Ep 174 || Business Risk Management: Selecting the Right Business Structure for Your Business on eBay

[podcast_team]

This week, financial coach Joey Ruffalo joins Brian and Griff to talk about how the right business structure can minimize your exposure to potential risks and liabilities. And Griff and Brian answer several questions on topics like: shipping ink cartridges long distances; what are ‘dings?’; and how does one edit their Listing Frames?

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Joey: "My wife and I, we were about $370,000 in debt back in 2007, 2008, during that last financial crisis running our business, living like we were high on the hog, so to speak without any income coming in, but still living like there was no tomorrow. And we woke up and, $370,000 in debt, scared, alone and crawled our way out of it, paid everything off. Been living debt free for many years now. I didn't want other people to feel the same way we felt alone and without anybody to turn to. So I looked into being a financial coach to help people walk that process. And I used eBay as means to help get outta debt."

Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and the inspiration to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 174 and in the studio we are. This week, our co-host is the honorable Brian Burke. Hi Brian.

Brian: Hello. It sounds like I've gotten a new title honorable.

Griff: Well, I think you've earned it.

Brian: I've earned a bunch of titles according to our seller community.

Griff: Really? What are some of those?

Brian: I'm not going back to those days.

Griff: Yeah, I've seen a few, my favorite or when they say, uh, when they call me grief instead of Griff. I love that one actually. Yeah, it's a great name. Hey grief!

Brian: Well, and then you got the one on my last recording with you before I took a few weeks off over the holidays. Yeah. I think it was, grifter.

Griff: Oh yeah. Somebody said you're a grifter, right? Yeah. Oh, I had that. You know, when that movie came out, people, were you, oh, there's a movie about you. There's three of you apparently. The Grifters.

Brian: Well, that could have been a good band.

Griff: Well, anyway, it's been interesting. I wish you were here last week. We had some interesting questions. We have interesting questions this week as well.

Brian: We do have some questions. That's good.

Griff: Yeah. And we have a guest.

Brian: It's good to have guests.

Griff: Ask me who it is.

Brian: Who is the guest?

Griff: So it's interesting. I was thinking about over the, you know, the holidays, well, what are we gonna start off in January? I need a theme. You know, we had that theme series with Audrey Tracy about social marketing and that was well received and it was fun to do as fun to plan out. And then I thought I was watching some show or something and it was something to do with risk. And I think, you know, everything in life is a risk and business is a risk. And we hear from sellers that they get really anxious about risk, whatever it may be. We need to talk about risk management because that's a part of running a business. So today we start off a series it's called Business Risk Management. And today we're gonna talk to, uh, I wanna start at the bottom floor at the bottom floor when you're starting or building a business is what should that business be structured as? And our good friend and owner of Jr. Financial Coaching, Joey Ruffalo is on.

Brian: That's great. It's great to have Joey back. So you are gonna start by building the foundation.

Griff: And then we're gonna build of a wreck of a house over it in the coming weeks. No, it should be great. We'll talk about business structure and I have some more information. We don't have any news this week.

Brian: No news?

Griff: Yeah. I checked. There was no news.

Brian: Second week of January and no news. Yeah.

Griff: I don't know. I don't get this. Well, you know, no news is good news. It's a slow week, I guess. So I have some information about a question that was asked last week, and I want to add it here at the top of the episode, because it's important to clarify.

Brian: I wasn't here last week. I know. So what was the question?

Griff: Well, it was, it was from a seller who couldn't change or add a PayPal account to their payments section on Seller Hub. And we provided the right information.

Brian: Of course you did. You always provide the right information.

Griff: Yeah. But I delved into the topic with our Product Team and I wanted to add a few more details for the seller and for everyone else in fact. So for the seller who emailed the question to us, it appears there may been a technical issue with their payments page. And it's now on the Product Team's hand for addressing that. So that's different. They may have a technical issue going on, but in conversations with that team last week, I did garner a few additional details and I wanna share them here to review. On eBay currently as a seller, PayPal can be used for two purposes. Well as a seller and a buyer. So it can be used as a payment option at checkout and as a funding method for eBay labels. And if you're in your payment, what we call and I don't know why we don't brand this it's Payment Wallet is what we call it internally. It's the Payment Options Page in Seller Hub. When you're in there, you can remove the PayPal account on file from that page, but you won't be able to add it back or add a new one on that same page. It'll have no impact on checkout if you're a buyer.

Brian: You can add it back as a label funding option when you go to purchase and print your next eBay label. So even though it's not on, you can add it.

Griff: You can't add it from the wallet page payment options.

Brian: But you can add it to be able to pay for your labels.

Griff: Right. And you have to do it at the point where you're actually purchasing a label.

Brian: And that point will be at the bottom of the label page for paying with PayPal. But again, you have to add it to your account manually and agree to the authorization request.

Griff: I know if you've done this in the past where you authorize the third party service. There's an authorization process and you you'll have to go through that. So that, that's how you would add a different account for paying for your PayPal labels. But to reiterate, PayPal cannot be used as a source for paying any other eBay seller fees.

Brian: Just your shipping labels.

Griff: Exactly.

Brian: That's good clarification.

Griff: It is. I hope. I hope that's clarification and remember, no matter what you do, PayPal will always be one of the checkout payment options on checkout during that payment flow as a buyer. Even if you delete your PayPal account from your Seller Hub payments page, I hope that clarifies this by the way. Cause I lost a little bit of sleep last week trying to make sure we got the right answer. And as I said, I see there's no news. It's a blank page, Brian. There's no news here.

Brian: No news at all. I don't know what to do.

Griff: I guess it's, it's been a quiet week here in eBay land for the month of January.

Brian: No news is good news or is it, should I be pessimistic and say, it's the quiet before the storm?

Griff: I just wish you wouldn't say anything would be that my ideal situation.

Brian: I actually have no clue because there's no news.

Griff: And it reminds me of a kid. There was a pun when I was a child, somebody was about to be hung. And they said, what are your last words? And they said, no noose is good noose. and you laughed at it. We're like two dads telling dad jokes.

Brian: Yes. Well, I have to laugh at your jokes. Otherwise you won't invite me back.

Griff: Well, I'll invite you back. I promise.

Brian: So do we have any questions to, well, we talked about that. We do have some questions don't

Griff: Yeah. Yeah. So, we do and I hope you'll stick around to help answer them.

Brian: I will.

Griff: In fact, I want you to take some of the heat if we answer them incorrectly

Brian: And then I get to go talk to Product to find out the clarification, right?

Griff: Cause accountability loves company. But first, why don't you and I introduce our topic and guest for this week.

Brian: Sounds good.

Griff: Every action in life, every endeavor or journey or experiment entails risk starting and building a business involves quite a bit of risk in fact. There's risk from losses either by damaged or destroyed inventory, or it could be a loss of your business location. There's risks from equipment failure. There's risks that come from satisfying customers, all sorts of risks. And in fact, if I haven't scared you enough, there's even more because for the seriously risk averse, starting and running a business can produce a constant level of high anxiety that can take all the fun and the profit out of running your own business. But fear, not! This week, we start an open ended series based on that theme Business Risk Management. And our first segment in the series is about the risk of having the wrong business structure. Or should I say not having risk because you have the right business structure and to help us learn more about business structure. Welcome back to the podcast, our guest owner of JR Financial Coaching. And he's an eBay seller. Joey Ruffalo. Hi Joey.

Joey: Hi guys. How you doing?

Brian: Welcome Joey, Happy New Year.

Griff: Happy New Year to you guys as well.

Griff: When it comes to starting a business, a lot of sellers, they just start, they just start selling online for example. What should a seller be thinking about when it comes to how they've structured their business and what does that mean?

Joey: So for me, business is sort of a mindset. If you're running yourself, as you know, let's say you're selling a couple things and you don't think yourself as a business, you may not be as buttoned up and you're selling as you wanna be. But if you think of yourself as a business, you're gonna sort of have this idea that I need to do things legitimately. And also the government's gonna say, Hey, you're a business and we want a fair share of your tax money.

Brian: They do want that. Don't they?

Griff: You mean I can't get away with it. I can't just pretend it doesn't exist. OK, good.

Joey: No. So things can get really messy, pretty fast once you start having a business and you don't separate your business income from your personal income, especially in your bank account. So that's called commingling of assets. When you mingle your assets together, your business and your personal income in one account, things can get very messy income tax time, especially with deductions and write-offs and everything else. So it's just best to have a separate business structure set up for you regardless of how much you're selling. Even if you're selling a little bit, let's say the great thing about the United States is you can start a business as a sole proprietorship, just you, you and your wife or your spouse, depending on what state you're in. If there's common law aspects that take over, just check your state it's much easier that way than me trying to sit there and decide with state switch. But so proprietorship is pretty easy. You can pretty much say I'm a business today and use your social security number, open up a bank account with your name on it. If your name is your business. So for example, if I was to use Joey Ruffo Reselling, I could start a business today with that name. Anything that has your last name, plus your business structure, whatever your title is. You don't need a DBA, which is a doing business as, or a fictitious name statement. For example, again, like I said, Ruffo Reselling, that's fine. But if I was to use Widget Collectibles as my name, I have to file something with the county, which is called a, uh, a DBA or a Fictitious Name Statement, and then bring that to the bank. And then the bank will allow me to open an account in that name. I see. So that I could do business as Widget Collectibles.

Griff: I bet most of our sellers aren't even doing that.

Joey: I would imagine that. A sole proprietor that's for any business in general. So if you were a LLC, you are an S Corp, whatever you wanna call your business and have the bank account in that name, which then will allow you to get, say, business credit, or have a business debit card in that name, you need to file those forms. Each location municipality has different requirements as to how to fulfill this. So for example, in my area in Northern California, I have to file this with the local county clerk's office. And then put this statement in a local newspaper for four weeks, which calls to action Hey, I'm using this name. Does anybody have a claim on this name that they wanna sort of dispute? If that doesn't occur, then you're in the clear that usually costs about a hundred dollars to run in a local newspaper for about four weeks. And you're good to go. But in the short term, in that meantime, and that four week period, you can get a lot of other stuff done, go to the bank, get your account, set up, get everything going that way. This way. When you set up your Managed Payments, your eBay store name is gonna be what your bank account name is gonna be. You can kind of get the process going that you have to connect with the right account and make sure that everything's the same name and all that stuff. You wanna make sure you have that going there.

Griff: So the idea is that if you're starting out, you should start out and keep everything separate from your personal income. What about sellers who have already co-mingled and now listen to this podcast, have a mini freak out and they wanna separate their assets. Is that possible?

Joey: Yeah. It's separate too late to do it. Just pick a start date and just go from there and just, you're gonna have to deal with the mess, let's say of before business. The other thing I would suggest or say that you need when you're starting your business, so you need your business name, like we discussed, let's say I use Widget Collectibles. I file doing business as and Fictitious Name Statement from the county. Get my business bank account. You also will most likely need a business license depending on where you're operating. Most municipalities again, if you're an at home or a cottage industry type business will need the file for a business license to operate. Even if you're operating at home, it's just best to be above the law as much as possible, then skirting or below the law, in my opinion. And it doesn't cost that much to get that stuff done. And it's just cost of doing business. You can write it off on your taxes usually you're good to go there.

Griff: So there's some management involved here. There's some work and there's a little bit of cost and you know, filing fees. I know that I had to get a business license in San Jose and it costs me about $120. I think of a year. It's not that big, but what are risks if I just avoid this conversation altogether, pretend I'll listen to the next episode, not this one and go about my merry way. What are some of the things that can happen if you're not structured properly?

Joey: Well, you can be shut down. Obviously I don't think the cops are gonna come ranger your, your death pile storage room and say you can't sell online anymore. But the risks that are there is just, there's liability risks that happen when you're, when you aren't separating yourself out from a business. So let me get into sort of the types of business structures there are shortly. And then we can kind of discuss the liabilities of each one. So you have your sole proprietorship. So` like I said, you need your business name, bank, account, business license. Another thing might need is a seller's permit. I know the state of California, that's important to have that helps you. If you're gonna buy large amounts, not have to pay the sales tax, but also to when you're collecting sales tax from your customers and eBay handles that for us on the online side. But if I'm taking my business to like a flea market location or a brick and mortar location, I have to collect sales tax. So I'm gonna need that as well. The other thing you might hear people say is an EIN number. an EIA number is an, an Employer Identification Number. That's basically your business, social security number. When you're a sole proprietorship, you can use your social security number or an EIN. I suggest getting an EIN it's free, takes about two seconds to get. You email it, you get a number and you use that on your taxes to separate all your expenses are under that heading. Sole Proprietorships are gonna probably handle about 85 to 90% of all sellers. And I think that's just my estimation. It's just easy said and done across the board. Next is gonna be sort of a general partnership situation. That's a little bit more complex, but that's not something that you would set up as a business structure. Let's say with the state, or like, if Brian and I are going at the business together and we decide 50/ 50 partnership, and then you set up, who's gonna do what duties and run the business. The only problem with partnership is they have this, what I call the seven D's. Disinterest, Death, Debt, Drugs, Divorce, Disagreement, and Disability are the reasons why they don't run. So if something should happen on those sides and Brian is disinterested or we have a disagreement, it's all on me to do the work. You know, there is nothing I can do about it because that's just the partnership we have, like 50/50, or whatever we have set up. They always say that the only ship that doesn't sail is a partnership.

Griff: Well, this is wait, this isn't supposed to be this depressing, but go on.

Brian: No, is that because one, one person's rowing one way and the other's throwing the other?

Griff: One person's not even rowing. Yeah. The other person doesn't even their ore in the water.

Joey: Right, They just circle. The next thing would be an LLC, which people have heard about and Corporation. So LLCs probably gonna be, if I'm thinking about 85%. Sole Proprietorship for sellers, I'm thinking probably LLCs, probably like that 10% range, Corporations are 5% or less. That is gonna be your structure.

Brian: Is there like a dollar amount of sales that you, you would recommend, like someone goes from, say sole proprietor to an LLC, or is it dependent on the business?

Joey: I would say it's dependent on the business. So income inventory, location and workers will determine your business structure. In my opinion, as you earn income or your income level, the type of inventory you're selling the location, where are you selling? Are you selling on online? Are you selling on site? Are you meeting in person with people all the time? Cause you're meeting in person all the time and you're driving a nice car. They see that you might have some money. They may decide that, you know, they're gonna try something and then you need to be protected for liability wise. If you have an LLC, you can protect your assets better than proprietorship. And then if you have workers, if you hire anybody soon. So if you gonna do any of those steps or hit those thresholds that you think that's good for you, then you might wanna switch from the Sole Proprietorship to let's say an LLC, basically an LLC is gonna protect the assets that you put in the LLC. Again, for example, let's use rental income. Let's say you have rental properties and you own house A and house B, you put house a and LLC one, you put house B in LLC Two. If something happens to house A and you get sued, house B is protected. Cause it's in a separate LLC.

Brian: Oh, interesting.

Joey: They can't come after those assets. If you put 'em all in one, then all those assets are fair game. So if you're doing a lot of inventory selling and churning a lot, let's say you're selling on multiple sites. Let's say you're selling on eBay. And let's say, you're also selling in a storefront location. And you're selling on a secondary online site. You may have three LLCs set up just to protect the assets of each location. So your eBay assets are protected from your onsite. Your on site is protected from your third location and then so on and so forth.

Griff: Okay. So, but if you're doing that, if you have three LLCs, is that three separate tax filings?

Joey: Yes. So LLC basically is a pass thru. If you pay on your personal taxes, so you file one tax return and you just on your schedule C's, you put a different business down. So for example, I have several different businesses that I run through coaching and side hustles and eBay and everything else. When I file my taxes, I have three or four different schedule C's that get put in there, everything gets added up and then I pay tax off of whatever the total amount is for each of them together. But each one has their own separate deductions and separate write offs. Everything else.

Griff: Oh, this makes a lot of sense. I've never made myself into an LLC for my eBay selling, but I'm considering it.

Joey: The difference in California again, is cost. So again, there's no cost to set up a Sole Proprietorship and your taxes you pay are basically your, your personal tax rate. When you have an LLC or even an S Corp, you have corporate taxes that you owe the state of California for example. The minimum amount you owe is $800 a year. Even if you made $0, you made no money. You still owe the government $800 for an LLC or an S Corp. The difference gets to be with an S Corp you're double tax, or you pay a corporate tax and then you pay your personal tax, right? So you pay a 1.5% tax, on income or $800. Whichever's larger on an S Corp for an LLC you pay $800, but then there's flat rates based on the amount you make that you would pay. So for example, let's say I make $999,999 this year. And I'm deciding if I have an S Corp or an LLC. For an S Corp. I pay 1.5%. So about $15,000 or so in taxes and LLC, I would pay $800 LLC tax. And then there's a 2,500 LLC fee for that bracket. So a total 3,300, you see how an LLC would be much cheaper and savings money wise the more you make.

Griff: Yeah, seems like a no brainer. In fact, why wouldn't anyone want an S Corp?

Joey: We had one a long time ago. My wife and I for a different business. It's, it's expensive. It's costly to set up. It takes a while and you can't just do it yourself too. You have to have a third party involved either to file for you, but also on your, Board of Directors. We had to have the two of us, then somebody else be on there till let's take minutes and then Annual Meetings, it's a pain in the butt.

Griff: Yeah. I, I guess you'd have to become a pretty big operation to benefit probably from a S Corp. It sounds like most people are gonna be Sole Proprietor, LLC, if they're selling on eBay.

Brian: And it also sounds like the jump from so proprietorship to LLC really becomes, okay, there's an extra $800 that you're gonna pay for that, LLC. And then do you need that liability protection?

Joey: Correct. So that's, that's why I was saying earlier, like depending on what you're selling, let's say, say you in a category that could be counterfeit, lets say sports cards used to be before all the companies came up with their authentications. You know, there was this big thing in the eighties where it just was like churn and burn autographs. You don't know what you're getting. Purses sometimes in different categories, like is this a fake or not a fake. eBay is good with all new authentications now. So we're kind of covered in that aspect. Or even if you're doing a lot of inventory in those categories, like sneakers, now you're doing a lot of sales. You might just wanna protect yourself.

Griff: Yeah. Makes sense. This has been great information, Joey. I really appreciate it. I made some assumptions about business structure that were wrong. So I'm glad that we had this just for my benefit. And I hope it was a good benefit for sellers as well. I wanna give you a chance to promote a little bit your expertise in your business about coaching. Where can people go to maybe hire you as a coach?

Joey: They can go to JRFinancialCoaching.com. There's a place on there. I have a little tab for eBay sellers. They can click on that and get started. Just reading a little bit about what I do. A little bit about my story. My wife and I, we were about $370,000 in debt back in 2007, 2008. During that last financial crisis, running our business, living like we were high on the hog, so to speak without any income coming in, but still living like, there was no tomorrow. And we woke up in $370,000 in debt, scared alone. And our way out of it paid everything off. Been living debt free for many years now. And when we went through the process, it was more like I didn't want other people to feel the same way we felt alone and without anybody to turn to. So, I looked into being a financial coach to help people walk that process. And I used eBay as a means to help get out of debt. So we sold online and, you know, started the side hustles and everything back then to sort of jumpstart everything. I help people either get started selling or take sellers from that beginner level to that next level of, yeah, we're turning this into a business and we're gonna grow this because there's a lot of potential there for everybody. And I, I want people to sell because they love selling and cause they like it. Not because they have to, because when you have to do something, you don't do it as well as when you like doing it.

Griff: That's true.

Brian: Makes sense. Really good advice. And congrats. That's a huge whole dig out of.

Joey: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So happy we did it and happy to help anybody who needs help. So just go to the website, there's a place, like I said, there's start here button, click here. You can also find me on Instagram JR Financial Coach on there. Anyway, you could find me, just hit me up and let me know your situation and we'll set up a Zoom call and we'll go from there.

Griff: Excellent. Joey, thank you so much. And thank you for taking time. I know you're a busy guy. Thanks for taking time to be on the podcast again. I know we love it. I know our listeners love hearing from you as well.

Joey: Anytime, man. Anytime.

Griff: Thank you. very much.

Brian: Thanks Joey.

Griff: Joey Ruffo is the owner of JR Financial Coaching. He's also an eBay seller and we'll put a link to his business in the transcript for episode 174.

Brian: You got answers.

Griff: No, you got questions.

Brian: I was just seeing if you're paying attention, Griff.

Griff: I'm paying attention. I have the script in my hand.

Brian: You've got questions?

Griff: Oh jeez Brian. We got answers!

Brian: So what's our first question today?

Griff: Well, let me tell you that we have several questions actually. We got one calling question. Yay. Yay. And it's a good one and several emailed questions. And our first question is from a good old friend, Andrew in Poland, he's an eBay seller who sells and ships ink cartridges. He's written into the show before Andrew writes this week: Hello Griff. I'm the guy from Poland. Who's selling ink cartridges for pens, and his user idea is Ink For Pens. Pretty, explanatory. I'm a Top Seller and it's costing me more and more money to be a Top Seller. I need to ship my cartridges in one day. I don't have a problem with that, but I kept getting the following message from my buyers like this one, Mr. Seller, this is his buyer emailing him. He says, I received your package January 13th, which is okay since there are problems with flights, but the problem is that all the cartridges are damaged. They are spilling ink all over the plastic bag in which you sent them in is full of ink. Most probably they got damaged on the way here. Your help is appreciated. And then he included another email from another buyer. And this may be telling you something, Brian. I just had a very frustrating and messy morning with this order. Or the package arrived with two bags, full of mixed ink and cartridges. They had clearly leaked in transit and no ink was visible on the outside of the package. The thick paper wrapping inside did a good job of catching what leaked out of the bags. I don't know what happened here. My previous order from you was perfectly fine. That's why I ordered more cartridges either there was a problem with your tubes or their filling or the whole package was badly crushed in transit. Andrew signs off with, I'm a hundred percent sure these buyers are describing frozen ink cartridges.

Brian: Coming from Poland.

Griff: And he says, can I get any help from eBay? Best regards, Andrew. Okay.

Brian: It's great. He's getting repeat buyers. So he is doing a good job there.

Griff: He's gonna lose 'em though.

Brian: And he will lose 'em if he doesn't fix this, this issue. And, but those buyers, you know, oftentimes we hear from sellers that, Hey, buyers can be unreasonable. Neither one of those buyers were unreasonable. They were just looking to get the item as described that they purchased.

Griff: Yeah, I think, I think Andrew understands it.

Brian: Yeah. And I mean, clearly, you know, he's been on the site for a long time and sold lots and he's getting good repeat buyers, but he does have a frozen ink cartridge problem.

Griff: Yes. And there's a C here. It's winter. Yes. And it seems these started happening in the winter. It sounds like he's not insulating these packages enough to keep them from being frozen when they're sitting on the tarmac or when they're up in the air, because they're in unheated cargo planes. Most of the time, not always.

Brian: If they are being shipped, you know, kind of anything with air, they're gonna go up to an altitude where they're going to get frozen.

Griff: And if they're frozen, the variance in air pressure can also play a part in having them be, you know, explode or leak. Yeah. I mean, there's only so much stress plastic can take.

Brian: And they're little tiny plastic things. I mean, they're not really meant for freezing temperatures. The one thing that I think about is chocolate sellers have to do this too.

Griff: Chocolate?

Brian: Chocolate sellers. Mm-hmm . And so what they do is they insulate the packages when they send them and they have to deal with both heat and cold, but tend to deal more with heat cuz you don't want melted chocolate.

Griff: No, I don't want that.

Brian: And styrofoam and those kinds of insulation work well for that and would work well in this scenario.

Griff: Well, it'd be worth trying. I, I would use styrofoam sheets. Yes. All around the inside of the box. And then I would probably use one of those metallic lined, insulated bags, plastic bags, and put that in the middle to at least see if that makes a difference. I don't know what else you can do. Not sell cartridges in the winter?

Brian: Yeah. The other thing the styrofoam obviously will protect it in other ways too. I mean structurally. Probably would be the guidance that I would give.

Griff: Best of luck there. Andrew. I know this is a tricky situation, but I think you can figure it out. To do it with packaging.

Brian: I have one other suggestion. There are a lot of other ink cartridge sellers on the platform. And some of them must have dealt with this issue before. So one other option, Andrew is our sellers tend to be very friendly with information to others and you can always reach out to a seller and ask them. The other thing is we all have lots of people who do packaging on our site and sell packaging on our site. And they may have come across a seller who had this problem and they had to solve it. And so reach out to one of the sellers who sells packaging on our site and tell 'em your issue and see if they have a solution.

Griff: All right. And the best place to do that is on the seller board on community. Yes. And the second other place you can look for seller groups on Facebook, but we prefer the community cuz it's our real estate. So we like that.

Brian: Exactly. Well, good luck, Andrew.

Griff: Good luck. Our next email. Isn't a question, but it's a story and the sender wants to share it.

Brian: Excellent. Who are we to deny a seller the opportunity to share a story.

Speaker 3: We are desperate content hunters here Brian, desperate. That's who are.

Brian: I need a bow and arrow. eBay seller Terry sent the following: Would like to submit this as a possible hustle of the week. My wife and I live in the Midwest and we were vacationing in Maine over the new year's holiday. We love thrifting and listening to you guys and visited some thrift shops out there. Most stuff was overpriced, found a few things worthwhile and picked through a free box on the way out of one store. Something got our attention. A 1945 street map of Houston, a little tattered, but we picked it up. Found no identical comps, but based on other vintage maps of major Metro areas, we listed it for 49.99 and accepted an offer of $40 in about three hours. Nice ROI for free.

Griff: You pick it out of a free box. It's like printing or taking two $20 bills out of the box.

Brian: Keep doing what you're doing, keep it real and relevant. That's a great story. Thanks Terry. So thanks Terry for that. It's always good hearing about success, stories like that. I sometimes wonder all the good scores have been scooped up, but no, there's always the possibility of finding a great deal like this out there in the world. Yeah.

Griff: And I think that's what keeps people hunting. You know, a lot of folks who do this as a sourcing, well, you know, I need inventory for my business. I know that actually there's that other side of you that says, yeah, there's that the thrill of the hunt and who knows what you're gonna find? And that's the exciting part of it.

Brian: Reminds me of a seller up in the Portland area who bought a sword at an estate sale. It was $80. It was over his price point, but he thought, you know, I probably can get $80 back. So probably the worst I'll break even, or lose a couple bucks. And he put it up at auction with an $80 reserve price and it's sold for almost $300. So there's always those out there. Thanks for sharing that Terry. And maybe we should encourage others to share stories that are similar. Not just send us questions.

Griff: Yeah. If you have a good story about some score, we're happy to talk about it.

Brian: And maybe it's even something that you bought, you know, sellers buy stuff too.

Griff: I buy a lot of stuff. None of it's worth anything.

Brian: I dunno. I've seen some of the prices of the perfume you sell.

Griff: That's true. I do get outrageous prices. Our next question comes from eBay seller Julie, who asks: Loving the podcast and great to hear from you. Please send a couple of eBay Podcast mugs to Julie. And then she gave us her mailing address. Julie, we may be desperate for questions, but even we have our limits. The rules are you get a mug. If you send us a question or call one in on our voice line and we use it in the episode.

Brian: Well that means she gets one.

Griff: No, she didn't ask a question.

Brian: Are you sure?

Griff: Yeah. Look. Loving the podcast. Great to hear from you. Please send a couple of eBay Podcast mugs. That's all she wrote.

Brian: So if she just changed it a little bit or put a question mark, can you please send a couple of eBay for business? That's would've been a question.

Griff: That's not a question about selling Brian.

Brian: These mugs must be valuable.

Griff: Apparently they're a real hot item. Anyway, I responded to Julie with this: Hi Julie. We'd love to send you a mug, but the offer is for sellers who submit a question to the podcast. If we just started sending them out by request only it would defeat the whole purpose of getting questions. It's a bribe! Have you not figured that out yet? We need your questions. So do you have a question for us regards Griff. To which Julie then responded with an email that said, hi, Griff. Great to hear from you. Here's my question. Does eBay offer the same authentication for designer shoes priced at $500 and over? I understand they already offer this for the bags. Thank you, Julie. Well, although this may be the flimsiest of questions possible we are men of our words. So Julie you'll get a mug.

Brian: She wants two.

Griff: And she'll get two when she sends in a second question.

Brian: Oh, you are ruthless! II think given the fact that she responded back multiple times.

Griff: Yeah, really? Okay. Never mind.

Brian: Anyway, Julie, I'm gonna send you a second one. Well, except. I don't have her address.

Griff: And I'm not giving It to you. I'm the gatekeeper of addresses. Julie, the Authentication Program currently is only for sneakers when it comes to shoes and that's at the moment, that's currently, it may be expanded to other types of valuable high end footwear, like your Manolo Blahniks and your Jimmy Choos in the future. But not now. And don't ask me why I know about these.

Brian: Does she get two mugs?

Griff: When she sends in a second question, she gets two mugs. I really am a hard ass about this.

Brian: You are. It sounds like someone's making up the rules on the fly. you can bend them a little.

Griff: No, no, no. I, I, I can't, we don't have any meetings or committees. So how else will we write up give away rules? I gotta do them like I've done everything. I have to do them myself. Oh anyway. Brian: So another question?

Griff: Yeah. It's another question. And it's, I'll read this one. eBay seller Dana writes: Hi there. I'm a long time seller who has recently picked it up again. Hooray! Welcome back. . I have two questions. On some Facebook pages there is a terrible paranoia about getting "dinged" by eBay. If one makes a mistake in a listing shipping or just about everything else. Well, if you make a mistake in life, you don't get dinged on eBay. So, you know, your wardrobe choice is not gonna impact your seller performance level. Dana says, could you explain what eBay might do to an account If and when there is an issue, also what happens if one gets multiple dings? Also, if one gets negative feedback on which there is a proven false info, can it be removed? So that's the first question, right? That's the question number one. And Dana second question, which does not qualify for mug is about the eBay Standard Envelope.

Brian: Wait. Why doesn't it?

Griff: Because it's in the same email, it has to be separate emails. I write these rules.

Brian: You're ruthless!

Griff: I know I make them up as I go along. Anyway. Her second question is I sell trading cards and I love the standard envelope feature. I recently got a package returned indicating postage due. I had wrapped the top loader with a little bit of bubble wrap, which apparently made the package too thick to go through the postal reader. I wanna make sure my cards are safe, but I've started you to use a regular envelope with only the card and the top loader. I put two staples on the envelope. So the card does not move around. That's not good. Is it safe to send this that way? And or are there other suggestions or alternative methods? I look forward to the podcast every week. We do too! Even though I'm a small volume seller, I always get new info every week. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you.

Brian: Thanks Dana. So to your first question, what you're referring to are Defects. Often called "dings" by eBay sellers. Yes. I prefer dings. I think we should change the name on the site. Each earned Defect impacts a specific metric used to determine your current status on eBay. So go to My eBay Selling. This will take you to your Seller Hub pages. You can also get to your Seller Hub by www.ebay.com/sh/OVW Once there click on Performance and Seller Levels. This will show you your current status or value for seller level, which can be one of three levels. Top Rated, Above Average, Below Standard.

Griff: And below that you'll find four separate criteria that determine your performance level. They are shown as percentages there's transaction defect rate, late shipment rate cases, close without seller resolution and tracking uploaded on time and validated. There are different percentage buffers that are allowed for each. And if you go over the buffer, it can impact your current status level. It could take you from Top Rated to Above Standard, which means that you would lose some of those Top Rated benefits. And if you're at Above Standard and you get pushed to Below Standard, it actually puts your eBay account in jeopardy and you could end up getting suspended from eBay. So those are the things that could happen. And if you click the down arrow next to each percentage, it will provide more details for each of the criteria I just mentioned and will show you where you stand on each for this current evaluation period.

Brian: You can also learn more about the program by visiting your seller dashboard, but, and this needs to be fixed. There are two different seller dashboard pages and they don't show the same matching information for what each of the criteria are.

Griff: Oh, that just drives me crazy!

Brian: And I was gonna give her some general info. The one I want you to visit is found by clicking the All Program Details on the bottom of the left hand navigation for the Performance Level Page in Seller Hub, we'll put a link to that page in the transcript for episode 174.

Griff: And Dana, to your question about feedback, negative feedback is never removed based on the comments veracity. Feedback is a buyer subjective forum where a buyer can leave a record of their experience in their own words.

Brian: Although eBay does remove feedback sometimes for very specific reasons and truthfulness is not one of them.

Griff: Yeah, there are some specific reasons, but neither of us are, are on the ball enough to remember what they are right now.

Brian: Well, and the one thing that I would give guidance to her on is know what your delivery time is. Like, know what your handling time is and, you know, meet those, make sure you're using the shipping service that you advertise and you're not likely to run into too many problems. The other thing is if you ever do, be responsive.

Griff: Exactly. And if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know that I promote negative feedback as a great opportunity for you as a seller to shine. And that is that someone leads you a negative, you can respond. And I actually don't mind getting a negative because it gives me the opportunity to give a response that shows what a professional, polite and levelheaded seller I am. I always respond with a I'm very sorry this happened, would love to help make it up, issue a refund, or we change the way we're packing based on this. Make it seem that you are receptive to this comment and the criticism and that you're not, you never respond in kind. You never say, well, I told you this was this. You're just a stupid numpty buyer. That's the kind of thing that other buyers will see. And they'll just won't shop from you. Every buyer expects that a seller's gonna get a negative comment. Don't lose sleep over it, but it is an opportunity for you to respond, to give your potential audience of buyers, a chance to see you and your professionalism in your own words.

Brian: Good advice.

Griff: Yes. And now to your second question, Dana, there are envelope size and weight requirements for the eBay standard envelope option. They are no smaller than 3.5 inches by five inches, no larger than 6.125, inches by 11.5 inches, no thicker than a quarter of an inch. And they have to weigh up and weigh no more than three ounces. If your envelope fails to meet one or more of these requirements, the post office will consider it as non-compliant based on the postage you paid and they will charge you accordingly for other rates.

Brian: And I would not recommend using staples to secure a card sent using eBay Standard Envelope or any envelope for that matter. The size of your envelope can better help secure your card. Yeah. Remember any additional material you place inside the envelope can increase the weight past three ounces.

Griff: Now you can read more about the eBay Standard Envelope on Seller Center. Just click the seller center link at the bottom. Oh, then eBay page and then click the shipping tab. You'll see a link there for eBay Standard Envelope. Click it and read through all of the information on that page. We'll also put a link directly to you that page in the transcript for episode 174 and finally eBays seller, My Cottage Books and Antiques called in with the following. Interesting question.

Guest Caller: Hi, this is My Cottage Books and Antiques. My question, what happened to the listing frame and header in our listing pages? At one time as a store, subscriber, you had access to a tool that allowed you to edit the header and the listing frame. You could put in your store categories in the left hand column, you could put various information and so forth in the header editor. And the column on the left are still on my listings, but if I want to edit them, which I could do up until a few months ago, I can no longer do that because the page where you go to edit them is gone. I guess the basic question is, how now do we edit the header listing frame in our listings? Where do we go to do that? How do we do it? Or are we going to be able to do it? Because it appears that there is no longer the functionality to do that. Thanks lot Griff. And I sure hope the podcast continues goodbye.

Brian: I hope the podcast continues as well.

Griff: It's another listener who, you know, took my joke seriously and I'll know better never to cry wolf again. Hey, My Cottage, there's good news. It took a lot of email back and forth with the Product Team, but we finally got some answers. Sellers can still update the listing frame using a direct link to the old store listing frame page, which although it does seem to have disappeared from the site, it does exist. However, it's too long to provide on the air. You know, those eBay URLs that go on for like a paragraph. So we'll put a link in the episode, 174 transcript, but a link to this page is also included at the bottom of the Managed Store's Help page, which is available in Help somewhere. And I'll put a link to that as well.

Brian: The Product Team didn't include it in the store tab as targeted to be deprecated by the end of 2021. But that deprecation has moved to the end of Q1 of this year.

Griff: Exactly. And the Product Team in charge of Stores is working on a new and upgraded version of this editing feature for listing frames as part of the new store experience. And it will be released sometime in Q1. It will be automatically set up for sellers. So you'll see it more easily at that point. And once we have more information about the new management feature for listing frames, that experience and it's been released we'll of course talk about it here on the podcast. So I hope that's good news.

Brian: I hope so too. And if you want to join the fun here on eBay For Business, call us on (888) 723-4630. Fun.

Griff: Fun! Fun? Is this, you think this is fun?

Brian: It's fun.

Griff: Okay. I'll I'll go along with it. Friday Fun, Friday fun, (888) 723-4630 and the best part, that’s a hotline you can call any time of the day, any day of the week. You can leave a question or a comment and if it's appropriate, doesn't contain too many profanities. We might just put it on the air.

Brian: And 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: Now don't forget your Daily Podcast To-Do List.

Brian: Check the Announcement Board for up to date Seller News.

Griff: Hey, want an eBay podcast mug? Then put it on your list to send her call in a question, including your shipping address.

Brian: Check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we reference during the episode. And whenever you send Griff an email, just include a question mark. After one of the sentences.

Griff: That's not how it works, Brian. It has to be a real question. On our next episode we'll talk more about risk management this time with eBay seller and mentor Kathy Terrill when she explains just how you should be reading and using the data from your eBay Traffic Report.

Brian: And we'd like to, again, thank our guest this week Joey Ruffalo.

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