I Want to Tell You About the Best eBay Alternative

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by Ina Steiner

eBay made some major announcements on Tuesday, April 14, 2009. The marketplace will expand the rollout its new Item page, launch a new dispute resolution process, introduce new features for sellers including a Smart FAQ and Multi-variation Fixed Price listings, and more. We've listed some items that might have slipped your notice and created a list of helpful links to learn more about these changes.

Some important things to know about eBay's forthcoming changes:

Sellers will have the option to cross-merchandise on other each others' relevant item pages. ("You can choose not to have cross-merchandising on your item pages, but your relevant items won't appear on other sellers' items pages.")

eBay will introduce Multi-variation Fixed Price listings in certain Clothing, Shoes, & Accessories and Home & Garden categories, which allows sellers to include multiple variations of one product (such as color and size) in one multi-quantity Fixed Price listing. Note that each variation has its own Best Match score.

eBay is introducing a new dispute resolution process for when buyers claim their item was not received or the item they received was not as described in the listing

Sellers are advised to upload package-tracking information for UPS and USPS shipments. Starting June 15, this information will be highlighted for buyers in My eBay. (And eBay will factor this information in the new dispute resolution process.)

Sellers may pay for shipping and print labels on eBay. ("We're gradually moving online shipping services from PayPal to eBay to make it faster and easier to pay for shipping and print labels.")

eBay is moving Estimated delivery and handling time to the top of the new Item listing page and is removing High Bidder, Seller Location and Member Since from the Item listing page.

eBay is using iFrames in the new Item page. ("Separating user-generated content, such as item descriptions, from eBay content enables eBay to provide an extra layer of security. The separation will prevent users from submitting HTML that may interfere with how eBay works.")

Sellers can turn on "Smart FAQs" by going to My eBay > My Account > Seller Preferences > FAQ. ("This is a new free feature that draws on live information from your listings to answer the top 20 buyer questions before buyers reach you through the "Ask a question" or "Contact seller" links.")

Some Helpful Links

A Message to Sellers from Stephanie Tilenius: Spring 2009 Update

Link

eBay Summary of April 2009 Update

Link

eBay Seller Checklist

Link

eBay Town Hall Meeting (audio recording, 4/15/09)

Link

eBay Webinars

Link

eBay Discussion Board (now closed to new postings)

Link

AuctionBytes Blog: "eBay's Product-Return Requirements in US and UK"

Link

AuctionBytes Blog: "eBay Moves toward Guaranteed Buyer Satisfaction"

Link

About the author:

Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com

by Skip McGrath

It wasn't that long ago I was accusing eBay of trying to be Amazon.com. I wasn't the only one - that was the consensus of a lot of eBay sellers --and many buyers too. Then a few weeks ago eBay threw us a curve when they made an announcement at their analyst's day that they would start to focus their efforts on attracting large liquidation sellers.

This is the market that has been targeted by Overstock.com for several years so it looks like eBay wants to go head-to-head with them. The problem is that eBay has never demonstrated any knowledge of merchandising. eBay may have the money, the traffic and the depth of technology resources far beyond what Overstock.com has, but they lack one important thing....

You can read the rest of the article HERE

Do you still need Selling on the River to get your business going again? It has just been updated for 2009.

Customers are still out there - but they're shopping on Amazon!

"Last week, online retailer Ebay Inc (NASDAQ GS: EBAY) reported a 6.6 percent sales decline, citing a drop in its global e-commerce sales."

"Amazon is a company that treats its customers better than EBay," Scott Devitt, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co., told Bloomberg. "From a competitive standpoint between the two, I don't think there's any turning back.""*

*Source - http://www.istockanalyst.com 1/30/2009

Rather than trade one marketplace for another, Selling on the River will show you how to make more money by selling on Amazon. Stay with eBay, or leave it, but don't ignore eBay's biggest competitor.

By selling on multiple channels you can drastically increase your online income. Get started right now with Selling on the River

I was reading the newest newsletter by Skip McGrath and he was talking about eBay's earnings in 2008. Here is a snipet from the article:

"eBay reported their financial results for the 4th Quarter of 2008 and it was pretty bad. The Marketplaces business unit, which consists of eBay, Shopping.com, StubHub, Kijiji and other ecommerce sites, recorded $1.27 billion in revenue, equating to a 16% year-over-year decline. eBay attributed the revenue drop to the impact made by the strengthening dollar and the slow-down of the ecommerce market globally on the eBay business.

Approximately 55% of Marketplaces revenue came from markets outside the U.S. Gross merchandise volume (the value of all goods and services sold on eBay --excluding vehicles) was $11.47 billion for the quarter, a decrease of 12%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2007."

You can read the rest of the article HERE and you can subscribe for free if you like. You would think that eBay would see the error of their ways, and try to undo all of the damage by returning eBay to what it used to be. I don't think the current people running eBay understand this though. They seem hell bent on running ebay right into the ground. We shall watch and see. Just one more reason to give Amazon a try.

Here is an article by Victoria Barret in Forbes Magazine called: "The Real Reason eBay Is Stuck" that details why the problems occurred.

The second article is by Alan Lewis, former Creator/Product Manager for eBay Desktop. Alan describes the problems and what happened from directly within ebay. You can read the article on Alan's site, HERE.

I have read many heart-breaking stories of other folks whose businesses were ruined by eBay overnight. Many of them are now back at regular dead-end jobs because the eBay conglomerate has grown too big and powerful with big corporations in mind rather than the everyday small business.

eBay is no fun anymore.

These heart wrenching stories don't need to happen anymore. It is time for a real eBay alternative.

I am not trying to scare you. I am simply warning you. Do not put all of your eggs in eBay's basket. It is no longer safe to do. If you only sell on eBay, you don't own your business. They do, and they can "fire" you at any time. Yes, it is time for an eBay alternative.

If you get nothing out of what I am saying, please consider this. You need to start diversifying your business. You need to sell at other places besides eBay, but where? I am sure you have tried other auction sites only to be disappointed. They just don't have the traffic like eBay.

There is one site though, that does. This past Christmas, for the first time ever, this one site beat eBay not only in traffic, but also sales. That site is Amazon.com and they are waiting for you to come and sell your items with them.

This isn't just for e-book sellers.

Yes, we are the ones who got shafted this time, but no matter what you sell on eBay, your time will come. eBay is promising many more changes. They have said by next year at this time, you won't even recognize eBay.

They are trying to drive the average small seller away. We don't matter to them. eBay has been hard at work luring big corporations. They give these companies unfair advantage over us smaller sellers. That is why they recently changed the feedback system. It has nothing to do with making eBay safer.

Paypal is changing too. Did you know that one of the next things eBay wants to do is make it mandatory that you use Paypal? Yep, eBay will soon be a Paypal only site. No more personal checks or money orders or directing people to another payment site. Oh, and did you know that unless you have a certain feedback rating, Paypal can hold the money paid to you for 21 days? You still have to ship the product immediately, but you may not get the money for almost a month. And with the convenient new feedback system, most sellers will not be getting their money for 21 days.

Things are changing fast at eBay and your business could be in danger tomorrow just like mine. If you are ready to diversify your income, and protect yourself from whatever eBay comes up with next, then do what I did and learn how to sell your items on Amazon. Check out the new book called, Selling on the River.

"Selling on the River" became the code name folks used on the eBay forums. People started talking about Amazon, but eBay would delete any threads with that word immediately. So, "Selling on the River" was born.

It is also the title of a book I learned from, that teaches exactly what to do to sell your products on Amazon.com. This was an invaluable resource that allowed me to start making a living full time again.

Amazon has NO listing fees! None. You only pay ONE fee if your item sells. No need for Paypal either and its additional transaction fees! People pay you directly through Amazon-a name you know as do people around the world. You simply must give this a try! Even if you are still making money at eBay, get another stream of income coming to you. You will be so glad you did.

There is a right way and a wrong way to sell on Amazon. "Selling on the River" will show you the right way, and the best way to sell your items.

The website to learn about selling on Amazon is:

http://www.sellingontheriver.com

I love the free AuctionBytes newsletter and I have been reading it for years. If you sell on eBay or are searching for an eBay Alternative, you might want to check it out.

Here is a snippet from the current issue that should be of interest to my readers...

"Here are some things we see happening in 2009.

Increased taxes and regulation, with states continuing to look to ecommerce for tax revenue. Large retailers have introduced anti-fencing bills in Congress that would open eBay sellers' records to retailers, and the credit card industry is continuing its PCI DSS compliance efforts that may ultimately increase costs for small retailers.

If you sell children's items, you don't want to miss this news about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), which imposes third-party testing requirements for all consumer products primarily intended for children twelve years of age or younger.

eBay will run more third-party advertising on its site in 2009. Combined with "Diamond PowerSeller" listings from large-volume retailers, the site will look more like an ad platform and comparison shopping site, and less like a C2C marketplace."

You can read the rest of the article here.

by Ina Steiner

Brad Stone wrote an article for the New York Times today about the competition between eBay and Amazon. eBay CEO John Donahoe, like the Dennis the Menace character he is compared to by eBayers (Meg Whitman was Blondie), manages to stir things up without meaning to when he characterizes online auctions as time-wasters.

Stone writes that Donahoe "now embraces a "turnaround mind-set" and is refocusing its Web marketplace toward shoppers who don't want to waste time in online auctions. "There are times when I wish we can close this store and just open a new store, but we can't," he said. "We need to make bolder, more aggressive changes to the eBay ecosystem even if they are unpopular.""

Meanwhile Stone praises Amazon's Jeff Bezos as a long-term visionary, and writes that "third-party vendors - the foundation on which eBay was built - now account for about 29 percent of sales on Amazon."

eBay's short-term thinking versus Amazon's long-term thinking was reflected in the way the companies rewarded managers, as well as their investment strategies:

"While eBay was buying into classified advertising, online payments and Internet telephony, Amazon spent hundreds of millions of dollars building its brand as a trusted retailer - hiring customer service representatives and returning money to customers when transactions went awry."

While he makes clear that Amazon.com exerts more control over its third-party merchants than eBay had traditionally done, Stone doesn't raise an important issue. Merchants face the risk of being permanently booted off the site at any time and face seasonal suspensions. (Amazon suspends many toy sellers from posting in that category each holiday shopping season, for example.) He did touch on the fact that merchants compete directly with Amazon.com, but some believe Amazon extensively mines third-party merchant data to its competitive advantage.

The article points out some of the problems with eBay's management over the years, and lays the blame at Meg Whitman's feet. Short-term focus ("the company was obsessed with making quarterly numbers"), inability to define itself, failing to understand the competitive landscape, waffling (eBay Express), and a lack of focus - and Whitman's failure to get her team to agree on eBay's core mission.

As eBay continues to roll out change after change in 2008, many have tried to understand Donahoe's vision of eBay. The company has not communicated its vision well other than wanting-cake-and-eat-it-too statements - eBay wants to have a retail-like experience with great value and selection (the Amazonification of eBay), but also wants the small sellers and online auction format. Yet eBay's actions seems to be focused on only the first part of that vision.

Brad Stone said eBay wants to be a discount store. "This is where Mr. Donahoe talks about a vision to fix eBay, and to create a Web discount store that offers a wide variety of new and old merchandise in auction and fixed-price formats. To get there, he must administer the sweeping, painful fixes that eBay has previously shunned."

It appears that eBay is becoming an automated marketplace where algorithms do the work of reducing counterfeiting and fraud, and big-box retailers and distributors load their catalogs onto the site to fill out the inventory. This allows eBay to reduce labor-intensive tasks such as customer-service and fraud investigations, while it serves up contextual and behavioral-targeted advertisements to shoppers. This allows eBay to focus on its online payments business, an area where - for now - it leads Amazon.com.

According to the Auctionbytes newsletter, eBay has made more changes, and here are three of the biggies:

1. eBay's Buy It Now (BIN) Fixed-Price format is changing to a 30-day duration with a 35-cent listing fee and Final Value Fees that vary according to category.
   
   
2. Sellers are no longer able to accept paper payments - only merchant credit card accounts, ProPay, and PayPal will be acceptable, effective late October.
   


3. eBay is suspending selling activity on accounts that fall to 4.3 in any of their Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs).

I would like to call your attention to number 2. Do you realize how many small sellers will get the boot in October. Many small sellers don't want to accept Paypal because of the fees that rob their profits. Are you finally seeing how eBay feels about the small seller?

Are you ready to do something about it? If you are, then look at Amazon as a way to sell your items. Another good way and a possible solution would be eBay Classified Ads.

I know this sucks, but don't get discouraged! There are options and solutions. I am giving you some on this lens. This could actually be a good thing for you and it will open new doors if you let it.

Don't let eBay control your business anymore. Learn to control it yourself so that no matter what these sites do in the future, you can take it in stride.

I recently reported here, that as of September 1st, you could no longer include an email address in your ebay classified ads. I just received an update about this...

UPDATE JULY 1ST:

It seems eBay has changed it's mind. Tracey Edwards, an eBay Classified Ads expert, has just announced that eBay WILL allow email addresses in Classified Ads after September. This is good news for a change. If you have been thinking about trying eBay Classified Ads, (and I do recommend them) then Tracey Edwards is your go-to gal.

You can download a free ebook about "classified ads on eBay" written by Tracey directly from my site.

Get your FREE eBay Classifieds ebook HERE

When I lost my ebook business overnight, I was scared. I didn't know what to do, and things seemed bleak. Then, after I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, I began searching for other ways to sell online.

Now you can take a short cut, because I have told you the best source I found to do just that. Please take the first step towards protecting your business and you income. I only want to help you find a way out of the eBay trap like I did. Good luck to you and let me know how it goes!

I will be adding information all of the time at my website. I will discuss the best ways to sell both on and off of eBay. Please join me there!

http://ebay-alternative.iblot.com