Episode 160 || Part 3: Tracking Your Social Campaign

[podcast_team]

This week Audrey Tracy rejoins us as we wrap up our three-part series, Creating A Social Media Campaign. Part 3 focuses on how to measure the results of your campaign. We also talk with sellers Rob and Melissa Stephenson to learn how they use social for their business. Rebecca and Griff answer questions on shipping and the unusual case of the confiscated GSP shipment.

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Show Links:
USPS suspends services to New Zealand effective immediately
New requirements for refurbished cell phones and smartphones
USPS and FedEx Temporary Peak Rate Increase and Service Delays
USPS Holiday Shipping Deadlines
Rob and Melissa’s eBay Store “Amazing Views Orlando
Flea Market Flipper
Flea Market Flipper on YouTube

Rebecca: This week on the eBay for business podcast:

Audrey: “For a business, every marketing campaign has to be monitored. The numbers for a campaign, help a business see what's working, what's not working. And then they can make adjustments to their campaigns as needed.”

Melissa: "I think we went into it with some false expectations at first. So you had all these big expectations going into it. And then when those didn't work out, it was hard. And so we came back kind of regrouped. We both felt like our message did need to get out there and we could totally do this. And so we kind of revamped our content strategy. Let's get more content out there, be more consistent. So we weren't as consistent and we just needed to get better. I go back and look at those blog posts we did six years ago and I'm like, what? This is horrible. Why would anybody want to read this anyway? So now, you know, it comes with experience and doing it over and over and over you learn what is actually better."

Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.

Griff: I'm Griff, and this is the eBay for Business Podcast, your weekly source for them information inspiration. You need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 160. Welcome back to the cohost desk, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Very glad to be here Griff. How are you this week?

Griff: I'm okay. I hear it's noisy up in your part of the woods.

Rebecca: It is noisy actually. So I'm located in San Francisco, recording from my closet and overhead is flying the Blue Angels, which are, oh gosh, anyone who's actually in the military is going to tell me all of the ways in which I'm getting this wrong, but they are a demonstration unit that fly amazing jets. I believe they're F-18's because this week is San Francisco's Fleet Week.

Griff: Fleet Week. The ships are in.

Rebecca: That's right. That's right. And every year as a family tradition, we go down to the waterfront. We watch the jets, we cheer for them, but they practice and fly overhead, I think four or five days out of Fleet Week. So I can hear them in the background just a little bit right now.

Griff: Well, I'm glad you could make it back.

Rebecca: Now something interesting happened yesterday for our sellers. Isn't that right?

Griff: Yeah on October 11th.

Rebecca: That's right on October 11th, we released some of the updates that we announced in the Seller News Update back in September. And one of those key updates is that some item specifics are being invited to be updated. There is a news announcement up full of information. Everything that sellers need to know about the new item specifics that are some recommended, some required. And again, you have several months to actually make those changes sellers. So read that announcement for everything that you need to know.

Griff: Right. You just have to go to ebay.com/announcements and you'll find it there.

Rebecca: That is right. So Griff, what's up for this episode?

Griff: I'm glad you asked Rebecca because this week, Audrey Tracy returns with the third and final installment of our three part series, Creating A Social Media Campaign For Your Business On eBay. And we talked to a seller team, a couple Rob and Melissa Stephenson, they're known as Flea Market Flipper. We're gonna talk about how they have used social media successfully to promote their ongoing video tutorial series. And we have questions this week as well. One of which was about an odd situation with a Global Shipping Program shipment that was confiscated.

Rebecca: Interesting, very mysterious. I can't wait to hear what this is Griff.

Griff: But first it is time for the eBay news.

Rebecca: So first up is as of Friday, October 1st, 2021, the USPS will temporarily suspend some international services to New Zealand. The suspension is due to the COVID 19 transportation, cancellations and restrictions. We will continue to monitor the situation and for more up-to-date information, please check the USPS international services alerts page. And of course that, and all the other links will be linked in the show transcript. Now, this goes on to say that the eBay International Standard Delivery and GSP are not affected both services will continue to provide timely delivery to New Zealand. For more information on these services, please visit our eBay International Shipping page.

Griff: I think this is not surprising. It's sort of mirrors what happened in Australia.

Rebecca: Yes, absolutely. There's lots of more information available on those pages. The next item is of note for people who sell cell phones and smartphones, the refurbished kind, so to ensure consistent seller standards and item quality, we've launched three new gated item conditions. Excellent. Very good and good. And have removed the seller refurbished item condition for cell phones and smart phones. If you have refurbished cell phone and smartphone listings, and would like to learn more about these changes and apply to become a part of the eBay refurbished program, please visit the Seller Center page or visit the Announcement Board to view the entire post.

Griff: Yeah, I think this is mostly for those sellers who have been refurbishing and selling their cell phones and smartphones. And I think they've had fair enough warning, but I thought it would be wise if we talk about it just to let people know.

Rebecca: And these are one of those things where you can't be too warned, I think. Okay. And then some more about the U S P S, the United States Postal Service. Of course, that's U S P S will temporarily increase shipping rates from October 3rd to December 26th, 2021. So this is already in effect. These peak season rate increases will apply anywhere that postage is purchased. However, you can still pay below USPS retail rates, by using eBay Labels to print USPS postage. We urge all of our sellers to visit the seller announcement on this topic to read more details about the peak season temporary rate increases.

Griff: Yeah, and Rebecca and I are going to answer some of the most commonly asked questions on this particular temporary peak season rate increase, as well as questions that came into the recent seller check-in regarding the eBay Standard Envelope. And we're going to do that in the, you got questions segment later in the episode.

Rebecca: And then finally, our friends in Seller Marketing want you to know that there is a new way to get eBay for Business alerts. You can join the eBay for Business text alerts to stay updated on the latest news updates, podcasts and tools to help you optimize your business on eBay. You'll text 20633 right now and then you will be signed up.

Griff: Yeah. And I asked the team when they announced this, if I sign up, how many alerts can I expect to see on average in a given week? And they assured me it would be one or two a week at the most. So you're definitely not going to get inundated. So if you'd like to stay in touch with updates to eBay for Business news and the podcast as well, apparently text 2 0 6 3 3 today. And Rebecca, that's all the news this week. We'll see you after we speak with our guests so we can answer the questions we've received, including the one about the confiscated item.

Rebecca: All right, I'll be back later Griff.

Griff: Thanks Rebecca.

Griff: Welcome. This is part three of our three part series on Creating Social Media Campaign For Your Business on eBay. And as before we are joined by our social media marketing expert here at eBay, Audrey Tracy. Welcome back Audrey.

Audrey: Hey, hello. It's part three, the Grand Finale.

Griff: In part one, we talked about each of the most popular social media platforms that was in episode 158 and how to prepare content and tactics for each. That's part of the planning process.

Audrey: You got to plan.

Griff: In part two, we delve into the execution, the putting the plan into action part.

Audrey: You got to do.

Rebecca: And now today it's the last piece of the social media campaign puzzle.

Audrey: Tracking and measuring your results. For a business, every marketing campaign has to be monitored. The numbers for a campaign help a business see what's working, what's not working. And then they can make adjustments to their campaigns as needed.

Griff: What exactly am I supposed to be measuring?

Audrey: Well you're looking for three key metrics? Number one, how many people saw it, known as reach or impressions in the marketing world and this is an absolute number at 10, 5, 12, whatever. And then the second metric you're looking for is how many people reacted? That's your engagement rate. That's a percentage. And the last metric you want to look at is either clicks, which is an absolute number or click through rate, which is a percentage.

Griff: And it's a percentage based on how many impressions you get. And then those impressions result in click thru, which is the same as it is on eBay.

Audrey: With all three metrics, the bigger, the better here. And so let's dive into each one a little bit more, So reach. How many people saw it, either your direct fans or shared content. So imagine you put up a post, a fan of your shares it and their followers see it. That is counted.

Griff: And we want shares.

Audrey: Yes. And remember, in part two, we talked about how all the algorithms in these channels reward engagement. So pay attention. When something starts to get a lot of reach, all of a sudden, you may be onto something there. If you're looking at your posts over time, and these four posts have a decent reach, but then this one gets a ton of reach. You might be onto something there. So just something to note of.

Griff: You should be recording all this so that you can have it.

Audrey: Yes, get a little spread sheet going. That sort of thing. Okay. The next one is engagement rate. The more people that engage with your content, a like, comment , or share the more content engages people, the more people see it. Another thing you want to watch out for a spike for, right. If you've got these three posts that did okay, but then the engagement rate on this fourth, one blows up. You might be on to something.

Griff: What you did there on the blow up is the good one.

Audrey: Yes, yes. Pay attention to that. And then clicks or click through rate means how many people clicked from your post to your page, which I assume is your eBay listing, but it doesn't have to be. You know, if you write a blog about restored cars, you want to drive traffic to that. And then that blog is linked to your eBay listings. That might be another strategy.

Griff: That would seem to me to indicate interest and intent. You got somebody to do a number of clicks to learn more, read more, and hopefully at some point buy more.

Audrey: If they've done a couple of clicks to get to your eBy listing, there are pretty engaged prospect.

Griff: Yeah. I now know what I'm supposed to be measuring and tracking. This is great. But my second question, how long should I have to wait for my campaign to show any significant results in the numbers?

Audrey: I think there's two ways of looking at this. Number one, when you're looking at the performance of an individual post, I would look at that maybe 24 or 48 hours after it's been published because the shelf life of a social media post is pretty darn short. That said, we need to think about this as a campaign, not just individual posts. So it can take a little bit of time to grow your audience, get that engagement, particularly if you're starting with a small fan base. So give it time when you're looking at the individual, post-performance, don't get discouraged and think, oh, this campaign isn't working because you've looked at it in the first 48 hours of the campaign, give the campaign time to breathe, but also be looking at the performance of each individual post. Patience my dear. Patience.

Griff: And of course it helps in this case, if your smaller fan base starts to share your content with their followers or friends and family.

Audrey: Yes. Let's talk about the quality of a fan. You can go out and buy fans. They might be bots. They might be fake accounts. That sort of thing. That's not what you want. Everybody wants to have a lot of followers like the follower numbers, like the holy grail of social media. Not really. What you're really looking for is quality fans. I'm just making this up. But if I restore cars, I've got a car restoration blog. I sell these parts on eBay. My quality fans are really the folks that are interested in that. My low quality fans are people that are not interested in my topic or area and just happened to kind of be on my page. It's very unlikely that those low quality fans are number one, going to engage with your content and number two, going to buy from you. Because they're just not into the car restoration world.

Griff: They kind of stumbled in and they never stumbled out.

Audrey: Exactly, exactly. They're at the wrong party. The point of my story is don't yearn for lots of followers, yearn for quality followers.

Griff: You mentioned you can buy followers. You can also buy ad placement for example, on Facebook for your page or for your posts, right?

Rebecca: Yes. What I recommend when you're first approaching Facebook ads is to do a, what's called a boost. In other words, let's say you have a set of five posts on your page. You're going to want to look at the results of each one of those and boost your winner. So let's pretend out of these five posts. One was really great. One was kind of a okay, in the three were duds, for lack of a better term, you're going to want to put your money behind that first post, because it's already a winner. You've already proven that folks like this content they're engaging with it. So let's boost that and boost is literally the thing that you do on Facebook. It's a feature. You're going to want to take that post and boost it to other folks. And by the way, you can pick your audience going with this car restoration analogy again, you can select the kinds of audiences you want to see your content.

Griff: I like that. I would do that.

Audrey: It can be cheap too. You can boost for 5, 10, 15 bucks.

Griff: Yeah. We're talking about minimal expenses. Yeah. If you're going to do this though, just like anything else when it comes to running this campaign, track what you spend, right?

Audrey: Yes. Track what you spend and let me talk about one other thing that I actually don't recommend doing, which is ads for the page itself. If you create a post that is basically a link to your Facebook page and the message is, come follow my page. That is very like Facebook 2006, right? That is old school. Your content should attract fans to your page, not the page itself.

Griff: It does make sense. Okay. So using again, because I'm familiar with Facebook as an example, can I track individual posts for their views and engagement metrics or is it sort of just activity in general?

Audrey: You can look at individual post-performance with views, engagements and clicks. So what you're going to do is look for the insights section of your Facebook page, and there's a bunch of metrics on that page and you can toggle between them. My favorite of course, is engagement rate. As I mentioned earlier, that's kind of the king metric in social media. And then I like to download it. There's an Excel download option. And then I actually like to manipulate the Excel to kind of sort by engagement rate sort by reach. And then I actually do a little color code. I'm very basic here. I highlight the worst performer in red. I highlight the best performer in green. And then I kind of look at the various pieces of data to figure out who's the winner. And who's the loser.

Griff: You mentioned that it's insights on Facebook. Is this also true for Instagram pages?

Audrey: Yeah. There's an insight section in Instagram as well, because Instagram is mobile first, many of your metrics will show up on the mobile app versus a desktop. I find that a little annoying, but if you do use a third-party tool, like we talked about with Hootsuite or Buffer. They should have Instagram analytics on desktop. I don't know that for sure. Somebody please confirm that, but very likely.

Griff: They are both desktop apps, so they should have that.

Audrey: The question is, do they pull that data from Instagram and it may depend on the tier of service you have?

Griff: Of course. Okay. So Audrey, now I know what to measure and I know to set my expectations to what is reasonable when it comes to how fast an audience grows and engages. I check my campaign every day and it's looking promising more and more new engagement and new followers. This feels good. Let's say I bought some ads on Facebook and they're actually performing okay. Slow but steady and up to the right as we say in business. But there's a missing piece here. I think I know what it is. I didn't put this plan together and put so much time and executing it from my jollies. There is a method here.

Audrey: Sales. You want sales sales! As we all do.

Griff: How can I tell if my social media campaign is actually raising the meter on my eBay selling and sales?

Rebecca: Well, right now, it's not possible to use eBay Traffic Reports to show where external traffic to your listings comes from by website. But for now there is a metric in place in the Traffic Center of Seller Hub under the Performance tab. And it can give you some insight into how, or if your social media campaign is translating into sales. And that means running one or more tests.

Griff: Oh, there they are. Those tests. They never end with a business. Do they? So explain what you mean?

Rebecca: The traffic section doesn't show exactly which external sites are generating your traffic. It does show page views from that external source. And that's usually a search engine like Google or Google shopping. And it does show you both metrics for all of your listings and each individual listing. And that's where you might be able to determine a connection.

Griff: Right, because part of that external traffic metric could include Facebook as well.

Audrey: Yes, exactly.

Griff: Using traffic. There's the top section, which shows aggregate for a period of time and you can select the period of time at the top, you can actually select it just for one day in the past or below that you can see that the figures for that selected time per listing.

Audrey: Here's how you want to test. As part of the campaign, pick one listing from your active inventory, it should be something that really reflects your business. And one of your posts where you talk about your category or passion, put that listing link in and then publish it, of course, and then make note of the day that you published it.

Griff: And the post you want it. You're going to be watching that post as well. You're going to look at that post. And I think where I see where you're going with this, then I would track traffic for that individual listing in Seller Hub Performance Traffic section by filtering the page for a window of time with the back date of the date I initiated the post.

Audrey: Exactly. And on a daily basis, you want to watch and track the page views and impressions from that date. In other words, if you published your I'm just making this up, but if you published your post October 1st, you're going to want to look at the performance of not only the post itself on your social channel, but the performance of the listing that you linked to, right. And so if you can see post October 1st, a little spike in impressions or views, I guess we call them on eBay. Yeah. Kind of the same thing you can sort of guess you don't have a perfect correlation, but you can sort of guess that the social media posts is driving traffic.

Griff: Right. And it would probably be wise to reinforce that hypothesis by running more than one test.

Audrey: Yeah, because we don't have a definitive link between the social posts and the traffic to the listing. But if we do this a couple more times and we see that that happens with other listings, we might be onto something here.

Griff: Okay. I like this and I know how to do it. What I'm afraid of is what if there's an increase in the eBay traffic for that item and there are no sales, or what if there isn't an increase in any of the eBay traffic metrics for that item? Does that mean the campaign has failed?

Audrey: Maybe, but not necessarily. There's a ton of factors we're looking at when we think about social media, was that content, the right content for your audience. Was it the right timing? Did you post it at, this is a terrible example, but like 3:00 AM on a Sunday when nobody's online? Think about when folks are online and that's why you shouldn't rely on a single test. We need more than one data point to show that this is working because we, again, we don't have that tight correlation, but we can infer over time with many data points that you are indeed driving traffic to your listing.

Griff: Don't make assumptions on the basis of just one listing. In this case, you really do need a series of tests. But what if the eBay traffic page views do show an increase in traffic that you could safely correlate with the test campaign posts, but you have no sales. What does that mean?

Audrey: Well, then we want to look at the listing and the quality of the listing. Cause you've done all this work to drive the traffic to your listing and then something in the listing is causing them to fall off. Right? Think about your photos, your price, your description. If a followers on social media is interested enough to visit your listing, but doesn't purchase, it may be how the listing was presented.

Griff: Of course I understand. What if I'm sure I'm going to keep doing these hypotheticals because I have to play devil's advocate. What if I'm sure the listing really is high quality all around. It has good photos. It has a great description. My return and shipping policies are all customer focused and the price is competitive.

Audrey: You've got a perfect listing and still no action.

Griff: What does that mean?

Audrey: Well, then I would try a different listing. It may mean that that listing is not hitting with your audience, right? You might want to think about different content and of course always record the results. Good or bad.

Griff: Don't rely on just that one test. Don't be discouraged by one negative test results.

Audrey: And I do want to say that organic social, which means unpaid social tends to be a top of the funnel activity. Meaning if you're familiar with the marketing funnel, it's really kind of a top of the funnel activity to drive awareness. While you're always looking for sales, every eBay seller is looking for sales. . I think the best use of social media is actually to grow your brand, make people aware of your brand and drive awareness of your business. You can do all these tests and realize that you are getting increased traffic to your eBay listings. And that is good in and of itself, right? So you didn't make a sale. Yeah. We all want sales, but really what you also want is awareness of your business.

Griff: Awareness of your business. Awareness is really important. Even though awareness, doesn't always directly and immediately result in a sale. You're kind of banking for the future. You're investing in a new follower, a new potential customer that you may be able to count on giving you a sale in the future.

Audrey: Exactly, well said, because imagine somebody has landed on your eBay listing. They ultimately didn't buy, but now they're aware of your business. And in two months when they do need an item that you sell, they might visit you.

Griff: Well, that's, that's always important. I think any big business, that's what they do. It's that top of the funnel. Get a wider reach as possible to promote your business. You can't expect your 1 million followers to make 1 million purchases that'll happen down the funnel as people are more interested in a specific thing that you're offering. And I think the important message here Audrey is don't get discouraged because like any campaign expecting immediate results is probably unrealistic.

Audrey: Yes. And when you're feeling like, why am I doing all the social media work? I'm not getting anything out of it. You actually are getting something out of it with the impressions and the reach and the awareness that we just talked about. While it doesn't feel like dollars hitting your wallet, you're still marketing your business.

Griff: I confess that I used myself as an example, but honestly I haven't had the time or the inclination to actually approach this from my selling end. I have used a few of these tips that you've given us over the last three segments on our Facebook group for the Podcast. And I'm seeing immediate results. I'm seeing more engagement on the page. I'm seeing more comments, which I really like. And I'm determined that just liking someone's comment. Isn't good enough. I'm now responding to comments. I've wanted to always have a hands-off touch with that page and just leave it for everyone else that didn't kind of work. I am finding that I've experimented using this and now I think I'm ready to actually maybe promote this Facebook group to anyone who's interested in podcast groups or selling and listening to a podcast. So the last three weeks have been interesting to watch the impact. And I hesitate to say it only because we have listeners who are in that group. I don't want them to think they were Guinea pigs, but they kind of were, but they're good Guinea pigs. And they get good rewards, right?

Audrey: Yeah. You used to be, a post and run and now you're an engager.

Griff: Yeah. Now I'm trying to be more engaging and it's working. So thank you for that. And I will put these into play with my eBay listings once I determine how that's going to look. I'm back at, do I need to rebrand? And I have to really consider that seriously with a new user ID, a new store ID. Do I go with what I have? And I haven't made that determination.

Audrey: The challenge with you is that you have a lot of brand equity, so to speak.

Griff: What does that mean?

Audrey: It means you've invested in your brand. People know who you are. They understand your logo. They understand your business. Blowing all of that up and starting from scratch might be a little detrimental, right? So maybe keep the name of your business. Maybe rework the logo.

Griff: I am older than that logo. it's probably unfair. It's like, dear Abby, I don't know if you remember, Dear Abby? Dear Abby had the same young picture of her for decades and then you'd see her in real life and you'd think, oh my heavens, what happened?

Audrey: Time happened.

Griff: Well, this has been a great three part series. Again, thank you for spending the time and the energy to work with us on this. It was a lot of fun of maybe we'll do this in the future. I hope I can tell you that our group has already said more Audrey, more Audrey. So if you're willing to take part, we'd love to have you back on a more regular basis.

Audrey: Yeah, I would love it.

Griff: Audrey Tracy is the Marketing Manager for the Seller Team and she joined us for this three part series to talk about starting planning, running and measuring your social media campaign for your eBay business. And you can hear more of this in the past two episodes. This included it starts at episode 158 and runs through episode 160.

Griff: Last week, we met with eBay seller, Trader Don who has a, what I call a light touch, social media strategy. That works really well for his business and his passion and collecting everything Tiki. This week. We'll explore a different approach, the all in approach of social media, for lack of a better phrase. And to help us better understand how this approach works, please welcome our guests this week, Rob & Melissa Stevenson of Flea Market Flipper. Hi guys?

Rob: How are you?

Melissa: Thanks for having us. I have to confess when I checked out everything, including your eBay store, which by the way, the user ID is Amazing Views Orlando. I found you all over the internet. It was quite impressive. How long have you been doing this, Melissa?

Melissa: Well, the whole eBay part Rob started doing this 25 years ago. The social media aspect, that part of our business, six years ago.

Griff: 25 years!

Rob: I started this when I was 16. My mom kind of modeled it for me going to yard sales and picking up stuff and then selling it on eBay. So I started at a young age and did it full-time and part-time for the last 25 years.

Griff: So you're approaching 25, then not bad. Oh, I meant 25 years on eBay. Obviously. You're not just 25 years old. Right? Rob, you didn't do anything before really you were in school. This has been your life.

Rob: Exactly. And I did it part-time I always had the belief that you could not be a full-time reseller. Until about six years ago. When we actually went full-time into this. When I was younger as a kid, I'd made decent money at it to where I would have thought maybe it was a full-time income and I've had side jobs. I've started other businesses. I've done a lot of other stuff besides this. Cause I never really thought the money was here to be able to sustain a full-time income at eBay.

Griff: What are some of the things that you did before you jumped in full-time?

Melissa: Everything. He has done everything.

Rob: Yes, I was a host at a Red Lobster. I served at a Red Lobster. I worked for a glass company. I started multiple businesses.

Melissa: Advertising company. He tried to do a para sailing company.

Rob: Pool cleaning company, a landscape company, painting company. So you name it. I probably have done it.

Melissa: Or tried to start a business in it.

Rob: Exactly. And then my better half year has helped me into this portion of it for the last six years. And we it's been amazing. We have not looked back.

Griff: Melissa, what did you do before you eBay and social media and selling?

Melissa: I actually rode horses at a dinner show for several years when we first met.

Griff: What kind of dinner show was this?

Melissa: It was called Arabian nights here in Orlando. It was around for 20 some years and they closed down recently. And then I was a personal trainer for 10 years.

Griff: Personal trainer for equestrian?

Melissa: No, for a gym.

Griff: So about six years ago Rob, you said you got into social media. What was the reason for starting your social part of your business?

Rob: Six years ago, we decided to go all in with our reselling business and we decided that we wanted to teach others how to do what we do. That's kind of the turning point, Melissa and I, our third child was born and most of those going to give up her job as a personal trainer to stay home and take care of the kids. I had a decent job with a report company for homeowners insurance and commercial reports, but they canceled our insurance, our health insurance. And as of, was it May? March?

Rebecca: It was March. And he was doing April and they were cutting our health benefits by the first. So when he was due, we would no longer have health benefits.

Rob: When our third child was born. So they said, yeah, you'll be cut off and praise the Lord. He was born before the cutoff date, but that was what made us make the transition from what we were doing into reselling and teaching full-time six years ago.

Melissa: We knew what we were doing in part-time hours. And we had three little kids at home. So I'd be doing a lot of that. But if he could devote all of his time into our eBay business, what could we do with full-time hours?

Griff: How does it go for the first say couple months?

Rob: Absolutely horrible!

Melissa: I would say stressful. Are you talking about the eBay part of it?

Rob: No I'm actually talking about, Yeah, the eBay business was very well when we went into it full-time we did very well. When we started keeping track of like what we were doing part-time we were able to make like 42,000 per year when we started keeping track of it. And that was only working part-time hours. That's when we decided to go to the next level and do full-time hours. And then the first year we did full-time we did over 130,000 in revenue. And that's just going into, it's still not 40 hours a week, but more than what we were doing part-time. So that part of the business was growing. But the teaching aspect of it, when we started going over to social media, we created a course. We thought we would create a course and everything would just boom. And people would flock to us. The problem was we didn't have any exposure from social media because we had never really published or showed anybody kind of the stuff that we were doing. So that aspect flopped and we weren't expecting it. So we actually gave up on the teaching after seven months of creating a course. We thought that this wasn't for us because we couldn't get people to join our course.

Melissa: Or see our blog or anything.

Rob: We gave it up for about six or seven months after that. And then, um, well, for some reason, both of us felt like, okay, we really need to get our message out there. We need to stick with this. And we that's when we actually started really pouring into social media and pouring into people and it's been an amazing journey since then.

Griff: So what did you do differently. What did you learn from that first foray into social media, trying to promote the teaching side of your business?

Melissa: I think we went into it with some expectations at first. We had all these big expectations going into it. And then when those didn't work out, we, you know, it was hard. And so we came back kind of regrouped. We both felt like our message did need to get out there and we could totally do this. And so we kind of revamped our content strategy. Let's get more content out there, be more consistent. So we weren't as consistent and we just needed to get better. I go back and look at those blog posts we did six years ago and I'm like, what? This is horrible. Why would anybody want to read this anyway? So now, you know, it comes with experience and doing it over and over and over you learn what is actually better.

Griff: How quickly did you notice that it might be successful?

Melissa: It still wasn't very quick. I think we went into it with a different mindset before. It's like, we thought, okay, we'll hit publish and now all these people see us. No, that's not how it goes. So now we knew that. So now, like we just gotta get better. We need to get better information out there and come from a place of serving more than expecting people just to see us.

Rob: It was more information. Our flips are very, very weird. They're different, they're unique. And there are so much fun. We have so much fun with the stuff that we buy and sell. It was one of those things that we realized, okay, we have to start showing some people, some of these flips so they can see what we do and how much fun it is and how much fun we have. That's where we started to embrace it. And it's just gotten better ever since.

Griff: So your first attempt at this, was it lacking in the fun department.

Melissa: We are always pretty fun, but I don't think we really showcase it as much and we didn't bring the family into it as much. It was all just Rob in the beginning. And then we had worked with a coach and he said, I really think it's your whole family. It's your kids, it's you guys as a couple doing this. And so I think that bringing the family aspect into it really because we do it with our family, like we all do it together. We all go on road trips and find items across the country together. I think that was a big help.

Griff: How old is your oldest child Rob?

Rob: She just turned nine yesterday.

Griff: So she's old enough to be an entrepreneur.

Rob: She is. And uh, yeah, our son is five, our youngest. He'd made a funny comment to Melissa the other day about doing chores in the house. We've taught them how to flip stuff and they know they can throw stuff on eBay with our help and be making money. And Melissa said, Hey, you need to get your chores done. And he says, I don't want to do chores anymore. I can make more money flipping. Out of the blue and we couldn't stop laughing because it was hilarious, but it was one of those things. He was dead serious. And just telling us that, that kind of goes our family is it's fun that everybody's involved in the business.

Griff: Can you give us an example of a recent or a memorable flip that really got your audience's attention?

Melissa: Just recently we had the bus wash and that was a big one.

Rob: So yeah, we, we purchased a bus wash on a road trip and it was actually last year. It took us one year to sell this bus wash and it's big, it's 11 foot tall, seven foot wide, six foot deep. So it's a big mobile bus wash that you walk around a bus and you, you also wash a bus with it. We were on a road trip last year. We tried to do a road trip with the kids over the summer. We found this and I didn't have enough room in my trailer to bring it back. So we had to make another trip up there. I think it was in North Carolina. So we had to make another trip up there to pick it up. Once I negotiated the deal, we came back, we paid $500 for it. And then we sold it a year later for $14,500. And yeah, everybody just, shipped it on a pallet. It actually got shipped to another state. And yeah, everybody, when we do flips like that, people, they are in awe. They just, they appreciate it. They think it's really, really cool.

Griff: Well, it's an unusual item, but that profit margin, I feel like I'm in the wrong business.

Rob: Yeah. It was an amazing profit, but it doesn't always happen that way. We shoot for higher profits with our model. But yeah, that was definitely, that was our biggest sale so far this year.

Melissa: Another one that we picked up on that trip too, was that we picked up that stove top on the same trip. We like to, if we're going to go make a trip, we're going to go make it worthwhile. And so we picked up a couple items and it was a stove? A range that we picked up for $200 and sold for $2,200 pretty quickly too.

Rob: Yeah. Within a couple of weeks, we actually sold that on eBay.

Griff: What kind of range?

Rob: It was a unique range. It was, instead of most ranges, I believe are 30. I think they're like 30 inches wide. This was a 40 inch wide. So it was just a regular like oven. If I'm not mistaken, it was a Kitchen Aid. But instead of one pull-down drawer for the oven portion, it had a little side bake drawer. So it had two ovens on the bottom. It was an extra wide one. So it was a unique one. And usually unique stuff really sells well on eBay. So we try to find those unique items while we're sourcing, but this one, yeah, we paid $200 for it. The funniest part about this story was the guy we bought that from when we showed up at his house, he goes, Hey, you're Rob with Flea Market Flipper. And I was like, oh no, the game is up! He knew exactly who I was. And he says, yeah, I followed your guys's blog forever. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm going to take this back and sell it. And he's like, oh yeah, I got it for free. So $200, is great. I couldn't sell it. We took it back and sold it in a couple of weeks. And then we shipped that to another state as well.

Griff: 40 inch wide ranges and bus washes. Have you found more?

Rob: Absolutely. So this was our second bus wash that we sold. That's one of those things that we sold, the first one, sold it a little bit for a little less money.

Melissa: 9,000.

Rob: Yeah, We paid, I think $600 for that one, maybe $650. Don't quote me on that, it's definitely in the blog, but we paid that much. And then we sold that one for 9,,000. So, and then this one was a little bit newer worth more money. And these bus washes retail for 24, $30,000, somewhere in that range. The second one we sold was newer. So yeah, we made a little bit more money on it, but yeah, bus washes are great. We love selling bus washes!

Griff: When somebody with your range of the audience mentions that you made this kind of profit margin on a used bus wash, doesn't it become harder to find used bus washes now?

Melissa: The biggest thing is most people won't ship them. It is a whole another avenue. It's a big pallet, took you a couple of days. I mean the profits worth it to do it, but it's a big project to take on.

Rob: It is. And that's what usually sets us apart from other resellers is we take on, it doesn't matter. Even like the oven that we sold a lot of people will not take on selling that oven and shipping it to another state. They won't go the extra mile to throw it on a pallet, strap it down and then ship it to another state. That's kind of where we stand out. We can make so much more money. If I try to sell that oven locally for $2,400, it would take me forever and nobody would buy it because it just takes that special person. And that's where you get into a big audience on eBay. And when you find that right audience and it's large, your chances are a lot better at selling it, but you have to be willing to get the item to them.

Griff: I think sellers just think, I'm never going to be able to ship a range. It's just too big. It's too heavy. Where do I get all the cardboard boxes that I have to tape together? And how much bubble wrap is that going to take? They don't consider the freight aspect.

Melissa: Yeah. The first one that he ever did was actually right. Whenever we were trying to jump into this full time and you had a dining set and was it the buffet? What is that called?

Rob: It was a buffet where you had, you put your China and a credenza, silverware, china. And it actually had a spot in the back for the leafs on the, on the table. It was a really nice set.

Melissa: He bought it for three $350 at an auction, was trying to double his money in the local market. I think you had it up for $700 or $750 and nobody was even looking at it. And so he said, he started looking at them on eBay and they were selling for, I mean, similar ones were selling and he's like, okay, if this will sell, I'm going to figure out how to ship it.

Rob: And then we actually threw it on eBay for $2,200 or $2,400?

Melissa: No, $2,200 plus shipping.

Rob: So $2,200 and then I charged I think it was like $500 for shipping. That was my first freight and my realization, my aha moment of okay, if I start offering some of these larger items and I ship them, people are going to buy them and they're going to be appreciative that we're actually shipping them to them.

Melissa: It was very unique table set.

Rob: Yeah, that's one of those things. And then after that, we were like, all right, we're sold. We're going to dive into this. And it w it's been a couple years in building our expertise with the freight market.

Griff: Getting back to social media, it's become a big aspect of what you do. You do these videos, you have these courses on your website. How much time does this take up now, if you had to give a percentage of your working day?

Melissa: I would say of our working day, 75% of it is working on the social media blog courses all that stuff. And the other 25 is actual flipping.

Griff: Do you schedule out like in advance? Do you schedule which videos you're going to do? How you're going to create a new course? Do you script them? Do you have collateral ready? How deeply do you get into the production and scheduling of these videos?

Melissa: Planning and scheduling is definitely not something that Rob likes to do.

Griff: I'm not surprised.

Melissa. He's a free spirit. So that's taken us a little bit to figure out as a couple, what we're doing. We schedule out topics, but then stuff sells. And so those are kind of prompt impromptu. Oh, that's just sold. Let's do a video. So that part has to be more impromptu. Usually every morning we go for a run. We come back, we do a short video. We've been doing a lot of Tik Toks and reels lately. And so we do those cause those are pretty easy and quick to do. And then sometimes you'll go to the shop and I'll work more on the back end. And then we'll shoot videos at night sometimes too later at night after the kids go to bed.

Griff: How did you grow your audience during this second approach over the last five, six years?

Melissa: We started mostly with blog posts and Pinterest actually that's been our biggest start. So we did blog posts, a couple of videos. We still like YouTube is still on our radar. We still haven't been as consistent as we know we could be or should be. And that's definitely one of our goals to do, but that's where we started.

Griff: How big is your subscriber base right down on YouTube?

Melissa: On YouTube, we're at like 5,000.

Rob: And you used Pinterest to start off. That was the channel of choice for you.

Melissa: Yes. Cause it's a search engine. It's a search engine like YouTube and Google. It's kind of gotten a little bit less lately, but in the beginning it was really good. And got us a lot of traffic.

Griff: Assuming that you started close to zero over the last few years, what kind of growth have you seen an audience numbers?

Melissa: Well, we have on Pinterest, we have 27,000 followers. We get about 50,000 hits on our website a month. And then we have a email list of 23,000. That's kind of our bigger ones.

Griff: You started with Pinterest. What channels do you focus on now? You mentioned Tik TOK.

Melissa: Yes. We actually just started Tik Tok not that long ago, we were very resistant to do it because I'm like, oh, I don't want to learn another platform. It's just ridiculous. But I learned that I could do the video, I could edit the video on Tik Tok.

Rob: It has a great editing tool.

Melissa: Yeah. It's easy to edit, upload it to reels for Instagram. I can upload it to Facebook and they actually do really well on Facebook, our Facebook page too. We get the most views on Facebook. Like we get hundreds of thousands of views on our short videos on Facebook. I don't think most people realize that. So they do really well. And then they can be used for YouTube shorts and now they can be used on Pinterest as well on their newest thing. So that's five places I can use one video. And that is very amazing.

Griff: If you had to give a word of advice to somebody who's considering a social media component. It may not necessarily be that they want to provide courses, but they want to tie what they do for business to some sort of grassroots campaign that they create for social media. What would be your first word of advice based on your own experience?

Melissa: I think the first thing is to be consistent in whatever you choose. Like that is a huge piece of it. And right now, if I had to pick one platform to go all in with, it would be YouTube. We should have done that in the beginning. I wish we would have. Instagram is a close second, because you can do a lot on Instagram and you can make a lot of really good connections and reach a lot of people on Instagram too.

Griff: And what would be your second bit of advice?

Melissa: I would say a second piece of advice too, would be to understand what problems people are having. So if you consistently are getting asked the same question or you are asking it yourself as a new reseller, probably a lot more people are asking that same questions, answering those questions definitely will help.

Griff: How quickly do you respond to a question that has been posted on any channel?

Melissa: That's one thing also, I guess, would be another tip. A third tip was you can't be all consumed with it because it can take up your life. So I took notifications off my phone and that has been a game changer. So I don't see when somebody comments on any of the social media until I purposely go into that app, spend 30 minutes replying to people or doing whatever, because I want it to be intentional. Otherwise I'll be like doing this. Oh, let me, I got to answer this. Oh, I got to answer this and you'll go crazy.

Griff: So time management shut off those notifications.

Melissa: Don't turn off eBay notifications. Leave those ones on!

Griff: Let's make that clear. It's social media notifications. Keep the eBay notifications on you don't want to miss a sale. Thank you both. Continued success to you. I'd love to be able to speak with you again, perhaps in six months, find out how things are going and we'll speak again soon.

Rob: Thank you.

Melissa: Thank you so much!

Griff: Rob and Melissa Stephenson sell under the user ID on eBay, Amazing Views Orlando. We'll put the links to both their eBay store and all of their other media presences in our transcript for episode 160.

Rebecca: If you've got questions...

Griff: We've got answers and boy do we have a few interesting questions this week. The first one involves the Global Shipping Program and the lovely antique chapeau that's French for hat. By the way, eBay seller Tina emailed podcast@ebay.com with the following email. "Hi, perhaps you want to explain to your listeners, your erratic Global Shipping procedures. I sell a lot of vintage all over the world, many times to Japan, without any problem. Recently, a hat was confiscated in Kentucky. It amazes me after selling all these years that these issues pop up regarding eBay policies and they're never transparent. More like trial by fire. If that hat was a restricted item, why did eBay allow the transaction in the first place? Thanks." That's all she wrote.

Rebecca: Holy smokes. Tina does not sound happy.

Griff: Well, look at her defense it's no surprise. You know, you sell an item in good faith and the buyer purchases it and you ship it. And then you get a note that the item has been confiscated. And I'm sure that's an unpleasant experience, even though I must say that when this happens, the seller's not debited for the refund that comes out of eBay's pocket directly to the buyer, but still the buyer doesn't have the item. The seller doesn't have the item. So I emailed Tina to ask for more details, like the item number and Rebecca on inspection of the sold listing. I have to admit, I couldn't find anything that jumped out that would indicate that the hat contained anything that would qualify it for confiscation at the GSP warehouse in Kentucky.

Rebecca: Griff. I have to admit, I don't know as much as you about the GSP program. So I'm looking forward to this. I have some questions. First of all, are items shipped via GSP really sometimes confiscated?

Griff: Oh yes, yes. Sometimes they are. There is a restriction upfront by category and certain types of items that if you try to list them with GSP, they'll get blocked. But a lot of times things will still get through. There is a worldwide restriction on parts of endangered species like selling anything with ivory. That's going to raise a flag and it's going to be blocked on the eBay end if it shows up. But if it gets through that item will get confiscated. So if it's something that based on the manifest and take that into consideration, cause that's a clue about what happened here. If it's on the manifest, what's in the item and it's not allowed, it's illegal or whatever it's going to, it's going to get confiscated. I still have to say, I thought, well, I'm going to go back and look at this. And I looked at the listing and I couldn't find anything that would raise a flag. Of course the trouble as with most of life. I wasn't looking close enough. So first I emailed our contacts in Shipping cause I wanted to get Tina an answer and I needed to get a clarification about the shipment, why it was confiscated. And the answer I received was that the hat contained fox fur and for of any kind is not allowed to be shipped through Global Shipping Program.

Rebecca: Fox fur and you don't mean faux fur, you mean actual, cute little fluffy fox fur. And you missed that in the listing.

Griff: Yes I did. I looked again at the description. It didn't mention anything about fox fur it's a kind of hat that would have been popular like in the forties or fifties, as it said, the hat was made of velvet and that was the velvet crown and all over it were then stitched these rather large cloth flowers like chrysanthemums and carnations. And it covered the top, but it was all cloth. There was no fox fur in this hat. However, the description did say that the hat had a label and that label said it was sold or made for G Fox Hartford, Connecticut. Now Fox was a department store in the early 20th century. So thinking that was the evidence used for the confiscation. I emailed the Shipping Team back with my findings. You know, I wanted to tell them, Hey, it wasn't that there was fox in the item. The poor woman had just said it was sold by a department store called Fox, you know in it's day.

Rebecca: What did shipping say? Oh my gosh, I'm riveted.

Griff: Well, this is where it gets really interesting because they said, yes, it doesn't say that in the description, but the seller indicated an item specific for fur type. And then the value was fox. That's what I missed. I never saw that item specific and of course it was there. I thought about it. And I think I know what happened, the eBay system saw the word fox in the description and then filled in, created a fur type and filled it in with fox and she didn't catch it. So she then let it go through. And then the reason that this sort of bizarre, it's not really a seller error and it's not really an eBay error. It's just kind of this weird thing that happened. But what happens on a manifest for a Global Shipping item is the item specifics are on the manifest. And once they're there, they cannot be removed. Even though it was an error when the item is examined and ready to ship, because that manifest cannot be edited. That item had to be confiscated.

Rebecca: Oh my goodness. I have like three different thoughts at once. First of all, I'm not sure that we're selling the item specific story here. Yeah. I think the headline here is that this absolutely was a double-sided error, but it's a good reminder to check over pretty much every single listing to make sure that all of the items specifics and the details like the photos and the listing title and everything is exactly how you want it.

Griff: And Tina did not send her shipping address with her first email. I'm sure she had other things on her mind, but I did get her shipping address. I don't only want to send her a mug. I want to send her a hat, but I can't find anything that's quite like that wild hat she sold.

Rebecca: Well, I'm glad that we cleared that mystery up anyway. And Tina, thank you so much for writing in, and we're happy to hear emails from anyone happy or, you know, with some criticism, we'll take whatever you have. Cause we love answering these questions on the air.

Griff: Finally, this week, let's talk about shipping specifically, some of the questions that were posted in the chat for the last seller check-in. Now it seems that a lot of sellers and I assume a lot of them aren't podcasts listeners, hopefully they will be. It seems that they're just a bit confused about some of the recent news from carriers around shipping.

Rebecca: And during the check-in we thought what better place to provide some answers. So I brought them to you Griff so that we could answer them here on the podcast. So first there were a lot of questions about the eBay Standard Envelope. When it will be offered in more categories, why only three ounces, why doesn't tracking show the shipments progress?

Griff: And we should point out that there is an actual eBay standard envelope page on eBay, the link to which we'll put in the transcript for episode 160, but most of the answers to these kinds of top line questions are there, but we're still going to go over them.

Rebecca: The most popular question that we saw in the chat during that seller check-in was about, will we be adding more categories to the Standard Envelope Program? And the answer is yes, we will be expanding access to the envelope to more categories in the future. We're still not ready to say which categories or when, but we're aware that it is a highly requested ask from the sellers and please stay tuned to the Announcement Board for any updates as they happen.

Griff: The popular question about the eBay Standard Envelope concerned, the maximum weight and maximum and minimum envelope size requirements. Now these numbers were determined to be the ones that would offer the best value for the first roll out of the program. For example, the weight restriction is up to three ounces. There are no plans at this time and we have to be honest to change these weight or envelope size or requirements, but that's not to say they can't be revisited in the future.

Rebecca: And then the third most popular question was about the lack of tracking scans. This was still a hot topic. So although tracking is provided with this envelope, as many sellers have seen the transit information, isn't always updated. However, the on-time shipping metrics of sellers who use the envelope are not at risk. If a seller purchases the label on eBay, the tracking number is automatically uploaded and a lack of a scan of any kind does not impact the sellers on time shipping metric. Really important. We've got your back on this one.

Griff: Rebecca and I, we encourage all sellers to read through the information about the eBay Standard Envelope on the page that exists for that purpose. And I'll put the link, but it's also easy to find in Seller Center. If you just go to the Shipping Tab and hover over it, you'll see the eBay Standard Envelope link.

Rebecca: Yes, absolutely lots of great information there to read through. And then there were some other shipping questions around the recent USPS temporary peak rate increases that I mentioned at the top of the show and the details about how that works through the rest of the year. And then of course, questions about the slowdown of First-Class mail services. And here are the most popular questions with the answers that we've got.

Griff: The announced slowdown of First-Class mail service extends only to First-Class mail. That is letter mail. It does not impact First- Class packages. I think people hear First-Class and they think, oh, packages are going to be slowed down. No, the only slowdown is for letter mail. That's a different class of service. First Class package. There are no plans to slow it down.

Rebecca: I do think though. If one is the kind of person to send Holiday cards, maybe it means getting those cards in the mail a little bit earlier this year.

Griff: Yes. And last night on the news I saw that USPS has now published their deadline dates for specific services like USPS First-Class Mail, First-Class Package, Priority the cutoff dates to make sure that your items get to their recipients on time.

Rebecca: That's very helpful. I have to go find that.

Griff: I'll put a link in the transcript as I do every all the time.

Rebecca: As for the delays in all services, by all carriers, just like in the past, eBay monitors all the carrier and service level performances in real time and makes adjustments to the estimated delivery times displayed to buyers.

Griff: A lot of sellers were concerned that we would be promising delivery estimates that were unreasonable, and we do adjust those based on what the carriers tell us.

Rebecca: In any case, I hope that these questions about shipping are helpful to the listeners. And I think we probably have enough questions that we can cover some more over the upcoming podcasts. I know just generally in the Holiday season, there's lots of thought and questions about shipping. So I think we'll probably keep up with this at least, you know, sometimes.

Griff: I think it's probably the most popular topics, so we're going to address it. We got tons of questions. Some of them are quite interesting and we'll answer them in the next few episodes.

Rebecca: Speaking of which we need your questions. If you have one and I'm sure you do while you're listening, why not call us at (888) 723-4630.

Griff: (888) 723-4630. Leave a question or comment on the voice line and we'll call you back and maybe we'll put you alive on the air.

Rebecca: If you are not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: Okay. Pay attention, it's your Daily Podcast To Do List.

Rebecca: First check the Announcement Board for up-to-date Seller News.

Griff: Let us know how your social media campaign is doing. We want to hear if you've implemented it and how it is going.

Rebecca: And then finally check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see those links that we referenced during the episode

Griff: Next episode, as Rebecca said, we'll have more shipping questions to answer, and we'll take a deep dive into the world of Promoted Listings.

Rebecca: And many thanks again to our guests this week. Audrey Tracy and Rob and Melissa Stephenson of Flea Market Flipper on eBay.

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

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