Red Ink Diary

This week Saturday Silliness is not silly at all. Red Ink Diary supports Kiva, a program through which ordinary people can make micro-loans to entrepreneurs. This is not charity, it is enabling people to better their lives.

You can read about our current loans in this article “Kiva and Me and You and You and You”
For the ultimate insight into what it’s like being a Kiva Fellow, take a look at Kieran Ball’s wonderful and entertaining video “A Fistful of Dollars”, which he shot during his fellowship with AMK in Cambodia.

Y’all come back!

When I moved to Hawaii in 1980 you could find in any tourist shop a style of muu-muu no self respecting local would be seen dead in. They were one size fits all, vee neck and the sleeve was part of the whole enormous piece of fabric. They sold like hotcakes together with the matching aloha shirt for hubby.

If you were very large they clung in all the wrong places, if you were small you looked like an incredibly gaudy perambulating pup tent. Do not ask how I know this I am small now and I was quite a bit smaller then.

One size fits all is an oxymoron in clothing and also in sales venues.

Once upon a time

You could find anything you wanted on eBay. They built advertising campaigns on that theme and they were all true. One of my favorite eBay stories is of getting a phone call asking where an American lady could find a sporran for her son who needed to wear traditional Highland dress at a wedding. I found a telephone number for an outfitters in Edinburgh but their sporrans were very expensive. Just for fun I looked on eBay and to my amazement, there they were, I tell no lie, more than a hundred listed. She was able to choose the style, size and price and she was a happy customer.

eBay changed direction

This was a management choice and these people are paid big bucks for doing what they do. eBay’s preferred sellers are now large merchants, very high volume listers and those are the ones who are rewarded with final value rebates and customer service.

With fee increases, and the changes to search, many small sellers found that they were not able to be both competitive and profitable.

I was one of them. Because I live on an island my choice of product is limited. I must pay freight on anything I buy to sell unless I drop-ship. Freight alone can eat profit margins. What I have sold for years is low ASP (Average Sales Price), but lightweight. I was not “routed off the site” because I was a bad seller, I left because my profit potential was not worth the increased stress and risk to my feedback.

Some chose to stay

If you are happy and profitable on eBay I salute you. I know for a fact you worked very hard just keeping up with the 50+ platform policy changes last year.

Many of those changes, while burdensome (def.#2) to sellers were seen as necessary by eBay management to increase the perception of trust and safety for buyers. Only eBay knows if it is working.

However, while buyers may feel safer, there is higher risk for sellers. It is now much easier to defraud sellers with chargebacks once the goods are shipped and correspondingly harder for sellers, particularly smaller sellers to defend against. Those who are selling inexpensive collectibles are unlikely to be much of a target. Sellers of expensive goods are more vulnerable even if they follow every guideline and rule. This January story about Cornerstone Supply from Trading Assistant Journal is by no means unique.

Niche Sites

There are many choices for smaller sellers today. The trick is to pick the right one for your product. While building a cookie cutter website is comparatively easy, getting meaningful traffic without spending a lot of money is not so easy. It is possible, especially if you have a truly niche product but not instant. For those who need income a sales venue is the smarter way to go, perhaps while building the website traffic.

Apart from the niche sites there are any number of venues, all shapes and sizes, none of them have eBay’s traffic and for the most part none of them will have eBay’s sales, but, they do not have eBay’s fees or degree of risk.

If you go to any of these venues from Etsy to eFleaa expecting them to work like eBay and have eBay traffic you will be disappointed. Each sale venue has its own rules, payment methods and preferred inventory type.

I think we can agree

The person who is going to buy one of my exquisitely feminine limited quantity die cut Photo Mattes (yes it is a plug, click the picture to enlarge or click here to go to the item) might not be very interested in the latest miracle of technology, I probably should not list it on a site that specializes in electronics.

Even a part timer, hobby seller, or micro-seller should pick a venue where people go to buy things similar to what you sell and that allows you to make a profit, otherwise you might as well list it on freecycle.org or throw it in the trash.

It is your responsibility to read and understand not only the site rules but how it works and just as importantly how to make it work for you. Saying “I didn’t know I was supposed to . . ” is not going to miraculously get back the sales you missed.

Y’all come back!

Full disclosure: I am an ex-eBay seller currently selling on my own website and Bonanzle.com

This is the tale of two venues eBay vs Bonanzle and the blind test that wasn’t a test so much as a flawed experiment.

I was a bit petunia’ed last week after listening to last week’s ColderICE B.S. Walks When Money Talks radio show which eCommerce personality John Lawson hosts on TalkShoe every Wednesday at 1.14pm EST. I have learned to cool off and research before blogging which is why you are getting this almost a week later.

Why was I bent out of shape? John trashed my favorite venue, Bonanzle, you can listen to the show using this link.

I have a lot of respect for John and made complimentary comments last year when he made his blogging debut during PeSA/ECMTA 2008 on the Trading Assistant Journal. The fact that I like John doesn’t mean he is infallible (def.# 3) he is human and occasionally wrong. Although I do not know John in person, I do know that he is honest, so for him to trash Bonanzle the way he did, something was very much awry(def.#2).

Minimal research found the answer, pilot error.

Background and the Blind Test
John Lawson is the CEO of Third Power Outlet, he sells urban fashion both on his own website and eBay where he is a PowerSeller. John has been active on eBay since March 1999.

John opened a Bonanzle booth in January this year. He wanted to do a blind test or comparison between eBay and Bonanzle. He set up an alternative eBay ID and imported his listings from that ID to Bonanzle. He did clean up the listings.

The classic example of a blind test is the ‘Pepsi Challenge’.

One of the most important parts of setting up a blind test is making sure you are comparing like to like. Offering someone a glass of jello and a glass of soda pop to compare would not work, your testing is only valuable if it is comprehensive, well thought-out, and reasonable. If your test has holes, then it has blind spots. An inadequately planned test is a waste of time and provides bad information, because the interpretation of the flawed test results will be misleading.
At one point in his broadcast John refers to a double blind test, but I think this was an error of speech because:

In a double-blind experiment, neither the individuals nor the researchers know who belongs to the control group and the experimental group. Only after all the data have been recorded (and in some cases, analyzed) do the researchers learn which individuals are which.

eBay vs Bonanzle

eBay is an enormous venue. It used to be the place where you could find any type of antique, vintage or collectible merchandise, now it is much more commodity oriented. The new BaySpeak phrase is “secondary markets” and eBay wants large, high volume off-price retailers, liquidators, wholesalers and outlets.

Bonanzle is a niche site where you will ‘find everything but the ordinary’, it is not the place where you would go to search for cell phones although there are probably some listed. The Bonanzle focus is on collectibles and unusual items sold by small sellers specializing in friendly customer service. Think boutique as opposed to WalMart.

On eBay the seller has a choice of listing formats and pays a fee to list. John tells me he chose the 30 day fixed price listing format for his test, which cost him 35c per listing every 30 days.

Bonanzle does not charge a listing fee, has no auctions, offers a choice between fixed price and OBO (or best offer), listings do not expire after 30 days.

On eBay Google will come and ’scrape’ the information off non-auction listings on the site. If your eBay listing contains information that Google does not like, the listing gets dumped.

On Bonanzle sellers are provided with an individual xml file to upload their booth Google feed. The process is completely automatic once the seller has initiated it. Sellers may choose from a daily upload, recommended, a one time or monthly feed. The process takes about 10 minutes and there is a comprehensive help page with instructions.

Ooops!

As stated earlier, I was a bit peeved at the Bonanzle trashing, so after I had cooled off a bit I did a little research. Research is what I am good at. Looking at the Third PowerOutlet booth on Bonanzle I could not understand why John has so few sales on Bonanzle. I found the Union Jack flag I bought from him through the site search.

To my surprise I saw that John has not set up his Google feed submission. When I spoke to him on the telephone yesterday he told me he had not realized he needed to. So far as the internet is concerned Third Power Outlet on Bonanzle is invisible, I get about 70% of my sales off Google.

How could this happen? It is very simple, John is an extremely expert and experienced seller, on eBay. He assumed he knew, and he didn’t. Bonanzle is NOT eBay.

Comparing sales on Bonanzle without implementing feeds is like listing on eBay without pictures.

Fair Test? Maybe not!

On eBay John is offering the same flag I bought, with free shipping (which I received,) at auction with a buy it now option for about 40% less. Each insertion is costing him 40c (35c + 5c) every 7 days and he is paying 8.75% or 61c in final value fees. Each sale is costing him a minimum of $1.01 in eBay fees alone. A Bonanzle sale would cost 50c yet the flag is priced $3 higher. Of course to get any sales on Bonanzle he should activate his feeds or it is all a waste of time. Auntie May loves to say “Time is money, don’t waste either.”

It takes a big man to say “I goofed”. Maybe John will explain; after all B.S. Walks When Money Talks and your money is talking to you John!

Y’all come back!

Full disclosure: I am an ex-eBay seller currently selling on my own website and Bonanzle.com

Goodbye Richard Ambrose, Director of Trust and Safety for eBay UK, leaving eBay after six years “for new challenges”. To read the write-up at Tamebay you would think he had died and gone to heaven. It is a eulogy.

Almost a year ago in an open letter to Lorrie Norrington I said

“A large part of the blame can be directly attributed to your PR department who are arrogant, rude and dismissive. The ‘noise’ and ‘routed off the site’ comments will still be resonating long after Mr Lieberman has moved on.

In Australia it would be safe to say Simon Smith is despised, moving him would solve a lot of problems in that country. Your T&S chief in the UK, Richard Ambrose has earned the reputation (in less than a year) of being a vindictive and arrogant micromanaging cruiser of the discussion boards who is openly contemptuous of sellers. This attitude is increasingly prevalent among your employees towards your customers and it is not helping.”

See Dick go, or where is Dick?

Recently eBay UK decided to allow the pre-sale of event tickets, this was predictably followed by allegations of large scale fraud. Amounts close to $1M were mentioned on BBC radio last month.  With the cancellation of the Michael Jackson concerts in London, this policy is likely to prove expensive, and damaging to the public perception of trust and safety when purchasing on eBay.

Strangely, there is no mention of Dickie’s departure on the eBay UK Announcement Board. This leads to speculation that his departure was not entirely voluntary. Chris Dawson has repeatedly stated this speculation is unfounded.

Richard was well known for issuing lifetime posting bans on the Discussion Boards and was a master of the disparaging comment, for example:

• “It does not matter how many sellers leave, for every one that leaves three more take their place”
• “I think we will see some sellers leaving the site because of this change - mostly dodgy ones.”
• “Sellers are not not paying for visibility”
• Regarding Best Match: “At the moment the ‘formula’ is super-simple.”

Hear Dick speak

One, two, three (four, five?)

Simon Smith was the first to go, then Jose Mallabo erstwhile Director of Corporate Communications disappeared, now Richard Ambrose. Only one man (other than Mr Disruptive Innovation) has done more damage to eBay and I doubt we would get that lucky, but there is always hope.

Y’all come back!