Here in the States, today is Independence Day. This is perfect occasion to blog about declaring your independence from eBay, but after thinking about it for a while, I think discussing preparations for independence is more appropriate. After all, while Americans declared independence in 1776, we didn’t achieve it until 1783.
Your independence from eBay might take a while as well. Please note that I have never advocated leaving eBay altogether in this blog (although you should be prepared to). My point continues to be that true independence means that you don’t rely on any one source for your income – especially eBay. While auctions were the origins of my online business, my online efforts new generate income through a variety of sources. Auction sales are just a small portion of my internet revenue.
That’s how it should be for you. So to help you celebrate “Prepare for Independence Day,” today I’m offering some ideas on how you can expand your eBay business to develop multiple sources of income.
First, think about the reasons why you were attracted to selling on eBay in the first place…
- Easy to do
- No financial risk
- No technical skills required
- Lots of targeted traffic actively searching for your type of product or service
- Fun and excitement
- Etc., etc.,
These positive attributes paint a rosy picture of e-commerce, and for the most part, this “picture” is valid. That’s why entrepreneurs (like you) continue to join and stay with eBay. The payback potential is high and there is a strong sense of community among auction sellers. On a daily basis, you get to meet and/or do business with people who share similar interests to yours.
However, it’s only after you have been in the auction business for awhile that the blush begins to fade a bit. eBay requires real work just like any other real business. And therein lies the rub… all your hard work to succeed is not building a business of your own with true value (i.e., one that can be sold). It’s really building eBay’s equity. And we all know that eBay is presently worth billions of dollars… and growing.
Here’s why eBay has the upper hand at this point (later on, you will see how to “turn the tables” on eBay) …
- eBay gets you, and millions of others, to do the tough, physical part (sourcing, packaging, shipping, payment collection, etc.) for them, from home, as free labor. So they don’t ever need to own, warehouse, or ship a single product.
- eBay collects fees for each transaction – which now adds up to billions of dollars per year.
- eBay owns all the traffic — their automated software runs the network of buyers and sellers. This is not good news for you because if you don’t own your traffic, you can’t own your business.
So, realistically, you are working for eBay. You are depending on eBay for what is basically an hourly wage, while your “business” fails to build its own equity.
Meanwhile, eBay is constantly changing the rules in the middle of the game. Consider the (significant) policy changes implemented just in the five months prior to the publishing of this post:
- Best Match
- Feedback changes
- Fee changes
- Ban on the sale of digital downloads
- Mandating maximum allowable shipping charge in some markets
All those hours of scrounging for boxes, packing sold items securely, trips to the post office, e-mail correspondence, payment collection… and it’s eBay who is profiting! Arggh! It’s time to turn the tables!…
It’s time to take back your business and dreams!
But wait! There is no cause for panic… you don’t need to stop your online auction business (it’s making you money) or start over (continue to build upon what you have now). You just need a web presence, an understanding of the difference between having a website and an internet business, and the motivation to develop and follow a business plan that provides financial independence.
Take control of your business and its future. Here’s how…
STEP #1) Own your targeted traffic – This is essential. As was mentioned earlier, if you don’t own your traffic, you don’t own your business. So how do you eliminate your dependency on eBay for traffic? Simple… build a keyword-focused, content-rich and search engine-optimized web site related to your theme. As you steadily add web pages, more and more interested, targeted traffic will come directly to your site through search engines rather than via eBay. Building web pages with high search engine rankings is the most effective way to solidify your own traffic foundation. And that foundation is an essential prerequisite for the next step…
STEP #2) Diversify – Use eBay selling as only onepart your monetization plan. Once you see your traffic gaining momentum, introduce two or three additional income streams that fit with your theme. One of them will, of course, be your already established auction business. By opening up other options, eBay no longer has the same grip over your business as the sole money-making source. This independence allows you to use eBay, rather than the reverse – eBay using you.
Diversification helps you make every visitor count. For illustration purposes, let’s say that you specialize in US commemorative coins. Your monetization plan might look like this…list a few coins at eBay on a regular basis, sell coins from your site, promote your locally-based coin appraisal service and/or recommend a couple of quality coin-collection books at Amazon. Chances are your site’s high-value content will PREsell your visitors to follow through and generate income from at least one of those streams. (And speaking of informative content, remember to check out Google’s AdSense program as another revenue-producing option for your site.) Diversification will definitely improve your bottom line — which leads nicely into the third and final step…
STEP #3) Build equity – The way to do this may surprise you… publish a quality, information-packed email newsletter. If you do that, you will easily build a large subscribers’ address list. This list is more than just a list of names and e-mail addresses. It is your lifeblood. It will help you generate recurring sales (or commissions or leads, etc.). This is THE essential ingredient for sustaining your business longterm. Sure, you’ll get some signups to your newsletter from your eBay traffic – especially, your buying eBay customers. But now you can really grow your own list and build a credible satisfying relationship with present and potential customers.
So why are these three steps so critical?…
If eBay tripled their fees tomorrow, or did something else that would have a detrimental effect on your auction business, you would still have all your traffic generated by your site, your newsletter subscribers’ list, and your customers. And you could react assertively and immediately to eBay’s actions by either…
- Moving your visitors to other auction sites in a flash or by switching some of your auction business to a category-specific auction option.
Shifting greater emphasis to other monetization models. - Modifying your newsletter content appropriately, so that recurring business generates other types of revenues (for example, direct sales instead of auctions).
The bottom line?
YOU own your business (and not eBay). You depend only on yourself. And your equity is yours. A WIN situation for you!
eBay will come to love it because you will be sending them more traffic than they send you. You will be reversing their leakage problem (i.e., once someone buys from a seller, many simply “buys direct” the next time.) A WIN situation for eBay!
It looks like the auction selling “picture” just turned very rosy again!
Partial Refunds – Another Method of Increasing Your S&H DSR
Filed Under Best Match, Sellers' Insights | 3 Comments
In my last post, I discussed a tactic that I employed successfully to increase my eBay Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) for Shipping and Handling Fees to 4.7 – the threshold required for “increased exposure” under the Best Match search algorithm.
For many sellers, those who sell at a fixed-price or sell goods that are expensive to ship, offering a $0.99 shipping and handling fee just doesn’t make good business sense.
So, here’s another idea to help sellers in this situation draw attention to the fact that they offer “5-Star” service and value in the shipping and handling aspect of the sales transaction: provide small refunds to the buyer for “excess shipping fees paid.”
If you use PayPal, this technique is fairly simple. List your auction with whatever you normally charge for shipping and handling. As you ship the item, choose a shipping method that does not display the postage fee and then immediately send your bidder a partial refund via PayPal for $0.50 – $0.75. Include a note explaining that you overestimated the shipping and handling costs and that the customer was due a partial refund.
Is this technique manipulative or deceptive? Maybe – but it’s no more deceptive than eBay making the customer think that a 4-Star Shipping & Handling DSR rating is “Reasonable,” even though, according to eBay’s Pinks, sellers with a (“Reasonable”) 4.0 average S&H DSR, ”represent the bottom 1% of all sellers.” Until the system is fixed, sellers need to work within it in order to stay afloat.
The purpose here is to draw attention to the fact that you actually charge “Very Reasonable” shipping fees – and if it takes a small refund to make the bidder notice that fact, then so be it.
Odds are that your buyer will be delighted with your shipping and handling fees.
Issuing a partial refund to someone who made a payment via PayPal is relatively painless. PayPal will even return to your account whatever fees you’ve paid for that portion you refund, however small.
Here’s the instructions from PayPal’s website:
In addition to being able to refund your buyer anytime within 60 days of receiving a payment, you can also opt to send a partial refund.
Your original transaction fee will be credited to you. When issuing partial refunds, a portion of the original fees paid will be returned to you.
Here’s how it works:
- Log in to your PayPal account.
- Click the History sub-tab.
- Find the payment you would like to refund.
- Click Details to open the Transaction Details page.
- Click the Refund Payment link.
- Enter the refund amount and click Submit