Episode 44 || Pricing Strategies

[doug@ebay]

Our theme this week is The Right Price – what is it, and how do you know. In the Main Story we’re joined by Nick Dunkley from the UK and Joe Latif from Australia who each have very specific pricing strategies they share with us. On Inside eBay we talk with Steven Hong who give us the eBay perspective on determining the right pricing strategy. As always, we’ve got The Buzz, What’s Hot is back this week, and we’ll answer some questions from sellers. To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

eBay for Business- Episode 44 – Pricing Strategies

Our theme this week is The Right Price – what is it, and how do you know. In the Main Story we’re joined by Nick Dunkley from the UK and Joe Latif from Australia who each have very specific pricing strategies they share with us. On Inside eBay we talk with Steven Hong who give us the eBay perspective on determining the right pricing strategy. As always, we’ve got The Buzz, What’s Hot is back this week, and we’ll answer some questions from sellers. To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

Links

#ebaypodcast
ebay.com/sellingonebay
#makingithappen
ebay.com/meetups
ebay.com/community

ebay.com/sellercenter
ebay.com/payments
ebay.com/communitychat
trends.google.com
plumbworldUK
handyimports

Hosts

Griff, Alan Aisbitt, Jen Deal, Doug Smith

Guests

Nick Dunkley (eBay Seller), Joe Latif (eBay Seller), Steven Hong (eBay Staff)

Transcript

Hey Alan.

Hey.

What would you say is the most important consideration for a buyer who's making a purchase decision on eBay?

Hmm. Good question.

I know.

Photos?

They are certainly important. They have to be the best photos you can take in fact. Photos that are poorly lit or you've seen them, the ones that are out of focus or they contain lots of distracting background. They can turn off even the most determined buyer, but this is not about photos.

Okay.

Because ultimately photos are not the most important deal maker or breaker for buyers on the hunt.

Okay. Interesting. What about descriptions then?

Well, descriptions are definitely important. There may be details about the item that are not even evident in the photo. Happens to me all the time, but no, it's not photos. There's an even more important factor. Think, think it'll come to you.

Not Photos, Not description.

No.

What else is there? Oh wait, I got it. I think. Duh, It's price.

Bazinga!

Yay.

The actual survey shows that the number one thing on buyer's minds when deciding whether or not to purchase something is price.

The price is right.

That's right. I should have thought of that. Price is very important to me as a buyer.

And to me as well.

Then so price should be just as important to a seller.

Well you'd think so. And that's why finding the right price is the theme for our show this week.

I'm Griff

. And I'm Alan and this is the eBay For Business Podcast. Your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace.

So it's all about finding and setting the right price for your listings on eBay.

That's right. It is. And it isn't always just finding the one right price. It's staying on top of trends so you can adjust the price to keep it right.

To uncover the right price sweet spot for seller and buyer.

Oh you are so eloquent. And to that end on The Main Story, we'll be joined this week by two sellers, , Nick Dunkley from the UK and Joe Latif from Australia. Nick and Joe has some very specific pricing strategies they've developed and honed over time for their specific niche categories and they're eager to share them with us. And on inside eBay will be talking to one of our colleagues here. Stephen Hong with the eBay perspective on determining the right pricing strategy. And it's time for our monthly addition of what's hot with Jen Deal. So we have that.

Yeah and we have seller questions sent in to us to answer.

Oh, and there's some doozies in there. I can't wait to get to them. Have you seen the questions?

I haven't.

Oh, they're fun. Oh, cool. Of course. You mean we're going to attempt to answer them because sometimes even we're stumped, right?

We will try our best. We'll have some fun along the way I'm sure.

But enough about our short comings. Let's get this party started.

You are so not hip Griff.

Well, I do think I have some street credibility. I mean...

Doug, it wasn't a question.

Oh.

Now it's The Buzz with Alan and Griff. By the way Alan, just Alan, how's that one name thing working out for you, by the way?

I like it. I'm like Madonna, Cher, Sting.

Yeah, right. Fewer outfit changes though. You know, they'll listen is, would never know. It's a podcast. It's an audio. So there's no visual.

What do you think of this? ( Swish sound)

That's a surprising quick outfit change. How did you do that Alan? I never thought you'd look so good in, is that champagne sparkle?

It is. Thank you Griff. I appreciate that.

Have you been watching drag race?

Oh Yes I have.

It shows.

In this podcast studio here, we can transcend the barriers of mere audio with fabulous outfits. Okay. What do you have for this week Sparkle Boy?

Alright Griff. Let's start with some topics from the community. So over on our discussion boards an occasional seller was concerned about selling to a new buyer and asked the community how to proceed and remain protected. sellers discussed buyers who open false not as described cases to get a partial refund or avoid paying return, shipping costs. That then led to questions about return timeframes. Sellers and buyers must adhere too. So clarification was sought regarding feedback protections for sellers when an items was shipped on time but delivered late and whether these protections only apply to the guaranteed delivery program.

Feedback protection is that important anymore? I mean really.

Oh, it's nice to have all the little green dots though on your page and God forbid you get red one or a gray one.

Well, the guarantee delivery program states that guaranteed items will be protected from negative feedback related to late deliveries if the seller ships the item within their handling time, so that's how that works. The seller protection help page also states, you can read it there, that all sellers are protected from negative feedback related to late delivery when the item is shipped on time.

Oh, nice. Thanks eBay.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Besides the help from our sellers, the community theme confirmed seller protections and clarified late delivery feedback protections with the appropriate team.

Cool. What else? Alan?

The community team also helped to clear up some confusion over managing offers. Specifically best offers. Seller feedback was that the wording on our help pages around best offers could cause some confusion.

Really?

We did find a majority of sellers participating in the conversation seemed to have a good grasp of policy. But there was some misunderstanding out there. And the good news is that we passed on seller feedback and the help page was updated to state the policy in a clearer manner. There's always the opportunity to make something clearer.

I try to do it every day.

And it's always great. We can pass that seller feedback on to help make these quick changes.

Oh, it's my favorite thing to do.

I know.

We also had some feedback in the community this week and questions around managed payments and changes to the packing slips and we passed the feedback onto the Payments and Shipping Teams.

Speaking of Managed Payments. I hear that if you're in the program you should see the addition of PayPal as a form of payment appearing on your listings.

Yes. Very exciting news. PayPal as a form of payment has fully rolled out to all sellers who are currently enrolled in Managed Payments. Yeah. Remember, Manage Payments is a multi year journey and at this point we're inviting sellers who meet criteria.

I love multi year journeys. You can send postcards back to your family and your mother in Ireland.

It's like when, when they used to get the boat over to the US in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.

Please tell me we're not that slow. You know, we also had a couple of seller news announcements this week.

We did indeed. On June 1st Fedex started charging a $350 fee for each incident of a package shipped through Fedex that contains dangerous goods or hazardous materials that is determined to be noncompliant, by FedEx.

Yikes! $350?

Oh I know! Put a hole in your pocket pretty quickly.

Sure. Just like the acid you're trying to ship. And what is considered a noncompliant package?

I'm glad you asked that question. A noncompliant package is one that contains dangerous goods or hazardous materials and that can include insufficient or improper packaging, improper hazmat labeling or markings, undeclared dangerous goods, prohibited materials and packages, abandoned or refused.

Do eBay sellers ship this kind of material?

I hope not, man. None of our listeners will ship it because they are the best of the best.

Can you sell radioactive uranium on eBay? I don't think so. There's a big market out there for Uranian I'm sure. So what this means for sellers is if Fedex determines that you've shipped a noncompliant package, the fee will be reflected on your monthly eBay invoice in the same way that FedEx shipping charges are assessed today.

It begs the question, Alan, how can the fee be avoided?

It is a seller's responsibility to insure packages are properly marked and labeled packages and documented if necessary, according to their hazardous materials hipping policies. In addition to Fedex requirements, any shipments you prepare must comply with DLT, hazardous material regulations and any restrictions maintained by your preferred shipping carrier. Please refer to UPS, USPS and eBay's policy for more information, we'll include these links in the transcript.

What could they be shipping? What could you sell and ship that would actually be considered hazardous?

Hazardous liquid like mercury? Is that like thermometers? If you shipped a thermometers and it's like broken, leaking.

You know you're smart. That may be a use case.

Yeah, that would be pretty bad.

Are these oral or the other kind? Anyway, what's next on seller announcements?

Let's shift gears and talk about some improvements to the buying experience on listing pages and also in checkout.

Let's.

eBay is doing this to enable buyers to quickly choose the shipping service that best meets their needs. You do not need to take any action to apply these changes. The first shipping option you designate will always be shown on the listing and in search and never removed. This change applies to ship to home services only. It will not apply to buy online pickup in store or local pickup. Shipping options with guaranteed by dates are prioritized if speed and cost is the same as a non guaranteed delivery.

We also posted an eBay for business blog article on how free shipping could change your business.

Yeah, the post sites a number of studies with stats on free shipping and ecommerce. When free shipping is available, three out of four shoppers say they are more likely to shop online.

Part of the reason for the shift in mindset is a changing competitive landscape with the majority of online retailers moving to free shipping as the default option. Customers have come to expect that across the board regardless of business size.

it's automatic for me now. I just give preference If it says free shipping, my mind goes to those listings first.

It's just so easy at a glance to see how much you're going to pay. You don't have to do any maths and that's what you want. You just want a simple buying experience.

Yeah. Don't make your buyers do the maths.

It's like, yeah, when you go to a restaurant then you have to work out at the tip plus tax. It be great if you could just get the total cost.

But I'm good at the tips. So I always save 20% on tips.

Zero?

I always give 20%. So you take the bill, I take the first digits of the bill. So say it's $11 and 10 cents. The tip is, so I take one one, one and multiplied by two so it's going to be $2 and 22 cents that's 20% it's real easy.

Oh!

That's why I stick to the 20% cause if it's 19 or 25 I'm lost.

I like that. I'll have to try that next time.

Well, any who back to The Buzz. Within marketplaces like eBay, sellers are discovering that offering free shipping makes them more competitive. Furthermore, many companies are noting an increase in sales. 93% of online buyers add more to their shopping cart when a free shipping option is available. That should be telling you something and their orders can be 30% higher in value.

As more customers hunt for free shipping when they shop, companies are racing to keep up. In 2018 alone 88.5% of online orders shipped free and when compared with other drivers, consumers will still opt for free shipping. Even with a slower delivery time. By offering it to your customers, you're giving them a major incentive to buy from you versus somewhere else.

You know, I just sold a bunch of stuff on the weekend. I went to Ikea and they had these special limited edition pride bags. You know those big polypropylene bags that they sell.

Yeah, they're very popular right?

And these were the rainbow around just for the month of June for pride.

For pride.

Right.

Nice. So I knew they were, they're not going to sell them on the line, they're not going to sell them forever. So I get to Ikea early in the morning. I bought a case a hundred of them just to see how I do.

While we were eating in the cafe with our Swedish meatballs and Swedish pancakes, I put one up with a quantity of 10 and I put it at, I looked and I saw the other sellers are already doing it and I made sure mine were free shipping and I priced them competitively and by the end of the breakfast I had sold 10 of the hundred, I sold the whole lot within 24 hours.

Oh my God.

I made a little walking around money.

You're a hustler. That was enough to pay for your flat pack wardrobe was it?

You know Alan, every seller's situation is different. It may be challenging for some sellers to offer free shipping initially, but I tell you the long term payoffs are really worth it. As I found out this weekend and if you're ready to move to free shipping but are concerned about the cost involved, we recommend trying it with a few items in your store like a test. Another option is to set a threshold and only offer free shipping on orders over a certain dollar amount. In fact, this is a really popular practice. 66% of consumers expect to spend at least $25 to qualify. So you may find that implementing options like these on a gradual basis could take your business to the next level and that is that.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, Griff. I learned a lot and I agree with all of that.

I know you do. That's what a good cohost does. Anything in the news, Alan hopefully nothing about sports?

What's bigger sports news than the NBA finals Griff? NBA, you mean baseball's already back. Oh boy. I remember that song about baseball remember?

No.

(Singing) Out on the road today. I saw a dead head stick around a Cadillac...

Griff. Baseball's been going on for quite some time and what were you singing?

Well that's Don Henley's boys of summer. A song from, I think it's the nineties about baseball.

NBA is basketball. You know they throw the balls through the basket? It's big in our area as the warriors are in the finals.

How exciting. American basketball groundbreaking.

Are you familiar with the rapper Drake? Aubrey Drake Graham is a Canadian rapper, singer. songwriter, actor, producer, and entrepreneur. Drake gained recognition as an actor, the teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation in the early 2000's.

Yeah. Okay. Nice Googling. How about Stephen Curry?

Wardell Stephen "Steph" Curry is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association. A six time NBA All Star. He has been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player twice and won three NBA championships with the Warriors. And you see his face on t shirts all over the bay area.

Wow. You really do know basketball.

I know Google. I've been dribbling since I was a little baby. Apparently according to Doug, who's the script writer, I was the baddest dribbler in the whole neighborhood. This is extra. but go ahead.

Well, during a recent playoff game, Drake apparently grabs some lint off of Curry's hair. What? Yeah, he was court side, Steph Curry was right beside him and he reached and grabbed his head.

Grabbed his head?

Grabbed his head. You know, like with two fingers, his thumb and his index finger.

Are you kidding Me?

Yeah. Some people were not happy. It's kind of abusive, you know, you cant really be grabbing players from the sidelines.

What did Steph think about this?

Steph seems like a nice guy. Say it's ok since it was Drake, right? It's Drake so it's okay but if it were me, I wouldn't get ejected from the stadium.

If it was one of us would be like, Hey what's that eBay For Business Podcast guy doing here? How's he afford tickets? Uh, but no. If you are Drake you can get away with a bit more.

Because he's what?

Drake is a mover and a shaker. He posted on his Instagram account, champagne puppy, a forward of mentioning listing the lint on eBay.

He listed it on eBay! How many followers does he have? Nearly 58 million. Is that more than Brian Burke?

I think it's more than Brian Burke and Snoop Doggy combined. Let's say there are different types of influencers. The posts was captioned. Steph Curry lint hair for sale on my eBay right now. We're not really sure Drake listed the lint, but it inspired others selling Curry lint hair. The prices range from 99 cents to $399, 999.00.

That's some hair. It's like Wayne Newton. I want you to have this. It's a lock of my hair. Is that a song? Another obscure reference by Doug, the script writer. Thanks Doug.

I wonder if he saved it or threw it in the trash.

That lints got to be worth something to someone I guess. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Stop!

That's all the news that fits.

Thanks Alan. Coming up next. Let's move onto The Main Story.

It's time for more Main Story and joining us again are Nick Dunkley of PlumbworldUK and Joe Latif from handimports. He sells and is from and currently resides in Australia. And our theme for this show is pricing inventory. Lots of strategies involved. We'll welcome back Nick and Joe.

Hi Griff.

Nick, I want to remind people that you sell bathroom everything, right? So it's fixtures...

Everything. Yeah.

Yeah. And Joe, you sell restaurant equipment and primarily to businesses in Australia.

That's right.

And it's a whole range of restaurant equipment.

Oh, absolutely. I mean 20,000 items.

20,000?

Yeah, we do everything from the teaspoons to the walk in ovens and freezer rooms.

Let's begin with the idea of pricing strategies. Nick, tell us a little bit about what your pricing strategy involves in your field.

Basically when I'm pricing I don't want to look at it on a granular detail. So you've got to take into account all the different costs that there are. If say for example, we want to set a selling price which is competitive with within the market, we need to then work that back. So we need to look at what it costs to ship that item, what your fees are? That's PayPal fees and the eBay fees. We need to look at what it costs to package the product. And we also need to look at whether we've had any damage rates or anything like that in the past where we need to have to take that into consideration.

So all those factors are part of the formula in the spreadsheet?

Yeah. So we take the gross selling price we will deduct the vat which is at 20% and then we'll say 11% fees, which is for your eBay and PayPal. Then we'll deduct the cost of sending that parcel and then we'll also deduct the actual product cost and then that will leave the net profitability.

And it is there any profit in this situation?

That depends.

It sounds really close to me. It sounds like this can be a very tight situation when it comes to selling these products.

I mean if we know that we've got to sell at a certain price, we can work it back to workout what that cash profit looks like and then we can then look at the run rate potential. So we can look at how many realistically we think we can sell and that will let us know sort of what the opportunity looks like.

So Joe, is that similar for you?

Yeah, it's a, it's definitely similar. I mean everything that Nick says definitely have to be part of the equation. I have some extra complexities in terms of I've got a mix of imported products that I generally import from Asia, specifically China.

For resale?

For resale. That's right. So, and I also rely on local Australian brands, which I source from Australia. Obviously in Australia I'm dealing with Australian dollar, AUD. In China i'm dealing with USD. So an extra level of complexity is that you have to incorporate obviously the exchange rate. To make sure that your replacement cost, not the cost of just getting the item but your replacement cost is under check. Because there's no need to sell something that you think you making 7% on. And then when you actually going there to rebuy it, you find yourself that you have to actually add extra money.

So how big of a factor in your pricing strategy is currency conversion?

it's big. Just giving you an idea, about four years back in Australia, the AUD was just over a USD. So came to be about $1.05 cents to a dollar. At the current rate, you're getting .69 cents to the dollar. There's 35% there. For you, you can't be going in year in, year out, not paying attention on that.

How do you keep up with this cause those changes happen dynamically. How do you figure that into your pricing?

Well there are tools. One of the tools is I have a central database placed on a certain platform similar to Magento and you can get extensions for those that actually can give you the immediate replacement cost in the default currency that you'd like. So if I pay my supplier in the USD, I would like the default settings on that particular product also set in the USD. So did the cost angle. My buy price is reflective of what is at the time. I would just want to go back a bit about what Nick said in terms of strategy on an overall, I use what I just said about the cost or the conversion rate on top of what Nick has mentioned already. And to figure out the cost. But generally what I'll do, if I have a fresh item coming in, I will place it at the price or i'll price it at the minimum money I'll take. Okay. So I'll, I'll get super sharp on it to give the particular listing the best chance of succeeding and ranking up to the first page and I'll give her a bit of time and reassess that product. If the product is super successful, that might be because you're pricing it too low. So even though you're making a bit of money you could actually maximize that. If your biggest competition is far away, there's no need for you to lose on those profits. So I raised the price. If it doesn't do well and it's already at the minimum price or premium profit I can get, there is no need to import this particular item. I will throw into the clearance bin and makes space for another one.

I do things slightly differently. So when I'm launching a new product, if there's no one else in the marketplace selling that, I'll start off high. So I'll start off at my maximum expected margin that I want to take. And I'll use marketing tool to try and give that the visibility that it needs. Then you've got the option to discount where necessary. So if we know that the sale was not there and there's not much traffic, then we'll bring the price down to get the momentum that we need.

So it's the reverse of what Joe's doing.

Yeah, it's trial and error. So you're just finding that sweet spot of where the sales come in. It's the sales start picking up, could you bring it down a little bit more to increase the volume? Or are you happy where it's at?

Starting out with any pricing strategies. You say, I need to make this much money. And how do you determine what that is? Because you can make a profit, but if it's not big enough to sustain your business balanced with velocity, then why be in business?

I think that's quite a complex question and it varies category to category and it also depends on the size of the item that you sell in and the volume that it takes up in the warehouse. So if it's a piece of furniture, you want your margin to be a lot higher on the item because it's more expensive to store.

So storage is another concern?

Yeah, the bigger the item, the more space it's taking up and it's more expensive to ship. It's cost more if it gets damaged in transit, it's more difficult to pack, so the complexity of it is a lot higher. So you, you'd want to get a higher percentage margin.

Joe, how often do you revisit your pricing strategy?

It's hard to put a date on it. I don't have a reminder or anything. If I have like a period of time when there's not too much going on, I'll try to utilize that even if I've just revisited the prices a month ago. Because I know practically speaking that sometimes I get these runs where for 8 months straight I am too deep into a major project that I really can't put my head out of it. I'll try to do it whenever I can, but certainly when we're getting past six months that's really pushing it.

What about you, Nick? Because I'm constantly trading the accounts. I'm changing prices on a daily basis. So I'm constantly reviewing and refining, optimizing. I am constantly looking at sales reports, what's increased, why has it increased, can we maximize the margin there? Are we selling too cheap? If something slowed down, has competition stepped in? So it's constantly trying to understand what's going on and it's always changing.

When you are doing particularly well, you'll have competition coming in and trying to undercut you and take your business. So you've gotta be pretty savvy and spot that.

How often do you look at your competitors?

I live in Best Match, so I'm in it every day. That's part of the reason why we're so successful. We're monitoring our listings, we're making sure that we're as high up in search as we can to get the visibility that we need and also making sure that competition doesn't step in and take our business because there's a lot there.

Paying attention to competition is really important.

Joe, your competitive landscape is a little bit different where you are in Australia.

That's right.

So do you still have to keep an eye out for competitors?

Oh absolutely. That's bread and butter stuff. You really have to get onto that and keep an eye, but on top of that, you really need to keep an eye on the trends and the client's regulations. I could give you an example of how unforeseen competitors came in quickly into the market with a certain regulation change in Australia. At some point in time around 2013 or so, Australia exempted any inbound item, ecommerce purchased item from GSD If it was worth less than a thousand dollars. That would affect things like mobile phones, iPhones and things like that.

And some restaurant equipment.

Absolutely. Things that could be expensive, but also convenient enough for an overseas seller to put in a small package and send it your way and instantly be at least 10% more profitable than yourself. They also have a cheaper postage advantage. We all know about the International, it goes against common sense. But international sellers will have a more favorable price rate against sellers who are in Australia trying to send to people down the road. But depending on your location, you probably want to keep an eye on trends and regulations that might bring in a whole set of new competitors that you didn't think really affected you.

I think sometimes as well you can get a situation where you doing really well with a product. A competitor comes in, they undercut you, you can't possibly get to the price that they're at and then you make a decision, well is it worth continuing selling this product? And sometimes you've just got to cut your losses and move on.

Yeah. When you're looking at competitors and you're looking at pricing, how important is the current marketplace sold items? So if you're on eBay, you can view sold items to, is that part of your strategy?

Yeah, 100% of everything on eBay is completely transparent. Looking at the sold items, you can quite quickly gauge the volume of inventory that a seller is selling. And if you just click on sold, you can sort of have a look how much they've sold within a month period. And then you obviously times by the sale price and it gives you the total sales. So it just gives you what that opportunity looks like.

Joe, do you use sold items?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely use it. Also what I try to do is see how many people are selling that particular product. So like Nick said, you want to engage from the history, what sort of volume that you could fairly reasonably expect. So what you want to do is not only look at one listing but you also kind of like add up the sold items histories of multiple competitors. And if you have an advantage on a lot of those, reasonably expect that you will be selling as much as the total.

Do either of you use free shipping or do you charge for the shipping as well?

We use free shipping on absolutely everything.

And Joe?

It's different. The complexity of where the item comes from, which supplier comes in and also the sizing. I mean again, Australia is so massive that you wouldn't be able to just blanket cover free shipping on all items, small and large across all states. It's kind of like more tailored. So this is what I really found interesting and a really good tool to have is the freight rates that eBay has incorporated and they not only included that, but having actually refined it to the point where you can actually have multiple tables, it was absolutely a good tool to have.

It was built primarily for the US but it works really well for Australia.

Absolutely.

And for those of you who aren't familiar with the content in itself, there are geographical challenges. Because most of the population lives on the east coast. There is some in the west and then there's this big empty expanse in the middle that has to be traverse If you're sending parcels.

And service, you'll have, there wouldn't be big towns, but you'll have like towns of 300 people to few thousand people who are living in those areas that are quite hard to get to. And you really, you don't need to find them a service that works with them.

Yeah, it's a big challenge shipping.

Where we are and Nick in the UK pretty evenly distributed, not such a big agenda.

I mean obviously the UK is a lot smaller but it's sort of segmented into zones. So you've got the UK mainland, which generally is a sort of a flat cost and then you might pay a surcharge to deliver to the higher zone. So the Scottish highlands and islands and also sort of Northern Ireland. But we incorporate the shipping into all of our pricing structure because the fast and free and the free delivery is quite a big selling point for us. We think adds value because not a lot of our competitors offer free delivery on palletize goods. And also with having the premium seller badge, we gain better visibility and we obviously get 10% discount on our fees for meeting all those requirements.

That's important in the competitive sense as well. Joe, what's the biggest challenge you face?

Probably that would have to be the currency conversion. Yeah, that we mentioned earlier.

Because of so many different sources from outside of the country.

Absolutely. Yeah. It sounds like, yes, you have the tool, but managing the tool and tweaking it and making sure that that's maintained is a task in its right.

Yeah, it's a full time job. You'll have to hire someone just to do that.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And Nick, what's your biggest challenge as far as price?

I mean obviously with the amount of skews that we sell, we've gotten up to 4,000 skews, so managing that quantity of listings is quite challenging. So obviously we focus our attention on the bread and butter, so that 80 /20 rule, but obviously those other listings need to be looked at. So it's just the time consuming aspect of it.

Okay. You both get into an elevator, It's a hundred floors up. A new seller gets in with you, they recognize you because you're famous from the podcast now. And they say, oh, Nick, oh Joe, I'm a new seller and I, I love the idea of selling on eBay, but I need a pricing strategy. What bit of advice can you give me before I get off on the hundredth floor? Go ahead Nick.

Press the next floor, I'm out!

Okay, here's my floor. That was good. Now Joe?

I'll say, excuse me, it's not Joe. That must be my twin.

You don't want any competition. I don't want any extras.

All right valid enough. Here's my floor. I'll get off. Best of luck to the both of you. I want to thank you both for taking part in our podcast. Lots of great content here. I hope that our listeners have picked up some great information. I'm sure they have on how they can adopt a pricing strategy. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for having us.

We've been speaking with Nick Dunkley from the UK. He sells under the ID PlumbworldUK and they sell everything to do with the bathroom and Joe Latif who's handimports on eBay in Australia and they sell restaurant equipment. We'll be right back with Inside eBay.

Today on Inside eBay we're talking pricing strategies and with us is Senior Manager of Business Enablement at eBay. Steven Hong. Stephen, welcome back to the show.

Thanks Griff. Glad to be here.

Hey, I have to ask you a question. What is business enablement? I mean I, it sounds self evident but I just want to make sure.

Yeah, it's a team here at eBay in the Americas region that's focused on business operations. I'm specifically focused on buyer pricing. I get to work in a number of different interesting parts of the business, inclusive of our deals program.

That's why you're here. To help us discuss the topic, which is pricing strategies for sellers.

Yes sir.

Now why should a seller have a pricing strategy? Shouldn't they just make it up as they go?

We certainly do have sellers that do make it up as they go, but in the long run, if a seller wants to be in the business for a sustained amount of period of time, it really benefits them to be intentional about strategically pricing their inventory for the long run. If we're talking about a situation where they're trying to get rid of goods in a short span of time and not sell that stuff again in the near future, then that's different. But in terms of driving a sustainable business, it really makes sense to be longterm thinking about pricing.

Okay, so if I'm a seller and I'm going to create some sort of pricing strategy with the goal of making sales, right? Customers want to find the right price, they want to buy the item. What are some of the points that I have to look at? What determines what a good pricing strategy is? For example, how do I determine an item's value?

It's an interesting question. A values is item, really what the market will purchase it at, right? I mean there's a number of ways to assign value to something. Manufacturers like to put a watermark pricing out there when they talk about listing price or MSRP. But really it's about what's the price that's gonna move the item and cause buyers to transact. And you can assess that a number of different ways. One of the simplest ways is looking at the sold item history on eBay and I'm sure a lot of sellers are already doing that. It's understanding what is this item selling at in recent transactions. And that's a kind of a good reference point to start. And that's different than looking at what it's listed at on eBay, which could be aspirational but not realistic. Yeah, it's a very good point. I mean you might find a listing that's been live for a long time, but if it's not selling then it's a reason that listing spin up for a long time.

And you can check sold listings in any search results by just filtering on the left hand side of the page.

Yeah, that's a very easy way to look at it.

So let's talk about shipping costs because those have to factor into it, and again, it sounds simple, but it's not that easy, especially if your margins are tight. If they're are low ASP item, or average selling price, how should a seller go about determining how to absorb those costs in a way that can pass them on to buyers, not really impact their margins. How does that affect the creation of a pricing strategy for say in just a particular, one particular item?

Shipping is, it's an interesting variable in the value equation for a seller and a buyer. And unfortunately this might not be a gratifying answer for a lot of folks, but it's really dependent on what you're trying to sell and who the target market is. If you have an item that's unique, collectible type item or an antique that's rare in the market, free shipping is not going to be as a compelling of a value proposition as just having the item. But if you have something that's readily available, a commodity type item, there's a lot of other listings that are on the platform. Free shipping becomes a really strong differentiator.

I've noticed that myself in the antiques and collectibles category, you see fewer listings that have free shipping, but it makes sense because people are, they're on the hunt for the item. They're going to pay the price and if there is shipping, they're going to pay it. But like you said, if I'm looking for an iPhone accessory I'm looking for the best price.

Yeah, exactly. And there's also kind of this element of how much inventory do you have. If you enable free shipping, then the same price is going to be available to someone that's 50 miles away and it's going to be the same price as somebody that's 400 miles away. And so there's sort of a variable price on shipping that the seller incurs. If you have a hundred of those items or a big lot of inventory, you can kind of average out and kind of not lose a whole lot of money. But if you have one item, you need to think about what's the variation in terms of the profit you can expect depending on where you're shipping to.

We talked about sold listings, that important tool that a lot of experienced sellers use. Is it the only tool?

Yeah, I mean the most simplistic way is really around just looking at the search history, but then you can also consider things like looking on Seller Hub. There's pricing insights available to those that subscribe to stores and I think what you're getting at Griff is there's a tool that's now available for eBay store subscribers called Terapeak, and for many sellers that are listening might be already very familiar with that service that was recently acquired by eBay and now is available at no additional cost for store subscribers. Terapeak aggregates a lot of this information as far as sold item counts and really make it easy to visualize it at a larger scale. Versus kind of hunting through different search queries, et cetera. It's a power tool of sorts to understand this pricing intelligence.

With sold listings, you're looking at sold listings, that's all you're seeing. You're not getting any insight into deeper data or deeper views into what sold and why or trends or who sold it and when it's sold necessarily. But those Terapeak has all that detail.

Yeah, exactly. I mean you, you have at your fingertips now just average pricing over a certain span of time. You're able to attract trend line whereas before, I mean you can certainly plot that, but it's manual versus now this tool enables you to do that. It's right at your fingertips. So before we go, do you have any pricing tips for new sellers? These are the sellers that have the most fear and the most questions about pricing an item. They don't want to miss out on a profit, but they don't want to price it so high that it doesn't sell. What's your advice to that new seller?

I mean certainly use these tools and this data that's available at hand, but I think it's really just about the attitude of testing and learning, right? You might have this fear that you might lose money on a specific transaction, but if you are going to be doing this and are looking to do this for a long sustained period of time, it's a little bit of tuition to learn, right? The category, the type of product, the velocity of demand on the site and kind of learn by selling at different price points, trying different sales strategies and gather that data over time to really know your product and understand the market.

So test. And if you're a new seller and you're afraid of maybe losing out, find something that you don't care about, enlist that as your first item and see how it goes. You're not really invested in it emotionally or financially, so it's a great way to learn at low risk.

That's a great point. If there's items that are kind of laying around, maybe not so high value, those are great products to test with. Low price items that you can purchase in lots enables you to ab test different sales strategies like promoted listings versus just deeper price discounts versus things like promotions manager. Learn how your buyer reacts to different pricing strategies.

So check the site when it comes to soul listings. Utilize eBay tools like Terapeak and don't be afraid to test and learn.

That's a great summary. There is our takeaway Steven. I want to thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your insights with us.

Thanks Griff. You got it. We've been speaking with Steven Hong and he's the Senior Manager of Business e\Enablement here at eBay. Coming up next we'll visit with Jen Deal and see What's Hot for the coming season.

Every month we visit with our friends downstairs here in building six to figure out What's Hot and in the studio today we have Jen Deal, she's sharing with us What's Hot this summer in travel, toys and trends. And this is information that sellers can use. Welcome Jen.

Thanks Griff. I am going to talk today about what sellers might be sourcing this month and next, especially as we hit a prime selling season in the next few weeks.

As in prime rib.

Well, it's a different kind of fomo actually then having a high end dish to devour. But yes, prime season and everybody listened to that. Historically, actually retail summer sales were thought of as slow because people go on vacation, but in ecommerce that has changed everything. Right around the 4th of July,. It is a key buying and selling period. As the convergence of deals, peak summer season of travel, entertainment and all over fun and actually back to school shopping start to converge.

Because people shop on their phones. You can take your phones with you on vacation to the beach, to the barbecue and when your friends get boring in their conversation or it's overcast at the beach, shop, shop, shop, shop, shop.

Exactly.

Okay. Let's get into it. People generally travel and vacation during the summer, so what sells and when?

So luggage is a top seller during this time of year, but I'll be honest with the sellers because we want you to do well, it's the third highest peak of the year. Still important though for carry ons, accessories like packing cubes, makeup bags and hand held scales and other travel needs. So if you're a travel category seller plan for June through July, August as your summer periods, and then you go dark, actually not dark but like your lower sales are gonna happen in September, October. And then they pick up again in November and December for like a true high peak season for travel purchases. But this is one of the top three. So don't forget to list those items. Ironic, I'm about to travel in a few weeks and I'm looking for luggage.

Perfect!

Sellers put some luggage up there.

Hey are there any specific brands or price points that we should focus on?

Top selling luggage at this time of year is not brand specific, but Samsonite, Herschel and Tumi are usually brands that sell year round. And I'm seeing in Terapeak that the average price point is around $92 with a $20 shipping cost. Hopefully that's helpful to some of you. And the sell through has already been about 41% in the last 30 days. So that's pre peak.

That's high. That's really high. That's a total category sales through.

That's right.

I'm selling the wrong stuff.

Well remember we're in the, this is the peak time, right? So that's why we talk about these things.

Yeah, So now you mentioned toys are also big this time of year. And I wouldn't have thought that. I thought it was only during the holidays that they were a top seller. They are, but these are toys for all ages.

So summertime includes waves of water play, no pun intended.

I get it, I get it.

But the water-sports bring out toys like wake-boarding and water skiing specifically huge at time of year. I actually saw that there's this new toboggan mat, that you can add to your Waterski. Instead of water skis, You can add to the back of your boat a water mat. And so people can lay on it and drag you around.

How is that a sport?

It's like $1,200!

How is that a sport if you're just laying on it being dragged around. That's leisure.

It just sounds really fun.

I just see myself getting tangled up in a boat propellers.

Yeah. Gotta be careful. That's true. There should be caveats to all these things. Other water sport categories that we see peaking right now. Kayaking, canoeing, rafting, swim wear, life jackets, standup paddle boarding and snorkeling.

I've snorkeled that's a sport.

The sport, right. I nearly drowned, but I snorkeled chase fish, turtles, whatever.

What about pools and stuff?

Yeah, so large inflatables, lake inflatables, pool inflatables, all popular this time of year. And this year the unicorn comes back with slightly different styling.

Unicorns?

Yeah. Unicorns. You know the big pool floats with like a unicorn head that comes out?

Right, right, right.

Yeah. They used to be like swans and ducks and then unicorns were popular last year and now they're back again. But with a different look. Blondes are popular again. And there's other new big things like food groups. Food, fruits and pizza slices have made it to the pools, sloths, birds, all kinds of birds and several large scale lake floatables for multiple people.

Well it sounds like a splash, but ump ump ump! Any other toys?

Yes. To cover off on toys for everyone, tis the season for golf. Mostly clubs sell at this time of year, but all things golf will sell. Fishing terminal tackles, lines and leaders, rod and reel combos, reels, bait, lures and flies. I hope everyone's recognizing that. i'm only talking about some of the top selling categories and subcategories within that. But in that category in general, there's room for sales across the board. And then the last one for toys would be cycling.

Oh, big boy toys.

Big Boy toys yep. Car and truck racks were at the top of the list. Clothing, bike accessories and components and helmets.

I remember in my day when I was selling more shirts. If I had Harley Davidson shirts this is the time of year they sold.

Oh, there you go. Yeah.

That is part of the trend and speaking of trends, let's talk a little about that. What are some of the trends we're seeing?

Among trends in the next six to eight weeks the main areas of Home and Garden that peek through may until September, but specifically in June, are awnings, canopies, tents, umbrellas, beach shades and canopies for the beach, or the lake. And then weddings, supplies. We actually rarely talk about this but venue decorations, favors, centerpieces, and table decor are popular right now.

Excuse me. I always cry at weddings. This is also a special month for some of us. It is.

This is also LGBTQ pride month and various related products are on the market and I heard someone had a mother-load of sales over the weekend.

I did. I actually picked up on a trend and I found out that Ikea was going to offer these special big bags. Only they were in rainbow, so it was for pride month. But they couldn't be bought online and they were limited edition. I drove over with some friends to Ikea and then I bought a box of them. I think they've sold out since I took the box home. Actually at the restaurant, I started listing them. Wow. And 24 hours later I'd sold all 96.

Checkout you using the eBay APP.

I was using the eBay App and I made some walking around money. Nice.

So let's wrap up. Any last trends we want to talk about?

I don't have any last ones I want to talk about. Do you have a couple of tips though from everyone else that wants to find trends? So you don't always have to rely on us, but there are tools that we give you. A few of those are explorer.ebay.com. Available to everyone, gives you top trending on eBay bestsellers in the last week, day or hour, and you can also search different items to see what they're worth and they will give you trend lines in those items. Terapeak is another one which is included in store subscriptions for basic packages or higher. Or you can pay 19.99 per month without a commitment, $12 on an annual plan. And then if you're looking beyond eBay, there are Google trends and that's at trends.google.com. And this is a place to find relevant product categories related to trends. So maybe that Ikea bag would've shown up their. Bikes in keyword searches and regional trends and much, much more.

That's actually a really great site for picking up some tips about what is selling.

Absolutely.

Well Jen, thank you. As usual. It's been enlightening and I look forward to our visit next month.

Sounds great.

We've been speaking with Jenn Deal. She visits us once a month to tell us what's hot so that we sellers know what we should be sourcing. Coming up next. You send us questions, we try to answer them. Let's see how that works.

And now it's time for your questions and our answers so-called. And joining me is Alan. Hi Alan.

Hi Griff. And all the way from Temecula, California via Skype. It's Doug Smith.

Hey Griff and. Alan, thanks for having me back.

We couldn't, we couldn't do it without your expertise.

That's right.

So should we just jump in? These are questions that came in either, where did they come from, Doug?

They came from the podcast submission form and recent comments on podcast episodes. The online community.

So people are listening then.

That's right. That's right.

I'm so excited. Thanks people.

Yes, these several people.

So Doug. The first one you're going to take, so would you read the question please?

All right. Moody1957 asks, I need to start selling as soon as I can. Tell me how to start selling on this site.

Doug, how do you start selling on the site?

I would just say start selling. So it's pretty easy. There's login. Hopefully you have an eBay account set up already, Moody1957. And then there's a Sell link at the top of the eBay homepage or you can go directly to eBay.com/sell and you will be guided through the steps to list an item. Some people find it easier just to list via the mobile APP. That's how I did my listing because you can take your picture straight from there and it's a little easier to get it going, but be sure to read and follow all the steps and once you familiarize yourself with everything it gets easier. I would say also go to sellercenter.com and look up tips on taking photos. There's a great section in there on listing best practices.

Is it seller center.com?

It's ebay.com/seller center. Did I say seller center.com?

You did.

Oh Jeez. Ignore that. Moody1957 and then you know, look at some listings. Hopefully you've bought on the site that helps a little bit before, but everything is done via guided steps, so that should help. And if you have any questions, you can always go to the eBay community as well.

That's right, yeah. You can join the weekly chart from one to two Pacific at ebay.com/community. And as a new seller I would recommend that you listen to a fantastic resource called the eBay For Business Podcast.

Oh, oh wait, you're already here. You're listening to it. Every week we will drop the latest content direct from eBay headquarters, which will hopefully give you tips and insights to get an advantage over other sellers who don't listen to the podcast.

Yeah. My suggestion would be find something that you don't want like in your possessions. Hopefully something that's like new and package or it has the package or the barcode. Cause then you can scan it with your phone and it will fill in a lot of information. And if it's something you don't want, you're not emotionally or financially invested in it, you're going to list it for a penny or a dollar and let it go where it goes. And getting over the hump is getting over that first listing. Once you've listed and sold something, you'll feel very confident.

And that's what every seller says is just start selling.

Just start selling.

Yes, start selling.

We hoped we helped you Moody1957. Which if I'm thinking correctly, she's using or he or she is using a birthday, their birth year. So now we know their 62 years old.

Go do it Moody. Never too late to start selling. Alan, I think the next one is yours.

Yeah, we had a question sent in by loud played for you. The member was wondering, is it possible when you're selling on eBay instead of us paying you funds, rather you earn eBay credits. So rather than having funds transferred to your bank account or your PayPal account, could they keep credits on eBay and then you could use those credits to buy items on eBay or use the credits to bid on eBay auctions? So we'll start off by saying currently it's not possible right now but, what I have heard is, as we have rolled out managed payments, we've talked about it in the show and in previous podcast episodes. We're currently on a multi year journey to bring Manage Payments to eBay. So what that means is that buyers will pay eBay and eBay will disburse the funds to you into your bank account. But some suggestions we've had from sellers is exactly what you're asking, is wouldn't it be great if actually that money didn't go into my bank account but it stayed on eBay in a place like Seller Hub. And then I could decide what I wanted to do with it. Maybe I want to transfer 50% to my bank account, but maybe I want to keep the other 50% on eBay for purchases. You know, it could be for personal purchases. It can be for purchasing inventory from purchasing, shipping supplies. Not Possible right now, but I think in the future, at some stage it could be possible.

Well, you know, it kind of is possible. I just thought of this right now.

Oh dear.

Well if you have a PayPal account, people pay you into PayPal. You can let the money sit there. And then you use PayPal to buy things on eBay.

Oh yeah.

Duh.

That's why they pay you the big bucks.

You know they use credits in the Star Wars universe instead of money.

Quickly move on.

Yeah, please.

This is for me, this one, because you'll l figure it out. Hildabees asks, are Griff and Lee still doing the live radio show every week? How do I call in and chat with them? I have been away for a few years and would like to get back into selling. Well, I have some bad news. Lee retired and Griff and Lea as a radio show stopped production in July. It was the end of July at eBay Open. Last year. 2018 so no, we're not doing the live show anymore. Lee is working at home, enjoying her retirement with her husband, John. They're planting flowers and singing songs and I think she might be doing voiceover work, but no, the show's not live. We're not doing that show anymore. But you can always listen to the eBay For Business Podcast and you are right now. So that's that answer.

Normally we have Alan and Doug and other cohosts so hopefully we filled that Lee shaped hole in your eBay content calendar.

I'm just not gonna go there. I'm not going there, Lee, if you're listening, it wasn't me that said that. Doug, the next question is yours.

And this may actually help Hildabees as well. DM772012 asks, how can I find all new information about listings, refunds and shipping fees.

Tell him, Doug.

That's right. Well DM772012 you've come to the right place. Obviously you have come to the podcast page. So the eBay For Business Podcast is a great resource for the latest. You are in the eBay community. That's a great resource for the latest Info. You're also gonna want to go to ebay.com/seller center, read our seller news announcements also in the eBay community and you know, check out the eBay for business Facebook, the eBay For Business, youtube channel, all those informational items out there.

Well that was good information, Doug. Thanks.

Thanks Griff.

So this next question is interesting. At first I was little confused by it, but I think I know what she's asking. My cottage books and Antiques asks, When are you guys gonna add coded coupons to the promotions manager options? And at first I said, well we have those, we have the, Oh yes, they're the code less coupon. So we have a code-less coupons. Basically a URL that you can give, can provide the people to whom you give the URL a set discount on whatever listings you are offering in that promotion. There is no plans at the moment to add a coded coupon, where you'd type in a code, but I'll pass that information onto the promotions manager team and who knows, perhaps it'll spark something. I can't promise it will, but you never know. And then, took it home asks, is there any way to bulk end listings as to avoid the automatic renewal for good until cancelled? We were trying to divvy these up, but I really wanted to answer this one.

Well, knock yourself out.

Go for it. Enjoy.

If you go to the actives view in Seller Hub, you can select a bunch of listings and you can click edit and it'll take you into the bulk edit field and you can, one of the things you can do is end all the listings.

Oh, why would you want to do that?

Well that was my point. Why do people still hold onto this really bad business practice? There is no reason to do this. And I've heard sellers kind of justify saying, I want to look at my listings and make changes. I gotta be honest and I know I'm going to cause a firestorm here, but I don't believe that. I actually think people think, if I end all my listings and restart them, I'm gaming some ranking in search. And the answer is no.

Yeah, we've chatted with the search team. This has come up over the last couple of months since we announced the changes because of the canceled. And it seems like it's an urban an urban myth, urban legend. There is no boost. Sellers mention boost and I'm doing my quotations and I don't think it's a thing. And you know, I think about as a star on the high street, you're basically taken all of your stock off your shelves for whatever period of time. You know, people are walking by your store and they can't buy your items because they're not there because you're ending them. So leave them up, someone will see them or they'll tell their friend and their friend will come along and purchase them. Whereas you're basically deleting your listings and starting fresh every 30 days or however long you do it. And it's just not best practice.

And if you need to, if you feel you want to edit your listings, you can edit them live so you don't have to end them to edit them. You can revise them and they don't end and then restart. I just think it's a really bad practice. You're creating a lot of extra work for yourself. The next one we can all jump in because this is our last question. I love this one. Pro Maintenance plus says, why isn't eBay Open free to attend for the sellers that pay eBay fees every month? Alan?

Well, You get what you pay for?

We could dedicate a whole podcast to this. Yeah, I mean where do you draw the line? If you sell one thing, you get a free ticket. And how many active sellers? We've 50 million. 57 million? Number one, the Convention Center in Las Vegas doesn't hold 57 million sellers. And I think the point Doug wants to touch on is you definitely pay for what you get. And it is a big investment by eBay to put on this show every year.

It's also a lot of resources. I mean it takes a lot of employee time. There's a lot of cost on eBay's end, and eBay is a business. It's not a nonprofit and we're not talking tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are talking millions and millions of dollars to put on this event.

Exactly and it's definitely you're putting some skin in the game by purchasing the ticket.

Well now that's the big one because we've learned over the years of doing even small events that if you charge nothing, people perceive the value is nothing. You get tons of people who register cause there's no risk and they never show up. So you can never get an accurate count. Alan pointed out earlier that when it comes to comparison to other marketplaces that have events for sellers, it's pretty reasonable.

And you get all that food and there is a good party at the end. And you get to meet Alan, Doug and Griff.

Well that's right. At the community booth.

Sorry about that. (laughter)

You know, other, industry conventions are much more expensive than eBay Open is. It's, you know, relatively compared to other conventions and conferences, as bargain.

I know I've heard seller say that actually it works out pretty inexpensive because they can write it off for tax reasons or they can, they can knock some of it off. I'm not entirely sure how that works.

You can knock almost the entire week off. As long as it's, you know, because you're doing it for business. It's all a business expense. So your tickets, your hotels, the cost to go to the convention, meals, those are all tax deductible if you're reporting as a business.

There you go. We just saved you some money if you're weren't aware of that.

I hope so. As we speak, The Big Apple Conference is happening in San Jose. There's like 15,000 Devotes here for the worldwide developer conference. The tickets for those are incredibly hard to get and very expensive.

Really?

Yeah, you get what you pay for and all of the surveys and all the results, we survey all sellers after eBay Open and it's the highest approval rating I've ever seen. All sellers love it and give great feedback on it and say they learned things, tips and insights that'll help them grow their business. So you know that money that you put down on a ticket is certainly money that you'll make back. If you, you know, absorb all the Info on apply to your business.

Right. I hope we answered that question. I think we did.

And the networking opportunities.

Oh yeah. Well that's true.

Yeah, exactly right. Well, Doug, tell folks where they can go if they have questions that they want to submit to the three wise oracle's podcast?

Well, they can go to ebay.com/podcast. They can email us at podcast@ebay.com. They can call in to (888) 723-4630 anytime of day, 24 hours. Leave us a message. And then also if you go to ebay.com/ebaypodcast.

Wow. So many options.

Yeah, you've just totally confused me. I am exhausted.

But thank you.

I think podcast@ebay.com. Simple.

Well Doug and well Alan, thanks once again for joining us here on the question and answer segment.

Coming up next, time to end the show. Finally.

Hey Alan.

Hey Griff.

We've reached the end of the episode.

Really? I thought for sure it was another segment.

Nope, that's all there is for this episode.

It goes by so fast.

And let me tell you, it only goes faster as you get older. So there's that to look forward to young lad, but fear not the inexorable march of time be damned. There's another episode waiting in the wings and the theme for next week's episode is...

The right, customer service.

Exactly the right customer service is the best customer service. Easy to say, but often a challenge to deliver.

We'll spend most of next week's episode exploring what makes up the right customer service as we talk with seasoned experts on both the seller side, on the eBay side. And then we'll delve into customer service strategies with two eBay sellers.

Wait, there's more. I'll talk with eBay. Senior Vice President of Global Customer Experience. Wendy Jones, she's a good friend of the podcast and she's going to talk about what it takes to know your customers better in order to meet their needs and expectations both pre and post transaction.

That is exciting. Well, I can't wait and I have to let you know, Griff, I will be listening from Ireland.

Oh, right. I nearly forgotten. You're going on an extended vacation and in the Emerald Aisle. Your homeland. The place of your birth. How very nice for you, Alan, what do you have planned?

Oh, not much. Mostly relaxing. Catherine and I are taking the baby to meet my mother and family.

And to the pub no doubt.

No doubt.

Don't let them do it Mrs. Aisbitt.

A call out to my mother. Nice one.

My pleasure. Hello Julia. I hope you're enjoying your son's new found celebrity. He's a big star now.

I wouldn't go that far.

Yes you would.

Yes, I would.

Well have a great time. How long are you gone?

Four weeks. Hi Mom.

Yikes. What do we do here on the podcast?

I've arranged for some substitutes. Stand in cohosts. See you soon. Mommy.

Wait, substitute cohost. Anyone I know?

I don't believe so, but you've got to like them. I'm sure me mom will like them too.

Did anyone clear this with me?

And don't forget. If you want to join the fun here on to eBay For Business podcasts, you can be a part of the show when you call us on 888-723-4630.

That's right. Call us at 888-723-4630 it's toll free from Ireland. And did you know you can call that hotline anytime of the day or any day of the week? Yes. You heard right? Any time of the day. So leave a question or comment and we just might put it on the air as long as it isn't account specific.

That's right. Those you have to send directly to eBay Customer Support and we have our very own email address that also works. If you're in Ireland, you can send your emails to us at podcast@ebay.com that address again as podcast@ebay.com.

Now some serious thoughts here. Has Your cohost up and left you for a trip back to his home country? Are you stranded alone in your podcast studio with no one to share bonmotts and witticisms? Left to the misery of producing four episodes. Count them four podcast episodes without the support and assistance of your regular cohost?

Are you okay?

Well then you should be attending a local eBay seller meetup in your area. At seller meetups, sellers share tips, stories, insights, and they even commiserate about Cohost that abandon them for a vacation. You can see meetups that are scheduled at our special eBay community page for meetups at www.ebay.com/meetups.

And don't forget to tune in to the weekly live video stream on the eBay For Business Facebook page every Wednesday at 12:30 Pacific time. Go to facebook.com/ebayforbusiness. And now jump over to the weekly community chat every Wednesday at 1:00pm Pacific at ebay.com/community chat.

Now wait, before you leave on that jet plane, would you roll the credits for us one more time Alan?

Yeah. Don't be too upset. It's only four weeks and I will be back in time for eBay Open.

I sure hope so.

We get to hang out with 1500 sellers in Vegas. Lucky us.

It's a dream come true.

Stop by to podcast booth.

Yeah, we'll be, we'll be looking for people to put on the podcast.

We will. That's right.

Very well.

Come find me.

Credits Alan.

Here we go. Our podcast is a community effort and we couldn't do it without Director of Community. Brian Burke, Community Manager, Alan Aisbitt, Executive Vice Presidents Segment Producer, Doug Smith, Marketing Strategists. Liz Austin, Editor in Chief and Host Griff that's Executive Chairman of the Board, President of Podcast and as an Editor in Chief Griff. Oh fancy. And finally my esteem Cohost, Alan, just Alan, they know that Griff.

See you next month. Mother.

eBay For Business is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411. Who are these cohost that you've got to? Uh, I went, I was walking outside to get a coffee and I thought there was a guy outside on the street. And I Say Hey do you want to be on a podcast? He's like, what's a podcast. You're kidding. I said, well, so he'll take it up another level from the current level that we have now. Oh ouch. We kind of asked for it. No, really have a good time. Thank you. Griff. Will you be thinking of us? Your seat may be open for you when you come back. I know. I've got to hope they do do good, but not too good because I would like to do it when I come back, I'm sure our audience feels the same way. I really hope so. Okay. Bye. Thanks. Bye.

[textile_rescue]

If you go to the actives view in Seller Hub, you can select a bunch of listings and you can click edit and it'll take you into the bulk edit field and you can, one of the things you can do is end all the listings. 

Griff " Oh, why would you want to do that? 

If you go to the actives view in Seller Hub, you can select a bunch of listings and you can click edit and it'll take you into the bulk edit field and you can, one of the things you can do is end all the listings. 

Oh, why would you want to do that? 

...Why do people still hold onto this really bad business practice? There is no reason to do this. And I've heard sellers kind of justify saying, I want to look at my listings and make changes. I gotta be honest and I know I'm going to cause a firestorm here, but I don't believe that. I actually think people think, if I end all my listings and restart them, I'm gaming some ranking in search. And the answer is no. 

Here is an example for Griff and the eBay staff that they do not know their audience and do not GET selling on eBay for small sellers. I hope that there is a  firestorm of comments.

This is not about an " urban legend of boost in search, It is about eBays lack of transparency of fees. 

GTC would be great if it was what implies- but it is not. GTC is a 30 day listing that incurs new fees with each renewal.  It is always putting me at risk for additional listing  fees. eBay employees may not have to pay for their listing allotments. Small stores and no store sellers have a limited allotment of free listings, pay extortionate fees if the 100 to 400 extra free listings you offered us over the month renew beyond our allotment. Seasoned sellers...or novice... recognize that it is BAD BUSINESS PRACTICE TO PAY MORE FOR YOUR INVENTORY EXPENSES (listing fees) than your expected monthly sales. eBay podcasts continue to be outlets for eBay employees to pat themselves on the back for how smart they are and how stupid your sellers are. After 13 years of enjoying a second income from  eBay, I have to say am frustrated, hate the direction eBay has taken and will not be seeing you in Vegas anymore  again BABY.  

[griff@ebay.com]

Hello N/A

eBay fees are completely transparent. No fees are hidden.

Fees for Non Store subscribers: https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees?

id=4364&st=3&pos=2&query=Selling%20fees&intent=fees&context=9060_SELLER&lucenceai=lucenceai

Fees for Store Subscribers: https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/store-selling-fees?id=4122&st=3&pos=1&query=...

It is the responsibility of any business, including an eBay seller, to track their sales and the number of live listings, and to use that information to determine which rate option to choose:

No Store, or one of the four Store subscription levels.

I've been selling on eBay for 23 years, admittedly at different volumes over that time. I have studied the use cases carefully - my own and that of indvidual seller invoices month by month - and I cannot find any fiscal benefit at all to employing shorter listing durations. None. No matter how short or long the duration, a seller still ends up paying the same fees based on their Store level and the number of live listings. If a seller consistently has more live listings than the allotted quantity provided as free listings for each month, and they are paying more than their Store level subscription than makes sense for their business, then that seller needs to re-examine their current Store level and determine if it makes sense to upgrade to the next level OR determine if their current stock of live listings needs revisions in price or presentation or, as a last resort, culling (liquidating). This is the reality for every business and eBay sellers are not immune to this business reality.

And for the record, eBay employees pay the same listing fees as all sellers.

Regards,

Griff

[textile_rescue]

Griff,

We get it, the urban myth of short listings getting more exposure. That is a different group of sellers. The 3 day listers with large stores have their own battle. I am part of the "small sellers" with "other jobs" selling on ebay to supplement family income. I need 30 a day listing to end. I do not need another full time job tracking end dates.  I cannot afford to have listings renewing on their own when my account is not going to cover the listing fees.  I am 10 years under your vast experience. Only been selling for 13 years. But I think I can tell what works for me. GTC does not work for me.

GTC is not extending eBay listing exposure for Google search for one off sellers like me. Small sellers are still going in and canceling listings to avoid fees. If you just want the big store accounts you got it. I think many small sellers have had it and are moving away form eBay. I have. 

[griff@ebay.com]

Hello N/A

You wrote:

"... I cannot afford to have listings renewing on their own when my account is not going to cover the listing fees. "

I assume by this you mean you are adding new listings every month and the old ones, the ones that haven't sold, are adding to your total of live listings at the end of the month and that total is above your current Store allotment, consequently,  when the next month starts, you are over your allotment for your Store level and you are paying more on that month's invoice.

Yes, that is how it works and has worked for the vast majority of sellers who have been employing GTC for years. That is exactly why I advise sellers who experience this to determine if their current Store level is right for their level of business.  In most cases, when a seller in this situation analyses the cost comparison between their current Store level and the next one up, using their current listing inventory quantity and sales,  they discover one or both of two things:

The need to upgrade in order to reduce their monthly invoice.

or
They need to liquidate old stock (either revise the listings, lower the asking price, focus on Markdown sales or use Promotion Manager to incentivize buyers).

Your wrote:

"...GTC does not work for me."

Do you have evidence to back this up? Have you tracked your business activity?  Because GTC  works and has worked for the vast majority of sellers on eBay for years, both big and small sellers, in all categories selling all types of inventory. This is not my opinion. It is based on data.
You wrote:

"...GTC is not extending eBay listing exposure for Google search for one off sellers like me...."

Are you sure? Do you check for your listings on Google Shopping? Because, iIf they aren't showing up there, it would not be because they are GTC. It would be for some other reason. If you would like me to assess why, email me with your ID (griff@ebay.com)

The one thing I strongly advise against is simply complaining that the old way was better.  GTC is the only duration for all Fixed Price Listings. That is not going to change.   (There is no other marketplace of comparable size to eBay that provides shorter durations for listed inventory). A seller has options of course, but basing business decisions on resentment to a change instead of finding a way to adapt is a sure fire way of hurting your own business. And THAT, I strongly advise against, for yours and eBay's business well-being.

Griff

[heirloomfj]

"GTC is not extending eBay listing exposure for Google search for one off sellers like me. Small sellers are still going in and canceling listings to avoid fees. If you just want the big store accounts you got it. I think many small sellers have had it and are moving away form eBay. I have. "

Common sense !

by N/A 05-08-2019 08:36:48 AM | Updated 06-14-2019 02:33:08 PM by  li-gary

Options

It's obvious eBay has no intent on satisfaction for their sellers regarding forcing us to accept GTC...Good Til Canceled only helps eBay line it's pockets with our hard earned money. eBay doesn't have the guts to respond !   

I have a good question eBay...If you force sellers to work harder and pay more now  by this stupid idea and you call these promotional FREE listings. Why don't you call these promotions " Lining The Pockets of eBay Execs ?"

What is a sellers time worth ? What happened to freedom of choice ?

It's clear that the only outcome for GTC is GREED !  It has NO VALUE !

Doesn't eBay make enough money of it's sellers already ? Some of us sellers do not have the time to stop and restart listings like eBay piles up their profits.

I challenge eBay Execs to respond. Truth hurts eBay...you are not the only platform to sell on !

[heirloomfj]

It's obvious eBay has no intent on satisfaction for their sellers regarding forcing us to accept GTC...Good Til Canceled only helps eBay line it's pockets with our hard earned money. eBay doesn't have the guts to respond !   

I have a good question eBay...If you force sellers to work harder and pay more now  by this stupid idea and you call these promotional FREE listings. Why don't you call these promotions " Lining The Pockets of eBay Execs ?"

What is a sellers time worth ? What happened to freedom of choice ?

It's clear that the only outcome for GTC is GREED !  It has NO VALUE !

Doesn't eBay make enough money of it's sellers already ? Some of us sellers do not have the time to stop and restart listings like eBay piles up their profits.

I challenge eBay Execs to respond. Truth hurts eBay...you are not the only platform to sell on !

[flo_mingo]

Griff thank you for your thoughtful reply.

Your comments continue to demonstrate eBay’s disregard for small sellers.

Your statement “Yes, that is how it works and has worked for the vast majority of sellers who have been employing GTC for years.” Dismisses that perhaps the “few” sellers who did not use good for cancel, did not want to use it. Did not find it the best format for selling in conjunction with other commitments. Ex. Another Job, family, health. A 30-day listing that ends does not require micro- management of listing dates and does not require canceling to avoid fees.

No other site that has extended listing times greater than 30 days charges auto-relisting fees. The other sites’ policy’s charge one fee until the end of the listing, no matter the length of the listing.

You suggest the I may need to upgrade to a higher level of store subscription. I have done my research.  I have gone from basic to premium back down to Starter. After selling on eBay for 13 years I found that I get more service and value from not selling on a store. Without a store I can list auctions in more categories with Buy I Now, without paying extra fees. I prefer to list in the early morning 0400 to 0600 Mountain Time. Not the best time to start an auction. Without a store I can schedule auction start times without additional fees. I find with a store I pay more for fewer listing options. I keep a starter store because I want to keep my name, vacation settings, and markdown manager. I sell most of my auction’s items on another account. That is what I have found to be the best value for me.

My business model:

I take all my photos one day a month. I list as I have free time throughout the month. I check my store each day to ship. I do not have time each day to check listing dates and concern myself with canceling items before they auto relist for additional fees.

To state that I am simply complaining, instead adapting to change is the highest insult.

I am a 2-time cancer survivor who obtained  my RN degree and Master’s degree in Nursing Education during the years of ongoing treatment. I adopted two children after completing treatment in my 40’s, I continue to teach, care for a disabled husband and have launched both of sons into college.  I can roll with the punches.

You ask if I have done my research. My items show up on google search but often do not show up at all with eBay search, even when using my listing exact title. Yes, I have been doing my research. I have made both empirical and objective observations.  Has eBay been done theirs?

Here are some threads from the community. Often commenting that all comments are falling on deaf ears when it comes to eBays concerns for small sellers.

• I HAVE HAD IT WITH EBAY !!!!! 1500 views 70 replies
• Sales down 50% since GTC Change...NICE!!! 1700 views 68 replies
• I am not sure how eBay has ruined sales, but they have.2200 views 74 replies
• Re: GTC has Slowed Sales for Many. With diminshin... 2750 view 108 replies
• Re: GTC = The end of My Business 839 views 147 replies
• Re: Community Poll: is GTC Good or Bad for your Business? 564 views 173 replies- I did not see many positive for GTC
• Not listening to veteran sellers 839 views 39 replies.

 Please recognized that I used the 30-day listing format. Small sellers who used 30 listing formats are different from  “stupid” “urban legend“ 3 day sellers. I feel small sellers are being forced to pay the penalty for a solution that was formulated to end the 3-day listing practice.

Char- flo_mingo

[anjie234]

Hello everyone!  I am a 'small seller' who has recently started selling again after quite some time (I hadn't sold in maybe 6 months to a year). I was really surprised at all the changes. But, indeed, I try my best to embrace change and utilize what are supposed 'enhancements'.

So, my comments to Griff and the rest of the eBay staff:

1. I agree with the seller above who said "To state that we are simply complaining, instead adapting to change is the highest insult.", Uh.. YEAH, that is totally insulting! 

2. I began selling 20 years ago, and this GTC thing is a fairly NEW THING!

eBay NEVER AUTOMATICALLY RELISTED YOUR STUFF!  That's an outright lie!  Make it an OPTION, but don't FORCE that as the norm!

There used to be auctions, auctions with a BIN option (which recently I was charged an "advanced listing fee" for using a BIN with an auction! WTH is that?), and then there was a fixed price (for 30 days).

     NO AUTOMATIC RELISTING **bleep**!  I DON'T LIKE IT EITHER!

3. Griff's comment above that sellers who don't like it should either liquidate, reduce prices, etc....   Well YEAH! But we don't have the opportunity to do that SINCE IT RELISTS AUTOMATICALLY -- BEFORE HAVING A CHANCE TO MAKE THESE KINDS OF CHANGES!

4. Lastly, regarding the 'transparency of fees':  All I know is that there are SO MANY DIFFERENT PLACES within help or  ??   The 2 places (links) Griff  provided are 2 of MANY.  It would be WONDERFUL if those were the only 2 definitive places.  I have wondered over the last several months WHY  it ISN'T that simple.  It's as if it were designed to daze and confuse!!!!

IN SUMMARY:  GTC with AUTOMATIC RENEWAL TOTALLY STINKS!

Thank-you in advance for your consideration of my comments.

[heirloomfj]

Where is eBay representation here?   LOL

Running for the hills because eBay has to be losing on GTC...I know my numbers are way down and many others too.....LOL eBay comes off like they are doing you a favor ...LOL  why don't you just come out and say you are raising the ante with GTC ...

People are noticing less FREE and More PAY PAY PAY ....

Nobody likes Dicktators....

[heirloomfj]

Go Go Mingo Go.................Spot on post too !

[heirloomfj]

Great post Ange........

[karin7623]

Do I have to Register for managed Payments if I Am Not A Business or own a store on eBay.  I am a Small seller  Karin