Episode 123 || January Is Reflect and Review Month

[podcast_team]

This week, we welcome back to the podcast eBay Sr. Manager of Seller Marketing and Engagement, Liz Austin and eBay Vice President of Seller Experience, Harry Temkin. Liz will introduce our January theme; Reflect and Review and give us a hint of some of the topics we’ll be covering for the month. Harry has news for sellers about new and enhanced seller reports. And Brian and Griff answer questions sent in by sellers on accessing buyer emails, sales tax reporting, and how to make sure your shipments have an initial tracking scan.

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Episode 123 Links
Seller News: Shipping Rates Announcement
NEW! Learning Resources Pages in Seller Hub - orders
NEW! Learning Resources Pages in Seller Hub - listings
Sales Report Info Page
Sales Report Page
eBay Payments Report Page
eBay 1099-K Page
PayPal Transaction Report Page (requires PP login first)
Page for Traffic Reports
Listing Improvements Page
The Listing Quality Report page is still in staged release and will eventually appear in your Traffic page on Seller Hub.

Recurring Links:

eBay for Business Podcast	eBay for Business Podcast Discussion Group
The eBay Community	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

Hosts:
Griff, Brian Burke

Guests:
Liz Austin, eBay Sr. Manager Seller Marketing & Engagement, Harry Temkin, eBay VP Seller Experience

Transcript:

This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

Transcript - Ep 123

Brian: This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

Liz: "We can only move forward successfully, If we look back at the things that we've done and learn from them. So that if there's opportunities for us to improve or places where we just kicked so many goals and we should continue kicking goals, that we don't actually know what we should do more of If we don't actually look at what we've done in the past.”

Harry: "As you know, the platform was incredibly active. We brought on a lot of new sellers. The conversion was incredible this year. Going into 21 we're still seeing obviously with so many lockdowns, particularly in the UK and Europe, and it's still a lot of online transactions that are happening. And quite frankly, I feel like there's going to be a new base even after we get the vaccine out. I still think we're going to see this high level of demand for shopping online.”

Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: And I'm Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and inspiration to start, run, and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 123, one two three. Hello, Brian.

Brian: Hello, Griff. Welcome to week two of 2021.

Griff: I know, and so far it's just been such a calm, uneventful one.

Brian: Oh yes it has.

Griff: A slightly distract, especially if you're trying to run a business or you're trying to do a podcast, but we pulled it together. I hope sellers are holding it together.

Brian: I'm sure they are. The site seems very, very active and robust. And our sellers in our community seem very active, lots of posts and lots of commentary going on.

Griff: So my big concern is that the great strides we saw in 2020 with buyer acquisition and the increased activity across all categories continues into 2021 and beyond. And I think with a little work on our part, we can make that happen.

Brian: Agreed. And I think, uh, I know that many of our sellers enjoyed those additional buyers and that hopefully means more inventory from our sellers for those buyers and continuing to take care of those buyers so that they keep coming back.

Griff: Yeah, we don't want to downplay the incredible difficulties that 2020 has brought to so many people around the world, including Americans. If we had to look for a bright spot, one of them would be that this has been no other way of saying this has been a great year for business. So online business, let me make that distinction. There are a lot of people who are suffering because they depend on in location brick and mortars businesses like restaurants and small specialty shops. And it's definitely been challenging for them. And of course, looking back on 2020, it's part of our month's theme. Do you know what this month's theme is?

Brian: What is the month's theme?

Griff: It's Reflect And Review?

Brian: That's a good one.

Griff: Yeah, It's a good one. We are gonna talk about that all month. The different things that a business should do when it's time to look back and take stock of how your business has run, what you'd like to see improve and using that input to help drive your business in 2021. So we're going to talk a lot about reflect and review over the next few weeks, and we'll have lots of great, hopefully interesting content that can prove of value to sellers.

Brian: That sounds fantastic. I mean, and it's something that I know a lot of people do on a personal basis. They take some of those, some time during the end of the year and kind of look back on what's going on and businesses do that as well. And whether you're a small business or a big business, it's important to look back and say, Hey, what worked? What didn't, what do I want to change? So I'm looking forward to what content comes this month.

Griff: You will be very happy to hear who is going to come on first for this month and talk about Reflect And Reviews

Brian: Who is on first?

Griff: Well! First up, we're going to get a visit from our Podcast Correspondent, eBay Senior Manager of Seller and Marketing Engagement. Liz Austin. She's here to talk with us. And then I'll talk with the eBay Vice President Of Seller Experience, a good friend of the podcast, Harry Temkin. He's going to talk to us a lot about what his team has helped build in the last few months, in the way of seller tools and enhancement to seller tools that can help sellers when we're talking about Reflect And Review. But before we do all that, let's get to the news of the week. Course I mean, seller news, not the other news.

Brian: So the news this week, it's all about 2021 carrier rate changes.

Griff: They're here.

Brian: They most certainly are here and it's no surprise. The carriers always announce rate changes.

Griff: Increases that is.

Brian: Okay. Increases. I wonder if they've ever announced just a change or a reduction?

Griff: This year, It's all about the rate decreases! Yeah, I wouldn't put money on that ever happening.

Brian: Yeah. Not likely to ever happen, but they always announce these in January in 2021 is no exception. So on January 24th, 2021, the U S postal service will increase rates for many of its mailing products. UPS and FedEx 2021 rate increases are already in effect. But for eBay sellers, UPS rates on eBay labels remain at 2020 pricing at this time.

Griff: It's good news.

Brian: It is. And I want to remind everyone that for calculated shipping, the new rates are implemented the exact minute they're updated by each carrier. No need for a seller to worry that their current shipping amounts will be less than what they are charged for a label.

Griff: Exactly. Also for sellers, there are three main points to keep in mind. eBay labels are updated as the new rates take effect. I know we've already said this, but I think it's really important to reiterate this over and over because that's a unfounded fear among many sellers. Oh, you know, it's not going to update at the same time. It does. And if you use flat rate shipping, review your listings to see if your flat rate is going to cover the price increases. You may have to raise your flat rate charges to maintain the same profit margins. And finally, if you offer free shipping again, review your listings to see if the extra percentage in the increase is something you can absorb, or if you should actually consider going in and adjusting your listing prices.

Brian: Oh, that's a really good point. Griff.

Griff: And for domestic FedEx shipping effective January 4th, 2021, so that's already past. Rates for FedEx Ground FedEx Two Day, FedEx Home Delivery and FedEx SmartPost. Those services will increase approximately on an average about 4.9%

. Brian: And finally for USPS rate increases effective January 24th, 2021, and most of our sellers use USPS Priority Mail will see approximately a three and a half percent increase. Priority Mail Express a 1 and 1.2% increase. First-class Package a 6.5% increase and finally Parcel Select a 4.9% or almost 5% increase.

Griff: A 6.5 for First Class. I'm going to see that in my prices. I'm going to have to change the prices. Now you can read more about the annual rate increases, including those for international shipments, which we are not going to talk about here, because we need that as an incentive for you to go visit the Seller News Board. And you can find that at www.ebay.com/sellernews. We'll put a link to the post on Seller News in the transcript as well. So those are our shipping rates.

Brian: My hope is this week, Charlie and Donna are continuing to listen to the podcast because they'll now know that no, we're not going to give them a car. The Postal Service has just increase their rates.

Griff: A Car?

Brian: We talked a little bit last podcast about rate increases coming, and there was a comment for me about what's coming. I'm going to buy them a car.

Griff: Well, you do have a car that you could give away.

Brian: It's not my car.

Griff: Okay. So that's what we're going to resort to, it's your wife's car. Yeah. All right. $150,000 plus value on a Jaguar. Ah, uh, you can give that away.

Brian: All right. We digress.

Griff: Yes, we do. And it's time to move on because, well, we don't want to be self-indulgent so on with the episode.

Griff: This week on the podcast, we are introducing our theme for January, which is Reflect And Review. Two very important practices and habits that every business owner should have in their toolbox to help guide your business in the upcoming year, 2021. And who better guide could we have then eBay Senior Manager Seller Marketing Engagement, our very own Liz Austin, Liz, welcome back to the podcast.

Liz: Hello Griff. Thank you for having me.

Griff: How was your Holidays?

Liz: It was a challenge I have to say. I'm happy to be back at work. I think I need a vacation from this staycation. Yeah. Keeping two kids entertained is quite challenging when it's at home.

Griff: We should mention here that Liz has.

Liz: A five-year-old and an eight year old. Yes.

Griff: And I'm sure there were a handful.

Liz: They are handful. They definitely are a handful. And you know, to be honest, I'm sick of playing with Barbie dolls and I'm sick of playing with OMG girls dolls, things you probably don't know about them Griff, but they're these dolls that they love. And super excited to be back in the chair at eBay doing something I'm passionate about and talking to you. So thanks for entertaining my conversation at the next level.

Griff: We love having you on. And of course we love talking about the different themes every month that your team comes up with for helping to provide the information and the education that sellers need to really succeed in business. And this month it's Reflect And Review.

Liz: Yeah, we design these themes to try and, you know, really put ourselves in the shoes of our sellers and what they are thinking about in the business year. Whether it's a retail moment that might be popping up like Holiday, you know, is a Veteran's Day. What other retail moments can we help prepare you for? But right now, 2020 has thankfully ended. 2021 starts in a little bit rough, but we won't go into that. She's looking forward to 2022 already, but you know, I don't know about you, but I got many intentional books. Books to write down your reflections, you know, so that when you're very meaningful about the things that you do and taking the same type of view, that we can only move forward successfully. If we look back at the things that we've done and learn from them, so that if there's opportunities for us to improve or places where we just kicked so many goals, and we should continue kicking goals, that we don't actually know what we should do more of if we don't actually look at what we've done in the past. This is what we're encouraging sellers to do. I'm sure, you know, the good majority actually are doing this, but you know, making a very intentional effort to take a look at your business in 2020, even though it was an unprecedented year, as we all keep saying, the velocity that we saw on the site was unprecedented. You know there were buyers shopping online now that we've never ever seen before. So there are so many amazing things that came out of 2020, but let's use that as an opportunity to look at those moments, look at those trends, you know, are those trends likely to sustain and us into the new year? And if they are, then let's look at those as opportunities to grow the business. If there are other areas where you felt that you maybe didn't hit the goals that you wanted to, or your goals ,were all thrown out the water, as soon as the pandemic kicked in, who knows. But really it's an opportunity to pause, you know, start the year fresh, clean your slate. Look at your wins, look at your opportunities to learn and grow, and then be very intentional from those learnings about your plans for the New Year.

Griff: Most of our sellers, most of our listeners, they're either one or two people operations. But any successful business, no matter how big or small always does this, this is something that they do on a regular basis. We're looking at it as I said before now as something to do as an annual thing. But realistically shouldn't sellers be doing this on a regular basis?

Liz: Absolutely. A hundred percent they should be. I visualize this is just stopping and popping your head up and like taking a look around and seeing what's going on while you feet are certainly scurrying underwater to keep everything afloat, they just stopped for a moment. Take a look up, look around, look at where you're at, but don't do that just once a year. Find time in your week. Find time in your month. Are you on the track that you want to be on? Or have you been pushed onto a track that you didn't even imagine that you'd be on? A. because maybe there's an opportunity or B. You've pushed down that track cause you didn't stop to realize where you were. And if so, then stop align your wheels and go back on that track that you want to go on. You know, I think it's a great lesson in life. It's a great lesson in business and let's intentionally do this together, yearly annually, monthly, weekly, whatever you feel you have the time and the space and capacity for do what you can because it is a good investment.

Griff: What can sellers be looking forward to as we spell out this theme in the coming weeks?

Liz: I know that Harry is going to talk to you about the best tools and reports and things in Seller Hub that eBay offers sellers to use to review and reflect. We have some incredible tools and Harry's team keeps building them. He keeps building these reports and you know, he knows what sellers need because he talks to them all the time. He keeps saying, what do you need? What can I build for you? What do you need? What can I build for you?

Griff: (laughter) That is a great Harry, just so you know.

Liz: He does, and once he's built it, he's like," let me show you what I've done! It's so awesome! Come and have a look at what I've built for you guys". He gets so excited. So I'm sure he's going to have a pretty excited conversation with you. But he has built these awesome reports and tools that we urge sellers to use when reflecting on the year, that was 2020, and they really are to help you look at your data. Data is the best indication of opportunities to grow. You know, looking at successes, where did you traffic come from? You know, what was your highs of your sales and your lows? Are you, you know, where are your sales coming from? Are they coming from global buyers or are they coming from local buyers? You know, what's selling really well? What are your competitors doing? Like not only just you, but how well are you competitors doing? And what's selling well for them? And data can be incredibly, incredibly scary. I don't like data at all, but I do know that when I use data and I look at it, it is so helpful and so meaningful because it doesn't lie. It is data. It is the truth.

Griff: It's unambiguous, it's there and there it is. That's the only thing it is so.

Liz: Totally. So use it, you know, it's there. And I think one of the best things about eBay is that we're completely transparent about the data. We give you as much access to data as possible, because we know that access to data is only going to help you grow. So we're not going to hide it. We're going to present it to you on a fantastic dashboard, which is the Seller Hub, and it's all uniquely yours. And then you can also look at what your competitors are doing. Like what more do you want? It's a fantastic display of data, a fantastic display of tools that you can really use to assess how well your business did in 2020.

Griff: What do you know about other things that we'll be talking about in the coming month besides just the seller tools?

Liz: Well I know there's another great report coming out or has come out, sorry, is the Listing Quality Report. And you know, the perfect listing is like just gold dust. You know, if you can have the perfect listing, then you've nailed eBay really. This report tells you how good your listings are because your sales are obviously going to be very, very reliant on the quality of your listings. With this report, we can tell you the quality of your listing, how well they are, you know, are you driving the right behaviors to ensure that your listings meet the buyers and, and serve up the information that they need in listing to convert into a sale? That's a really helpful report, TeraPeak you know, I'm sure we've talked a million gazillion times.

Griff: Yeah, but it keeps changing.

Liz: But it keeps changing. And again, one of the most valuable set of data in Seller Hub so the better that you get at using Terapeak, you know, the more effective and successful you're going to be. So we will keep talking about Terapeak. We will keep urging you to use it because there's a really, really powerful tool. Spend time looking at the insights that it gives you, and then how you can actually apply it to your business and go and talk to other sellers. How the heck do they use Terapeak? Sellers, are the experts in selling. Go and ask them how they use the, you know, the listing quality report. Ask them how they reflect on their year has been, you know. We can give you the tools to power those insights, but then go and speak to the experts which are other sellers in your community and ask them how they do it, because everyone's doing it out there. You know, don't miss out, spend the time, invest, look so that you grow into the new year.

Griff: And you should always expect that this is my experience with eBay sellers. They will share and swap any information at all that they can come up with to help another seller succeed, with one exception. They won't tell you where they get their products.

Liz: I knew you were going to say that.

Griff: You're going to have to source that on your own.

Liz: And I wouldn't either.

Griff: But I'm finding that more and more people are relying on Terapeak as a sourcing guide as well, because it gives you more and more information about what's trending. What's hot, what's down in a trend, what the prices are. So it can really help with sourcing. I know on our end on the podcast, we're going to have a lot this month to help with that Reflect And Review. And we're going to have a segment on with a tax expert to talk about setting up your business for taxes. We will be talking about things like re-evaluating your listings using the new Listing Quality Tool and all of the different things that you should be doing as a business owner at the turn of the year to help make 2021 a very successful year. And I hope you'll come and talk to us some more as the months go on. And we roll into this new year about what's happening in seller marketing engagement and what sellers should be looking for month to month as we change the theme.

Liz: Yeah, absolutely. And we're always open to ideas and suggestions. What do you want to hear more about? We know that traffic is something that sellers really want to hear a lot more about. So, you know, we are talking about, uh, impressions and traffic at the end of this month, so that again, sellers can learn to read those reports and actually understand what's the saying? With the tea leaves in the cup, or how do? You know what I mean.

Liz: Read the tea leaves. Read the tea leaves. What does that mean? What does that mean for your business now? What does that mean for your business in the future? So here's that data as your tea leaves, and we're going to help teach you how to do that and also get sellers to help talk about how they do that as well. Because again, you know, that's the best way to learn, to hear how other people are doing it.

Griff: Liz, I want to thank you and let you get back to work. Hopefully you're not going to be too distracted by the children, but if they are say hello to them for me.

Liz: I will uncle Griff. They love seeing your face on Zoom. So, I'll make sure that they're around in our next meeting.

Griff: Okay, great. Liz Austin is eBay Senior Manager Seller Marketing and Engagement here. And she's been talking with us about the theme for month of January, which is Reflect And Review. Coming up we'll talk to Harry Temkin.

Griff: Our theme this month, as we've just talked about is Reflect And Review and a big part of a seller reflecting on their past business and reviewing are the use of the various features, services and tools that eBay provides for sellers. Now, I wanted to talk about these and I went through my Rolodex and I thought, who's the best person that we could get on? And of course, you know who it is. So join me in welcoming, back to our podcast, Vice President of Seller Experience Harry Temkin. Hi Harry.

Harry: Hey Griff. Happy new year! Great to be here. Man, that's a lot of pressure that lead in.

Griff: I'm sure you're up for it.

Harry: I am. I love doing podcasts with you. And as you know, I love talking to our sellers.

Griff: Well, I don't want it to go to your head, but when we did a little survey, one of the more popular segments are yours. So, I think you're going to be a permanent feature of this podcast.

Harry: Cool. I really appreciate that. Thank you. And I'm more than happy to do podcasts anytime. You know that.

Griff: I do. Cause when it comes to reflecting and reviewing, I know your team has been extraordinarily busy doing just that. Why do you believe it's important to review your business performance each year? When I say you I'd say a seller,

Harry: I think the key word is efficiency. You want to go back and look at what performs, what didn't perform? Where should I think about focusing my business in 21? We have a lot of sellers and do a lot of seasonal things. How did they perform? Gearing up for those different parts of the season. My son is a big sneaker seller as I think a lot of people know. And we go back and look at some of the drops he got in and how long it took to sell those sneakers, at what price points he sold them at. Some of them sold immediately and at really top dollar and others didn't. And I think it gives us and him particularly a perspective on as more drops, come on these different types of sneakers, whether they're the Yeezys or, you know, the Nike air Jordans, he can make a better determination of which drops he wants to get into what things he wants to source basically. When many of you hear me talk at UpFronts or even Meetups, I talk about efficiency and conversion and profitability. They are Kind of my three core themes. When we think about building product, looking back over a year about performance, again, for me is just about that. What converted? What was most profitable for me? How can I be more efficient this year? A lot of the tools that we've been working on and built and will do this year are all about that.

Griff: So there'll be some drops that your son is not going to maybe not necessarily totally avoid, but think twice about getting involved in an investing in?

Harry: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's just, the demand was different where maybe there was more supply of that particular sneaker. More people were in the drop. It could have been the color or the size. He's very detailed in his analysis. He uses Terapeak of course, to look for price guidance, what's active on the platform. And we've got some new tools that I'll talk about today that we've got in ramp right now and will be a hundred percent as we go through this coming quarter for sourcing. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of what it's about. Just kind of a look back and learning from how the year went. Obviously this was an anomalistic year, as you know, the platform was incredibly active. We brought on a lot of new sellers. The conversion was incredible this year. Going into 21, we're still seeing obviously with so many lockdowns, particularly in the UK, Europe, and still, even though we have the vaccine, we see where the numbers are. It's still a lot of online transactions that are happening. And quite frankly, I feel like there's going to be a new base even after we get the vaccine out. I still think we're going to see this high level of demand for shopping online.

Griff: Many of those are new eBay buyers and they tend to stick around.

Harry: Absolutely. One of the cool things about eBay is we talk a lot about flywheel and recognizing that all of the buyers that come to the platform can also be sellers. Sellers were buyers too, but there are so many purchases that are made. And we talk about, you know, we were big into refurbish this year. You might have a model from a year ago, and new models come out, but there's still plenty of demand for last year's model. Particularly in video games, we see that. And the consoles, you know, as we know, we saw PlayStation5 come out this year, a new X-Box and there's such high demand even for the previous model. And that's a lot of what the platform is known for.

Griff: We talked a little bit about sourcing. When you, when you brought up your son's sneaker sales and drops and you mentioned Terapeak. Talk a little bit about how that can help a seller in 2021 be more targeted in sourcing successful inventory.

Harry: This year, we made so many incredible enhancements to Terapeak. In particular, the ability not just to search on the title, key words, that's how Terapeak traditionally worked. And now we've extended the search capability to include the item specifics, which means that it returns a much more granular results set and actually more listings in the set by almost 30% more listings come back because the search is more filtered. And then we also added in sort of the same type of left-hand navigation that we have for buying where you can filter on the item specifics. We did exactly the same thing in Terapeak. So when you're only looking at Air Jordan size 11 and a half in a particular color, that's what you'll get back in the search results. So much more fine tuned, much more granular, which means that the price guidance is that much more granular and focused. The ability to go and examine at what price points things are selling at and again, not just to do for historical transactions, but to do that on active listings as well. And we're beginning to populate that data throughout the platform. You'll see it in the listing flow, you'll see it an active listings. So you now have Terapeak propagated pretty much in all the key points of where you're managing the listings when you're actually creating a listing in the flow. Where we're going one step further is to utilize Terapeak in the supply and demand data that we have to show you the categories that are in high demand. The ones that are trending that have high sales, conversion rates and where they have an impression to listing ratio that is high. Meaning that there's limited supply and it's indicating to you, there's good conversion. There's opportunity there and it'll break down the opportunity by the item specifics. So it will actually flag particularly, let's say in sneakers, the brand and the color and the size that are hot right now, so that, you know, particularly what the source. Not just that sneakers are hot, but this particular brand and color and size. We launched that capability in the fourth quarter and it's in ramp right now. So many of our sellers will already have access to that content and you'll find it under the research tab in Seller Hub and it says Terapeak Sourcing Insights.

Griff: And I want to remind our listeners that when we say something's in ramp, Harry, what does that mean?

Harry: So whenever we roll out code, we never just go a hundred percent. We want to make sure it's rolling out correctly. We'll typically do things like 10, 20 or 25%, and then go 50, 75 and a hundred.

Griff: Metrics are such an important part of running any business. We've used the analogy in the past that you wouldn't get in your car and put a shield over your dashboard and drive away. Your dashboard in your car. It tells you how far you've gone, how fast you're going, how much gas you've got left. It can also tell you if there's something wrong, the check engine light goes on. Running a business on eBay isn't too dissimilar. You still need a dashboard. And that's where Seller Hub comes into play. So there's a lot more metrics in Seller Hub than there is on a dash board though.

Harry: A hundred percent. And look, traditionally, we kind of only gave you a couple of gauges, you know, in general, we probably gave you your speedometer. How fast were you going? Like, what are your total sales or your service metrics? How many item not as described have I had, or my handling time was off, but we never sort of gave you the other gauges that actually tell you how the engine is performing. The RPM gauge or the temperature gauge, the voltage gauge. And I would equate that to the new Listing Quality Report that is ramped pretty much to, I think about 30,000 sellers now here in the U S. Many of the sellers who listen to this podcast actually should probably have access to it. Many who join the UpFronts and so forth and our Top Sellers we've given access too. But you will see it in the Performance Tab at the top of the Performance Tab to download this report and it effectively really analyzes all of your listings across all of your categories and conditions. And it looks at them on a relative basis to the top 10 and bottom 10 performing listings in the category. Now it just doesn't look at item specifics. It actually looks at every element of the listing, including are you offering free shipping? Are you offering returns? And what's the return window? Are you using any of the promotional tools? So not just promoted listings, but things like multi quantity discount or order discount or using markdown manager? Are you offering international shipping? It tells you how long your listings have been on the site. How many photos you have relative again to these listings. And it also enables you to look at which listings have been rejected from Google Shopping and which listings have been applied to Google Shopping. Remember as part of the service, we promote all fixed price listings up to Google Shopping. So this report goes well beyond just telling you how much you've sold. It literally is identifying actions you can take to improve the quality of the listing and thus improve the conversion potential.

Griff: These metrics, by the way, I want to remind you, they're not going to work for you unless you watch them and unless you track them, tabulate them, record them, download them, view them and read them so you can make better decisions about your business.

Harry: You know, one of my core tenants is building systems for informed decisions. It's one thing to provide all of you a number, but it's another thing to say to you. Well, what do you do about the number? And as you'll see, the analytics that we're building, that's what it's about. The Listing Quality Report not only gives you all this data, but then it actually makes recommendations. It pulls out the top two recommendations of things that you can do that would have the most impact to your listings. If you think about the traffic page on the platform, we now have again, the ability to download the traffic report and why that's significant is because it enables you to manipulate the data in Excel. But the ability to compare your organic impressions to your promoted impressions is important. It enables you to analyze and recognize where you may want to promote a listing or may maybe you don't need to promote. It all depends again on the demand and the supply and you can sort of see that in the impression traffic that you're getting for your listings, and sometimes the organic and the promoted might be about the same. And in other cases, you're going to see the promoted is a lot higher. And so that tells you what you may do. One case, you may increase the promoted listing, right? In other cases, you might just have to leave it where it is, because again, there is so much competition. That's where the PL is helping you. And so the ability to download the data and rank it and do those types of things is so, so important.

Griff: Yeah, I'm a big proponent of the old vacation settings now known as Time Away. And Harry, I gotta be honest with you. I've read some conflicting reports about its functionality on social media. And I'm curious to know what's going on with that and if you can talk a little bit about Time Away and how it functions.

Harry: Vacation Settings was a super old capability and essentially look, it was an out of office assistant. And last year we've committed to rebuilding that service. And we really took into account all the feedback from our sellers. And we rebuilt the thing from the ground floor up. What I've seen as you noted, there's been a lot of talk about scheduling time away. And I think there's confusion around the term scheduling, meaning that you can't actually turn it on immediately. Look, we all know the pressures and what we've seen COVID and unfortunately, some people have to go on time away immediately. Whether it's a medical issue or other things. And so the old service was an on-off switch. So that's the cool thing right off the bat, by the way, you can now schedule it in the future. You couldn't do that before, right. You know, you're going on on vacation, you know you have to take time off. You can now schedule it ahead of time. But if you need to schedule it immediately, if you go into the service, you'll notice that it defaults to today. And so simply leaving the date as today and then adding the end date makes it turn on instantaneously. And here's the thing. Instantaneous is the key word, the old service, if you said you wanted to hide your listings, so they were not visible in search, right? You completely were shutting down the store for that period of time. It would take anywhere between 48 and 96 hours for those listings to effectively be hidden in search. And I know many of you knew kind of the back door of bulk editing the listings and really not changing anything just to get them refreshed in search. Well, now you don't have to do that. It's instantaneous or it's really, it's close to instantaneous, you know, many times, depending on the numbers of listings, you have, it could be just a matter of minutes or SLA is under an hour, but basically it turns it on and off in a very short period of time. It adds the banners to the listings and to your storefront to indicate to people that you're away. The other big one that was such a problem for many of you was the handling times. When you would turn on vacation settings and still have your listings be visible, the handling times were not adjusted. You had to do that manually. And you did that with business policies. It was not an easy thing to do.

Griff: No it wasn't. Harry: Right, The new service does that all dynamically for you. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to change handling times in your listings. It's all done on the back end. And if you're going to be away for four days, let's say, and your handling time is one, it automatically adds the four days to the estimated delivery date. When a buyer looks at your item in view item. All of that is done dynamically for you. It is real time. It allows you to schedule the service so this misunderstanding that because we went to a scheduler means you cannot turn it on immediately. That's not true. You can turn it on immediately.

Griff: Okay, good. I'm glad we got that cleared up. What should sellers be looking forward to in the way of seller tool enhancements coming into 2021?

Harry: There is a lot that we're working on. I mean, one thing that definitely, you know, our source should be aware of is we're working on our next generation listing tool built on our next generation tech, which will have the same look and feel across all platforms. So whether you're on a mobile device, you're on a tablet or you're on desktop, the listing flow will look the same and all the features will be there, including new features like image cleanup for desktop users. So that was something that wasn't there before. It was only on mobile. All of these features will be consistent across all of our platforms. That's something to look out for and we'll start migrating our sellers in this year to bring them over to that new listing flow. But also we're working on a lot of new analytics reports. We're going to continue to add more analytics in that listing quality report. We're working on optimization capabilities to show you which words are key for search in your title and being able to show you effectively how often you're placing in the top search results. Recommendations on how you can use different words or the positions of the words in your title to optimize for search. All of this is about helping you be more efficient. How do I help you drive more conversion and be more profitable with your business on eBay? We're going to be spending a good amount of time, you know, enhancing our stores capability and our storefronts. So stay tuned for that. A lot of great, great functionality and features will be coming as noted. You know, going to a year of history on traffic, being able to break down the traffic by how it's sold, where it came from. These are all the types of things that the new backend and our tech led re-imagined innovation is going to be able to give you more of those gauges on that car dashboard.

Griff: One more question, before we go. Somebody actually complained about this and I thought about this as well. When I download most reports, they only go back 90 days. Is there any chance that could be extended?

Harry: The plan is to extend them beyond the 90 days to go to a full year. We know that's always been an issue. Being able to go beyond the 90 day window, and that's going to mean you don't have to do a download of your reports on a quarterly basis. You can look at traffic for a full year and be able to look at seasonality. That is definitely on our list for this year.

Griff: Fantastic. I can breathe easier. It's so important to keep sellers up to date on this. One more thing I want to remind people about is where they can go to stay in touch when news like this has been released besides the podcast, where can sellers go?

Harry: It is good you brought that up. I mean, obviously we put a lot of this in the community boards. Many of us are on a lot of the social channels, but we're also now embedding a lot of this directly into the platform in a new page called the Resources Page. This Resource Page has videos and it has access again to frequently asked questions and guidance and tips about all of these new tools and the existing tools. So be sure to check that out again, it's called the Resources Tab on the left-hand navigation down towards the bottom, on each one of the pages. It will have all this relevant content that will guide you through all the latest capabilities and the new ones that are out into the platform.

Griff: Listen to the podcast and check out the Seller News Announcements, but check out the Learning Resources tab on the bottom of the left-hand nav on the orders page in Seller Hub. You should be revisiting these and visiting them on a regular basis. You want to make this a calendar thing where you're doing it once a week, if not every day, when you start your business day so that you can stay informed, stay in touch, stay up to date about everything that's happening at a marketplace that listen, our middle name is change. It's been that way since the beginning and change is not going to change. It's going to stay changing and you got to stay on top of it. Harry, it's always a pleasure. Thanks again for taking time to talk to us and Happy New Year. And I hope things are going well for you there in New Jersey.

Harry: Yeah. Thank you very much for having me and Happy New Year to you and to all of our sellers. Looking forward to 2021.

Griff: Harry Temkin is the Vice President Of Seller Experience as part of our reflect and review theme for the month of January, he's been going over some of the new enhancements to seller tools that every seller should know about.

Brian: You got questions.

Griff: We got answers!

Brian: What did you dig out of the email bag for this week Griff?

Griff: Well I dug out three questions Brian. They were all mailed to us at podcast@ebay.com.

Brian: What? No calls?

Griff: No, I'm glad you brought that up because actually we do have a few calls in the queue that we need to address but I'm still researching the right responses for all of them. So if you have called in a question at 888-723-4630 and we haven't played it yet. We thank you. And I promise that we will get to your questions that were called in on the next episode.

Brian: Well, that's reassuring. I'm glad those that have called in will like hearing that. Should I read the first question?

Griff: Oh Yes. By all means, please do.

Brian: Our first question was sent to podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller Stew who wrote Hi, love the podcast. Would you have any insight into why customer email addresses are only visible for 14 days in the sales record? Like many sellers this Holiday season, I've had a large volume of USPS packages in transit for much longer than expected. When a customer brings this to my attention, I'll sign them up for tracking update emails at the USPS site after apologizing profusely of course. The issue is when a customer contacts me for an update, It's usually around the two week mark, which is already extremely late and their email is no longer available. At that point I just enter my own info and relay any updates to the customer, but it made me wonder why the 14 day limit? Is it arbitrary? Thanks, Stew. "Thanks for the question Stew. In brief, the 14 day limit to an eBay buyers email address is in place to protect the buyer's privacy and to discourage off eBay transactions.

Griff: The other thing that you could do, it really would take a lot of work is you could print out your order pages with the email address and then have that on hand. If you need it.

Brian: He can also include the link to tracking in eBay Message.

Griff: Right. If you want to give them that you can continue doing what you're doing now, but more important. Stew you should consider proactively monitoring all your sold listings using the orders page in Seller Hub. And when you see tracking shows that an item appears to be stuck or delayed in delivery, proactively send a message of your concern and reassurance to that buyer. That really goes a long way and eliminating the tendency of some buyers to overreact and then maybe file a INR report. If you're proactive, it really sends the right message to buyers.

Brian: So good advice for Stew and our next question is about sales tax. Griff, how about if you read this one?

Griff: Yeah. Happy to. eBay seller Mark wrote us. "I understand eBay collects sales tax on behalf of all sellers from buyers since 2019. The problem is at the end of the year, all the sales tax that eBay collected and sent to the IRS is counted in the sellers, gross sales, making all sellers pay more tax. The other problem is eBay told me there's no way for me to go back to 2020 and see how much tax eBay collected on my behalf. So I can deduct it from my 10 99K. eBay should be deducting this on the 1099K. Thank you, Mark." Mark, thanks for the question. First, I believe it's correct. The payment processors are required by the IRS to show gross amounts of payments processed. Not those gross amounts within expenses or other things like sales tax taken out, even when eBay has collected the tax. And this is an IRS requirement. It's not an eBay requirement. So eBay can't go in and deduct these from your 1099k. And the other thing I want to make clear here is that the 1099 K is only an indication of gross income. The IRS knows that these gross amounts of each of your 1099 Ks should add up to the gross amount you're claiming on your taxes, but you still get to deduct expenses. And this sales tax now is an expense that you can deduct. But then...

Brian: Mark, you can also determine how much sales tax that eBay has collected on your behalf by downloading one or more of four different reports. There's the Orders Report in Seller Hub on the orders page. And that report has a column showing tax collected.

Griff: Yes, it does. However, that particular report goes back only 90 days, at least for now. I hear rumblings of a change coming there for adding this as a full year look back, but that's not happening now. It's coming.

Brian: I heard those rumblings too, but if at some point in 2020, Mark, you opted into Manage Payments, you can also find the tax collected in the Managed Payments report and there's two. There's Transaction versus Payout. If you look at the Transaction Report, that's the one that I'm talking about and that report goes back a year, go into Seller Hub, click on the Manage Payments tab and download that one as well. Make sure you set the right to and from dates to cover the period you need to see. And just so you know, like I just did this for the year. I just went back in and set it for January one, 2020, December 31st, 2020. And I have all my sales for the year.

Griff: How interesting I did the same thing this week when I was researching this question. It does work. Of course there is a problem though, if you're a seller like me, who wasn't opted into Manage Payments until the middle of the year, there's going to be that place in the Managed Payment Report. That even if you've gone back a year, it ends. So I only started in August and I have the whole year, but the months before that, that I have to account for, and there, I rely on the PayPal transaction report because that's what I was using. All my payments from buyers were going there and those go back a year or more. And they also have a column in the report that says sales tax collected. You can use a combination of those if you need to, if you were opted into Manage Payments sometime mid year to get an accurate figure.

Brian: And that's a really good point because probably the majority of our sellers and listeners opted in at some point in 2020. As opposed to like me who opted in 2019. The nice thing about that report though, Griff is it's extremely detailed. There's lots and lots of columns. If you haven't looked at it, Mark, I encourage you to go look at it. It's more info than most sellers will ever need. So Mark, depending on your own Managed Payment situation, you may need to download all three to get an accurate amount for the sales tax collected on your behalf for 2020.

Griff: Yeah. And we did mention there was four and the fourth one we've talked about with Harry Temkin in this episode. So this is probably a good place, Brian, for us to remind all sellers that rather than waiting till the end of the year or the beginning of a year, you should be downloading copies of these really necessary reports and you should do so on a regular cadence. Be like me. I actually, cause I have short-term memory, have an alert set in your calendar application to remind you to do so either on a monthly, quarterly or half year basis. I do this monthly for all the reports and then I give them a month name , 2020, 2021. I store them someplace on my computer where I know I can reach them at the end of the year when it's time to start calculating up the information for my taxes.

Brian: You're more diligent than me cause I used to wait for the 90 day. And the downside with that is sometimes I would forget for a week. And then all of a sudden I had a gap in info. I was really, really happy when I could use the Managed Payments report and go back longer than 90 days. But I think staying on top of your business is the right message.

Griff: You should really do this regularly.

Brian: Good tips, Griff and for those not familiar with these reports, they're all downloadable as comma separated value or CSV files. The reason we, and most other sites that offer downloads for user data use a CSV format is it's one format that every application can read. That means Excel or any other spreadsheet program.

Griff: And if you don't have Excel, there's a lot of free spreadsheet, application options online like Google Sheets. That's probably one of the more popular ones. And there are also client-based options that you download onto your machine that are free. One of them that I've been using for years is Libra office.

Brian: And I believe that Mac operating systems for those on an iMac also have built in spreadsheet application, which I do. And on a Mac it's called Numbers.

Griff: I used Numbers on my Mac. I use Google Sheets a lot, both for my personal use and also here at eBay. We use Google Sheets a lot. And of course I have a copy of Libra office, which actually is pretty cool.

Brian: Well, my default is Numbers, but I also have Excel on my laptop as well. I've got all those plus, so I got more than you.

Brian: You do. You're a well-rounded guy Griff.

Griff: Why don't you read our last question, Brian?

Brian: Certainly. This was emailed to us by eBay seller James. James says "Dear eBay Podcast Team. I appreciate this forum and the communication. I've been an eBay seller for about a year and a half. After deciding my nearly 40,000 comic book collection had grown far too big. Since then I've been selling consistently and it's been nice to cut down on the clutter in my house and also earn a little extra money. I've been a happy eBay seller until just recently. And I do have one concern that stems from USPS shipping delays that have affected seller ratings. Even though these delays are out of the seller's control. Numerous times over the past month and a half, I have dropped off shipments on time at the post office only to have the boxes sit there for days. And in some cases, weeks before the items were scanned and validated, this is completely out of my control. Yet, eBay cited the lack of timely validations as cause for removing my Top Rated Seller status. This episode, which is far from unique stands in sharp contrast to eBay's public pledge to ensure seller ratings are not impacted by USPS shipping delays. Thank you, James." First, James, I'm sorry to hear that you've lost your Top Rated Seller status. I believe that any defect removal for late shipment acquired during the period where extra protections were in place can take time. And those defects are subject to removal if there's a scan on record that shows you put the item into the mail carriers, hands within your stated handling time.

Griff: Yeah. And that's the rub because the protections assume that you're putting the packages into the carrier's hand within your stated handling time. But of course, if tracking does not show such a scan, then the sellers ETS status could be in jeopardy as you've learned. So James, although at this podcast, we can't really change your status. We're only a podcast. We're not eBay Customer Support. There are steps you can take. However, to avoid this situation in the future.

Brian: Indeed there are. James my first question would be, do you use a scan sheet? These scan sheets are really important. They're available on eBay for any labels printed within a day that could be separate labels or bulk labels.

Griff: Exactly. And that one scan sheet can represent the tracking for up to 50 separate shipments and a USPS driver or clerk is way more likely to agree, to scan a single sheet as opposed to scanning a pile of parcels that are labeled and doing so individually.

Brian: And most of them are happy to do so. And then another thing James is, do you schedule for USPS pickups? If not, you should consider doing so. You can schedule for free USPS pickups on their website. A driver is not as Harriet as a desk clerk and will always agree to scan a scan sheet. Especially if you meet the driver at the door with the parcels and the scan sheet, you'd be making their job a lot easier with said scan sheet.

Griff: That's right. But James, if for some reason you, there could be a number of them. You have to go to a post office, use the scan sheet with all your parcels and make sure that the clerk scans it. Now you say that they wouldn't scan it. Well, they're actually supposed to. There wasn't any exemption because of how busy it got. I think clerks tend to get really frazzled because they're overwhelmed and they may make rules up on the spot. So if you ask politely, but be firm, a USPs clerk is required to scan at a customer's request, no matter how busy he or she might be. And now when I was dropping off all my shipments in previous years before I started using pickups, I would do my best to establish a really good set of friendly relationships with all the clerks there. You know, I'd go in and I'd ask them, Hey, good day. And how's your day going? And boy, it sure is busy today. Isn't it? And you guys work so hard, everyone who's in a hard service job, just likes a little bit of acknowledgement and that acknowledgement can go a long way. It's a lot better way of catching flies, you know, honey not vinegar. And I even brought speaking of honey, a box of honey glazed donuts once to the clerks. And I said, here, these are all for you for the great work you do. I really appreciate everything you do. And after I did that at that office, I never had a clerk refused my request to scan ever again. In fact, they smiled when I walked in and they were all eager to have me as their customer.

Brian: Well, Griff. That makes me think of two things.

Griff: What?

Brian: You're such a suck up and maybe that's a sponsorship opportunity for us here on the podcast.

Griff: Oh, I didn't think of that.

Brian: Donuts. Griff: Yeah. I'll call Duncan's and see if they're interested and as being a suck up, that may be true, but listen, it worked right. So there it is.

Brian: Well James, so maybe a box of donuts, but more important. As we mentioned in the previous response to Stew, be proactive, monitor your shipments and contact buyers whose shipments appeared delayed to let them know you're on top of it, keeping your buyer's confidence in your intentions is job number one.

Griff: And a reassured buyer is a lot less likely to open up an item not receive case as well. And I know you're concerned about your ETRS status. It's understood, but I think if you follow our tips, you'll find that it'll be a lot easier to avoid this in the future. Anyway, that's all the questions we have for this week. Brian. Now remember if you've already called in with a question and you're wondering why aren't they answering mine? Uh, I promise we'll get to at least a few of those next week.

Brian: And whether called in or emailed in, we love your questions. Keep them coming. Call us on 888-723-4630 to leave your question as a voice message. Yeah.

Griff: Yeah. That's 888-723-4630. Now remember if your question is timely, it's urgent or it's specific to your account or listing status. You should contact eBay Customer Support directly for fast service. Not us. We're not Customer Support in that way. Click the help and contact link at the top of any eBay webpage, scroll down to the bottom and find the option for calling Customer Support.

Brian: You need to be logged in to see that call us option. If you're not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: And you can also record your question on your cell phone and send it to us as an attachment in an email to podcast@ebay.com. The audio from your cell phone recording tends to be a lot better quality than the phoned in voice message.

Brian: Is that really true?

Griff: Yeah, it is. Especially if you have a newer model iPhone or Android phone. Their built in mics are really high quality and they offer incredibly clear audio.

Brian: That's interesting. I'll have to try it. Maybe one of these days we'll be doing the podcast just on our phone.

Griff: Yeah. I doubt that, but I think your idea's worth merit. In fact, let's do this. Why don't you record a question for next week's podcast and send it to podcast@ebay.com Brian, and do so as an attachment and then call the voice line and leave the same message. We'll play them both on the air side by side.

Brian: I like that idea. Does it have to be a question?

Griff: Not really. You could say something like, let me think. Oh, maybe, Oh, I know "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you."

Brian: Is that from something or like a TV show?

Griff: It is a famous quote, but not from a TV show. Why don't you Google it and tell me in the voice message?

Brian: Always so mysterious. I do know where that's from though.

Griff: Oh, you do? Good. Okay.

Brian: But , you know, what I might do is I might go out onto the discussion boards and find a good question and actually read it because it'll be informative for our sellers if we give them an answer anyway.

Griff: Okay. That's a better idea. By the way, the quote comes from...

Brian: A Sherlock Holmes question?

Griff: No. It's not Sherlock Holmes. I know why you think that. Cause it says Watson. It was actually...

Brian: Oh! This is the, this was a the first phone call.

Griff: This is the first phone call that it was ever made from Alexander Graham bell to his assistant in the next room. He said, when they hooked up the wires, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you." That was the first ever phone call conversation. And also the first conversation that started speculation. Was there something going on between Alexander Graham bell and Mr. Watson that we don't know about? Anyway,

Brian: I am going to digress, just for a second. I once saw something where they talked about how you should greet someone and there was discussion over how to greet someone on a phone. And back in the day, they couldn't figure out what was it going to be hello? And some people said it should be Oy, there were all kinds of these different options and I'm glad we settled on Hello.

Griff: Greetings! (laughter). You know what mine is today? What's up? I don't have all day.

Brian: Griff anyway, we digress again on the second week of the year. The episode is nearly over, but first it's time for your podcast To Do list.

Griff: Yeah. And that first tip is going to be, don't operate your business on eBay in the dark. Stay in the know, check the Announcement Board for up-to-date Seller News. It's news that can help you run your business and keep you up to date on all things new and changing at eBay.

Brian: And go visit the eBay Community Pages. There are thousands of sellers, just like you asking and answering questions, swapping tips and tricks, and just generally chewing the eBay fat. So to speak.

Griff: So to speak. (laughter). Check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode. You can view this episodes transcript by going to www.ebay.com/podcast. Then you click the title link for episode 123 and then click the transcript tab. Scroll down to click. I know it's a lot of clicking to click, see more to view the entire transcript and that's see more, not the person Seymour.

Brian: On our next episode, we'll visit with an old friend of the eBay community, tax attorney, Cliff Ennico. Cliff will share his sage advice for preparing your business for the 2021 tax year.

Griff: Yes, he will. We'd like to thank again, our guests this week, Liz,Austin and Harry Tempkin.

Brian: The eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.