eBay bans negative feedback for buyers, cuts listing fees

eBay announced some huge changes today, the summary is below.

Nobody will have a problem with the reduced listing fees, but a lot of sellers are going to be outraged that they can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers. I don't see how the seller has any leverage to prevent buyer fraud without the ability to report bad buyers via feedback.

eBay honcho Bill Cobb said there's "a lot of passion" among sellers about the feedback policy change. That's got to be the understatement of the decade.

1. Reduced Listing Fees
   Lower Insertion Fees and adjusting Final Value Fees, which reduces the up-front costs of selling on eBay. Free Gallery picture on every listing, and some additional feature discounts.
   • Lower insertion fees
   • Free Gallery picture with every listing
   • Lower fees for Gallery Plus, Picture Pack, and Feature Plus
   
   
2. Rewards for seller performance
   There will be discounts and incentives for sellers with the best customer satisfaction rates according to the anonymous five-star Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs).
   • More search exposure through Best Match
   • Fee discounts for PowerSellers
   • Increased protection for PowerSellers
   
   
3. Feedback Changes
   The strategy is to "increase buyer confidence" and "showcase good sellers."
   • Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.
   • Positive repeat customer Feedback will count and Feedback more than 12 months old won't.
   • Negative and neutral Feedback left by the buyer will be removed for transactions in which a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) or if the member is suspended.

Speaking of eBay...

I have a few review copies of this new eBay guide for those who are interested.

I have 10 copies listed on Amazon Marketplace for 1 cent (OMG -- I've become a penny seller!).

And of course there's an auction on eBay.

I'll sign your copy too. In return I'd appreciate it if you'd write an honest review of the book -- keeping in mind that it's a guide for eBay novice to intermediate sellers. If you're already a pro at eBay, this book won't be earth-shattering for you (although there is a great deal of eBay trivia indexed in it, which may be helpful. But no information about bookselling in particular).

I say these are "review" copies, but they are not marked that way -- these are the retail edition, and so their resale isn't prohibited.

Bezos: Auctions are too much fun for our customers

I've been waiting seven years for this explanation from Amazon chief Jeff Bezos. Why did auctions soar at eBay but flop at Amazon?

Pretty simple, Bezos says. Amazon customers just can't be bothered with auctions:

We make it really, really easy to buy things.... If you’re a customer who wants that kind of quick service, you do not want to wait till an auction closes. An auction is more about playing a game. There’s some fun involved. You’re not necessarily just trying to get the job done. It’s a different kind of thing and a different customer segment.

OK, I'll buy that. But further down Bezos gives a squirrelly explanation for why zShops got the ax. Something about it being stuck off in another department.

The real answer is that Half.com showed Amazon they could charge sellers 15 percent instead of 5 percent.

Taking the pulse of online auctions

If you're an auction seller -- on eBay, Amazon (remember those?) or any other site -- you may want to take the new survey at AuctionBytes.

No registration is required. I just completed the survey, and it took me about five minutes. When the results are released I'll post an item here.

I'm sure the results will be interesting, considering all the upheaval at eBay and Amazon these days. Specifically, I'm talking about the reduced viability of eBay Stores for booksellers, and Amazon's recent vaporization of zShops. Seriously, it seems eBay's fees are going up faster than college tuition and healthcare put together.

Apparently, our good friends in management at eBay and Amazon believe we are locked into their venues for life, no matter how high their fees, or how badly they cripple our storefronts. Perhaps, then, it's no coincidence that AuctionBytes' last survey found a huge, 253 percent increase in signups at Yahoo Stores -- clearly a sign that sellers are looking for a fair deal -- easy-to-use, branded storefronts that can generate traffic. I don't foresee any reversal of this trend, although I'm sure Google Base will siphon off some of the growth at Yahoo.

Q&A: What software should I use for selling books on eBay?

QUESTION: I sell books primarily on eBay, listing books worth more than $10 in my Store. For less valuable books, I auction them for two seven-day periods, then the unsold books go into the store. When there is a promotion, I put almost all the expensive books on "live."

Each book is scanned and "written" up through eBay's Seller Assistant Pro software. I also list about 400 of my more expensive books on Amazon. This is very time-consuming, and Sellers Assistant Pro is being retired by eBay, which is going to require lots of relearning.

Is there a better way? eBay's ISBN listings are erratic, and many titles miss pertinent keywords. But eBay still provides a great venue for sales -- many times I'm the only seller with a certain title listed.

ANSWER: You can also use eBay's TurboLister software to list auctions, fixed-price core listings, and Store items. After you input an ISBN, TurboLister also allows you to change the book title, just in case you want to add a keyword or ensure the author name isn't cut off.

TurboLister allows you to quickly relist any group of auctions (or fixed-price listings) with the click of one button. You just highlight the ones you want to relist.

TurboLister is free, but it does have its idiosyncrasies. If you need more automation, you might want to look at the new version of eBay's Blackthorne software, which is supposed to improve the migration from Seller's Assistant.

Another option is considering third-party software that would enable you to automate your inventory management on eBay, Amazon, and the other major bookselling sites. These services manage your listings and delete the ones that sell, so you don't sell the same book twice. Here's a list of these tools hosted by eBay.

Of course these services will cost you a monthly fee and sometimes a percentage of your sales. But if it gets you a lot more cashflow it might be worth it.

On eBay, start low to sell high

When I auction books on eBay, I always start them at a penny, no reserve. Why? My gut tells me bidders are drawn to auctions that already have lots of bids. And the best way to get bids is to start your auction at a penny.

Sure, I've taken a pounding on several auctions where the book sold for 1 cent. But I've also sold several books for more than the cover price after a bidding war ensued.

The eggheads at the Kellogg School of Management agree with me. In a psychological study, the authors document:

"... How and why, in the social setting of auctions, lower starting prices result in higher final prices. Three processes contribute to this effect. First, lower starting prices reduce barriers to entry, which increase traffic and generate higher final prices. Second, lower prices entice bidders to invest time and energy (creating sunk costs) and, consequently, escalate their commitments. Third, the traffic generated by lower starting prices can lead bidders to infer value in the item, thereby explaining previous findings that traffic begets more traffic."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

How about it? Is this ivory tower thinking, or reality?

eBay has a bright idea: Recommendations

What's the biggest difference between bookselling on Amazon and eBay? The way I look at it, it's recommendations.

The No. 1 driver of sales on Amazon is keyword searches -- buyers looking for a title or author name. No. 2 is recommendations.

Amazon creates demand for us, and that's why we pay 15 percent for our Marketplace sales. Amazon's customer base and its recommendations (in e-mails and on the Web site) result in tons of sales. The downside is, we depend on the customer figuring out what they want. Then they find us.

The flip side of this is eBay. On eBay, sellers have more license to create demand. The downside, of course, is you've got to work to make those sales. eBay knows a lot about sellers on its site, but it doesn't know much about the buyers.

Now eBay is taking a page from Amazon, and is paying people to write product reviews and it's developing a recommendation engine like Amazon's.

Netflix has had great success in recommending movies, much like Amazon recommends books. But will recommendations work on eBay? The software engineer who developed a recommendation system for Amazon Auctions, Greg Linden, has his doubts. As he recalls, Amazon pulled the plug on auction recommendations years ago because:

[I]t generated complaints from sellers who did not like competitors' items shown next to theirs.

I can already hear the howls of protest on the eBay boards once this feature is rolled out. But it appears eBay honchos have already decided it will increase sales, and they're going ahead.

How is bookselling on eBay going for you these days, and what's your take on auction recommendations?

Another take on bookselling: eBay for children's fiction books

I focus on selling a high volume of nonfiction books at fixed prices, mainly on Amazon, but plenty of people do just fine with a completely different approach: They sell fiction and children's books at auction on eBay, selling fewer books, but at higher prices.

There's even a how-to guide, How to Sell Used Books Using Online Auctions, an e-book by Elaine Krieg Smith. By focusing on antique and children's books which aren't adequately described on Amazon Marketplace, Elaine concentrates on selling small lots of books by topic targeted at homeschooling parents and teachers.

To be sure, there are some common principles in Elaine's book and mine, The Home-Based Bookstore: Good customer service, fulfillment, and keeping good records. And we both agree on not wasting time buying and listing books that won't sell. The ultimate goal is maximizing your profit while expending the least amount of time and energy.

If you're interested in finding out more, my friend Christine has this review of Elaine's book posted on her blog, "The Thinking Mother."