Episode 153 || Trading Cards Price Guidance and Collections

[podcast_team]

This week, Director of Trading Cards Bob Means returns to talk about the beta release of two new features for trading cards. Kirsty Dunn is here urging sellers to apply for the second annual Up and Running Grants by September 3rd! eBay Seller Ann Kulinski shares her Holiday Sourcing tactics. Griff and Brian answer questions: Getting started with the Global Shipping Program; Do I need two eBay Stores?; and embedding Freight as a shipping option for big stuff.

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Show Links:
Links: eBay Up and Running Grants
eBay Trading Cards Hub: Collection and Price Guide Betas
Ann Kulinski’s eBay Store
Shipping Options Page
Freight Shipping Information
Global Shipping Program

Brian: This week on the eBay for Business Podcast:

Bob: “I just kept that shoe box full of cards from when I was a kid, but some of us did keep the shoe box full of cards when they were kids and those cards are worth something now. It's a lot of fun and you're still seeing kids today buy it. It's the same thing. You're chasing your heroes when it comes to sports. And when it comes to collectible card games, you're an active player of a specific game, but that's something that's always going to continue as long as there are trading cards.”

Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: And I'm Griff. And this is the eBay for Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and the inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 153. Welcome back, Brian.

Brian: It's great to be back Griff.

Griff: Are you busy this week? Have you been busy at work? We always talk about busy-ness.

Brian: It is and I actually went into the office, which has been not a little bit new for me. You got to reserve a desk and all wear a mask, but it was nice being in the office. I ran into some folks that I hadn't seen in a little while. And so, it was fun.

Griff: Well, Brian I checked, there's nothing in the bay news this week. So instead I thought we'd maybe tease a few of the segment topics that are on the docket for the last quarter of this year on the podcast.

Brian: That would be great. Yeah. Cause I think the last news item we had was the recap from open on Friday that Jordan put up.

Griff: This upcoming shopping season, we're going to cover a lot of topics. We usually cover these every Holiday season. We're going to try to find a different angle for some of these. For example, shipping. We're going to spend some time starting today, talking about shipping options that a lot of people don't consider. For example, freight. We're going to talk about special options for things like packing. And this comes into mind for me every week I buy a lot of stuff on eBay and very rarely do I get something that's under packed, but I get stuff that's over-packed all the time. That could be an issue for buyers.

Brian: And then also it happens too frequently from a seller you're actually eating into your profit margin.

Griff: Yeah. You know that extra ego around the item with tape three or four more times, that costs you money. I get things wrapped and I think the intentions are great, but it is like trying to unwrap an Egyptian mummy. And it's so tight, like a bubble wrapped item that has so much tape on it that I have to go get a scalpel to open it. And there's always the risk I'm going to cut myself.

Brian: You're not getting anything broken I'm sure then when they pack them that well.

Griff: Very rarely does something come broken, but sometimes I've come close to breaking my fingers, trying to get stuff open. We're also going to talk about coupons. There's been some enhancements to that so we've scheduled at least one, if not a few segments around coupons. The perennial favorite promotions. We're going to actually get some sellers to talk about specific things they do to get promotions, to work for them.

Brian: Obviously everybody knows Holiday season promotions are absolutely critical.

Griff: Yes, they are critical. We're going to have Barbara Wellman back and she's going to talk about closing out the year, 2021 and getting ready to start for 2022.

Brian: Which means we will get a question about, and maybe you and Barbara can answer it, when and where will I get my 1099?

Griff: Every year Yeah. Well, it doesn't come until 2022, usually in January or February, but we'll talk about that as well. And then finally, we're going to have a three-part series planned for October and it's going to be about crafting a social media marketing campaign. So not just which channels you use and how you use them. It's actually sitting down and creating and then managing a whole campaign around social media marketing. And this is what businesses do. This is what eBay does. This is what every business does. Just because you're a small eBay seller doesn't mean you shouldn't do it either.

Brian: That's a great idea.

Griff: You may not have as big as budget, but you can still make it work for you. And it's like, anything you want to want to do it right. Our special Guest will be guru and Social Media Marketing Expert and no stranger to some listeners on the podcast. Yes, it's true. She's coming back. Audrey Tracy.

Brian: Wonderful. Audrey's great. Griff: Yeah. I can't wait and we'll have of course a lot of other stuff that we always do and talk about lots of sellers, lots of sellers stories. So I'm looking forward to the last quarter of this year, which is coming up. And by the way, we also have a few open slots in our up and coming episodes. So if you have a topic you'd like us to cover here on the podcast, feel free. Send it into us please at podcast@ebay.com.

Brian: Great idea. I think you probably will get a few requests for topics. I'm sure I will.

Griff: And it'll be great to have some feedback. Hey Brian, I hope you have time to join me for a few seller questions this week.

Brian: I will be there. What are the topics?

Griff: Well, we have a question about opening a second eBay selling account, the pros and cons. A question about how to get started with the Global Shipping Program and a question about shipping, big stuff like furniture.

Brian: Very interesting.

Griff: I'll see you at the end of the episode.

Brian: Sounds good.

Griff: Every now and then we like to stop in talk with our good friend Bob Means who's the Director of Trading Cards. And I thought this would be a good time because there's been some changes to the trading card features that we want to talk about. Bob, welcome back to the podcast.

Bob: It is good to be here Griff. Thanks.

Griff: What's new in the trading cards world?

Bob: We've been talking about just the pace of the business in general. It's been incredibly strong last year. And this year to date, it's been also incredibly strong. Jamie announced $2 billion in sales at the last earnings call. And so in half a year, we did what we did a year ago, which is a pretty amazing amount of volume to do all on trading cards. We see that surge happening and we see that surge continuing. So it's been a lot of fun.

Griff: Is this just a momentary thing because of the pandemic or do we see this continuing? I wish I knew that, but we keep thinking that that moment's happened and then it keeps going. You know, I think there might be some really good ground underneath this and some really solid foundation. The other thing to remember is from a collectible perspective, the collectors were here years ago and they will remain here. Whether there's some speculation involved nowadays, the collector is there and the collector has always been there. And so that's always been the foundation of this business. We're feeling really good about it.

Griff: This is not something that just became a collecting interest in the last two years. People have been collecting trading cards for decades now.

Bob: Yeah, that's right. I had trading cards as a kid. It's fun when you have this job and you talk to somebody and almost all of us have the same story of gosh, if I just kept that shoe box full of cards from when I was a kid. But some of us did keep the shoe box full of cards when they were kids and those cards are worth something now. It's a lot of fun and you're still seeing kids today buy it. It's the same thing. You're, you know, you're chasing your heroes when it comes to sports. And when it comes to collectible card games, you're an active player of a specific game, but that's something that's always going to continue. As long as there are trading cards.

Griff: Tell us a little bit about what these two announced features for eBay Trading Cards, what it does for the platform and for buyers and sellers.

Bob: We've announced quite a few things and we've talked a little bit about them in some of these podcasts. You know, we came up with a cheap shipping method called eBay Standard Envelope, which is for cards under $20. We also came up with Image Scan currently, that's just for collectible card games, but that allows you to use your phone, to scan a card and create a quick listing for you to get it up on eBay. And the two new things that we've iterated on is we've released a beta version of Price Guide and Collection, and they're very closely related, but they're also kind of different. And the reason why we're calling them beta is we know we've got a lot to learn. We wanted to get them out to the market and figure out what the customers like about it, what they don't like about it and how we need to iterate on it. But I really liked the fact that we actually jumped forward on something that we didn't feel a hundred percent on and got it out to people and let them tell us what needs to be improved about it. But let me tell you a little bit about Price Guide. Price Guid from a very simple perspective, just helps us leverage all these years of data that we have on trading cards and quickly tell somebody what their most recent value is. If you're thinking about making a purchase on a card, you can look that card up and see what it's been doing, how it's been trending. Maybe it's trending down and you think it's an opportunity to buy something. Maybe it's trending up and you think it's an opportunity to get in before it turns up any higher, but it's much like the stock market. If you think of it that way, and collection takes everything that you've purchased on eBay for I think it's the last year at this point, and it creates a digital collection for you. And then it aggregates the value of that collection together. So that if you bought 10 cards, those 10 cards are going to show up in your collection. And the aggregated value of them is going to be shown up. And you can look at each individual card as well. Both of these are huge steps forwards for the collector, for the investor, for the flipper, for whoever is interested in this, right? Because one, it helps you keep track of your inventory. And two, it helps you get eBay's Best in Class data behind it to know what the value of your cards are at any one given moment. This will lead us to some really exciting innovations on this. I'm looking forward to how we iterate on it and how we make it even better. I wish I had it for the things that I collect. And I think that's one of the things that we're really excited about is if we can figure out how to do this, anyone who's a collector of anything would benefit from it. We've got to figure it out. We got to get all the wrinkles out. We've got to understand how this works. eBay is such a massive company. And there's been so many millions and millions of transactions. That's a lot of data to try to pull back for people, but in this day with Cloud and all this, we can figure out how to do it. And maybe somewhere down the road, there's things past price guide and collection for just trading cards. But right now we're just focusing that on that one category, because it's just a such an explosive category.

Griff: Is there a place where I can go and actually see the Price Guide or see the Collection feature and how it works?

Bob: I'm going to give a little nuance here. Price Guide is a slowly evolving and growing thing. When we launched it, we launched it based off of 10,000 or so keyword someone like LeBron, James would show up if you did a search and then eventually you'll get into the place into a point where even a very niche player, somebody who might've had one year in the major leagues, eventually we'll be in there. Eventually we hope to expand it to everybody. But yeah, the simplest way to see it is to shop on the eBay app, go to trading cards and put in somebody who you know is a big deal. For lack of a better term. LeBron will work. Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, from a baseball perspective. If you throw Mickey mantle in there, you're going to get price guidance from a soccer perspective, you throw Lionel Messi in there. You're going to get price guidance from a golf perspective. You throw Tiger Woods in there you're going to get price guidance, right? Like if the person that you're looking for is in there currently, we're going to keep flowing more information through the system. So eventually we have very wide coverage of all of these players.

Griff: Is this dynamic price guide, or is this something it's like a database that gets updated every six months or something?

Bob: it's dynamic. So like for instance, something with trading cards, if you do LeBron James, that's an incredibly broad search. You're not going to get the best results because there are still LeBron James cards that you can buy for 25 cents. And there are LeBron James cards, you can buy for $500,000. So if you do a very broad search, you're going to get very broad results. But as you narrow that down to a specific card that you're looking for Topps, number 1752021, prism green, whatever the specifics are that you're looking for, that's where you'll start to get really narrow results. But again, current. It'll always be looking back over the last few sales and giving you a good reference point for what that trend line has been in the immediate history.

Griff: What about collections? Is there anywhere I can go and learn and see how the collection feature works and how it looks?

Bob: There is a desktop version on My eBay, but it's optimized now for app. So if you're on the app, you go to My eBay and you'll see digital collections show up sort of at the bottom under, you know, like messages and all that good stuff. That's in your My eBay, you know, recent sales, recent purchase history, all that good stuff. It's down at the bottom of it. It'll say digital collection. Again, if you've bought cards in the last year, it's probably populated with some information. There's no opt in or opt out or anything like that. If you don't want to use it, don't use it. But if you've bought a card it's going to be there. We've also added a process through the desktop, which is called a CSV upload. So really kind of a cool thing that we heard from some of our customers. There are people that have been tracking this stuff for years, they might have an Excel spreadsheet or a Google sheet or chicken scratch napkins stuffed into a drawer or something, but people have their different systems. And one of the things we want to do enable was for people to get that information up into their collection as well. It can be a lot of work. If you can just imagine this Griff, if you have a thousand cards and that's all on an Excel file, you can upload it really quickly. But we have people who have literally millions of cards. That's a big, big upload I should say, to get into the system, but we're working on it right now. We have a cap and I'm not a hundred percent sure what the cap is, but we're expanding that as well. Just like with price guide, it's just, we had to sort of contain all the bandwidth and all the storage and all that, that kind of stuff we had to sort of contain it. And then we slowly expand and expand and expand. My goal is at some point that somebody could have their entire collection of sports cards or collectible card games on the site tracking against eBay data so they can keep track of the value of it at any one given time.

Griff: You actually piqued my interest. I think I'm going to go buy some cards just to see how this works.

Bob: And Griff. I know a company that you can get some trading cards out if you ever need to.

Griff: Hey, we're going to keep checking in with you. And we understand, I want to make this clear that both of the features Price Guide and Collection are in beta right now, as Bob says, it's a learning process.

Bob: Yeah. I'm so happy that we put this out as a beta. Just said, look, we need your help figuring this out. Cause it's so big. We're learning about people again with tens of thousands of cards. How do we keep all of that together in one place? But if you head over to ebay.com/tradinghub/ there is more information to read about. And then you can send feedback to beta feedback@ebay.com. And we will read all of it. People that are involved with trading cards, they love to share their opinions. They don't hold back and we don't want them to hold back. We want them to tell us how to fix this and make this be the tool that they need in the future. That's where we would need them to do it.

Griff: You just send it to beta feedback@ebay.com and Bob and his team will see it. Bob, thank you so much for stopping by and talking to us about these new additions to the Trading Cards Market on eBay. Bob means is the Director of Trading Cards at eBay. We've been talking about these new features, specifically price guide and collections. And we'll put the links that we talked about in the episode transcript so that you can check them out yourself.

Griff: Joining us now is Kirsty Dunn, Senior Seller, Social Marketing and Communications Manager. She will share how sellers could get their hands on $10,000 to power their business. And also she's going to share some seller tips for prepping for the Holiday season, which you know, we're talking a lot about this month. Welcome back Kirsty Dunn.

Kirsty: Thanks for having me Griff.

Griff: We've talked with and teased a little bit about the re-introduction of this latest round of the Up & Running Grants. But I want to make sure as many people as possible apply, cause it's not hard to do, and you're not going to get the grant if you don't apply. Let's go through it all. What is the Up & Running Grant Program again?

Kirsty: This is actually our second annual Up & Running Grant program. We have continuing to give back to our small business. You've obviously really been powering America and continue to power America. 50 sellers will once again be chosen to receive $10,000 in cash. They also get Seller School training and access to a growth advisor. We're inviting all of our sellers to apply for one of these grants. So we really hope that the sellers take advantage and apply again.

Griff: We don't do this alone, correct? We do this in partnership.

Kirsty: Yeah. So we do this in partnership with Hello Alice. They're a business accelerator, so they help us run the Grants program. When you apply, you have to register to have an account with them. They really help us administer the whole Grants program because as you can imagine, there's a whole bunch of things that come with the Grants program as well. So yeah, we work in very close partnership with them.

Griff: It must've been successful last year and that's why we're bringing it back this year, I assume.

Kirsty : Exactly. Yeah. And like I said, it's just part of our DNA. And just being able to give back to those 50 sellers, being able to see them go through their Seller School journey and actually applying some of what they learned to their business, hearing their stories about how they applied the grants to their businesses. I just heard from Trong actually, I'm sure he won't mind me sharing. And I know that you love Trong.

Griff: Trong was one of our most popular guests we've ever had on the show. He was amazing.

Kirsty: He's incredible. While he's actually just about to release two new products, which he's been able to develop thanks to the funding and the resources and the training that he got through the grant.

Griff: How to sellers apply again?

Kirsty: We have a landing page it's ebay.helloalice.com. There's a grant application that we ask you to fill out. We want you to tell us what you need the grant for, how you're planning to use the grant, how you run your business. Obviously we want to know a bit about your business and how you want to evolve. Everyone can head on over to there. The applications close on September 3rd at six o'clock Eastern. So there's still a few weeks to apply. So we want to get as many applications as possible. You do have to be registered eBay seller obviously but all of your listeners are. We hope.

Griff: What are some of the tips we're going to tell people when they're going through the process about what they should be keeping in mind to make theirs standout.

Kirsty: Yeah, I think that's a really important question Griff. We judge the applications based on obviously, like I said, the need for the funds, as well as their plans of how they're going to use the funds. The applications kind of split up. There's some which are more kind of background questions, some basic questions on their. business. And we obviously want sellers to be complete and truthful and accurate with how they run their business, what they sell, why they're passionate about it. But then there's also a more long form narrative questions near the end of the application. This is where you have the ability to tell your story and to share your needs and set yourselves apart from the other applications.

Griff: If I was a seller and I was applying for this, I'm not because I can't as an employee. What I desperately need is to completely redo my workspace, which is currently my garage. And I would be putting in a grant application saying, in order for me to grow my business, I really have to invest in my physical location. So this $10,000 will go a long way for helping me get this foundation to my business in place so that I can grow it. That would be what you'd want to say and not something like where we've been working so hard. We're looking forward to a Las Vegas vacation. So this will really help!

Kirsty: Exactly how you can demonstrate that it's going to be applicable to your business and help you grow the space that you have. You might need to get storage space. You might want to expand. You might want to get more inventory. You might be planning to pivot to new inventory.

Griff: And that's always a huge investment having to do that.

Kirsty: Exactly. Yeah. So the funding can help you kind of dip your toes or try that, tell us what your goals are and what you want to spend this money on. So that's the Up & Running Grant.

Griff: While I got you here, I also wanted to talk a little bit about holiday prep and we get our content from the sweepstakes that runs on the eBay for Business Facebook page. The most recent one was Prepping For The Holidays. And we have a little collection here that we can read through some of the best tips. Would you like to do that?

Kirsty: I'd love to. Yeah. We have some really good advice from some of the sellers and some of our followers on our Facebook page. Particularly about what they're doing now to stock up and get ready for the Holiday season.

Griff: Great. So why don't you start?

Kirsty: Well Yeah. So Jenny says list, list, list and keep your eyes peeled for those Christmas treasures. When sourcing, she says Summer is prime Christmas time for garage sales. So she's already out and about finding all of her Christmas inventory, her Holiday inventory.

Griff: Colleen says, focusing on getting as many things listed before quarter four starts. Now that's really smart. I hired a few new workers. She says, and I'm stocking up on shipping supplies.

Kirsty: And then Alita says, I'm cleaning up old listings to make them more discoverable by the search engines and perhaps high on the list of search results. So I guess she's spending some of the time in the summer to get all of hat listings in tip top condition. So love that.

Griff: Very good use of time. Julie says that she's researching, what's likely to be in demand and then streamlining or listing processes. Anything that makes business more efficient is a good thing.

Kirsty: Right and then Marianne says sorting and organizing all the inventory purchased earlier this year. And last year researching, photographing, writing up my descriptions. She says, my shipping supplies are well-stocked and need to be better organized. She says she listed new Christmas in July items to get in the mood and she's looking forward to a great Holiday season starting now.

Griff: That's great. Amanda says, I have Holiday card I'm starting to fill out to include with each purchase. So she's getting them all prefilled with handwriting on her cards that she puts in each box. Very wise.

Kirsty: I love that. Yeah. I love that. Cause hopefully she gets so many sales that she needs to have hundreds, thousands of these cards ready to go. That's such a smart idea.

Griff: Yeah. And if you think that's a good tip, you want to listen to next week's show because Amanda's actually part of it.

Kirsty: Tammy says I want to get everything from my death pile listed. Before I plunge into listing the 200 plus Holiday CDs I have in my, to be listed queue. I'm stocked up on shipping supplies.

Griff: Oh yes, death piles.Speaking of shipping, how are sellers prepping for the Holiday shipping season?

Kirsty: Denise, she says getting ready for the busy season by ordering eBay shipping supplies. She says, don't forget to use your quarterly coupon if you have a store.

Griff: You'd be surprised how many people actually forget to do that? So you can use it anytime during the quarter. If you don't use it, the next coupon will show up for the quarter, but you let a whole 90 days go by without getting free shipping supplies. So make sure you're always using those.

Kirsty: Set a reminder in your calendar phone, near the end of the quarter and remind yourself, have I used it?

Griff: If you don't use it, you can. I've seen people do this. If you overstock and you know you're not going to use them. You can always sell them on eBay. Colby says watching for shipping supplies and major deals on toys going on. A lot of clearance happening right now in retail stores, which leads to great things to put up on eBay.

Kirsty: And finally Diane says, listed about half my Halloween and Christmas stock when getting items out, I leave one for every week left until Holiday and less that to keep stocking category fresh. She says I'm a loving the assorted bubble mailer package. It may just be what I order with my coupon.

Griff: You should always check the store out for the shipping supplies, the eBay Shipping Supply Store with your coupon because there's new things being added all the time. Make sure you check it out. Kirsty. I want to thank you so much. Always great to have you here.

Kirsty: Thank you for having me back and get you Up & Running Grants applications in by September 3rd at eBay.helloalice.com.

Griff: Absolutely. Kirsty Dunn is Senior Seller, Social Marketing and Communications Manager here at eBay.

Griff: We're calling eBay sellers who posted a tip in the eBay for business Facebook sweepstakes posts. And last week we talked to eBay seller, Mary Robbins, about her Holiday sourcing tip. And this week we have Ann Kulinkski on the line. Ann thanks for calling in.

Ann: Thank you for having me.

Griff: I read your tip on the Facebook Sweepstakes Contest and we thought we should talk a little bit more about that. But before we did, I went out and checked your eBay store. You have a lot of stuff!

Ann: I do. I specialize in nothing and I don't claim to know everything. Just a little bit about everything enough to be dangerous.

Griff: Do you source differently for the Holidays. Or I should ask you, do you source for the Holidays?

Ann: I source year round for the Holidays. I do a lot of collectibles and vintage items as well as some new, more modern. What I do is primarily auctions. I don't do a lot of rummage sales and estate sales. I like to buy in volume because when I buy in volume, I can buy at better prices. And that's been the key to my success. It doesn't work for everybody, but it does work for me and a number of others that I know.

Griff: And we'll put a link to your eBay store in the episode transcript for episode 153 so that people can check out your store. It is really diverse. I mean, I'm used to seeing sellers with a diverse line of merchandise, but yours is about as diverse as I've ever seen.

Ann: I have talked to a lot of people that ask, you know, how do you decide what to sell? I don't know what I'm going to sell tomorrow. Every estate is very different. When you go to auction, sometimes it's a number of estates and personal products. And I don't claim to know everything about that item, but research is key. And when pricing, if you can buy right, you can sell, right. I'm a firm believer in free shipping. And I know that the very hot, controversial topic, but after you've done this for a while, you learn your boxes and your weight and you just build it into your price. If somebody is searching on eBay using free shipping as a qualifier, many items, aren't going to be seen if it's not being offered.

Ann: Yeah, that's true. Although it's mixed in collectibles. I think you still have an advantage if you take the shipping out of the equation for the buyers. Then they don't have to think about, well, how much does this really cost? And it's just one price and they know what that price is. Oh my heavens. I'm looking at your listings and I found, I know it's a woman's hat and I know it won't fit me, but darn it's my favorite color. It's the woman's Bohllman hat. It is a doe skin felt citation green. It is fabulous.

Griff: Yeah. There's some really neat items. Yeah I want that Hat. I want that hat! It Won't fit me. I have to shrink my head. I don't think that's possible. It's been tried.

Ann: Hats look good on you. They don't on me, unfortunately.

Griff: Ann, if you had to give your advice or talk a little bit or extrapolate on the tip that you provided to the Facebook page for eBay for Business, what would you tell a seller when it comes to sourcing for the Holidays?

Ann: The sky is the limit. Retail has changed so dramatically through the years and it will continue to change. Buyers don't know what they're looking for until they find it. And the key to my success is a vast inventory of different items. People oftentimes don't know what they're looking for. Sometimes they'll go on and they'll search for something specific in a certain category and stumble across an item. And they didn't realize they needed it until they seen it or it triggers a memory. And that's the key to what I do is their grandma had it, or they had one as a child. I hear from buyers all the time through email. I had a Teddy bear recently that this young lady had, it was purchased by her grandmother for her, but she had one in foster care growing up and through the years it had gotten lost or misplaced and she was struggling and going through a really hard time. And her grandmother looked up Zazu was the teddy bear's name and found it. There was no others on eBay. It had actually been in my inventory for quite some time. And it was that memory that triggered it and she bought it, sent it to her. And she said her granddaughter was just in tears of static because that bear was her comfort growing up. And now she was struggling again. And it was a comfort item.

Griff: What a great story, it is true too. Memories, boy, they trigger a lot sometimes when you're searching on eBay, I've never owned this hat, but I want the memory that I once wore it maybe in a different life. ( laughter).

Ann: It's fun doing, you know, and that's the key with eBay is when you're doing it, if you love what you're doing, it's really not work.

Griff: I agree with you a hundred percent. And I'm sure there are thousands of sellers who do as well. Well, Ann I want to thank you very much for coming on and giving us your tip and continued success to you in a very profitable Holiday season as well.

Ann: Thank you. Continue selling!

Griff: Ann Kulinski's eBay store is Granny Annie's Attic We'll put the link to her store in the transcript for episode 153, you can find this and all episode transcripts at www.ebay.com/podcast. Just click on the link for the episode you're searching for in this case, it's 153 and then click the link for transcript. All of the links are at the top. If you have a tip you want to share with your fellow eBay sellers, send us an email to podcast@ebay.com and include your phone number. So we can call you back and talk to you live.

Brian: You got questions.

Griff: We got answers. Brian is back. Thanks, Brian.

Brian: My pleasure Griff. I've looked through the three questions for this week and I think I'm ready to help answer them.

Griff: Excellent. So why don't you read the first one then?

Brian: Okay. Our first question was sent to us by eBay seller Michelle who writes, Hi. I just discovered your podcast from the eBay Open and have been plowing through the episodes. I have been selling mainly apparel on eBay since last year. I'm helping my mother-in-law downsize and she has given me a lot of great collectibles, home goods and art to sell with the profits, going to my kid's college fund. What a great idea, what a great mother-in-law. Should I set up a different store for these items or would that get too confusing? I just don't want to mix my inventory with hers. If I do open a second store, how would that work on the app? Thank you so much, Michelle Sass. One sassy lady is her user ID.

Griff: Well, thanks Michelle. Oh, Brian. It's time for the old pros and cons mostly cons in my view of opening a second or third eBay's store.

Brian: Yes this is a perennial question. Michelle, there are not so many benefits to opening a second eBay store and a lot of obstacles. For example, you'll have to open a new eBay account for the second store.

Griff: Exactly and that new account will have to have a unique user ID and email address associated with it.

Brian: And that account will also be subject to the same listing restrictions that all new accounts have. For example, you will be limited to listing only a few items at a time to start.

Griff: Yeah and although you can always ask eBay to raise your selling limits for that account. There's no guarantee that they'll grant your request.

Brian: And you'll have to manage two separate accounts. That means two separate logins and that's for all channels, mobile desktop. Yeah.

Griff: And another concern with two separate accounts, you won't be able to use any of the Promotion Managers features of either of them to cross promote between the two separate inventories.

Griff: That might not be a concern of Michelle though.

Brian: I guess, but Hey, anything that helps sell either inventory is a good thing. Promotions could be a sales booster. Correct?

Brian: The other thing I thought of Griff, if someone's browsing through her store, they won't see the other inventory as well. Right.

Griff: And maybe she feels it's not a good mix, but think of it from a buyer's perspective, it actually may be a good mix if it's because she wants to keep that inventory separate for bookkeeping. She can do that. But let's talk first about the benefits. Michelle, the benefits, honestly, I don't think there really aren't any benefits from having two separate accounts. Yeah. You can keep the inventory separate that way, but I just don't see that this is a necessity cause you don't need two accounts to accomplish this. You can indicate, for example, your mother's inventory in your store you're selling with a note in the customs label field. Maybe you say, you know, moms or something that you can use. And then you can use that field to find and filter all of her inventory and your payments report for your single account.

Brian: That's a really good idea. Great. So Michelle, our recommendation is though you can indeed open a second account to sell your mother's stuff. It's not really worth the hassles of starting and managing a second account, especially for a limited amount of inventory.

Griff: If we're talking about, you know, thousands of items, I don't know, maybe, but even then.

Brian: You can keep your inventory separate in your bookkeeping. If that's important, you don't need to rely on a second account to keep them separate for bookkeeping purposes.

Griff: Yeah. We hope this helps Michelle. Thanks for including your shipping address by the way. We're shipping mugs out this week so keep an eye out for yours. Our next question is about shipping eBay seller Suzanne sent the following to podcast@ebay.com. Hello, I've been kicking around the idea of expanding my eBay, selling to include furniture and larger items. The thought of packing and shipping them sounds incredibly daunting. And probably beyond my capabilities somewhere. I heard that I can sell larger items, but have the buyer take of the packing and shipping by a third party. If I miss this somewhere in my searching, please put me on the right track. Thank you, Suzanne Sheerman on eBay. She's Distal Think Antiques. Interesting name. Thanks, Suzanne. The vast majority of sellers with the occasional big item, they tend to list it for shipping. They just say local pickup only. No shipping. Buyer has to come and pick it up.

Brian: One of the pros to that. Is there, there are no worries about packing or crating and shipping.

Griff: Right But there are a few cons because local pickup only drastically cuts down on your potential buyer base.

Brian: But for some big items, local pickup only makes sense. Things like sofas or tables, appliances, et cetera. And we mean those big furniture and appliance items that don't have a collectible interest.

Griff: That's a good point, a huge contemporary sofa is best listed with local pickup only with no shipping, but you know, a designer name, for example, let's say an Eames or a Knoll mid century modern sofa, that's worth quite a lot of money that should be made available to a wider audience in order for it to realize its true price.

Brian: If it realizes its true price I'm sure she would not mind paying for the shipping.

Griff: Right. But there's an option for that.

Brian: There is. And there's, there's always the freight option.

Griff: Exactly. eBay Shipping Policy feature has options for selecting something called freight, which you can use for large and or heavy items. And we also have a long list of national freight carriers that provide.

Brian: The one thing is there's some work to be involved on anything that you do for freight before you list that big desirable item, you would need to determine which of the recognized freight companies are in your area. Then you would have to get a list of their rates based on size, weight and destination.

Griff: In the example of that IEM sofa that we were talking about, the freight company would come out, you would give them measurements and they would tell you how big the crates going to be. And actually they may provide crating as part of their service. So you don't have to do anything except fork over some money. They do all the work and on eBay, any seller who provides a freight option for shipping can then use that information they get from the freight company to set up their own rate tables based on the information provided. For example, your freight company might have different rates based on where in the U S the item is going and they would give you that information. And then I'm going to put a link by the way, where you can see these rate tables. And then you can create the rate tables for your freight options and then select those as a policy. And we're going to get there too, because once you have that information and you've created your rate table, you can then apply it to any item so that when a buyers gets their invoice, they'll see the freight charge there, clear as day. And it will also be in your listing. Based on your rate table, based on their location in the United States, they'll see a cost that they'll have to pay for freight shipping.

Brian: A really good point. Another concern, most freight companies will also come and pack and create a large item that you have contracted with them to ship. There could be an extra charge for the crating service.

Griff: Yes, but that you can, if you know it beforehand, you can add it to the listing and the policy. So it shows up on the invoice as a handling charge, which will be baked into the price. So you can include that as a handling charge when you list the item, good idea. All this information is probably only worth considering if you're going to list big items continually, or if they're really valuable. You know, if you're planning to only list a few big items now, and then, and they aren't valuable antiques or collectibles or like high value goods, like air conditioners that are sold out in most markets, then stick to the local pickup only.

Brian: Also keep in mind that with local pickup only you will have to meet the buyer to complete the sale. That means the buyer comes to your place of business. If your place of business is your home, you may want to arrange to meet the buyer in a safe location. Many local police departments provide a safe trading place in their parking lots, something to consider. The other thing I've heard sellers will meet in front of a bank because there's lots of cameras in front of the ATM machines.

Griff: Oh yeah. That's a good point. Now there are two pages on eBay that have lots of information. You're going to need for helping you to set up shipping with a freight option If you decide to go that route and we'll provide their links in the transcript for episode 153. Now our last question was sent to us a t podcast@ebay.com and Brian, why don't you read this one?

Brian: Sure, Hello. My name is Karen and I'm originally from Columbia. I've been selling on eBay for the past five years, starting with my personal account and now upgrading it to business. I would like to start to ship items to my country and other places around the world. And I've been very into the Global Shipping Program. Please guide me with information about how to start to dive in it. I would really appreciate it. And I would also love to receive the eBay mug. We definitely can get you the mug and that's from an eBay seller account CS Liquidations. Well, thanks Karen for that. Using the Global Shipping Program couldn't be easier. You only need to set up a shipping policy to include the option for GSP or what we call the Global Shipping Program.

Griff: Yeah. In fact, if you have a current shipping policy set up one or more, you can choose one and you can edit one or more to actually add the Global Shipping Program as an option for them.

Brian: Their way, it's easy to get your shipping policies go to your account in Seller Hub. So that's HTTPS:// www.ebay.com/SH/OVW. And click on the Listings tab at the top. Then look for the business policies on the sidebar on the left. Once you're in the business policies page, look for the edit and create new options for shipping policies and follow the instructions from there.

Griff: And that's it. It couldn't be easier. There's really nothing else to it Karen. Once an item is listed with Global Shipping Program as an option, it will appear in searches by buyers across the world. If one of them buys your item, you'll be instructed to ship it to an address in Kentucky where our big warehouse is and eBay takes it from there. You're only for getting the item to that Kentucky address. And if you're using eBay to print your labels, the label will have that address right on it, slap it on, ship it. And that's the last you have to worry about it.

Brian: And we'll provide links in the transcript for this episode that have more information for the eBay Global Shipping Program.

Griff: Now we hope that answers your question, Karen, and we'll send you a mug in the coming weeks.

Brian: Do you want a eBay for Business Podcast mug?

Griff: Who wouldn’t?

Brian: If you do, and you have a question you'd like us to address in an upcoming episode, why not kill two birds with one stone and send it to us?

Griff: Oh, geez. Two birds with one stone. Brian, PETA will be phoning in soon. We'll just send them to Griff@ebay.com.

Griff: Thanks.

Brian: You can call your question in at (888)-723-4630.

Griff: (888)-723-4630 is the number and the best part is always, you can call that hotline anytime of day, any day of the week, leave your question or comment. And if it's appropriate, we just might put it on the air.

Brian: If you're not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: Hey, where are you? No, sit down. We're not done yet. Don't forget your Daily Podcast To Do List.

Brian: Always check the announcement board for breaking news. Make it a daily thing.

Griff: Don't buy a thermal printer.

Griff: What? I thought you wanted them to buy one?

Griff: No. Reverse psychology Brian.

Brian: I don't think it'll work. Ignore him and get yourself a thermal printer.

Griff: Or not.

Brian: Check out the transcript for this and all episodes for up on what you heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: On our next episode we'll welcome back. eBay seller and seller mentor Cathy Terrell, to talk us through the new eBay store, edit category feature and how you can utilize it in your store categories during the holiday shopping season. I'd like to.

Brian: Again, thank our guests this week. Bob means Kirsty Dunn and eBay seller, and Kolinsky.

Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

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