Sale discounts for eBay shops - markdown manager

Markdown Manager is the perfect solution for setting up a sale in your eBay shop. Not available in the UK yet but launched for US shop (store) owners it allows you to literally slash prices on Buy It Now and Shop Inventory Format listings.

Buyers will be able to see the original item price displayed with a strike through next to the sale price. Sellers will be able to choose which items to discount by category, all SIF listings, all BIN listings or by choosing individual items.


Sensibly eBay have set some limits - the minimum discount in a sale will be 5% (Maximum 75%) but this is going to be such a popular feature. Imagine you have stock in specially for Valentines day which is in two weeks time. You probably have listings launched already but on say the 7th February you could launch a sale to clear your inventory rather than have it hanging around waiting for next year. Similarly for other seasonal goods such as Christmas, summer goods, winter goods - start a sale towards the end of the season.

Of course any savvy seller is going to prime their buyers with email marketing, there is nothing so compelling as to tell a buyer that the sale will start in two days time at 9pm but you're giving them a heads up so that they can be logged on to snag the best bargains. Major high street stores do this all the time and now so can eBay sellers!

This is just such a compelling feature, I'm amazed that yet again eBay.com get the best and most useful features first while other marketplaces get stuffed with experiments such as Feedback 2.0. Is this simply because eBay are petrified of upsetting US sellers or do they not think other countries are ready for the best selling tools?

Auctions that go on forever? No thanks!

WebProNews has an interesting piece proposing a solution to the problem of scamming bidders on high ticket auctions:

Now here's another reason for eBay to start thinking seriously about automatically extending auctions when late bids hit. Scammers hitting electronics auctions with inflated bids followed by requests to ship items out of the country, spoofed PayPal payment notifications, and other naughtiness ought to be enough for eBay to do something about the situation. ... If eBay enabled the ability to automatically extend an auction by a few minutes when a late bid hit at the last second, buyers and sellers could both benefit. Sellers could ban obvious fake bids, while buyers in legitimate sales would have the chance to increase their bids above the sniped amount, making more money for the seller.

I've been around eBay for a few years now, and this auto-extension option has been suggested a lot. But I've never seen it proposed as a solution to the problem of the Nigerian father who wants your mobile for his son's birthday - so kudos to Mr Utter for imagination here. But I'm afraid he's completely wrong.

There is already a solution to the problem of scamming bidders: buyer management. *Every* eBay seller should be using some of these: whether it's just blocking buyers from countries to which you don't ship, or whether you want to go the whole hog and block buyers without a credit card on file and/or without a Paypal account. Most legitimate buyers would pass this test; most scammers won't.

Auction extensions are a bad idea for a whole host of reasons. eBay buyers ALREADY expect sellers to be at their computers 24/7 (*waves to the lady who mailed me at 4am and again at 7am to complain she hadn't had a response*): extending auctions would just make things worse. It would also vastly increase the problems of bidding wars: most of us have had experience, either as buyer or seller, of two or more bidders who between them drive the auction price way above what any sane person would expect. Currently, eBay's hard ending does put a curb on that; with extensions in place, nothing would. We would just exchange one set of non-paying bidders for another.

[PS - Hey, WebProNews, how about some form of comments/trackback on your articles? No dialogue is just *so* Web 1.0 :-p ]

Virtual property banned from eBay

Gamers, beware: eBay is now delisting all auctions for 'virtual artifacts' from the site. This includes currency, items, and accounts/characters used in MMORPGs, as well as Neopoints used in Neopets.

This isn't a new policy by eBay: such items are very likely to fall foul of the rules on digitally delivered goods, particularly as ownership of such items is questionable at best. "For the overall health of the marketplace", said an eBay spokesman, it was felt best to ban such items altogether, though once more, this policy has not been highlighted by any announcement from the company.

Auction extensions banned on eBay UK?

Actionbytes reported earlier this week that auction extensions were to be banned on eBay.com. This practise, whereby sellers list for the shortest time period possible, and then extend auctions with no bids, gains extra exposure at no extra cost. Several tools are available to sellers to do this automatically.

Though there has still been no official announcement for any of eBay's sites about this change in policy (I think I may have said that once or twice before...), sellers are now reporting that revision tools are no longer working. Those who rely on this method to gain extra exposure for their items need to think again, and fast.

EU know it's a load of cobblers

So far, these efforts appear to be paying off with minimal disruption to our legitimate sellers.

That's Bill Cobb referring to the effects of the new "Building Trust by Reducing Counterfeits" policy. Exactly which sellers is Cobb talking about here? The couple of hundred cherry-picked and invited to listen to his spiel in San Jose? Or the thousands of sellers around the world outside the Ivory Towers who are struggling to maintain their sales on eBay?

We reported last week the huge problems Spanish sellers are having now that they're unable to list or ship outside Spain. The European Union is working to remove all cross border trade restrictions.

Removing border posts across Europe is easy. The real challenge for the European Union is to ensure that more subtle obstacles to cross-border trade in goods and services are similarly consigned to history.

Suddenly removing the ability for Spanish sellers to sell luxury goods across Europe is taking European Internet commerce back years at a single stroke, and it's not just the Spanish! All the other EU sites are in the same position, it's just I don't speak good enough Italian to communicate with those guys and report on the situation there!

There's another serious consequence of the new policy too, sellers who have been regularly selling on eBay for a number of years are suddenly finding their ability to make a living is severely restricted. A quick browse of almost any community board reveals sellers fighting to be able to list the inventory they have for sale.

It took them 10 days, to reinstate mine.... Their reply was that my account was in good standing and it was just a spot check!!!! bloody cheek. i was reinstated for a day then it happened again. was off for 5 days then back on again.. same answers..... then restricted me again while they looked into it. another 5 days..all in december too!!! i lost thousands as a power seller.

This quote is not an isolated incident, and we're not talking about sellers that have only just started out on eBay. These are sellers who have been trading for years and in many cases rely on eBay for their entire income.

It's all very well for Bill Cobb whose remit is eBay North America to state that sellers aren't being disrupted, but maybe if he cast his eye across the water to Europe he'd find a very different story. It is not the biggest sellers on the North American continent who are suffering, it's the rank and file of sellers worldwide who have piles of inventory and are suddenly barred from marketing their goods to the customers they purchased them for.

Third time lucky for Alaskan jet?

eBay's most infamous unsold item, the state jet of the Governor of Alaska, is back up for sale on eBay. This will be the third time of asking for the poor, unloved plane: both listings previously failed to make their reserve.

Reserve not met on Alaskan state jet

A second round of bidding has still failed to find a bidder for Alaska's state jet. Officials are now saying that they may turn to a broker to sell the plane instead.

It's interesting that now, the Governor's office are revealing that they need "about two and a half million dollars to break even" on the aircraft. When the plane was first relisted, a spokesperson resolutely refused to reveal the reserve, though did state that the plane had cost US$2.6m. Frankly, I think they're being optimistic to think they can break even on a second-hand jet, and should take their highest bidder's offer.

But the real moral of the story is that hidden reserves don't help anyone. eBay buyers like transparency, so if you want US$2.5m for your old jet, it's probably best to say so.

No money back, no guarantee

eBay sellers of Cricket World Cup ticket holders will get a double whammy from organisers, as not only have the tickets been cancelled, but no money will be refunded. More than 200 tickets have been cancelled after resale, for contravening the terms of the original sale. A spokesman for the ICC said:

"CWC has worked very diligently to track down the persons who have been undermining the tournament's integrity by engaging in this black-market activity. We have had good success and have cancelled the relevant tickets. However, CWC believes an even stronger message must be sent regarding indulgence in such practices - both to persons selling and buying these tickets. Offenders will have to face the consequences of their actions - no tickets and no refunds either."

My view, as I've said many times, is that if you can sell something you own at a profit, then you should be allowed to do so. However, more and more venues are taking this kind of line, and eBay transactions are so much more visible and traceable than traditional outside the venue touting. So I'd strongly advise anyone thinking of selling a ticket to check and double check the associated terms and conditions before doing so.

eBay gives other sites a good handbagging

Online auction sellers fall generally into one of two camps: those who like eBay, and those who hate Feebay with a passion. Those of us in the first camp - and I'm happy to stand up and be counted here - sometimes make the observation that we go where the buyers are, and the buyers are all still on eBay. The response to that is generally that we don't know what we're talking about.

Now Trevor Ginn, head of Auctioning4U, has given us some real listings to look at, and interesting looking they certainly are:

Over the last few months have sold many Harpers & Queen Brown Cowhide Briefcase Joyanatura so we decided to try idential listing on other auction sites. Over the period of the trial we have sold 17 for an average price of £27 (ranging from £12.50 to £63) on eBay. Data for the other sites is as follows:

• CQout: No Bid, 15 viewers
• eBid: No Bid, 6 viewers
• QXL: 1 Bid at 99p, 102 viewers
• Tazbar: No Bid, No Data

Admittedly, it's one product, but really, how conclusive can you get?

Happy snappy

How to build your own light box and infinity board: improve your eBay photos for almost no expenditure, with the added bonus that you need an empty beer box.

Going solo

Andrea has been an eBayer for over three years and recently took the step from part time eBay seller with full time employment to full time eBayer. Today she shares her story of how redundancy spurred her on to success. Andrea is a full time business-registered PowerSeller with over 11,000 feedback from over 8,000 seperate buyers.

For me, taking the next step to being a full time eBayer was simply that. Taking that step. Working two full-time jobs, i.e. as an eBayer and as a market research exec was taking its toll on me. 9 to 5 in the office with a three hour round commuting trip five days a week and then working evenings, weekends and lunch hours eBaying was slowly but surely draining me. I got up at 6.30am and went to bed at 1am with a lie in on Sunday (midnight to 7am). The worst of it was that I NEVER had time for the children. As a single parent, that was the criminal aspect of how I was leading my life! Something had to give eventually.

I was a bit of a coward, I ‘downsized’ my off-line job and became a Regional Manager for the same company – looking after interviewers and mystery shoppers in the field, which meant I could work from home. All this meant was that I managed to cut out the three hour daily commute. It brought its own problems though. Working from home in my off-line job meant dealing with interviewer problems etc in the evenings and the weekends as well as during the day. I was also earning less than half of my previous wage. Which was good in a way, because it showed me that my eBaying was actually able to sustain me. My off-line job wage now reverted to becoming my pin money. However, I STILL wasn’t spending time with my children. Not properly, anyway. I was at home – but at my computer the whole time.

Finally, October 2006, my company closed its field department and now outsource that aspect to another company. So I was made redundant. Best thing that could have happened really. I now work from home, eBaying full time, but now with the added ability of being able to schedule eBay and my personal life to really suit me. I can now work harder on it, I can list more because I am now able to cope with more sales, I can spend time on proper customer service, my mistakes are almost non-existant (I was forever sending out the wrong thing to the wrong person, or sending out only one when two were ordered etc). I am able to concentrate on getting a real off-eBay website set up and can now factor in some other retail projects for 2007 properly, i.e. book myself onto a whole lot of Festivals.

All in all I am very VERY glad to have been made redundant. I don’t think I would have had the nerve to do it without that shove – I used my off-line job as a crutch for way too long. I wish had been brave so I could have done it all earlier…and by myself.

The best of it all, of course, is that I now have time for the children. We have a LOT of things planned for 2007 for us as a family and I CAN’T WAIT! They are the reason I worked myself into the ground in the first place and they are the reason I realised that my life had to radically change to fit them into it.

If you are working two jobs and are on the verge of going solo, I would say go for it IF it means you can make MORE of your e-tail business if you do. It might be an idea to downsize first, i.e. take on a part-time job or find a job that you can do from home first. Do your accounts properly, so that you know exactly what you need to do to go solo. You need to be sure that the time you give up being employed will make a real difference to you as a full time e-tailer. You need to be sure that you can live off your earnings as well as keep investing back into the business. You need to also love being on your own, eBaying is a fairly anti-social business – no colleagues to throw paper-clips or to roll your eyes at when the boss is having a go! Finally, your foundations for being able to do so must be your reasons for doing so – they must far outweigh any reasons for not doing so.

All my Christmas for sale

The Daily Mail has a rather odd story about selling your entire Christmas - decorations, half-eaten choccies, unwanted CD - on eBay. It's an amusing idea, along the lines of All My Life for Sale, but I can't help thinking the sale itself would have raised so much more for the unnamed charitable beneficiary if the writer had known what she was doing.

A one day listing, beginning Boxing Day, for Christmas decorations is never going to be the most effective. Selling off your own old tat just when everyone else is selling the same thing will never get you the best price. If you want to make a real killing on Christmas decorations, sell them in August (believe me, I've seen it done).

Then we have

I spend ages trying to decide how much to charge for postage. There's an awful lot to mail out and the tree is quite heavy. I think it would cost about £10 to post, but am worried it will put people off bidding. I opt for £2.50 and hope I don't have to pay out much more than that.

Never, never, never guess at postage. By all means, subsidise it within the item cost if that's what you choose to do, but make it an informed decision to do so.

Still on the postage theme, we have this interesting ASQ a bit further down:

Q: is the posting a mistake at 2.50
A: No, the postage is not a mistake - it is £2.50. I have a job that means I can get things delivered cheaply. Thank you

You see, you can make the postage too cheap: buyers don't mind paying what postage *costs*, what they object to is sellers making a huge profit on it. And if you *are* using your post room at work to ship your eBay sales, it's probably best not to advertise it on a public forum.

Of course, if you can seriously write "an hour goes by without a bid I must admit I feel despondent", then you obviously haven't a clue what you're doing, and should probably stick to earning your living writing idiotic articles for tabloid newspapers.

Hogmanay hogwash

Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations have become the latest event to complain about their tickets being sold on eBay. Council leisure chief Donald Anderson urged party-goers to buy their tickets through local channels, which have not sold out, rather than through eBay, where, claim the Council, tickets are up to three times as expensive. We say that if people are prepared to pay three times face value, the Council have underpriced their tickets.

A quick glance through eBay's listings, however, reveals a number of tickets at rather less than their £32.50 face value. We wonder if Edinburgh Council will be sensible enough to take all this on board and sell their own tickets on eBay next year?

No rest from the bidders

Thousands of people will spend part of Christmas Day indulging in the UK's favourite leisure activity - shopping, says the Telegraph. Some major retailers such as Currys, Comet, Halfords and Woolworths are beginning their sales on their websites on Christmas Day, and others such as Waterstones and MFI have already begun.

eBay sellers rushing to get their last few parcels out the door today might have been looking forward to a rest between now and next week's CLD, but we've always found listing over Christmas to be very worthwhile. If you can spare half an hour out of your Christmas Day to check emails and ASQs, you'll really wow the buyers. And we've heard that eBay's current series of adverts has "half a dozen" episodes; with only three having appeared so far, a new one to say that eBay's still open over Christmas has to be on the cards.

How to sell your Christmas presents on eBay

Seven out of ten people would be hurt to see gifts they gave up for sale on eBay. So what are you going to do now with that hideous but oh-so-thoughtful item that even now is lurking under your Christmas tree? Follow our handy guide to gift reselling and you won't go wrong.

Have a secret ID

Never, never, NEVER let your family, friends or work colleagues find out your eBay ID. You don't want your boss to know about your penchant for Dilbert. You don't want your trendy friends to know about your Bridget Jones pants. And there might be a million things you don't want your mother to know about! If by some act of carelessness on your part, your eBay ID has become known, then register a new one; you can have as many as you like, all they need is different email addresses. Believe us, this will save you grief in the long-run.

Don't let your own home be visible in the photos

You will not be able to deny it's Auntie Doris's plaid pantaloons you're selling if your living room can be seen in the background of your photograph. Photograph larger items against a plain, neutral-coloured wall. For smaller items, a light tent makes your photographs so much better, or use a plain sheet.

Have a tidy out

Bored with mince pies, sherry and TV holiday specials already? Us too. Have a tidy out. That Des O'Connor CD won't show up nearly so badly if it's part of a job lot of discs you no longer listen to.

Leave it til Easter

Let's face it, by Easter, everyone's forgotten about Christmas. Give it a few months, and no one's going to spot your ingratitude, you undeserving traitor :-D

But if you really think eBay's a no-no...

Give it back to them next year

"I loved mine so much, I got you one just like it! Merry Christmas!"

eBay sellers "are confident and optimistic"

MarketBlast's Seller Confidence and Satisfaction Report for December 2006 looks at how eBay sellers feel about their businesses and their partnership with eBay. Though the sampling was tiny - just 316 sellers - the results are surprisingly positive. Some highlights:

• full-time sellers are both happier and more confident than part-timers
• the more core items you list, the more you sell
• competing on price is probably not the best strategy
• half of sellers characterise their business as growing
• half of sellers are satisfied with their profitability (no indication as to whether this is the same half as those whose businesses are growing)

Apparently MB will be repeating the survey twice annually, so we look forward to seeing how things have changed in six months.

PAYG research for eBay sellers

Do you want to check out a new stock line, find the average sell-through rate or the best day to list for your category or find out how a competitor is doing? eSeller Street is a new pay-per-search service which can analyse ninety days of eBay results: much more useful than the unanalysed fourteen days you can get from eBay's completed listings. eSeller Street is designed for sellers who perform fewer than forty searches a month: above that, eBay's own Marketplace Research facilities will probably work out cheaper.

One sample search showed me a lot, even in a category I thought I knew backwards. I know that Sunday and Monday are my best days to sell, and that Wednesday is my quietest, but I was astonished to learn that 1-day listings have the best sell-through rate of any listing duration, delighted to see that the sell-through on SIF listings is only 6% lower than auctions (I thought it was just me!), and intrigued to learn that one related category has a 50% better sell-through rate than the 'natural' one for what I'm selling. eBay's own advice to avoid "other" categories is bourne out with real figures, but Gallery doesn't seem to make nearly as much difference as I thought it did: 46% sell with Gallery, 40% without. (I sell beads, if you didn't already know: why not check it out for your own categories?)

Sadly at the moment, it's restricted to US categories only, but site owner Michelle Waldorf has given me a sneak preview of the UK service she plans for early next year. I'm glad, because this useful tool shouldn't just be restricted to US sellers.

Selling the Ruby Slippers

This is a great article on the cathartic process of selling off a disliked step-grandmother's clothes on eBay. And her remark that "knowledgeable customers have educated and helped me along the way" ought to be inscribed on every seller's wall: buyers can teach you almost everything you need to know.