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07-25-2023
05:00 AM
This week we dive into the new Social Sharing page in Seller Hub with eBay Lead Product Manager for Social, Jessica Vayo. Griff and Brian talk about Seller Meet Ups and take questions on topics like how to toggle on optional features like Multi Variations, what it takes to get stuck inventory moving, and how eBay messages a buyer who is about to leave negative feedback.
Episode Links:
Multi Variations
Responding to Feedback
Seller Meetings
Seller Hub’s New Social Page
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events
Brian: I'm Brian.
Griff: 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 a successful business on the world's most powerful marketplace. This is episode 252. I don't do this alone. Welcome Brian.
Brian: Hello Griff. Glad to be here.
Griff: What's it like in San Jose?
Brian: It's nice.
Griff: Oh good.
Brian: It cooled off after a really hot weekend, but I shouldn't say anything about Hot cuz other parts of the country are much, much hotter.
Griff: Yeah, it's been 120 here.
Brian: You in Phoenix?
Griff: Yeah. I's okay though. I actually don't mind it. I go out and I sit in the pool for a while. Yeah, it's cool in the pool.
Brian: How's that laptop work in the pool?
Griff: Oh, I don't take the laptop out, although there's a whole outdoor area. There's a huge portico in the back of the house and I can sit out there. I also think I'm gonna put up some misters. I've been searching on eBay for good deals on a misting system.
Brian: That will be a well worth it investment.
Griff: Yeah. You know, I never knew that they worked cuz we don't really have them in San Jose or at least I've never seen any place with them. And I was walking around Palm Springs last month and it was a pretty hot late afternoon and every time we went by one of those outdoor restaurant areas where they had misters, the air was noticeably cooler. It really cools the air down. My biggest issue here is I set up my selling station. We finally got most of the garage organized and I set up my little selling station. I had a bunch of items, maybe 20 items that I had ended that I still have. Cuz before I moved I got really frantic at one point and I had about 50 listings and the majority of that stuff I said I was not gonna deal with it and I stuck it in the car and brought it to Savers. Well I can't re-list those but I ended all my listings. So I had maybe 10 pairs of shoes and a few nicks and nacks and bricks and bracks. Those are still in my unsold and they'll be there till the end of this month. So I put them into drafts and I've, you know, I've started listing again and, and I feel like I'm back in the game even though I don't think 20 listings is back in the game yet. But, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute cuz we have a question that relates directly to how much you've got up live on the site and whether or not you can be successful. I feel like I'm kind of going into a routine again.
Brian: The more you have up, the more successful. And it's funny, it's like finally I got my youngest to start selling on eBay. And so she sold another item Tuesday night and I said to her, I said, well when, when did you listen? She goes, this morning.
Griff: Oh good.
Brian: I said, how much did you list it for? And she said it was like $28. And I said, my only guidance to you, I know you're happy for the sale and everything is, if it sold that fast, you might've been able to get more money for it.
Griff: Oh, stop it Brian. You're gonna make her crazy. Just say congratulations.
Brian: I did say congratulations. It was a pair of Lululemon or however is pronounced
Griff: On this show. It's Lululemon no matter what anyone says.
Brian: It's Lululemon shorts that she had and, but they were kind of like five years old but they were really in, I guess they don't make 'em anymore. So they're, they're highly desirable.
Griff: Is that true? Is there no more Lululemon?
Brian: No, there are, but just not these, I guess they come out with different styles.
Griff: Oh, I see. Yes.
Brian: And And so they didn't have this style and brand new. They were $34. So she got $28 and I'm thinking, yeah, maybe you could have got 34.
Griff: Brian, stop it.
Brian: Who's to quibble over six? She was very happy.
Brian: She got some money. She used them for several years. She, she sold them. She got some money back out of them. Good for her.
Griff: Yes. And I have to do a shout out to a seller who I met in Salt Lake City.
Griff: Oh really? Who?
Brian: Jester Mace. And he sells clothing and sports memorabilia. But when we were on the tour, he said, who likes Tim McGraw? And I thought, I think Nancy likes Tim McGraw. So I take a Tim McGraw shirt and I come back and I give her the shirt and she goes, oh that's great. Megan and I are going to see Tim McGraw next Wednesday. And I said, oh, you're kidding. So shout out to Mace from Chester Mace who on our tour in Salt Lake City gave me that Tim McGraw shirt, which gave me good points with Nancy when I returned from a business trip.
Griff: Yeah, happy wife. Happy life.
Brian: Exactly. Well, Who's in the guest seat this week?
Griff: This week we're gonna learn about the new Social Media Connection Tools available now in Seller Hub. And I'm gonna confess something before I even go any further. I had no idea this was there. Can you imagine? I'm supposed to know everything and I don't know anything
Brian: Mr. Social Didn't know social?
Griff: I didn't know this was in the in Seller Hub. So Social Team Member Jessica Vayo is gonna be here to walk us through, including myself, the new Seller Hub page. And she's gonna outline in detail some of the features of the page as well as based on her experience, social best practices, do's and don'ts for promoting your business on eBay. And I think during the interview I'll pay close attention.
Brian: Well, and it does say new on the little social link so it is new.
Griff: You know, I gotta start paying it better Attention. Any news this week?
Brian: No news?
Griff: Oh no. Well no news is good news. So we just segue right into our interview then.
Brian: Okay. But before we do that, yeah. I want to talk a little bit about Seller Meetings.
Griff: You love these things!
Brian: I do. I'm very excited about 'em because we're seeing more and more. But if you want to join a Seller Event or a Seller Meeting in your area, I do. Or if there is no group in your area, you can consider starting one.
Griff: Yes. Yes.
Brian: Many Seller Event Groups start out with one or two people in a local coffee shop. Some quickly expand to 5, 10, 20 or even more members. Some of our larger groups meet on a regular schedule, like monthly at a local community space. I know Colorado Springs, they meet in a local library space or a school room. Some find corporate sponsors who donate space or our businesses like our friend Michael in Akron who offers his business space and then others meet up in local eateries.
Griff: I do remember, one of my favorite groups in the olden days was the Chicago Land Group. They used to meet up in Elk Grove.
Brian: Elk Grove.
Griff: At this fantastic steakhouse called Charlie's Charter House. It's no longer there.
Brian: It is not. Rich and I, Rich was actually on the the Seller Meeting Call. We have a monthly call with all the Seller Meeting Leads and he was on the call last week.
Griff: Another benefit of starting a Seller Meetup as you get these monthly calls with your peers,
Brian: With peers and eBay staff and you can learn from some of those peers.
Griff: Oh, and you know what Brian? What? There's a really helpful guidebook for folks considering starting their own local Seller Events Group. It was put together a while back by the founder or co-founder of one of the longest running seller groups that's located in Texas. Her name is Stephanie Inge and it's the Dallas eBabes and eMales Seller Meetup. And you can find her book online for sale in many places, including eBay. And we're gonna put a link in the summary overview for this episode so you can check out, maybe purchase a copy of her book.
Brian: And that's a wonderful resource for anyone who's starting out doing seller meetings or seller meetups. Another great resource if you start a Seller Meeting on eBay and you're on that monthly call, she's also a regular in the group. She was the original. I think she started the very first meetup. It's like 2002. She'll correct me if I get it wrong.
Griff: Yeah, of course. She'll call in.
Brian: I think it's 2002 and not 2000 but I'll find out. If you're interested in connecting with other sellers or learning about selling on eBay, check out Seller Meetings Events tab at community.ebay.com.
Griff: There's lots of benefits for doing this. This is a great way to make business connections and for a lot of sellers on eBay, as you well know, it can be a solitary lonely experience working day to day. It's a great chance to get out, socialize, make new friends, share a little nosh, , some sips and nibbles. You can find a lot of support among your peers and you can get help from fellow sellers in your town or metro area on particular aspects of your business that you find challenging. Kind of addicting. Once you get into a group, you look forward to going. If it's once a month, some groups meet twice a month, some group meet on a sort of irregular schedule. Like we said, like Brian said, if there's no group in your area, if you search the sellerevents@ebay.com website, you can't find a local group for yourself. Great opportunity to maybe start one.
Brian: Yes, definitely. The other thing is like sometimes you don't even know that what you don't know. And when you go to these groups, you know, just in the casual conversation or the topic that happens to be covered that particular week or month, you pick up tips and you go, ahh, I can be more efficient with my business or I can save money or save time. They're worthwhile.
Griff: You might learn that there's a new social page on Seller Hub.
Brian: Yes, exactly. And how to leverage it. Or you might learn that there's this wonderful resource called The eBay for Business Podcast.
Griff: Really? There's such a thing.
Brian: There is.
Griff: I gotta check that out.
Brian: You should. In the meantime, let's learn more about this new Social page in Seller Hub. We get a lot of questions from eBay Sellers about marketing and eBay Sellers are asking us about how to use social networks like Facebook and Instagram to help promote and market their businesses. Now recently eBay created a new section on Seller Hub to make it easier for sellers to use social in order to promote their eBay listings and their eBay store. Here with me today in the studio is Lead Product Manager for Social Jessica Vayo. Welcome Jessica.
Jessica: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Griff: Why is Social important for eBay sellers?
Jessica: Oh my gosh. Honestly, in this day and age, Social is a super valuable way to reach customers if you wanna reach buyers where they are, they're on Social, they spend a huge amount of time there every day. Social is especially important to Gen Z and Millennials when it comes to making purchase decisions. Honestly, that's where I make a lot of my purchase decisions.
Griff: I know it's just while you were saying that, I was thinking I'm not immune to this because I do spend a lot of time on Social. I make a lot of purchases too based on what I see there.
Jessica: It is very influential. It's just a really important place if you wanna be able to sell. It's where everybody is.
Griff: And so what does your team focus on? More to the point, what is the Social Product Team?
Jessica: My team specifically, we focus on building social integrations for eBay Buyers and our eBay Sellers to help them share to social either with their friends or to build their business. We try to make that a lot easier.
Griff: And to that end and the reason why you're here, I hear your team has added a new Social Section to Seller Hub and I confess I haven't checked it out. Please don't be mean to me .
Jessica: It's okay, It is very new. It's very new but we're super excited about it. The latest product that we launched is Yes, the Social Page. It's in Seller Hub. It allows sellers to link to their social accounts to create custom posts and share to platforms. That's including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, a lot of the big ones. With the help of eBay. You can make these posts with images and text and we offer you hashtag ideas, things that can help you just best to highlight your store or your categories or your listings on social media. It's really, really great to help attract new buyers but also bring back returning customers. Currently it's available to store sellers, but we're hoping we could bring it to all sellers in this Seller Hub asap.
Griff: This is yet another reason why you should consider subscribing to an eBay Store.
Jessica: Yes, it's a very good reason.
Griff: Value add. And of course there's also that end of it where if you are posting on a site, I'm gonna use Facebook for an example, that you can then use that post and market it through Facebook's marketing tools to help increase to a broader reach beyond just your own friends list.
Jessica: Absolutely. Our team is actively looking into like how we can help with other types of ads products on social media. Because to your point, you can get an even bigger reach if you boost your post on Facebook, for example, if you spend ads dollars. But honestly we wanna make sure that we make good products for eBay buyers and sellers where if they don't wanna spend money they don't have to. There's products around using hashtags and just sharing social both can bring you in new customers new reach.
Griff: Yeah, that's that power of the hashtag.
Jessica: Yes. Yeah, I mean honestly if you think about how you may browse certain platforms that are really big, like the Facebooks and the Instagrams, the TikToks, et cetera. Hashtags are a really great way for people who may not have even known that you existed. But if you're using certain hashtags and you share in those features or those interests with other people who are browsing those social platforms, that's how people make instant connections with new businesses. Hashtags are super important. Just don't use too many.
Griff: I've seen posts with, there's like huge paragraphs filled with nothing but hashtags. I always wondered how effective is that?
Jessica: It's not very effective. Use like three to five and make sure they're relevant.
Griff: And eBay now provides some assistance with that determining what would be the best hashtags.
Jessica: That's right. In the social page when you're creating a post, we're trying to make it just as easy as possible for you as a seller based on the listings that you're choosing to share. Or your store will generate hashtag options for you and you can pick from them. You don't have to think about it at all.
Griff: So would you mind just if I ask you to go through in a little bit more detail, what's actually available to sellers through your new Social Page on Seller Hub?
Jessica: Yeah. When you go to the Social Page in the Seller Hub, the first thing you're gonna do is you can link to your social accounts as mentioned. We have Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, we wanna add more all the time. And then after you've linked an account, you can go through our create flow and then choose which platforms you wanna post to. You can post to all of them at the same time to save you time if you want. That's another great feature.
Griff: And that's right from the page, right? You don't have to go to the single sites, you can do it right from the page.
Jessica: Yes. One of the things that I will say is that I know that some of the social platforms can be kind of confusing, a little bit overwhelming and so like going through each of those flows is probably a little bit much these days. But with the Social Page it's just one flow. You don't have to leave eBay, just pick which platforms you wanna post to decide what you wanna drive traffic to. If it's your listing or your store, your category, you get to pick which images you wanna have featured in your post. And then when you post it to somewhere like Facebook or Instagram for example, you have these really beautiful carousel formats. Normally you don't get these kinds of formats unless you pay for Facebook ads, but you get 'em for free with us. So that's really nice.
Griff: Well that is cool. Well okay, so now you peaked my interest because I'm not doing this at the moment. So how do I link my Seller Account to these different accounts?
Jessica: A few things to keep in mind. So eBay integrates with the available APIs of these different platforms like Facebook, Instagram. So there's different requirements. Just make sure when you're linking, you have your Facebook page set up. If you wanna link with Facebook, if you wanna link to Instagram, make sure that you have your Instagram business account switched over. Both of those are free things to do. They're very easy to do. If you need any help at all, we have steps in our help guide that's right on the homepage of the Social Page. But again, they're free. They're also best practices if you're a seller and you wanna share about your business, it's the best setup for you to have. And then for Pinterest, just make sure you have a Pinterest account and if you're logged in on those browsers that you're already managing your Seller Hub with, it should be really easy.
Griff: You mentioned uh, with Instagram you need a business account. Can you go into a little detail about the difference between like a normal, I guess what it's called, a personal account and a business account on Instagram?
Jessica: Yeah, that's right. So with a business account, you go into settings and then you switch from a personal account, like you said, you switch to a business account. All that means when you switch to a business account is that your account becomes public. If you have a private Instagram account that does not include content about your business, don't use that one. Use a Instagram account that you want to showcase your business content like your listings. And then after you switched over to a business account, it allows you to link to eBay. That's number one.
Griff: And that's with Instagram. That's not necessarily the case with Pinterest or Facebook?
Jessica: Right. Yeah, with Pinterest, the nice thing is that you can have public boards and you can have private boards. It's only under one account. So they all differ a little bit. But you're in control.
Griff: So it sounds pretty intuitive.
Jessica: Yeah, not bad.
Griff: I just got a question about this. So I'm glad we're doing this discussion because it came up, actually it came up on our Facebook group and I avoided post anything because I didn't know the answer. But, and you know this because sellers who spend all their time running their business, they want to know if any of the marketing campaigns including social, are effective. So how do sellers know that their social posts are helping to drive traffic to their eBay store or listings?
Jessica: Yes. So this is something that I have been hearing from sellers since I joined eBay about two years ago. It was the number one thing that sellers wanted, which was insights. I think historically at eBay we just never had that level of detail for which social channels are working for me. But with a social page, what we added was a new Analytics Section. Now with the Social Page you can go and you can check out if you're getting traffic from certain social sites, specifically Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, but also others like WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS, just about any social channel that is pretty big today. You can get those insights. Finally, it's been a really long time. We're really excited that we could give that to our sellers.
Griff: The question that I was reading specifically asked about, because we don't have this internally about traffic to your eBay store page, we have lots of reports on eBay itself. We have nothing that indicates, you know, if a specific campaign is directing traffic to the actual storefront page, is that available in the Analytics Page for Social for sellers?
Jessica: Currently what we have is just numbers of visits to your eBay assets. So that could include your Store, your category page listings. But we are looking into giving a more granular view in the future. Like if a particular social post in general is doing the best for you, maybe you wanna create more posts like that. So we'd love to give you more insights like that in the future.
Griff: We'd love a call to action with our segments because sellers then, we can warn them and they can go get their pen pencil and take notes. Course they can always rewind a piece of this podcast and listen again. I was hoping you might share some tips that sellers can use to be successful with social media, including use of the new Social Page.
Jessica: As someone who has been really deep in the trenches of social media since my tech career began, I have a lot of feelings about this, but some of the main things sellers should be doing are, number one, have social accounts. Like I said, social is where all of the buyers are. It's where they prefer to look into what kind of businesses they wanna buy from. So have social accounts. They're actually pretty fast to set up. And the next thing to think about is you should be posting to the social accounts on a semi-regular basis, maybe a few times a month, but up to a few times a week. That's usually pretty good. Talk about your business, talk about what products are you selling, maybe give a sneak peek to like what types of things you're shipping this week. Buyers really appreciate having that kind of like that preview of who you are, what you're selling.
Griff: You wouldn't recommend posting every day or every hour necessarily?
Jessica: Oh no. Also I, I mean I can't imagine that would even be enjoyable for a seller let alone the buyers. So no daily is not necessary. But I think what's more important is using those social accounts to engage with your potential buyers.
Griff: Okay.
Jessica: Showing that you're a person. I think that's the main thing everyone thinks about these days on the internet. We're all on the internet, we're all constantly trying to figure out which businesses have real people behind it. Just being authentic is really important. And one more thing is, this is something that I think about all the time is that you don't have to put your face on social media. You don't have to put your likeness, you can showcase your products. I think a lot of people may think that, oh I have to like be some type of social media influencer on these social accounts and that's just not necessary. People just wanna know what you're selling, what it looks like, especially in video form. So think about using video whenever you can.
Griff: Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Well these are great. So I'm just gonna do a quick review For those of you who are writing it down. Make sure you have social accounts and if you have an Instagram account, change it to business. You should be posting on a regular schedule that you set, but don't post too often. Of course we mentioned this earlier, but you gotta use hashtags to get discovered by more potential buyers. And of course what you just said, which we hadn't really talked about in great depth, was uh, the importance of video over images at least where it's applicable, right? So that really can grab attention and you don't have to use your own likeness. You can create a brand with an icon or a trademark and not have to worry about putting your face out there. Although it is important, as you say, to talk about your business from a human standpoint as opposed to kind of a cold corporate, even if it's a small corporation perspective. We do have a page that we can send uh, sellers to that is a help for this. And unfortunately the URL's a little long. So I will put that URL along with the other information we talked about in the summary overview for this episode.
Jessica: Perfect.
Griff: Any last words?
Jessica: Honestly, social is a way for you to build your business. I honestly think it's kinda more of the fun way to build your business. So make sure you're having fun with it.
Griff: Yeah, you're spending all that time on social as it is right now. You might as well be making money while you're doing it.
Jessica: Exactly. honestly
Griff: Jessica, thank you so much for coming by and telling us about this page. I didn't know about it and now I do. I should have been paying more attention to my email.
Jessica: Like I said, it's super new, but thank you for having me. Thank you so much.
Griff: Jessica Vayo is the Lead Product Manager for Social here at eBay. We've been talking about the new page on the Seller Hub, which can help you connect to your social accounts so that you can use social to boost your business.
Brian: You got questions?
Griff: We've got answers and some of them are actually accurate. Don't worry though. You know, last week I said that we were gonna have a, We Stand Corrected?
Brian: Yes.
Griff: So I'm holding off on it.
Brian: Our listeners have to go another week?
Griff: Yeah, I thought it was, it wasn't enough for me to have a one week buffer. I decided we needed a two week buffer before we add another,We Stand Corrected and next week we will stand corrected I promise.
Brian: We better not make a mistake this week or we'll have two of them.
Griff: You know, they could cascade. It could become a real problem for us. Anyway. Our first question was sent to podcasts@ebay.com. By eBay seller Pasia. And if we're mispronouncing it, that'll be our next We Stand Corrected. Will you do the honors Brian?
Brian: You know I will. Pasia writes, Hey y'all. I wonder if she's from the south.
Griff: Sounds like it.
Brian: I'm a new eBay seller as of this year, so I'm still learning the ropes. I would love to subscribe for a Store as soon as possible, but not to the point financially yet. My question, I've seen some sellers are able to add variants, allowing customers to pick a specific version or issue of a series of trading cards, comics, et cetera. I've seen the variations toggle on the list editor a month or so ago, but lately I've been trying to set one of these listings with variations up but can't seem to find the variation toggle. Now it might be a dumb question, but how the heck do I get it back and use it when I find it? And thanks for all the great tips and news. Best regards Pasia Torres, owner of Nomadic Book Trades.
Griff: I think you're gonna be pleasantly surprised with one caveat. I'm not absolutely sure of this, but I do think that there are some categories where the variation toggle isn't available.
Brian: I believe you're correct.
Griff: Yeah. And I just don't know what they are. But if you believe that the category that you're listing in should have that showing for you, we can lead you through the steps. And they're pretty simple. First, when you start a listing, look up on the upper right hand corner of what you call the Listing Editor, which I kinda like, or what we kind of informally refer to as the Create A Listing page. Go to the upper right hand corner and you'll see three vertical dots and click those vertical dots and then click the option for Settings.
Brian: And then next in the window that pops up, look for the option for variations. Toggle the option for variations so that it is on, it will go from grayed out to blue.
Griff: And then once you've toggled that over so that it shows blue, close the popup by clicking the X in the circle on the page. And now when you go back to the Listing Editor, I kinda like that, I think that's a great term.
Brian: The Listing Editor.
Griff: As opposed to Create A Listing page. I'm gonna talk to the team. When you go back to the Create A Listing page, you'll see the option for adding variations towards the bottom. And one of the things we'll do Pasia, in case you're not familiar how they work is put a link in the summary overview for how to use variations. But if you don't want to wait for that, you know what the solution is. If you're a regular listener to our podcast, which is just to go to Help And Contact at the top of any page and then type in multi variations and it will show you all the Help page informations and everything you need to know to use that particular feature effectively.
Brian: Great question.
Griff: Yeah. You know why I thought it'd be good to include it is there are several instances on eBay where you may be looking for something and it's not showing up and your first step should be to search the page for a customized table or a settings link and see if it's not showing up because you have to include it manually as a customization, which is kind of like what we just described for the listing editor. Thank you Pasia, to include variations where they're applicable. Our next email, Brian is from eBay Seller Rob Lowe 12 who has a question about no sales. He writes, hello gentlemen. I've been selling on eBay for over a decade now. It never fails that I will get a time when I just can't move my items. I know they are deals in comparison to other listings, but I just can't seem to get rid of them. Things like China sets, military surplus, power tools, accessories, et cetera. It's a wide variety of items. What do you think I can do, Rob Lowe 12. So I sent you the link to Rob's listings earlier and I had some thoughts. I think you might have some thoughts too. What's the first thing that came to your mind?
Brian: Well I think one of the first things is quantity of listings. The more listings that you have, the more eyeballs that ultimately get to your whole pool of listings. And Rob has a good start number at 34, but I think having an expanded number of listings would get more eyeballs to all of his listings.
Griff: It's really difficult to make steady sales with 34 one of a kind listings. In fact, it's really extremely difficult to make any viable business on eBay with less than I say 100 one of a kind single skew listings. And those have to be listings that you can determine by past sales are in somewhat demand. People are looking for them, right? I looked at your inventory and it's currently weighted heavily towards kind of used, older in some cases out of date electronics, like a lot of cables for example.
Brian: A lot of accessories, things like that.
Griff: Right? And some are very specialized, they're not necessarily in high demand. They might be considered long tail where you know, they sit there for a while but then somebody really needs to replace an old cable, can't find it new anywhere, then they find it on eBay.
Brian: You see that with electronics and you see it with auto parts, those kinds of things. But you need a lot of that stuff then
Griff: Yeah, you need more than 34 listings if you're gonna have that kind of inventory. Realistically, you're going to need, I said a hundred, minimum a hundred listings live at any time. You're gonna need several hundred items live in order to turn that into a business. There's just no way to expect that all 34 of those listings, even if you would've reduced the price, are going to sell. For example, I checked your listings and we can see as outsiders that there's only two listings that had any watchers that I saw and one of them is a Chevy engine, a straight six engine that in the listing description Rob Blow says he's selling for a friend and there's lots of watchers. So you know, there's some interest there, but there may be some obstacles to selling it. And I'm not sure how much that you want to put into this Rob, because if you're selling it for a friend, I don't know how much you're making on it. And one of the big obstacles is not assisting with finding a freight shipper that you can talk about right in the listing because it weighs 450 plus pounds and it needs to be palletized before it can be sent. And if a buyer's not in your area, this may be more work than they want to go through. You might wanna do that footwork upfront and get some estimates for that you could use. There's also, it's kind of complicated, but there's a freight option in eBay. But making that a little easier might help. But yeah, I think the big thing here, and I think we both agree is you just need more listings in order to make more sales.
Griff: Yep. Agreed. And one other thing is like I noticed there was a China set.
Griff: Oh yes. Right? A China set.
Brian: China sometimes can do very well on eBay. And one thing Rob, I'll encourage you to do is go to the Advanced Search and type in not your full title on the China, but type in just what the China is. Don't use set or how many pieces. Just say it's, I don't even know how to pronounce it. Nitto Claridge. Did I get that right?
Griff: I don't know. I'm not a seller of China.
Brian: Then when you do the search, use completed search, don't do sold do completed, because then you can kind of see what sold and what didn't. And if you take a look at that, you'll notice that there's a number of individual pieces or small sets of pieces that have sold and that can give you kind of a price for what a set would cost as opposed to, I think you've got a much larger set. One of the things that folks of older China or silverware, things like that sometimes do flatware. They'll sell it by the piece because someone might need it to complete a collection as opposed to actually collecting it themselves.
Griff: Yeah, I believe that that's a business practice that one of our regular podcasts guests, Lynn Dralle, who has sold a lot of China and Dinner Sets over the year, Dinner pieces has recommended. Always do the research first, but you may make more sales and ultimately even more money if you break the set into separate pieces and see if there's a demand that way. So we hope that helps. Let us know if it does. We'd like to hear your story of success as well as lack of success. We wanna make sure that we providing the information you need to boost your sales cause that's why we're here.
Brian: Perfect. And finally, our third question this week is from eBay for Business Podcast frequent emailer, Tiskett. You know Tiskett, I do. Who sent the following to podcast@ebay.com. Thanks for taking yet another question from Tsikett. Recently, a buyer gave a negative feedback stating a shirt he purchased was burnt orange instead of the advertised red. Arguably the shirt color could be seen both ways. I never make it a point to argue with buyers, but rather do two things when things like this come up. First I will reach out to the buyer directly, apologize and mention we offer free returns for a full refund, including initial shipping in this case. Second, I always make it a point to comment publicly on the feedback stating we offer free returns and if you aren't happy, we aren't happy. Perfect. Both great practices. I don't take the feedback comments like these personally nor honestly too seriously, but I do take pride in normally having a hundred percent feedback score. My frustration is more with the clunky appeal process to negative feedback with eBay. Oh no. Especially on a $15 shirt.
Griff: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Brian: I suspect I'm not the only one who has had this happen. I've appealed before. Gotten rejected, then messaged, emailed or called and gotten the feedback removed when I actually got ahold of a live body and explained myself again.
Griff: Now wait a minute, I got to interrupt. Ticket, you just said you don't take these personally or seriously and yet you would spend all that time. Okay, go on.
Brian: As a Top-Rated Seller, I believe I'm doing all eBay asks of me, including offering free returns. Has eBay considered auto generating a response before submitting negative feedback? Prompting a buyer to reach out to a seller that offers free returns prior to submitting the feedback comment. Or even better simply auto flagging and removing unreasonable feedback for Top-Rated Sellers. This might alleviate some headaches on everyone's end, but
Griff: I thought she didn't take these seriously!
Brian: she doesn't take 'em serious Griff. If not, I may just humbly request burnt orange be submitted as a color consideration in future item specifics. That was a good close. I I have to give her credit for the close.
Griff: She's a great sense of humor. Well, welcome back Tiskett. Yeah, welcome back. And we got some good news for you by the way.
Brian: Well we do, but I could go on a whole diatribe that I'm not gonna go on. We're gonna jump into the good news. So eBay already displays a message to buyers attempting to leave negative feedback.
Griff: Yes, we do. And we've been displaying this message for a long time now. In fact, Brian, I think you know better than I do. How long?
Brian: So long ago? I don't even remember the exact date, but so we're talking probably close to 20 years.
Griff: Yeah. It's been there. We call it the interstitial message.
Brian: Yes.
Griff: It pops up and you'll see it if you're ever a shopper on eBay and you go to leave a negative feedback and in fact you should try this, if you've purchased something on eBay and it's been delivered, go to your purchase history, find the item, and then where it says feedback, start the process and attempt to leave a negative. Don't leave the negative, just attempt to do it. And you'll see the interstitial message that pops up that says, Hey, do you really want to do this? We recommend you contact the seller first because then the seller can help make it right, whatever the issue was. But I gotta tell you, as for auto flagging and removing "unreasonable" feedback, Tiskett, we gotta be really honest here. That just isn't gonna happen. What's unreasonable? Yes. Feedback by nature is subjective. And in your case, a burnt orange or red. Yeah, I know that's very subjective. And it doesn't matter. The buyer didn't like the color, wasn't happy with it and left a feedback. Okay. Happens.
Brian: It does happen. I would say focus on the next buyer.
Griff: I know. Like we've been saying this message for so long, it is automatic.
Brian: One thing I do want to say on automatic removal for Top Rated, that would then just lock people in who are Top Rated, Top Rated forever, no matter what kind of service level they're providing. Yeah. So we, we wouldn't, I don't think, ever go down that path.
Griff: And we're not gonna have people judging or determining what's reasonable unreasonable. That's just, there's no way to do that. We're not in the transaction.
Brian: And we would get into legal trouble. We do remove feedback automatically for some situations. For example, a return case where the buyer accepted the return and the return was free. But for the most part, eBay is hands off on feedback.
Griff: Yeah. We'll also remove it if it's left for eBay International Shipping and the item was received and accepted at the Chicago hub and then sent on to the buyer. And like you said, it's hands off here at eBay and it's rightfully so. In my opinion, feedback by the way is not a factor at all in determining a seller's status. It used to be, oh boy, people are not happy about it. But that was changed a long time ago. Every seller, no matter who, including me by the way, is going to at some point receive a negative feedback. And to Tisketts point here, it isn't the end of the world. And in fact, as she knows and she practices a negative, provides a seller for an opportunity to actually shine.
Brian: That's right. Our own research says that for the most part, buyers don't really read positive feedback comments, but they do look for negatives or to be more specific buyers look for seller responses to any received negative feedback. Buyers know that all sellers are likely to receive a negative. How a seller responds to a negative makes all the difference to a potential buyer.
Griff: Yeah. And I've been saying this for years, sellers who respond professionally and politely to a negative comment and don't use the negative as an opportunity to bash the buyer, but instead express genuine concern for the buyer and the buyer's experience. Well those sellers our own day to show are more likely to impress a potential buyer as a good seller and then get that customer to purchase from you.
Brian: Exactly. The polite and professional response is an excellent opportunity to reassure a potential buyer that you will help them out should something go wrong.
Griff: So Tiskett my advice or I'm going to say our advice. Can I include you on this, Brian?
Brian: Oh, why not? Sure, go ahead.
Griff: Great. Our advice to sellers has been for 26 years and remains stop worrying about feedback. Read it of course, occasionally. And if you see a comment that indicates a buyer was not happy, do what you do. Reach out to them, but never ask them to revise feedback. Never ask a buyer to do so ever. Ask them if there's any way you can make their experience better. Do what you can to make it better. And then, and if you can't, there's nothing that will make the buyer happy. Leave it alone, walk away, move on to the next transaction.
Brian: Yeah, I agree. And when it comes to feedback, there are two rules. Number one, don't ask for it ever.
Griff: Ever.
Brian: And number two, don't ask for revisions. Yeah. You're not in the business to collect a hundred percent positive feedback. You're in the business to make customers happy. So they spend their money on your items.
Griff: And the reason why we're being so I would say strict about this is because we know it's a way to get you to write in emails. Well, I mean that we're over the top on this and we need your emails.
Brian: We could do a whole year on feedback.
Griff: I couldn't face it. I can't, I can't face it. No, no, no, no, no. Anyway.
Brian: Well, would you like to hear your question answered here on the podcast? Well, don't hesitate. Call it in on (888) 723-4630.
Griff: We need more questions called in. (888) 723-4630. Call at any time it's, it's free, it's toll free. And you can call any day of of the week, any time of the day, leave a question or comment and we just might put it on the air. And I gotta tell you, we're about to have our next all Q and A and I would love to have for that episode to have a lot of questions to choose from. You know, we won't use them all at once. We'll use the best and then we'll put the rest in the queue for future episodes. But yeah, we need your questions.
Brian: So send some questions in. Yes. And if you're not a call on the phone person, you can email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: Let's see if they check this difference. And now it's time for your multi-point Podcast Checklist.
Brian: Check the Announcement Board at ebay.com/announcements for UpToDate Seller News every day.
Griff: Are you looking to connect with other sellers near you? We'll then check out eBay Seller Meetings. Currently there are over a dozen seller hosted meetings and one may be near you. If not, you can always start your own.
Brian: In fact, last week the Akron Seller Meeting had the eBay Ads Team present and coming up, the New York chapter is covering Promoted Listings.
Griff: Great opportunities here. Find information and meeting details at ebay.com/sellermeetings. Or I believe it's actually sellerevents.ebay.com.
Brian: Seller events, covers both the eBay events and Seller Meetings. And then Seller Meetings is the seller hosted events.
Griff: Okay.
Brian: 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, we're gonna talk with eBay Head of Partnerships from the eBay Ads Team. His name is Jacob Hunter. He's located in Salt Lake City, works for eBay. We're gonna talk about home and garden trends that he has seen and his team have been following and their predictions about what's gonna be hot and trending for back to school.
Brian: We'd like to again thank our guest this week, Jessica Vayo.
Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
This week we dive into the new Social Sharing page in Seller Hub with eBay Lead Product Manager for Social, Jessica Vayo. Griff and Brian talk about Seller Meet Ups and take questions on topics like how to toggle on optional features like Multi Variations, what it takes to get stuck inventory moving, and how eBay messages a buyer who is about to leave negative feedback.
Episode Links:
Multi Variations
Responding to Feedback
Seller Meetings
Seller Hub’s New Social Page
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events
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