eBay as a Business – Three Different Ways of Approaching It

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There are so many different ways that a business can be approached from, however I believe in keeping things simple where-ever possible and here are three top tips for when approaching eBay as a business.

#1 Think Like a Buyer

eBay buyers are a special breed, you need to at least try and understand them and thier whims, desires and fears when dealing with them.

After answering so many questions from buyers, I have come to the conclusion that they are:

  1. Scared of being ripped off
  2. Scared of being ripped off
  3. Scared of being ripped off
  4. Scared of being ripped off
  5. Scared of being ripped off
  6. Scared of being ripped off
  7. Scared of being ripped off
  8. Scared of being ripped off
  9. Scared of being ripped off
  10. Just like any other buyer

9/10 for being “Scared of being ripped off” is a bit harsh, but that is my personal conclusion. If you look at buyers emails, with this in mind, those mindless questions make sense. Why else would a buyer be asking a question, if it is not to test the seller to see if they are real (ignoring their thousands of feedback) and if they respond quickly, then they know if something goes wrong, they feel half assured that something will be done about it.

I never saw myself as a sales person ever on eBay, I saw myself as a provider of quality information, wrapped up in great customer service. Nothing else.

So its your job to ensure that the customer feels safe, by providing:

  • Good product images (although I am now certain that these need to be “exceptional” to make a real difference)
  • Accurate product specific information
  • An accurate description
  • Easy to read postage
  • A clear layout of the information provided
  • Quality branding of your business

The last one has almost become an absolute requirement. With the focus on customers, if you’re presented with something that looks like its been made by a blind monkey in a dog shed, to that of a professional, I’m pretty sure you know whom you’d buy from.

#2 Time Really is Money

eBay can be a very time intensive environment when compared to other marketplaces. There is a steep learning curve and the customer service requirements are high, its very easy to fall into a self centred trap, focusing on just plodding along, without focusing upon expanding and maintaining profit.

eBay can become very personal and its your job to ensure that it does not, a simple tool such as a time sheet can help you work out how many hours each week you are spending on each task.

Taking the time to make a sales projection can also be a good goal setting exercise, this does not have to be power point charts or excel sheets, literally by grabbing a peice of paper and writing “sales projection” at the top of it, will put you in front of 90% of the competition, because you are now working ON your business not IN your bussiness.

Shed Working

Ever considered working from a Shed?

Back to the sales projection, if you can use excel, that would be handy, using your previously recorded sales, use these to map out expected sales and what growth you would like to see. You do not need to worry about being accurate, that will loosely come with time and even the best strategies in hindsight, turn out to be a lot of luck in the right order.

Its also likely that you are working from a home office, if you are struggling with excessive hours, then why not take a serviced office, for what is peanuts a month and actually make the step of “going to work”. Most amusing, you could join the millions that work from a shed, see shedworking.co.uk.

#3 Know that eBay is Going to Change & Embrace it

I was looking at the eBay.com community boards and those on a few American sites and they are littered with people going nuts about the pending updates on eBay.com, there are some hefty changes going on in the eBay May 2011 update that I documented a few weeks back.

Fact. eBay always changes, it always has done and always will do.

My point is simple, let everyone else bitch about the changes, you should be smart and work out how they affect you and then plan to change with them.

Conclusion

Those who know me well, know that I commonly preach and personally aspire to the following statement:

What you focus upon, expands.

I sincerely hope I’ve given you a slightly different outlook on eBay and how to approach it. Not only as a buyer with their ‘concerns’, but as a business, with a simple timesheet and sales projection and finally that eBay always changes and its much easier to work with it, as with anything, than against it.

eBay Turbo Lister Tutorial Video’s

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I first started using eBay’s Turbolister about 7/8 years ago and and it was pretty basic and not particularly stable either. Its come on leaps and bounds in the past few years and is now a feature rich tool to allow smaller sellers to list in volume on eBay.

eBay Turbo Lister

Which Business Type is the eBay TurboLister Ideal For?

eBay’s Turbolister is ideal for businesses that need a tool that is beyond the Sell Your Item form (SYI), can schedule listings and help them grow to the next stage of their evolution.

The following statement is what certain parties will not like being published:

As with any tool, no matter if that is TurboLister, Selling Manager Pro, eSellerPro, ChannelAdvisor, 247TopSeller or similar, any form of automation is going to speed up the business and ideally (as not always) lead to more sales.

While there are extremes in all cases, I personally suggest using Turbolister, when a business has an inventory base of around 20 to 150 and the business is exclusively eBay. Where the business has outgrown or outgrowing the SYI form, has a set limit to the number of SKU’s (Stock Keeping Units, or just “products”).

You can also use Turbo Lister to list onto multiple eBay sites, this is a feature that is sometimes missing in paid-for-software products. Ironically Turbo Lister is still defined as being “NEW!” on eBay’s documentation, however has been around on eBay longer than myself :X

Which Business Type is the eBay TurboLister Not Ideal For?

Turbolister should never be dismissed entirely, infact its a great tool to help smaller sellers build up to using more comprehensive tools for running their business from. Its almost a “right of passage” to be able to say, “I’ve toiled with eBay’s turbolister”.

eBay’s Turbolister is not ideal for merchants that are or are aiming to sell on multiple platforms, the reason is simple, its eBay only and there are inexpensive tools/software products that can allow you to sell on multiple platforms at once and still have a similar power to that of TurboLister. Also when trying to manage large catalogs of stock/data, then there are far superior tools out there and inversely, if you have a small number, then Turbo Lister can be a distraction.

eBay Turbo Lister Tutorial Videos

These are not mine, they’re straight from eBay. They will give you an inside view on the tool and how it works in real life.


Download eBay Turbo Lister

You can download the UK version of Turbo Lister here:
http://download.ebay.com/turbo_lister2/setupUK.exe

If you are a USA eBay seller, you can download the US version here:
http://download.ebay.com/turbo_lister2/setupUS.exe

eBay Turbo Lister Links

Here are links to find out more about the eBay Turbo Lister application:

How to Legitimately “Keyword Stuff” eBay Listings

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Keyword StuffingLets be ultra clear here, I do not endorse this practice. It’s the reason why I am publishing this, so that its noticed and then action is taken upon this practice.

In the next few minutes I’ll be taking you through the practice of how to keyword stuff eBay listings in a manner that gives them extra weight to normal search.

Ground Work

Before we can start we need to understand how the eBay search works. A while back eBay introduced something called ‘Best Match’, while I’m not going to cover all the factors right now that i suspect are included, one of the biggest changes that best match allowed was the inclusion of factors outside of the listing title itself and time the listing had left to run. A obvious variant to the search is the eBay Top Rated Seller (TRS) status, this I used to suspect caused a +/-20% increase in sales, now seeing this move on three accounts, its more like a sales increase/decrease of at least 30%, this is how pivitol a single factor can be in the eBay “Best Match” search.

So, we now know that eBay search is based (by default) on a process called “Best Match” and like any algorithm it can be bent and its this bending and the manner in which it can be bent I’ve taken a dislike to.

The eBay Title

In days gone-by, it was only the title that impacted the search result, however with the new best match method of returning search results can be influenced and as suggested its not only the title that can effect the results. However in this instance I’m going to be looking at how the title and crucially the variations can influence the “Best Match” results.

The eBay Title

Up to 55 characters, it used to be less than this and the extra 10 chars were welcomed a few years back. These for most sellers are the main focus of keywords.

Item Specifics

When these were first introduced, it was said that these would not influence the search results, however they do, but not all the time. I not looked at this properly, but it appears there are mixed results on the use of item specifics in main search results.

Variation Detail

Now here is the jackpot. Its become clear, as I will prove in the examples to follow, that the labels for the variations do appear in the primary search result and these effectively extend your items by an extra 31 characters per variation value.

Lets spell this out in plain English:

If you use variations and add extra variations, the values you place in the variation field directly influence the eBay search results.

And then to top this off, again in plain English:

This does not stop at just a possible extra 31 characters extension to the title, you can do this numerous times, if you did it twice, you load your listings up with 62 extra characters

Now, can you understand why I disagree with this?

No Apologies

I’ve pondered whether I should use a live example or not and decided that I just cannot show the results properly without using a real life example.

I strongly disagree with this abuse of search and make no apologies for highlighting this seller specifically, because I feel is wrong, a blatant abuse of the best match and in direct  violation with the eBay Search and browse manipulation policy.

The Example

For this I’m going to be including a new format to the site, video. Now I do apologise in advance, this one of my first attempts and just like the rest of the blog, its a learning experience and you’re learning with me. SO any feedback you have, good or bad, please post in the comments box below.

The Title

From the video, you will see that this seller has in fact three titles, extending their title by up to an extra 62 characters.

Original Title: LADIES PINEAPPLE TOE POST FLAT FLIP FLOPS SHOES UK 3-8
Sub Title: Girls Ladies Womens Woman Bell
Sub Title: Wedge Sandals Comfort Leisure

The following keywords were not in the main title:

  • Girls
  • Sandals
  • Comfort
  • Leisure
  • Womens
  • Women

However as clearly shown in the video, these are in fact part of the search.

I Need Your Help!

This is where I need your assiatance to help me. As mentioned before, this whole blogging experience is new to me and the video format is also very new too and I’m out of practice from the video’s I’ve made in the past and the format is entirely different.

Could you read the questions below and post any feedback either directly as comments or directly via my contact page I’d really value any input you may have.

  • What did you think of the video?
  • Did you like the insert of myself in the bottom right?
  • Did you think I looked a “tool” with the big headset I use?
  • What could I do to improve?

Managing Large Adword Campaigns with Google Adwords Editor

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Google Adwords EditorEver wondered how search marketing companies & larger companies deal with more than a few Google Adwords campaigns? The answer is easy, they use the right tool for the job, Adwords Editor is one of them and best of all its free!

Managing Campaigns x 10,0000

A slight exaggeration, however using the Adwords Editor, you can manage literally hundreds of campaigns over several accounts using a single, free tool.

A key feature of the product is the ability to import new campaigns via CSV, you can update them via CSV for external processing and then import them back in again. Its all quite civilised and dealing with hundreds of campaigns at one time is a very simple task.

Why you should use the Adwords Editor

Here are the reasons why you would want to use the Adwords Editor:

  1. You can import and export your campaigns from Excel. That means for geeks like me I can do all the work in excel and then quickly and easily import the campaigns for immediate upload to Google.
  2. It works offline. This is brilliant if travelling or out of signal range. Just send the updates when you’re next connected.
  3. The Editor works with more than one Adwords account.
  4. Finding duplicate keywords is easy, see here for more info.
  5. This is an official tool created by Google,

So if you want one up on your competitors, you are about five up now. Or the biggest feature for me, was the import/export features. Being able to manipulate data outside of the interface and import, was a huge win.

There are other tools, mainly paid for, plus there is an API as well, which for the larger PPC based companies build their own interfaces to our use hugely expensive software to manage campaigns on an epic scale.

Helpful links:

Part 1: What Are Affiliate Networks & Should I be using Them?

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Affiliate NetworksThis was an old post that I’ve revamped for human consumption. “What Are Affiliate Networks & Should I be using Them?” is a really good question and a very short answer is yes, you should be.

I’m looking forward to explaining and givening examples over the next three articles, as I discuss what they do, how they work, who uses them, how much they cost and ultimately why you should have a network as part of your online marketing strategy.

The Affiliate Concept

Wikipedia:

An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs

Starting at the beginning, we have merchants, businesses that have websites and want more customers, we also have people like me affiliates (I was focused on Affiliate Networking for the majority of 2010) who want to specialise in their area which is known as publishing and will happily pimp themselves for a percentage cut of the merchants sales.

Affiliates and merchants normally come together via a 3rd party called an ‘Affiliate Network‘, which is a place where affiliates can find merchants to promote & vice’versa and acts as a trusted party between them both. As you can imagine there are a few of these globally and I’ll be looking at these in detail next week.

The Merchant gives the Affiliate a fee, typically for a confirmed sale, again typically through an Affiliate Network.

Affiliate Program Fees

Affiliate networks hold lists of merchants and lists of affiliates, then promote them to each other. The affiliate networks make their money in several ways:

  • The start up fee to the merchant
  • The on going monthly fee from the merchant
  • Commission on the commission’s paid to merchants
  • And in some cases a fee they take from the affiliates for joining

That sounds like a lot of fees to shell out as a merchant, but to give you some idea, the start up fees for a affiliate program range from a few hundred, to a few thousand and monthly costs vary from £250-500 or more.

The actual percentage paid to affiliates (those nice people known as publishers that get you customers) can vary and be tiered on performance. For technology based products, commissions of 1-3% are common, for clothing 8-15% are common, holidays are similar of not more and gambling can be much higher.

Note: Are these fees starting to ring true to the updates set by eBay in the eBay May 2011 update, Tech = 3%, CSA = 15%?

Yummy Cookies

Cookies are worth a special mention here, this is because you can set the length of time you can allow your affiliate to gain commission on a sale from the time they referred them to your site(s).

Note: We’re not talking about those delicious snacks, we’re refering to cookies, that are dropped by websites into the clients browser, the HTTP cookie, see here for more info.

Normally this is a 30 day cookie, some companies offer 7, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 or infinite or if your name is Amazon.com, then the cookie life is 24 hours. More on that later in another article as I am not willing to contribute to the ongoing war, sorry debate over cookies and their timings at this time (this is an industry wide hot topic, sadly with no ‘right/perfect’ view).

DataFeeds

There are several different ways you can tackle affiliate networks, you could ban PPC affiliates or stay text link only OR you could open your affiliates up to allowing them to use PPC (on or off your brand name) and give them something called a ‘datafeed’.

Affiliate networks do more than just put an affiliate and a merchant in touch, they can handle data feeds given from the merchant to the affiliate network, for adaptation and distribution to their affiliates, then track clicks the sales and report these back to both parties.

Datafeeds are files that contain the very latest (hopefuly!) information from a merchant on their product catalogue, so you as the merchant can keep your affiliates up to date on the latest products you have.

Below is a screen shot of items selected using the AffiliateWindow ‘Create-a-feed’ tool in their new (ish) Darwin interface.

Affiliate Window Create-A-Feed Tool

Affiliate Window Create-A-Feed Tool

Contacting Affiliates

This is also part of your fee to the Affiliate network, you should be assigned an account manager who will ‘woo’ the top affiliates in your product area(s) and get them to take your feeds. A tip here is to do two things. Firstly research who is promoting your products, secondly now knowing who is, speak with your account manager and get them to promote you to them.

As a merchant, you can either choose to allow anyone to join your network (suggested) or filter the affiliates that want to join (not suggested) and the different affiliate networks have different tools to allow you to communicate with your affiliates.

Here is a screen shot of a message from the Dorothy Perkins affiliate program:

Example: Dorothy Perkins Affiliate Email

Example: Dorothy Perkins Affiliate Email

In the second part of this series I’ll be covering the following sections:

  • Who’s Using Affiliate Networks To Promote Their Products?
  • Examples of Affiliate Sites
  • Special Networks
  • Summary of Affiliate Networks

You can read the second part here Part 2: What Are Affiliate Networks & Should I be using Them?

Apology from John Perkins, Play.com CEO SilverPop Leak

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play.comFollowing on from my tweet this morning, here is the letter from the Play.com CEO, John Perkins reguarding the suggested compromise of customer related data.

Have a good read of the email below and then re read it again with the sections highlighted at the bottom.

The Email

Dear Customer,

As a follow up to the email we sent you last night, I would like to give you some further details. On Sunday the 20th of March some customers reported receiving a spam email to email addresses they only use for Play.com. We reacted immediately by informing all our customers of this potential security breach in order for them to take the necessary precautionary steps.

We believe this issue may be related to some irregular activity that was identified in December 2010 at our email service provider, Silverpop. Investigations at the time showed no evidence that any of our customer email addresses had been downloaded. We would like to assure all our customers that the only information communicated to our email service provider was email addresses. Play.com have taken all the necessary steps with Silverpop to ensure a security breach of this nature does not happen again.

We would also like to reassure our customers that all other personal information (i.e. credit cards, addresses, passwords, etc.) are kept in the very secure Play.com environment. Play.com has one of the most stringent internal standards of e-commerce security in the industry. This is audited and tested several times a year by leading internet security companies to ensure this high level of security is maintained. On behalf of Play.com, I would like to once again apologise to our customers for any inconvenience due to a potential increase in spam that may be caused by this issue .

Best regards,

John

John Perkins
CEO
Play.com

Read it again

Read the mail again, this time note the following sections:

“Investigations at the time showed no evidence that any of our customer email addresses had been downloaded.”

And then this sentence:

“Play.com have taken all the necessary steps with Silverpop to ensure a security breach of this nature does not happen again.”

Is it just me, or do these contradict each other?

Congratulations to eBuyerExpress on eBay!

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The day I released the article called ‘Argos is Kicking eBuyer’s Butt on eBay‘ the web stats went bonkers with the staff over at eBuyer looking at it and earlier thread called ‘Dear eBuyer.com, You Could Be Doing So Much Better on eBay UK. Here is How!‘.

17 different people I counted from the webstats at eBuyer and I’m happy to announce that they’ve taken stead and revamped their current listing design, from what was a mildly embarrassing layout (but none the less an amazing start it has to be said) to what is now something more visually attractive and should see them break the £1M  monthly sales bracket again.

The Latest eBuyerExpress Design

You have to agree its a massive improvement on their old design.

New eBuyerExpress eBay Template

New eBuyerExpress eBay Template

You can view the new version here on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290546129749

Karma

The effects of a person’s actions that determine his destiny in his next incarnation (Hinduism and Buddhism)

Acknowledgement is all I ask. However here’s the thing, you’re happy to take, but not to give back. You’ve made a little mistake (its actually quite a serious flaw). I’ll let you find it, its quite obvious when you hit it.

Making Sense of the Pending eBay UK Updates in May 2011

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If you’ve not heard yet, you have now, there are some stellar changes coming up for eBay UK in the May 2011 update. You can read the full update here and in the next few minutes, I’ll be discussing what this means for you and your business.

As far as I see it there are two options

#1 You cry like a little girl

girl-cryingThis option is normally chosen by merchants that are on the edge or so rammed up the whole idea of selling on eBay arse, that they get stuck, throw toys around and eventually burn out. Lets hope your competitors either do not twig there is an update at all or select this option.

If you would like to select this option go to the eBay community boards and start ranting how eBay ruined your life.

#2 You fully embrace the changes in advance

This is what smart merchants to. They analyse what the landscape is going to look like knowing what the updates are and work out how it affects them and how they can change to leverage this to their advantage.

If you would like to select this option, read on.

The Updates

I’m going to follow the structure in the update page from eBay, but give you the spin you need to turn this into plain English and see where its going to hurt and where there is potential and where work possibly needs to be done to ensure a smooth transition.

‘Value for Money’ Fee Updates

I’m just not seeing how the ‘Value for Money’ part is going to be interpreted by merchants, all I’m seeing is almost a universal hike in fees. Yes there are a few winners, but overall, expect to be paying more after this lands.

Fact: eBay UK will become more expensive that it is currently.

I would like to point out that eBay is amazing value for money, even at its higher closing rates the amount of exposure you gain to customers is immense and its never been so cheap to sell on eBay and the barrier to entry for new merchants is extremely low.

Remember I come from the era of SIF (Shop Inventory Format) where we paid 20p for 30 days/GTC and had no exposure, now you can pay a few pence or nothing (with an Anchor eBay shop) and gain access to the main listings and all its exposure as a normal listing. Bargain.

Summary of Fees Update

pound-coins

The ‘simplified final value fee’ is a bit of a hoax, yes it makes working out what you will end up paying easier, but I’d like to point out that sellers did not care before with the multi tiered final value fee approach, as they relied upon eBay to calculate the different levels of fees and it was absolutely no issue for the seller.

Lets be brutally honest, anchor shops are poorly marketed, so sellers who have them either have not worked out this or have more inventory that makes it more economical for them to upgrade. If you’re at this level then the 1p to free listings make little difference and again with the Basic to Featured shop upgrades, the lines are so close, you’re better off going for the featured shop as soon as your’re allowed to.

If you’re selling technology based products, then there is a fair chance you’re going to be much better off if you have a ASP of under £100, over this you’re going to be paying more, with a 200% increase on sales of £600 or more.

Parts sellers are going to have a mixed experience, again ASP’s come into play, if you’re sub £30 going to see a 1.9% saving, over this due to the ‘simplification’ you’re going to be loosing out to the tiered fee structure that was in place before the update.

CSA (Clothes Shoes & Accessories) sellers are worst hit, this to me personally sucks somewhat, as its CSA that has seen the largest growth for the past year and now eBay are ‘tapping it’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, there are updates that if actioned properly and effectively will give us an advantage over slower moving clients (or those that ‘rant’, I’m just making a little point, remember option #1?).

PowerSellers: Focus on quality

I’ll be quite open, I read this part of the update as blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah. Again, taking my own advice, I am not inserting a rant about DSR’s, I’m just going to point out they are flawed as indicated in a previous article I wrote How to add icing to your competitors Christmas on eBay: Top Rated Seller Flawed?. Ultimately upping the standards of sellers has to be a good thing for the overall community.

eBay Express is Back!

Whoops, sorry its called ‘eBay Shopping Basket’, silly me :X

new-ebay-checkout-1

The New eBay Shopping Basket

If you’ve not heard or seen this, go to this page immediately, print it off and read it thoroughly, this is a critical update you need to know about.

In the update, its described by eBay as having these attributes:

  • Faster and easier shopping
  • Better value
  • Fewer fixed price unpaid items
  • Make payment simpler
  • Bigger orders

Let me translate these for you, the duplicates are not typo’s:

  • Buyers are (almost) forced to pay with immediate payment
  • You can offer them more stuff in more places and eBay will probably charge you for this later on
  • Buyers are (almost) forced to pay with immediate payments
  • Buyers are (almost) forced to pay with immediate payments
  • You can offer them more stuff in more places and eBay will probably charge you for this later on

Now we know eBay buyers are not the brightest of bunnies and quite scared creatures too. So it is a sensible suggestion by eBay that you re-think your postage strategy and start with a free option and then expedited options at sensible (lucratively cheap) values. You’ll also want to check on your postage discounts and ensure that you are using them where ever possible.

New Feature Bundles

Well almost, all that has been included is a sniff at the bundle feature that certain sellers are using in BETA currently. This is one feature that has been sorely been missing from eBay for a long time. Expect this to be rather similar to that automatically created by Amazon.

Item Specifics Updates

For CSA sellers, this is either going to be a huge task for sellers with large inventories and no back office tool, or a bit of a bind for more technologically advanced sellers. As I have a conflict of interests here (due to me publicly showing I work with My1stWish on LinkedIn yesterday), I’m just going to boast I have a tool that will tell me which records are affected and I’m not prepared to share it.

Being slightly more constructive for other CSA sellers you’ll need to check the table that shows the requirements in the May 2011 update, hopefully these should not be too painful and there are bulk editing tools such as this.

Electronics Category gets Amazon-Fied

Have you tried buying ‘tech products’ on eBay lately? Its a nightmare, Amazon is so much easier imo, eBay should be better by this time next year.

The requirement of EAN’s and matching existing records has been around for quite a while now, there are many reasons why I believe this is a good change overall, such as cutting down on the clutter on eBay and more transparent pricing for buyers.

Stellar Update – Variations!

ebay-variations-1

An Example of Variations. Just note the sales volume to the right. Yes that really is 12,686 sold!

Rather excited about this one and you should be too. Multi variation listings have been around in the CSA category for ages now. There are again many reasons why you should be using these, the biggest is because they are common place now and make it easy for customers to select goods that are available in variations (such as colour or size), however there is a distinct benefit for best match search too (whoops did I say that?).

If you’ve never sold with variations before, then see this help page on eBay and also it would be a wise move to have a scan through the CSA category on eBay also and see how they are used by sellers in a category where its been a feature from when they were first implemented.

If you’re using a tool such as eSellerPro, 247TopSeller or ChannelAdvisor, dealing with multi level variations differs and I strongly suggest if this your first interaction with them, to start by manually listing an item as a variation in one of the clothing categories and then making the correct inventory structure (with the tool’s support team if needed) so you know how to prepare for this type of listing.

Its critical that you realise also that you cannot form a new multi variation listing from existing listings and you will loose the best match history on old items when moving from single items to variation styled listings. To be brutally honest, the sooner you move, the better.

Duplicate Listings Removal

Now this is a smart move by eBay and its going to catch out quite a few sellers that are perhaps bending the rules a little too far. To see how you are impacted, eBay have released a tool that identifies possible duplicates and allows you to download them as a spreadsheet.

I tried this today on a few eBay accounts, amusingly none were true duplicates, it just highlighted the lag in the tool we’re using to deal with some listings that were ended.

The wording around what is a duplicate is a little sketchy, because it does not account for fashion items where one week you may get a “black lace dress” and the next another “black lace dress” and chances are you’re going to describe it in almost the same manner. I only hope that eBay has been vague on purpose and are looking at the item specific attributes for a more informed view on whether an item is a duplicate or not.

On a side note, if we think about what eBay are possibly doing here, they are indexing key attributes for each listing and then comparing them for similarities and rejected some that are matching too closely. Now this by itself is quite simple, do this for millions of sellers, over possibly trillions of listings everyday, now that is truly amazing.

Global DSR Updates

This is quite a nice move by eBay as they are relaxing the standards for international sales and also giving sellers back the information they need to identify problem areas with international orders.

I have a saying that I previously shared, which is quite simple, but works very well for me:

A mistake or an error
=
An unexpected outcome, but none the less, an outcome. Knowing its a mistake or an error is critical!

Knowing, really is everything and this is a fantastic move. You can see the new global performance standards here.

Other Updates

There was an update to the Listing Analytics tool, some information about conditions for media items, buyer email spam was cut down with the removal of some duplicate emails from SMP, tracking numbers can now be taken for all couriers and also some category changes coming in April 2011.

In Summary

For me, the sole area for leverage as a merchant is to jump on the multi variations as soon as possible. Yes fees are going up, there are some other changes blah, blah, blah.

Variations are were your attention need to be, screw everything else in this update, go learn about variations immediately, they are going to change the dynamics of your almost ALL the categories you sell in.

Updated Services List, Forthcoming Articles & Client History

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Forthcoming ArticlesI’ve been really quiet again on the article front this week again. I’ve not given up, quite the opposite. I’ve been beavering away in the background updating other content on the site (like Amazon & eSellerPro category pages) and that’s what this article is about, what is coming up and what I have completed in the past few days.

Also, I have a draft article on my MBA progression that is due for tomorrow morning (Friday 11th March), if you have any background on working with someone whom has an MBA, been through the process, employed, read about or have any information you may feel would be of use to me, please contact me today, as I’m at the OU in the evening.

Forth Coming Articles

This is not a complete list as there are a few that I wish to keep in my ‘back pocket’ for later use. However should give you an idea on the topics that are due to be released here in the forth coming days:

  • What is Fulfilment By Amazon & How much does FBA cost? (FBA Calculator included!)
  • Should I be using Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilment By Amazon)
  • Which eBay Shop Subscription Level should I be using? (Fees Calculator included!)
  • The untold truth about using 3rd party software such as Channel Advisor or eSellerPro
  • Is eSellerPro really worth +£2,000 plus fees?
  • Why choose Channel Advisor, aren’t they Web 1.5?
  • What is 247 TopSeller?
  • An Ex Employees/Insiders guide to eSellerPro
  • Get Ready, Get Set. Facebook Credits are going to change EVERYTHING
  • How To: Using eBay Shop Keywords to Leverage the Extra eBay Shop Pages

Client History!

This page is really is in its infancy currently. however it has been an interesting experience, remembering all the different companies I have worked with. The stark reality that there are so many and how different each of them were. The Client History page is not complete yet, however it visually shows the breadth of businesses I have had and still have the joy of working with.

New Service Offerings

I’ve been documenting what exactly I can offer potential clients and what I have been helping businesses for what is a very long time now with. Its been quite an interesting process as I am well-rounded-character and have experience in a lot of fields, that is a quality that makes me unique, however I do have key offerings, these are:

Business Mentoring & Consultation
The person you can turn to for advice, suggestions and solutions to your issues. If you want to work 4 hours per week we’ll work towards that, if you want to grow by X% then, we’ll do what is needed to achieve that goal.

Competitive Intelligence
A legal and ethical business practice, which allows executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organisation. Competitive Intelligence is the defining, gathering, analysing and distributing intelligence about a company, its products & services, its competitors and any aspect that affects the company in question.

In short, knowing your competition better than they know themselves.

Data Manipulation & API Integrations
I am an expert with MS Excel, can write VBA, iMacros, PHP and JavaScript by hand, however I know that there is no point in adding complexity, if the lowest skilled user cannot use it. That’s why I have for a long time used the term I coined ‘Matt Proof’.

From SOAP to CSV, XML to HTTP Post, if it needs to be altered, chopped, changed, manipulated, uploaded or abused to a much nicer format for use elsewhere, then there is an extremely high chance that I can aid you with this. I’ve included several examples on this on the Data Manipulation & API Integrations page.

If you are interested in any of these services, then contact me today.

How to Make Your Own eBay Daily Deals & Weekly Deals

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This is a precursor to the full article on how to leverage eBay shop tags which I may finally complete for tomorrow (ok, may be Monday). However this is the most immediate application for your eBay shop and can be implemented in minutes. Plus I’m including code for you to copy/paste with! 73MAR2VX5JRS

What are eBay Shop Tags?

Before we start, you need to quickly learn that there are special tags, or keywords that can be used in the eBay shops. These tags that allow you to dynamically show your listings and other data on your eBay shop. I’ll be covering these fully in an article I’ll be releasing shortly, that describes each of them and includes a practical example of each.

The eBay Shop Tag – eBayStoresItemShowcase

Example ItemIn a few moments we’re going to be leveraging the eBay shop tag eBayStoresItemShowcase and using the attribute called ITEM to specify an eBay item ID to then bring this through on to our eBay shop.

This tag (or keyword) has several other attributes, I cover these in more depth later in the full article, but for now, rest assured you can have more control than this.

Create a Custom eBay Shop Page

For this to work, we need to create a custom eBay shop page, as long as you have an eBay shop, you can do this as the basic eBay shop has 5 pages included.

  1. Go to eBay and Sign in
  2. Go here: http://my.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MyeBay&CurrentPage=MyeBayManageStore
  3. On the left click on ‘Custom Pages’ (or go here)
  4. Now under ‘Active Pages’, hit ‘Create new page’ (its a little hidden, keep looking)
  5. Now there are a couple of formats, but we want the most control so go for the bottom one called ‘1 text Section/HTML’ along the bottom and hit continue
  6. Enter a Page Title. I suggest ‘Home’
  7. You now have a big text section, the HTML for this will follow in a few moments
  8. You can elect to show or hide the left bar at the bottom, this is a choice I’ll leave for you (leave it shown!!!!).
  9. On the next page, after pasting the HTML verify its as expected and hit save and publish

Notes: You may have already noticed that some of these templates include featured items, that’s really nice for simple users, I’ll be giving you some HTML in a moment that you can edit to your own liking and have maximum control.

If you would like this for your homepage, there is one extra step to do this, go back to the eBay shop custom pages page here and near the bottom there is a section called ‘ Shop Homepage’ and a drop-down box, you can use this to set the shops homepage. This is how people create custom pages and create some those superb landing pages you see.

Grab 6 Item Numbers

We’re going for the maximum control option, which is specifying the item numbers that are to be shown in our daily and weekly deals section. There are other options, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to be wanting to specify exact items.

We need 6 numbers, 2 are going to be our daily deals, the other four are going to be our weekly deals. So before we can do this, lets go and grab six items. If you do not know what item numbers are you can find these by looking at your listings, using this listing as an example.

I have put an arrow next to the eBay item number.

ebay-shops-item-number-1

Where you can find the eBay item Number of a Listing

The Keyword

We’re using two keywords, on that has two items specified for the daily deals and one that has four item numbers set for the weekly deals. In this example I’ve also set the attribute BACKFILL to on, so at least if you forget to update the listing or it ends, eBay will back fill for you.

Daily Deals Keyword:

{eBayStoresItemShowcase ITEM=”ItemNumber1,ItemNumber2″ DISPLAY=”1″ BACKFILL=”On”}

Weekly Deals Keyword:

{eBayStoresItemShowcase ITEM=”ItemNumber3,ItemNumber4,ItemNumber5,ItemNumber6″ DISPLAY=”1″ BACKFILL=”On”}

The HTML

Now this is clearly not going to be a one size fits all, but it’ll get you on the right track. It is s a single column format that has titles, descriptions and the eBay shop tags in and will point you in a the right direction.

I’ve added some comment tags to guide you to which sections you can edit and also remember to replace ItemNumber1, ItemNumber2, ItemNumber3, ItemNumber4, ItemNumber5, ItemNumber6 with the eBay item numbers you harvested before.

Code:


  

    Our Daily Deals
  

  

    
    	
    	Welcome to ebay shop XYZ we have two amaizing deals for you, these are Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam et rutrum lorem. Morbi eget mauris enim, ac interdum lacus. In non interdum est. Nulla facilisi. Donec vel nibh ac purus faucibus volutpat. Praesent nec neque dolor. Aliquam id lectus sit amet augue aliquam accumsan. Morbi lobortis eros lacinia erat facilisis suscipit. Donec eu urna nec elit vestibulum ornare ut ultrices arcu. Donec in nibh ante.
	
	

	

    
    	
    	{eBayStoresItemShowcase ITEM="ItemNumber1,ItemNumber2" DISPLAY="1" BACKFILL="On"}
    
    
  

  

     
  

  

    Our Weekly Deals
  

  

    
    	
    	Take advanatge of our amazing weekly deals, thee only last for one week  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam et rutrum lorem. Morbi eget mauris enim, ac interdum lacus. In non interdum est. Nulla facilisi. Donec vel nibh ac purus faucibus volutpat. Praesent nec neque dolor. Aliquam id lectus sit amet augue aliquam accumsan. Morbi lobortis eros lacinia erat facilisis suscipit. Donec eu urna nec elit vestibulum ornare ut ultrices arcu. Donec in nibh ante.
	
  

  

    
    	
        {eBayStoresItemShowcase ITEM="ItemNumber3,ItemNumber4,ItemNumber5,ItemNumber6" DISPLAY="1" BACKFILL="On"}

Real Life Example

This is the example code live on eBay, as you can see, it only needs the descriptions and you’re ready to roll!

ebay-shops-daily-deals-example

The Example Code Output with Live eBay Items

Easy-Peasy

You’ve now got the keywords, the HTML and the instructions. Easy-Peasy. Enjoy.

Skip Google & Microsoft, Will eBay Buy Twitter?

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twitter_whaleAfter reading an interesting article titled ‘Why Google Will Buy Twitter‘ where Douglas points out that it could be prime buying material for not only Google, but Microsoft too. But I’m wondering, what benefit could there be if eBay were to pick this up?

Google & Microsoft

Douglas rightly points out that Google Wave and Buzz are complete flops. Wave had its strategy wrong and Buzz was hammered due to privacy issues in the beginning. Where-as Balmer at Microsoft is really going for it with Bing and has pockets deep enough to pick up a few high profile businesses.

Capacity Issues

While Microsoft & Google might appear to be prime technology based companies to solve the whale issue (a big whale appears when its over capacity, annoyingly quite often too), eBay has immense practical knowledge itself with deploying its platform over some +35 countries, +80 million users and dealing with some insane amount of new listings each day.

There was a time when eBay was quite flaky, we used to dread Friday mornings and that was nearly always our morning off. Something was always being updated and something nearly always didn’t work that morning before 12. But thats long gone now.

So what could they do with Twitter?

Assuming that eBay can leverage their knowledge to solve the the whale issue, this does give them a standpoint that they’ve not had before. They have access to an huge audience of users that work on real-time data.

Maybe its a side entrance to Facebook, B2B users, a different way of communicating directly with buyers. I’m not sure why it feels right, but it does.

If…

If you were eBay, Google, Microsoft or someone else for that matter and knew that Twitter was up for grabs, what would you do with it?

The WOM Factor – Why ALL eBay Sellers are Not Equal

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the-wom-factor-chalkboard

The Word of Mouth Factor

I’ve answered too many eBay’er questions over the years, its probably why I have such a tainted view on specifically eBay buyers, my personal ‘resounding’ conclusion is that they’re scared and really scared at that, almost to the point of paranoia.

In the next few minutes, we’ll be looking at the different types of buyers and a new system of gauging sellers, not feedback, but a derivative of feedback, which gives a clearer overall picture of the seller in proportion to their customers views and perception of the business. I’m calling this the WOM factor.

Multi-Channel

For multi-channel businesses, they’ll know that there are three different breads of customer and they vary enormously. These are:

#1 The Website Buyer

Website customers are the most relaxed of them all, you’ve woo’ed them with your marketing and reassured them with your subliminal security and reassurance factors. They’ll be happy with a couple of days shipping time and normal have already answered their questions before even buying from you.

#2 The Amazon Buyer

Its extremely rare to receive a question from a Amazon buyer and if you do its 99.9999999999999999999999999% of the time related to shipping or a broken item. Besides that, they’re quiet as a mouse.

#3 The Psycho eBay Buyer

I feel sorry most of all not for the sellers on eBay, but for the buyers. Mentally unhinged, these buyers are the stuff of customer services nightmares, they’re scatty and nuts, they’re lunatics and time wasters. But most of all they’re just scared.

They’re scared of being ripped off, they’re scared you’re going to steal their money and emigrate to Nigeria and then sell all their personal details to a chap in a mud hut who will spawn 10 versions of themselves as the victim.

Harsh, but that’s the kind of metal thought patterns that go through these paranoid buyers heads

Word of Mouth

This isn’t a new concept, infact its a very well documented concept, in short it simply says, that for a good experience a customer will tell two people and for a negative experience, they’ll tell 10 people.

Loss & Reward

This also sits well with the experiences of reward and loss. If I take your pet cat called “puddles” away from you right now, never to be given back, the sense of loss you will feel will be immense; However if I give you back a kitten called “Spot”, you’ll learn to love the little ball of fluff, but it will never replace puddles, who’s loss carries a far far greater sense of loss, than any gain can give.

Also word of mouth is extremely strong, companies are scared of the extremes that can occur with terms being coined such as ‘Brand Terrorists’, those customers that have been so pissed off by a business or brand, there is no stopping them ram-raiding the company or brand at any opportunity.

Inversely, when tribes are formed (Seth Godin’s input here)  “Brand Sponsors” are created, those people that are just nuts for a product or service, the most immediate example I can think of are Apple fans. I’m an Apple product fan, but I’m to the level of what I would call excessive, that some of these Apple nut-mini-Steve-Jobs are.

Using “Word of Mouth” to Measure eBay Seller’s

Its not hard to see why either, if we use the rule of that one positive comment will create 2 positive word of mouth reviews and a negative or neutral comment -10 word of mouth reviews, then its not hard to do the maths on a random selection of sellers and understand that eBay’s growth is actually tainted by its underlying feedback system and also that all sellers are not actually equal.

The DATA – Random Sellers Feedback

These were taken completely at random, I picked four categories and picked a couple of sellers for each category from the top of the list (yes I’m aware this is weighted by the best match algorithm) and included their feedback for the past 12 months and neutrals are counted as negatives.

I have not included revised feedback, I could not decide whether these were positive or negative events, so have elected to ignore them completely. If I was forced to add them, I would class them as a negative event, as it was not a “perfect” transaction, perhaps I should look at this again in a few weeks and maybe I’ll attribute a +3 or +4 to these, but for now, I’m not sure.

PS: What do you think? Post in the comments below!

Random eBay Sellers Feedback Scores

ID Positive Negative +Points -Points WOM Factor
jpe_enterprises 189 2 378 20 5.29
loco_gadgets 378 1 756 10 1.32
benthamltd 80791 1008 161582 10080 6.24
argos 259217 6181 518434 61810 11.92
xia090729 561 7 1122 70 6.24
glamorousoutlet 22585 530 45170 5300 11.73
bench_outlet 40274 530 80548 5300 6.58
bessy0302 2960 12 5920 120 2.03
online4babyltd 55870 614 111740 6140 5.49
babzeeonline 19549 217 39098 2170 5.55
tennis-deals-2008 4221 24 8442 240 2.84
poshtotz-store 5337 34 10674 340 3.19
little-devils-direct 773 10 1546 100 6.47
flyingplaneman 4765 68 9530 680 7.14
kmsdirectshops 14069 198 28138 1980 7.04
aqua_spot 894 7 1788 70 3.91
Totals 512433 9443 1024866 94430

Understanding the Data

I’m quickly adding that several of these sellers actually had either 100% or 99.9% feedback scores, this is only one factor that I am indicating in this article. While the vast majority of these sellers are above 99.0% feedback, Argos stands out for two reasons:

  1. They have a feedback score of 98.7, the lowest of the group
  2. They have the worst ratio 11.92% of WOMF

The second, is on face value an OK seller, they have a score of 99.1% currently, which is good enough and almost all retail stores in the physical world, would probably never be able to achieve this.

Glamorousoutlet are turning over a decent amount of items, with 22,585 feedback in the last year, this is probably around +32,000 orders, however they have incurred 530 negatives, or using the WOM Factor a negative score of 5300, giving them a WOM of 11.73 which when you look at Argos with their 98.4% feedback, is actually worse in proportion!

How to Calculate the WOM Factor

Calculating this is easy, you take your positive feedback for a set period of time and times it by 2, then you take the negative and neutral comments and times them by 10. Then divide the negatives by the positives and times by 100 to gain a more friendly number. In short the lower the better.

The-WOM-Factor

How to Calculate "The WOM Factor"

 

What Customers Really Think

Being able to gauge what your customers truly think of your business is stuff of marketeers wet-dreams. This new factor, I’m coining as the “WOM Factor” can be one tool in your arsenal to accurately gauge what your customers actually think of you.

To give you a measurable and a new dimension on what is just raw numbers. The WOM Factor gives you an indication of what is the actual effects and general response of your business on the outside world.

I wonder what the WOM Factor for Microsoft is?
I wonder what the WOM Factor of Apple is?
I wonder what the WOM Factor for the entire eco-system of eBay is?

Whats Your WOM Factor?

This leads to the pivotal question, whats your WOM Factor?