Ep 232 || A Conversation with Clara Albornoz of ListPerfectly

[podcast_team]

The co-founder and co-CEO of ListPerfectly and eBay Seller Clara visits the studio and shares how and why she started her business and talks about the challenges she had to overcome regarding disabilities and mental health. Brian and Griff answer questions about Local Pickup, selecting the right category for listing patches with variations, appealing a VeRO takedown, and using eBay’s Addresses feature.

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Brian: I'm Ralph.. Well actually I'm not. I'm Brian.

Griff: I'm Betty. No, I'm Griff and this is the eBay for Business Podcast, your source for the information and inspiration to help you start, manage and grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 232. It is currently 3:08 and Friday afternoon. It's been a long week. And both of us, I mean Brian and I are just a little bit punchy.

Brian: A little punchy. A long but productive week.

Griff: It was, it was an interesting week.

Brian: Yeah. We got to see some of our colleagues in person, which was exciting. We got to see some sellers in person.

Griff: Yeah, a lot of our team members are remote, some of them as far away as Toronto. And so we only get to see them a few times as a team during the year, maybe three or four times this past week. Last week we got to see them for the week and had a good time. I thought.

Brian: Yes.

Griff: I mean, we got some work done, but it's also about having fun with your team.

Brian: Got a lot of work done, some planning done, and yeah, it's good. I wonder, should I post that picture of you in a chef hat?

Griff: Sure. Yeah. We have one of those team building and experiences, you know, in the corporate world. They do this team building stuff and we had a cooking competition at a local kitchen that's set up for that here in San Jose.

Brian: And I was really hurt.

Griff: Why?

Brian: Well, you didn't pick my team as the winning team.

Griff: Well, I was on your team.

Brian: I know.

Griff: Well, I had to admit, listen, there was a blind testing of all the ram. We made Ramen

Brian: And Griff was the judge, the sole judge.

Griff: I was the judge. And I didn't see the numbers. I picked solely on taste. And we have a team member who came up to me before the competition started and said, cause she knew I was a judge. And she said, what do you think about cilantro? And I said, I love cilantro. And she said, thanks. And they put cilantro in their ramen and it tasted great. And they won.

Brian: Three hours later you forgot about her question and...

Griff: And I said, wow, this ramen has an interesting kick.

Brian: And it was the only one probably with cilantro in it.

Griff: It was the only one with cilantro. So I chose that one as the winner.

Brian: How come we didn't do cilantro? We could have.

Griff: I don't put cilantro in it if anyone disliked cilantro.

Brian: Uh, so someone else on the team didn't like it.

Griff: Well, that is, cilantro is the most controversial herb of all. You either love it or you hate it.

Brian: Or it tastes like soap. I've read that apparently. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't taste like soap to me.

Griff: No. Although I like the taste of soap, so I probably wouldn't care. There's not a flavor in the world that I don't like. So, yeah. So that was fun. We had a good time.

Brian: Yeah, that was a, that was a really good offsite. That was fun to do. If you ever get the chance to go to a cooking class, go, they're fun.

Griff: Especially if it's going to be a competition. You know, among your team you divide up.

Brian: But I'll still pretend my feelings are hurt.

Griff: I don't think you're pretending, Brian. I think your feelings really are hurt. I'm sorry that the, uh, competition was rigged against you. , you go blame Alison. She's the one who rigged it.

Brian: Who's our guest this week? Bobby Flay.

Griff: No. Uh, last week we had the good fortune during that entire week to actually have a visit from an eBay seller who, along with her business partner, started her own business helping other eBay sellers. And we'll listen into that conversation in a bit. But first I was just wondering, Brian, might there be any eBay news you can relay?

Brian: Well, there is some news this week. The big news item this week is the announced changes to the Promoted Listing feature that the eBay ads team posted on their blog last week. There are two changes in particular that will be of interest to any seller utilizing Promoted Listings. First starting March 30th, when a buyer clicks through to your listing page, we'll now include when a buyer clicks on the heart icon to add an item to their watch list from a promoted listing.

Griff: So that's gonna count as a buyer click, basically.

Brian: Correct. That'll count as a buyer click. Also, starting March 30th, eBay is expanding what qualifies as an attributed sale for promoted listing standard to include when a buyer clicks on one of your standard ads and then purchases any of your Promoted Listings standard items within 30 days. There are more details and an extensive FAQ on the eBay Ads Team blog at https://www.ebayads.com/blog/ There's also a healthy discussion in the eBay community@communityebay.com and underselling.

Griff: We'll also put a link to that blog article in the episode links for this episode, episode 232, so you can find it there as well. And if you're a user of the Promoted Listing, it would be who behoove you to actually read up on that so you know what's coming. Starting March 30th and in future episodes of the podcast, we're gonna have some best practices for how to utilize promoted listings in a way that benefits you because that's the whole point.

Brian: Correct. We also had one other little thing happen this week, which is the eBay seller Check-in with Adam and such. And if you didn't go to the Seller Check-in, go to ebay.com/events and you can find the Seller Check-ins there and happen every quarter or so. So it's a good way to get information from our Vice President Adam Ireland or Rebecca Michaels and other in the company.

Griff: And that's the nice thing about these. If you can't attend, you can always look at the recording and it's just like being there.

Brian: It is.

Griff: Except you can't ask a question. No. Well, it's time to meet our guests, shall we?

Griff: Born and raised in Argentina, Clara Albornoz's first flip was selling candy for a small profit in elementary and middle school. Clara's passion was put on hold as she earned her law degree and became a practicing lawyer. But the constant economics instability in Argentina encouraged Clara to explore the world. And during her time in the USA, Clara was forced to sell her most prized possessions, vintage clothing and jewelry inherited from her recently deceased mom. It broke her heart but it awakened in her a passion for selling. Clara, welcome to the podcast.

Clara: Thank you Griff. Thank you so much for having me here. And what a beautiful introduction. I really appreciate those words.

Griff: So one of the things I didn't mention at the top is that you're well known in the seller community as the CEO and Co-founder of a company called ListPerfectly. What is ListPerfectly and how does it benefit sellers?

Clara: ListPerfectly is a software that originally was built for me with another reseller. So we can help resellers to list on multiple platforms, control that inventory with effective solutions for inventory management, and at the same time being able to maximize and grow and measure the performance of different stores or one store and the same time, grow that business in the right direction.

Griff: How long has it been around?

Clara: From the conception? Can you believe before ListPerfectly was ListClothing and before ListClothing. We call it the Amanda Lister, which is the co-founder of ListPerfectly. She's the technical partner. I am the non-technical. She's the one that decided to teach herself coding and I'm the one that continue reselling to fund the building of ListPerfectly.

Griff: That's Amanda Morse. And she's co-CEO with you in the current iteration of ListPerfectly. And I'm assuming that she's back at headquarters running the company right now while you are out on the road.

Clara: That's right.

Griff: Well, thank you Amanda for doing that and letting us have Clara. Obviously selling is a big passion of yours, but there's other topics that we don't really discuss very much on the podcast, for example, disabilities. Can you talk a little bit about why that's a passion for you?

Clara: Yeah, and I have to say thank you to Amanda, the co-founder, surround yourself with people that believe in you because when I was labeled as disabled, I got deformative arthritis at when I was only 40 years old. I couldn't type, I was very fast typing, coming from banking and law. I was very fast listing, but I just found myself I couldn't, I didn't know how to manage the pain, I didn't know what was going on. And literally I ran away to Argentina and I told Amanda, get yourself a better partner. I am defective. And I had this stigma, right? And she tells me, Clarla that's pain speaking. Come back, give it a chance and we'll make this happen. And I kid you not, I came back, I learned to manage pain and I learned to accept my condition and to thrive with it. And at the beginning I felt depressed a little, but then I would've never thought that would be the fuel for us to build ListPerfectly. Because it's desperation. When you have limited time, you know that your body only works for limited time. So you gotta be very, very strategic of how you're gonna be spending your day. And that forced us with Amanda to be very, very planning very carefully how we would create this tool. Like I said, I never thought it would be used for what, almost over 50,000 signups. I never thought. It was built for me. So it just blows my mind. And to be here talking about the tool that we created is just a dream come true.

Griff: You and Amanda sort of built this product initially to help you with the challenge when it came to typing. So your version of ListPerfectly made it easier. You didn't have to type as much data.

Clara: Exactly, because I found myself that I wanted to, unlike at that time, we're talking about 13 years ago when I got into reselling at that time we were talking about, most people were like, how can we get the traffic out of eBay? And Amanda and I were like, no. How do we get the traffic from other platforms? Okay, like Pinterest or Instagram, how do we redirect it to eBay's store to create credibility? And then I realized, okay, perfect. I can do the listings in eBay, but I wanted to create that social awareness of my store in different channels and redirect it and send it to eBay, taking advantage that I was a Top Rated seller.

Griff: And that's basically what the product does today.

Clara: Yes, absolutely.

Griff: You and Amanda are listed as co-CEO and co-founders. I'm assuming you're also very close friends.

Clara: Yes. 14 years. 14 years. I cannot even explain you. It's like we just get along, we don't even have to say, okay, she likes all the part coding and technical part. I cannot even see one string of code. If I have to do it, I'll do it. Okay. But it's just incredible. She's not so social. I can make the walls talk. And she didn't enjoy customer service. I love customer service. So she likes sourcing. I did not like sourcing. So it was just such a win-win situation with the clothing vault. Like I always say, I run ListPerfectly like my reselling business. I make sure my return of investment, I make sure you know, my customer service questions are answered promptly. If there is a dispute or maybe a customer that is maybe going through a challenging time, we are customer centric and we make sure we address each and every concern. And that I think is the secret of my success. Like I always say, there would be no ListPerfectly without eBay because all the good habits, we got it through the many years we sold on eBay.

Griff: And you're still selling. Now, besides having this company that you're running full-time with employees, some of them are here today, you're also still selling on eBay. How does that work?

Clara: Honestly, I don't sell anymore. So I'm a big shopper now. So I have a great team that they do the selling so I can focus on more the how to generate more sales faster and look at it from the perspective of the buyer now. So it's always, I'm transitioning from different perspectives.

Griff: But the Clothing Vault, the store on eBay is still active.

Clara: Yes, absolutely. We have the website www.theclothingvault.com where you can see that I'm sending traffic to eBay. If you scroll the way down, you can see in my website you can go to eBay. So we did it all the way around Griff. So it was such a win win situation. I was on my way to make half a million dollars with 20 x return when list perfectly went viral. And I kid you not, I still, sometimes I can cry a little because I miss reselling so much.

Griff: So somebody else in your company now is doing it. You have people that are doing the selling part. Do you ever envision a time where you'll get back to that aspect of the business and let somebody else do more of the running of the ListPerfectly organization?

Clara: This year I committed myself to do a thousand listings for the community. I'm gonna be listing for you for her, you throw me any listings and I'm gonna show you how I list. So it was building to have a bigger team because don't forget, it was just Amanda and myself. There is no investors, there is no board, it's just us. So we had to literally teach ourselves many things and grow the team to get to this point that now I can go back to the community and say, Hey, this is the software I built, but let me show you okay, how to use this software more effectively. And then let me show you how to list more effectively. Let me show you what I did.

Griff: You mentioned you're gonna do this for the community. What is that process gonna look like? Or has it already started?

Clara: It has already started. So ListPerfectly launch a new platform called ListingParty. ListingParty is the first network for resellers where they can meet, shop from each other, but it's not a marketplace. We just show you listings and redirects you to eBay. So they can shop from each other. They are all day 24/7, they're listing and they support each other and then they have goals. So there is a goal section in which you commit yourself. For example, I committed myself. You can make it public or private as you prefer. And then this is free access to any ListPerfectly member. But again, we're self-funded bootstrap. But I will make it available to everybody in our community when I can.

Brian: We get a lot of questions from sellers in email and sometimes on our voice line as well, asking how do I drive sales? How does social media work? I don't have a feel for this. I don't know how, if I'm doing it the right way, I know that I spend a lot of time on social media observing. I don't really participate that much. And I'm always a little bit perplexed by the approaches that many sellers use, which don't seem to work. Do you have some tips you can give us?

Clara: Great question. My favorite topic, Griff. I can't wait to share this with the community because it's free. Everything I did with the Clothing Vault, List Clothing, ListPerfectly, everything was done without sales team, without advertising. And it's organic marketing, 100%. Okay. Once I have the listing in eBay and it's promoted and perfect, okay, it's live, you know, it's optimized. I'm happy with it. What I wanted to do is redirect. Okay, use that listing that I have. Every listing for me is an opportunity to gather more people and bring them to eBay to my store. And I wanna bring them from Pinterest, from Instagram, from Facebook, you name it, from YouTube, from any social media channel, Reddit that is open there. What I did is making sure that you adapt that listing to different, okay, different formats. That's what pretty much ListPerfectly does, helps you to go to Instagram. So you can not only cross post to eBay, but then you go to Instagram and then you can say, visit my eBay store where I have more items. And I'm not saying go and post every listing, but as buyers, we wanna see at least one listing here we wanna see maybe a picture, even if it's a tiny picture of where you store your items, maybe the bag with your boxes when you're doing shipping. We love seeing that. And I think one of the things that I most benefit from social media was the capacity of doing videos when I was shipping an expensive item. So in that way, I protected myself. I show that I did the right thing and if something goes wrong, I have evidence. So for me, it was a win-win situation. It gave me credibility. It gave me not only exposure on eBay, but I was able to redirect that traffic because you start selling once and it, it gets the algorithm and you start selling more and more and more. So my biggest problem was once I used the social media was how to sell more. It went to, where do I have to find sourcing, because you start selling so much that, where do I get more sourcing? Social media gave me the credibility and the reputation, but you have to be like maybe once or twice a week, be open. Don't copy anybody. Buyers don't wanna see just the high highs. They wanna see everything. Maybe you're having a day that you don't have any sales and hey, you know, this is my store. I'm not having any sales today. You know, go and visit it. Just be honest about it. Be yourself. Don't copy anybody, and just take the journey as a growth because the platform itself will show you and the audience with the questions will guide you.

Griff: I've always thought that the differences between, say if I'd use two examples, Facebook and Instagram, where if you're gonna promote on Facebook, it's really important to have more than just a photo. You need content of some sort. I find a lot of sellers who may be okay at sourcing and know their market are not good at creating content. Where with Instagram, that's not necessarily case. You don't need to post content. It's all so visual. Same with Pinterest. What do you tell a seller who wants to be able to create good content? What are the tips that you would give them? And when I'm talking about content, we're talking about, it's not just the picture, it's about, you know, how do you approach it as an important part of organic marketing overall.

Clara: I did an AB test. So I had the cute website with incredible branding logos, and then I did average listings. Okay? Then I did the ugly website and you can still see it https://theclothingvault.com/ literally couldn't be more handmade. Okay? And we did perfect listings. Guess what happened? That website went, and that's the one that we were promoting.

Griff: The ugly one?

Clara: Uh huh! So I couldn't believe my sister-in-law, that's e-commerce in Argentina. And I was talking to her and I told her it blows my mind. And she's like, Clara, don't you get it? As resellers we don't wanna see your perfection. We don't wanna see that you're always making money. We wanna see the reality. We wanna see the truth. We wanna see that it is a little handmade because we're not designers. Not all of us have money for branding and to see other sellers succeeding, it gives you the hope and the seed money so you can evolve and grow your business.

Griff: Does that mean that a large part of your audience that buys, they are also resellers?

Clara: Yes. Yes. So you control it. You know, if you put a very higher, like I always say, if you're gonna go higher than what you find available on eBay, then you know you're gonna be targeting a consumer. Very, very, maybe a collector or someone that has a very emotional connection to buy it. If you're gonna go with lower prices, you know you're gonna, might be reselling. Okay. There is a high percentage and you're gonna be reselling to other resellers. Because I even source on eBay.

Griff: Since the pandemic, I have not been inside a thrift store. All my sourcing has been online since then.

Clara: Okay. I got out of thrift store and guess what? I got now into trading cards, of course, thanks to eBay. Now I got into trading cards and the history of trading cards. What a better way to learn history. It's called The Presidential Collection. And then you can go with different parts of Americana history. Amanda, the co-founder of ListPerfectly, she's a historian, so I'm gonna be opening the boxes to show other sellers what an incredible category trading cards is. Amanda will be doing the explaining of the history so I can also learn faster history.

Griff: Yeah, that's interesting because most people, when they hear the word trading card, it's, it's just sports.

Clara: I just did a special with American Arbitrage. Incredible eBay seller. He taught me about it, he's a historian and they are so much fun. And they trade so well. They come with a little piece of momentum. Americana element. It's very well done.

Griff: Oh, I have to look at this. I work at eBay, so I know now that the trading cards are, there's a lot more than just the sports. Just think about gaming.

Clara: When they went to the store, they were out of stock and I came to eBay, so I bought 'em from eBay.

Griff: Yes. I'm telling you, it's great source for reselling. You just sit at home and gain weight, have coffee, and spent money. It's terrific pastime. So it's no secret, I think to the audience that's been following me since I started at eBay and you know, I wrote a book and I was very upfront about my issues with mental health. And I know this is an important issue for you. How do you tie in your efforts as a profit company ListPerfectly, The Clothing Vault with mental health and your promotion of it.

Clara: It was a journey. Uh, it was a journey. Certainly Griff, in the beginning I felt, like I said, I was down to my last $1,500. Up to $200,000 in debt. 15, just $1,500 in savings. $200,000 in debt before, ListPerfectly when viral for me, that gave me, you know, it's acknowledging that I have anxiety. I've been doing therapy for 30 years. And I embrace my condition. I manage this as as effective as I can, but I learned to use it not as a label of defective. Like sometimes, you know, it's a mental health issue, but I'm human. We're all human. We all have anxiety sometimes or depression, or we're sad or we're worried or we get insomnia. And I think that sometimes with social media, lately we've been trying to portray such the happy times and that creates an artificial perception of your persona. And then when you come with a challenge and when you're down, people perception is like what's wrong with her? And I think that embracing and being honest, like I've been talking about anxiety. God knows I got so much depression when my mom died, I thought I could do better when my dad died, when I was nine, I thought, okay, when the day that my mom dies, I'll do better. That did not work like that. And I'm so grateful that I had so many resources here in USA, doing grief groups. I did it. You name it, any therapy, I did it. And then I'm very open, even with my team, we talk about anxiety management, I tell 'em, Hey, what's stress levels? Okay. And I feel, and if I see them stressed, they get a mandatory day that is paid by the company because I want them to be, it's proven employees and teams that are not stressed out. They will produce faster and deliver results faster when they're not under stress.

Griff: And they're happier too, as human beings.

Clara: And they feel listened to. Yeah. Their opinion...

Griff: Is validated. Yeah. Yeah. That's important. I think you're lucky in the sense that you have a team surrounding you. So many of the people I think, who listen to our podcast regularly operate as sole proprietors and they don't have that network. That's why we're always promoting seller events. What advice do you give to sellers who work alone?

Clara: This is a great question because can you believe that that's why we build ListingParty, because can you believe now it's 24 7, they're listing and they even go and take a nap and they leave their laptop open, they come back and you see them listing. Some of them are sweeping the floor. I've seen that's what we created ListingParty, because I was very lucky that I had Amanda back in the day, there was no group where you could go and ask, Hey, where do I get better shipping fees or whatever. There was nothing like that back in the day. So it's been a dream that we accomplished to give to our community ListingParty. And to see that the last listing party started, Teresa started it on Saturday night and it just finished. In meantime, there is other listing parties concurrently going. So that would be for our community. Can't be there, Go to YouTube. There is many resellers you can get on the chat. And there's so much fun on the chat. So you might feel a little odd in the beginning, okay, because you're new. But just go in there, hi from Arizona, how is everybody doing? And you'll see it's so much fun. And then you'll find the person that will resonate best with your ideologies and your feelings. And that's what you wanna embrace. Once you find that, then you embrace that culture or that community, that influencer created, and then you start feeling slowly part of that community and little, you know, now you're part of it and you just don't wanna leave.

Griff: That's excellent advice. When I get asked, I always say, you, you try to get to a physical seller event, you'll meet and make friendships there and you'll get a great way of exchanging knowledge and war stories and really important advice about running a business. I think it's also important to mention that one of the ways I've discovered to maintain good mental health when you're dealing with social media is to regulate your time and to stay away from the negativity. We all thought way back when that, oh, this is great social media be a great way for us to communicate and make friends and you know, it's turned into something else which is not so healthy. And it's important to avoid that.

Clara: I'll be honest, you know, at this is true story. When I met Amanda, she was burned out from reselling a little. So I'll never forget she was having a hard time replying to customer service question, customer service, something that is natural to me. And I'll never forget, I started to tell her, Hey, you know, you have to have this positive mentality. It's just you're going through a phase okay, it'll go away. No worries. I got your back. You know, at that time I had a severance package, so I really had time to see my options. I'll never forget, little by little, she just got out of that phase. And it's incredible how positivity attract positivity. And ever since, that's something that the other day Amanda was saying, I knew where I wanted to go, but I needed someone that would help me to get there. And that's what I recommend to everybody. Even if you are a sole entrepreneur, go to a Facebook group, go to a YouTube Live, whatever your platform, even if you're not into social media, maybe you go into ListingParty. These are, they're not public. Uh, it's not streamlined publicly. So these days, the recordings don't stay, they disappear. That's something that I recommend highly for our community because you will have a day that will be challenging, a day that maybe you get a return, you get an open case, no sales. It's not if, when those days comes, you need the right support group.

Griff: No one is alone. And it's important. And it does take a virtual village to be successful. I think you can't really do it on your own. Clara, before we close, you have your whole crew here, and I noticed that one of your crew, he's an old member of our team, Doug Smith. And Doug runs your podcast for ListPerfectly. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Clara: So the Seller Community Podcast sponsored by ListPerfectly, that was an idea that was brought to me by Doug Smith and executed by Doug. I couldn't be more happier because more than two years ago, we started with a couple of sessions and then he was able to take this incredible, incredible opportunity to now having his own website. We have so many guests, so many speakers in the, such a beautiful community. So I have to give all the thanks to Doug Smith.

Griff: Hey, Doug.

Doug: Hello Griff. Hey Griff, how are you?

Griff: So you've come crawling back, .

Doug: Well, you know, the, I don't wanna say the students become the master, but I'm a student of yours and I seriously, learned it all from you, so I wouldn't be where I am. Obviously if it wasn't for ListPerfectly, but you were an amazing mentor in these rooms we're sitting in right now. You taught me how to do it all. Thank you.

Griff: And you're enjoying it as well, right?

Doug: I love it. Yeah. I mean, what's there not to love?

Griff: Well, we missed you and we're glad that you're, you're doing it and I'm glad you landed someplace where you could follow your passion. So that's important. Tell people where they can go to listen to the ListPerfectly Podcast. Sure, sure. So The Seller Community podcast from ListPerfectly is available on all your favorite streaming sites. Or you can easily go to TheSellerCommunityPodcast.com.

Griff: TheSellerCommunityPodcast.com Okay. I'll get all that information. We'll put links in our episode link section so that you can visit it as well. I actually encourage anyone who consumes our podcast to go out and consume more podcasts as well. Don't just listen to this one, listen to a lot of the others out there so that you get a well-rounded diet. Selling on eBay and online selling content. And you can listen to podcasts while you're listing.

Doug: Exactly. That's the beauty.

Griff: I want to thank you both, Clara, and it's really good to see you, Doug, for stopping by and we'll see you a little bit later here on campus, I'm sure.

Brian: Yes. Thanks so much. It's great to be back. Great to be here with Clara. Thanks for having us on.

Clara: Thank you Griff. I cannot even tell you how excited and what a beautiful time I had talking with you.

Doug: Clara is Co-CEO and Co-founder of ListPerfectly with their business partner Amanda Morse. Doug Smith used to work at eBay, left for greener pastures and is now managing and hosting and editing the podcast for ListPerfectly.

Brian: You got questions?

Griff: We got answers. And Brian, our first question this week was sent to podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller. Lena, why don't you do the honors and read it?

Brian: Certainly. Lena writes, I'm currently a top seller offering free returns and looking to sell some larger, lots of new with tags maternity bras and clothing and thinking of not offering free returns. My questions are how to set up listenings with option for local pickup. And by not offering free returns, will this affect my Top Seller ranking on these listings? Thank you in advance, Lena. Well, Lena, you can indeed set up a listing for local pickup with two options, local pickup as one of two or more shipping options. Or you can do local pickup only. If you're using eBay's business policies, you may need to create a new shipping policy or two for local pickup and local pickup only.

Griff: Yeah, then you'll have those to select. You didn't state whether or not your listing was just gonna be local pickup only it can, right? But you want a specific policy that says local pickup only and there's no other shipping options. But keep in mind, Lena, about your question about your TopSeller ranking. So it's not gonna affect your ranking to list this way and there's no demerit or defect for listing with local pickup. But Top Rated Sellers do receive a 10% discount on all sales and that's a 10% discount on final value fees on all sales made with one day handling and free returns as part of the listing. Those listings that don't offer one day handling and free returns do not receive the 10% discount. So that's something to keep in mind.

Brian: Yep. And some categories are exempt from the one day returns, although bras is not one of them.

Griff: Well, that's too bad.

Brian: In addition, the 10% discount does not apply to listings that are local pickup only. So you wanna weigh that into your equation of course.

Griff: You wanna know that going into it. But again, I want to assuage your fears that this is going to somehow affect your status or your rating. It doesn't, this doesn't impact in a negative way your seller performance level. So if you're Top Rated, you'll stay Top Rated. What it just means is you won't get the 10% discount on final value fees. And Lena, I assume you're a regular listener to the podcast and I'm sure you don't want us to replay that PSA again and I'm holding off for a while.

Brian: I thought it was an ESA

Griff: Oh right. eBay Service Announcement about contact and help cuz you can always learn more by going to Help And Contact and searching on top-rated. Select the link on the top of the return results. It says seller levels and performance standards and it'll explain it all to you. Thanks Lena. Our next question, Brian is from seller Jay Magnan, who sent this to podcast@ebay.com. Greetings gentlemen. I have a question that your overseas tech support coworkers haven't been able to help us with. We make patches and some of them are available in different fabric colors or thread colors. We're trying to locate the correct category that will allow variations. Hope you guys have some suggestions. I listen to the podcast religiously and I've learned a lot. Thanks Jay Magnan.

Brian: Yeah, thanks. I like it when I hear that someone's listening regularly,

Griff: Religiously

Brian: And religiously.

Griff: Religiously and regularly. Mr. Magnan arise, my friend. So I don't sell patches. I gotta be honest, I've never sold a patch in my life. So you're looking at the non-expert here. But I did what I always do when faced with a question like yours about a topic of eBay selling, for which I'm clueless. I searched on patches with a little scrolling through. I found a category that seems to be a common category that sellers of different types of patches use in its collectibles in art, and then the crafts category under that. And then under that sewing and under that embellishments and finishes. And finally there's a sub sub sub sub sub category called patches. And I double checked that category has the variations option on the listing page when you create a new listing. It also appears to be the most popular category for listing patches.

Brian: Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed collectibles, but I could see people doing collectible patches for like different institutions and things like that over the years so maybe.

Griff: It's the top line collectible cad and art category, right? So art then breaks down into crafts and now we're at the, you know, whether they're machine made or handmade, there's still a craft I guess. Anyway, that's where most of them are.

Brian: And Jay, if you need help with creating variations for a listing, I suggest...

Griff: Wait for it.

Brian: Help and Contact.

Griff: Bingo.

Brian: Click on that text at the top of any eBay page and then search on the word variations. Click the link at the top of returned results.

Griff: Yeah, it says multi variations and fixed price listings.

Brian: The other place that I, I would recommend folks go and I think help, I would always start with help and contact because we've got lots and lots of information.

Griff: Like an ESA out there.

Brian: There within the eBay community there's also Ask A Mentor and we've got a lot of sellers out there who answer other sellers questions and such. And also another opportunity for folks to get help from fellow sellers.

Griff: And how do I get to Ask A Mentor?

Brian: If you go community.ebay.com and then click on the community info one, one of the very first tabs underneath that is Ask A Mentor. You can also get to it by going to Help And Contact and depending on the topic that you're searching for, at the bottom you'll see a link that says Ask The Community. And if you click on that, Ask The Community link. It actually brings you to the same spot where you can ask sellers. And sometimes those sellers that are there will respond very quickly and accurately. They can't answer everything. You can imagine if it's like a, a question about your account status or something. They don't have visibility into an action that eBay took. But if it's a question like this around how to list something or what category to pick or which shipping label to use, or what shipping printer to use.

Griff: Thermal.

Brian: Those kinds of questions, they can definitely address.

Griff: So there you go. I don't think you'll have any problem. Jay Magnan list away those patches. And may you have many, many happy sales. May the Salesforce be with you.

Brian: Yes. Our next email is about a very popular topic and it was sent to podcast@ebay.com by seller Pamela who writes, hi Brian and Griff, I love your podcast and look forward to every episode. I have a question for you about a VeRO I received this week. I created a listing for a new backpack using all my own photos and my own description. I used the exact model name in the title, the VeRO claims. I used one of their copyrighted photos, which I did not. There seems to be no recourse to argue my case with eBay. And the letter refers me to an email address for copyright holder. In doing some research, it sounds like this is usually the email for the products legal team and I haven't read any success stories, reaching out to them to argue a case, with no checks on their claims. This company may be filing false VeROs to eliminate the secondary market. Even though my listing complies, I will not re-list the item. I've heard I can get an account suspension if I do so. But this is against the first sale doctrine and against the whole idea of the eBay marketplace in my view. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Your loyal listener, Pamela in Maryland Purple Guppy on eBay. Well Pamela, thanks for this question. We normally don't answer specific account level questions like yours, but we see it's a good opportunity to talk about VeRO and the DMCA. Digital Millennium Copyright Act is what the DMCA is and what a seller can and cannot do when it comes to being on the receiving end of what is called a takedown notice. And for that, I'm gonna turn to you Griff.

Griff: Oh gee. Thanks Brian. You're so kind. Pamela. Before I say another word, I have to issue a disclosure. I am not a lawyer, I'm not a legal expert. I definitely don't have a background in intellectual property law. With that being said, I can't really give you specific legal advice, but over the last 26, 27 years in me working at eBay, I am a little bit familiar with it in a way I feel comfortable talking about in that's process. So first the US Congress passed the law in 1996 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And you can Google D M C A to read the details in that legislation. But in short, it's a law that explains the responsibilities of rights owners when it comes to protecting their property rights and the responsibilities of something that was new in 1996, which are online service providers and their responsibilities in facilitating claims of infringement. That's all it is. VeRO which is not a federal law, is an eBay project. It stands for Verified Rights Owners and it's the process and program that eBay put in place shortly after the DMCA was passed in order to facilitate claims of potential or alleged property right infringement by copyright or property right owners based on subscriber to a service like an eBay seller who that rights owner is claiming has infringed by their listing on that owner's rights. So that's it in brief. Again, I urge every seller to read up on it. And if you have questions about the DMCA, please ask a lawyer, not me. Brian is so tight lipped as I'm putting myself on the liability ledge.

Brian: Sellers do have some rights here.

Griff: They do. But it's complicated.

Brian: It is. And as I would not want to give you any advice that may put you in some legal jeopardy, you can reach out to fellow sellers like we just mentioned with our previous caller. They might be able to give you some guidance on what has worked well for them in similar cases. So check out community and ask other sellers about their experiences and what, what they've been able to do. There are some processes that you can take advantage of to appeal, but it's stuff that you should be very go in eyes wide open with and maybe even consult a lawyer.

Griff: Because you can't appeal through eBay. So it's not that eBay doesn't want to help you. We love you and we want to help you by law. We are not the mediator. We have to take an item down, no questions asked. Whenever a rights owner tells us for an eBay listing, it's through VeRO that that listing infringes upon their rights. It's no questions asked. We don't get to mediate, we don't get to ask for proof. All we can do by law is take the listing down. And when it comes to appeals, you can't appeal to eBay. To eBay, you have to go to the rights owner. So the first thing you should have done is email the legal team. I don't care what you read, other people's stories, you will see people that said, and it resulted in nothing, which you probably won't see a lot of are people who will say, yeah and it actually yielded results. So the first step is communicating through the channel. Most rights owners or their legal teams understand that they do have a responsibility to respond to a subscriber, an eBay seller who is pushing back on a takedown. Notice this was not right. Here's the reason why. Here's if you have it visual proof, you need to contact eBay and reverse this. Notice they're required to do so, but eBay cannot do anything until they do it. So eBay again is as neutral a party as you can imagine. So the VeRO team can only act on notices they receive through the channel to VeRO that says, Hey, this listing violates or infringes on my rights and eBay says, have to take it down. There's nothing we can do.

Brian: That's good advice. I mean they gave you an email address, take advantage of that email address. You know, a possible solution that I have seen other sellers use in a situation like yours, Pamela, where a company is claiming rights to a photo you took is to retake the photos but include an index card or piece of paper with your user ID written out by hand and placed alongside the item.

Griff: Because it'd be a very hard thing for them to claim that the photo you took with your index card and your user Id somehow belongs to them. It's another thing to think about it. And I always advise this, whether or not you've got a VeRO notice for a listing or not. Because Pamela is right. If you get an item taken down with a VeRO notice, I don't recommend re-listing it.

Brian: Definitely not.

Griff: Yeah. Because you're risking your selling privileges. You could get your account suspended. But if you first contact the rights owner representative, and you're right, for most big companies it's gonna be a legal team. State your case record that you stated your case, keep copies of the email and then you know, I don't want you to write a threatening letter, but you know, open up that line of communication and take it as far as you can to get them to understand that the photos that you took are your photos and not theirs. But for anyone who is selling an item that they believe could be subject to this, there's nothing wrong with adding a little index card in the image. And by the way, in case you've asked the question of yourself all the way, uh, right now, that little index card next to the next to the item, which is a physical card, it's not a software overlay that does not preclude your listing being acceptable by eBay or showing up in Google Shopping.

Brian: And the other thing is, sometimes people make mistakes. You might have taken such a professional looking photo that they just made an assumption. You know, one other thing that I'll say is, and this just happened to me recently, is I went to list an item of clothing and eBay, we try and help sellers too. Yeah, I was listing an item that was purchased decades ago and I never used it and it was a onesie for a child. And I went and typed in the ti in the title onesie. But when I went to list and I thought, wow, this is good on eBay's part up popped a message and said the term onesie is trademarked by Gerber. Was this a Gerber product? And it was not a Gerber product. And so I went back and I just changed it to one piece. But it was one of those things where I thought, okay, that's eBay. Also getting smart and making sure that our sellers don't trip up over something that, I mean, I know what a onesie is, right? I didn't know that it was Gerber only.

Griff: I've heard this one before. I always thought a way around it would be, say it's a two-sie minus one.

Brian: Well Pamela, I hope that helps and, and don't give up all hope. There's a lot of information on what a seller can do when faced with a takedown notice from a rights owner if they believe the notice is not legitimate, like in your case. For starters, try Googling appealing DMCA, take down notice for more information, check out the community and follow some of the advice we've given.

Griff: Our next question comes from longtime listener and eBay seller. Suzanne. Thank you Suzanne who sent this to podcast ebay.com. I just finished listening to the last podcast about working with unhappy customers and boom, I get an email from an angry customer, bad juju. Anyway, this is what happened. A customer purchased a mug, I shipped the mug to the purchaser same day purchaser sends an email, says that it should have been shipped to another address as it was being sent as a gift. That address was not in the address field. Unfortunately, the purchaser did not specify before buying the item that she wanted it shipped somewhere else. She thought she had put the address in, but there was no way for me to find it. Does the eBay tech team have a "address" book on their to-do list? It would be a great feature to easily add an address and keep it in an address book. Like so many websites do. Think of Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble, et cetera. Anything to make gift giving a bit easier for our customers. Thanks for all your help. Suzanne. 1852 House.

Brian: Well Suzanne, perfect timing. You'll be overjoyed to learn that eBay does in fact already have an address book for all registered users and it even has more features than that other website address feature.

Griff: Yeah. And it's easily available at checkout. Now you can see the address feature outside of of checkout. Just go to my eBay and then account and then addresses that takes you to your addresses page. And from there you can see there's different types of address like shipping return, et cetera. You can go to the shipping addresses as a buyer or seller if you like to buy as well. And you can click on that and you can add addresses that's necessary very much like that other website. And to check out that buyer if they're the person who've added the addresses to their address book can select an address from their shipping addresses or they can add a new address at the time by selecting change on the checkout with the addresses, which I suspected. Would you think she did that? Yeah, I think she might have.

Brian: Might probably did that or she thought she did. But as for your buyer, there's no way to tell which steps they actually took at checkout, but I suspect they missed one. Most likely the save button.

Griff: So that's important. You wanna make sure you save your changes so that you can use 'em. But yeah, I hope that assuaged your fear. You don't have to ask ever as a suggestion for us to add it. It's already there! It's all under My eBay.

Brian: Yeah, and that means buyers should be able to add whatever, like if let's say they send stuff to their mother and they always wanna send stuff they can put, put their mother's address in and easily switch between the two.

Griff: M is for the many things I've sent her.

Brian: Yes. And our last question this week is from seller Barbara. Dear Griff and Brian, thanks once again for your enlightening podcast. I don't know how any seller manages to stay abreast of all the changes in online selling without listening to it religiously. There's that word again, maybe we're in the wrong field.

Griff: Oh Brian, please don't.

Brian: I've already had three kids. I have a question about the new informed Consumers Act in the following statement. What is meant by the term new items? And here's a quote, A high volume seller is someone who has sold 200 or more new items totaling more than $5,000 and a 12 consecutive month period over the last 24 months on our US site. I sell used items but otherwise meet the criteria. Am I therefore exempt from this nightmarish requirement? Please say yes. I'm begging on behalf of the introverts who are the backbone of the selling community. Barbara, it's a great question. Griff, what do you think?

Griff: Introvert would be the last word I would use with the sellers that I know in the eBay community, but you know, teach their own Barbara. Yes, at first I had no idea for certain what that could mean because again, I'm not a lawyer could mean many things. I'm not a politician either. So I asked Ashley on our government relations team and she wrote back and she assured us the law is written to cover the sale of new not used items. So the answer is yes, Suzanne, you don't seem to meet the threshold requirements and are thus exempt from compliance. And again, the actual text does say the term high volume third party seller means a participant in an online marketplace platform who is a a third party seller in, in any continuous 12 month period during the previous 24 months has entered into 200 or more discreet sales or transactions of new or unused consumer products and an aggregate total of $5,000 or more in gross revenues. So there it is.

Brian: There it is. So sellers of mostly pre-owned merchandise do not have to comply with this new law. That's correct. The other thing that came up is, and it's a fa fast follow on question, what about new other? And I reached out to Toby who's in charge of Inform Act and he said, only new items sold on the US site, even New Other are exempted.

Griff: Because a lot of those new other, it's like new in box not used necessarily, but it's not new.

Brian: Or open box.

Griff: Well thanks to all who sent in questions this week, we love them and we hope our answers were clear and helpful. And I want to say that we do have a backlog of questions. So I think in the coming month we may actually do a whole episode just to catch up and just make it a question and answer. We haven't had one of those in a while.

Brian: It has been a long time.

Griff: And they're very popular.

Brian: They are.

Griff: I don't know why people like to listen to us answer questions. I think we're unlistenable, but I They like it. So you know, they listen religiously. Oh, we'd argue. Let's give them what they want. Yes. Right?

Brian: Okay. I'm up for that.

Griff: Me too.

Brian: Well, do you have a question? Don't keep them bottled up inside. Let them out by, by calling us at (888)723-4630.

Griff: The most underused hotline in the world. You can call at any time of the day, leave a question or comment and we just might put it on the air.

Brian: And if you're not a call on the phone person, you can always email us@podcastebay.com. That's podcast ebay.com.

Griff: And now it's time for your three point podcast checklist reminder to-do list.

Brian: Check the announcement board ebay.com/announcements for UpToDate Seller News every day.

Griff: You can smell it in the air.

Brian: You can smell what in the air

Griff: Spring, Brian Spring. And that means spring cleaning. Start planning now for a spring cleaning and reorganization of your work and inventory storage areas today.

Brian: That sounds like a great topic for future episodes, especially for me.

Griff: Hmm, good idea. Wait, let me make a note of it in my organizer.

Brian: Finally, need to review anything in this episode. It's easy. Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: And on our next episode, eBay Vice President Adam Ireland will join us for an informal casual eBay executive chat.

Brian: We'd like to again thank our guest this week, Clara Albornoz of ListPerfectly.

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