Responses to eBay's "Analyst Day"

As a small seller on eBay, I try to keep my ear to the ground about how the company is going to be treating folks like me in the future. Last week eBay held their "Analyst Day", and the reports from those who know about what eBay discussed are distressing.

Small sellers are what made eBay back in the day. One statement that really stood out was “The old Ebay was sitting in people’s attics. The new Ebay is sitting in warehouses,” said Lorrie Norrington, president of marketplaces. So now it seems that all of us who sell vintage items of any sort, are no longer valuable to eBay? That seems crazy to me.

I did a little market research this morning, pretty straight forward. When I search on eBay for the keyword "vintage", a whopping 1,483,063 listings come up. I compare that to all the listings in the Computers & Networking catagory, and it has 1,342,683 items listed. Hmmmm. So I did some more. Right now there are 219,061 items listed under Antiques. And 243,552 items listed in Entertainment Memorabilia. And 2,066,462 in Collectibles!

So can someone explain why those of us who sell stuff "from our attics" are no longer valuable to eBay? Our listings don't make them money?

Other longtime sellers are upset about this as well. My bud John from ColderICE has done a big rant about the recent Analyst Day that can be found here and which is well worth the read. Should you wish to read through the entire PDF of the presentation made, you can read it here (note, it's a large file that takes time to load):

I, like other smaller sellers, do wonder sometimes just what it is that TPTB at eBay are thinking...

My letter to Auctiva today

For those of you who haven't been following the saga of the eBay auction listing site Auctiva and their infection by malware last week, see ColderIce's blog here for lots more info:

http://3rdpoblogs.com/colderice/

In summary, the listing site was infected, and sellers were affected because when a potential buyer clicked on a picture in a listing, they got the dreaded Red Screen of Death telling them that Auctiva was a Bad Site and had Big Problems (thanks Google, appreciate that a lot!) And some people were infected by trojans and other viruses! So now some buyers are saying they simply won't buy from sellers who use Auctiva, ever.

Great. I have over 750 items listed in my store/auctions, and the thought of moving them all to another venue (like InkFrog or Vendio) is daunting, to say the least. It will mean closing and relisting each item, and include additional listing fees, not to mention a horrid amount of time to implement (as if I don't already spend my life doing this stuff!)

It would seem to me that if the Powers That Be at Auctiva would just step up and admit they handled the situation poorly and apologize, a lot of the people who are angry with them would feel vindicated and somewhat placated. Not all, of course, but at least some.

So I sent this email to the folks at Customer Support today, opening a case file to do so. I'll keep you all posted as to whether I hear back from them at all. Here's the text of my email:

I am incredibly distressed by the problems you have been having over the past week. I have heard buyers state that they will NEVER buy from a seller who uses your service. I like your service, and I have no desire to have to move my 750+ store and auction listings to some other service.

But you NEED to get out there and apologize! Your lack of accepting responsibility for these problems is giving you a terrible credibility issue with eBay buyers, and that's hurting us sellers. I would like to stay with you. But you have to step up to the plate and acknowledge that you made some mistakes. I think once you do that people won't be so angry. They're mad now because you continued to act like everything was ok (telling people to ignore the red screen of death and log in anyway was a big mistake.)

I would like to hear your thoughts on what you are going to do to address the lack of trust your actions have created among the buyers, and tell me how you plan to regain that trust, so that I as a seller will want to stay with you.

Please do not send me a canned response, a real answer from a real person in authority is going to be very important here, if you wish to retain me.

Thank you for your consideration and response.

Laura Haggarty

Getting up and running with the social networking

I've been playing a lot with Twitter today, experimenting with using it to market and network. Up side, lots of people out there share my interests in things vintage and collectible. Down side, the thing is a major time sink! I mean, I could spend hours tweeting, and that's time I should be working. So the challenge is to learn to use it judiciously and in a way that will maximize the potential without it sucking me into a major black hole.

Still pondering, stay with Auctiva, or leave? Tomorrow ColderICE is doing a conference call/meeting thing to discuss it among users like me. Here's the link:

http://tinyurl.com/djrods

Will be interesting to see what's going to be said/done. Not sure they'll care what we think, but worth a try anyway.

Listing Services for eBay

This weekend there was a big kerfuffle in the Auctiva camp, as several of their servers were hacked and had malware installed that also was affecting their images. Google posted the Red Screen of Death (reporting them as being dangerous) when you tried to log in or even supersize and image that was hosted on their website, which was a big pita for sellers, as I am sure it drove some customers away. They got it all worked out by this morning, but it was a nasty time all around, with some reports of people being infected by Trojans during the initial stages.

The worst part was this happened on the weekend, as Sunday is a big listing day for a lot of types of items, especially tobacciana, which I have been working a lot with of late. I was completely unable to get things listed, which irked me no end.

I have since been looking at other listing services, including Vendio and InkFrog, but am not sure I'll make the switch. Vendio is 'way expensive, and InkFrog, even though they are a paying service, doesn't have some of the things I like about Auctiva.

I am in conversations with one of the tech guys at InkFrog now to see if they'll consider some add-ons that will do what I need to have done, we'll see how that goes. But I'm not going to take down and relist some 750+ listings unless I have a really good viable alternative, and I haven't quite found one yet.

I don't give a damn about cutesie templates, I want clean, simple, uncluttered pages. I want to be able to list my item description, TOS (terms of sale) including payment and shipping terms, I want to be able to give the usual warning about customs fees for my overseas customers, and I want to be able to include my grading system so there are no questions about how I grade my items. Sounds simple, but can be anything but.

I have no desire to mess with FTPing files. A regular old Java uploader is fine with me. I don't have any desire to have to format my info with HTML myself, my god, that went away years ago (although I did do that back in my early years on eBay in the late 90s.) I want WYSIWYG formatting, multiple images (close up ones!), adjustable layouts, and good customer support. I'd even be willing to pay Auctiva for same if they got their tech support act together. Maybe if they started charging a small fee they could hire some more IT guys? Just a thought.

Well, back to work, have lots of items to list to catch up now. Many sales to you all!

Selling on eBay

Sooner or later, it's going to happen. You've been going along happily buying things on eBay, and then one day you look around your house and say to yourself, hey, I could sell this stuff on eBay and make some money! Other people do it, why not me?

Why not indeed. Selling on eBay is simple, as long as you do a bit of work before you get started. The very first thing I recommend is that you read the excellent tutorials available from eBay here: How To Sell

Once you've read through that and done the tutorials, you need to make sure you understand the fee structure that eBay has in place. See this link for specifics on how fees work here on eBay: Selling Fees

Once you're clear about how the fee structure works, try a listing to get a feel for how things are done. Start with something small, don't leap into selling with a big-ticket item, get your feet wet gradually, and once you get more experience under your belt, you can move into more expensive items.

A very important aspect of a successful listing is a good image of your item. There's no substitute for a clear, sharp, well-defined photograph in your item description. If the thing you are selling is something flat, then by all means, scan it if you can. If not, be sure to photograph it under proper lighting conditions, and close enough so that details can be seen and understood when folks are looking at your listing.

Before listing your item, do some market research. eBay allows you to Search for items that have been Completed. This allows you to see what does and doesn't sell, and the average price that a given item will sell for. It will also tell you what your competition is doing, and lets you see if your pricing is in line with the market.

Another very important thing to do when listing an item to sell is, keep your Item Description simple, clear, and easy to read. Don't get all cute with multiple sizes and colors of type, don't clutter the description up with lots and lots of extraneous info, just simple and straightforward will do the best job for you. Use all one font (typeface) for your listing. Keep it readable - yellow type on a black background is very hard to read (for example) and people who can't read your listing will pass it by and go on to someone else's. eBay has software you can use, like TurboLister, to list multiple items, or you can use third-party tools like Auctiva to create good-looking listings with templates all set up for you.

Be sure to be honest and truthful about your items. If the item you are selling is something used or vintage, be clear about any flaws or problems. No buyer wants to think they are getting something perfect that isn't, so be more than up front about any issues you think they might wish to be informed of. Better to be excruciatingly truthful and have the buyer find the item is better than they expected, than to have them disappointed because you left something out.

Make your shipping costs reasonable. Most buyers aren't interested in paying a huge markup on shipping costs, and if they see you've included an unreasonable amount for handling, they just won't bid. Put the costs clearly in the shipping fields, don't hide them in the item description in 2 point type, that's just not something a good seller does.

Consider signing up for a PayPal account, if you don't already have one. Many buyers prefer the security that a PayPal transaction affords them, and there are good things in place to protect sellers too. There are small fees involved, but they're more than worth it for the safety and security that accepting payments through PayPal gives you.

Once you've sold something, be sure to communicate with your buyers promptly. Send an invoice soon, and be sure to follow up with an email once the item is sent.

Package your item securely. No buyer wants to have something just tossed in a box, only to have it arrive broken or otherwise damaged. You can get cheap or free packing materials from any large grocery or department store, they often have extra packing materials that they'd love to have you take away so they don't have to pay to have them removed. Bubble wrap, styrofoam peanuts, sturdy cardboard boxes, all these can be yours for the asking if you do a little legwork. Remember, the shipping services don't care about your buyers item, it's up to you to ensure it gets to them safe and secure.

Invest in a scale, and weigh your items before shipping them. Then you can go to the USPS website and see how much it would cost to ship, saving you and your customer time and trouble. Or, list your item so that the weight will determine the shipping costs, according to their location (they enter in their zip code.)

Offer insurance, and consider using some sort of tracking to ensure the item gets to your customer safely. Delivery Confirmation is relatively inexpensive, and can save a lot of heartache in the event that something goes astray.

Once your item is shipped and you've notified your customer that it's on its way, consider leaving Feedback right then. Some sellers wait until the buyer leaves them feedback before returning it, some don't, it's a personal decision. But I figure if a customer has paid me for the item and I've shipped it, then the customer deserves positive feedback right then. It's up to you, of course.

There you have it, these are the basic things you need to know to get started selling on eBay. There's more to it than this, but this should get you started. Best of luck with your sales!

Real Photo Postcards

Real Photo Postcards, or RPPCs as they are called, are a fascinating subset of the deltiology hobby. They consist of images that are actual photographs, generally taken around the turn of the 20th century and into the 1930s and '40s. They are a slice of life preserved in amber, if you will, and can contain amazing historical information of places and people of times gone by.

The most popular images I have found are those of places that no longer exist; buildings that are no longer standing and which have a personal connection for the buyer. Images of children's camps from the '40s, country clubs from the '20s, historical houses from the 'Teens, all are immensely popular with collectors.

As well, topical cards are very collectible. Some people focus on a theme, such as "women on horseback", or "circus freaks", or specific brands of old motorcycles, for example. Some collectors are mad for images of early aviation; train wrecks and ship wrecks; specific makes of trucks and cars, and so on. The possibilities are endless, and everyone can find a niche that pleases them.

The date of many RPPCs can be identified by what is in their "Stamp Box", the spot on the back of the card where the stamp was placed in order to mail the card. Various manufacturers of the blanks used by photographers to make their cards had specific imprints that we can use to determine the age of a card. There are two websites I turn to again and again for help in this regard.

For a quick search of stamp boxes, I like this site: The Two Buds who have a short list of stamp boxes by markings and dates.

For a more exhaustive search and extensive listing, I always turn to the Playle's website, which has both a short list and a series of alphabetical links to actual photos of the various stamp boxes.

Between those two sites I can almost always date a card. One caveat however, later use of the "Kodak" papers means that an old image can be newly reprinted, which rather negates the dating process. So beware of the newer labels when searching for vintage cards, and be sure to check the stamp box before purchasing.

The true beauty of a real photo postcard is that it is often one of a kind. These are not mass-produced and printed cards, they're generally the only copies of a particular image. And photos that are 100+ years old are fragile and don't store well, which means they are even more collectible. They're more expensive than some other types of cards, but well worth the investment, especially if the subject is one near and dear to your heart.

How it all started

My adventures into postcard collecting and dealing started with my mom, of course. She was a dedicated lover of ephemera, and passed that love onto me. I can remember (and still have) her sending me vintage postcards when I was just a young girl, away at camp. She'd put a blank sticker over the back if it had already been used (which makes me cringe now), and write a note and just send it along through the mail again with a new stamp.

Mom had an eye for beauty. She could pick out the one good card from a huge boxful of junk. She had an unerring instinct for what was collectible, from shells at the beach, to antiques, to postcards. She just knew somehow, when something was right. It's a skill you can learn, up to a point, but there's also a quality to it that must be inherent, in the genes, and my mom had it.

I began buying and selling postcards about ten years ago. It all started with a trip mom and I made to an antique mall near the small town where she grew up. They had hundreds of dealers, and that day mom and her sister and I spent the entire day there, with a short break for lunch, then back at it. We rooted through the various dealers stalls, looking for the special cards that she liked to collect, and in the process I came to realize that I liked this hobby too, and wanted to do more with it. At that time eBay was relatively new, and I was new to it. I had a small business there selling collectibles like pottery and so on, three-D stuff if you will. After that day at the antique mall with mom and my aunt, I went home with a big pile of postcards to see how they'd do on eBay. They did very well, and I was hooked!

I sold postcards on eBay for about three years, making quite a fair job of it for a part-time seller and part-time mom. I tapered off the year we bought four horses and some goats, it just wasn't possible to keep up with all that and milk goats at the same time. But I always kept my love of Deltiology, and often mom and I would talk on the phone about her postcard hunting trips and whenever I went home we'd pore over her albums with glee. It was a love we shared, and something that we could always talk about for hours on end.

Mom died last year, and left behind thousands of cards. My dad has no interest in them, and I don't have the space to house her huge collection. I've gone through much of it (some is still back at home waiting to be poked through), and have started listing the cards on eBay for my father. It's a bittersweet process. At one point mom and I had talked about trying to contact a large greeting card company and licensing her images to them, but between the two of us we never quite got around to it. But she had a name all picked out, and it's the one I'm using now: KatyDid, after a book that was a childhood favorite of hers, "What Katy-Did."

So now I have a second shop on eBay (still have the other one for my own cards), sending mom's cards back out into the world for others to collect and treasure. It's hard for me to let go, I am not quite the pack rat my mom was, but I believe in saving history when I can. I've pulled out some of the best of each of her albums, and perhaps may publish a small book of her collection. As I work with her cards every day I can sometimes hear her voice telling me to look that publisher up, or check that artist, guiding me along as I go down this road. I know it's not the business we had envisioned, but I hope in some small way that the customers I work with feel the integrity I strive for, and the love that mom and I both put into the cards we're selling. Any other way of doing things just wouldn't be true to either of us.