Ebay Changes Coming Clear

Hi canadianphilatelist.


Last time I said that I would email the answer to that question, my thread was destroyed.

It is my belief that admin's can see the content of a SCF generated email.

I will be a good little SCF member.

Thank you for asking. John

Really? I got Irishjack's ebay account from SCF.

It is all about income! It is simple I get nothing to spend, nothing not even $5. I do not drink, smoke, eat take away food, go anywhere and I have a great life. All income goes totally to my wife. I have to prove to her that stamps are needed to be purchased and the totally why of and then she might buy them. Our income is in that much trouble at present. But the stamps will make all the difference once again. We have been very blessed in our humble endeavors.

So I can not be a site supporter and irishjack can.

These days you have to be a site supporter before you can give out ebay info etc!

No use hiding the truth.

This morning on our new ebay store, out of 249 auctions listings for next week we have 26 lots with 27 bids at an average of $3 per lot already.

This is one very happy house hold. It is so nice to see my wife not stressed out. Granted it is not much but it is everything to us.

It does not matter what happens we just need to keep positive and just keep trying.

I have also been on my knees big time!

It is so helpful to share the journey.

Thanks Puzzler.

I know your comments were in very good taste and I know you did not intend to upset anyone.

But that is the way it is now.

It just might take us a bit of time to adjust to the new rules.

Always Happy Everything. John

The end of a huge amount of change this month.

Our sales settled and increased by a massive 800%+ in 4 weeks.

Very stressful time. I do not want to be on that ride anymore.

It is going to take a couple of month to fix the damage.

At least we can say we are on the other side of it all now.

What a journey!

Being forced to change from an USA ebay store to an Australian ebay store we have managed to do in a stressful round-a-bout way but we did it.

The end of the first month of our new Australian ebay store and the cost for the months activity has come in and the profit goes 66.6% ebay 33.3% us. We are use to 33.3% ebay and 66.6% to us.

With the expense of listing under $10 auction style going from 10c & 25c to 50c we have had to only list the very best of our selling lots which is not a good position to be in, so what do we do.

All week I have been going over and over all the different things to do even to stop selling all together.

To be continued......!

Have you considered Delcampe? They have much lower fees and fewer hoops to jump through, but you must understand the European market (they operate out of Belgium), plus, Europeans tend to prefer BIN instead of regular auctions.

Thank you Doug.

We only sell Australia and more than 95% of our sales are here in Australia. I do not think we have a choice because of our strong market place here other than Aus ebay.

But you have hit the nail on the head with the BIN approach.

The buy it now style of selling will hopefully suit 3 of our listing days per week.

It costs 20c per listing instead of 50c per auction style. It becomes a huge saving if you are listing 200 lots plus on those 3 days per week. So the saving is approx $270 plus per month.

But will the BIN lots still be at the front of the listing pages? Will there be the same amount of lots sold? Will we be able to cope with sales happening 24hr 7days a week?

The pricing of our lots on those 3 days already suits a BIN selling approach. If it works we could add one more day of the auction style selling as it would be more profitable listing as BIN lots. Which would be a saving of another $180 plus per month.

So if the sales stayed at the same level we could save $450 plus per month on ebay fees buy just changing to a Bin selling approach.

All I can do is have a go and hope that it will work out alright. There are so many things that are in the unknown but that is life!

Always Happy Stamping. KGV

You need to state that you ship on Mondays and Thursdays or two days that work best for you that way you will be a little more relaxed about shipping out items.

Thank you irishjack.

I will think on the whole area of mailing so your info is very helpful.

At the minute there is an order in the confusion of it all and we mail Monday to Friday. The mail leaves the PO at 3.30pm Our local PO is 3 mins by car and we very rarely have to line up to be served. Mailing is a very easy experience for us here.

Very day we have a different type of Australia stamps for sale.

Monday: Letter Rate sets.

Tuesday: Personalised stamps.

Wednesday: High Denomination.

Thursday: High Denomination sets, Large Letter Rate sets, & unusual items.

Friday: KGV's

Listing takes place from 8am to 1pm.
To put the orders together and mailing is from 1.30pm to 3.30pm
Prepare listings from 4pm to 6.30pm and all day Saturday.
And 3 people do all of this. But these figures are maximum times.

As can be seen everything is very regimented to get it all to work out.

My biggest worry is having all the different days stamps in one order. Each day has a different plastic container to hold the stamps in so it would be some stamps from here and some stamp from there into each order. The extra time this could take worries me let alone the general confusion of it all. We are turning over approx 100 orders per week and growing.

I found this interesting while searching the forum on Australia ebay. We would have free mailing and buy it now. There must be a reason why listing buy it now is the cheapest way to list with ebay. Everything they do is for a well researched reason.

It is really strange selling "buy it now" and not by auction.

Changed 4 days to "buy it now" on 350 lots. We have sold a fair bit already. Some of our buyers are getting the idea.

Pricing was not an issue for the "buy it now" lots. It is a much better price for the buyers. If it works out we will drop our prices some more.

Friday is our only auction day and a very good one at that. We have been offering bulk KGV lots from 15 stamps to 50 stamps crammed into a stock card and mail them as is so the buyer can tell they are getting what they won. We have been doing this for about 6 weeks. All lots have a starting price $3.99 which is on approx 20 lots and about 15 lots are selling. It has turned into a $250 day. This income has been holding things together with all the forced changes that have come our way.