Shoestring Theory

Thanks for the tips power up newsletter, but I think I know what I’m doing.

The February PowerSeller newsletter (Power Up) hit inboxes yesterday afternoon, glorifying the changes and providing “tips” on how to improve Detailed Seller Ratings.

Communication: Even on weekends. Today’s online shoppers expect 24-hour communication lines and prompt response. That doesn’t mean being tied to your email 24/7–consider automating emails at key steps and using Frequently Asked Questions.

I would say eBay expects shoppers to expect 24-hour communication lines. PayPal (an eBay company), doesn’t offer weekend hours for its customer service.

Shipping cost: Keep it real. Buyers leave lower DSRs for sellers who pad shipping costs so make sure yours reflect real costs. Better yet, offer discounted or free shipping–and combined shipping for multiple item orders. Itemize costs in the listing (handling, insurance, etc.) so there are no surprises.

eBay has really been pushing free shipping for awhile. Unfortunately for sellers, shipping costs keep increasing. UPS, FedEx and DHL all raised their rates about 4.9 percent at the start of this year. The post office just had a raise last year and will likely be raising prices again this May (a First Class increase has already been announced, new Priority and Express prices won’t be announced until March). Of course, eBay has a vested interest in trying to get sellers to include shipping charges into the item price. Sellers pay fees on the item price, but not on what is charged for shipping.

Tags:   changes · eBay · power up · tips1 Comment

More stats from PowerSellers Unite.

The fee changes officially went live today and auction traffic is down again from yesterday. Statistics are again from PowerSellers Unite. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime.

Today saw an even larger drop, almost 650,000 listings, or a 4.59 percent decline from yesterday. Of course, a week ago, eBay had a 20 cent listing day. A chunk of that drop could be caused by a number of auctions ending today that people only listed because of the fee sale. I usually throw up a few odds and ends on cheap list fee days to see if they will sell. If they don’t sell, they usually won’t be relisted. Still, I’m not sure that would account for this big of a drop. Total listings are down by almost one million since Monday evening. Also, the stats haven’t updated for a couple of hours (normally updates every hour). I’ll check again later this evening and see if they have updated.

Tags:   boycott · changes · eBayNo Comments.

E-meter image from Salimfadhley on Wikimedia Commons.

According to realitybasedcommunity.net, the Church of Scientology is directly pulling auctions for church related items by abusing the VeRO (Verified Rights Owner) program. This includes physical property purchased by former Scientologists, such as e-meters (a device used in CoS rituals), that should not be covered under any copyright or trademark laws. That report has also been picked up by Slashdot.

But every time [Bill] attempts to sell his e-meter on eBay, the listing is removed within hours by the Church of Scientology, which claims that the listing violates their intellectual property rights.

Then:

If you’re uninitiated to eBay, you’d probably think that for each of these removals, the Church of Scientology informs eBay of the violation of its rights, eBay considers the merits of their argument, and then only then does eBay yank the listing. But that’s not what happens at all. Instead, eBay effectively deputizes Scientology, which logs into eBay and removes the listings itself.

The VeRO program is a cost cutting measure by eBay. By allowing intellectual property owners to directly remove listings violating the DMCA, copyright, or trademark, eBay doesn’t have to have as large a staff to handle complaints from IP owners. In the case of physical property though, people do have a right to sell what they have previously purchased. Think about this. If you buy a book, sweater, car, or table lamp, you have the right to sell any of those items to someone else. What if Honda suddenly told you that you weren’t allowed to sell your used Accord? Same thing.

A google of this topic brought up a few other stories and blog posts relating to this over the last few years, so it’s not exactly new. But this should be pointed out again and again until eBay brings its policies in line with how the laws are meant to work. As the writer (Scott Pilutik) at realitybasedcommunity notes:

It’s possible to argue that Scientology is engaging in price fixing, tortious interference with a contract, misrepresentation, perjury, unfair competition, discriminatory business practices, and religious discrimination, to name a few off the top of my head.

If you’re interested in more analysis on this, you really should go read his full piece. On a CoS related note – Shawn Lonsdale, an opponent of the Church of Scientology, was found dead in an apparent suicide a few days ago. Rest in peace Mr. Lonsdale.

Tags:   censorship · eBay · scientology · Vero3 Comments

Paranoid people
flood the boards with dire warnings –
world ends, nothing changes

Tags:   eBay · haikuNo Comments.

More stats from PowerSellers Unite.

We’ve got today’s updated auction statistics from PowerSellers Unite You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime.

So, total listings have dropped about 400,000 more, or a 2.78 percent decline from yesterday. A two day trend downward, but what will tomorrow bring?

Yesterday, I suggested people should explore other sales channels even if they aren’t participating in the boycott. Now I’m wondering if this could actually be bad for some of eBay’s competitors, particularly the smaller ones. Taking my own advice, I played around on iOffer last night. The experience in three words: buggy, slow and frustrating. After a half-hour, I had no desire to be there anymore. Page loading and search times were horrendously slow. Maybe it’s fine normally and the first day of the boycott was just driving too much traffic to them to handle. But, the last thing you want as a business is for a new potential customer’s experience to be so poor. To be fair, I’ll go back in a couple of weeks and judge it again, but how many other people will? I couldn’t recommend seller’s try to transfer their inventories there this week, that’s for sure.

Also, I think they may not have thought out their Mr. Grabber program very well. iOffer’s Mr. Grabber will go to eBay, Overstock and Sell.com and import all of your active listings. Sounds great, but some people were clearly lazy about it. Almost every item I checked out had the vestiges of an eBay listing left in them (graphics for eBay stores, notes about a listing being updated, etc). It made some of the listings ugly, others silly and gave me a generally low opinion of those sellers for being too lazy to properly touch up their listings. This all reflects kind of poorly on iOffer too. The idea of Mr. Grabber is great, but if the result ends up leaving buyers unimpressed, you’ve hurt your site. Perhaps the next version of it could automatically strip out the code for things like eBay stores (though that would potentially have its own negative impact).

Tags:   boycott · eBay · iOfferNo Comments.

Listing stats from PowerSellers Unite.

PowerSellers Unite tracks listings volume across a bunch of different sites. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day. Normally that page is embedded in the site, but is currently a standalone page due to the high volume.

As of right now, it’s showing a decrease of 3.03 percent. Is that a big change going from Sunday to Monday? I don’t honestly know. The charts page isn’t currently working (just takes you back to the main page). I’ll check this every day during the boycott and update as appropriate.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the boycott. If you’re interested, you should definitely check out AtTheBat’s comment on it. I think he nailed the mentality behind some eBay sellers (not all, certainly, but some). I’ve got some more thoughts on this, and a reply to ATB that I’ll hopefully get typed up in the next day or two.

Also, I’d like to pass along some advice I’ve seen posted in multiple forums about the boycott. If you are participating and are a regular eBay seller, take the opportunity to explore your other options. Every seller can benefit from diversifying their sales channels.

Tags:   boycott · changes · eBayComments Off on Is the eBay boycott having an impact?

Experimental listing design, click picture for full size image.

Current listing design, click picture for full size image.

eBay periodically tests new designs and options throughout the site, sometimes in their sandbox and other times live. A user in the forums found a radically different listing design while surfing today. Above is a shrunk down image. You can see the full listing here. If the link is dead, I have a full size image here. You can see what the listing looks like with the current design here (or again, full size image here).

The price, pictures and seller are more prominent in the new design. Shipping info, payment options and buying tips have been put into a tabbed format along with the seller’s description (choose the tab to see the appropriate information). Previously, all this information is in a linear format going down the page.

The biggest change is just below the seller’s name. In red font, it says, “This seller has low ratings for Shipping Time.” There is no explanation behind this statement. The seller’s DSR for shipping time is 4.0 on a 5.0 scale.

If eBay is going to start pointing out possible problems with a seller, they should offer more information. Has the seller received multiple low marks in shipping time this month? Is a 4.0 considered a low score in shipping time? Without an explanation, any possible buyer is only left with an ambiguous, but dire, warning from eBay. If the point is to get buyers to make more informed decisions about their trading partners, give them more information.

Beyond that, I understand what eBay is trying to do with making certain elements pop out more (like the pictures). In this experimental design though, I find it all rather distracting. That could just be because I’m so used to the current design. There are several pieces of information missing, such as high bidder ID and item location. I would say those are two pieces of information that should stay visible.

There could be several new listing designs floating around right now, randomly being applied to a small number of listings to test them. I wouldn’t expect this to be the final version of any new format. If you want to give eBay feedback on the design, there is a link on the auction page to do just that.

Tags:   changes · eBay · experiment · listing designNo Comments.

Photo from Bari Hotchkiss.

I’ve always wanted to live in a non-traditional domicile, like a church, old school, barn or something of the sort. If only I lived in Washington, I could rent part of a Titan Missile Base. Discovery News pointed out a classified ad listing on eBay to rent out part of the former Larson Air Force Base for as little as $495. The owner, Bari Hotchkiss, has been using the place for years as a summer retreat for his family. It’s like summer camp, but with nuclear missile silos. Ya know, as a kid, all we had was boat and a borrowed trailer in Trenton, Neb. For a kid, this place has so much potential:

The base is home to more than 47,000 square feet of underground rooms and tunnels. The largest rooms, which once housed the Titan missiles, rise more than 155 feet.

Can you imagine the kind of trouble kids could get into with that much space and creepy underground tunnels? Awesome. And I thought building grappling hooks and hunting prairie dogs was fun as a kid. Gimme this place!

Photo from eBay listing.

Tags:   missile silo · nuclear · weird eBay listingNo Comments.

Blu-ray wins the format war.

Editor’s note: For Sale is a regular feature highlighting what the auction traffic is like on eBay in relation to particular events.

This decade’s format war has concluded, with Wal-Mart and Netflix firing the last shots into a staggering HD DVD. Reuters (based on a Japanese news source) has reported that Toshiba will drop support for its hidef discs.

The company source told Reuters that Toshiba was in the final stages of planning to exit the HD DVD business and that an official decision would be made soon.

So, if you’re looking for a dirt cheap HD DVD to stick next to your Betamax (for nostalgia’s sake), they should drop down to pennies per player on eBay soon. I’ll be curious to see if people flood eBay with HD DVD listings to try and recoup the cost of their players and movies before the non-gadget oriented learn the format is dead. The current stats on eBay are:

HD-DVD listings (players and movies)

9,227 active listings
21,009 completed listings – sold and unsold

Blu-Ray listings (players and movies)

8,045 active listings
22,578 completed listings – sold and unsold

As always, any links to eBay items will eventually die when eBay removes them from its servers. Any statistics may change within just a couple of hours.

Tags:   blu-ray · For Sale · hd dvdNo Comments.

Mr. Fluffy Toes avoids the temptation to cross the picket line. Pic by fweez on flickr (CC license)

The plan for members to strike/boycott eBay has been floating around since the day eBay announced the new changes to the site. I hadn’t posted about it as: a) I don’t think it will accomplish anything and b) I’m not impressed by the arguments in favor of a strike. There’s an awful lot of disaster rhetoric floating around which genuinely turns me away from having any feelings of solidarity with the strikers. Disaster rhetoric boils an argument down to the absolute worst possible outcome, ignoring all other facts and facets of a situation.

I’ve already addressed most of the rhetoric in previous posts on the changes. But, as an example, I keep seeing the 60-66 percent fee increase figures thrown around. The truth is that this is a moderate fee increase for many sellers and a decrease for a few. The disaster rhetoric of the strikers focuses on the imaginary eBayer whose fees are increasing by huge amounts. Imaginary martyrs don’t impress me.

Besides, eBay sellers attempted strikes previously and ranted just as angrily then as they are now. Every time major changes are announced, sellers threaten to strike. I wish them the best of luck with it this time, though my sales will be up just like always.

Tags:   changes · eBay · strike1 Comment