eBay announced today that they would be testing something called semi-persistent Buy it Now. Please read the announcement.
This is something that I advocated for years and is needed to raise ASP's. While this is a test for the next several months it is a welcome sign that eBay is willing to test things that will improve the buying and selling experience. I think this will be a very successful test.
One of my favorite eBay Stores Board posters has made the move. As of today 5-17-2006 she has shut down her eBay store. While, she will continue to sell in CORE she just felt it was time to shut down the store.
Perhaps, we could call her leaving "collateral damage" to eBay's efforts to improve the buyer experience but it isn't collateral to her. As you can see from the picture above, she had 100% feedback, with over 4,000 positives and 5 stars across the board with Feedback 2.0.
She is a perfect example of the types of sellers that are leaving eBay Stores. For many of them it no longer makes sense for their business.
Postcardsandmore, you will be missed.
Today's announcement from eBay, highlights the changes in the eBay affiliate program. Now sellers can get affiliate pay for driving traffic to eBay, even if it is only to their own listings. You would need to join the eBay affiliate program to participate. I'm not sure how this will affect the FVF credit that store owners receive.
One thought from my perspective: Why would you want to expend effort and possibly money to drive traffic to eBay; you will still only receive part of the transaction and eBay gets the rest for absolutely no effort? This move lessens eBay's dependence on paid search and benefits eBay in the aggregate while individual sellers get little benefit.
If you are a store owner and want to keep your store presence on eBay it may make since but I would think you would be better off creating your own independent webstore and driving traffic there. Why give eBay even part of the transaction if you are doing all of the work?
I regularly read the eBay Stores Board but never post -- I am deemed a "rabble rouser" by the team that runs the stores board. When I was selling I rarely if ever read the eBay discussion boards but I think I missed out. Sure most of the sellers on the boards are small sellers but if you read the boards there are nuggets of wisdom to be found.
I spend most of my time on the Stores Board because I believe eBay Stores are the weakest link in the eBay Empire. I think that eBay has "screwed the pooch" in regards to stores, mostly by limiting Stores potential. They feel if they improve visibility in Stores it will continue the decline of CORE and in its present form that is probably correct. My biggest beef is they don't appear to know how to do both (Core and Stores) effectively.
I have many complaints about eBay in regards to Stores but it is time for Sellers to take some responsibility for their own business. Stores are not the "Holy Grail" of online business; it is a tool to reach customers. Sellers should not make the mistake of believing if they "just list it they [customers] will come. Sellers are not entitled to a nice profit just because they list items. I don't blame eBay for my business failure because when the market dynamics changed I was not prepared to handle it. Sellers need to learn to be responsible for their own business.
This recent comment from the stores board is full of wisdom in this regard.
faeries_finest (709 ) View Listings 2 of 9 Apr-28-07 22:07 PDT
"Stores aren't part of Core. It's that simple. Stores can be a profitable part of an Ebay business but Ebay never claims it is one size fits all - they never say 'put all your inventory in a store and your sales will go up 'You have to be responsible for picking and choosing the services that Ebay offers. Only you can decide the best listing formats and the best mix of listing formats for your particular business. Of course Ebay is going to encourage you to use all of them. That's their job. Your job is to exercise judgment about whether their recommendations are actually a good business decision for you."
Sellers don't let changes in the marketplace catch you by surprise. eBay Stores are a tool, its up to you to become the Master Craftsmen.
If you are new to online selling or considering jumping into it headfirst, please take a few minutes to read this post. I am usually not a How-to kind of writer so forgive me if I don’t follow a standard format.
There are at least three major considerations you need to address before opening up a business online: (There are many more things to consider but these are key)
Please don’t fall prey to the “Get Rich” fast schemes or the eBay Millionaire Stories. My company was profiled over and over again as an eBay Millionaire. While I made a good living for several years I was no Millionaire.
Think – Research – Test before you start an online business.
Just my 5 Cents (Adjusted for eBay economics)
Unfortunately CNBC does not provide a method for embedding their videos in a blog so I will just have to link to Meg's interview on CNBC this morning.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=261406629
It was interesting to hear her take when she mentioned the strength of eBay is the small businesses that use their platforms and services -- they certainly have a funny way of showing that to sellers, don't they?
Another humorous comment was when she mentioned Skype. She mentioned that Skype's business was 2/3rds from Europe and 1/3 from Asia then she added the US makes up the rest of it -- is this another example of eBay math.
Many US sellers are concerned about Feedback 2.0 and the impact it will have on their business. If sellers want to get a preview of how they will be rated once it goes into effect in the US market, that information is available right now if they sell internationally.
Sellers:
If you sell to the UK and have sold more than 10 items since Feedback 2.0 was launched you can see your rating by going to your ebay UK store. Huh? Yeah that's right you have an eBay UK store. To find it just do the following.
Take your ebay store url: (Example)
http://stores.ebay.com/Spyglass-Movies-and-Music and replace the ebay.com with ebay.co.uk like this:
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Spyglass-Movies-and-Music
Once you are at your eBay UK store, just check your feedback to see how you are being rated. It's that easy.
Now that you know you have an eBay UK store make sure to add the new URL to search engines. It can't hurt.
I came across a great post on the eBay Store Discussion board regarding Feedback 2.0. Please read the Original Post as it is very fair and well written.
I don't think Feedback 2.0 will have as much impact on sellers as many think. Most buyers are lazy and if the transaction was favorable they will either not make the effort to rate the transaction further or give it all fives. The negative people are of course going to be negative regardless. The nice thing for US Sellers (though not great for International sellers) is they probably won't release Feedback 2.0 until after eBay live and they may make some modifications to resolve some seller's concerns.
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.
I've been playing with vFlyer for several weeks and decided to share some of that information with my Squidoo buddies. vFlyer is in essence a digital flyer for promotion of your business or specific products and is used for placement on classified sites like Craig's List, as a promotional widget on blogs and social networking sites and for email marketing. Please check out this example of a company promotion flyer for eBay seller Rider’s Discount as well as a product flyer for their Z1R Youth Motocross Helmets.
Here is an example of the widget:
They have a free personal account for you to test your own vFlyer so check it out.
I just realized we had recently passed the one-year Anniversary of the introduction of SIS, on Feb 13th 2006, and it got me thinking. If, as eBay stated, the reason management chose to remove Stores from Search in late March of 2006, was due to the effect it had on the buying experience, then the Year over Year CORE listing numbers should be fairly consistent. If, as Store Sellers believe, eBay removed Stores from Search because CORE listings dropped like a rock then we should see a huge Year over Year gain in CORE listings. Of course eBay ran 2 listings sales in March (One was actually started on Feb 28th) so that might mask some of the gains.
Here is the timeline:
Feb 13th, 2006 eBay launches SIS
Feb 28th - 10 cent Core listing sale.
March 15th - 10 cent Core listing sale.
March 28th, 2006 Chris Tsakalakis announces the plan to remove Stores from Search
April 6th, 2006 eBay begins to remove Stores from Search
It will be interesting to see the numbers. According to Bob Peck of Bear Stearns “In the eighth week of 1Q07 . . . U.S. Listings [were] Down 16% Wk/Wk Post-Promotion. We estimate that sellers listed 13.1 mn core items on the U.S. site last week, down 16% from the previous week, as the previous week’s listings were boosted by the 50% off listings promotion. Listings were down 27% Q/Q but flat YoY.”
The key will be to watch these numbers over the next 6 weeks. I’m sure it took a couple of weeks for sellers to realize the increase in store sales was related to SIS. In fact as I mentioned in the timeline above, eBay had a 10 cent Core listings sale on Feb 28th of 2006. (They don't do discounted listing days unless the metrics show there is a need) and then again on March 15th.
Here is my analysis: eBay started to notice the drop in CORE listings around the end of February, that is why they had to be propped up by the listing sale on the 28th then because the listings did not recover they had to have another sale; not more than a week after the items from the Feb 28th sale had closed. The items from the March 15th sale closed on March 22nd and I'm assuming the CORE listings did not recover so they had to make the announcement on March 28th that they were removing Stores from Search.
I’m looking forward to the next 6 weeks. The weeks they did not run listings sales should indicate the impact of SIS.
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.
