Join us for an exclusive recap of eBay Open 2024 with three of the most influential voices in the reseller community: Doug Smith, Trish Glenn, and Danna Crawford, who dive deep into all the exciting announcements, updates, and insights from eBay’s flagship event. Whether you attended eBay Open 2024 or couldn’t make it, we’ve got you covered with all the highlights and key takeaways that can help elevate your reselling business!
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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List Perfectly eBay Open 2024 Recap
Doug: What’s up, everybody? What’s up, ladies? Two of my favorite E ladies with a capital L. So welcome and welcome everyone. We’ll say hello in a minute, but we’re here with the fantastic eBay open 2024 recap. It’s eBay Open Week. We get e nostalgic this E week because of our E memories and yeah, a lot of stuff comes up.
It’s really good old Facebook memories. A lot of stuff comes up. It brings a slight, maybe tear, like a prison tattoo, to my eye, and I think back. But I wonder if we counted up all the eBay opens and all the eBay events between the three of us. I bet we would break like a hundred.
Trish: Danna could probably break a hundred on her own.
Doug: That is true. We’re going to get into it. The insights, takeaways, memories, feelings, laughter, tears all that stuff, and maybe some surprises and fabulous giveaways, maybe as I teased, maybe some slight. Shoutouts and homages.
Trish: To what, I wonder? To what that could be referring to?
Doug: Yeah, but we’ll talk about that. I’d like to talk about that a little bit too. And I know for a fact because I’ve been told there are going to be some eBayers here listening in. We got some good feedback from eBay Open, from our booth, and from our video, and from Crystal Maus and Amanda Morse’s interview. That was fantastic.
Trish: The List Perfectly booth was the best place to hang out. Thank you for that.
Doug: I went around to a bunch of booths. Our energy level was high. We were laughing and talking about List Perfectly, talking about new features, all that.
Trish: If you went to eBay Open, you got a survey, please fill it out. It’s the only way that you can win swag. And I heard 4, 000 people will be getting swag. So get those surveys in.
Doug: So you two ladies, can you handle the last announcement from eBay Open 2024, the big one that everybody’s talking about that trumps all of the announcements? Your prayers have been answered.
Trish: E prayers have been answered. So 2025 live in person eBay Open. We do not know where. Or when, so don’t ask us.
Doug: We hope that’s the thing. There’s hope, but we don’t know. They haven’t said; maybe they don’t know yet. If I had input, I would hope that they would do it back in Vegas and just be like old school.
Danna: Yeah. Steph in Texas said it’s in Vegas. I saw it posted there.
Trish: If she posted it, maybe she has some inside knowledge and we wish we had that because it would be great to know. I was hoping it wasn’t going to be Vegas, but if it’s Vegas is fun. I gotta say.
Doug: Were you hoping for Boston? Isn’t Vegas your town?
Trish: I love Vegas, but I really wish they would come a little bit further closer to the Mississippi or east of the Mississippi, just for sense of how many people can go and things like that. Traveling to the West Coast , Isn’t easy.
Doug: Yeah. Maybe
Trish: It was just my own personal, I was hoping we’d get further. Danna and I area come this way.
Doug: I would love Vegas again, but again, it is close to me. So we’ll see. But there aren’t many details, but let’s talk about this Trish, because you were instrumental in setting this up.
The fantastic interview that we got a lot of feedback about and a lot of excitement, even from people at eBay. The Crystal Maus, Amanda Morse sit down as they would say.
Trish: That went really well. And I’ve got to say that Amanda had this brilliant idea of having Crystal film her warehouse. And the fact that was in there, I think that really added to it and the legitimacy for lack of a better word.
We all know Crystal and what her business is, but people outside don’t. And so I think when you see somebody who’s just so done so well and has really, been able to buy a warehouse and it’s so organized and it’s so it’s, and I see her every day. I run a mastermind class and she’s in it every day and I see it.
Her warehouse always looks like that. Isn’t like she went and cleaned it. It always looks like that. And I think that Amanda had a stroke of genius when she wanted to do that, and I really think that added to the whole thing, and it was great. So I was really happy about that.
So they had it in Boston once, eBay Live. I went. I wasn’t really a seller then. I’d sold a little, and then I stopped for a while after that, but I was there. Boston is not a great convention town, I don’t think.
Doug: Okay. And I don’t know, is there a central city that would be ideal for everybody?
Like right in the center of everything? What do you think?
Trish: I don’t know.
Doug: Alright, let’s bring it back around to 2024. So let’s start early in the week, and I’m very privileged to have my two e ladies on here who are also long time eBay fans. Meetup leaders. So let’s talk about the eBay seller kickoffs earlier this week.
Danna: Yeah, I was in Atlanta. I helped launch their official eBay meetup group in Atlanta. So, the kickoff party was the kickoff. So I’m pretty excited. Atlanta is off and running, and it’s at the Salvation Army. And the great thing is everybody that attends their meetups will get a discount at the Salvation Army and do some shopping before and after meetings, which is amazing.
So there you go, meet up leaders, reach out to your local thrift stores and places like that. Goodwill, Salvation Army, see if you can have an event there and then offer a discount to everybody that attends. So yeah. That was a big bonus, but we had a good turnout. They also got a tour of the Salvation Army and lots of goodies from the Salvation Army also were given away.
And we just had an amazing time. The food, everything was fantastic. Now, some people were a little disappointed. One guy came in and said, What is eBay on a budget this year? Cause he was at eBay open last year in Atlanta. So Doug was with me in Atlanta.
You know, people that there were several that were also at eBay open in Atlanta. Last year. So when they came for the kickoff party this year, they were like, what?
Trish: People don’t understand that eBay did theirs, and we did. That’s right. And so they didn’t understand the difference.
Doug: And I think this was an experiment just to lean into the meetups. How was Boston and Trish? Tell us about that.
Trish: It was good. We had it south of Boston. It was good. We had a really great turnout. We had a full buffet. So the food part was really good actually in Boston this year.
And I would say it may be better than eBay Open in Chicago. I gotta be honest. It was really good. And we did not have an open bar, that was the only thing you had to pay for. If you came, we gave away swag, List Perfectly, of course, bought everybody soft drinks, which was great. So List Perfectly partners with a lot of local meetups and partner with mine.
And really it’s not mine really. It’s Diane Lassonde’s. So I don’t want to pretend that it’s mine, and So List Perfectly partners with us. And so we gave away some LP swag. We had LP stuff. And then, of course, we had all the eBay stuff. eBay had great swag for their kickoffs. They had these really great bags; they’re heavy canvas bags, and they were fabulous.
I gotta be honest. I thought this was one of the best swag stuff that I’ve gotten in a really long time.
And then they gave like Some eBay tape measures. There was a couple of pens. Mine had some LP swag in it that LP put in. So it was really great. It was a really great swag thing. I thought, comparatively to other years.
Doug: Yeah. That tape measures, no joke. It makes me think that I can be handy.
Trish: It’s lying to you. You, my friend did not be handy. I thought the eBay kickoffs were great. We had a really good turnout. The only thing was they sent this really large box thing.
Danna could set it up. She had a big store. So I was in a restaurant, so it was too big. I could not set it up and Cheryl Hinton couldn’t set it up. I think a few more of the leaders couldn’t set it up because it was too big, but we had some really great time. The whole thing was great, I thought.
And I really appreciate List Perfectly partnering with, eBay leaders in general, right? And because most of the leaders are not eBay specific. They, most of them cover all of reselling. And it’s great when LP can help out because these events are once a year, but then they want to have usually 11 other meetings a year.
And so it’s nice to be able to help them do other things also.
Doug: Yeah. And they sent a lot of swag. I went to greater LA. Caryl Ingersoll is the newest eBay meetup. At one time it had the highest number of RSVPs, but you know how that goes. Not everybody shows up, but the spot was cool.
The tacos were great. The crowd was good. It was a Dodger Padres game. So I got to say go Padres and…
Trish: Just to annoy people.
Doug: Yeah, just to annoy people. That was his whole,
Trish: Yeah, it’s a whole thing.
Doug: And then so not only was List Perfectly a sponsor, our friends, Paul and Faith, My Reseller Genie, were sponsors as well.
They had an unmanned booth that I kept a single eye on. But that was cool. And then the fabulous Teresa Cox came over. She did dual meetups, Long Beach, and then came up to LA. And then but Caryl did a great job. It was great to be there. She’s very motivated. She’s going to do something. LA is really big.
So she’s going to try to adjust it, figure out how to get more people to show up. And then I saw for the first time in my life, a driverless taxi, which I was fascinated by. And then I saw one of those little weird food delivery robots that was like rolling off the curb at a crosswalk and it stopped and backed up.
So I don’t know if it saw the video. I did. There’s videos of both that I will send out, ladies, gentlemen.
Trish: Yeah. And I just want to say that Danna did a lot of the reachouts. Danna took most of it, Doug. So yeah, I really only was reaching out to LA and a few more that I knew personally, which ones we knew.
Doug: Yeah. No, thanks to you both. You both do huge stuff with events. Oh, so yeah, those were great. And then we transitioned the next morning. Some of us had to travel back. I drove, so I had to drive home and weave in and out of Los Angeles traffic, which is always a joy.
And then we got home the next morning. We started up eBay open right away. Always a challenge with something like this. Some early on technological challenges that they got through,, but what’d you think of the experience, the virtual experience, the expo hall, the booth and all that?
Danna: Yeah, I was happy with everything. I was actually, traveling back from Atlanta and stuck at the airport, but I was able to have my laptop on and listen as much as possible. And also the chat was crazy.Thanks to Clara I caught her typing in the chat and she actually shared how to slow down.
The chat, because people were complaining too. It wasn’t just me. I was like, Oh my God, how can I keep up with all of this? And Clara was kind enough to put in there the directions on how to slow down the chat. So I was happy to see that moment, but it was good I participated a lot in the chat room.
I know the team was in the networking, but I was also able to attend the keynotes, which I wanted to not miss. I was really happy. I like hearing Jamie speak from being at eBay and being around him a bit. I really enjoy his conversations. So I thought his keynote was interesting.
Trish: What did he say that you thought was interesting?
Danna: Just the way that he was embracing the community and at List Perfectly, we’re all about the community as well. So I really appreciated that. Then, I just introduced the people that were coming up that I didn’t get to see.
Doug: Yeah, some of the other stuff that was talked about, all of us buyers will have to. Provide a form of payment when placing an order for new best offer, a new best offer experience. That’s interesting. I think people have been asking for that for a while.
Trish: That really isn’t new. That’s been going on for a while. They’ve been slowly making everybody; they did it A little bit at a time. I would say right now, I don’t know about you, Danna, but I say more like three-fourths of my best offers are immediate now. I don’t wait very often for them to get paid anymore.
Danna: Yeah. Oh no, that’s it; they are nice compared to other platforms.
Trish: I think they’ll just finish rolling that out, Doug.
Doug: Yeah. That’s a good point. It’s like some of the stuff that’s rolled out. They talked about it at eBay Open, so they also talked about the new search design and all that.
They talked about the new the eBay listing tool that they’re rolling out. They talked about that there will soon be consequences for non paying buyers. But we’re waiting for more details on that. Talked about eBay live is expanding categories.
Trish: We’ve been talking about eBay lives now for a couple of years, and they don’t seem to have caught on as I hoped that they would.
Doug: As I used to work at eBay, so people, I know, ladies, I know. I didn’t want to surprise you. I didn’t want you to find out this way, over, like you said, Trish, over the last couple of years, I’ve talked to even some eBay people that are like, yeah, we should have got that rolled out sooner.
I think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity, but, there’s a lot of competition out there now with like whatnot, obviously PoshLives. They’re rolling it out now. It’s a good sign that they’re expanding it to categories. And I know that with some of the other stuff they partnered with Specific sellers.
Yeah. So there you go. Simplified listing flow. Talked about that. Seller hub, some changes coming to seller hub, new view item page.
Trish: Just hope that we wait for all of this stuff until January.
Doug: Yeah, that is a, that’s always interesting. We talked about that yesterday when we were talking internally about eBay open 2025 that we hope they don’t do it in Q4.
Trish: Yeah, and I don’t know, it has been, I know it’s a joke amongst resellers, right? That they, all the platforms make decisions and do things in Q4. so it would be great if it was Q2 or Q3, I’m just saying. Yeah,
Doug: Yeah, don’t roll out stuff in Q4. We’re pretty conscious of that at List Perfectly as well.
Trish: Yeah, we really try not to do that also, exactly.
Doug: Alright anything else on that?
Trish: I thought it was great. Our booth was great. We had a really good energy. Everything was fun all the time. We had multiple people there. At one point, we had 170 people in the booth. It was great. But even during slow times, there were 40, 50, 60, 80 people in there. Constantly. And it’s great. A lot of those people are diehards, and some of them are here right now.
And it’s always great. They show up and they support us and they support List Perfectly and we could not be doing what we’re doing without them. And that’s wonderful. The only thing, the only negative thing that I would have to say about eBay Open is I wish sometimes there was more actionable.
Classes, maybe, that could help a reseller get to the next level, if that makes sense. I really, and I understand they’re trying to cater to newbies, intermediate, experienced people. I get it. I just wish sometimes, and I think they always did that at the in-person events. They always had classes that you could attend, and it would be a lovely thing if they did that a little. But other than that, I love it. I’m an eBay girl, so what can I say? I love eBay.
Doug: Exactly. So it’s interesting though, because, like you had said a lot of people, and this was stuff we always heard, back from the eBay opens to the in persons, it’s like people would want more advanced classes or different levels.
So they did tracks and things like that. But there are a ton of people who do these things just to network, connect, and see friends. And to a degree, as much as it could happen, there was some of this with this. It was cool to see some people I hadn’t talked to for a while. Hey, what’s up with so and hey, so and so’s in here. And a lot of people just came to hang out in our booth, but we talked about a lot of stuff, a lot of new stuff that List Perfectly’s rolled out. Recently, like Listing Assistant Vision, Express Lister. We did some live demoing on phones and within the booth with the listing assistant, express lister, and background remover, and we had a lot of interest in all that.
And it seemed to me that, that we got a lot of new people in there that were really interested in a lot of the stuff that we had to say.
Danna: Totally agree. Yep. I think that the breakout for the local meetup groups was really awesome. It was great connecting with people that were looking for meetups in the area.
We had so many people come that didn’t know that we had meetup groups in Punta Gorda. So I really appreciate that eBay had that opportunity for local meetups. And also just the way that they made it so easy to reach out. But I have to tell you, though, during the whole event, the whole time I was there, I constantly got messages from people that I hadn’t talked to in years, people that knew me and people that, were followers or whatever, but it was really cool the way that eBay made it so easy for us to connect with the community like that. I love that part.
Doug: Yeah, definitely. And in person, we’ll be back in 2025. So that’s exciting. All right. Can I move on to another big announcement from eBay this week?
Trish: Sure.
Doug: All right. So very near and dear to my heart. This is why I’m wearing this shirt today. And this is fair. I know I joke around a lot, but this was really a bummer to hear.
And it’s very important to me. And yeah, the eBay for business podcast is put out its last episode this week. It was a sudden departure and They just decided to make that go away. Involved in the early part of that and that is really the it was the segue from 15 years of eBay radio, which was amazing, two times a week live radio show that was online and it was from there that the starts of eBay open came from.
They started doing a meetup in Vegas and then it segued into there. And help me out here, Danna, I think 2016 was the first official eBay open.
Griff said a couple of things. He said he’s not retiring. It’s just, so I don’t know, I have no inside information. People have reached out and asked me; I don’t know. I’ve touched base with some of the other people, Alan and I worked on the podcast together, but it’s sad to see, but these things do come to an end and, again, maybe more will come out, but the ending was pretty surprising but of course.
As we’re so ensconced within the community. You have the Power Selling podcast, the Power Selling Mommy podcast, and then your big brother and older sister, the Seller Community podcast. And so hopefully we are there to help fill in that big gap that’s going to be there without the eBay for Business podcast.
And, Some of the things early on, metrics say that the best day to release a podcast is on a Tuesday, but we never released on a Tuesday because we didn’t want to mess with the juju of the eBay for business podcast.
Wednesdays are in the middle of the week, but no, I did reach out to Griff, and he was appreciative. He’s appreciative of everybody sharing memories. And the love and that he’ll be missed. But he still says he’s going to be around. He said, or as he says, I’m not retiring yet… so we’ll see. But after several years of the eBay for Business podcast, Griff taught me everything I know about podcasting.
So hopefully that’s been good. I don’t know. Maybe some people are rolling their eyes, but taught me a lot. I learned everything from Griff and had a great time with those guys. And. Wouldn’t be where I am today without them. So thank you, ladies. I just want to take some time to shout out to those guys.
Trish: And I looked for that purple shirt for a good 45 minutes today to try to wear it. I saw him with it this morning. I was like, Oh, I’ll wear that. But I couldn’t find it.
Doug: I should have also worn my hoodie, but I didn’t want to pass out. But the other, so this reminds me too, I was going to say. I saw a couple of these shirts in people’s social posts for eBay Open.
I also saw a bunch of List Perfectly shirts.
Trish: Yes.
Doug: So that was cool to see people sharing the love, and a couple of people I knew at eBay reached out and said, Hey, LP’s presentation was great. It generated a lot of conversations on internal eBay Slack. So that’s good. I don’t know what it means, but it was good.
But anyway, ladies, any final words? Final parting memories?
Trish: Final words. These are totally worth doing. eBay Open is worth doing. Live events are worth doing. Join a meetup. Find your local meetup. It’s really worth it. You never know. Who you’re going to meet, what’s going to happen, what connection you’re going to make. And I really think that it’s a really worth your time and investment.
Danna: Yes, I agree a hundred percent. And just to add to that, I would also like to encourage everybody to use List Perfectly and cross posts because eBay is the big dog. But it’s nice having sales on Poshmark and Mercari and Depop and Grailed and Etsy and Vestiaire and Kidizen and Mercari. So it’s a good idea to crosspost.
Doug: Attend a meetup, especially those seller meetups.
Trish: And as far as LP goes, I couldn’t agree with Danna more. I think LP is a perfect addition to eBay. And I don’t even think you need to cross-post. I think if you only sell on eBay, we are still worth using. You are going to list faster.
Your items are going to be optimized. And we really want to be part of the community and we want to help. And so if we can help you in any way, reach out.
Danna: And I can’t wait to see everybody in 2025.
Doug: There you go. Yeah, that’ll be great. All right, cool. This was fun, ladies. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody. And we will see you next time.
Outro
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