I have been spending quite a bit of time on eBay lately.  And while I can still say that I am NOT an eBay fan these days I was able to find a couple of really good deals on geocoins as well as a couple of study aids for my PMP adventure.

I hate getting caught up in a bidding war on eBay and what I find typically happens is that as soon as there is a bid on an item, or as soon as you outbid someone on an item you end up in a bidding war and the price of the item keeps increasing above what you really want to pay.  And now that you have a “vested interest” you don’t want to be the loser.

Gixen has helped me solve this problem… When I see an item that I would like to bid on I can logon to the Gixen site and place my maximum willing to pay bid.   Since it isn’t recorded on eBay there are no emails telling me I was outbid and that I really should bid again, I don’t get emails about similar items, etc…  A large part of the emotion involved in an auction is removed.

In the past few days I’ve won 6 auctions in the last 6 seconds and in most cases it was for far less than I was willing to pay.  I am convinced that had I been caught up in a bidding war I would have paid much more.

Gixen is free but does have a “mirror” site that you can pay for. (Six bucks a year.) There are also a couple of additional functionality things you get but certainly don’t necessarily need.

If you’re wondering if a FREE snipe site works I encourage you to take a peek at gixen.com.  You can also check out my original posting on Gixen – HERE…

A change that will cause seller uproar this time is that in the Books, Movies & DVDs, Music, and Video Games categories (at least to start with more will be added) there is now going to be a maximum charge allowed for postage and handling.  eBay has indicated that this is one of the primary complaints of the buyers on the site and they are trying to make the buyer’s experience more pleasant so there are a greater number of conversions.   Translated this means they want more final value fees.

On the FAQ found many layers deep… There is a question posed asking what if my actual costs are higher than the maximum allowed… The response:

• ” When selling a bundle or quantity of items, you can use the shipping calculator to charge actual shipping charges
• When selling via fixed price, include all or part of the shipping cost in the item price
• When selling via auction:
  • Continue to list your item with the same start price and a shipping price at or below the maximum shipping cost. Many of our sellers have success with auctions, even at free shipping, because their item looks more competitive to their buyers.
  • If your actual shipping costs are higher than the maximum shipping & handling cost, start the item price higher to cover your shipping cost. This technique will minimize risk that you will lose money on shipping.
  • Move your item to fixed price and include all or part of the shipping cost in the item price.
  • If you are selling a bundle or quantity of items, you can use the shipping calculator to charge actual shipping charges”

Any time you include shipping costs as part of the cost of the item eBay wins.  These charges now become costs that they get to charge a FVF.   So now sellers will have the privilege of paying eBay a fee for not only the listing and the sale but also for the shipping of the item.

The posting goes on to encourage sellers to make shipping free and as an added bonus, Powersellers will get double the discount bonus on their FVF fees for the allowed time frame,  you’ll get free Subtitle upgrades AND higher search rankings with best match.  Don’t forget now that someone pays for shipping somewhere so most likely you’ve included it in the price of your product and NOW as an additional added bonus eBay gets to collect the FVF as well.

As a final KICKER (translated – bend over and lets see how far I can bury my boot) eBay will no longer allow checks and money orders as a form of payment. “Checks and money orders no longer allowed: Beginning in late October, we will no long allow checks or money orders as payment methods on eBay. Only approved electronic methods will be allowed. In January 2009, all accepted payment methods will be integrated into eBay Checkout. For buyers, this change means a more consistent and secure payment experience. For sellers, it means faster payment and fewer unpaid items. (Note this policy will not apply to Vehicles and some categories in Real Estate, Mature Audiences, and Business & Industrial).”

Since the smaller sellers typically do not have their own credit card accounts this means that eBay through their Paypal company will also get a piece of the payment activity. 

Again, all of these changes are under the guise of an improved experience for sellers and buyers.  I suspect there is some pressure in a poor economy to continue performing for investors as well and if they can put a positive media spin on increasing the ways they can gouge their sellers for more of their profit then more power to them.

I’d love to hear your thoughts of these recent changes…

I have noticed there have been a number of promotions on eBay lately trying to get people to list their items for sale.  I’m not sure that this is related to the general seller unrest that seems to be prevalent or simply eBay’s attempt to help stimulate listings due to soft economic conditions.  The bottom line really seems to be a matter of personal choice. 

My choice… I have nothing currently running on eBay and I’m not sure how long I will continue to NOT list.  I am trying out ewaey.com and I’ve dabbled with a couple of others.  What I really hope is that this general unrest will open the doors for these small guys to at least make a bit of headway into the online auction marketplace.  I’m a pretty firm believer in the concept that you don’t want to place all of your eggs into a single basket.  If you only list on eBay then you are tied to their every whim (fee increase, policy change, etc.).

So my questions to you if you are a seller:

• Are you a participant in the strike/boycott?
• What is your primary complaint with eBay?
• What alternatives are you using?

If you are a buyer:

• Have you noticed a decrease in listings?
• What are your thoughts on the eBay changes?
• What other online auction venues do you visit?

Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

This is the first edition of the Online Auction blog carnival.   For those of you not familiar with a blog carnival, think of it as a magazine related to a specific topic.  Authors will submit their posts/articles to the carnival and then an editor (me) will put them all together for my readers to enjoy.

This carnival is specifically related to online auctions.  If you have any thoughts or comments related to the online auction environment then we would absolutely love to have them posted here for all readers to enjoy in a quick, concise format.   You can click on the submit post link above it will take you to the correct submission page.

This is the first edition of this carnival and there were not too many submissions…  All are related to eBay so I have broken them into separate categories

eBay Auction Tools

Bill presents a review of a tool that he uses to place SNIPE bids on items on eBay.  Sniping on eBay is the act of bidding in the last few seconds of an auction not giving any of the other bidders an opportunity to react to your bid.  The article titled Free eBay Sniping Software – Gixen Review can be found on his blog Projects Possible.

eBay Auction How To

Raymond presents a great article called eBay Guide To Buying and Selling Wholesale Products posted at Money Blue Book.  In this article he points out some great tips for buying and selling on eBay and points out quite a few SCAMS that are in play and what you can do to avoid getting caught up in them.   Great reading for all eBay buyers and sellers.

eBay Auction Controversy

Raymond also presents Feedback About eBay’s New Pricing Structure and Policy Changes posted at Money Blue Book.  With eBay’s recent announcements about changes to their platform, there are a lot of opinions out there as to what if anything this is going to do to the eBay venue.  This article gives one viewpoint.

Bill presents a different viewpoint in these two articles found on Projects Possible.  The first article My Thoughts on the eBay Seller Strike list the pain points for sellers and the author’s view of those pain points.   The second article Another eBay Seller Boycott – May 1 discusses the continued dissatisfaction of the sellers and their intended boycott to begin on May 1.  This one also has a link to a YouTube video that is circulating.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of online auctions using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.  Remember this carnival is about anything and everything related to online auctions.  I’d love to get some posts about different online auction sites, tools that you use to bid, buy, list, etc… Next posting will be in the middle of April.

Technorati tags: online auctions, blog carnival.

Blog Carnival
online auctions - archives | submit post

There is an ever increasing rumble that sellers are NOT through with their protest of the changes that eBay is making to their system.  eBay seems to have taken the stance that if they just ignore the rumblings they will go away, and many rumblers are going away to other auction sites like ePier, OnlineAuction, BidVille, eCrater and others.  How long will eBay keep their head in the sand?

The changes sellers are upset about include increased final value fees, sellers inability to post neutral or negative feedback about buyers, PayPal holding auction funds for up to 21 days on “risky” transactions, and the new search which apparently lists eBay’s “best” sellers first in the auction listings.   Many of the changes are in effect now and others are slated for roll-out in the future. 

Loading...

I know I have been playing at other sites (I hope to review these soon) and I WILL probably be participating in this particular boycott.  Now I’m not a powerseller,  but just in the past month I’ve noticed that my fees are higher than they used to be even with the reduction in listing fees.   I’ve also noticed that even though I charge ACTUAL shipping charges, ship the day of payment or the next day depending on when an auction closes that my Detailed Seller Ratings as posted by my buyers are not high enough in those two categories to ever qualify for any discounts or preferential search treatment.  I’m guessing the key to these number is going to be sheer volume.  Something we smaller sellers don’t have the luxury of.

I do know one thing…I’m just tired of it all.  I want to go back to the days when things were simpler.  I want to be a smaller seller on eBay and be able to make a little money and not be treated like I am a waste of eBay’s time.  What are your thoughts?  Are you an eBay seller or buyer that is “moving on” to other options?   Let us know your thoughts…  Click on Comment!

• No negative or neutral feedback can be given to buyers.
• Paypal can hold my money for 21 days
• The fee increase disguised as a decrease.

They are also ranked in order of importance to me.

Let’s look at them individually

Feedback – When I accept payments from buyers I want to know that they aren’t going to stiff me.  A quick review of their feedback lets you know this relatively quickly.  I also will not accept personal checks or money orders from any buyer that has a feedback score that is less than 10 or if they have any payment related negatives. 

The argument that I hear is that when a buyer leaves feedback if it is in any way neutral or negative there are a group of sellers that retaliate and post a negative to the buyer.  In effect they have alienated the buyer from the eBay community and that buyer will no longer buy.  I have been a victim of this.  I posted neutral feedback for a seller due to lack of communication and merchandise that I thought could have been better described.   It wasn’t 30 minutes later and the seller hit me with a negative on every item that I had purchased (I had purchased 5 items.)  As a new buyer I was quite angry.

What is feedback anyway?  I have always thought of it as a rating or indication of how well your portion of the transaction went.  For the seller as soon as you receive payment you should be posting feedback.  If the buyer purchased your item and they paid you for that item what more is there?  For the buyer, once they receive the item and it was as you described, they should leave their feedback.

I would be much happier with a system that required a seller to post feedback for the buyer and limited the buyer from posting feedback until the seller had posted or XX days had past.   If the seller did not post feedback for his portion of the transaction then he doesn’t have an opportunity to post feedback when the buyer post his feedback after the XX days have past.  For example:  I sell a widget to you for 1.00.  You pay me with Paypal the next day.  I as the seller would post feedback at that point indicating my impression of that portion of the transaction.   You your widget arrives broken and you post me a negative feedback based on your experience.   My experience is now pretty negative as well because I know what I sent to you and it wasn’t broken.  I respond to your negative feedback with my comments and you respond to my comment.  End of feedback war.   I blacklist you from my buyer list and I move on.   Cost of doing business online.

In a typical retail transaction if a customer brings something back more often than not they are angry at the situation and the person working on the returns desk is taking the bulk of their negative feedback.  The difference is that in a typical retail transaction you do not get to know anything about your buyer ahead of time but as a retailer I can choose to refuse service to anyone that enters my store based on past experience.

Paypal – I love this method of payment.   I use it pretty extensively to both buy and sell online.  The thing that rubs me a bit wrong about this is that when a deposit is made into my account eBay can arbitrarily decide that the transaction might be an at risk transaction and hold my money for 21 days.  The real kicker is they don’t have to pay any interest on that money they just get to keep it in their coffers and earn interest on it.

If I were to use a normal credit card merchant account I would get the chargeback and they would deduct it from future payments to me.  If there were no future payments they would send me a bill.  What makes eBay think that their “bank” (and for all intents and purposes Paypal IS a banking type institution) should be different from any other banking institution. 

If they want to hold my money they absolutely should pay me interest on that money since they are earning interest on it.   They also need to clearly define what types of transactions they are going to hold payment on.

Fees – They are sure talking up the reduction in listing fees.  Look at what a great company we are.  We are going to reduce the fees to list items so you can list more with us.  God forbid you’d sell an item that is over 20.00. (or whatever that magic number is)    Sellers with a large sell through percentage are the ones that are really getting hit on the backside of the transaction.   Sure they reduce the amount that they charge you to get it into their system but if the transaction finishes they are hitting you with 66% more in Final Value Fees.   So if you do what you hope to do…sell items then in the long run you are in a worse financial situation than before the fee adjustment.

Overall I would have to say that the changes are designed for the buyers.  They want to make the buyers happy.  We all like happy buyers.   When buyers are happy they buy more.  But it is a fine line that you have to walk when you also depend on the sellers.   eBay I think tried to walk the fine line here by disguising the fee decrease as something they are doing for the sellers and the Feedback for the buyers.  (I think they did the Paypal thing for eBay… it’s much easier and more profitable to just keep the sellers money until we’re sure there aren’t going to be buyer disputes.)  Reality shows however that sellers are losing all around on this one.

I don’t think the STRIKE was effective.  I really don’t think eBay cares!   I think they should…with stock prices falling, and competition gaining footholds the “glory days” of eBay I think are over.  With the new leadership at eBay in place it may be an opportune time for some of the big fish to jump into the mix…Will we be seeing a Google Auction Site or a Microsoft Auction Site?  Heck if Microsoft gets Yahoo they have one already to dust off and revitalize.  eBay may still be the big fish… but it takes a lot of little fish to keep a big fish fed…

So having said all of that eBay seems to have the buyers right now for the seller’s product.   What’s it going to take to move that buyer to the alternatives?

What are the alternatives?  ePier.com, Bidville.com, OnlineAuction.com?

The first thing that I did once I heard of the increase is I started making comparisons using my typical transactions.  I was calculating things manually until I found a great little tool over on Auction Bytes.   If you go to their eBay fee calculation page you can do it right on the screen or you can play the what-if games on your own PC by downloading it as an Excel spreadsheet.  For me I found that on my lower end items that I always placed Gallery pictures on I will save a bit.   Higher priced items is where I find the FVF kills me… of course that would assume that I SELL the items since the FVF only effects those I sell.  The real determining factor on whether this is an overall increase is based on your sell through rate.

In just my brief playing around with the numbers and reading the announcement a few things came to mind

• eBay is going to be a venue with a lot more STORE items because they’ve lowered the prices for insertion… the FVF is still killer but you can at least get your items out there for people to see.
• The seller that is going to take the biggest hit is the higher value sellers with the larges amount of sell through.  
• Because the insertion fees were lowered the up-front risk is less and therefore I expect we will see the volume of items increase giving the buyers a better selection.   Perhaps eBay is trying to re-attract buyers with selection?
• Reserve has become expensive on the lower end items so you will see many more items that were previously reserve priced either NOT listed at all, or listed with a higher opening bid.  I suspect this will reduce the number of .99 cent starting prices that sellers often use to create a “buzz” around their items.

As I said previously you will need to decide if the changes are for the better or worse for you in your situation.  I know they will cause me to change how I list, and I think to some extent what I list as well.  Perhaps I will actually start looking at and USING some of the alternative auction sites that are out there…

Alternatives… YES there are alternatives to eBay.   Why not take a look at some of the following:

ePier , BidVille, HiBidder, WeBidz

If you’ve got experience with these or others please share!

I did create an Auctiva account and for the most part things seem to be relatively simple.  They do image hosting, have auction templates and a scrolling list of your eBay items.   What I didn’t see was how the process works with your buyers and what the post auction management and reporting are like.   I’m looking for your insight folks.   In a previous post I made I was looking for seller software.  No one had any suggestions to offer.  Certainly there must be someone in the blog community that is a seller on eBay and has recommendations.

I have been a seller on eBay for a number of years and have dabbled a little bit with books on Amazon.  What I am looking for now is some GOOD auction management software.    I’ve tried quite a few different things in both the online and local environments including: Merlin, Auctionwatch, Auctionworks, Mr.Lister, and Shooting Star among others.   In all cases they each had features that were great but for this casual eBay seller I was finding they were or became too expensive to run, or they just didn’t have what I needed to do the types of auctions I wanted to perform.

So lets get into that… What kinds of auctions do I run?  I think this is critical question to ask when you are determining the software that you want to run.  For example if you have an item or two and you only sell those items do you need to have the full blown package complete with inventory management?  I’d guess not but then each seller likes to run things differently.

My items include:  flea market and estate sale items, collectibles, home decor (50-60 items that can be stocked, ordered and drop-shipped), overstocks and returns, basically a real eclectic mix of things.

For me the critical things are:

1.  An inventory management system.   I have many items that I have in multiples that can be re-ordered, and others that are of the one time purchase variety.  Because I am a “data hound” and I never know when I might be able to get the items again I want to be able to keep track of all of the inventory and then list to the auction sites from my available inventory to sell.  I also want to be able to run a “storefront” for the item that I currently have in stock.

2.  Seamless integration with the auction site’sg checkout including integration with Paypal.  I don’t want my buyers to wonder what is happening in the checkout process.  I don’t want them to be redirected to some OTHER place and wonder if they are being spoofed.  

3.  At a glance status or dashboard would be nice.   I want to know how all of my auction are doing… Not only the ones that are running, but the ones that are complete.  Am I waiting on payment, do I need to ship, am I waiting for checks to clear, do I need to post feedback, has feedback been posted for me, etc??

4.  Scheduled listing.  I don’t want to have to babysit the process of listing items.   If today I want to list 30 items for sale I’d like to be able to schedule which of those items I would like to list and on which auction venues and just forget about it.  

5.  Financial reporting.   I need to know what the items cost (from my vendor) , the listing fees (auction venue) , the selling fees (Paypal, auction venue), the selling price (buyer), shipping charges charged, shipping charges paid, packaging materials, insurance, etc. etc. etc….  I need to be able to know if after all is said and done with an item whether there was any profit made on the item and if so how much.   An export of this P&L information would be helpful to other accounting software like Quickbooks as well.

6.  Image management.   I don’t necessarily care if there is hosting of images but the ability to upload, delete, and include image links in the auction listings would be important.  For any item there could be any number of pictures and being able to tell the items story with pictures is extremely helpful.

7.  Flexible auction templates.  I would like my auctions to look professional and include a lot of “standard information” like return policy, shipping policy, terms and conditions, etc.. but I would also like the flexible information to be fully integrated so that the auction as a whole looks like one complete “flyer” of information.

8.  Storefront.  I’d like to run my own based on what is in my inventory.   Just because it isn’t on auction doesn’t mean I won’t sell it.  I’d like to make all of my in-stock items be available to buyers.  Preferably as part of my auction management solution, not as part of the auction site.  (ie.  Not a fan of eBay Stores)

So what have you all found that can help me out here?   I’d be interested in links to reviews, your own personal choices and observations, any information you have at all..

The gixen.com website allows you to jump on the sniping bandwagon and it is absolutely free.   They do offer a subscription “mirror” service which will virtually guarantee that your bid will be placed but in my test the bid was placed just fine and while I didn’t win (more on that later) I found Gixen to be one of the easiest sniping services that I have tried.

Basically you go to their site, enter your eBay credentials, enter the item number to bid on and your bid and you are done.  It is that simple.  You can then forget about remembering to place your bid… Gixen will do it for you within seconds of the auction close.

A couple of things to keep in mind with eBay bidding and snipe tools…

1. eBay will auto-bid up to the bidders maximum so waiting until the last few seconds of an auction to bid really is no guarantee that some previous bidder has NOT entered a higher maximum bid than your maximum snipe bid.  Remember is isn’t the last bid that wins it is the highest bid and you should absolutely make sure that you always bid the maximum that you are willing to pay.  (Keep those shipping charges in mind too!)
2. Snipe tools may sometimes encounter eBay dialogs or pop-ups that they were not programmed to handle.  If you absolutely positively want to bid on an item you should do it manually.  I have read in a few places now that eBay is asking people to update passwords when they login.  A snipe tool isn’t going to be able to bid if this happens. 
3. Keep in mind the eBay bidding rules… Snipe tools have to follow them as well.  You can’t expect it to place a snipe bid for you if your snipe bid amount is lower than the current bid, or if your snipe bid is not higher than eBay’s next bid increment.  (Remember eBay requires your minimum bid to be at least one increment above the current bid and this increment depends on what the current bid amount is at the time you place your bid.)
4. Set it and forget it… at least until you win.  Remember you are responsible for all bidding even if you happen to forget that you place a snipe request and then later find a better deal but forget to cancel the snipe.  If you win the auction you need to pay for the item!

While Gixen is a great tool and increasing in popularity every day, sniping really is a phenomenon that is tied to bidder preference and education.  As I state above… eBay will auto bid up to a bidder’s maximum bid amount.  The idea behind a snipe is that you are going to swoop in at the end and place your bid before some previous bidder has time to re-bid for a higher amount.  You are basically gambling that the previous bidders either don’t know how eBay’s bidding works, or that they decide at the very end as the bidding activity increases that they should increase their bid.  

I think eBay is doing a much better job now at trying to get people to enter their maximum bid and explaining how the bidding process works.  You see it in their email, on the item pages, bidding pages, etc…  So the real value of Gixen is to keep that bidder from having time to re-think their maximum and with more and more people using sniping tools my recommendation to you snipers is to make sure you’ve done your homework and know what the absolute maximum is that you will pay.

How I use sniping (Gixen) in my eBay bidding…

• Manually bid (not my maximum) on an item to get a feel where the current bids are in price and to get it into MyeBay screen so that I get notifications when I am outbid, etc… I will usually manually bid in small increments until I am the highest bidder.
• Watch the bidding history.  Does the previous bidder jump in and outbid me?  Are there more than 1 or 2 people bidding on the item.
• Set my snipe with the maximum that I will pay based on what I know about the item, research I have done on others that are on the site, activity from the bidders, etc…  I always place my MAXIMUM bid into Gixen because you don’t get a second chance.

If it is a good day you win the item… On a bad day another sniper may jump in at the end with a higher maximum than yours… In the case of my Gixen test today I didn’t win because my maximum wasn’t high enough.

Overall Gixen has been working flawlessly.  I would put it in my recommend column as long as you use it understanding how eBay places bids.