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"EBAY SELLING" EZINE

July 27 , 2006
In this issue:
* Timed Offer: FREE $297 CD Set & Manual
* eBay Announces Drastic Changes In eBay Stores

Timed Offer: FREE $297 CD Set & Manual

A few months ago, we ordered 2,000 sets of our eBay Secret Interview CDs & manual. They include interviews with six eBay sellers:

* Armand Morin
* Chris Malta of Worldwide Brands
* Jim Cockrum of 'Silent Sales Machine'
* Dale Calvert
* Todd Taylor, million dollar eBay seller
* And me, Sydney Johnston

And 9 other Internet & mail order millionaires, including Robert Imbriale, T. J. Rohleder and Alan Bechtold. You can read the details here:

http://auction-secret-interviews.com

The program costs $297 but you can get it for FREE! Everyone who purchases the Auction Genius Course CDs beginning today gets:

1. A copy of our eBay Secret Interview CDs at no cost
2. We will pay for shipping

Here's the deal, though - out of our original order of 2,000 sets, there are only 67 left. So when they're gone, this offer is withdrawn. First come, first served.

Why are we doing this? Because we have a new CD coming out this fall and are making a lot of changes in our business. Also, since we're going to England in September for Yanik Silver's "Underground Seminar", and will be gone for 2-3 weeks, we need to get a lot of work accomplished now.

So, if you've been thinking about the Auction Genius Course CDs, there will never be a better time than now. Just remember that this offer can be withdrawn at any time. We will remove it when the last copies of eBay Secret Interviews are sold.

Go here to read about the CDs:

http://auction-genius-course.com

{Your free copy of Secret eBay Interviews will appear after ordering}

eBay Announces Drastic Changes In eBay Stores

Wow, the you-know-what has really hit the fan at eBay! The cause of all the furor is changes eBay has announced in its store fees and policies. In the uproar, it's hard to sort out what's actually going on and I admit to being at a disadvantage in that I don't know eBay stores very well. When I would have loved them, they didn't exist. By the time they were introduced in 2001, I already owned multiple off-eBay stores and had no interest.

The Two Kinds Of eBay Listings

There are two kinds of listings on eBay:

1. What Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, calls "core listings"

* Auction-style
* Auction-style with Buy It Now
* Fixed price listings

2. eBay store listings

According to Cobb, these store listings were "intended as a low-risk way for sellers to display large amounts of product in their eBay Store. This format employs low insertion fees and higher final value fees to encourage an abundance of inventory on the site."

Current Advantages Of An eBay Store

eBay has encouraged store listings by offering many attractive incentives that aren't offered for core listings:

1. Lower fees

Currently listing fees are 2¢ for every 30 days per listing, regardless of quantity. Of course, this isn't the only cost because there are monthly fees of $15.95, $49.95 or $499.95 based on various store options.

2. Your listings have a longer duration

If they're a fixed price format: 30 days or Good 'Til Cancelled (Good 'Til Cancelled (GTC) is a store's fixed price listing duration that allows the seller to list an item and have that listing automatically renew every 30 days as long as there is quantity available. This listing will recur each 30-day period until the owner chooses to end this listing and will maintain the same listing number for the entire life of the listing. eBay does not end this listing for the store owner - meaning if you forget to end the listing when everything is sold, you will be charged anyway.)

3. Store listings appear in multiple spots

* In your own store, naturally

* In regular searches when eBay's main search returns 30 or fewer Auction-style and Fixed Price results.

An example: I recently published an article on the super expensive "Cartier Love bracelet". Typing in that keyword phrase, there are only 16 regular auction items today so at the bottom there are listings for two more bracelets from eBay stores.

* When using a tremendously popular keyword like "ipod" (80,738 listings), we can spot a small box at the bottom of the page mentioning eBay listings

* In "Search Options" that appear on every single search page on eBay, there is an opportunity to include store listings in your search

* Beneath every "Search Options" is a small paragraph listing selected stores that offer the keyword merchandise and "all matching stores"

4. Search engine promotion

eBay suggests that store owners use basic SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to promote stores in the search engines. Every eBay Store comes with its own personalized website address so the owner can drive buyers directly to her store.

For example, owners can customize their keywords on every store page and eBay uses these pages to create meta tags for the page. If done properly, this might result in some search engine results. This is obviously an advantage over regular auction-style listings which have zero control over the pages on which they appear.

5. Final Value Fee kickbacks

Store owners can get up to 75% of their Final Value Fees back when they drive traffic to their eBay stores from off-eBay, which is defined as other Web sites, emails to buyers, print advertisements, and so forth."

For details: http://pages.ebay.com/help/specialtysites/referral-credit-faq.html

6. Cross promote other merchandise

eBay stores can "cross promote" other merchandise. Cross-promotions appear when a buyer bids on a store item, a buyer wins the item or a buyer views the store listing. Cross-promotions can appear in listings with any selling format except "Live Auctions" and in any category except "Mature Audiences".

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cp-overview.html

7. The eBay Store icon

A. All listings contain an eBay store icon that links buyers back to the owner's eBay Store
B. The eBay store icon also appears next to user IDs for extra visibility

8. eBay Store Directory

The eBay Store Directory drives buyers back to a store. The eBay Store Directory is a directory that lists all eBay Stores. A store will automatically appear in every Category Directory where appropriate items are listed. Stores are sorted based on item count within each category.

http://stores.ebay.com

9. Inclusion in eBay Express

And, of course, store offers have been the only merchandise listed on the new eBay Express.

http://www.express.ebay.com

Fee Increases

More on fee increases:
http://pages.ebay.com/sell/announcement200607/overview/fees.html?ssPageName=CMDV:AB

How do these numbers compare?
Let's work out some scenarios assuming the list price and sale price are the same:

According to Cobb, these increases are justified. He states that store listings take more than 40 times longer to sell than core listings. What this means is that eBay's cost to host a Store Inventory listing is more than 50% higher than for a core listing. In fact, current Store Inventory insertion fees don't cover eBay's costs for hosting them, he claims.

Other Changes Affecting Store Owners

There are two major changes that affect store visibility - and thus profits.

1. In August, eBay will include an unlimited number of Store Inventory listings after all matching core listings, when the buyer clicks the Buy It Now listings tab at the top of every search results page. When the buyer hasn't selected this option, eBay.com will continue to display store listings along with core listings in the way we've already described above.

2. Up until now, only store listings have appeared on the new eBay Express, but eBay vows to add auction-style listings with Buy It Now - and those non-store listings will show up higher on eBay Express search results than store inventory listings.

Clearly, eBay is attempting to force its sellers back into the auction mode.

eBay Seller Reaction

Whenever eBay increases fees or makes significant changes of any kind, there is an outrage from eBay users and this time is no exception. There are screams of pain and vows to boycott and never use eBay again. Here is one seller's post on the eBay store forum:

Post title: "What eBay University Doesn't Tell You: Store Owner/Mom Forced onto Welfare - The effect of eBay's fee hike:"

Post content: "eBay Store Owner/widowed mother of 2 who must work from home in order to care for a disabled child will be put out of business and forced onto the welfare rolls as a result of eBay's fee hike."

My heart truly goes out to this woman. She is clearly in a bad spot and desperately worried. But the bottom line is that eBay owes only its stockholders. It is not eBay's responsibility that this woman might be on welfare. A substantial part of my income comes from Google AdSense and Google has recently made dramatic changes to its AdWords program. Any change to AdWords will inevitably change AdSense revenues. Just as with the eBay changes, Google forums have been inflamed with Google bashing.

But the bottom line is that every job and every business has problems. Years ago I came to the realization that when these problems and changes arose I had two choices:

Choice A: wallow in rage and self-pity, loudly proclaiming about how unfair it all was

Choice B: accept that this is the way it is and get on with finding a solution.

The fact is that it's eBay's site, eBay's game, eBay's rules. If I want to continue to profit from either eBay or Google, then I have to accept their rules. If I don't want to play that game, I can leave. That is the choice that all business people face, like it or not. Yes, I know this is an unpopular observation, but it's still the truth. It's tempting to blame Big Bad eBay or Big Bad Google, and that's especially the case when we see a situation like the sad lady above. But years of choices brought her to her current situation - not eBay.

Am I Defending eBay?

No, not at all. I'm simply being as objective as possible. In fact, I think eBay has made some poor decisions and some choices that I don't understand at all.

First, at eBay Live in June, eBay promised no fee increases in 2006. Yet, one month later they announce what amounts to a 6% increase in store fees. Bad joss, eBay.

Meg Whitman, eBay's CEO, said the store inventory format has "diluted the magic of eBay," and that, "We are trying to get back to the essence of eBay." Oh, please, Meg! If she would say that eBay has made a financial error in heavily promoting stores and it's not economically viable to continue down that path, I could respect that.

This is similar to a recent eBay ruling that they wouldn't allow eBay sellers to use the new "Google Checkout" payment system. Google Checkout is a payment system similar to PayPal, which is owned by eBay, of course. Google Checkout has been dangling economic incentives to lure e-commerce sellers to its payment system. eBay expressed concerns for "safety" as the basis for its refusal. This is hogwash! eBay is protecting its turf and has a perfect right to do so. I am not going to sell my competitors products on my web properties and neither would you. I can respect that reasoning, so just admit it. Don't assume we're stupid and gullible.

In addition, the entire purpose of eBay Express (EE) seems to be compromised. EE is supposed to be a shopping system that will allow buyers to purchase from multiple eBay Express merchants yet pay for everything — including shipping—in a single, secure payment using PayPal or a credit card. If auction listings are going to appear in EE - and above store listings - how is this going to be different from regular eBay? At this time, it's only auction listings that include Buy It Now, but if they're pressuring sellers to get "the magic" back, will regular auctions soon be included? Only time will tell.

Is Selling Through eBay Stores Still Worthwhile?

That is a completely unanswerable question. Any conclusion must be carefully decided upon by each individual seller. I can only answer for myself and the answer is a loud and clear YES! I have been an Internet seller for 11 years and the essence of successful selling is a two-part equation. Half of that equation is about traffic. Customers. Interested prospects. Serious buyers.

Consider the two most popular ways to get traffic to whatever you're selling:

1. Pay Per Clicks: if you think eBay is expensive, check out the PPC market! Google has just raised the minimum price on many clicks from 5-10 cents to 5-10 dollars. And that price is for one click. Compare that to an insertion fee of 5-10 cents for 30 days with no limit on the number of people who click on your listing.

2. The "free" search engines ... this is my primary game and I can tell you that there's nothing free at all about getting high ratings in Google, Yahoo and MSN. My company spends many thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work in getting - and maintaining - our high search engine positions in a constantly changing and extremely competitive environment.

The bottom line for us: eBay is an awesome place to do business because:

Keep in mind that's my decision. When trying to make your own choices about eBay, do your best to get past any emotional response and look at your situation as objectively as possible. Your business will prosper if you do.