However I will reply to you personally and please don’t take personally if you’re not selected, remember the final guide will be given away on this site and you will be able to benefit even if you’re not selected.

Application Form

I’d done my best to keep it as simple as possible and there is an edit box where you can add any extra information you feel is important. I’ll ensure that the five businesses that are selected are from non-competing product areas, so that we can keep the barriers of competition as low as possible.

As we’ll be using GoToMeeting to host the calls & screen sharing where required, at no point will I need your login details to any account and please do not include these as they’re not needed. You will not be added to any mailing list and I will reply personally to each application.

[contact-form-7 id=”4245″ title=”eBay Shops Form”]

Looking Forward to Working With You!

I’m really looking forward to working with you, if you have any comments or suggestions on how to maximise your eBay Shop then I’d love to hear from you and let me know in the comments box below.

 

Do you keep seeing scroll bars on your eBay listings?

Update: There is a workable “Work around” in this article.

When viewing an eBay item, sometimes the description area which is now being placed in a IFRAME tag doesn’t render in the browser page correctly, causing your listing details to only be 200-300 pixels tall and a scroll bar appears on the right hand side.

This seems to happen to both FireFox and Chrome quite regularly for me (probably in Internet Explorer, but I never use it) and to visually explain what I’m referring to a screen shot is below, note the scroll bar on the right hand side:

ebay listing scroll bars

To try and combat this all you need to do is add an style to your style sheet. If you have no idea what a style sheet is, just copy/paste the code below at the very top of your listing in the HTML view and save the changes.

<style type="text/css">
<!-- 
#EBdescription {
     min-height: 4000px; !Important;
}
-->
</style>

This will force your description to be a minimum of 4000 pixels tall. If this is too long for the majority of your listings, try 3000px, then 2000px and inversely if its not tall enough increase this value.

Its not perfect but will at least tell the majority of modern browsers that the height needs to be at least this value and extend the iframe downwards to limit the scrolling.

Have you see this before on your or another listing? Let me know in the comments box below.

A Changing eBay – eBay UK Launches TV Campaign

eBay is launching a new TV campaign tonight on 3 channels, seeing as I tend not to watch TV at all (have you seen Ted.com?), you can preview the advert on YouTube and I’ve popped it below for you.

 

A Changing eBay

It’s interesting that the stance is towards “what you want” and leveraging the sheer volume of listings (not product’s) on eBay, which is around 30 million. Also judging by the programmes this advert is attached to, Location, Location, Location, The Mentalist and Criminal Minds is focused towards women, but features a man and more men (7) than women (4) in the advert.

I’m not converse with this type of marketing, but I do wonder why verbal no mention of the fashion outlet was included, although this might be subliminal due to the amount of product eye candy for the women’s department.

Also, take note on the wording from Alex Von Schirmeister, VP of Marketing for Europe:

“In the past few years, eBay has changed. It’s now a destination to buy the latest laptops and smartphones, high street fashion, even brand new car parts. We want to say to people that love shopping, and like to have a wide choice and great prices, ‘come and take another look at eBay’.  The selection people will find on eBay is truly unique.  The new retail merchandise is there alongside vintage, hard-to-find and second-hand items which we know our customers love to browse and shop too.”

You can’t disagree that eBay has changed in the past few years, mostly for the better, but for as much as I and the businesses I work with gain from the new style, I personally like using eBay for both fixed price items, but also the auction format that now only accounts for 39% of total sales.

Where else would I have got a Kodak Zi8 camera, as new, with a case and remote control for under £100?

Your Thoughts

Ultimately you’re funding the campaign, what do you make of the new advert? Money well spent?

Any marketers out there that would like to comment on the adverts contents either publically or privately or do you have any inclination on the demographics this advert is aimed at?

Let me know in the comments box below.

Will You be at the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst 2012 Event?

ChannelAdvisor Catalyst 2012

Catalyst Register 2012It’s getting closer! I was pretty much veto’d from attending the Catalyst event for the best part of 5 years due to working for competitors, I had always recommended others to go and the feedback was always really positive.

So last year I broke my Catalyst virginity and attended the ChannelAdvisor event at the Park Plaza Riverside hotel in London and I’m really looking forward to attending this years event. Its also a special time for me as I’m getting married to my partner of 12 years a few days after, so if you’re attending and would like to meet up for a beer afterwards, let me know!

I’m also looking forward to meeting David Spitz again and also the new Managing Director of EMEA Seamus.
(I wonder if he has the same dancing skills as James?)

Chris from Tamebay has a special voucher for the event, giving you a £80 discount, use the code “tamebay2012” when registering.

Speakers

This year we have an interesting line up of speakers including:

*coff* they’re all links to LinkedIn profiles ;-)

The event is spread over two days, Monday 28th and Tuesday 29th May. The agendas are below:

Monday, 28 May, 2012

9:00 AM  –  10:00 AM
Registration Open
Location: Foyer Area
10:00 AM  –  10:45 AM
Workshops

1 – International Expansion: Breaking down borders

2 – Becoming Social- Tips on using Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube to generate leads

3 – The Evolving Customer

10:45 AM  –  11:30 AM
Workshops

1 – Putting the changes in Comparison Shopping to work for you

2 – Time to get mobile- Making your business mobile friendly

3 – Back-Office Integration: How to simplify your processes

11:30 AM  –  12:00 PM
Networking Break

Exhibition Open

Strategy & Support Booths Open

12:00 PM  –  1:00 PM
Workshops

1 – Creating an engaging and user-friendly website that converts

2 – Whats hot and whats not – Channel Trends

3 – How to succeed and make more money online

1:00 PM  –  2:00 PM
Networking Lunch

Exhibition Open

Strategy & Support Booths Open

2:45 PM  –  3:30 PM
Workshops

1 – Our path to success” One company’s insight into their business.

2 – How Retailers Can Succeed Independently with Daily Deal and Flash Sale Campaigns

3 – eBay Best Practices, things to ensure that you do, things to ensure that you don’t do.

3:30 PM  –  4:00 PM
Networking Break

Exhibition Open

Strategy & Support Booths Open

4:00 PM  –  4:45 PM
Workshops

1 – Online Marketing Strategy- Tips, Tools and Techniques

2- Leveraging Salesforce.com CRM to Streamline and Grow your eCommerce Business

3 – Trading online – Making Payments simple

4:45 PM  –  5:30 PM
Workshops
1 – Becoming a Top Rated Seller on eBay2 – How to win the Buy Box3 – TBA
5:30 PM  –  10:00 PM
Catalyst Drinks Party
In The Sky Bar

Tuesday, 29th May

8:00 AM  –  5:00 PM
Registration/Info Desk Open
8:00 AM  –  9:00 AM
Networking Refreshments
9:00 AM  –  9:45 AM
Scot Wingo – CEO, ChannelAdvisor
9:45 AM  –  10:30 AM
The Changing Face of the Global Retail Landscape – Panel Discussion
10:30 AM  –  11:00 AM
Networking Break
11:00 AM  –  12:00 PM
Miriam Lahage, Global Head of Fashion Brand, eBay
12:00 PM  –  1:00 PM
Jacqueline Gold, Chief Executive of Ann Summers and Knickerbox
1:00 PM  –  2:00 PM
Networking Lunch
2:00 PM  –  2:45 PM
Amazon Keynote
2:45 PM  –  3:15 PM
Interview with Peter Briffett, MD, LivingSocial UK, Ireland & Netherlands
3:15 PM  –  3:45 PM
Taking Retail Mobile – Panel Discussion
3:45 PM  –  4:15 PM
Networking Break

Exhibition

Strategy & Support Booths Open

4:15 PM  –  5:00 PM
Gavin Sathianathan, Head of Commerce Partnerships, Facebook
5:00 PM  –  5:30 PM
Practical tips to immediately apply to your business
5:30 PM  –  7:00 PM
Drinks & Networking Reception

Are You Attending?

So will I be seeing you there this year? Let me know in the comments box below.

eBay’s SellerSphere Featured Seller BamfordTrading Out-takes Video

John & Gill from BamfordTrading passed on solid advice in their recent article that was featured by eBay SellerSphere in January, you can see the article and the three videos they included in the full article here.

However… Those polished videos were not without a few slips and with John & Gills permission here are the out-takes.

Your Feedback

I’m also working on persuading John add more video content, you can do me a huge favour by subscribing to BamFordTrading’s YouTube channel.

Let us know what you think of the video in the comments box below :)

Do I Need an eBay Shop Design to Sell on eBay?

The short answer to this question is no, you do not need an eBay shop design to sell on eBay.

While having you eBay shop custom designed by a third party design company may look fantastic and most are able to offer features and functions that are not found in the basic eBay shop structure, it is not a requirement that you have your eBay shop themed or custom designed.

This article is quite brief, I’m just making the point that you can easily use one of the standard templates that eBay provides for your eBay shop and I will be covering the entire eBay shop in great detail in the forthcoming weeks.

 

You can theme the eBay shop yourself

While I’m not going to cover the fine detail of the eBay shop here, you are able to change many aspects of your eBay shop very easily using the tools that eBay provide to you.

For example, you can pick from approximately 30 pre-built themes and advanced, more customisable themes are available.

Example Standard Themes

A couple of examples are shown below:

Selecting a Standard Theme

Selecting the one of choose is really easy and you can pick your standard eBay shop design in eBay here:

http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?StoreMgmtChangeTheme

While these are not specifically tailored to your business and branding, these themes are perfectly acceptable, can be enabled in seconds and included free on your subscription level.

Advanced Themes

There are five advanced themes provided by eBay that allow you to have more control over the elements of the eBay shop without needing to know any CSS or HTML, or if you are comfortable in making design changes, these themes, especially the ‘Custom header Only’ theme easily allow the insertion of HTML & CSS to extend the eBay shop design further.

Paid-for Themes

There are many design companies out there offering eBay shop designs for various prices and at various standards. I recently covered the eBay listing templates in a two part series here and here and also an interview with DZine-Hub whose business is focused towards eBay Shop and eBay listing template creation.

Summary

As I mentioned in the beginning, this article is quite brief, just to answer this question specifically as its been asked too many times now. So… No, you don’t need an eBay shop design to sell on eBay.

One of the basic designs will be fine for the interim and while the designs offered are not all equal in what you can do with them, you can easily save yourself several hundred pounds of outlay and focus on shifting product first.

I will be covering the entire eBay shop in minute detail in the forthcoming weeks. If you’d like to be notified when its released, use the subscribe box below to be notified.

What if the prices for everything were the same?

 

This whole price parity issue with Amazon over the past few days as got me thinking. What if the prices for everything were the same?

Let’s imagine for a few minutes what would happen if we say, all governed by a communist government worldwide and one of the parts of the establishment was that for all products, the prices had to be the same.If Prices Were the Same?

I mean everything, from a can of coke to a Plasma TV. If it’s exactly the same product it has to be exactly the same price set by a third party, no if’s, no but’s and you go to jail if you break the rules. (The jail part is harsh, but I’m just making the point).

Now before you start picking holes, unbranded goods would fall into categories, for example, a printed T-Shirt, regardless of design or material would be a fixed price. All broken or refurbished goods have to be scrapped. Every single product is categorised and has its own fixed price, regardless of country of origin or point of sale and cross-border trade was not allowed.

How Would You Differentiate Your Business?

Humouring me for a few moments, that everything businesses product has to be sold at the same price as their competitors.

What would you do to to compete in a marketplace where everything was equal as far as pricing is concerned?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments box below.

How eSellerPro’s Channel Profile Can Help Your Business

One of eSellerPro’s core features is a function called a ‘Channel Profile’, in this article I’ll be covering the basics to what a ‘Channel Profile’ does and how it can help your business.

Multi-Channel selling is now an assumed practice for eCommerce businesses, unlocking the power to reach a much wider audience than you could ever have imagined, but sensibly. The Channel Profile feature in eSellerPro can enable you to achieve this.

I’ve put together a short video, where I describe the key benefits of using a channel profile and how it could help your business when dealing with multiple sales channels.

What is a Channel Profile?

The purpose of the channel profiler is to maximise the exposure of your inventory exposure across more than one channel, then once an update has happened to let the other channels know of that update to the stock level.

In eSellerPro you can create more than one channel profile (hence ‘profile’ in its name), which you can apply to more than one inventory record and each profile can have different attributes. I’ll cover these later on in this article, but for now the easiest way of explaining what a Channel Profile does is by using  an example.

Let’s say we have 10 of the same mugs in stock and we wish to sell them on:

  • One eBay account
  • Amazon
  • Our website.

For maximum market exposure, we’re going to use the channel profile to list ALL 10 of these mugs onto eBay, Amazon and also show them on our website too. A couple of hours later, a customer called Jane buys one from eBay.

We now only have 9 in stock and the channel profile will now update Amazon to 9 and the website also to 9. Then another customer, Jim buys from the website. Again the channel profile will update the other marketplaces, eBay & Amazon with the new stock level of 8.

The next morning a new delivery of these mugs arrive and we have 10 more, so we now have a stock level of 18 mugs. The Channel profile will now update each of the selling channels where the products are listed with the updated stock level.

In this basic example, we gain maximum market exposure for our products and keep each of the selling channels in-line with the latest stock levels. Neat eh?

The Negatives of Using A Channel Profile

I’m going to note here the negatives you might have already realised are minor in comparison to the positives of exposing your inventory across as many channels as possible. However you need to be aware of them.

In theory if you only have 10 in stock, then you only have 10 to sell. By exposing your inventory across just 3 platforms in the example above, you are actually exposing 30 items and again in theory if they all sold at the same time, you could go to a negative inventory count of 20 (that’s the 30 sold, minus the 10 you had in stock).

The Channel Profiler is a process that runs on eSellerPro’s servers and it does not update the marketplaces instantaneously, there is a time lag on eSellerPro’s side and with the marketplaces themselves. While I now don’t know the exact figures, a period of about 30 minutes would be about right for each passing of an eSellerPro account to make updates to the 3rd party platforms.

We also need to understand that eSellerPro is a 3rd party to the marketplaces and as such there are time delays in the communication to them. Again referencing the earlier example, the orders from eBay & Amazon are not picked up instantaneously, they’re scheduled. Plus we also need to account for time delays in the marketplaces themselves, Amazon orders are not immediate, they tend to sit for 15-30 minutes before being released and also you can only ask for order reports every 30 minutes or so.

So it’s perfectly possible for Jane and Jim to buy on two different marketplaces within a time window of say 10 minutes and eSellerPro is not capable of updating the other channel to let it know there is a deduction of the inventory level, if there was only one left, this could have caused an oversell or back order. Hardly ideal.

It should also be noted that in relation to eBay, eBay auctions and BIN listings of 10 days or less, are regarded as being committed to the eBay marketplaces, thus if you have 10 in stock and 2 of those are in two auctions, then eSellerPro sees an available stock count of 8 and will use this value to keep the platforms updated.

Note: You can use the true stock level of 10 called “Percentage of On-Hand”, however this is where you’re most likely to be caught out, as using this option I strongly advise you never to use this option (although there are situations where it does not matter, such as virtual or limitless stock).

Channel Profile Tolerances

The channel profile process also has “tolerances”, for items over a stock count of 20, there is no compelling reason to keep the selling platforms updated with the latest stock count for each change.

If we had 10,000 of those mugs in stock, then updating them every time we sold one would be silly and slow down the really important updates for other stock items which have much left. As such eSellerPro has different tolerances for different stock levels and they can be found in their Wiki.

A Simple Example of a Channel Profile

A really simple example of a channel profile is the first example, where we were listing all 10 of the mugs on the 3 platforms. In this example we are committing 100% of  the “Available stock” (10) to each of the channels.

An Advanced Example of a Channel Profile

There is likely to be situations where you don’t want to commit all your stock to all of the channels all of the time and this is where the ability to create multiple profiles comes in really handy.

For the first example, we would have named the channel profile something like “List 100% to eBay, Amazon and Our Website” (naming the profiles to what they do is again strongly suggested, it makes them “Matt proof”).

For this second example, we’re going to want to keep two of mugs in stock at all times, this is because they’re end of line and we want to keep safe just in case we get a return of breakage.

Similar to the previous example, we’re going to commit 100% of the “Available Stock” to platforms, but we’re going to add a number 2 to the column called “Min. Qty Avail”. By setting a value of 2 in this column, we’re saying list 100% of our stock, but when we get to our last 2, take them off all the platforms.

We could of course just set this value of 2, to just one platform, so that when we get to our last 2 items, we take it off Amazon, but leave the 2 on eBay and the website. I did say that this was ‘neat’ :)

Further Examples

The abilities of the channel profile doesn’t stop at just listing 100% of items onto marketplaces and keeping their stock levels in-tow and basic stock control. You can also configure a channel profile to use these cool features:

  • Percentage based listing, not just 100%, maybe only 50% to eBay and 100% to Amazon & the website.
  • Force set inventory levels onto one or more marketplaces, that never go out of stock
  • Force set inventory levels onto one or more marketplaces that are removed when the available quantity drops below a specific level
  • Using a “Cost Formula”, dynamically calculable your selling prices for each channel and also the minimum and maximum prices for Amazon & Play.com accounts.
  • Cap the number of listed items on a platform to a maximum number
  • And there are some funky things you can do with sequences and stocked sub skus of products that 99.9% of the people reading this wouldn’t ever use.

It should also be noted that if you have the WebXML interface enabled for up to 10 external channels, the channel profile can also apply inventory update rules to these too and via the new eSellerPro API, the status of the SKU can be checked to see if its been set to list on several of the ‘channels’ in the channel profile.

My eSellerPro Channel Profile Tips

Here are a collection of tips that you may find useful:

  1. Never edit the default profile
    Think of this profile as a off switch, keep it set to manual and use this profile to take items off all the platforms and for new records that are not ready to be listed yet.
  2. Keep calculations to a minimum
    The more you ask for a channel profile to do, the long it will take and the slower it will run. Where ever possible, keep calculations for prices to external tools lke excel or PHP before entering into eSellerPro.
  3. Never use product specific channel profiles
    If you create product specific channel profiles, you’re missing one of the huge benefits of eSellerPro ‘profiles’. If you do have an exception product that needs its own rules, just create another profile and name it accordingly. Then ALL your profiles are in one place and easy to administer.
  4. Name the channel profiles sensibly
    If the profile is listing 100% to eBay, Amazon and the Website, name it that. In the bulk update tool, in the inventory record and in the import/export system you only see the names of the profile, thus name them clearly in relation to what they actually do.
  5. Think through each channel profile thoroughly before creating it
    Take a few moments to write down what you want the profile to do, then once written, use this to guide you to the configuration of the profile.
  6. Use ‘Bulk Update’
    You can use the bulk update tool to update as many records as you would like, remember that naming them clearly will make this task a cinch.
  7. Import/Export with care
    Don’t forget you can import a channel profile name as part of the custom import/export sheets. But use this with care, as you can enable products to be listed from an import sheet, this may not be desired straight away and may cause other issues, especially if you are loading new products and images need to be collected from a 3rd party before listing, the listing may go live and be incomplete!

The Channel Profile Summary

Using a channel profile is not without its risks, as you can in theory oversell heavily if the products which have been assigned a channel profile are in ultra high demand, accounting for the lags of the platforms themselves and giving eSellerPro enough time to react (although in reality this is quite rare, I can only remember of two instances in 3 years of this happening).

Sensible configuration of your channel profiles for different velocity products is key and also keeping them as straight forward and aptly named is strongly advised.

The examples in this article are quite basic, however if you consider you may have thousands of inventory records, numerous eBay accounts more than one Amazon Seller Central account (yes this is possible), multiple websites and maybe 3rd part integrations to other selling platforms, being able to expose your entire inventory across ALL possible channels and keep them updated when items sell and stock deliveries are made, makes the “Channel Profiles” in eSellerPro one of the core parts of the entire system.

Try doing all that manually. You’ll have no hair left like me!

Your Feedback

Do you use the Channel Profile in your eSellerPro account, is this something you could or couldn’t live without? Let me know in the comments box below.

Reverse Engineering The Data From an eBay Listing Part 2

Welcome to the second part of a 2 part series in this final part I’ll be looking at the data that is posted into the template to show you how easy it is to create a fantastic eBay listing, but with minimal data.

In the first part here, I worked out what the probable layout of the eBay listing template that was used, introduced you to keywords and pointed out that eBay templates don’t have to be a single template, they can be made up of lots of smaller templates, that once combined form the the final finished eBay listing.

So let’s have a look at the ‘data’ used behind an eBay listing.

Reverse Engineering the Data From an eBay Listing Video

To make this as easy as possible for you, I’ve put together a video to explain how this works and where I have pulled the data from and I have attached the excel spreadsheet that I created from this video later on in this article.

While you’re watching this video, keep in mind how ‘light’ or ‘easy’ the listing data is when you look at it in its purest of forms.

Data File

The Excel file that was created during the video is here and includes the formulas that were explained to create the price saving value & percentage.

What Have We Covered?

While it may appear that large eBay sellers spend a lot of time ‘listing’ items to eBay, they’re actually not. They’re in fact spending time on quality data to create eBay listings through listing tools that allow the use of one or more templates to create the finished listings that we see everywhere on eBay.

When you break down the actual data requirements for a product (a fashion item in this example) then the amount of data is actually very, very low. What makes it look great is the way the data is formatted through the listing template and most larger sellers are clever to recycle data that is needed for item specifics, into the eBay listing too. What looks complex, is actually very easy to do.

In this two part series, I have shown you how an eBay template could work, what the elements are and in this final part what the data behind the actual listing could look like before its been sent to eBay. My question is, did you expect for it to be this straight forwards? Let me know in the comments box below:

What is eSellerPro & How it Can Help Your Business?

So what is eSellerPro and how can it help your business? To answer these questions effectively, I’ve put together a 3 minute video overview where I discuss the following:

  • The 3 core parts of eSellerPro, these being:
    • Inventory data & stock management
    • Order aggregation
    • The “Channel Profile” to keep the sales channels up to date
  • Suitable business types

Answered in a 3 Minute Video

Before you watch this video it’s important to note that I am a former employee of eSellerPro, clients that I work with use eSellerPro for all or parts of their businesses.

I’m not a sales rep nor do I receive any incentive from eSellerPro to publish this content. I certainly do not believe that eSellerPro is perfect, no solution provider is. What I am motivated to do, is to ensure that you choose the right back-end tool for your business and eSellerPro “could” be one that is most suitable to you.

Your Feedback

I haven’t covered the 3 core elements to eSellerPro in any great detail, the video was only designed to give you a brief overview of what these are and how they could help your business. However, these will follow in the next few days.

However did you find this video useful? Have you or are you using eSellerPro to run part or all of your business? Let me know in the comments box below.

That’s Curious BrightPearl is Releasing a Magento & eBay Integration?

Brightpearl LogoBrightpearl, now that’s a curious one.

It appears they’re adding a Magento & eBay link to their arsenal (see their shhhh page here) and I’m super curious!

If we look at the different SaaS (Software as a Service) providers out there, they’ve all originated from different angles:

  • ChannelAdvisor came from the perspective of eBay
  • And so did MarketWorks too
  • eSellerPro came from an order processing perspective, for which the marketplaces & listing were added later.
  • 247 TopSeller has hefty Amazon slant to it
  • StoreFeeder came from a Fulfilment perspective
  • Linnworks came from an ERP and MRP satellite systems
  • ChannelGrabber from a need to combine eBay & Amazon together

Brightpearl, Where Did They Come From?

As we’ve seen above each of these providers have come unique points of view and Brightpearl isn’t exception. Brightpearl came from two entrepreneurs and co-founders Chris Tanner and Andrew Mulvenna, whom was frustrated with the likes of NetSuite & Sage and how everything from a website (osCommerce) & accounting perspective was not linked and hindrance to his business at the time called “Lush Longboards”.

A years coding bender in 2006/2007 led to the development of Brightpearl, two investments later from Eden Ventures & Notion Capital, Brightpearl have over 6000 customers, a solid product that combines the features of a inventory management system, full-blown accounting (including purchase orders, quotes & invoices), contacts & a CRM tool (which is excellent I hasten to add! They’ve extended the Rapportive extension that links with Gmail), a web-based EPOS system (this is very cool) and an eCommerce offering for integrated websites.

Recently Kate Gover from Lahloo Tea discussed how Brightpearl helps her business. The video is below:

When I met the team at Brightpearl last year (hola!), the irony was that the businesses using Brightpearl felt it so valuable to use Brightpearl for their online channels that they were manually importing sales orders from other sales channels like Magento, eBay & Amazon, so that they can leverage the functionality of Brightpearl to its full potential.

eBay can get deep very quickly and Magento API is pretty poor currently, especially if you want to do complex tasks. I don’t know how far they’ve gone with the integrations yet, but even if they’ve done the basics such as stock control and order aggregation, it could be pretty slick.

Now it’s looking like they are adding a Magento integration and an eBay integration…. From a different perspective, that of website & accounting, that’s why I’m curious.

You can find out more about Brightpearl on their website and Shhhhh page where I found this information is here http://www.Brightpearl.com/shhh.

Reverse Engineering an eBay Template from an eBay Listing Part 1

Following on from the article series around eBay listing templates I recently covered in Part 1 and Part 2. In this article, I reverse engineer an eBay listing template from an eBay listing and show you the parts that make up an eBay listing template.

This is again going to be part of a two-part series and in the second part, I’ll be showing you the template that makes up the eBay listing, which is probably a lot like the one used to create the eBay listing we’re dissecting today in this article.

So let’s dive in!

Introduction to Keywords

Wait……………. Before we dive into this, I need to introduce you to something called “Keywords”. Keywords come in many names, macros, variables, shortcuts, custom fields are a few common names, they all mean that they are a placeholder for data to be entered into.

For example, if we had a product whose colour is ‘Black’ and its data field is called ‘Colour’ then it’s quite possible that when we see a listing extract in the image below, that the actual template on the left is using such a keyword, so that when the item is listed, it becomes like the right-hand side.

introduction to template keywords

This is how large sellers on eBay are able to create consistent eBay listings, they’re not making every single listing by hand they’re using tools that are advanced and allow them to focus on each core element of the listing separately.

Note: These ‘Advanced Tools’. You’ll be seeing a few of these over the next few weeks and what they can do.

Reverse Engineering an eBay Listing Template

What I am now about to do could be explained in a couple of thousand written words, but I can do better than that I’m going to show you using video and take you through stage by stage to reverse engineer the template that site beneath an eBay listing.

From the video, I have included the template I reverse engineered as a screen shot below, so that you can see how the sellers listing template could look like in their backend tool.

ebay listing template with keywords

Summary

I remember the first time I was introduced to keywords (or Macros as they were called in MarketWorks), they were quite odd I have to admit and it took me a while to get-my-head around them.

eBay Templates enable businesses that use 3rd party tools to sell on eBay to crucially separate their product data from their eBay templates.

I eluded to the fact that some software tools allow you to template the templates. At eSellerPro, the boundaries of what can be done with templating was pushed to a level I didn’t think was possible (or even needed) and I’ve been known to create some complex structures of product templating & data that have allowed exceptionally slick data input methods for businesses in the background and what the  customer sees as in the eBay listing, looks superb.

This article was designed to introduce you to what an eBay template could look like in a back-end tool, what I didn’t cover was the data that powers the listing in the background and that’s in part 2 of this series.