When eBay announces their new policy changes next week, part of the announcement will make sellers cheer.  I have confirmed with a source inside eBay that the advertising banners that appear at the top of search results will be curtailed beginning later this year –probably in the Fall.

eBay has always had strict policies to prevent driving traffic to non-eBay sites or engaging in any activity to take business off of eBay and direct it to other venues.  (Amazon has a similar policy). So sellers were understandably upset when eBay began placing large horizontal banner ads across the top of search results pages.

Although the banners were for services such as Quest telecommunications, Monster.com job seeking services and the Wall Street Journal, sellers have long felt that when someone is searching for something to buy –they don’t need to be distracted by these other offers. For example, if a buyer is searching for one of my items and a Monster.com ad comes up, he or she might click on it to check out the job market.  When they get there they see an interesting opportunity and forget that they were looking for something to buy.  OK, so a hour of so later they remember and go back to eBay, but my listing may have expired in that time.

eBay has not announced a specific date when the new policy announcements will be made, but the buzz is that it will come early next week. Part of the announcement will be details of the new Trusted Seller Program that was covered by AuctionBytes last week.

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This story is so typical of eBay’s seller service. I get emails from people constantly expressing the same frustration. This is by eBay Seller, Walt Auctionwally. Walt is a very interesting guy. He runs a website that provides appraisal and other auction related services at services at:http://www.auctionwally.com/

Read his article here: http://budurl.com/pysq.  Warning – you will want to tear your hair out.

Skip McGrath

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eBay will effect the changes they announced in April next Monday.  If you haven’t revised your listings by then you run the risk of your listings being cancelled and/or not found in search.

The two biggest changes are that all listings must have a shipping and handling time stated and your items must be in the correct category.  Here is a link to the April 14th announcement. Be sure and read the entire announcement to see if your listings will be affected.

The other big factor is the new category and item specifics policy.  eBay has made some very important changes that will affect thousands of sellers.  Here is a link to the page with the category changes.  Get this wrong and your auctions will be cancelled.

The other big change coming in June won’t happen until June 30th. That is when the free shipping promotion will end. If you offer free shipping after that date, then you will no longer get free subtitle and if you are a PowerSeller then you will no longer receive the double fee discounts.

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The last few parts of the announcements include a new dispute resolution process, free access to eBay Selling Manager, moving the shipping process from PayPal to eBay and tools to bulk edit your listings.

The new Dispute Resolution Process will be the most controversial, because it puts eBay between the seller and the buyer. Other changes I am trying to confirm include removing the eBay seller’s location from the listings and removing the date that a seller joined eBay. Personally I think buyers like knowing if a seller started selling last week, last year or ten years ago.

I will be commenting more on the personality change eBay is going through over the next few days so stay tuned.

Also I am now on Twitter. If you would like to follow me on Twitter, I will send you a tweet whenever I do a blog post.  Here is my Twitter Profile Page: http://twitter.com/Skip_McGrath

So that concludes our review of the new policies.  You really do need to read all of them which is why I provided the active links. Of course we still won’t know all of the details until they actually roll out in June, but I really give eBay credit for giving us this 60-day lead time to prepare.

As you can see I gave eBay a star rating (on a scale of 1-5) just like their DSR system. So what is the total for all the policies overall?  It comes out to  3.7

Overall these changes are a big positive for sellers but there are two big disappointments.

1. It is pretty clear that eBay has permanently abandoned the level playing field concept. They have been favoring the mega sellers for some time now which is interesting because these guys are the least loyal of all the sellers and are all selling on other platforms. I don’t really have a problem with eBay giving fee discounts to large volume sellers. After all, you can get discounts for almost anything you buy in volume anywhere. But I don’t like the idea that large sellers get prominent placement and special promotions that the rest of us don’t get. If eBay is really into driving buyer satisfaction then give anyone who provides a stellar buyer experience the breaks regardless of their size or volume of listings.

2. The new dispute resolution process is another turn in the road that leaves the concept of community behind. eBay was founded on the idea of providing a marketplace where buyers and sellers could come together to do business with each other. Sellers were encouraged to brand their business and build an online personality through their feedback, their About Me pages, eBay store branding and on the forums and features like Guides and Reviews. With these changes and more changes planned for the Fall of 2009 eBay will cease being the provider of a marketplace to become the marketplace itself.

This is so strange because the rest of the online universe seems to be going in the other direction with platforms like Twitter, Facebook and My Space.  Social networking is the fastest growing phenomena extant today. While people are seeking more connections and more interaction, eBay has decided to depersonalize the buying experience and isolate the seller from the buyer.  Ina Steiner has already reported in AuctionBytes about the Certified Seller program now under study and the fact that eBay will soon restrict sellers from cross selling during the checkout process.  I predict that the next steps will be total control of the communications. All email will go through eBay and sellers will have no way to let buyers know their email address or learn of the buyers.  In the longer term, eBay could even get into warehousing. Sellers would have to ship all their goods to an eBay owned and operated warehouse. When a sale is made, eBay would ship the goods so the seller wouldn’t even know the buyers name or address.

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eBay latest announcements  cover a lot of ground –too much for one blog post, so I am going to break them down into three posts. today is part one of three.

I am going to try and comment on the changes the best I can realizing that the info available from eBay is still limited. We will have to wait until June to see the final versions.  eBay has buyers rate us sellers on a 5-star system, so turn about is fair play. I am going to give my star rating for each of these features. At the end of the third post I will give you the calculated total.

Let’s look at the first group of changes. The eBay description is on the left and my comments are on the right. The hyperlinks will take you to the eBay page that explains the policy and gives examples. I strongly suggest that you go there and read the full policy after you read my comments.

Overall these changes are a big positive for sellers. About the only disappointment is that eBay has permanently abandoned the level playing field concept. They have been favoring the mega sellers for some time now which is interesting because these guys are the least loyal of all the sellers and are all selling on other platforms. I don’t really have a problem with eBay giving fee discounts to large volume sellers. After all, you can get discounts for almost anything you buy in volume anywhere.

But I don’t like the idea that large sellers get prominent placement and special promotions that the rest of us don’t get. If eBay is really into driving buyer satisfaction then give anyone who provides a stellar buyer experience the breaks regardless of their size or volume of listings.

Skip McGrath

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The announcement from Stephanie Tilenius, Senior VP & GM for eBay North America had been rumored for a while. As part of the announcement eBay stated a new policy that from here on they will give 60-day notice on all new changes before rolling them out.  This was welcome by the selling community and third party service providers who must integrate with the eBay system.

I haven’t had time to analyze the announcement yet and its impact on sellers, but here is the text of the announcement from eBay.  I will be studying this and commenting on various parts of it over the next couple of weeks.

————announcement ———————

The spring release is set up to deliver three things for our sellers:

1. Easier, more visual shopping, plus buyer incentives to drive more sales

• New item page rolling out. New photo zoom coming later this year. Get your listings ready now.
• New eBay product pages surfacing to more buyers. To make sure your items show up on these pages, use product details (formerly called pre-filled item information).
• New way to list in Fixed Price lets you offer all variations of one product—e.g. color and size—in a single low-cost listing.
• Buyer incentives and loyalty programs expanded to drive more traffic.

1. Key information to set buyer expectations and help reduce your costs

• New Smart FAQ answers buyers’ top 20 questions before they contact you.
• Package tracking information available in My eBay—print labels on eBay and tracking shows up automatically, or you can upload the information.
• Return policy and handling time required for new listings and re-listings beginning June 15. Deadline for updating your Good ‘Til Cancelled listings extended to mid-September.
• Use Item Specifics. Now in some categories, you can customize when the available choices don’t apply to your item.
• Category and Item Specifics changes now consolidated with the rest of updates—find out if your listings are impacted.

1. Other updates to make selling on eBay more efficient

• New, more efficient process for handling disputes.
• Selling Manager FREE for all sellers—with powerful new Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro applications.
• Easier, faster way to pay shipping, print labels, and update buyers—right from eBay.
• Bulk editing tools available now.

Get more details on all these updates.

You’re also invited to:

• Take part in one of several upcoming webinars on April 16 and April 21.
• Join myself and other leaders from eBay and PayPal in a Town Hall meeting on April 16.
• Talk with members of my staff during the next two days on a special discussion board we’ve set up for this purpose.

Again, thank you for partnering to make eBay a successful marketplace. We believe these changes will improve your sales and the efficiency of selling on eBay.

——–end of announcement ————-

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Basically a lot of fear by sellers is overblown –but there are some new requirements to meet if you sell children’s clothing or toys on eBay.  Here is the link to an eBay Blog post where the Consumer Product Safety Commission answers questions from eBay sellers.

http://ebayinkblog.com/2009/01/28/the-cpsc-takes-questions-from-ebay-community/

Used children’s clothing has seen a huge spike in sales on eBay since the economy went into the tank and this can be a very profitable area for eBay sellers.  Children’s toys and clothing is one of the niches I cover in my book, Ten eBay Niche Markets Any One Can do.

Watch for the February edition of The eBay Seller’s News which will be up on the website within the next 24 hours.

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About three days ago I received a phone call from eBay Seller Support reminding me that yesterday was the last day for eBay listings to appear with a statement that sellers will accept personal checks or money orders.  I remembered that I had already changed my settings in Vendio (my auction management service), but I decided to check and make sure the changes were effective.  It is a good thing I did.  It seems that the Vendio auto insertion feature only worked when you launched a new item.  Existing store and auction listings still had the old text.  So I have spent most of yesterday and today ending and relisting my items –about 70 in all.

Of course this is a boon to eBay. When you cancel a store or fixed price listing, you lose the fees paid for the rest of the listing term and then you pay a new listing fee.  I guess in this economic environment eBay needs all the help it can get.

Seller support told me that the eBay listing program will scan listings for the words “personal check,” “check” and “money order.”  If it sees these terms in your listings it will block the listing and you will not be charged a listing fee.  As for ongoing listings, if someone reports you, eBay will remove the listing and your seller reputation will be dinged.  Three of those in a 90-day period and you will lose your PowerSeller rating and you could be suspended by eBay.

So I suggest everyone go through their running listings with a fine tooth comb and make sure those words do not appear. The eBay listing tool is not perfect.  For example, I put a statement in one listing this morning that says “eBay no longer allows sellers to accept checks or money orders.” The listing program caught the words checks and money orders and blocked the listing.

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  Written by Skip McGrath, an eBay Gold Power Seller who sells on eBay every day

My inbox has been filled the past few weeks from eBay sellers of baby toys and clothing and homecrafters with questions and angry letters that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was going to put them out of business.  I resisted commenting on the new regs until now, because I knew the regulations had not been clarified –and they certainly would be before the new act went into effect.  That happened today. The CPSC announced:

“The new law requires that domestic manufacturers and importers certify that children’s products made after February 10 meet all the new safety standards and the lead ban. Sellers of used children’s products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standards.

The new safety law does not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold. However, resellers cannot sell children’s products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit. Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties.”

There are still a few pitfalls in the regulations that resellers could run afoul of, but they are fairly minor and easily complied with.  I suggest everyone who sells handcrafted toys or children’s clothing, used toys or clothing read the actual announcement at this link:

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09086.html

When you read the announcement you will be tempted to parse it. Since it is from a government agency it is written in typical government bureaucratic CYA language.  This does not mean that government agents will be showing up at your door with lead testing devices in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other.  The real danger will come from frivolous lawsuits.  The easy answer to this is to incorporate your eBay business to take advantage of the liability protection that an S-Corp or LLC offers.

If you would like to learn more about incorporating your eBay or small online business, here is a free article that explains all the ins and outs of incorporating and how to go about it.

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