Ep 188 || A Chat with eBay Seller and Up & Running Grant Recipient, Anna Packer

[podcast_team]

This week, we return to the Chat format with seller Anna Packer who was one of the group of sellers whose submissions were chosen for the recent edition of the eBay Up & Running Grant program. Griff and Brian answer questions about Top Rated Seller and Plus badges, Selling Limits, and dealing with Item Specifics Reminders.

You got questions? Call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.
Join the conversation
Take our podcast listener survey

Episode Links:
eBay Recommerce Report
Selling Limits
The new Spendable Funds option
Anna Packer’s eBay Store
The Doing Scary Things Podcast
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Discussion Group
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events

Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your source every Tuesday for the information and inspiration to start, run, and grow a business on, what has to be the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 188. And I just know you have a comment about me changing the wording, don't you.

Brian: Well, not this time.

Griff: I've changed the wording.

Brian: You did change the word. There's no magazine.

Griff: Yeah. I took that out.

Brian: Yeah. So no more flipping of pages.

Griff: And it also doesn't say your weekly source, it says your source every Tuesday.

Brian: Oh, so what's going on this week?

Griff: This week we'll talk with an eBay seller and recent Up And Running Grant recipient Anna Packer about her business and how she got started selling on eBay. And of course, we also have questions this week, which will answer at the end of the episode. But first, as we do every week, let's check in with you to see what's the news this week, Brian?

Brian: The single news item this week is the release of the 2021 Re-Commerce Report, which every seller should download and read. eBay's 2021 Re-Commerce Report surveyed nearly 4,500 people on the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and Australia. And the survey showed sellers and buyers are embracing Re-Commerce worldwide with Generation Z driving the demand. Here are some interesting bits.

Griff: I love interesting bits, hit us.

Brian: Twenty percent of the buyers cited the circular economy as their top reason for buying pre-owned. 32% of sellers who started in the past year identified as Gen Z, the largest of any generation. And 72% of seller surveyed believe buying pre-owned has become more common in the past year.

Griff: Good news for our audience.

Brian: Especially those selling pre-owned. In addition, 50% of survey respondents have authenticated products on eBay.

Griff: Okay. That number surprised me. I had no idea our authentication service in those categories, where it's available had been that popular. That's an amazing statistic.

Brian: So you think about handbags and watches and shoes and all of that. That's fantastic. It helps both the buyer and the seller, those authentication services.

Griff: This is an eBay created report. eBay does the survey there's this is for last year. Yeah. I think it points an arrow towards what's happening this year. And although it, it wasn't on the announcement board. It is on the eBay inc blog and we're gonna put a link to it. I really, really urge you to read this report. It's eye opening and it can help you decide when you're making decisions about your business and what it is you want to sell, knowing what buyers and sellers are saying about their businesses on eBay for 2021.

Brian: And what drives them to both buy and sell. And on that page for the report, there's a link to a recent seller spotlight featuring eBay sellers, Katie Silverberg and Vicky Egan.

Griff: Oh, two more colorful sellers you will not find.

Brian: Fantastic. They also host an event, they did the first one in Las Vegas last October.

Griff: And are they gonna do the event again next year?

Brian: Next year? They're planning to, and I would encourage any of our listeners who are like to go to in person events like that. The event in Las Vegas was an excellent event. They put on a really good one. So I really do hope they do it again.

Griff: I even think I might go next year. If I''m invited, I don't want to do a passive aggressive thing, but here I sit with no one asking me to go anywhere, so...

Brian: Well, I think you don't need actually a formal invite because they'll put it out there and anyone who wants to go can go.

Griff: I know, but I want eBay to play with a plane ticket.

Brian: Okay. I bet I can get you an invite.

Griff: Thank You.

Brian: so again, download that report from the link in the transcript, or you can visit the eBay Inc. Blog and read and download it from there. Just go to eBayInc. One word. So eBayinc.com.

Griff: You should go there all the time. In fact, and as Brian says, we're gonna put a link to that page in the episode transcript for episode 188. Now it's time to meet our guest this week. eBay seller, Anna Packer. She's also a recipient of the recent Up And Running Grant Program.

Brian: Fantastic.

Griff: Brian, it's been a while since we've talked to a seller.

Brian: We just talked to Greg last week.

Griff: Well, yeah, but that was a question and answer.

Brian: That was Q and A, it wasn't a seller interview. You're right.

Griff: We have to remedy that.

Brian: We should.

Griff: So joining us now as a recent up and running grant recipient, eBay seller, Anna Packer who sells on eBay under the store name annaaestheticmiscellany.

Griff: Love it. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here.

Brian: Definitely. Welcome.

Anna: You guys do have a lot of fun.

Griff: How long have you been on eBay?

Anna: Well, I've been selling in earnest for a little over five years.

Griff: Just five?

Anna: Yeah, just five. I've casually used eBay for many years, but in, I believe it was spring of 2017, I started really building a true store. And about a couple years later, September of 2019, I went full time with my store.

Griff: What were you doing before?

Anna: Oh, in my former life, I, I actually am a licensed professional counselor, so I had a private practice. I practiced general psychotherapy for years and kind of getting a little burned out in that field was what led me to start my eBay store on the side.

Brian: Anna, what do you sell?

Anna: Oh, well it's in the name. Miscellaneous or miscellany if you prefer.

Brian: Miscellany, I like that.

Anna: Have you heard that, like

Griff: Are puns one of your hobbies?

Anna: I mean, yes. . I think that can definitively, I can say yes to that. My dad and I actually argue about which way it should be pronounced.

Brian: Okay. Miscellaneous or miscellany.

Anna: I believe Miscellany is more like the British English pronunciation.

Griff: Like aluminum. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Okay. You said you were a casual user. I have to do a research of our sellers before we go into the recording booth and I went to your store, I don't think 12,000 items is casual.

Anna: Oh no, no. I would not consider that casual either. I just mean before 2017, I would use eBay to buy my own cool vintage stuff or textbooks for college, always trying to buy the cheapest copy of every textbook and things like that. I just used it kind of casually in that way. Just as a buyer only basically occasionally I'd sell back a textbook or something like that, but I wasn't really selling a whole lot back then.

Brian: So 2017 you started selling, how did you decide to kind of go from that, Okay. I'm gonna sell the textbook back that I've used to something where I'm actually gonna spend a little bit more time on it?

Anna: Yeah, that's a great question. I was actually introduced to the idea of eBay as an actual side hustle or even full-time income from The Scavenger Life Podcast. I heard about them because actually the host of that podcast were interviewed. It's like really, really podcasty in this story. So just try to follow me here, but I was listening to a personal finance podcast that had an interview with the host of The Scavenger Life Podcast, explaining how they had built this whole little empire of eBay themselves. And I just was flabbergasted by it. I know ever really thought, wow, this could create a full-time income or, you know, you could kind of cobble together enough things that it would be sustainable. Like I never even thought about it, but my husband and I have been together for a long time and our whole relationship, we have always like loved, you know, quirky, vintage stuff. We love thrifting. We love yard. Occasionally even dumpster dive for things like we are not above any of it. . And so when I heard about, you know, someone else already successfully running a store that way I was just fascinated. And of course I went and binged through their entire podcast and caught up to the present day and then listened for many years after that, I basically learned from them the idea of a business model, where you could have a large inventory and kind of sit on things and let them sell through. And you know, some small percentage of it sells every month and after a certain point, which is different for every person it's sustainable and it's predictable enough. So I'm also a little bit of a statistics nerd. So like all of those concepts really resonated with me. And I just thought this is brilliant. I need to try this with all of that knowledge. That was kind of coinciding with getting kind of burned out at my practice and working with people in some of their deepest, darkest moments of life is really taxing. You know, it's great work.

Brian: You should try being in the studio with this guy.

Griff: Excuse Me!

Anna: I cannot imagine. Okay. Like I have so much empathy for both of you at this point. , I'm just kidding, but, but I was getting kind of burned out and as hopefully a good therapist, I really did not want that to impact my work with my clients. So I knew that one way to kind of mitigate that would be to spend some more of my time and maybe get some more of my income from something else as like a counterbalance. And so that's why I started in earnest building a store. So the first thing I did, this is actually really funny because when I decided, okay, I'm gonna do this. I had just donated a whole bunch of stuff to Goodwill I was like, oh man!

Griff: You didn't buy it back?

Anna: No, I did not. I did not buy it back, but I just thought, dang, like I probably could have sold some of those things. Yeah. I wish I had decided this a week ago. I looked around my house. The first thing I wanted to do, I'm like really frugal about eBay, especially so really low overhead. That's part of the equation for me. I thought, okay, I'm just gonna look around my house. Like maybe there's a handful of other things that I could and in my office too, like my therapy office. I'm like maybe there's a few things to be willing to part with.

Griff: A couch.

Anna: Yeah. You know, the couch holds all the secrets. You can't sell the couch. But actually this chair behind me is my therapist chair. It has, it holds all the secrets.

Griff: Do you have a box of Kleenex and a special holder?

Anna: No, but there's oh, you can't see it in the frame, but there's a stack of books next to it. And there's actually Kleenex, hiding behind the books.

Griff: Yeah. Cause you need those right here. Have a Kleenex.

Anna: Yes.

Griff: My father never loved me.

Anna: It's sad.

Griff: I know. It's a first world problem.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah. Basically I still found a hundred things to list looking around my house in my office. I managed to come up with 100 items that probably should have been Good-willed with the rest of them. But fortunately for me, I wasn't very thorough in my first sweep.

Griff: We always tell folks like, you know, know, look around your house. And, it's funny, like new employees who come here and they say, well, I don't know what to sell. And it's like, you know, look around your house. You will find some things to sell.

Anna: Absolutely. Especially if you look around and you think, would I rather have this or 20 bucks most of the time that that'll clarify it.

Brian: When was the last time I wore this or use this or 20 bucks?

Anna: And then fortunately, once you really start researching things, as you're going through your listing process, you learn that some of it's worth a lot more than 20 bucks. Yeah. And that's even better.

Brian: How did you make the move from kind of the stuff around the house to then actually actively going out and looking at inventory?

Griff: Well, she might have had 12,000 items around her house. You don't know?

Anna: You never know, know?

Brian: She did use the word frugal though. So I assume you did not have 12,000 items around the house.

Anna: No I didn't. But I think at that time too, there was just in our household in general, we were trying to kind of pair things down. We both have very much collector tendencies but we really wanna focus on the collections that we value the most and stuff like that. There were definitely some things to clear out at that time. But one of the most fun parts of having an eBay store is the shopping part. Whether that is, you know, shopping from the dumpster or shopping from an estate sale or a thrift store or whatever. At that point, I just had, I had some rules for myself to keep myself in check because obviously the shopping is the fun part and you can't do the shopping if you don't do the listing. So you have to like, you know, Hey, I'm talking to you, I'm talking to you, but yes Griff, I am talking to you.

Griff: You know, I'm guilty. I feel so guilty. I need a box Kleenex.

Anna: I have one right here.

Brian: She needs a virtual one.

Anna: If we could somehow yes. If I could somehow pass you one, I would.

Griff: Okay. I'm recovered now. Yeah, but I'm getting better. I, I am getting rid of everything I've ever collected. Although I have to admit that every time I open up a drawer and take bunch of fragrances to list on eBay, I do spray some and go, I can't bear to part with it.

Anna: right. That the struggle is real.

Griff: It is real. It is terribly real.

Anna: That to me, it makes me feel better. I guess, about keeping the stuff that I really do value. I'm like, no, I love this. And I'm glad that I chose it. And you avoid regret on both sides that way.

Griff: No regrets.

Anna: Yeah. No, never.

Griff: Edith Poff is our muse, no regrets at all. You were up and running grant winner. What compelled you to send your submission into the grant committee?

Anna: I actually applied in 2020 and I didn't get it, but I thought I had, well, truth be told in 2020, I wrote a book about this, myself, about my store and how I built it and why I built it. Just because I talked to people about it a lot and people are kind of fascinated and now I can just throw a book at them instead of answer their questions.

Griff: Well, you hand it to them. You don't throw it at them.

Anna: Right. I hand it gently. Part of it too, I just wanted to document the whole journey because there are a lot of personal sides I'm sure for every seller to why they're doing their store and why they do it the way they do it and the things that they value. I love to write. And I just decided I'm gonna write a book about this. And so when I actually first heard about the grant program and I was reading about the application process, I thought I'm poster child for this. I have to apply like this is so cool. And also I had, I guess earlier that year, I think I had hired my first kind of like employee. She's actually a contractor still. IRS don't come after me. She's a contractor. But you know, she's working pretty much regular hours for me every month, like a good bit of work. And so I thought this is so cool. Like this store has created this amazing opportunity for me to have a lot of freedom and flexibility that I wanted, you know, to mitigate the burnout I was feeling. And now it's expanding to another person and giving her a flexible work opportunity that's, you know, kind of unorthodox. And that was just really cool. I thought, wow, this is the, this is the spirit of, you know, this grant program. And we have been working really hard for a few years on this. Let's just apply. And then of course we didn't get it the first year. But the second year we did and all of this was so fresh on my mind from writing about it in this book, because I had just been thinking through all of these kind of themes and also just deeper level reasons and benefits of, of the store. So I just, I'd already thought through many of the things that were in the application and you know, I really do a wholeheartedly recommend trying this to like whoever has the inkling to do it because I think it's not one size fits all at all, but that's why it's so beautiful because you can create it the way that it works for you.

Brian: I'm glad that you applied a second time.

Anna: Me Too. I was so shocked that I got it. I like screamed. I was in the Dunkin’ Donuts drive.

Griff: Oh dear. I hope you didn't alarm anyone.

Brian: Dunkin’ Donuts. We don't have 'em out here.

Anna: I know. So sad.

Brian: It is sad.

Griff: There is one here in San Jose now.

Brian: Oh did they finally move back at? Like 20, 30 years ago, there was one and it closed down.

Griff: On the Almaden expressway across the street from Goodwill.

Brian: The things I learn every time I come into the studio.

Griff: Yeah, there's a Dunkin’ Donuts there.

Brian: I am trying to think what do you guys have besides like Starbucks and like, you know, one off shops?

Griff: Google. Facebook.

Anna: Do you have any other chains?

Griff: We got McDonald's.

Brian: What are your plans for the funds?

Anna: Well, first I was just beside myself, excited about it and you know, I'm dreaming of all of the other things that came with the grant program. Like the group coaching stuff. I'm now doing, some basically consults with an eBay growth advisor. Who's personally helping me apply all of this great stuff for my own store to make it better and make it more scalable so that we can hopefully keep growing and offer more opportunities to people to have like a flexible type of thing to do. But before I decided what I was gonna do, I wanted to learn everything I could from this opportunity and it just keeps on giving. So I really haven't done much with it yet, but I know there are a few basic categories that I'm kind going to assign funds to such as more contract labor. Like right now we're cleaning out a huge estate and I'm gonna be able to hire a little bit more help to get that process done faster. And there were some other like infrastructure things with my inventory storage that I was able to go ahead and take care of like just more shelving and more bins and better organization equals more efficiency and that kind of stuff. So tightening up our processes, tightening up our systems. So a lot of it's towards that, but I'm not really sure yet. I have, I feel like there's maybe one more piece missing that I haven't decided on yet, but it's been really great to just have the time to soak up all of this new, new knowledge and information, and hopefully I'll be able to make the best possible decision for the rest of it.

Brian: I'm sure you will.

Anna: I hope so.

Griff: I am too. I'm I'm always psyched when I talk to a seller, who's as excited as Anna is and I wanna get home and get in there and start listing again.

Anna: Yeah, that's right.

Brian: Since you sell miscellaneous or miscellany.

Anna: Now you guys get to you about it. Isn't that so fun?

Brian: Yes, tomato, tomato. One of the challenges that sellers always have, um, when they're selling, you know, unique items is just the time to process and get the item listed and up on the site. Are there any things that you do, like whether it's like how you take photos or how you organize to be more efficient in that, and it sounded like even storage, like you had an opportunity to improve.

Anna: Definitely. And for everybody who wants like the nitty gritty details on one hand, I wrote really detailed about all my processes in my book.

Brian: And what's the name of your book?

Anna: It's called Miscellaneous of course. That's the, you know, that's the version of the word that everyone recognizes.

Griff: You can find it at fine bookstores every where.

Anna: You can, and you can also buy it from me on eBay because of course, of course you can.

Griff: OK, good. We like that.

Anna: But on the other side of that, I've actually changed a lot of things since I wrote the book because I wrote it at the beginning of 2020. COVID changed a lot of things. It changed everything, you know, every process a little bit at least, but as far as getting things up and listed, like one of the things that I prioritize when I first hired help was to have them do like a certain step in the process. So I think honestly, one big pointer that I would give people is to just think about and map out what your process is for every item, because then you'll never get like lost in, well, there's like this pile over here that I've I've researched, or maybe you've like, I log all my stuff in a separate spreadsheet. Maybe I've already logged it, but, but you know, some of 'em have been photographed and some of 'em haven't. And well, what happens once I have the listing up? Are they intermixed? You know, with stuff that's not listed yet. I like to keep everything really tidy and have a really thorough, specific process, like workflow for each item. So like the life cycle of that item, I could tell you every single step that it goes through, then, you know, I'm never confused about what's going on with any given item. And honestly, with over 12,000 items, it has to be that way at this point.

Griff: You could find just about anything right now with your system, right. If I said, oh yeah, go find this item. You know exactly where it is.

Anna: I do. Yeah. I mean, I have spreadsheets for that, but yes, I could tell you what bin it's in which unit it's in. Cause at this point it's, I have my stuff in storage units. I had it in my garage for years, but we outgrew that now it's all just, I know which unit, which bin number and I go and pull it.

Griff: How far away are these storage bins? Is it a storage company?

Anna: Yeah, it's just like a little like a mini storage, climate control type of thing. But um, it's like five minutes from my house. I do wish it was still at my house, but we just couldn't accommodate it anymore because, well, we have so many things. But also I needed more and more space to actually do my shipping. So the garage still has no vehicles in it. It's still eBay, but it's only shipping.

Brian: So you'll go to the storage, pick the stuff that you need for that day and then ship. It's a good way.

Griff: So your listed inventory is also in the storage units.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah. And I try not to build up too many piles of unlisted things because I just don't really have a space for that. Like I don't want anything that's unlisted to be intermixed with anything that is listed, you know, part of having my contractor who's by the way, my beloved sister-in-law is who works with me all the time. And she's the best shout out to Amanda she's the best. But if she has 200 items with her that she's working on photographing, you know, I try to basically send everything that's not yet listed to her. And then by the time it gets to me and my spaces it's already photographed and gets listed right away. And then it goes and lives in its unit.

Brian: That makes sense.

Griff: How many more items would you like to have listed on eBay? I mean, what's a realistic goal given the size of your operations.

Anna: I'm not sure if I really traffic in realistic that much , but I don't really know. Actually it's a really, it's a really good question and I should strive to be a little more realistic at times, but I think one thing that's been really strange about the last two years is that I thought that I was gonna stop at like 10,000. Like I thought I would never go past 10,000 because I would reach this kind of tipping point where so many things would be selling all the time. That just the number of hours that I work in my store every week, like I wouldn't have time to list enough things to replenish the ones that sold, you know, like there's gonna be some kind of tipping point with that. And I really thought that I would hit that. But the way that kind of the retail cycles and patterns have been the last couple of years, it's been generally a lot slower for me, at least for my store. I know it has not been that way for everybody, but for me it has. And I just thought, well, the only solution is just keep listing stuff. Now, actually this month it's like suddenly a lot more things are selling kind of in a more normal pattern again. And I feel like we're closer to that tipping point than I realized. So like I'm doing a ton of shipping, which I'm super grateful for this month, but I don't know that I will necessarily choose a number and say like, I'm not going above this number. I think it'll happen more naturally where, okay, because of all the hours I put in shipping this month, I only had 10 hours to list stuff instead of 20. So I only got X number of things listed, you know, when in the past, when it was slower and I didn't have as much shipping to do, I might just have more time to list.

Brian: And, and similar to it's Amanda. Right? Who is helping you with the listings would you ever consider, uh, you know, to continue to grow, hiring someone to help you with the shipping?

Anna: I would, I'm just a little bit of a control freak about that.

Griff: Would've never guessed.

Anna: I know, I'm sure. I'm sure . I feel like you already totally know me.

Griff: But I have the same issue all of my life as I'm a control freak, but then you start thinking, you know, it'd be nice to take a two week vacation, go to the Isle of Capri.

Anna: I mean, sign me up for that.

Griff: Yeah. But it's, it's hard to do that. If you're the control freak running business, you got gotta give up some control. Occasionally, I think.

Anna: Well, certainly. And I mean, honestly, the way that you can run your eBay store already has so much, so many flexible options built into it. Like thank God for Time Away, Time Away has been the jam. I love that. But yeah, like long term, you know, if there's like a longer period of time where I'm not gonna be physically present to do all the shipping or something, then I would have to have someone else. And that is another kind of key step in the process that I will train somebody in. And I have started actually, cuz I'm a nerd. As we know, I've started writing out like a manualized set of instructions to help me think through every step. And if I were to train someone or even if I were to like have to be gone for an emergency, I could hand that to someone and it should tell them everything they need to know to like execute the job. Even if there are like little nuances, you know, maybe they shipped something Priority mail and they could have sent it First Class. Okay, well that's a $4 mistake I'm willing to tolerate, you know, but obviously there's a lot of training that would help, um, all those little nuances, but it's definitely something that's teachable. I think that would be another part of the process that would kind of be outsourced for lack of a better word, next.

Brian: And I think that idea of having the written process down is a really good one. As you go through that process of doing that, you find deficiencies probably.

Anna: Absolutely.

Griff: Well, she's singing my tune. I actually wrote a, I have a whole in that drawer over there, there's a huge manual about how to run this podcast. Should I meet my early demise, somebody can come in and actually know how everything works. I think it's important to have that. And a lot of people who sell on eBay don't have that.

Anna: Yeah, it's true.

Griff: We we've seen it on our end because we'll get a call from somebody in the family saying, one of our relatives has gone into the hospital and we don't know how to run things and they're not really communicated at the moment. And you can avoid that if it, if no says you should always have, I don't wanna call it an exit plan, but you should always have some sort of contingency for emergencies or time away. That makes a big difference. I think.

Anna: I agree. And I think because eBay can be like a sort of non-traditional way to like make your income or whatever people don't necessarily always think of it as a business. I mean, I'm coming from a world where I already ran my own business. My private practice was a business. You know, I had things like that in place at my practice. And there's no reason not to do the same thing with this. Like it, it is a business and ultimately a lot of like the work in eBay, you're sort of front loading the work and you're getting paid later for the work that you've already done. So not only is that work sitting there unfulfilled, if you're gone and all your inventory is still there and it's listed, but also, or even if it's not listed, frankly, but also the customers, the would be customers are the ones that are affected by that. I think it makes total sense. It's just a business thing.

Griff: Anna, we only have a few minutes left and I wanted to give you a chance to not only promote your, uh, again, your book where you can find it, we'll have a link to your eBay store in this episode transcript. When I first met you, you talked about your podcast and I'd love you to, I know you're, gonna restart that up if you want to promote that, this is a great opportunity.

Anna: Well thank you. Yes, we did talk about that. We got to talk about some nerdy, audio production things, and that was really fun.

Griff: That was fun. Yes.

Anna: It was. My podcast is called the Doing Scary Things Podcast. I am the co-host with my friend, Katie Snyder. She's amazing. And that podcast and the premise of it is actually really tied to my story also because when I was doing my practice and she was actually a professional photographer and we're both married to professional musicians and we sort of both have this secret-ish dream to write and record and release our own music. And so our scary thing that we did was that we recorded music together that we wrote together. We kind of like quietly wrote music together for years. And so we had all these really awesome conversations through that process though. And every time we would start telling people, you know, just casually talking to people about what we were up to, we found that a lot of people had a scary thing that they wanted to do or that they were pursuing, but like kind of quietly in the corner, like we had been for a long time. So we created the podcast to sort of share that journey and also to explore the same kind of things with other people and not all of it's art and music. Like some of it is starting a business or, you know, looking for a tenured professor position or just a whole bunch of different things.

Griff: Bungee jumping off a bridge. It could be, right? That's my big scary thing.

Anna: Oh yeah, yeah. That is, that sounds terrifying.

Griff: Except I have no desire to even try it. And the podcast is available on regular channels like Spotify and Apple.

Anna: Yes, it's available everywhere. And we, we have two seasons of episodes, a lot of it's interviews. Some of it's just Katie and I, or when we were released our singles. We did episodes where we played the song and described, you know, things about writing it and stuff like that. But we are actually about to start our third season. We definitely took a big pause during COVID as well, but we're excited to get back to it. So if you go and listen to the stuff that's already out, you'll get to know us a lot and, you know, see the kinds of things that we've already discuss with people. But you can also just keep your eyes peeled for this next season.

Griff: And I'll put some links on our transcript, not just one where you can find it either on, but on your channel of your choice.

Brian: Right. Your preferred podcast, listening device.

Griff: Apple podcast, Google podcast, wherever, wherever good, fine podcast can be found.

Anna: There are so many.

Griff: Well, thank you so much conversing with you is it's been exciting.

Anna: Hope it motivates you to go with some of your death piles.

Griff: It does that. And the fact that I can't take it with me, those are all. And no, and I don't mean that in a morbid way. I mean, I may be moving soon in the next few years.

Anna: Like, I literally don't want to move this.

Griff: I don't wanna move all this stuff. It's just, it's, it's expensive and I'm not using it and I'm never gonna use it and, you know, my new lifestyle is gonna be very sparse and severe and minimalist. No, it's not who amI kidding?

Brian: I was gonna say, that's not gonna be Griff.

Anna: You know what I love about that idea though. Sometimes. Cause I know you're like a collector in spirit too. Right. And in practice also. But I think something I've learned, like my relationship to stuff has changed a lot, running an eBay store because of course there's so many things that I see that I like and I wanna keep for myself or whatever. And I do sometimes, but it's really taught me what a hot commodity space actually is.

Griff: Yeah. It's very hot. Trust me. It is. It's nice to have it.

Anna: You can enjoy the space if you are like mindful to be aware of the gift of it. Just as much as you might enjoy, you know, something else, some physical item.

Brian: It's a good perspective after, you know a thousand items, including parts of your collections.

Griff: And it's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to talk to us and we'll put links to your store, your book, your podcast. And if you go back into business as an analyst, we'll put a link there and direct people to your couch. I have a feeling you won't be doing that, but Hey, you never know. Right?

Anna: Well, thank you so much.

Griff: Anna Packer sells on eBay under the store name, anestheticmiscellany, or Miscellany. And we will put a link to that store as well as to the podcast in the transcript for this episode.

Brian: You got questions.

Griff: Well, we've got answers. At least we hope we have answers. We try our best to have answers.

Brian: Yes. Accurate answers.

Griff: Well, always accurate. Always double checked with another team to make sure that they're fresh and accurate. And our first question was emailed to podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller, Derek who wrote, just started listening to the podcast the other day. And I'm not sure if this question's been asked before, does eBay plan on displaying the Top Rated Seller seal on all listings versus only qualifying ones? I'm sure it would help buyers decide versus them double checking your feedback before buying. I felt like it was a good amount of work to get it. And I'm sure some would sacrifice a small price difference to buy from a seller with better feedback. It's also hard to determine their true seller feedback If a user does a lot of buying and is boosted by this way. Also what does this mug I keep hearing on in the podcast. Thank you, Derek I, his user id is C2 D2 Cards. This is something that's near and dear to your heart.

Brian: Yes. And he asked two questions.

Griff: Yeah.

Brian: Podcast mugs. And a real question.

Griff: Well, you want me answer the mug question?

Brian: Sure.

Griff: So Derek, we have these mugs and we have a lot of them and there's they're all over the studio.

Brian: Well, I dunno. We have many.

Griff: Many? Look at that. That's a pile and they're cute. Little coffee mugs that say eBay for business podcast and purple with a little mic icon. And if you ask a question, send us a question and we put it on the air, we'll send you a mug, but you have to send us your address, which you didn't do. So send us your shipping address. We'll ship you a mug. Now let's talk about this top rated seller badge thing, cuz I know this is something you know about.

Brian: Yes. Derek, the Top rated Seller badge was retired several years ago. There are no plans to bring it back for all listings, nor is there any plan to change the way Top Rated Plus is displayed on listings.

Griff: Exactly. And in order to have that Top Rated Plus indication appear on a seller's listing, the seller has to be top rated to start off with. Yep. And the listing has to offer same day or one day business handling time. And the listing has to provide for 30 days or longer free returns. If it meets it, then it will say Top Rated Plus. And then it'll explain why. Talk a little bit Brian, if you would, about the reason we change this.

Brian: Yeah. So the, so one of the things is like, so top rated is a seller level performance standard. That's great. But what we wanted to do was make sure that buyers, as they were looking at an item could differentiate different service levels that we, when you look around, realistically, if you look around at other marketplaces or other e-commerce sites have kind of become the standard and kind of become expected. And so things like returns or one day handling and free returns have become standard. And so what we decided to do was say for those items, we would include the badge. So you do first have to be top rated and then your item has to include that service level to, to get the badge.

Griff: Right. I think as long as you're meeting those and you get that, what we call Top Rated Plus, which indicates that you're offering the options for those high ends of service, they're, they're the highest service you can offer. You don't have to offer them, but that's how you get that, that badge. It's not really tied to feedback at all. So a seller, every page on eBay, that's a listing about can always see your feedback score and click it to read comments. You don't need to have Top Rated Plus on there.

Brian: And the other thing that it does is it allows a seller to kind of manage the businesses. They see best some of their items. They may wanna offer that level of service. While other items they might say, you know, I don't wanna offer free returns. But okay. With the other service levels. So they, they sacrifice getting the badge on those items. But it allows them to manage the business as they see fit.

Griff: Yeah. And quite frankly, if you ask us, well, why did you change it all those years ago? It's because it wasn't resonating. Buyers had no idea what Top Rated meant. And in fact, today, if you think about it at the time it was created as a program, which was over to 10 years ago now, right?

Brian: Yeah. 2000. Yeah. Over 10, 2009,

Griff: 2009. Right? Feedback, which is how you rate a seller and DSRs those counted. They don't count anymore. So it's actually a, it's a misnomer to be top rated anymore.

Brian: Correct. Cause there's no rating. It's really, we're looking at performance metrics.

Griff: But as we do with a lot of, sometimes we just can't let go of legacy. We like to hold onto it so.

Brian: Well. And the sellers like it. I think so. Yeah. I think so our next question comes from eBay seller, Curtis, who emailed podcast@ebay.com with the following, Hey Griffin and cohost. This is Curtis and I have called in a couple of times and the store CurtyLows. And the first question is how long does the 250 item limit last? Because I have 1000 listings for my store, but keep getting stuck by this 250 limit. And also a couple weeks ago on eBay News, there was the topic of being paid every week or biweekly and then being able to use the balance to shop, I switched to weekly, but I can't figure out how to use my balance on eBay purchases.

Griff: Hmm.

Brian: Okay. So a couple different things to unpack there.

Griff: Yeah. That's selling, I, I assume he's talking about selling limits. Does that sound like that right? The 250.

Brian: The 250, which to me means go to Help and Contact and search on selling limits to find that page. Yeah. And you really just need to go there and email a request to have your limits raised and they will evaluate. As you can imagine, when you're a brand new seller, we do place limits on you and you can gradually grow out of those limits. But if you're bumping up to it and you've been successfully selling, request to have them evaluated and increase the limit.

Griff: And we'll put the link to that specific Help and Contact page in the transcript for episode 188. Again, though, when you get there, you can read through it and at the bottom there's a button or a requested increase in limits and that should help you. And Curtis, the recently announced what's called spendable funds is currently not available as announced in the Seller Update, it's in the coming months.

Brian: In the coming months, Curtis, you'll be notified that you have the option to use the earnings from your sales to fund your eBay purchases without waiting for a payout to your bank. Once notified the next step will be to enroll in the feature.

Griff: Yeah. And once you enroll and you sell something, your earnings will become spendable funds as soon as the buyer pays. And then when you're ready to purchase, if you are a buyer, you'll be able to select your spendable funds as one of the payment options at checkout. And again, you don't see it right now because this only starts rolling out as the announcement says in the coming months. So you got to pay attention to the fine print there. Yeah.

Brian: Yes. It's critical that every seller read all of the documentation for Seller Updates when it's released and that announcement can be found at announcements.ebay.com

Griff: We mentioned this a lot on the air and we hope that listeners are taking it to heart. But when we have a Seller Update, you gotta go to the page and read through all the documentation so you know, all the facts. You'll be completely in informed and that'll be helpful for you. You won't be left in the dark about things like this.

Brian: Exactly. Our next question comes from eBay seller and podcast listener Terry.

Griff: Oh Terry, he writes in a lot. What does he have to say?

Brian: Hi Griffin company. I know item specifics is one of those dead horses that we resellers continue to beat. But I have one very specific request as regard to Items Specifics for comic books. I haven't crunched any numbers, but I'm confident that a majority of the comics listed on eBay are not professionally graded, yet the item specifics template for comics is set up with the assumption that all comics are professionally graded. Could this please be set up with a first question like it is for autograph books as to whether or not the comic is professionally graded? If the answer is yes, then we could be asked as to who did the professional grading and what the certification number is. Right now for every comic I list, I am asked for the professional grade and certification number. And when I don't fill those blanks in, I get the item specifics recommended notice from eBay. Of course I could ignore this, but it is annoying. And if I select don't remind me again about this. I may be missing out on valuable item specific recommendations that may be added for my listings in the future. Thanks again for all the valuable info. Terry.

Griff: Thanks for the question, Terry. We can send your recommendation to the product team in charge of item specifics, but we can't promise that doing so is gonna result in the adoption of your suggestion.

Brian: And Terry, when you say you get a notice, do you mean the column and active view for item specific shows recommended item specifics?

Griff: Actually he does cuz I asked him that in a second email and he sent it back and he told me that's what he's finding annoying.

Brian: Well, that's good to know. So Terry, we talked about this in a previous episode, the team is not planning on providing an option for bulk editing this field. But if you're confident that your items don't require any of the recommended items specifics, and you find the message annoying, simply remove the column from the active view, by clicking the customized table link on the top of the active page,

Griff: I did it and I don't miss it at all! And Terry, if you fear that by removing this column, you'll miss out on future added recommended item specifics. You will notice them when you list a new comic book and can add them at that time, if you wish individually or using the bulk edit tool. Now again, I removed the column from my active view several weeks ago and I don't miss it. I also believe that if we change or add item specifics to a category and you have active listings and you have checked the box not to remind you again, I think we remind you anyway, it won't escape. You, you you'll be fine. I know it's annoying. It was annoying for me too. And I actually think that we'd be better off allowing sellers to make the decisions as to whether or not they want to be reminded over and over in that column. But I think we may be pushing up against a wall on that. In the meantime I found the cure. Just get rid of the column problems gone.

Brian: Outta sight outta mind. Do you have a question about selling on eBay? Why not share it with your fellow eBay sellers?

Griff: Yes. And we hope we can give you an answer.

Brian: Yes. Yes. It's simple. Just call us on (888) 723-4630.

Griff: Oh you know that number, but I'll repeat it. (888) 723-4630. We should put it on the coffee mugs. And the best part is you can go all that hotline any time of the day, any day of the week, you leave your question or comment on the voice line. We'll listen to it. And if it's good enough to use on the air, it's good enough for you to have a coffee mug. Just remember to leave your shipping address.

Brian: So this weekend you're gonna spend time putting the phone number on all the coffee mugs, right?

Griff: Yeah. I'm gonna use magic marker.

Brian: Or even magic marker.

Griff: Magic marker. I'm gonna use a magic marker.

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

Griff: Now don't forget your Daily Podcast To-Do List. Number one, always check the announcement board for Up to Date Seller News.

Brian: Download the 2021 eBay Re-Commerce report.

Griff: We put the link in there. Please do it'll help you out. Hey, number three, check out the transcript for this in all episodes to follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode and to find the transcripts. That's easy. Just go to ebay.com/podcast. Click the title of any episode. And all the links mentioned in an episode are on the top of that page.

Brian: And you can also find a complete text transcript for the audio for every episode, by clicking the transcript tab.

Griff: On our next episode, we'll revisit an old eBay friend and seller Rich Cooley to catch up on his business. How it's fair during the recent slowdown on the supply chain and how he's meeting that challenge.

Brian: We'd like to, again, thank our guests this week, eBay seller and Up And Running Grant recipient Anna Packer.

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