The Case For Yahoo Stores Over eBay Stores!

In addition to the uncertainty about eBay Stores/Shops, my recent comparison between Yahoo Stores and eBay Stores was eye-opening.

For my example, I looked at a basic online store with listings of 200 items a month, with a product mix of 150 items under $25 and 50 Items over and made the assumption that the store sold $1,000 in merchandise in a month. If your numbers are greater than this, the savings begins to grow substantially.

Here is the Google Spreadsheet with my comparison, as well as room for you to input your existing eBay Store/Shop Listings and monthly GMV. This will allow you to calculate if there will be a savings by switching to Yahoo Stores. Please plug in your own monthly numbers into the green fields in the spreadsheet. (The spreadsheet refers to US pricing only)

In addition to the cost savings there are also promotional benefits that make moving to Yahoo Stores attractive.

Promotional
With eBay stores you get limited exposure in search on eBay.com and often have to pay for Auction listings as advertising for your store items. There are no additional promotional benefits to having an eBay Store/Shop. You still have to do most of the marketing to get buyers to your store. You also have to contend with the competition on the eBay marketplace.

With Yahoo Stores you get the following: (As of May 11th 2007)

• $50 credit towards Google AdWords (In effect paying for your Store Setup Fee)
• No PayPal fees for 6 months with PayPal Express setup
• 1 Month Free at Shopping.com
• $50 Credit for ShopZilla.com
• 20% off of your Yahoo Listings

But, you will still have to spend some of your savings on other marketing efforts but the offers above give you a head start to see what works for a discount.

My goal as the Seller Evangelist is to provide you with accurate, unbiased, information so that you can make the correct choice for your business. I do not earn any money from either of these two programs nor am I partial to either. If you are serious about making money online you need to make informed decisions. There may be other WebStores that compare just as favorable but with the information provided here you do have a head start on your research.

Additionally:
It is interesting to note that both PayPal and Shopping.com are eBay owned companies and you get a better promotional deal with Yahoo Stores than you do with eBay Stores.

Also, with a Yahoo store you can still use eBay for Auctions but instead of considering Auctions as advertising (it is difficult to move eBay customers off site) you should sell only the items that will convert well and are profitable. A side benefit is that over time some of these customers may choose to buy directly from your Yahoo Store.

One last benefit:
With Yahoo stores your hosting fees can rise based on the number of additional features and increased sales but your FVF's will decrease allowing you to scale your business.

Check out the Yahoo Store of eBay seller Rock Bottom Golf

Oh and I forgot the best part. You can advertise using Yahoo Sponsored Listings and show up in eBay search. Not a bad deal.

Update: Ina Steiner Interviewed the Director of Yahoo Merchant Solutions in her most recent podcast. Listen in for info about Yahoo Stores.

Just my 5 Cents!

Squidoo is Courting eBay Sellers!

I recently received an email from Squidoo promoting “The Lens of the Day” a nice little feature where they highlight a particular “Lens” for being unique, clever or in some way standing out. Yesterday’s LOTD was Freaknoodles and here is the email I received:

“Hi Randy,

Q: What happens when you cross Sock Monkeys with some Cherry Pie and Santa Claws?
A: Freaknoodles!

Huh?

Okay, once more, in English.

Freaknoodles is a cute eBay store that sells colorful pajamas. And they have a lens, which is today's esteemed Lens of the Day.

This is what every eBay seller should have! Tell a story about your items, why you're selling, who you are, share some testimonials, and point people straight to your auctions. You get more reach, more pages linking Googlers to your stuff, more sales.

Are eBayers with lenses the new elite of online trade? You better believe it.

Stop by the Freaknoodles lens and suck up some inspiration from a pro.

http://www.squidoo.com/NickAndNoraPJs/

P.S. The SquidTeam will be at eBay Live in Boston this year. June 14-16. Come out at say hi! “
I was struck by the focus of the email. It appears that the folks behind Squidoo see the value of promoting their site to eBay sellers, in fact they are going so far as to tell readers they will be at eBay Live in Boston. I have posted a couple of times on the value of Squidoo for eBay sellers – mostly small to medium volume sellers -- it is nice to see the management of Squidoo sees that value as well.

BTW - Freaknoodles received a substantial increase in activity to their Squidoo Lens as noted in a eBay Stores Discussion thread post number 2.

Be Prepared for Another eBay Store Fee Increase!

According to Scot Wingo of ChannelAdvisor, eBay is preparing to raise store fees once again. You can see Scot's take here at his blog eBay Strategies. The increase, that Scot predicts, seems very high to me but is possible when you consider that last years Stores Fee increase didn't move enough listings off of eBay and as Scot says "stores continue to grow much faster than core. eBay hit the brakes, [ Last July] they slowed down and now they are climbing again. ".

So, what is a store seller to do? My suggestion is to plan your exit strategy now. I don't suggest moving everything until the fee increase becomes a reality but you need to be prepared. Find a webstore that fit's your needs and sign up for Google AdWords using PPA (Pay Per Action) Keep your high volume items on eBay and move the rest to the webstore. With PPA you only pay when there is a sale and you can set the terms.

This strategy will be beneficial regardless if eBay raises store fees or not.

eBay Promoting Stores and New Sellers Again!

I was driving to get my coffee this morning when I heard my first eBay radio commercial ever. It was a 30 second spot encouraging people to find something around the house to sell on eBay and giving them their first 3 listings for free. This seemed odd to me because most eBay advertising in traditional media is geared to the buyer. This is the first time I’ve ever heard a radio ad for eBay let alone one promoting selling on eBay.

My first questions were: Is eBay, having trouble getting new sellers to replace those that are leaving? Could it be that the metrics are finally showing a leveling off in seller growth? If so, are existing sellers in line for some incentives to stay? I couldn’t help that last question; it is my nature to be optimistic.

Then I got home to do my morning surfing and saw this, on the eBay Announcement board: Grow Your Sales with eBay Stores – 30-Day Free Trial Offer. Wow, eBay is (I know it should be “eBay are” but it just doesn’t sound right and its my blog) once again promoting stores. After last years store fee increase I had the impression they didn’t want any more clutter. What will more stores do to reduce the clutter?

I think these two events are telling (here goes the conspiracy theory). eBay traditionally doesn’t promote anything unless it is new to the site or their metrics show the numbers are going in the wrong direction. It’s been my experience that they make changes very quickly if the metrics are not going their way so I have to come to the following conclusion: Sellers are leaving and not enough newbies are joining to make up for it! Is there any other explanation?

March will be an interesting month because SIS skewed eBay’s 2006 numbers and it is apparent they are having problems retaining sellers right now. PayPal is being very aggressive with new promotions and now eBay Stores are once again being promoted. I wonder how balanced the site is now. Stay Tuned, this could get interesting.

Squidoo is what eBay's My World Should Be.

I've been playing around with Squidoo.com for a couple of days now and have come to one conclusion. This is what eBay's My World Profile should be.

In an perfect world, if eBay weren't so determined to control the universe, the My World profile would allow sellers to generate incremental income from the content they create while expanding their ability to connect with their customers and maximize their marketing efforts. Imagine if you had a Squidoo Lens with eBays traffic. Of course we don't live in a perfect world so sellers that are creative end up going off of eBay to find tools like Squidoo.com to help them connect with their customers and network with other sellers and heaven forbid, generate incremental income.

The money you make at Squidoo.com may be small initially but if you use it as a tool for finding new customers connecting with existing customers and networking with other sellers your business will be better for it. Check out my Seller Evangelist Lens on Squidoo (I know the name sounds a little weird but it grows on you).

Just my 5 Cents!

eBay Store Sellers! How Would you Like This?

I normally use The Digital Napkin to discuss new ideas but since this idea directly affects eBay Store Sellers I thought I would bring it up here. Okay here goes:

Since eBay wants to increase listings in CORE and disadvantage Stores in search, how about if they provide store sellers with a new referral credit? The credit would be 50% off of the sellers store FVF on purchases that began with a link from a CORE listing , Store Bookmark, Watched Item or Return Customer -- The Watched Item credit may be a little too much to ask.

A great many store purchases start with a CORE listing that the customer thought was interesting but before purchasing they decided to look in the Sellers store for something else. This credit would serve two purposes. It would reward Store Sellers for listing in CORE and possibly increase the number of CORE only sellers that would open stores.

Blogs are a great way to get feedback for this type of idea so please add your comments regarding the CORE referral credit.

Additional comments: The idea is not an all-or-nothing concept. For instance if you think sellers should get a FVF credit for purchases made by return customers let me know.

Why Adding Google Checkout to eBay is Good for Sellers!

I've written several articles on the PayPal - Google battles over online payments and won't go into those same issues again -- I will add some links to those articles at the end of this post. What I would like to discuss is the need for Google Checkout to be accepted on eBay from a seller's perspective. Remember, I'm The Seller Evangelist so I look at issues from the seller's perspective.

I came across another article on Google Checkout today and something struck me. According to eBay spokesman Hani Durzy "It's our responsibility to encourage payment systems that have a historical track record and desire by community to use it," Durzi said. "Google Checkout has very little historical track record ...we see a very low level of interest." The first part of that statement is funny. Google has had a year to fix the technical issues with Checkout and is now available on 100 of the top 500 shopping sites on the Web and Google itself has a tremendous track record as a company. So that argument is pointless but what about the statement “we see a very low level of interest." The idea that sellers don't have any interest in Google checkout is like saying “Jared, doesn’t like Subway sandwiches” Does eBay really expect us to believe there is little interest in offering this service?

When I was selling I spent close to 4% of Gross Sales -- including S&H -- on PayPal fees and I was getting PayPal’s best rate. The percentage was high because we had a low AOV (Average Order Value) so the 30-cent transaction fee hit us hard as a % of sales. In 2004, my best year on eBay, I spent close to $180,000 in PayPal fees; do you think I wouldn’t have any interest in adding Google Checkout and their no fees promotion?! You have to be kidding me! I would have jumped at adding a no fee option. So the idea that sellers don’t want Checkout is ridiculous but where eBay gets wiggle room is that eBay buyers have shown little interest in adding Checkout. Pardon me, but buyers aren’t interested because they don’t have the option. Give them the option and see how fast they adopt it.

I can tell you this; Google is not going away so at some point they will work out a deal with eBay to include PayPal in Google Checkout in exchange for allowing Checkout to be accepted on eBay. This would be beneficial to both buyer and seller and is inevitable.

Recent articles on the Google - PayPal battles:

• GoogZilla Vs. King Ebaydorah the Three Headed Monster!
• PayPal Vs. Google Checkout!

And there's new guy coming into the payments area:

• Microsoft's Micro-Payment System May Save Web 2.0

What the Heck is a TSE?

Is the TSE (Tailored Shopping Experience) the Wave of the Future!

It is evident that the Tailored Shopping Experience is here to stay. The TSE approach is what many of the big Internet Retailers are betting their future growth on. Amazon announced their own TSE - http://www.endless.com/ in January and here is a list of current eBay TSE marketplaces, according to the 3rd quarter 2006 earnings call: eBay Motors, eBay Express, Shopping.com, and Meg vaguely referred to their Classifieds portfolio as a TSE (Kijiji, MarketPlus and Gumtree, among others) One marketplace she did not mention was Half.com which has been eBay's Red-headed step-child. They can't seem to figure out what to do with Half.com, though sometime this spring they will be adding Half.com listings to Express. In January eBay announced they were buying StubHub.com to be their Tickets TSE. The StubHub deal closed this past week.

I’ve been very critical of eBay for the moves they made in 2006, so it surprises me that I see some positives in this march towards more TSE marketplaces. I have written about eBay’s vulnerability in Vertical marketplaces and this TSE approach seems to address that issue head on. Back in Oct. I wrote that I believed this new approach made the rumors of a StubHub purchase even more likely and look what happened.

If eBay can create TSE’s for Collectibles, Electronics, etc. they can re-invigorate the marketplace and keep the other TSE competition at bay. The best way to improve their relationship with sellers (if they care to) is to make a more successful marketplace. TSE marketplaces are the right move.

Wow, add this post to my article on the Stores Markdown Manager, that ran in Auctionbytes this weekend and you would think I was practically an eBay Cheerleader. Let me state for the record, my focus is on the success of online sellers not just eBay sellers. If I come across something I believe is positive for sellers, I will shout it from the rooftops. Even if that means I'm being positive about something eBay is doing.