Trish Glenn and Doug Smith break down eBay’s October 2024 Seller update, sharing input and considerations on eBay’s Studio-Quality Photos with AI, updates to the Product Research Tool, the Flexible Cash Advance Program, International Shipping to Canada with Higher Value Limit, Feedback Removal Policy updates, ShipCover Insurance Expansion, and updates to store subscriber features. Tune in and learn more about recent eBay updates!
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the e-commerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and a hub for information on growing your business. Find out more at thesellercommunitypodcast.com, leave a message, or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email us at podcast@listperfectly.com.
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Episode Links
eBay October 2024 Seller Update
eBay October 2024 Seller Update
Doug: Trish, it’s that three or four time a year, wonderful time of the year again at eBay.
Trish: It is. They do love to do this, especially in the fourth quarter.
Doug: Yeah. And I always say this, but it is applicable. I don’t know why they sneak out the seller updates where it’s like you wake up one morning, it’s like surprise.
Trish: Yeah. They let us know this time. Like 12 hours before it came out. Yeah.
Doug: We’re not all influencers like you are.
Trish: Sorry, Doug. Sorry. I knew 12 hours before it came out.
Doug: When we were up at eBay, I didn’t even have like full backstage access anymore. I needed something called an escort. I have no idea. I know what that is, but in a different context.
Trish: It’s very sad, Doug. Very sad.
Doug: It was terrible. I couldn’t wander the halls.
Trish: Don’t know how you’ll ever live through it.
Doug: It was unbelievable. But, interestingly, it is the busiest part of the selling year. It is Q4.
Trish: It is.
Doug: I think it’s been a challenging sales year across the board.
Trish: Agreed completely.
Doug: We did have a seller update that came out, the October 2024 seller update.
Trish: Correctamundo. Do think that eBay, with this seller update, there is nothing worth shattering. There’s nothing that I think will make people picket in the streets. But there is some good things and a few protections and some advanced funding, so it’s pretty good.
Doug: Yeah, and I do think, though, that eBay does what they think are best and based on data and, trying new things with tools, funding, protections, enhancing seller success, and that’s a lot of what we are seeing in this update. But I agree. I’ve seen most people are like, nothing too bad.
Mostly, I think mostly like tweaks and updates, so they’ve got these categories. So Trish, start with the new tools for efficiency.
Trish: So there are two things that kind of fall under this. One is AI photographs. You’re able to take a photo. Remove the background, which you could already do with eBay.
And then you can use an AI constructed background. I think that this is really going to affect a very small amount of sellers. There are very small amount of sellers where this would help their niche. I think most sellers are going to just want, you A plain background or a, the white out, a white removed background.
I think this is nice. This is fun, but I don’t think it’s very relevant to 95 percent of the sellers out there.
Doug: List Perfectly has this capability and I really think the List Perfectly background remover can’t be beat.
Trish: It’s way better than eBay’s integrated background remover. It just is. For whatever reason, eBay’s is a little clunky. And we don’t do AI backgrounds. We may eventually, who the hell knows, but I just don’t think there is really that big of a call for them. So, in my opinion, this is a nonentity.
Doug: The term AI is hot right now. And I think people are still leery and scared of it. And I think it’s here. I think it’s leaking into everything and it’s been in parts of a lot of the stuff that we already use like Alexa. Just get used to it.
Trish: If you’re going to use the AI, make sure you’re really double, triple checking it because I think the photos sometimes can look a little otherworldly. Like The product is floating on this weird AI background. If you’re going to use it, just try to really look at it and make sure it makes sense for your niche.
Doug: Yeah, if you have six fingers.
Trish: Yeah, exactly. I do not. I only have five.
The second thing in this same new tools for efficiency is Product Research Tool for Pricing, which is eBay Research, but this has already been here. Everyone has had access to this. They’ve just made it a little bit more integrated so you can find prices easier.
Again, if you use List Perfectly, we have this also. It’s already integrated. We’ll bring you right to the Product Research pages within eBay, so again, I think this is a non entity , Doug.
I think there are two interesting things. One is they have started like a more flexible cash advance program. So you can apply for a loan. It’s zero interest. There’s a cost per loan. So that depends on how much you take out, et cetera. And they’re choosing short term advances really to be able to get somewhere that you’re, if you want to, if you need to buy products, if you’re trying to do some infrastructure updating, things like that.
And sometimes sellers can really take advantage of these short term loans to cover for cash flow, maybe for the holiday season, if you want to ramp up and buy more for the holiday or whatever. I used these quite a bit when I first started, not through eBay, but through PayPal. When eBay was integrated with PayPal, PayPal had some PayPal loans, which were a great tool at the time.
And since eBay is not integrated with PayPal anymore they’re not that easy to get now. And so I think eBay is just trying to fill a need that sellers have. And so it’s net feeing, so it would be taken out of your net every single day. Look into them, they may be a good option for you.
I am going to give you a bit of caution. If you’re gonna take out one of these loans, just make sure you’re doing what’s right for you and your business. Make sure you can really pay it back easily and that you’re not putting yourself behind the eight ball.
Doug: You kids don’t borrow more than you can afford to back.
Trish: Exactly. And the second thing is international shipping to Canada. Now you can have a higher value limit to Canada. It’s a big opportunity for sellers who have higher ticket items. Canada used to be difficult over a certain price point to send to Canada. This is going to make it easier.
And as a lot of people who sell on eBay know, Canada is one of those places where a lot of us ship directly to. We don’t use the international shipping program for Canada because it’s such an easy way to ship on our own. So this is a great thing. And I also think if you’re not selling in Canada, Maybe you should start looking into it. This may be some way for you to expand your business. And Canada is a really easy country to ship to.
Doug: So help me out with this, Trish. Why do I think it’s funny that shipping to Canada is international shipping, right? They’re like right there.
Trish: I agree with you, which is why I think a lot of us always shipped to Canada and we did it outside of the shipping program so that we could keep the cost down for our Canadian friends who wanted to buy from us.
And so I do think if you are somebody who is not shipping to Canada directly, please look into it and I would encourage you to try doing it on your own. And I think you’ll get a lot more Canadian Buyers.
Doug: There you go. And they’re supposed to be very polite people.
Trish: I think they’re very polite people.
Doug: There you go. So maybe, not too many snads. Not too many returns, not too many questions, or very polite questions. All right, let’s move on to these are always good, Enhanced Seller Protections.
Trish: A little while ago, eBay, Kind of did some stuff with their feedback removal policy and it didn’t sit well with a lot of us. We felt like People could leave us negatives that were unwarranted and it used to be that if you had free shipping and free returns They would take these negatives off for a lot of different reasons and they pulled back on those and so this is A way for eBay to be able to give us some protection against unfair negative feedback. And, it’s just going to give us some peace of mind, hopefully.
While this is a welcome change, and I’m very glad that eBay’s doing this, I’m going to encourage you to document your communications with your buyers. EBay’s protections often rely on evidence. Evidence, quote unquote. So you want to be able to say I said this on this date, without having somebody have to go back through 8 million messages.
And Consistent customer service will play a big role. If you are engaged in trying to work something out with a buyer and the buyer’s unreasonable, you’re much more apt to get that feedback removed. So even though feedback removal is now going to be back in their box of tools, I still think you need to try to do everything you can on your end to get it from getting to that place.
And eBay. I have always found to be a very fair thing about getting these things removed. I’ve been selling full time now for, I don’t know, 10 or 12 years. And for me, I can count on the number of one hand less than five times where eBay, I really felt made the wrong decision in, that I felt like, I was really getting screwed for lack of a better word.
So I do think that eBay really tries to do the right thing. And this is just another another way I think they’re trying to do that.
Doug: And Trish is really good at customer service. It’s important to her business. And we always say, and it’s true, whatever level you are, you need to have good customer service, get back to people right away. And that consistent response and customer service can help you All around in your business.
Trish: The other enhancement that eBay is putting out is ship cover insurance is being expanded. So I don’t remember what the value limit was, but now it’s 5,000. And this is great for, again, like the Canada thing, this is great for sellers who sell higher-end items, who sell high dollar amount items. Because it used to be difficult to get a certain amount of insurance, and now it can go up to 5,000, so that’s great. It’s an eBay-specific insurance option, so that’s great.
I would say that this is really for high end sellers, rare collectibles, things that most of us probably don’t sell day to day, but also, make sure if you’re going to buy insurance, make sure you’re comparing rates, and maybe eBay’s integrated rate might not be the cheapest.
We have the pirate ship, there are some third party things that have insurance built in. So just make sure you’re comparing if you’re going to be selling something so expensive.
Doug: And I will need the up to $20 coverage rate, whatever that is.
Trish: Exactly. That one’s built in, my friend.
Doug: Let’s move on to store subscriber feature updates.
Trish: They’ve redesigned the summary and discount page. And they’re just trying to make it easier for store subscribers to monitor their promotions.
This is great because I, we spoke about this morning in Mastermind. Who belongs to List Perfectly. I run a mastermind every morning at 9 a. m. Eastern. We’d love to have you. It’s free with your subscription, but one of the things we talk about is making data driven decisions, right? Don’t make decisions based on how you feel.
Don’t make decisions based on what you, Oh, I think of this, make decisions based on data. And the good thing about eBay as a platform. Comparatively to all the other platforms is that eBay gives us a lot of data to look through. And one of the things is allowing us to make data-driven decisions. And for them trying to put this information in a better summary for us so that we can make those decisions, I’m all for it.
Because the less digging we have to do, the more that it’s right there. You can see what you’ve used. You can see what you haven’t used. If your audience responds differently to different kinds of discounting strategies, or if if you’re somebody who’s going to try to run a certain kind of promotion, being able to see these things in a clear manner really will help you make data-driven decisions for your business, and that’s the best kind of decision you can make.
Doug: There you go, and Trish said, look at that data, look at what you got available. Especially on eBay, they’ve got a ton of great tools, and data’s black and white, and eBay has a ton of it.
Trish: Exactly.
Doug: Alright, obviously we’re going into Q4 what’s your opinion Trish on, briefly, it’s eBay sales being down, what do you think?
Trish: I think that this has been a weird year, and I would bet to say that election years historically are always a little off. And I think this one in particular was difficult.
Doug: Alright, that could turn things off.
Trish: Yeah, so I think that’s throwing them off. I do think that, I’m hoping now that the election is over, That things will start to even out salewise.
But, a successful Q4 is bound to happen. People are gonna get back, people are gonna be holiday shopping, people are gonna be doing the end of year things that they always do. So hopefully, it’s just a bump in the road and we can get back to some kind of normalcy.
Doug: eBay updates things regularly, and eBay makes changes, this and that. What you really need to do if you want to be up on the latest stuff is a couple of different things. Community.ebay.Com, make sure you check that announcements board regularly because that’s where they regularly make. Quick news announcements, not necessarily daily stuff, but we’ve always said that’s where you can get the quickest updates from eBay. And then the other thing that people do when they sign up for eBay and they choose what messages to receive, a lot of times they opt out of I think it’s called marketing messages.
So sometimes you will miss this stuff in your eBay messages. So basically make sure you’re subscribed to that. Check your eBay messages and again, community.ebay.Com. And we will include that link in the show notes.
Trish: And people like Doug and I we are always trying to stay up on this stuff, and if anything comes up, you guys, Find anything or interested in something specific, we would love to talk about it. Tell us what you’d like to talk about. Maybe some of you’d like to come on the podcast or come on to a listing party and let’s talk about the things that you think are important to you and your business.
Doug and I really believe in this community and we want everyone to succeed. And, and we want a differing opinion. Maybe you have a different opinion than us. I’m always open to talking about that. That’s always fun.
Doug: And you can email us at podcast@listperfectly.Com.
Trish: Well, Doug, as usual, it’s always fun to talk with you. Nothing earth-shattering in this eBay update, in my opinion, you.
Doug: Yeah. There had, I don’t know if Trish, but I used to work at eBay.
Trish: You did?
Doug: Yeah. A lot of us would come in and we would gather in, they called it the war room, but I think they changed the name of it. And we would just basically monitor sentiment, look at influencers, look in the community, look at what they were saying, look at, the feedback and all that and respond to questions. And, there were some tough ones.
Trish: When they took away the ability to run a sale, people lost their minds for a while and they reversed that, pretty fast after that. I’ve said this many times, eBay is a huge tanker and they can’t stop on a dime. They’re not that agile, but I do think they have the ability to make some changes when they need to. And, There’s nothing in here that I think needs to be walked back or anything.
Doug: And I do think, based on that 29 years of data that they have, They’re making decisions they think are best for their businesses. But I think this is across the board from selling a lot more after I left eBay, I think they need to make sure that they have sellers on their teams, all the marketplaces, because then they’re going to really get a better finger on the pulse.
EBay used to require people to sell and now they encourage it. I think if you’re selling, you’re more relatable to sellers. Sellers want to hear from other sellers. And then I had no idea some of the struggles or some of the inside stuff.
Trish: Totally agree with you. Totally agree.
Doug: That’s my feedback to eBay, if you’re listening.
Alright thank you Trish. This was a joy as always. And thanks everybody for joining us for our eBay October 24 Seller Update Recap.
Trish: Thanks everybody. Have a great day.
Outro
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