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eBay Head of North America Advertising, Scott Kelliher on the importance of a solid Promoted Listings strategy for the upcoming Holiday shopping season; Griff converses with this week’s 25 Years of eBay Story seller, Patty Whitlock of theshoppingmom2; and the hosts answer a question about shipping labels for returns.
To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com. To give us feedback, please take our podcast listener survey (https://connect.ebay.com/srv/survey/a/sellerops.podcast)
To connect with other listeners of the podcast and discuss, share insights and ask questions about the latest episodes please join us here (https://community.ebay.com/t5/eBay-for-Business-Podcast)
Sneaker Authentication Announcements
Sneaker Authentication Press Release
Promotion Strategies
Promoted Listings
Patty Whitlock’s eBay Store
Returns
Return Preferences page
Return Shipping Help Page
Business Policies (shipping policies) Page
eBay International Standard Delivery
Hosts:
Griff, Rebecca Michals
Guests:
Scott Kelliher (eBay Head of NA Advertising), Patty Whitlock (eBay Seller -theshoppingmom2)
Transcript:
This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:
"The best part about Promoted Listings is you only pay for the service when your item sells. So if the item doesn't sell, it doesn't cost you a thing, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But we're all aligned. If we can sell more items for you, everybody will make more money and everyone is really happy."
"And so I went through our neighborhood. There was this toilet, it was our category. It was beautiful. So my husband is driving. So I'm searching it on eBay. I said, "Oh my God, the toilet it sells, it sells! It is a vintage toilet. Stop! Stop!" He's like, I am not stopping. I said "but, please." And I sold them on eBay. The lid went for $150. The tank went $250 and the toilet seat went for $125."
I'm Rebecca Michaels.
I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and inspiration to help you start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And if you're keeping count, this is episode 113. Good day, Rebecca.
Why Hello, Griff. How are you doing this week?
Doing very well. It's a, another busy week, especially in the news when it comes to eBay. I think you've been paying attention to the news.
That's right. Have you heard, we have launched sneakers authentication.
Yeah. I was really excited to read the details. For those of you who haven't seen the news, we will post links, both the eBay inc blog that has a story about the new Sneaker Authentication Program. And we'll publish the link for the SNA or the Seller News Announcement as well. But basically it comes down to this. If you have a pair of sneakers that are valued at a hundred dollars or more at no charge to you, these will now be part of an authentication process that's similar to the one for a luxury watches, which we announced a month or so ago.
Now look Griff, the thing is that sneakers, I mean, this is a huge business in terms of trading and collectibles. And it's pretty amazing how sneakers are really a part of the culture.
Yeah. I was shocked to see the size of the addressable market, but the addressable market in sneakers right now is considered to be a potentially a $30 billion a year market.
That's pretty amazing. And to think it all started with a pair of Air Jordans, I believe, I don't know. I might be showing what I don't know about sneaker history, but I do know and when we were reading to prepare for this, I saw it. eBay sells a pair of sneakers every 1.5 seconds. That's pretty amazing to me.
Yeah. As we go through time, we'll be extending out these sort of services for categories where they're appropriate to help make the transaction for buyer and seller, including the return process for these listings, as safe as it could be. Anyway, enough of that, again, we'll post those links in the bottom of the transcript for this episode, which you can always find at ebay.com/podcast. Look for the episode for this week, episode 113, click on it. And there's a link for transcript. So shall we tell them who's waiting in the wings for this week, Rebecca?
Yes, we shall. First up, we're talking Promoted Listings with eBay Head of North America Advertising Scott Kelliher.
And then I'll talk with eBay seller, Patty Whitlock of the Selling Mom2. Patty's a well known eBay seller in the social media world and on eBay Community. And her story was one of the 25 selected for the 25 Years Of eBay Series. And Patty is quite an exciting guest to talk to.
She is a firecracker. I'm looking forward to this one. And then I see that we have some questions to answer.
Yes we do. We have a question about returns, a very specific question, which should be quite interesting and a question about international standard delivery. So I think those should be of interest to our listeners we hope.
All that and more, but first up is promoted listings.
It's Marketing Month at eBay. This week, the Seller Team is focusing on Promoted Listings. So that's what we're focusing on and joining us now to go over all things essential with promoted listings is eBay Head of North America Advertising Scott Kelliher. Scott welcome.
Hey Griff, how's it going?
Going great. How are things out there in New Jersey?
Good, it's Fall. I feel like the Holidays somehow are right around the corner. It feels like Halloween finally. I think which means yeah. Thanksgiving. Yeah. Christmas. Here we go.
There's never been a year like this one, at least not in our lifetimes.
You know, I've never had a chance to watch the leaves change so readily out my window before that is for sure.
Well, I'm in California. Leaves don't change they just sit there and then they all drop one day.
Come visit us in New York man, come visit.
I will, once this is all over. We're here to talk about Promoted Listings.
My favorite.
You are the Head of Advertising for North America. We're going to utilize you as the expert on Promoted Listings. Sellers are looking for a way for promoting their listings overall, whether that's through Promoted Listings or through discounts through Promotion Manager, they want to grab eyeballs. Could you give us maybe a quick recap of what Promoted Listings are?
Absolutely. Promoted Listings or PLS we like to call it is the most effective way for sellers to get increased velocity of their items on the platform period, full stop. And as the Holiday season starts to come and competition starts to increase this is really a tremendous tool. The thing that I like to start with is the best part about Promoted Listings is you only pay for the service when your item sells the item doesn't sell. It doesn't cost you anything, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But we're all aligned. If we can sell more items for you, everybody will make more money and everyone is really happy.
Yeah. And that's the key. A lot of sellers think this is a way for eBay to make money. Well, of course we're a business, but it's really important. If you don't make money, we don't make money. So we're always looking for ways to get you to sell.
Exactly right. And this case it's really the best closely service we offer. We literally charge nothing unless your item sells.
The other thing to remember too, is if you're a Top Rated Seller, you can actually try Promoted Listings for nothing. So you can get for this quarter, you could get a $30 credit to use to, to try them and get the effect and get the benefit. The second thing is you'll get increased access to different types of premium placements across the site for your listing. So it's not just on search results page. That's obviously a really key place, an important place to be. But it's also in the merch strips on view item and a whole host of other places all over the site. And it's really, really, really easy. I know that sounds like, okay, how easy could it really be? But it really is quite easy. You just need to decide what you want to promote, how much you want to promote it for. And then we kind of take over from there.
So promotions for promoted listings or PL are these temporary, or are these ongoing?
This is going to end. This is just for Q4. So make sure if you want to take advantage of it, do it now. It's part of a great Holiday package, right? If you want to be doing PL in Q4, the thing we will continue to tell you is to keep testing, keep learning, keep testing, keep learning. Try something different, see what the results are and try again. That's an overriding theme, right? Like be active, be involved in your listings and you'll see the results.
Of course, a lot of sellers want to know how do I find out more about Promoted Listings and how are they working? So, you know, I have some campaigns going, I like to check in on 'em occasionally to see how effective they are and where do sellers find this information?
So the Marketing Tab in Seller Hub is the place to be. We recently made some changes so that you can start to see your Promoted Listings results in the overall Marketing Tab and in the Performance Tab. In the last Seller Release, I know Harry has been talking a bunch about this. Now everything is in one place and you'll have an opportunity to filter your listings by all different types. So you can get right in there and say, okay, what is my organic performance looking like? How is my promoted listings performance doing? What are the different types of things that I need to look at? I mean, getting it all into one place, I think makes it a lot easier for sellers to find the stuff they're looking for, right? That's at the end of the day, we're not trying to hide anything, right? The key to the whole scenario is that everything is transparent. So we want to get all of your performance into one place. So you can do that either through the Performance Tab or through the Marketing Tab.
And it's pretty easy to find if you go to the Performance Tab, there's actually a little sub menu right there and it says, Promoted Listings.
You got it. And then in the Marketing Tab, you can do the reverse. You click on the Marketing Tab, all of your Promoted Listings are there. And if you do the sub tab, you can see your organic listings as well.
So you can get to, you see how they're working. You know, one of the things I love about what your team has done is not just provided the data, but you've actually created features that can help us as sellers guide us to more success. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. This is one of the things that we're most proud of in this most recent seller release. The two things that are really prominent now are which items should you be promoting. And historically, we've been able to look at the category level and make some recommendations, but now we've improved that. So it gets all the way down to the item level and say, there's increasing demand in this item type. There's increasing demand in this subgroup. We're going to be able to surface for you. "Hey, you could really benefit from promoting this item through PL." That's really honestly, again, it's one of those things, we won't make any money unless items sell. We're trying to be as strategic and open about this as possible and make sure that sellers understand, Hey, this was, this one is ready. This one is primed to be used.
And that's Recommended Listings Tool, correct?
Yes. Recommended Listings. Exactly. Right.
I don't want to waste my time promoting listings that quite frankly are not going to benefit from a Promoted Listing placement. I want to make sure that I'm actually targeting the ones that are going to work.
Yeah. And again, this isn't new. We've had recommended listings for a while, but the sensitivity and the number of data inputs that we're pulling in to make those recommendations is what's really been improved upon. I think, especially as we go into Holiday is going to help a lot.
This sounds like it'd be really helpful. Especially during the Holiday season where competition can be really fierce in most categories, sellers are going to want to check in and make sure that you're reading all this information, especially when it comes to recommended items.
Yeah. And then the second piece of all this is something that we call the suggested ad rate. If you think about the way that PL works overall, you have a chance to say, I would like to promote this listing and I'm going to promote it by offering this percentage of the selling price for it. That's what we call the ad rate. Now historically we've made a recommended ad rate, which again was not as sensitive or as refined as we'd like. And with this most recent seller release, we've done a lot to improve that. And we've launched what we call a suggested ad rate. That takes into account all of the listings in a certain sub category, all related listings that we can think of and we'll make a recommendation to you. So even though it's called the Suggested Ad rate, it's just a recommendation. And we've implemented a couple new ways for you to take those recommendations, alter them. You can say, I'll take everything that you guys are recommending and I'm going to plus it up by this much or minus it by this much without a problem. And then the second piece about it, which is crucial, total transparency in this, right? We're not in this, unless you sell something. It's actually possible that we might suggest to you that you list an item for less than you were already listing it for. So if you were listing at an ad rate of 6% and we think that will be better, you'll get higher performance at 5%. We're going to do that. Those things are the recommendation in what you're selling. They are totally divorced. So our recommendation is going to be solid based on the data that we get.
That's important based on the data. So we're not just off the top of our heads, making recommendations for higher or even lower at rates. It's based on what we can see overall.
Yep, exactly. And this has been greatly improved with this most recent seller release. This is again why we're talking so much about this. We wanted to get this into the hands of sellers before Holiday hit. So you guys can see it, you can play with it and you can see if it's going to work for you and how you want to think about your strategy.
Yeah. And you know, what's important about this Scott, is I know that not so much for myself, but I've talked to sellers who said, well, I tried Promoted Listings. It didn't seem to make much of a difference for me, you know, I gave up. But isn't it true that sometimes Promoted Listings won't work because there are faults with the listing itself, maybe the title of the items specifics?
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great recommendation and a great reminder. The quality of your listing is crucial to the success of an item on the platform. And that quality is taken into account as part of all of our algorithms. You want to make sure that the item is as well represented as possible. Your pictures are as strong as they possibly can be. And you got to remember to stay active right? To your point before, I check back frequently. Yeah. That's a really, really, really great idea. I can't say that even more and stay on top of your Marketing Tab and stay involved in the campaigns and try different percentages, try different ad rates, try different pieces and it all comes together. And I think that's an important thing. You've accurately called out. It all comes together. It's a big package. Listing's quality, the quality of the item itself, the quality of the ad rate and all the different performance factors that you've brought into play.
It's never just that one thing. And I think that the insights that I've gained from this personally have not come from being a seller, but I'm an active buyer on the site. And I'll often see, I can tell which listings are promoted and where they're promoted. Sometimes I'll see a listing promoted and I'll say, why is that seller wasting their time? That's a terrible listing. They're actually putting a terrible billboard up on top of search results, for example, and who cares if it's up there, but it's a terrible listing. I'm not going to even bother looking at it. And the one thing I notice a lot of times as a buyer is that it is a matter of price. People will promote a listing and it's way more expensive than a listing that's just underneath it that isn't promoted.
That's right. Again, the organic ranking of your listing doesn't go away just because you're participating in PL. This is an important thing to remember, that organic listing quality is absolutely a part of the equation. You said it very accurately before making sure that your listing quality is as high as it can be. Your seller rating is as high as it can be. All comes into play, it makes for a Holiday success.
And these are the best practices.
Exactly.
Is there anything else you'd like to add about Promoted Listings or just as message to our sellers when it comes to promoting those listings?
First and foremost, thank you for listening. Please keep coming back again. We do this for you guys, because without you eBay is nothing. Bigger picture though, I would say is we've seen a lot of Holiday action starting early this year. So be ready early. People are shopping earlier than they ever have. People are getting ready for the Holidays earlier than they ever have. Start early, be prepared early and start testing now. You can get a lot of learnings now before the actual rush starts that you'll be able to apply when the real Holiday crush starts.
And who knows what that's going to be like. Normally we would say, Hey, Black Friday, Cyber Week, Cyber Monday, but everything is on the table this year.
That is right. And as you said, the buyers are participating in this process as well. Right? And they know that shippers and carriers have been having a hard time getting packages done on time. So people are looking to buy earlier so they don't have to worry. So they get the things that they want and the things that they need early. And that's gonna really start pushing everything ahead.
I couldn't have put it better myself, be prepared and start promoting those listings now. And remember the best practices. Don't just promote your listings without making sure they're the best listings you could promote. I want to thank you for taking to share with us your expertise on how to utilize Promoted Listings. Kudos to the team for these new features and new recommendation engines and sellers will take advantage of them, especially during the Holiday shopping season to boost sales.
Thanks, Griff. I really appreciate it. Scott Keller is the Head of North America Advertising For eBay. As always we'll put links to relevant pages regarding Promoted Listings in the transcript for this episode, episode 113.
Back in June of this year, eBay launched a contest to help celebrate eBay's 25th Anniversary. Yes, we're 25 years old. That contest asked the eBay sellers to send in their stories about their eBay life. 25 were selected and we have featured one of those 25 sellers every week since then. This week, we have the pleasure of meeting and talking to a seller who is quite well known among her peers as she is very active in both eBay Meetups and on social media, she sells under the eBay ID, theshoppingmom2. Welcome Patty Whitlock.
Thank you for having me.
It's our pleasure. You have quite an interesting eBay story to tell. So let's just get right into it. How long have you been selling on eBay?
I have been selling on eBay since 1999.
You are an old timer. And I mean that in the nicest way and what got you started?
I wanted to go ahead and stay home with my kids. I didn't want to go back to working. I am a respiratory therapist and I used to work for Miami Children's Hospital. And then when my kids were born, you know, it was too much to take, having to go through the hospital and seeing kids sick and coming home and seeing my kids. And I just couldn't go ahead and do it anymore. So I found eBay and the rest is history.
Well history. Yes, but that transition can't be easy. You've got a full time job. And then you moved to eBay. Was it gradual or did you do it all at once?
No. What I did was I started selling at the same time that I was working as a respiratory therapist. What kept me going was that every time I put more effort and more work into eBay, I started seeing more results. And so I went to my husband and I said, listen, I don't want to do this anymore. The hospital. And then eBay, I have to choose one. I cannot do both. And eBay allows me to stay home with my kids. The hospital does not. And eBay doesn't give me stress. The hospital does. You want a happy wife? And I have life, right? I said, you have no choice. I'm choosing eBay. But I did it gradually. I did it where I said to him, if I make this amount of money a week doing eBay for let's say four or five weeks, can I then consider quitting? And he says, yeah, no problem. That's how we did it.
And you did, you made those goals?
Yes. Yeah. And the whole trick is the work that you've put into it.
You said the other job was stressed. Selling on eBay was no stress. Is that true?
Well, it is to a certain extent because since it's all done online, let's say that a customers stressing you out. So you could go ahead and sit there, type up a response, walk away, come back, delete the response. And you know, you're done with it. You don't have to go ahead and stress over any of this. You need to go ahead and take it calmly way. And eBay allows you to do that because you don't have to respond the second that customer contacts you. You have time to think about the response or how you're going to act on it, or what are you going to do about it?
There's no job that isn't stressful. And even being your own boss can be very stressful as well. How do you deal with a difficult customer? What was the most, let me ask this way. What was the most difficult customer you've ever had to deal with and how did you deal with it?
Okay, first of all, I deal with the customer. Like you deal with the customers and like you tell everybody, all your audience to deal with customers because I follow your advice to the T. I learned that in 2001 when I met you. So my customers can do anything for any reason whatsoever. I don't care. They can return it. But going back to the worst person that I ever had was this guy. And he bought a shirt and it was my mistake. I didn't get pictures of the collar of the shirt and the shirt had alot... I guess he taught me how to now look for shirts.. He said, "whenever you buy a shirt, you have to inspect the, in mens shirts you have to inspect the neck, the collar, make sure that there's not a line on the collar. And then also on the cuff because they wear out. So he was showing it to me and I said, Oh, thank you so much. And he gave me a horrible negative, and I refunded his money. I gave him another shirt and I contacted him and said, why did you give me a negative? Can you take it off? And he said, no. And I said, why not? Because that's going to teach you a lesson of never, ever selling a shirt without looking at the cuffs and the collar. And he was right. He was right. And there was nothing I could do to make him take it off. But he was happy and he came back again and he bought from me again. So I believe that if you treat your customers right, they're going to treat you right later on.
I think we're both old enough to remember the old ring around the color commercials. Anyone in our generation will remember that. Yeah. Buyers don't want to see ring around the collar or they don't want to see frayed cuffs or, you know?
Yeah. That was the deal. I didn't see it. And it was a beautiful shirt too. I think it was a well known brand and it was gorgeous, but yeah, yeah, it was my fault. 100%.
You've been selling on eBay now for, you said 1999. So that makes you a 21 year veteran of eBay. And in those 21 years, you've obviously seen a lot of changes. What are some of the changes that have had an impact on you personally as a seller?
One change that it took , well it didn't take me by surprise, but I didn't like it. But I understand why you guys did it as feedback. I wish that the feedback was a little bit, I don't know how to explain it.
You mean, two sided? Like leaving buyers neutral or negative feedback.
No, I don't agree with the neutral or the negative, but being able to give the feedback to the buyer in private, like in private. Because sometimes these buyers don't know, honestly, they just don't know. They don't know what the impact is on somebody, you know, when you leave them a negative feedback. But I don't know if you remember your first negative feedback?
Oh I do.
I do and I stressed for hours. I mean, I felt bad and I felt, you know, sad and my perfect 100% positive was gone. And you know, and I cried but, but then I got over it.
Yeah. I've said this before. And I don't know if you found the same thing that when you respond to a negative feedback in a professional and positive way, it kind of telegraphs to buyers who look at it and say, Oh, this seller is pretty reasonable. Even when he, or she gets negative feedback, they respond politely and professionally. I don't have to worry about this seller.
Exactly. So you don't go ahead and reply in a negative manner to feedback because it's going to stay there and other buyers are going to see it. If I see you replying in a negative way, I get kind of like, ah, I don't know if I want to go ahead and buy from this person. You know, I get a lot of people in my Facebook group that say, and also in the eBay community, they go, wow, I want to go ahead and tell everybody about the buyer. And I'm like, that's not the way of going around this. You just, you know, you have a business, you are professional. You have to act like a professional.
Yeah. You're now known as an expert in the community. People come to your Facebook group. I know that you've been active in meetups. Are you still active in the meetups scene?
Yes. Yes. We, we are. I'm still doing it. But right now with a situation here, especially in Florida and how we are a hotspot, we have to go ahead and deal with people not wearing masks and not following guidelines. I don't want to go ahead and put the people at risk. And a lot of my Meetup people are also older people. So they're not that well versed at Zoom and all that kind of stuff. So what I do is I do phone calls and I talk to them and try to keep everybody together. Hopefully we can return.
That is a lot of work, one on ones?
No, sometimes I do with the WhatsApp app and I'll call like two or three. And then we go ahead and do that. Or, you know, chat like that. Or they go into the Facebook group and they, you know, they go like that. Oh, I tell them to go up to the community. The community is wonderful. I mean, listen Griff, I mean, you post something in the eBay Community within like a half a second you get a response. It is better than customer service. Okay.
It can be. Yes. I agree. Not always, but it can be.
Yes. It's very nice.
You're kind of holding your own little community together and during these hard times, And as you said, most of your, or a lot of your followers are older. Do you find that they really appreciate your efforts, especially during a time where they may become somewhat isolated from everyone?
Exactly. So a lot of the members are a little bit older. I have one member that is 86 years old. And another one that is 89 years old and they come to the Facebook group or the MeetUp group, they send me messages saying, Hey, listen, can you help me with, you know, whatever it is like shipping or, you know, the shipping is always a hot topic in the group, especially now that you guys are providing UPS and FedEx and USPS and all of these choices. And when you have to deal with an older crowd, they're more set in their ways. So when something is changed, the kind of don't like it. And I don't think that it's not liking it is the fact that it's changing, that they don't like, and they have to learn something new.
Yeah. When you started selling 21 years ago, what did you start off selling? What was your inventory like? If you can recall.
Okay. So what I started selling, I was selling on another platform and they canceled the auction. So I was selling kids clothing. And then, because I was still in the hospital, I was getting dresses from the doctors because they will go to an event. They will wear that one dress and then they couldn't wear the dress anymore. So they will give them to me to go ahead and flip it on eBay. Remember we didn't have pictures.
It was hard!
It was very hard.
People talk about the old days as though it was so rosy. It wasn't that rosy on eBay.
No it wasn't. And you had to go ahead and take the pictures and then upload them. And it was just, Oh my goodness. And you have to really describe the item. I mean, really? You have to describe it. Like there were no pictures that was hard.
Over the years. Have you changed what you sell on eBay or has it stayed basically the same?
More or less the same. I mean, I sell everything and anything. I told you about the toilet story.
The toilet story?
Yeah. The toilet story.
Remind me.
So my husband has his car broken down. So I have to take him to work at six o'clock, seven o'clock in the morning. And so I went through our neighborhood and we have what is called bulk garbage day, where people take stuff that can not fit into your garbage can, put it on the side of the road. And you know, the trash people come over and pick it up. There was this toilet. It was avocado green. It was beautiful. So my husband is driving. So I'm searching it on eBay. I said, "Oh my God, the toilet, it sells, it sells! It"s a vintage toilet. Stop! Stop! He's like, I am not stopping for a toilet. I said but Please. So I throw him out of the car in front of his job, come rushing back. I call my son, my older son and he just clicks the phone and says, no. Then I call my other son. And I said, I know you're in school, but I can talk to Mr. A and get you out, and you can help me with the toilet.
You got your son out of school?
Yeah, I know. So my son is like, no, I'm having a test. I'm doing an assessment. But you can Go ahead and ask. And he's like, no. Click. So I call my other friend who said, Listen, I can"t help you. But I can help you think this through. And I say, Oh, okay. So she says, the lid of the toilet tank, take that and put it in the car. Then you put the tank in, you might not be able to fit the whole toilet or lift the whole toilet but the tank you take it apart and then take the toilet lid also because it was beautiful. Griff it was one of those that had coins in it.
The lucite, the lucite seat.
The lucite, yes. So I take all of that, I don't take the toilet base of the toilet and left it, but I took three pieces. The lid, the tank and the toilet seat, and I sold them on eBay. They lid went for $150. The tank went for $250 and toilet seat went $125.
So that was a good stop.
It was a good stop Okay.
Do a lot of the clerks in, when you're thrifting at stores, do they ask you about why you're buying things? Yes, they do. They do. And my kids were born into this. Okay. So like Nick, my youngest used to go ahead and go row by row touching just the shirts. And he will pull out the Tommy Bahama shirt. Okay. So they will ask the kids, you know? So we had a saying that they couldn't go ahead and tell them I'm sold on eBay because then either A, the prices will go up. or B, I would find more of whatever. Right. I used to go ahead and tell the kids, grandmother likes that.
Yeah. Because when I'm in thrift stores or I, when I was, I haven't been in thrift stores for over a year, but when they would ask me what I was going to do, you know, originally I would say, well, I sell, resell on eBay. And then I thought, you know, I'm not going to say that. So now I get this horrified, look at my face and I'd say, well, you know, my psychiatrist says I should talk about it. So I guess it's okay. I'm a hoarder. And I need help! (laughter). And that shuts them right up.
And then they, yeah, they don't say anything, right?
No, they don't. They don't say anything at all.
When they see you coming with 20 Hawaiian shirts. (laughter).
You more than alluded to the fact that you've learned a few things from me over the years, but you find yourself now in the position of also being a mentor, because people come to you now and they ask, you know, how should I do this? How should I ,what's the best way to sell ? They ask all the different questions. What's the most common question you said shipping before. What's another common question you get from your followers who were looking to you for advice?
A lot of them are right now, they need to go ahead and learn to adapt to Managed Payments. Okay. And I think this stems from where you're used to something for so long. Okay. And then this is something new people don't like changes. And with 2020 and how it's been and all of the stuff that is going on right now, people are very stressed out. So with Managed Payment, they are not used to it. I have an older lady that says it is taking a lot longer to receive my money in the bank. And I said, it will get better. As you know, as you get into it, the longer you're in, you will get into a rhythm and you will get used to it.
So Shipping, Managed Payments. Is there anything else? I know that there's a lot of talk right now about Item Specifics and the ones that are going to be required.
Okay. Yeah. So we do have a lot of people with the Item Specifics. And at the beginning of it, we were pushing Item Specifics. I am very close with it in my group. We have a lot of big time sellers and old timers that are there forever and ever like, even before me, or, you. No, not you!
Well there were sellers before me. There were five of them I think.
So anyways, we have a lot of them in the group and they with the item specifics, I have carried too. So Harry has been pushing items specifics and, on and off, I will go ahead and do a post about item specifics and we go through it. The problem is that I think with the Item Specifics is that people like the same thing as Managed Payment that, you know, we were with PayPal for so long. Right? Okay. So it's the same thing with Item Specifics. eBay is not going to tell you to do something that is going to hurt you. They're telling you to do stuff because they have done the research to know better. If you follow eBay guidelines, even if they're hard they're doing it for a reason, we are here to make money. eBay is here to make money. eBay is not benefiting if you don't make money, We all benefit from making the money. So therefore eBay is telling you to do Item Specifics and put the color or put the style, or you guys have made it so easy. On this side of the screen, you have sent feedback. And a lot of people say, Oh no, you guys don't read that. You do read the feedback.
Those teams do read it. Yeah.
Yeah, they read the feedback and the same thing with Buyer Protection, I get a lot of things about Buyer Protection. And a lot of it say, Oh, eBay only protect the buyer. That's not true. That is simply not true. If you have a very documented well documented case and you remain calm, polite and professional. You could go ahead and have eBay look at the stuff and they will try to help you. I don't know what else to say. I mean, it's like, it's amazing how, when you follow the guidelines and you open up policies and you have all the windows open and you can pull up the stuff in a calm, professional way, it's amazing what happens when it's done right?
The more explicit, the more information a seller can provide either for customer or for eBay team or for Customer Support, the easier it is to help us solve those issues. Well, Patty, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day there in Florida, to talk to us about your business, your history, and all the things that you learned over the last 21 years. It's been a delight speaking to you.
Same here, and I love listening to your Podcast.
We love to hear you on our Podcast. It's great to finally connect.
Thank you.
Patty Whitlock sells on eBay under the user ID, theshoppingmom2. That's theshoppingmom and then the number two, we'll put links to her eBay store and other presences on social media. So you can check out both her store and what she does to help other sellers manage and thrive on eBay.
It's time for You have questions, we have answers!
Yay. These are the questions that come in through podcasts@ebay.com our email address. Remember, you can always email your questions to podcast@ebay.com or you can call our voice line at 888-723-4630. Griff. Should I read the first question?
Oh yes. Be my guest please.
Alright, away we go. "Hello." Says the first question. "I have noticed a savings of 14% on shipping to Canada link at the top of my Seller Hub homepage for a while now. I looked into it today and I have questions." We love that. It goes on to say, I remember before there was a global shipping program. When I got an international order, I would have to take it to the post office and fill out a bunch of forms and then go through a really time consuming process to mail it with the post office clerk. I read the page about international standard delivery this morning, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be like it was in the past to mail an international package myself. I'm hoping you can talk about this on the show in a little more detail. I would like to be able to ship to Canada more economically and would take advantage of it. If I knew it wasn't going to be like before." And Griff, I can understand that, you know, sometimes having to drag all the way to the post office to ship it adds an added layer.
Especially during the pandemic right now.
Exactly. All right. So going on "also, can you choose to have international standard for Canada only, and then global shipping for everywhere else? Or do you only get to pick one international option? Great show and super helpful discussions. Keep up the great work. Thanks Jessica." From Jessica Pearson and her username is hen-and-chicks.
hen-and-chicks are separated with hyphens if you want to look up her user ID.
Jessica, thanks. That's a really great question. And yes, you can use international standard delivery.
I'll call it ISD because here at eBay, we love our acronyms. And the good news is that you don't have to go to a post office to fill out forms for an ISD shipment. In fact, it's really super easy. You simply print the ISD label at home as you do now for all your other eBay labels, including Global Shipping Program. And you hand it to your mail carrier in the same exact way you do now, whether that's scheduling a pickup or a drop off at a U S P S location, it's exactly the same process as Global Shipping, but to a different destination. We encourage you to read up on International Standard Delivery on Seller Center, cause that's going to help you a lot. So we'll put the link to the page in our transcript and because it's another impossibly long eBay URL, we won't repeat it on the air. It'll be in the transcript though.
Now, Jessica, to answer your second question, there is indeed a simple way to offer both ISD to Canada.
For this example only and Global Shipping to the rest of the world. First, either create or edit an existing shipping policy and your list of business policies, and you can find them, if you aren't aware of them on Seller Hub under the listings page. On the left hand side of that page, there's a series of links inside there. There's one for business policies. If you click it, you'll see all your current shipping return and payment policies on the next page that shows up when you click business policies, select shipping policy. And from there, you can either create a brand new one or you can edit one or more or all of your existing shipping policies, and then fill out the international section of that policy by checking here's the steps you check the box for Global Shipping Program for the international section. And then underneath that select the following alternative international shipping options for the type I'd say calculated cost varies by buyer location, ship to Canada and then services, international standard delivery.
And I'm going to include a screenshot of that configuration on the transcript page or in that chat for the transcript page. So you can see exactly where these selections come. Once you've done this, remember to scroll down and click save, of course, and then do this for all of your existing shipping policies where you want to include this configuration of international options for in this case, ISD for Canada and GSP for the rest of the world. And that's it, that's it. That's all you need to do.
Anytime anyone buys from Canada, you'll be printing out an International standard Delivery label. And for the rest of the world, you'll be printing out a Global Shipping Program label that goes to Kentucky. And as I said, we'll put both links to the international standard delivery page and seller center and a screenshot of the configuration that I just suggested and your shipping policy in the transcript and chat section for this episode at ebay.com/podcast.
And Griff, you know, I have a hint for that link. We would love for all of you listening to come check out the transcript, but if you don't want to, you can also find that International Standard Delivery page by going to ebay.com/help, and then just typing International Delivery or International Standard Delivery into the search window. And it should be the very first thing that pops up for you.
What a great suggestion, Rebecca!
Thanks Griff.
And coincidentally, our next two emails are suggestions.
All right, I'll read the first one. "Hi, Griff and Rebecca love the podcast." Why thank you. "You mentioned a few shows ago that to find the sku field for sold items we can navigate to the orders page from Seller Hub. While I can totally do this, I really miss the days of the sku's showing up from my label printing page. Many more clicks are required now. The skew did show up on the shipping page in the custom text box up until a few weeks ago, and now it's gone. This isn't a make or break feature, but it is an annoyance to have to go to my orders page separately from the label printing page. I'm hoping you can either suggest a more streamlined way for me to embed my item location code into my item. Or can you pass the request for the sku to be put back on the label printing page to the appropriate eBay department? Thanks Dave from intergalactic fossils." Okay. I have to go check out that store because intergalactic fossils totally has piqued my interest.
Right. Who knows what you will find.
So let's answer this suggestion. Hi Dave, this really is actually a great suggestion and we will definitely ask Stuart Reichenbach about adding the sku back.
Yeah. I don't know where it went. And of course I'm with Dave on this one as a seller, I used to have the item title added to the label. It was one of the selections and I miss having that feature. It used to make bulk printing out of 10 labels a lot easier. We'll definitely let Stuart know that one Dave and our next suggestion is from Trish. And Trish says, "would it be possible to have page numbers, pagination that is. That's on the top of the page is also at the top of pages in the watch list and the purchase history. This would be helpful at times we know something we see goes on a different page. Thank you for consideration Trish.
You know, I have to admit I'm totally Team Trish here. I think pagination belongs at the top and the bottom of any page where it possibly makes sense. So we will forward that to Harry's team and ask him to take it into consideration.
Yeah. Rebecca years ago, we did have the pagination on the top of bottom of at least I remember the watch page. I don't, we didn't have a purchase page per se. And I prefer that as well. You might, by the way, get the impression that I look for suggestions in our inbox that match the suggestions I would make, but I assure you that is not the case.
Likely story.
No I swear that it isn't! I believe we have one last special question for this week.
We do. We do. So the last question is about returns and return shipping labels. textmixsales writes. " What return process do you recommend when selling expensive items? I'd like to offer free returns, but I'm concerned about eBay generating a return shipping label without any insurance. Will an RMA prevent eBay from automatically generating a return label and allow me to provide one with insurance?" So Griff, what's the answer here?
Well, textmixsales and Rebecca, I have some good news and some bad news. Want to hear the bad news first?
Yeah, I guess we should.
The bad news is there Isn't an option for a seller to add insurance to the default eBay generated return label that eBay provides to buyers in a return process. But the good news is there's a way to create your own label with insurance added to the label if you choose. You can do this by opting into the RMA feature in your return preferences. And to do that, you go to Seller Hub, then go to the orders page, scroll down to the link for return preferences at the bottom of the right hand column of links, click it. And then once you're on the returns preference page, check the box there labeled RMA and then save your new preferences. RMA is a global setting that is applied to all return sales. Rebecca, do you happen to know at RMA, the acronym stands for?
I do know this one, it stands for Return Merchandise Authorization. It's a standard term applied to any retailer's return process. So that's not just an eBay term, right?
It is an industry standard. By the way. The one thing I need to include here is, is during that process, if you actually have a return merchandise number, some sort of process or a printout sheet, you can also add that to this process, but we're talking about the label here. So yes, RMA does stand for Return Merchandise Authorization. If a seller opts into RMA, by checking the RMA box on their return preferences, that seller will have two label options whenever a buyer opens a return request. The seller can select to have the default eBay return shipping label sent to the buyer, or the seller can select to upload her own label. For instances where the seller wants to ensure the return shipment, she can purchase her own label and add whatever insurance she needs to add. And then the seller uploads that as a PDF of that label for the buyer to print and for all the transactions where a seller doesn't want to add insurance, she can just select the eBay generated label, no upload on the seller's part. So it gives sellers a choice, my label or eBay's label. Now, once the seller is uploaded their label eBay will verify it by the tracking number on the label and add it to the tracking information. Just show that the label has been provided to the buyer by the seller. So everything is recorded and you're covered.
Griff, When we were talking about this earlier, I think you explained to me that the seller generated label can be from any carrier. So that means it can be from FedEx, UP or USPS and many sellers who use the RMA option. They like to use FedEx, right? Because those are for returns because then the seller isn't charged for a FedEx label until the label is actually used. On the other hand for USPS a seller pays for the label and wait, let me get this right. If the item is never returned, the seller then has to avoid the label and request a refund. It's a really interesting question. Well, I didn't know about the RMA option. So I learned something here myself.
Yeah. I wasn't clear about it either since I don't use it. So I had to do a little digging by the way. And sometimes it takes a little digging or more to find the right answer to a thorny eBay question like this one, but it's always worth it. And in this case, I have to thank our team member, Brittany. She provided us with the information that we needed to answer this question. Now Brittany comes from our Customer Support Team and she knows the intricacies of the site better than I do. Without colleagues like her I'm afraid we'd be stumped.
And we're really lucky that she joined our team this week, along with Sheila, who has just joined as a new Community Manager for the Community forums. So it's been an exciting week. Isn't it great to have new people on the team?
It is. And we're full strength again. It's, it's been, it's been really a great week anyways. So if anyone out there has a question that you think might stump us and we can hand it off to Brittany for her help. Why not call e888-723-4630. And leave it on our voice line.
That's 888-723-4630. And if you're not a call on the phone person and a lot of us aren't, I hate calling on the phone. You can always email us at podcast@ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com. Now it's time for your weekly podcast to do list.
Check the Announcement Board for up to date Seller News.
Check your operations and make sure you have all the supplies for packing and shipping stocked and ready for the Holiday rush because you ain't going to get them. If you order them at the last minute.
Check out the transcript for this and all episodes for followup on what you've heard and to see the links that we referenced during this episode.
On our next episode 114, we'll talk about Holiday ready tips for leveraging social media to help drive buyers to your listings on eBay in the next few months. And we'll answer a question about reporting sales.
We'd like to thank our guests for this week. eBay Head of North America Advertising Scott Kelliher and eBay seller, Patty Whitlock.
And we'll see you in another week, Rebecca.
All right, sounds great. Griff have a great week.
You too. The eBay for business podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podcast four one, one.
eBay Head of North America Advertising, Scott Kelliher on the importance of a solid Promoted Listings strategy for the upcoming Holiday shopping season; Griff converses with this week’s 25 Years of eBay Story seller, Patty Whitlock of theshoppingmom2; and the hosts answer a question about shipping labels for returns.
To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com. To give us feedback, please take our podcast listener survey (https://connect.ebay.com/srv/survey/a/sellerops.podcast)
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