eBay popping up on Amazon and Google searches

I could not believe my eyes when I saw this story on AuctionBytes about eBay's Browser Highlighter download software. As the article indicates, it "allows integration of listings within product and search pages on competing websites, including Amazon and Google."

Amazon is going to have these guys in court within weeks, that's my prediction (for what it's worth). I've seen lots of software like this that does comparison shopping, but it's always with an affiliate arrangement. If I'm understanding this one correctly, it seems like eBay is trying to intercept customers -- or at least, it looks dangerously close to that.

When you look at the official Web site, though, it only mentions Web real estate owned by eBay -- Skype, PayPal and StumbleUpon.

Anyone heard of this before? It's supposedly in beta, although it was mentioned on TechCrunch last fall.

Bonanzle ... eBay replacement or classic TV western?

Are you selling many books these days on eBay? I still have an eBay store and pay about $30 in fees a month, but the sales (a couple per week?) hardly cover the rent these days. It seems that eBay has gotten away from what made it great -- collectibles, auctions, and a growing user base.

I have not even bothered to figure out whether the upcoming integration of Half.com and eBay is going to totally replace the need for eBay Stores or not. What do you think?

Skip McGrath has a great article today on a relatively new site that sounds like it has the sizzle that eBay had in its early days: Bonanzle. Skip prints this recent note he received from a lady who's had success on the site:

I've only finished my booth, but I've sold 5 books in launching it. So, we'll see, but I'll tell you what is really cool about Bonanzle. One, there are no insertion fees, you can use Pay Pal, Google Checkout, allow money orders, etc. and can post up to 4 pictures on an item for free.

Get the rest of the details here at Skip McGrath's blog.

By the way, on a totally different topic -- have you tried Twitter? I've been on it a week and am addicted. If you are on there (or want to join), give me a "follow" here. I will be posting some bookselling items there when they are too short to include on this blog.

Will eBay boycott bring boatloads of sellers to Amazon?

The week-long eBay boycott set to begin tomorrow is getting huge play in the media. Sellers are outraged about a series of changes to feedback, fees, and search results. Here's a good rundown of the changes at CNN/Money:

• Fee hike sparks seller rebellion

• Backlash: Rival sites court eBay sellers

• Outraged sellers plot strike

• PayPal funds freeze draws fire

• Talk back: eBay forum discussion

• 5 sellers who ditched eBay

And here's a YouTube video that states the grievances of sellers devastatingly well.




In part, it says:

New CEO John Donahoe] called eBay sellers and buyers "nothing more than noise." He then proceeded to call eBay buyers and sellers "a flea market" and implied that he is ashamed to be a part of it.

In his very next breath, Mr. Donahoe then announced yet another eBay fee increase. This increase raises fees by up to 66 percent higher for some sellers. eBay management had the bright idea to market this increase as a "fee decrease," blatantly insulting the intelligence of millions of buyers and sellers worldwide."

True enough. But as noted by Ina Steiner on AuctionBytes, the impact of the week-long boycott will be hard to measure. eBay has coyly scheduled a temporary listing fee reduction to coincide with the boycott.

Meanwhile, Amazon is doing all it can to attract eBay refugees. "We want all sellers on our site," Amazon's business solutions chief, Matt Williams, told Steiner.

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

eBay cuts media listing fees, but shuts the book on feedback

It seems eBay is starting to recognize that sellers are really steamed about the recent policy changes. In response, the company is making what looks like a token adjustments in fees in some categories, including books. But there's no give on the issue of feedback--sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral ratings for bad buyers.

eBay is slashing insertion fees for these categories by up to 50 percent. For example, auctions with start prices of $1.00 to $9.99 will cost 25 cents in insertion fees, compared with 40 cents under the previous scenario.

Here are the changes, effective February 20:

In the Books, Music, Movies and Video Game software categories, eBay will offer lower insertion fees for the first three insertion tiers as follows:

$0.01 – 0.99 (auction-style only)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .20
New Media fee: $ .10

$1.00 - 9.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .40
New Media fee: $ .25

$10.00 – 24.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .60
New Media fee: $ .35

But eBay marketplace honcho Lorrie Norrington pooh-poohed seller concerns that the recent feedback changes would hurt business. "We will proceed with our plans to evolve our feedback system and with the weighting of Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) in search, as announced," she said. "They are both central to our plans and will aid in providing a great buying experience from sellers buyers can trust."

By a landslide, eBay sellers say feedback changes will hurt business

Nearly 99 percent of eBay sellers responding to a survey last week said the site's recent feedback changes will hurt business. The only thing sellers were happy about was enhanced PayPal protection for Powersellers:

	Neg	Pos
Feedback changes	98.7%	1.3%
Fee changes	86.3%	13.7%
Best Match search visibility changes	83.3%	16.7%
Seller Standards	84.9%	15.1%
PayPal Protection for eBay PowerSellers	29.6%	70.4%

Read the full report here at AuctionBytes.

After eBay policy changes, Amazon sees surge of new sellers

No, it's not your imagination, there really are a lot more people selling on Amazon lately.

Amazon claims it has seen a spike in new sellers after several controversial policy changes by eBay.

"We've certainly heard of frustration with other marketplaces, and we've seen a significant increase in registrations," said Matt Williams, Amazon's business solutions general manager.

Longtime eBay seller Debi Lee said Amazon has worked well for certain items in her repertoire. She tired of eBay's tactics and now uses the site primarily to educate consumers about her products...

The full article is posted here at Fortune Small Business.

eBay will give special deal to PowerSellers

Ever since its founding, eBay has emphasized its "level playing field." That meant small sellers were treated exactly the same as the megasellers, and nobody had a special advantage.

Now, with longtime CEO Meg Whitman on her way out the door and with eBay trying to revive its growth, it's offering a sweetheart deal for PowerSellers who maintain certain feedback ratings. Check out the comments at the bottom of this New York Times blog post, the first one calls for a Feb. 18 boycott:

Specifically, the discount applies to PowerSellers, those who sell more than $1,000 a month on eBay and meet other criteria. They will get a discount of 5 percent or 15 percent off the final value fee—the percentage of the sale price eBay takes—depending on their feedback ratings.

The discounts are tied to eBay’s new “detailed seller rating” system that asks buyers to rank sellers on a one to five point scale four categories: item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges.

Q&A: Is climate control essential for storing used books?

QUESTION: Most of the books I have for sale are stored on shelves in my garage. I keep the more expensive books inside my house.

My garage is clean and dry, and the books are well off the ground, but I am concerned about the temperature extremes. I live in New England, so it can get quite cold in the winter. In the summer I used a dehumidifier, which definitely made a difference. But there is little I can do about the cold. What effect, if any, will the dry, cold air have on these garage stored books?

ANSWER: When I started selling books online full-time, I lived in a one-bedroom apartment. I had to go shopping for storage space, and all the storage units with heating/air conditioning seemed outrageously expensive. Since I couldn't afford climate-controlled storage for my books, I got a regular Public Storage unit, which resembled a single-car garage. It had a rickety orange door that rolled down in front; it was about as thick as a tin can. On the right is a picture of the place -- I must have lugged 5 tons of books in and out of there.

So for my first three or four years, my books weren't protected from temperate extremes at all. Pretty soon, I had about 15,000 books listed (I had to get two more storage units and was paying $1,200 a month is storage fees) and I was worried about the effect on the books. With all the temperature and humidity changes, I was afraid the books would crack to pieces.

Fortunately, I never noticed any damage to any of the books -- except for one that got mildewed. That's what I think the main problem is -- mold and mildew. I never had much of a problem with it, even though the summertime here in Virginia is very humid.

Also, I turn over inventory relatively quickly. My average book isn't sitting there for years, deteriorating all the time. Within a few months, the average book is sold and shipped to a buyer. If my books had been sitting around like this for years, maybe some damage would become apparent.

In my storage units, I set out mothballs and bug repellent but I'm not sure whether those did any good or not. I never found any silverfish. Of course, the books worth more than $100 I kept indoors. And now I have a big basement for storing all my books, and I have better book-preservation habits.

One hassle I did have at my storage units: During the winters, whenever we got a big snow, I'd have to shovel the snow from the front of my storage doors, and it would take forever. That's a great way to spend your morning -- huffing and puffing, sweating like a pig in your winter coat, with a baby crying in the car. But I could never afford to wait a day or two until Public Storage got around to plowing -- I had to get my orders out.

Anyone else have stories about makeshift book storage or techniques for protection from the elements?

Another book lover mourns the pre-Internet days

Here's a nice little newspaper biography about Wayne Kee, a rabid book collector in the Northwest.

He tells a good story about passing up on a chance to buy an1814 edition of the Lewis and Clark journals for around $6,000, something he could sell today for $200,000.

But he seems to have mixed feeling about the Internet's impact on book collecting and selling:

Before the Internet came along, it was a wonderful world out
there, finding books. Now that the Internet has come along, everything has come up now, and you have a true market in books. Now you put them on eBay, and you can no longer find something at a decent price. But the one thing that it has
done is brought out a lot of books that people didn’t know about before.

OK, who's going to tell this guy about Amazon?

eBay's Griff offers shaky defense of feedback changes

After the feedback changes announced this week at eBay, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an angry, torch-wielding mob beating down the front door of eBay's headquarters right now.

The new feedback policy prevents sellers from giving a bad buyer a neutral or negative feedback.

Huh? I've had about 5,000 transactions on eBay/Half and I've never left a negative for a buyer. But I should have the right to do so. It's called checks and balances. It's what regulates eBay's marketplace.

As you might expect, eBay's employees are all defending the decision, despite the outrage from sellers. Today the dean of eBay University, Griff, weighed in on his blog. He argues that eBay feedback had become meaningless because too many buyers are afraid to hit a bad seller with negative feedback, even when it's deserved.

The way it's supposed to work, Griff argues, is that sellers should automatically give buyers positive feedback. Then, buyers won't fear a retaliatory negative rating by the seller. Then, according to Griff's logic, the feedback scores of crummy sellers won't be inflated, and buyers will rest easy.

Here's how Griff puts it exactly:

Many sellers maintained a 99-100% positive Feedback rating by building their whole business strategy around “customer first” by providing the best possible experience for all their buyers. Let’s call them “A1” sellers. The majority of these “A1” sellers left Feedback for their buyers upon receipt of payment...

Many other sellers maintained a 99-100% by exploiting the system’s inherent built-in weakness: the implied threat of retaliation for a received negative. These sellers – we’ll call them “A2” sellers – never left Feedback first, but always waited to leave Feedback after the buyer left Feedback for them.

Griff, I beg to differ. Many sellers--like me, for instance-- who've been burned by irresponsible buyers now make it a habit of leaving feedback only after they've heard that the customer is satisfied. And in most cases, we know whether the buyer is happy when they leave feedback. (Needless to say, if they're not happy, I fix things.)

Griff, I'm not pulling this out of thin air, eBay itself approves this practice. It's in black and white, right here in eBay's official Feedback Tutorial:

Either approach is acceptable.... One reason sellers wait until a buyer has left feedback is they take the feedback as the signal that the buyer is satisfied with the purchase and no further customer support is needed.

Frankly, to be told I'm an "A2 seller" on eBay is pretty offensive to me. I've bent over backwards to ensure that each one of my customers was happy with their purchase.

What's your take on this?

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.

Another shoe is ready to drop at eBay

Big changes are afoot at eBay. A new chief executive is on the way in, and Meg Whitman is on the way out.

At the top of the agenda:

Shifting eBay's emphasis from auctions to fixed-priced listing, which could make the experience of buying on eBay more like the one customers have come to expect from sites like Amazon.

Fixed-price sales now account for 40 percent of eBay's revenue. Who knew?

An announcement on a new fee structure is expected next week. I am guessing -- I'm way out on a limb here -- that fees for sellers will be higher.

If eBay can improve its search function and repeat-business action, higher fees might be worth it.

One area where eBay is expected to CUT fees: image hosting. That's long overdue, if you ask me. The more product images on eBay, the more sales. Encouraging multiple photos for listings without a fee penalty makes a lot of sense.

There's a lot of speculation about what this means for eBay Store sellers. For those of you who sell on eBay, how do your costs compare to Amazon when you add up insertion, final-value, and PayPal fees, compared to Amazon's 15-percent Marketplace commissions?

Google Base service provider throws in the towel

Remember BuyBundle, the service for listing your Amazon and eBay items on Google Base? It looks like they've called it quits, and have sent this message out to members (thanks to BeachSideBooks for sharing):

Dear BuyBundle Seller,

We would like to update you on the status of BuyBundle's operations.

BuyBundle was an attempt to bring the reach of Google Base to independent sellers. Unfortunately, Google Base has been slow in catching on. We waited patiently for over a year but given the current status of Google Base, we are not sure how long it will be before Google Base becomes a viable channel.

We are officially suspending operations from January 1, 2008. Till then, the site will be open for sellers. You can check your account and take care of existing orders. We are closing the site for new buyers so there are no more pending orders.

Thanks for being a part of BuyBundle community.

I haven't heard much about Google Base recently and its effectiveness as a bookselling platform. Personally I had taken a wait-and-see approach to see if brought in a decent amount of sales for other people. I didn't want to have to monitor it if it was only bringing in negligible business.

This isn't a knock against BuyBundle, whose team seemed to have a lot of great ideas. They couldn't help it that Google has left this Base thing on the back burner indefinitely. I don't think Base will ever take off until it's organized into something like a marketplace where people can compare prices, merchants, etc., easily. Opposition from Amazon surely didn't help.

I can only guess that Google has bigger fish to fry right now. Or maybe they were afraid of inviting government regulation. They have so much control of the Internet already. They practically control Internet searching and advertising completely. If they started taking over Internet shopping people would really be up in arms.

Should Amazon buy eBay? Ho ho ho!!!

Here's an interesting but hilariously misinformed item on the New York Times' Bits blog raising the possibility of Amazon buying eBay.

The author and the dozens of commenting readers argue that either Amazon should buy eBay's auction technology or build its own. That's brilliant, Einstein. Except that Amazon buried its auctions section about seven years ago.

For most of the Internet age, eBay has been a Wall Street darling, while Amazon's stock has been in the cellar. That's turned around dramatically in the past year, with Amazon's stock price tripling.

I don't see anything Amazon has to gain by buying eBay, do you? Amazon already has all the sellers they want. The only thing they'd do is inherit eBay's problems.

I think Amazon has enough to worry about. I have a hunch that their Marketplace business is down over the past year. Once that becomes common knowledge they're going to have a tough time explaining why. And there are enough distractions with this Fulfillment by Amazon boondoggle.

Should sellers be able to leave negative feedback for buyers?

It's sort of a moot point at Amazon, since hardly any of the buyers know what buyer feedback is. But over at eBay, feedback is a totally different animal. At eBay, feedback is a seller's entire reputation, and buyers pay attention to their own feedback too.

At Amazon, sellers piggyback on Amazon's reputation somewhat. Half of the buyers don't even realize they're buying from a third party on Marketplace. And it's pretty obvious that Amazon prefers to hide buyer feedback because it doesn't want to irritate any of those buyers. Perhaps Amazon feels it can't afford to lose a longtime customer who may bolt from Amazon completely if they feel insulted after getting a bad rating from a seller.

Now there's speculation that eBay is thinking of going even further than Amazon -- by forcing sellers to leave positive feedback for buyers who pay promptly. As Ina Steiner writes at AuctionBytes:

The etiquette of leaving feedback has been debated for years, such as the question of who should leave feedback first - buyer or seller - and when. Those who leave feedback first often feel their trading partner then has the upper hand and can wield the threat of negative feedback as a weapon unless their demands -- reasonable or not -- are satisfied.

eBay has been surveying buyers about whether they'd like automatic positive feedback. Some sellers believe the cake is already baked -- that eBay is going ahead with this, and is doing the survey only as a formality.

This would fit in with eBay's recent emphasis on fixed-price transactions and no-hassle buying at eBay Express. But no wonder rank-and-file sellers are livid about the idea of automatic positives for buyers.

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.

eBay tests jury system for disputed feedbacks

It's been a long, long, time since I've heard an original idea about how to resolve feedback disputes. Now AuctionBytes reports on something that just might work -- a new eBay program being tested in the UK called "Community Court."

It works like this: eBayers who want to contest a negative feedback rating can let a jury of 100 eBay peers decide the case. If 70 jurors agree with the seller, eBay removes the feedback. Otherwise, it's a hung jury and the feedback remains.

eBay has obviously put a lot of time into developing Community Court rules, and I hope it works well and migrates to the U.S.

I'll bet most of the people who bother to participate in something like this will be sellers. They know what's at stake, and will tend to give other sellers the benefit of the doubt. But I don't think jurors will automatically let bad sellers off the hook when they receive a legitimate negative feedback. Otherwise feedback is meaningless and doesn't help buyers or sellers.

The only way I can think of that Community Court might be abused was if unethical sellers were able to stack the jury with their cronies. Surely eBay has thought of a way to prevent this ...

eBay's new feedback system could hurt small sellers

If you're an eBay seller, you should check out Skip McGrath's blog Make Money on eBay.

Skip is taking eBay to task for its new feedback design, which allows buyers to rate sellers anonymously on four criteria: Item as Described, Communication, Shipping Time, and Shipping & Handling Charges.

These eBay "detailed seller ratings" are similar to the "optional questions" that Amazon customers are prompted to complete while submitting feedback in response to Amazon's 21-day reminder e-mail. With Amazon, the optional questions don't figure into your feedback score. But on eBay, not only are the detailed ratings reflected in a star display, there's no way for the seller to find out which customers dinged their ratings.

Soon this will be a huge deal because, as Skip points out, in 2008 eBay will begin sorting search results by these detailed seller ratings. Sellers with the best ratings will be on top, and searches won't be filtered by auction ending time anymore.

If you get lots of feedback, your positives will cover up the occasional negative. But low-volume sellers who get dinged once or twice take a big hit:

This seller, for example, had one or two buyers unhappy with the delivery time. But the seller has no way of knowing who, and no way of resolving the problem or misunderstanding. If there really was a problem with delivery, perhaps the seller could refund the shipping fee. On the other hand, maybe the buyer didn't read the shipping terms. There's just no way to know (and nothing to prevent competitors from sabotaging your detailed ratings).

My own eBay feedback has been dinged on "Shipping & handling charges" even though I charge a flat $3.49. What do these buyers want -- free shipping on everything?

eBay launches social-shopping 'neighborhoods'

eBay is allowing users to create "neighborhoods" organized around certain types of merchandise. This is just getting started, but it seems to have vast potential.

Here's one for Stephen King fans. As you can see, the neighborhood page pulls together listings, book reviews, guides, blogs, and discussion posts related to King books -- and you could create one for any other niche.

It's a pretty neat "social shopping" idea, and you can probably see how seller could tap this feature for free advertising. For example, if you were selling a first edition signed by King, you could come right to this neighborhood and post your details to the discussion board. And since the eBay members congregating here are King fans, your free exposure here would probably be more valuable than a listing on eBay's home page -- and without the listing upgrade fee!

The possibilities for using this Neighborhoods feature are endless. Are you an expert on Agatha Christie books? Start a neighborhood about it. Boom, you're in business. So far, there are only a few book categories.

Kudos to eBay for rolling out a feature that makes it easier for shoppers to find stuff to buy. Here are more details.

Easy way to get rich selling collectible books

OK, here's how it works:

1. Find out which authors will be visiting your town this week (you can search here).

2. Pick the most famous authors, and buy some of their books.

3. Everything else you need to know is in this cartoon:

Q&A: Can I sell teachers editions or solutions manuals on Amazon or eBay?

QUESTION: I've known for a long time that we are prohibited from selling teacher's editions on Amazon or eBay. As a used bookseller who also home-schools (and has experimented a lot with curriculum), I'm aware that I can list my books through e-groups or Home School Legal Defense Curriculum Marketplace (though there don't seem to be a lot of bids there. I see a lot of zeros).

So I was rather surprised and hopeful to see a math solutions manual listed on Amazon, both new and used, a book that I want to sell (but can't if I'm to comply with their prohibitions). The teacher's edition of the same book is also listed, although the listing doesn't state that it's a teacher's edition.

So I started thinking hopefully that maybe they've changed their policy on this. But I looked and it still says the following are prohibited:

Solutions manuals. Manuals or teacher's editions that provide answer keys to student textbook editions are prohibited.

Is Amazon inconsistent or just unaware? I'm not planning to tell them. It just bothers me that I would like to list these books with them and can't, and yet the books are actually listed there with copies for sale. Have you or anyone else had similar experiences or frustrations?

ANSWER: I've never understood why teacher's editions are against Amazon's policy in the first place. As long as the buyer is getting what they expect ... But the policy hasn't changed as far as I know.

Is buying a teacher's edition cheating? Seems like a silly question to me. Anyone who goes to the trouble of buying and reading a teacher's edition is probably going to learn the stuff assigned for their class, and isn't that the whole point? Besides, 99 percent of the teachers manuals bought online are probably purchased by teachers and homeschooling parents.

At one point I had a ton of teacher's editions and I sold them all on Amazon under the regular ISBNs by listing them as "collectible" then providing the description. I guess Amazon polices Marketplace more closely these days.

I wonder if any Pro-Merchant sellers are creating detail pages on Amazon for teachers editions and solutions manuals? There's probably nothing to prevent it, unless they have a filter that includes all the ISBNs for these items.

But for the two examples you've given, they don't look like seller-created pages, it looks like Amazon is carrying the books. So my impression would be that if Amazon has a "Sell Yours Here" button on one of their pages, it must be OK to sell that item.

Making videos to enhance your eBay listings

Remember this item from a couple of weeks ago about the bookseller who made a video for his book listing on eBay? The book sold for $379, and that's not even the best part. The video was so popular (more than 700 views) that the seller has expanded into producing videos for others.

What a great example of how good stuff happens to you when you work at being creative.

In case you missed it, the maker of the video, Brian Smith, added a comment to the previous blog post that includes tips for making your own videos:

Having briefly (and long ago) edited video at a small TV station, corporate voice work is what I do now. Books are a life-long passion. This video was just the bringing together of "talents" and resources. It's unlikely I'll compete too much with those who sell books for a living -- but it wouldn't be so bad to make videos for you pro sellers when the right titles come along.

Anyway, when making your own videos, the single best thing you can do is separate the shooting from the voicing and put the two together in editing.

Just write a script, shoot the video most anywhere while reading the script aloud, leaving a few seconds between shots. Then take the script into a bedroom or any well-damped room -- and with even a $30 mic and a little cable, you can get great results recording straight to your computer. There's a powerful and free-download audio editor called Audacity that will do all you need.

Even Windows Movie Maker can handle the editing. The first step is importing the audio and laying it down first. Then add the shots to match the narration.

How to use online video to sell a book

Several weeks ago eBay began allowing the use of video within auction listings. I didn't pay much attention until I saw this listing.

Here's the video. The link is about midway down the page.

Now that's a great way to sell a book online. I was curious, though -- the video is so professionally done, I thought it had to be made by a company that specializes in online videos. But I couldn't find anything to identify the company that produced it.

My friend Jane e-mailed the eBay seller to ask about this. It turns out he did the video himself using a cheap camera and his own microphone. Online bookselling is his hobby, and his "real" job is doing voice-overs.

Pretty cool.

There's no way you could justify the hassle of making a video for every run-of-the-mill book. But for a collectible like this, I think it's well worth it.

The eBay curse

eBay can be a lot of fun, but I usually avoid auctions when it comes to my bookselling business. I just like to set my price and be done with it. If I had a ton of collectibles it might be different.

So it's Buy-it-Now on eBay (or Amazon) for me. I just hate to mess around with the buyers who want something for an unrealistically low price.

Of course the other side of the coin is when the auction buyer pays an unrealistically high price. An interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor finds that many auction bidders end up paying more than they could have bought the item for using Buy-it-Now.

This is where eBay users fell prey to what Malmendier and her coauthor, Stanford University economist Hanh Lee, call "bidder's curse." Apparently, some bidders grew so enthusiastic about winning the auction that they lost sight of the "buy it now" price, sometimes offering more than $185.

We found that in 43 percent of the auctions the bidders ended up paying more than the 'Buy-it-Now' price," Malmendier says. This is really huge. It's far more than I could have expected

New feedback system hits eBay

eBay unveiled its new feedback system, which is less forgiving for sellers but buyers seem to like it.

Skip McGrath has a good rundown here:

Most buyers think it is great, but many eBay sellers are less than enthusiastic. The main concern lies in Detailed Seller Ratings, an anonymous rating based on each of four criteria: shipping and handling, communication, item as described and shipping time as described. The problem is the seller has no recourse on this. Any buyer can leave any rating they want and there is no dispute process for the seller as there is for feedback. This, of course, is one of the reasons buyers love it. They can be honest without the fear of negative feedback in return.

Well, sometimes "honesty" is in the eye of the beholder.

I guess eBay's system is getting to be more like Amazon's -- with the increased danger of being zapped by some buyer who hasn't read the description, can't wait a week for Media Mail, or some other grievance.

eBay adds features to TurboLister

eBay is adding features to TurboLister this week, including some functions that were only available through "My eBay":

• View and Edit your Active and Scheduled Listings. You can now view and edit your live and scheduled listings right from Turbo Lister. Make your desired changes within the tool, click on "Synchronize" in the top navigation bar, and your listings will be updated on the site.

• Relist or Sell Similar Items. Relist items or use the Sell Similar option in Turbo Lister by using the new buttons within the Listing Activity view.

• More Time-Saving Options. "Find & Replace" text within your listings. In addition, you'll be able to use Windows shortcuts to copy/paste information between views, and to export data from Turbo Lister to a spreadsheet program like Excel.

Q&A: Is it getting harder to be a full-time bookseller?

QUESTION: Can a person just starting out in the bookselling field today still make a full-time living at it -- like people used to be able to do about 7 to 10 years ago?

I hear so many booksellers on eBay complaining that books sales are so bad, and that they can't make a living with the new fees. Is your book still congruent for today's seller, or has the market really changed since you wrote it?

ANSWER: I got into online bookselling six and a half years ago, right about the time it got popular. Third-party selling had just been introduced on Amazon, and Half.com was going like gangbusters.

Back then -- and ever since then -- there has been a vocal contingent of sellers who've said, "Things used to be great, and now they're terrible."

Personally, I never felt like there was a gold rush in Internet bookselling. And there's no doubt, things have gotten a lot more competitive. Sometimes I feel like I'm working harder and harder just to keep my head above water.

As far as being able to do it full time, it all depends on whether you have access to plenty of stock at reasonable prices. I'm lucky in that sense because I live near Washington D.C. and there's several libraries within easy driving distance. It's pretty unusual if I can't find two or three good library sales every weekend of the year. I suppose someone who lived in a very rural area without lots of nearby libraries would have it much tougher.

I still think online bookselling is a revolutionary way for an entreprenuer to have a viable home-based business with very low risk. But you have to put a lot of time and labor into this. It's not a get-rich-quick plan. For long periods, I've worked 10 hours a day on this, and I've never netted more than $40,000 a year selling used books. But I would never work 10 hours a day for someone else, so I don't complain about the way things are too much.

Regarding eBay, I prefer selling at fixed prices, so I do about 80 percent of my business on Amazon and the rest on eBay/Half, and I don't auction books anymore. I'm sure it's much harder now to auction common books on eBay for profit than it was five or six years ago because eBay has lost some of its novelty for people -- there are lots of other places to shop online now. (Collectibles are another story. If I specialized in collectibles, 80 percent of my business would probably be from eBay auctions and the other networks.)

Nevertheless, I stay active on eBay/Half.com because I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket. Sales on Amazon have been crummy lately for a variety of reasons, so I've stepped up my activity elsewhere.

And you're right -- I think there was a time when you could sell practically anything on eBay and make great profits. But that was before my time.

What does everyone else think? Is it still possible to make a full-time living as an online bookseller?

eBay workshop on Half.com - Express program

Last week eBay announced that your Half.com listings will begin appearing on eBay Express at no additional charge in April (if you opt into the program).

If you have any questions about this, eBay is hosting a workshop Monday afternoon. Members of the Half and Express teams will answer questions here.

Get double exposure by adding your Half.com listings to eBay Express

eBay announced sellers can add their Half.com listings to eBay Express, the new fixed-price portion of the auction site -- with no added fees.

The change is effective April 1, but you have to opt in to the program.

I think this is a great idea, Half.com and eBay Express have both been a disappointment lately. This will juice both sites through increased exposure, and help sellers too. I might be tempted to close my eBay Store, and just manage my eBay business from my Half account.

Here's how it works:

You don't have to change your Half.com procedures

• Continue listing on Half.com as usual.

• Sales on Half.com will be processed as usual. You'll be notified through Half.com and paid by direct deposit twice monthly as usual.

You'll manage your listings on eBay Express through Half.com

• When you opt-in to sell on eBay Express, your Half.com listings will show up on eBay automatically.

• If you make any changes to your Half.com listings, the changes show up on eBay. Any price changes, new listings, deletions, etc., show up on both sites.

Your eBay Express sales will be recorded in My eBay

• When a shopper buys your Half item on eBay, the transaction shows up in My eBay. It won't show up in your Half account.

• Payments for your eBay Express sales are deposited immediately into your PayPal account.

• To help you manage your inventory, your My eBay selling record, including the File Exchange tool, now has two additional fields to show where your inventory was listed and sold so you can clearly identify Half.com inventory sold on eBay Express.

Your seller fees won't increase because you list on both Half.com and eBay Express

• For Half.com listings that sell on eBay Express, you are charged a PayPal fee and an eBay Express Final Value Fee.

• These fees total the same amount as fees charged for Half.com listings that sell on Half.com. For example, if you sell a book for $25, you'll net the same profit, whether the sale happens on Half or eBay. See the math at the bottom of this page.
  

Q&A: Why does Amazon buyer feedback often critique the book, not the seller?

QUESTION: I've been selling books on eBay and Half.com for five years with 100 percent positive buyer feedback, and have only recently started to sell on Amazon.

Feedback is important to me is because it lets me know I'm grading my books correctly and meeting a buyer's service and quality expectation. But something is driving me nuts on Amazon: Many of the feedbacks I've received are mini book reviews that have absolutely nothing to do with the transaction. For example, two out of the three most recent feedbacks I've received went like this:

5 out of 5: "Clear, concise, practical, funny, personal. I couldn't put it down!"
(RE: Idiot's Guide to Toltec Wisdom)

4 out of 5: "This book was fascinating at first, but was too long and became predictable. It was an interesting read for the most part."
(RE: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue)

I have received thousands of feedbacks on the eBay sites, and no one has ever assumed I was responsible for a book's content. Why are book buyers on Amazon so confused? Do they think they are buying a book directly from the author or publisher? What should I do when I receive negative feedback based on the buyer's dislike for the book's content?

I have concluded feedback is not as important on Amazon as it is on the eBay sites -- mainly because the average buyer is not as sophisticated as the average eBay buyer, and because if a buyer leaves a poor, mindless, or ridiculous rating on eBay there is no real consequence for doing so.

ANSWER: I agree, Amazon buyers are much less aware of the purpose of feedback. Some of them don't have the foggiest idea that they're buying from a third party instead of Amazon itself.

I read a lot of the customer book reviews on Amazon, where people are supposed to critique the book, and several of them say stuff like, "Thanks for the fast shipping."

Jeez, how did these people ever get a credit card?

No, seriously, I think there's more to this. I'm not sure the eBay buyer is more sophisticated. It's a different culture. Amazon buyers are driven more by convenience, and don't give much thought to feedback. On eBay, lots of buyers (maybe most?) have been on the seller's side of a transaction, so they understand feedback. On Amazon, I'd bet that less than 5 percent of buyers have ever sold something online.

The bad news: We have to deal with some clueless customers. The good news: This shows that our business is growing. People who never thought of buying from an "online seller" are buying our books. Lots of these people have never been on eBay, and perhaps never even bought a used book before.

You're right, feedback is much less important to buyers on Amazon. However, I think it's essential to your business to keep your feedback average as high as possible. Because feedback does matter to buyers of expensive books.

The best we can do is to clean up after the mishaps. Just as on eBay, Amazon allows buyers to delete feedback, and I think it's worth the effort for us to educate them. Hopefully this prevents inappropriate feedback for another poor seller!

Here's a post where I give instructions for feedback removal. On eBay, the equivalent is mutual feedback withdrawal.

I guess the additional challenge in the type of case you mention is to e-mail the buyer and educate them -- within a sentence or two -- that the purpose of feedback is to rate the seller, not the product. I think you need to be very brief when you ask a buyer to delete feedback. If they were careless enough to leave silly feedback, they aren't going to care enough to read an e-mail from a seller that drones on for several paragraphs. As far as they're concerned, the transaction is done.

Does anyone out there have a diplomatic way of saying this?

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?

Q&A: Can I sell my unwanted books in a bulk lot on eBay?

QUESTION: I'm considering selling my deadwood books on eBay as a bulk lot. Do you have any insight on this practice?

ANSWER: I tried this once a few years ago and didn't get a single bid, so I haven't tried it since. However, I've bought several dozen bulk lots of used books on eBay, and there's even a separate category for it: Books, Wholesale, Bulk Lots.

This has never been a primary way of finding stock for me, and I haven't bought this way for a couple of years. I decided it wasn't worth the time because I had a few bad experiences -- some crummy merchandise and one seller who never shipped at all. But if you're patient enough to keep looking for bargains, I'm sure it can pay off.

As far as unloading your books, I think there are two ways for you to approach it:

1. Maximum disclosure. Take a bunch of pictures, and include a list of every title and ISBN in your eBay listing. Otherwise you'll probably get pestered to death with questions, like "Can you give me a list of the titles?"

2. Just say up front, it's pot luck. You don't know what's in there, you just want to get rid of it.

The big disadvantage for buyers and sellers of book bulk lots is the enormous shipping costs that can be involved. So another way you might approach this is by advertising on Craig's List.

If you've never heard of it, Craig's List is a classified ad service, just like a newspaper, except it's online and free. (eBay bought the company a couple of years ago, but hasn't done anything to screw it up -- yet.)

So by using Craig's List, you can eliminate the two big sticking points of getting rid of a bulk lot -- shipping fees, and the advertising costs of placing a classified in your local paper. (Be sure to click through to your nearest metro area on Craig's List, otherwise all the ads you see will be from Craig's Lists' home base, San Francisco.)

You can use Craig's List the other way around, too, as a prospecting tool. For example, you could advertise: "Cash paid for your used books." It's time-consuming and involves a lot of e-mailing back and forth, but it's another way of getting stock that you wouldn't have found otherwise.

eBay revamps feedback

If you're a regular eBay user, you know the auction site is planning to updating its feedback system. Here's a preview of what it will look like, based on testing on ebay's UK site.

eBay's "Feedback 2.0" adds these features:

Detailed Seller Ratings – In addition to the current positive, negative or neutral comment, buyers rate the sellers on these specific transaction aspects based on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest rating. The average of all ratings is displayed on the seller’s Feedback Profile page.

Display of Item Title and Price – To give buyers more information to evaluate the reputation of a seller, the transaction’s item title and selling price will be displayed beneath each Feedback comment on the Feedback Profile page for 90 days. This will give buyers more context while reviewing and evaluating Feedback comments.

Feedback 2.0 will help buyers feel even more confident about a seller’s reputation, while rewarding good sellers by recognising and highlighting the things they do to ensure customer satisfaction.

Get more details at AuctionBytes.com

Will eBay scrap Express? Wall Street thinks so...

Well, eBay Express has certainly turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments of 2006. Lots of sizzle but no steak. eBay promoted it, but where are the buyers?

The talk on Wall Street is the thing's going to be scrapped:

"It's a flawed concept," says financial analyst Philip Remek from Guzman & Co., who thinks Express has little chance of success and will likely be scrapped. "This effort will bear little fruit and potentially will be a management distraction. I don't see any revenue driver in eBay Express."

I had hoped Express would provide a real alternative to Amazon Marketplace, but that's a pipe dream now. And whatever happened to Half.com? I've had about five sales there all year!