Episode 71 || End of Year Review, Webinterpret

[doug@ebay]

This week, our theme is End of Year Review. In the Main Story Dawn Ralston gives tips on organizing and decluttering. On Inside eBay we’ll learn about Webinterpret from eBay’s Greg Ross Smith and Mark Ellis, VP of Partnerships for Webinterpret. We’ll also have a special segment on tax and bookkeeping tips with Barbara Weltman. As always, we’ll cover topics of conversation from the eBay Community in The Buzz. To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

Links

eBay for Business Podcast (ebay.com/podcast)
eBay Meetups (ebay.com/meetups)
The eBay Community (ebay.com/community)
eBay Seller Center (ebay.com/sellercenter)
Weekly Community Chat (ebay.com/communitychat)
eBay Seller Protection (ebay.com/sellerprotection)
eBay Help (ebay.com/help/home)
eBay System Status (ebay.com/sts)
eBay Seller News Announcements (ebay.com/announcements)
Webinterpret (https://www.webinterpret.com/us/solutions/ebay/)
The 2019 Community Holiday Gift Exchange LIKES & DISLIKES Thread 
Seller haggling with the supplier 
It's Official I have had more returns in 2019 then all 15 years selling combined 
Where do I find the sales tax that ebay is collecting from my buyers? 
Post Office rates for 2020!

Hosts

Griff, Alan Aisbitt

Guests

Greg Ross Smith (eBay Staff), Mark Ellis (VP of Partnerships for Webinterpret) Dawn Ralston, Barbara Weltman

Transcript

This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

" Okay, now I've got the plan, I've bought all the things I need to put the plan into effect. Now I'm going to take a day, shut everything down and this is all I'm going to concentrate on today. And so i'll only lose one day."

"Well the U S economy is strong right now, but when it changes and the U S dollar becomes weaker U S inventory becomes cheaper. And if our sellers are set up to sell that inventory to buyers not in the U S, they hedge against a softening U S business by being able to tap into a growing non U S business."

"From a tax perspective, unless you segregated everything, it's hard to show that it's business and you want to be able to show that it's business because if you have business expenses, you want to be able to deduct them."

I'm Alan.

And I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast. Your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace.

And this is episode 71.

And before we go any further, Alan, we want to announce that there will be no new episode for next week. We're going to take a little break for the holidays.

A Break? Who said we got a break?

I did. Don't you remember the meeting?

Oh yeah. Yeah, the meeting. When will we be back?

Well, we haven't even left yet, so let's try to get through the episode and then at the end of it I'll tell you when we'll be back.

Sounds good. Okay. I'll be waiting at the end of the episode for the information.

You do that in the meantime, let's get on with the show.

Every week we stroll through some of the more interesting threads on the eBay community discussion forums. You know, to capture a bit of the thousands of conversations that happen there every minute of every day. So what do you have for us this week, Alan?

First off, we want to acknowledge an annual community tradition that is happening right now. It's called the Community Holiday Gift Exchange. Yeah. So the community gift exchange has been running since about 2002 and every year sellers, buyers, eBay staff, eBay executives come together to join in a gift-giving celebration of the holidays.

Where they exchange gifts? Will you get a partner and exchange gifts?

It is exactly, it's kind of a blind Secret Santa. Some people might call it Secret Pal gift exchange. So you play by signing up, you respond to a thread and say you're in and then our organizer, the fabulous Patty Whitlock, the shoppingmom2 is running it behind the scenes.

Does she assign who goes with who?

Yeah, she has a random number generator and she matches everybody up and then sends the details. So you will get the name of your match. The person will have then posted their likes and dislikes on the community and then you purchase something for them and mail it to them.

Well, how many people are involved? It sounds like a lot of work.

Yeah. I think this year is over a hundred people.

Oh, a hundred. It's not so bad.

It's still a lot of work.

Is it too late to join in for this year?

Too late to join in.

Oh darn. I like gifts. Of course you've got to give them too.

Next year. Yeah, keep an eye. It usually starts early, mid-November. You'll see it before Thanksgiving. Anyway, it kicks and a great, great celebration. I love it. It's a highlight of the year and I know for for eBay staff as well to be able to buy things on eBay and send them sellers is always a lot of fun.

Well, we'll post the thread so you can see the likes and dislikes list the different participants in this project posted this year. It's pretty fun.

Yeah, it's cool. And then at the end, a couple of days before the end of the year, we have a opening party. So everyone comes together on the community at the same time, opens their packages and takes photos and upload them to community. So cool. A really nice end of year celebration and everyone gets to share what they received.

Well that's excellent. Okay, so what's our next thread or really, it's our first thread, right?

Yeah. The first thread of the week is titled "Seller Haggling With A Supplier". And the poster of the thread...

The original poster?

Yeah, the OP in Hawaii wrote: "I found an item online that I thought I could sell on eBay. I tried to buy 20 from the website, but it wanted to charge me $27 for U S P S first-class shipping for packages that weigh less than a pound. That's kind of steep. I called and spoke to a friendly gal who offered to discount the shipping down to $15 still kind of steep, but I said, okay, and made the purchase. It turns out that they have been selling well on eBay. I'm ready to order 20 more. I called and spoke to a fellow this time since this was my second order for 20 I asked if I could get any kind of discounts. The answer was no on the discount."

Yikes.

" I could tell he was offended by me asking for a discount."

Offended? Like a low ball best offer?

"...I ended up not placing the order. A week past. I got called back today. I got the same fella. I apologized to him if I offended him by even asking for a discount and he said everything was cool. So they talked about running a business and making ends meet. I was ready to place my reorder. He told me to just order online and I explained to him that if I order online, it wants to charge me $27 shipping. Actual shipping costs is $4 33. I asked if I could get the same shipping discount as before. I was told no on a shipping discount. I don't mind paying $15..."

He's persistent isn't he?

He's very persistent.

"...To ship a $4 33 package, but I'm not going to spend $27 to ship a $4.33 package. Again, I did not place the order. Am I out of line here? If I am please tell me. Oh I know you will. At this point should I just give up or call back and ask for the boss or owner?"

This is an unusual thread.

This is interesting. I'm dying to hear how it goes.

I mean, I have my own opinions here. Let's find out. How did the readers or some of the readers of the thread respond?

Member pinkfishrule replied, keep calling and hanging up until you get the gal again.

(laughter) Take persistence to a whole other level!

I hope they don't block his phone number.

That's what I would do.

And then collections had this to say. I would think they give you a deal the first time but you know what you're doing. It sounds like you're trying to tell them how to run their business. I would guess they have a handling charge and make an extra buck per sale. You are biting into their profits and also trying to compete with them here. I would tell you no and have a good day.

Well I would say, good day sir!

Get out of here. That's a good point though. I think collections. Yeah. Interesting. I hadn't thought of that when I first read it, but yeah, you can see how you might think you're doing them a favor by purchasing from them, but you know essentially you're becoming a competitor. So you know, businesses have to protect themselves.

Any more responses?

Yeah. This is a good one. Normal365 chimed in with: "the seller is obviously charging way too much for shipping. Is that a legitimate way to profit? I say no."

Should it be banned. I mean, this is not an eBay seller. This is a supplier.

This is just a supplier, right?

Yeah. They can do that They set their own rules. Finally, golfingaddict added some wise words of advice: "skip the supplier and find out his source of items, where is he getting the item?"

Ooh, diabolical. Yeah. I like it.

"..Buy them from the manufacturer or wholesaler and skip this guy with a website. Be prepared to spend a lot more and possibly more on freight. This guy does not owe you a profit and 20 items does not sound like a big order. Particularly if they can be shipped, as you say, for $5. Do a little more legwork. It may pay off. But quit bugging the guy after he said no."

Stop with the persistence already!

Give the guy a break.

Exactly. Yeah, I like that, golfingaddict, that is really good.

If you're going to work with a supplier and they've kind of set up a pretty firm no about a request you've made, there's nothing to be gained by pushing it. What you could do is say, well, what if I buy 300 of these and maybe they'll talk, I don't know.

I will take them all off your hands.

But you're both running a business, so don't get offended because someone says, you know, I can't ship these for whatever reason.

Yeah, so that's it. He's in the same situation as you. So yeah, just just be mindful of that when you're messaging people.

And let's go onto the next topic. Yeah, it's one that's near and dear to my heart.

Returns? Nice. "It's official. I have had more returns in 2019 than all 15 years selling combined."

That's the title of the thread?

That's it. And then OP jnybuyandsell shared his tale of whoa..."l received another three returns this week. Two did not fit and one sent wrong item, which buyers switched to change mind. Anytime I send out 10 or so items on a Monday, I can count on at least two of them coming back almost every week. Only two abuses of the system. Knock on wood so far this year, which is pretty good, but if this continues, eBay will not be a viable part time job for my family much longer. I'm not sure if people are just not reading measurements or descriptions and I've noticed my pre sale questions from buyers have dropped dramatically. I left selling on Amazon five years ago because the returns had gotten out of hand and unfortunately eBay appears to be following their model."

No. We're not returning things. We're not buying.

That's right. Yeah. It's buyer behavior.

Stop blaming eBay. Look at buyer behavior. Go on. I'm speaking out of turn. You know how I get about this kind of thing.

Good thing about eBay is you can normally resell the item, but with free shipping, the profit is normally gone from an item after a return. I cannot imagine what free returns is doing to the people taking part.

Well, I'll tell you, I'm taking part and it's working for me. But anyway, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the responses for this thread and this topic were all over the map.

Yeah, you may be right. Why don't you read one for a change?

Okay, I will. So this is a topic from seller bosticfabricstash and they responded with: "returns are a part of business. There are more returns on the internet than in brick and mortar stores. Figure out the cost of the return and then add it to the price." And bostonfabricstash goes on to say, "and this is what I love, I add 99 cents to all my apparel fabrics to cover returns and free shipping." This is a guy after my own heart. This is what all businesses do that sell and have to accept returns. This guy gives it away. jnybuyandsell at the top, the original poster says.." I can count on at least two coming back almost every week." There you go. Well, now you know how much is going to come back. Now you can work the cost of those into all of your items and spread it across your entire transactions for a period of time so you don't worry about the cost of taking a return.

That's one take on the topic, they posted: "It's the annoyance of eBay, letting buyers return under any conditions, appeasing the buyers no matter what and the cost that you must now pass onto your innocent buyers instead of eBay having the buyer who caused this pay the cost of the return. You could stop free returns if you use them. If you don't have to follow the trend of appeasing the buyer at your detriment. If you don't want." I think you need to make buyers happy.

This is the kind of mindset I just don't understand. It's not a matter of appeasing the buyer, it's pleasing the buyer. Wherever you sell, there's a competitor. So if you're not gonna make a buyer happy, your competitor will and you'll see your business drop. And I always say that to sellers who bring this up. I say, well, you know, what do you expect? How do you expect to be treated as a buyer?

Put yourself in the buyer's shoes. You read the next reply.

Well, okay, so this is seller myboardid, and they wrote: " I too have had more returns this year than in 22 years of selling total. I still do free returns so I can maintain my Top Rated Seller Plus status because (now listen carefully. I like what they say here) the money I save with the 10% final value fee discount is still much higher than the cost of those returns."

That's a good point. The 10% is a significant saving if you can get it.

And again, it's a way of mitigating the cost of doing business. So A, returns, there are reality. You're not going to escape them. B, as a business owner, you are in charge. You can mitigate these costs by figuring out an incremental cost to add to all of your listings, all of your items, the inventory to help cover the cost of doing business. That's what it's called.

That's what we're all about.

Okay. Enough of me. Enough of me and my strong opinions on returns, shall we move onto the next thread and topic?

Let's do that. It's titled, "Where Do I Find a Sales Tax that eBay is Collecting From My Buyers?" And the OP gladyourerhere asked: "I see the tax, I'm charged when I make a purchase, but I can't find a sales tax that is collected from my buyers. Any suggestions?"

Good question. Inquiring sellers want to know.

Indeed they do and to that end seller, mothermarysistersue helped out with the following bit of advice: "for an individual sale you can go under, your Paid and Shipped orders on the drop down box on the left side, click on your report. Sometimes the tax collected will be there. I have no idea where to find a composite report."

But apparently the original poster then ended the thread with this discovery of theirs, which is great and it was the advice that we would have given given I'm sure, and they went on to say: "I found the comprehensive sales report in Seller Hub under orders and then on the upper left hand side, paid and shipped." Now right side of the screen there's a link for download report and the information it provides is extensive. You'll have to expand the columns to see the taxes eBay collected and the taxes the sellers paid. It's a spreadsheet and there's a column that shows you all each transit individual transaction, the cost for that transaction, all the information for that transaction. And one of them is if tax was collected.

Lovely. Well you learn something new every day. Thank you Griff. Thank you community.

And our final selected eBay community discussion is...

" Post Office Rates For 2020."

Oh i bet they are going up!

Beautiful. Right.

It's a perennial favorite.

Isn't it just? This shouldn't be news to any experienced seller. The three major carriers nearly always announce a rate adjustment, AKA hike every December. These are as reliable as Santa Claus.

Only real.

Stop. You'll upset the parents.

I know.

So this thread is brief. It has a link posted by DP2Dora that leads to a stamps.com page from October, 2019. It contains a concise and easy to read breakdown of all proposed postal rate changes for USPS. We'll post the link in the transcript, but you can also find a quickly by searching Google on 2020 postage rate increase.

And we'll also have every single thread we discuss. We put the link to those threads in the transcript for this episode. You can find those links and the transcript. If you go to the podcast page at ebay.com/podcast and then open an episode and you'll see a link there for transcript.

That's right. That's right.

So this is what happened. The poster, nobody'sperfect, pointed out the following, and this is really important because at the time this was released in October and they said this was news in October. USPS announces their new proposed rates every year in mid October for the review process and then implementation in late January. And he's right. That's the yearly cycle. So see the post in the thread and he or she says to link to notice one, two, three for current status. There have been no changes to the proposed new domestic prices as noted in discussions last October. The only real significant change is that retail ground will now be subject to dimensional weight. What stamps.com posted, they laid it out pretty clearly what the rates will be. Those, even though they were proposed, they usually don't get any pushback. They end up being the rates that get announced and implemented in January.

Okay. So it was just a heads up really.

Any comments on this?

Yeah. One seller, jjaspergarage posted what they plan to do about the postage rate increases. And they said, "after holding my rates for three years, I'm finally raising them for 2020. It took a lot of planning and recycling of hundreds of bubble envelopes found at post offices to give my customers below market rates during 2007 to 2019 and I won't ever complain about being able to mail a letter across the country for 55 cent.

Postage Rate increases are inevitable. It's a fact of doing business. It's unavoidable, but that doesn't mean you can adapt to them. And remember when the rate increases happens, all sellers, all merchants, everywhere that rely on one of the three carriers, including USPS have to fold those in somehow. So it's not going to put you at a competitive disadvantage. You just gotta plan for it so that you can adapt your prices.

It effects all sellers on eBay. So we're all, we're all in the same boat together on this one. Well, Griff, I think my time has come to an end.

Well just at this point. I mean, you'll be back.

Oh, I'll be back for the outro. Of course!

I couldn't out-tro us without you.

No, no, you know, I love those closing credits. But anyway, The Buzz is taking a break for the rest of the holidays and The Buzz will be back in the new year and we will have the latest hot topics from the community then.

Thank you Alan. We'll see you then. Thanks Griff.

You sell on eBay and you run a business out of your home or your garage or your basement, I don't know. But you have this constant low resolution anxiety like me that your business space and operations, they're just not as efficient as they could be. Maybe you're constantly having to hunt down sold inventory, maybe even having to cancel a sale because you can't find the item you just sold. Or you sometimes find yourself tripping over packing supplies or bags of unlisted inventory and spraining an ankle or an otherwise simple task like packing a sold item involves several trips around various parts of the room to find the packing tape, the bubble wrap, the tissue, the boxes, and several hours later you've got it wrapped. Diva Dawn Ralston known on eBay is Top Rated Seller divadawnlv is the founder of Declutter With DivaDawn and the director of Camp Clutter Be Gone. Dawn is an expert in the field of decluttering and organizing a business space and she's agreed to share some of that expertise with us as we start out fresh for the new year. Welcome Dawn.

Hi Griff. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

It's so good to speak to you again. I know we used to talk on eBay radio all the time.

I miss that.

Dawn, could you explain the concept of declutter?

Decluttering is not about stripping your space of everything. It's a matter of getting what you have down to what you really need. Do you need seven pairs of scissors on your desk? Probably not.

But I like those scissors.

But you could use them elsewhere.

I suppose. It's funny you picked up on scissors. I have scissors in every room of the house.

I have scissors everywhere too because otherwise they end up all over the place.

Oh I see. Maybe I'm making a good move here.

I think maybe just don't have them all in one room.

Okay. Not in one room. That's a good thing to do, but you mentioned something not having to strip down to a bare room and starting over again.

Only if you're making a major renovation and you want to strip down to everything. I think it's more important that you strip it down to what you truly need and not keep remaking the wheel.

Well I realized as I said it, that if you've got constant business going, it could be really disruptive to have to stop everything. You'd have to really put your store on vacation if you were going to do that.

You really would because if you're redoing your shipping area, you're not going to have access to that. You don't have access to your desk If you're redoing all of that. You need to make a plan where it will disrupt your business the least.

Okay, so that was my next question and you answered it. And that was what should a disorganized seller who wants to declutter their workspace do first?

Make a plan. That's figure out what area of your business is making you the most crazy and then figure out what will make it better. Don't just start clearing everything out because you don't have room on your shipping desk because all that stuff has got to go someplace. So you need to make a plan to how it's going to be better organized and maybe set aside, okay, now I've got the plan, I've bought all the things I need to put the plan into effect. Now I'm going to take a day, shut everything down and this is all I'm going to concentrate on today. And so they'll only lose one day.

What does a typical decluttering plan look like? So you've seen many plans and they're, they're different for each seller and each client. What do they have in common? What's some of the main components of a plan we're putting together.

An efficient arrangement of the furniture involved and a pretty clear workspace. Only the things you use every single day should actually be on the workspace. If you only use it once a week, it does not belong on the table or on your desktop. It belongs in a drawer. It belongs someplace easily accessible, but not taking up that really expensive, important real estate.

Unless you have the luxury as a seller of having an enormous warehouse with lots of space. Most of us work from our homes. We're really limited to both the space and the furniture we're using right now.

Exactly, and even sellers with warehouses, they get full too because you think, Oh, I've got so much room, but eventually the room fills up if you don't keep it under control. Yeah, we like to acquire stuff, don't we?

Yeah, we do.

Including inventory.

That's important to have, to keep acquiring and to keep turning over. You don't want stuff that you bought five years ago still sitting in that, well, I need to get to this pile.

There actually is a pile in my garage that's five years old.

I had one of those too and I worked through that in October. I did 22 straight days of "I'm going to take a box or a bin at least one and deal with it."

And did you get rid of most of it?

I got rid of maybe a third.

Well that's a start.

I listed most of it and the rule was ,the box came in and it went back out empty. So everything had to get listed every day, 22 straight days. It was a chore, but it was done. And I have this big wonderful space in my garage now.

How long does it take to go through a plan and decluttered to the extent where you feel you've accomplished something, is there an average amount of time that a seller should plan for? What does that plan normally look like when it comes to time?

I think the biggest thing that takes the most time is the planning, is the looking at a space really critically and saying, what about this doesn't work? Where should things be? How can I put them there and brainstorming. I think that's the longest part of the process to me. Then it becomes, okay, what supplies do I need to get them ordered? Find what kind of shelving or boxes or bins or whatever it is I need. I usually find it takes like me like a day to strip the space or to move everything around and then another day and a day being say five or six hours. Then it takes another afternoon or a period of hours to put everything how you want it. But the biggest part is the planning because part of that planning needs to be, what am I going to do with all the stuff that's here now that doesn't belong? Where does it go? You can't just take it and pile it someplace else and say, okay, I'm organized.

What are some examples that you can give us of the types of labeling and storage that works best for certain types of inventory?

I find usually that some type of shelving really helps because it utilizes all that wasted vertical space. It can't go up too high unless you're going to have step stool or something to do it, but to start with a shelving unit of some sort. Then dish ware can just go on a shelf and get stacked to where it is safely stored. But then you've got all this shelf space that you don't want to put like a small figurine and waste all that vertical space. So I've created risers out of boxes. Kind of made them U shape so that you could have a lower level and an upper level. A really good way to store smalls is in shoe boxes, because I can stack like three shoe boxes high on a shelf. So I, when I sell men's ties, they go in a shoe box and when I label them, it's tie number 842 in shoebox 26.

When you do that labeling, how do you reference it? Where in the listing is it placed so that you can find it when it's sells. I have a piece of paper that goes with every listing that works as my bookkeeping and my inventory management. So it goes on that. But you can also put it in the custom label field. You could put it as part of your listing in your description. Just small little letters at the bottom, skew number 842 so that it's easy for you to find and it's not distracting for the buyer saying, well, what does this number mean?

I found that if I am using the custom label feature, which is what I normally do and it sells on the phone app, I couldn't find the custom label anywhere. I actually would have benefited from having it somewhere else. The power came back on. Everything was fine, but it made me think for a moment about using just the custom label form. Some people put that information in a quiet little discreet place in the description, which is perfectly okay.

Right. I think as long as it's not distracting, like you don't put it in the title because then the buyer goes, what does this mean and is this the right one? If it's got this number, mine doesn't have this number.

So title, no, don't put it in the title.

But a small little at the end of the description I don't have any problem with and it makes it easy to find.

That's important.

That's the most important piece. If you're shipping isn't going to be costing you money, that means you need to retrieve quickly, package it, quickly, know where it is and know what kind of a box it's going to go into or what kind of envelope. It's all about expediency and speed and that's what de-cluttering gives you.

I, one of the things that I discovered over time, if you sell, is that you tend to acquire not just inventory but an excess of equipment. At one point I had three or four printers in my garage. When one would either break or I would get a different type, I'd leave the other one in place. So there was this having to let things go. There's a certain person who's been on TV for the last year. You may know who I'm talking about.

Ms. Kondo.

Yes, yes, Ms Kondo.. See the, the ethics seems to work when you're running a business as well. A friend of mine said, if it doesn't spark a profit, let it go.

I like that.

What do we do with equipment that's been outdated or maybe we're not using as often?

Well, I tend to just donate mine. I like to have a backup on the things that I'm really going to need. Or at least have a backup plan. Like for you with your printers. I know it's hard to let one go that wasn't broken.

They're not broken. That's the problem. I want back up.

Right? So if, if your printer goes down, what are you going to do? Maybe you need a different plan. Maybe if your printer goes down, you'll print it at work or you'll go your next door neighbor will let you come over and print something every once in a great while at their house and then you could let the other printer go.

Right. It's taking up space. Let it go. It's like keeping refrigerator manuals these days. You can access it online twice as fast.

You know me too well. How did you know I keep all the manuals?

Because I do too.

I always think, well, I can sell them on eBay. Somebody might be looking for it. Of course you can download most of the stuff from online. So it's kind of ridiculous. Really.

It's that worrying about what will happen if I don't have it.

That's the problem, right? That same fear works its way into things like inventory, which causes folks like myself in the past, when I would shop for inventory, I would buy more than I would need to sell or that I could expect to reasonably list in the fear that if I don't get this now, I'll never get it. And that's what drove me to have a garage with like 3000 shirts.

It's that fear of, you know, I'm never going to find inventory again. And then you suddenly get to the point where you're overwhelmed by it and you don't want to deal with it. So what's the remedy? You can just go out and buy new stuff. It Because I don't want to deal with old stuff.

Yeah, I don't want to deal with that old. I want to buy some new inventory. I make a joke and I laugh about it, but it really can present an incredibly serious problem for a business owner as I've learned. I did go through everything a year ago and got rid of half of it. I just read, donated it back and wrote it off, but I've since changed my habits. You know that leads me to the question I wanted to ask about maintaining good habits. Because I have done things in the past where I've, I've successfully decluttered a space and I know a lot of sellers go through this, but then clutter starts to creep in. That's a real challenge. How do you keep a clean, organized space clean and organized and not revert back to falling into that trap of having all this clutter around?

That's a really hard thing for anybody to do, especially when you're sourcing. You want that new stuff. You want the thrill of the hunt. You want to find the good stuff. I try and look at it as a pile of money that I'm giving back if I don't get it done. I found some old things that I've had piled in my garage for five years that five years ago would have brought me $500 and now they're going for about $49 and I just want to kick myself in the head. Maintaining that newly organized space is really important. Some of the things you could do is to, each week when you go thrifting, you don't get to go again until last week's is done and you have to be really strict. You have to be the parent, you have to be the mean boss and you have to say, Hey no more. Until you get all that stuff listed, you can't thrift again. And I did that to myself and it's been over a year and a half since I've thrifted. I get to start again now.

And you can start without the guilt.

Exactly.

We talk about this like it's an addiction, don't we?

I think it can be. Because you feel good when you buy the stuff and you're excited about it, but then the work happens. Then you have to measure it. Then you have to take pictures and you have to do the listing. But if you don't do those three steps, you're not going to get to ship it and you're not going to get to get any money for it.

That's the whole reason why we're doing this.

So it's really important that you set up a schedule for yourself. As in, I can thrift this week, but I can't thrift next week or until all that's listed. If it's your shipping area, it's at the end of every day. When I'm done shipping, I cleaned my surface. It'll only take me a minute and you could time yourself. It only truly takes you a minute or two and yet the next morning if you come in and your shipping table is covered, it will take you longer than a minute or two to clear it up because you want to be busy shipping.

So it's discipline. It's actually gets creating a regimen and being disciplined enough to stick to it.

It truly is. It's forming that habit. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit and only three days to break it. That's pretty sad, isn't it?

All right. 21 days. I'm going to recommit. I've actually made some progress and I know a lot of our sellers out there who, who attempt this on a regular basis have made process too. Don't be so hard on yourself. We have to take some credit for the discipline that we've shown and just, you know, keep at it. And if you fall back and you get a bag or two a stuff that it's just sitting there, you'll get to it, but you have to get to it by saying you'll get to it and then getting to it. You've got to do it.

One of the things I recommend to some of my clients that have a big mountain of unlisted inventory is let's go through it all. Put it all in boxes and bins, get it contained, and then we're going to put a date on it. And this is the date this box has to be done by.

Oh, that's a very good, I love that idea.

So then you, you just feel like this is all I have to do. There may be a hundred boxes out there but I only have to do this one. And then that's doable.

Is it harder for people to stay organized if they are working alone? Does it help to have a business partner who kind of, you check each other and they keep you in check and you keep them in check?

I don't necessarily find it to be the case. I do find that maybe one partner is a little more organized than the other or finds the disarray more difficult to deal with, but usually if you're really good working partners, you probably have some of the same bad habits. One thing I do recommend working with is a thing called a Seinfeld Chart and you could Google it to see what they look like, but a calendar works just as well. And it got its name because Jerry Seinfeld when he was an up and coming comedian made a promise to himself that he was going to write a joke every day. He might write 20 but he was going to do at least one every single day. So it's just a string of dots that you fill in. When you've done your commitment for the day. Once you get five or six red dots in a row, you don't want to not have a dot filled in. You want to keep going and you want to have this long string and Xs on a calendar work the same way. You want to develop that 21 days of habit and not have those blank spots.

Very good advice. I know you've inspired me and I know you've inspired our listeners as well to get out there and make an end of the year promise a new year's resolution, if you will. To straighten out our workspaces, make them ergonomically more efficient so that we can make more money.

That's the point of the whole thing.

Dawn, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy de-cluttering day to stop and talk with us.

Thanks for having me, Griff.

Diva Dawn Ralston is known on eBay as Top Rated Seller divadawnlr. It's one word. She's the founder of Declutter With Diva Dawn and the director of Camp Clutter Be one. You can learn more about Camp Clutter Be Gone at www.declutterwithdivadawn. That's one word. Declutterwithdivadawn.com. Check it out. You'll be glad you did.

On occasion throughout its nearly 25 years as a company, eBay has formed strategic partnerships with other companies that offer eBay buyers and sellers tools and services that eBay itself not or cannot offer. Think of label printing through our partnership with Pitney Bowes or our warranty protection program through Square Trade. Mark Ellis is the Vice President of Partnerships for Webinterpret. Mark was previously here at eBay managing our Cross Border Trade Programs. Welcome, Mark.

Thank you very much and also joining us today is someone familiar to many of our listeners, Greg Ross Smith, who for the past four years has been managing growth at the eBay U S Export Business. Welcome Greg.

Thank you Griff.

So guys, what do you have for our seller audience today? What are we talking about and why is it important?

We're really happy to have Mark here today and Webinterpret has been a partner for ages, a good partner. Why are we talking about It? Well, we're talking about growing our sellers business specifically by tapping into non U S buyers. There's a big world out there.

It's huge. We read about it in the news.

Right? It exists. We have 180 odd million active buyers and many of those buyers are not in the U S. We strongly believe that if our sellers wish to grow their business, tapping into non U S buyers as an opportunity is the right thing to do. And more than that, the U S economy is strong right now. But when it changes and the U S dollar becomes a weaker us inventory becomes cheaper. And if our sellers are set up to sell that inventory to buyers not in the U S , they hedge against a softening U S business by being able to tap into a growing non U S business. So we're talking about growing exports.

Mark, you're from Webinterpret. So who is Webinterpret?

So we've been going as a business for sort of over 10 years. Essentially our main aim is to help sellers internationally in all markets to sell into all other markets. So we partner with companies to try and help their sellers do better internationally. We're working with eBay directly for probably seven years. I first met Webinterpret way back when I was on the eBay side. Again, trying to solve this problem for eBay around how we do active cross border trade. I'm not sure if your listeners are totally familiar with passive and active.

Well, they may not be. Passive and active. What does that mean?

Yeah, so, so when you talk about GSP, essentially what you're talking about is a seller who is shipping and listing passively internationally. If they're not shipping through GSP, if they're not directly listing on another eBay platform, they're essentially shipping and listing passively. What it really means is that the eBay platforms are really only bringing your inventory up if it really hits all the market. It's not available locally. Although you're getting good international visibility, you're not doing as much as you possibly could. With active, what we're talking about is sellers who have gone beyond the passive experience, easy experience with just setting the shipping price, essentially do those who have then taken a active approach to the listing internationally. And what that means essentially is localizing the inventory in a language. So if you're listing into Germany, you know, it should be in German. German sellers are not searching in English, they're searching in German.

Although they understand English mostly, well, they still search in their native tongue.

Well if they understand it, they're not going to do it out of default. They're not going to just suddenly go on and start searching for shoes. They're going to start searching for shoes in German. So that's the starting point. Really when we started this program, and again on the eBay side, we started to look at sellers who were already actively listing. So only really the biggest sellers that can afford the translation, human translation going back sort of seven, eight years translate tools were not really available. And the process that they were going through was long, complicated, difficult, expensive. And so it was clear that you couldn't really scale a program like that.

It's almost impossible given the volume of business on eBay.

Exactly. So what we did was to start looking for partners who we could work with, who would help us grow at scale so we could help our sellers again from the eBay side. I was based in the UK back then, so we were looking at UK and German sellers shipping essentially into France, Italy and Spain.

How we can work with a partner that could then grow a lot of sellers rather than 10 that could afford to do it. So we came across Webinterpret after looking at number of the platforms. But really Webinterpret was doing was using the technology as the solve. So one of the benefits of Webinterpret and one of the things that makes it easier to use lots of sellers is we automate everything. So when a seller comes in the program and joins up, they don't really have to do anything. They continue working with their domestic listings. They change something. Webinterpret will automatically pick things in the background and list again for them. So it's really around the core of automating as much as possible.

Mark and Greg, the benefit here is that the seller who's using this tool is now more actively getting their inventory up in front of buyers, in countries outside of the U S in the language that they would use.

Yeah, exactly. So one, it's in the language that they use. Two, it's in a currency that they're familiar with. They work with every day and essentially, you know, it only makes sense that when a buyer searches for something they will have a local experience. And active really then goes and let's say it goes beyond the passive experience of sellers who are more um, you know, trying to just touch the water essentially of doing international to those that have really gone to the next step. And then what we do at Webinterpret is make that next step available to everybody.

The way that I like to describe it, Griff, is in two ways. The two benefits. Number one, increased visibility because we are taking us listings and actively listing them on other eBay sites around the world. That listing is now competing and getting the same visibility as a local listing in that country. Whereas today, if it was passive, that U S listing has to get through loads of filters to maybe show up on the other site. That's the first thing. The second thing is relevance to the local buyer. Translation of currency and language. It stands to reason that that's going to increase trust and relevance to those buyers in other countries and other languages and have them more likely to buy.

If I'm a seller using Webinterpret to provide this sort of benefit to my business and expose my inventory to other sites, do I pay for extra listings? I mean, is it a listing that's created and then listed on another site? And if so, is that my cost?

So essentially what we're talking about today, not necessarily Webinterpret but the sort of program we're working on together. Which we grew out of Europe, which we'd been doing it for some years and in the U S a couple of years now. Tens of thousands of sellers work on the programs. And what we do is again, as a business is we try and make things as easy and as simple as possible. If it's going to cost a seller money, if it's a barrier at al, we need to to do something different. You mentioned in the session fees, so the program itself has no associated fees so we can list up to 20,000 listings in each market that we're listing in to. So France, Italy, Spain, Germany, U, S, Australia, UK and Australia. So it's 20,000 listings per month, free of charge. So no listing fees, which then gives us the ability to really expand. This program wouldn't work without that. That's ongoing benefit, should we say?

Yes.

And then as part of the program, there's no extra cost to the seller. On that promotion, we're listing half of the eligible items of a seller. Eligibility basically is, is it selling? It's all the moments of the item, does it ship into the right country? If it's meets those two criteria it's basically eligible, so we'll list up to 50% of those items as part of the program, the joint program we are doing together. It's a no cost to the seller. This long growing program has been going on for 12 months here already.

And that's regardless where, which country the items being listed in?

The program covers the six core markets.

Six core. Okay.

For U S sellers, it's UK, Germany, Australia, France, Italy and Spain.

They are the main ones.

I don't know the GMV breakdown there.

Well we couldn't talk about it if we could. If you didn't know it so. You mentioned Mark that this is a special program with eBay, so that's a little different than just Webinterpret, which is a service that's available to a wider audience beyond outside of eBay I suppose?

Yes, we have a number of products, but with the eBay products, and this is obviously the main thing that we do.

We talked a little bit about why it's important to translate and get these items on the site because, well obvious it's a no brainer. You're getting your items in front of a lot more buyers that that can increase your sales. But what does that look like to a seller who's, I'm going to use the product, I want to know how this works for me. What are they going to see if they go to other sites? Like we talked about the global shipping program, Greg, you said that not all global shipping program items may show up in certain international markets because there's a set of filters they have to get through. Is the item even available to be sold there? Is there a restriction, for example.? So what will a seller see if they're searching out their items after signing on to use Webinterpret?

So what will they see as far as the buyer experience?

Yes. Because sellers, our audience are going to say, I'm going to go out and look. So I'm going to go to the UK site. I'm going to go to the French site, eBay site. And I'm going to search for my item. What can they expect to see?

If they're on the program, we've listed the item and let's say they go to the German site. Or the French site. They'll see the item, their listing exactly the same as they have it on the U S site.

Only translated?

Only translate it into the local language.

And the currency.

Yeah. This is a little bit more complicated and actually it's not as straightforward. You know, if you just use some like Google translate, you're going to translate everything like the brands and You know, maybe especially into German language, the title, it gets too big and it gets cut off. So we have a lot of technology behind the scenes, we've been working on it for a decade or so. Which really is very much an eCommerce based translation engine. So we take all of those things into consideration before we then list them on eBay. So the seller would just see their item essentially as it is on the U S just localized.

Greg, why should sellers care about this?

Why should sellers care? Well, this is an opportunity to get more visibility to a large number of buyers in other countries. Many buyers in many countries, for example, Hong Kong, all they do is look for items on sale from U S centers because U S inventory is highly desirable, most likely or more often in categories of fashion, electronics and collectibles. They are looking for made in the U S trusted quality trusted brands and so our sellers should consider that whilst the U S market is huge and their business may be robust just off the back of their U S buyers, there is an opportunity to grow. Get more visibility, get translated, and ultimately sell more.

Do these two things work together. Global shipping program and Webinterpret?

Global Shipping Program is a fantastic program for sellers who do not know how to ship at all internationally. This program, the Webinterpret program and GSP do not work together currently.

Okay, so It's either or.

It's either or. But it's a pretty simple set of recommendations. Shipping to France, Italy, Spain, Germany, UK, Australia. These are quite easy, risk-free markets to reach. Okay. So use GSP by all means and sellers should for those harder to reach riskier countries to deal with. But they can select opt out of it for these very easy markets. And if they do so then Webinterpret can work for them as an accelerator for those listings that they will ship directly to those markets.

That was my next question. You don't have to, it's not an either or for your inventory. You can have some of your inventory that's GSP and some of your inventory that's Webinterpret?

And you can actually have the same inventory doing both if that's what you want. So if you have a GSP item and you just add sort of shipping to it, your own shipping, GSP will still carry on working in the background. So nothing changes there. But then we can then work with those listings listed internationally. The key thing we need is for you to be able to ship to those countries.

Okay. So what does sellers need to do who are interested?

So really simple. So again, we try to get to the methodology that very little needs to be done. So essentially there is a link on a page on ebay.com/webinterpret. There was a limited lead pool actually, so it was sort of 100,000 sellers or thereabouts, but some of the, you know, mostly the business sellers available. But once you're on there, you click the link and essentially you then tell Webinterpret to start working. You join the eBay Webinterpret program. In the background then we will then pick up the listings that we got on your platform, check which ones eligible to go international, localize them all in the background, list them directly onto the market and then really the seller doesn't need to do anything else. So once they've clicked that button in the background over the next sort of 24 hours, their listings will go live internationally. They'll start getting more sales from those markets.

Does a seller select which listings in their inventory will be Webinterpret?

No. We don't do it that way around. So what we do is we take those items that we believe will sell and we'll list those. If a seller doesn't want to sell, they can turn some items off right in the background. If they don't want to sell to particular country, they can turn it off in.

our platform. So the last line on my list of points here is really important to hit then if you're, if you're interested in this and you do have to make sure that your listings are set up to offer international shipping, even if they also offer GSP.

Absolutely. So that is a key eligibility factors has a set of set up to specifically shipped to those markets. If not, then those, those listings will not get pulled out.

Okay.

Yup, yup. They can just go and set the shipping afterwards once they join the program if they want to. Or they can actually use our platform to just set sort of a global flat price for those items that they want to. So it's fairly straight forward it's just without the shipping we can't tell. We don't make it up.

Does Webinterpret make recommendations to sellers who are using their product when it comes to their verbosity of the description, the wording, how much wordage is in there, is there a recommended best practice?

So we're not recommending things directly, good practices, just to keep things simple to explain what the product is. What we will do is we will take out a lot of the extra stuff that could be put in there. So if you have these stars and all those sorts of things which aren't going to necessarily look right in another language, we just take the words we know what's a brand do and we make sure we localize the listing as it should be in market. But we're not giving advice essentially about how it's done. We try again to do things in the background, trying to make sure things are easy for everybody.

So it's worth at this point Griff mentioning what those best practices are. Of course keeping in mind that listings that are shown to non U S buyers, keeping that in mind when creating the listing. So for example, avoiding very Eurocentric sort of colloquial phrases or abbreviations that could confuse a foreign buyer. Like pre loved means something in the U S but it may not mean something or may mean something completely different in another country.

Something inappropriate!

Something inappropriate, so avoid terms like that. Make sure that weights and dims present that dimensions are mentioned.

In centimeters and decimal.

We will localize.

You'll localize?

Yes, that must not be that hard because U S is the only major country now that actually uses it.

The UK is not supposed to. Still does.

And also make sure that there are pictures, lots of pictures and that that is obviously a tip that you give, not just for international for everything. Everything. A picture will tell a thousand words and for buyer that wants to make sure that they are about to pay for and receive something that they want. Pictures are important and a completely accurate description of condition. These things are important, not just for international, but certainly. can make a big difference for the international buyer.

So the regular business practices still apply. There you go. And if you're interested in finding out how Webinterpret might work for you, all you have to do is go to ebay.com/comwebinterpret. So check it out. And again, I want to reiterate by the way that this is a strategic partnership. This is not just a company that developed services for eBay sellers to our developer network. This is actually integrated into the eBay platform.

This is a strategic partnership. Yes.

Well guys, I want to thank you for stopping by. This is really great.

Thank you Griff.

Mark Ellis is the Vice President of Partnerships for Webinterpret and Greg Ross Smith. He's been managing the growth of eBay's U S Export business now for four years.

You know, from listening to the last two podcasts that we're talking about, end of the year tasks. There's one thing left on the task list that we have not spent a lot of time talking about and that's your business health when it comes to bookkeeping and taxes. Barbara Weltman is the President of Big Ideas for Small Business. Barbara, welcome.

Well, thank you so much.

What is business structure?

Business structure means that first of all, you're separating your personal finances and your personal activities from your business. So you're maintaining a separate bank account, a separate credit card, perhaps even a separate PayPal account just for business. And the reason why this is so important is first of all, it's virtually impossible to be able to remember what's what. Especially when you're looking back several months after a transaction was that business? Was that personal? But from a tax perspective, unless you've segregated everything, it's hard to show that it's business. And you want to be able to show that it's business. Because if you have business expenses, you want to be able to deduct them. And if you conducting your activity rather informally and you're trying to take business deductions, meaning deducting your PayPal fees and all of your other expenses, If this really amounts to a hobby and not a business, you can't take business deductions. You're going to have to report all of your income. I repeat, you will report all of your income, but you don't get deductions. You really want to structure this as a business. And keeping good books and records and segregating your personal from your business activities is one way to show that you're really in this for a profit.

Right? And you're going to save money. Reporting as a business and structuring as a business because you'll be able to take advantage of all those expenses of which, if I remember correctly, it's a long list.

Oh my goodness, you can, you can write off your shipping costs and business use of your vehicle to go to UPS if you're, if you're doing that kind of thing. So there's many opportunities to greatly reduce the income that you receive from your sales. Not only the cost of your goods sold, but also all of these other expenses. But again, you're only going to get them if you're actually in business. And once again, the way to prove you're in business is to conduct it like a business.

But what's the difference between being a sole and another type of business?

Well, the other types of entities are used for various reasons. First of all, if you're in business with somebody else, you can't be a sole proprietor obviously. So you have to do something else. But you can gain personal liability protection with certain types of entity choices like a corporation or a limited liability company. And again, you may want to have a business structure not only for legal purposes, but it's not a bad marketing strategy to have a business that has Corp after it or LLC after it.

It gives you some street creds, some gravitas.

Precisely.

Well, you just said something that was interesting to me and that's the idea of shielding from liability. Can you go a little deeper into that?

If you are a sole proprietor, you do not have what's called personal liability protection. Which means that you can be sued personally for anything that the business does wrong, like not paying a vendor or anything like that and your personal assets, your home, your personal savings account, your personal vehicle can all be at risk. Now, as a practical matter, let's face it, most eBay sellers do not have this tremendous legal exposure. And this isn't a major concern for a lot of people. But you know, I go back to, I was thinking about this many years ago that somebody told me they were selling chainsaws on eBay. I was thinking, geez, that would be the kind of person that should have personal liability protection.

If something goes wrong. Oh, I don't even want to think about it.

Right.

Well that's good to know. So that if you have a business structure, like a limited liability, which is I think the first step beyond a sole proprietorship is an LLC?

A limited liability company can you can do it with one person or with um, two or more people. So it's just that kind of entity that gives you personal liability protection.

This is the end of the Year Barbara and a lot of people who may have been considering either changing to a more formal business structure or there is a small population out there, I suspect of people who really don't file taxes. What do you advise a seller who fits that profile?

Well, it's never too late to start doing things right. It is challenging to try to reconstruct what happened months earlier, but now's the time to start keeping good books and records and starting to report your income. Even if you've been remiss in the past, the IRS could come after you. I'm not, audit rates are way, way down, but if you're the one, you know, it's not fun.

It's no solace knowing you are the only one.

No, exactly. So you do want to try to do things right. And certainly if you've remiss in the past, it's really a good idea to talk with a tax professional, a CPA, or some other tax professional to find out how you can come back into compliance and sleep easier at night.

Barbara is correct. Anytime is the best time, if only for the peace of mind, but there's another reason. You're running a business. We assume you're depending upon the income, you want it to be as efficient as possible. Right?

And let me tell you, there are a lot of tax advantages to having that business. For example, you're reporting your income, but if you are a past owner of the pass through. like a sole proprietor, a limited liability company, an S corporation, well there's a special personal deduction of 20% of your qualified business income. So you're going to reduce the net amount that you're effectively paying taxes on. It's a real bonus for you. And why waste it by trying to duck and hide and all of that. And just more to what you said earlier, if you come forward before the IRS finds you and try to own up to mistakes, they're more than willing to work with you and and get things going on the right track.

This, this is great advice. Know what products are there or practices even that sellers should adopt so they're keeping better records?

Well, first of all, I think people should understand that you don't have to be a numbers person to keep good books and records. You don't have to know anything about accounting and, and the underlying mechanisms because there are so many tools out there now too. All you have to do is enter your income, enter your expenses. It's kind of a no brainer. There are apps to help you. There's software, there's cloud solutions. I've been using QuickBooks for forever. That's kind of the GoTo for me, but there are other options. There are low cost options, there are free options, and as I said, some that you can enter even through apps. So it's so easy and if you just sort of develop a good habit, this is all about good business practices and it doesn't take long to get into the swing of things.

Good business practices lead to better business which leads to the best profits.

Exactly.

I just coined a phrase!

Well, I like that because it's true.

It's so true.

I'm on your newsletter and it's proven invaluable to me. Where can people sign up?

You can sign up for my idea of the day and my newsletter, big ideas for small business at my website. bigideasforsmallbusiness.com . And you can also see my annual tax book is out now a J. K. Lasser's small business taxes 2020 which is for your 2019 return and year-round tax planning. And I cannot recommend your book enough.

You gotta to have a copy of this with you. So say the title again Barbra.

It's J.K Lasser's Small Business Taxes 2020.

And we assume you can buy it on your website.

You can buy it through my website through Amazon, through bookstores.

Barbara Weltman is the President of Big Ideas for Small Business and you can check out her website at bigideasforsmallbusiness.com.

Well, that's our show for this week.

I liked that show.

I thought it was a good way to end the year.

I think it was our best one yet.

Our best one?

Our best one yet. But I think that every week.

Of course you do.

How can we get better? But every week I surprised myself.

The optimistic Irishman. That doesn't exist.

Don't let anyone back at home know though.

It's not really over. We'll be back pretty quickly.

That's right.

In the meantime, while you're mulling over your gifts and having wonderful holiday cheer and celebrating your family and avoiding discussing politics, don't forget our number.

Of course, if you want to join the fun here on the eBay For Business Podcast, you can be a part of the show when you call us on (888) 723-4630.

That's right. You can call us at 888-723-4630. And you can call that hotline anytime of the day, any day of the week. Leave a question or comment and we just might put it on the air. And I have to add here that if you called in and left your new year's resolution, we will be getting back to you so we can get your address to send you and size so we can get you a hoodie. So remember you can also call and leave. You got a little time. There's a little window next week. A tiny little window open. A little window. So call us on888-723-4630. Leave your New Year's resolution after the New Year's. Once we put them all on, we will get back to those that we've chosen and we've aired. It looks like we're going to put most of them on anyway.

That's good.

And we'll send you a hoodie.

We still have our very own email address where you can send your questions if you prefer. It's podcast@ebay.com. That is podcast@ebay.com.

But we're not taking New Year's resolutions on the email. You have to call in for those. We want to hear those. In the meantime, holiday fatigue setting in? Are you tired of your visiting relatives already? Is snow getting you down? Do you need a boost, a shot of inspiration, shot a tequila? Then put down the tensile and go find a local eBay seller meetup in your area. Because you know this, I know this. At seller meetups, sellers share things. Yes they do, and sharing is caring. Tips, stories, insights, company commiserations and even a few kvetches.

I love kvetches.

Kvetches will always be there.

Now you can see meetups that are scheduled on our special eBay community page for meet ups at www.ebay.com/meetups. And don't forget to tune into the weekly live video stream on the eBay For Business Facebook page. That is every Wednesday at 12:30 Pacific. You can find that at facebook.com/ebayforbusiness. And then right after the live stream, hop on over to the eBay community.

Hop, hop, hop, hop, hop.

For a live weekly chat with eBay staff every Wednesday at one o'clock. Pacific go to ebay.com/weekly chat and we'll see you there.

Yeah, and remember we have no episode next week during Christmas week, but we'll be back on New Year's Eve December 31st we'll be back with our episode and it's technically, I guess it's still the end of the year, but we're thinking of it as it's the beginning of the year.

Yeah. By the time people listen to it, it'll be probably January 1st or second.

And don't forget, that's the episode that we're going to have.

Oh. we're going to have Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Americas market, Jordan Sweetnam. And he's going to be answering the top questions sellers voted on.

. He's a very important person at eBay and he is going to be here to answer the top five questions as submitted by sellers and voted on by sellers on the eBay community. They've been voting for the last week, so we're going to take the ones with most votes and answer them right here on the podcast.

Okay. Time to roll ourselves outta here.

The eBay For Business Podcast is brought to you by Head of Community, Brian Burke, Special Correspondent Jen Deal. Associate Executive Segment Producer, Doug Smith, Marketing Strategist, Liz Austin, my esteemed colleague, Alan. Editor in Chief, Griff.

And the eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

Have a very Happy Holiday. Merry Christmas. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Hanukkah.

Enjoy your Celebration. Whatever you're doing. Whatever you're into, have a good one and we'll see you soon.