eBay and Walmart
One is a mega-corporation that is known for:
- its great bargains
- a vast selection of merchandise
- squeezing suppliers till they scream
- an ever-growing number of satisfied buyers
The other is eBay.
Buyers are not going to be satisfied because they will not find what they want.
eBay is stumbling through the summer toward what should be their biggest quarter this year. And they are still confusing and angering sellers. The newest policy affecting sellers states:
When buyers search and browse, only one of identical listings from the same seller will be displayed per result set.
In addition to displaying only non-identical listings from one seller, a maximum of ten listings from one seller will be shown per results page unless the only available listings are from the same seller. (bold is mine)
Why is that a problem? Well, lets say you have a set of Noritake china you picked up at a garage sale. You have 40 pieces to sell and you'd like to break them up and sell them one piece at a time. You list them on eBay at 8PM Sunday evening for seven days.
Lets say a shopper searches for that particular Noritake pattern. They want the salt and pepper shakers, and the gravy boat. But only ten of your items will show up at a time. So your salt and pepper shakers may show on page one of the search results, which would be good. But if your gravy boat happens to be number 40 of your items, the shopper will need to click through four pages of results to find it.
On Sunday evening when your listings end, all at 8PM, it's quite possible that items 20-40 will have never shown up together on page one of the search results. Not good exposure for your stuff.
Some sellers are beating their chests and saying eBay takes money for listings and refuses to display them. That's not true. eBay is simply not displaying them on page one. So they all need to put down their clubs and pitchforks and stop talking about lawsuits. It's silly. You cannot use the toilet at eBay without consulting the legal department. Generally speaking, eBay lawyers know more about the law than we garage-sale shoppers do.
(Even with the identical item policy, they have created a way for those items to be displayed. There is a link at the bottom of eBay pages that says "To view all identical listings, please click here." So legally, since the policy is stated quite publicly, by listing an item you agree to eBay's policies.)
Things You Can Do
- Cross-reference every single listing in the description. Link to "Seller's Other Items" everywhere. Make sure your shoppers know you have more for sale.
- Stagger your start times. Never list more than ten items at a single time. Spread every ten listings out by at least ten minutes to allow every ten to appear (at least for a while) on page one of search results.
- Sell with multiple accounts. It's not against the rules (yet), so if you can manage it, use multiple accounts and get more than ten items to show on page one.
- Learn to sell on Amazon. Buy my ebook and stop fooling around with eBay's ever-changing rules.
If you have other ideas, please add them via comments below. (And please - a lawsuit is not an idea.)
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Hi,
Wonderful article and some great advice. I always recoomed cross selling as I have found that it increase my profit by 20% or more.
I think this very important thing to do specialy the direction eBay is taking lately.
Another tactice I always recommed is selling from your own website to customers you get from eBay. Its a bit of a work setting up your own site and manage it but based on my experience, it clearly justfies the effort.
My profit has doubled since I have started selling from my own site.
Thanks agian for wonderful advice