This promotion is designed to help store owners "test the waters" of moving their store inventory into a fixed price format where it will appear on the core (main) search results on eBay.

Starting March 30th eBay will be discontinuing store inventory format and all listings in the store inventory format will be converted to fixed price format. When this change happens a fixed price listing will run 20 cents for a basic store owner, 5 cents for a premium store owner and 3 cents for a anchor store owner.

With this shift in pricing eBay is encouraging (as do I) store owners to liquidate distressed (non selling) items.

The other possible advantage for sellers who move their items into the fixed priced format now is that your item may have an opportunity to gain impression points that will help it's ranking in best match.  This could be a real opportunity to get a jump on your competition.

I strongly suggest to sore owners to take advantage of this promotion - use this promotion to test the waters for some of your inventory and to start liquidating your inventory on the site.  This is a great wy to start getting your store inventory into the core search results.

Read the announcement and all the details of the eBay promotion here: announcements.ebay.com/2010/02/limited-time-offer-list-in-fixed-price-for-just-10%c2%a2/

The announcement can be broken down into three aspects:

Enhancements to Buyer Protection - eBay has expanded the Buyer Protection program to cover more approved electronic payment methods.  This change is designed to provide more confidence to buyers who purchase items on eBay.  This is a good move.  I know for myself as a seller I want to do things right where a buyer never wants a refund - and in the rare cases where the buyer wants one, I am willing to work with them.  However, I do feel the more eBay promotes the protection for buyers this will increase buyer confidence and will only benefit all of us sellers.

Easier, more profitable selling - This change has already started to roll out over the past few months.  I personally do not see how being able to add a watermark to my photos will increase my profits (possibly help cut down the number of people stealing other sellers photos for their own listings), but I do not see a watermark being a big sale increaser. List variations like color and size in one Fixed Price listing—extended to more categories - this will be great and will increase profit as sellers can now list all their inventory that are similar (maybe different in size and/or color) in one listing instead of several listings.  This will decrease the cost of insertion fees which means more profit for sellers. Category and Item Specifics changes now consolidated with the rest of updates - this is something eBay started doing about a year ago.  I am not sure hwy they are promoting this like it is a big change.  eBay has already stated they would not make any category structure change between updates expect in rate emergencies.

Fee update: Choose the option that's right for you - This is the part of the announcement that has brought the largest amount of chatter from the community.  The first thing that hit me is that for a basic store owner, who currently pays 3 cents for an item to be listed, will se about a 700% increase in insertion fees OUCH!  Even though eBay touts this portion as a  reduction in fees, be carful - read it thoroughly to find out if this change will save you money or cost you money if you continue to operate your business as you are today.

If you have been following this blog or a subscriber to my newsletter, you would know I have been making some major changes to my business which includes a change in the direction of inventory I want to sell on eBay.  I am moving away from sports memorabilia to products for the home office or cubicle worker - henche the store nzame change to My Cubicle Buddies.

My plan was to liquidate distressed inventory as well as inventory I no longer will carry to make room for new inventory that better goes along with the new direction of my business.  Now with this recent announcement from eBay I am going to ramp up the sales of these items by slashing prices to get rid of the distressed and unwanted inventory.  I have crunched the number and I want to get my store down to 50 items that do not sit on the virtual shelves for years. 

Prior to this announcement I would keep out of season items listed year round.  Unfortunately I will be discontinuing this policy and only have seasonal items up during the season (and slightly prior to) that they should sell during.  I will lso do this to items from professional sports.  For example you will not find NFL items in my store in April.  However, since anything and everything can make a great Christmas gift, I will put virtually everything into my store during the Christmas selling season.

This is a time all of us sellers need to take a look at what we have and clean house.

size="4">There are many articles in the news that break down the earnings call for investors.  This article takes a look at the earnings call from a eBay sellers point of view:

One point that Donahoue seemed to drive home is how eBay is becoming technology driven which be backed up by reporting that eBay's cell phone apps are becoming increasingly popular.

Towards the end of the earnings call a question was asked in regards to if eBay had any numbers that broke down the sales through mobile devices.  Donahoe responded with they did not have those numbers and that eBay did not care what the numbers breakdown was.  I was a bit troubled by this response.  I as a seller I would like to know the percentages of mobile access of the site.  I know it is growing but at what rate? 

Understandably eBay has been loosing ground to Amazon.  I would have liked some numbers as to mobile access, is this an area where eBay hopes the growth can lead them to pass Amazon?  If the mobile apps are to drive eBay, eBay along with sellers need to make sure the listings are accessible via the mobile web.  Unfortunaly there from what I understand, no standard for mobile web browsers.  As this technology evolves I see this being a market businesses online need to be aware of and have a presence on.

By no means should this post by me be interpreted as I have any inside knowledge of what be coming, this article basically shares my thoughts on the predictions the AuctionBytes article has made.

One issue that was brought up in the article was would eBay.com do to the stores as they have done on other international sites.  FYI: on other International sites eBay has done away with the store format listings but kept the store, where sellers inventory will be in a fixed priced format which does get higher ranking in eBay searches compared to store format.  Also, fixed priced format comes with a higher insertion fee in some cases significant compared the store insertion fee of less than 10 cents.  If this changes is implemented by eBay this would probably cause many sellers to either raise prices (unfortunately with a significant insertion increase the cost would have to be passed along to the buyer) or store owners would be more selective as to what they put into their store for inventory which could change the market including a shift in prices.  Remember when quantity is lower then demand the prices can increase.

Stores in core search results: eBay tried this several eyars ago and stopped a few months afterwards stating that the number of results that came up for a buyer was overwhelming to the buyer.  Personally I feel that sellers releaised that paying 3 cents insertion fee was the best price for an item and saw sales increase so they stopped listing in other formats - bottom line I think the cost to eBay was hurting the company.  I am not sure if they wil bring this back, however with the new search eBay has created the "overwhelming" number of results may no longer be a problem.

I also feel that if eBay does make this kind of a change I would hope that they would decrease the store subscription fee.

Feedback changes: It has been reported on various sites on the Internet eBay is beta testing a major overhaul of the Feedback system where feedback will include how likely a buyer would be to refer a seller to others.  This, as always, will be controversial, but I feel it is a move in the right direction.

Fee changes: I would be surprised if eBay did not change the fees.  When I started on eBay in 2001 fees were pretty straight forward, now it is more complicated where you feel you need to have a Ph.D to understand the fees before you list an item.  I would hope eBay would make insertion fees less complicated.

From the AuctionbBytes article  also speculates there will be some policy changes including limiting buyer and seller communication.  Since this is not official and I have no idea what if any limits would be placed, I will just say that as a seller (and as a buyer) I do not want any limits placed on how much I communicate.  As a seller you should communicate with the buyer as much as he or she wants and should do it personally - not with FAQ pages or auto responders.

AuctionBytes is saying there may three rounds of changes this year, this has not been confirmed as far as I know.  They also are predicting the first round will be announced in January and be implemented in march.  Again this has not been confirmed.  I would hazard a guess that if an announcement is coming ti will be after the Q4 earnings call (schedule for January 20th @ 4pm CT) and before the town Hall on January 27th.   Regardless of when changes are announced on eBay, I will be covering it right here.

Another year has come and gone.  I do hope that 2009 and was a successful year for you and that this year will even be more blessed for you both personally and professionally.

This Saturday, January 9th, will be my 9th anniversary on eBay.  If you have not read how I got started on eBay, you may want to read this blog entry I posted last year: My 8th Year Anniversary on eBay: A Look Back and A Look Forward

Today I want to take a look ahead and share with you a recap of last year and what I hope to see in the coming year for the PowerWheelerChris family of websites.

2009 Accomplishments:

AskPWC - I launched a new blog called AskPWC in August, a daily blog with tips and how to's for eBay sellers.

Kansas City eBay examiner - (launched at the end of August) Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I post an article of interest to the eBay community

We changed our eBay store name from Bases Covered Sports to My Cubicle Buddies.

What is coming in 2010!

Overall: We are taking our business in a new direction.  We are focusing all aspects of the PowerWheelerChris family of websites (aka C & K Business Services) to help eBay sellers or small business owners. 

A Domain Name 4 Me - I plan to launch this around the middle of 2010.  This aspect of the business will offer domain registration, web hosting, blogs, email marketing, everything you can think of to get your business on the Internet.

FSeBS (Four states eBuyers and Sellers) of Joplin MO - in 2009 we started the group but decided launching the group so close to the holidays was not a good start date.  We will be launching the group this spring.  We are planning on monthly in person meetings and online events.  The online events will be open to anyone regardless of their location.

My Cubicle Buddies - We will continue to offer sports memorabilia in our store but the type of products will change slightly to items that are more appropriate for workspaces such as home offices or cubicles.   Along with sports themed items we plan to add other items that would help a person express their personality at work.  We also plan to offer products and services that wll help a person to manager and/or grow their business.

PowerWheelerChris - The site that began it all: we plan to offer new ways for you to learn about eBay through a PWC Learning Center that we plan to offer online learning to eBay sellers.. 

PWC Bookstore - We are overhauling the PowerWheelerChris Bookstore and will be bringing it back new and improved this year.

Other things to watch out for in 2010:

PWC Podcasts: We are in the early phases of launching our own weekly podcast.  As of right now I do not have a firm date for when this might happen, but be watching for it.

Build Your eBusiness - we will be launching a new website/blog that will bring everything nicely together to make it easy for yo to grow your eBay business.

Of course you can count on the PowerWheelerChris' blog to continue to post weekly articles of interest to the eBay community including editorials. AskPWC to continue to provide tips and how to's every weekday for eBay members and the Kansas City eBay examiner to publish every Monday, Wednesday and Friday news of interest for eBayers.

Be sure to rely on PowerWheelerChris to keep you updated on the latest eBay related news in the news center section of the site.

You can also count on the PWC News to send you weekly updates via email of everything going on with the PowerWheelerChris family of websites including roundups of all blog entries, Kansas City eBay examiner articles, the top news stories and a calendar of eBay related events of interest and sales from My Cubicle Buddies, A Domain Name 4 Me and recommendations from the PWC Bookstore .

And finally you can keep up to the minute on everything by being a fan on Facebook  and following on twitter your area of interest: Follow PowerWheelerChris on Twitter at http://twitter.com/PwrWheelerChris, Follow Ask PWC on Twitter at twitter.com/AskPWC, Follow FSeBS on Twitter at http://twitter.com/FSeBS, Follow My Cubicle Buddies on Twitter: at:
twitter.com/MyCubicleBuddy, and follow ADomainName4Me on Twitter at twitter.com/ADomainName4Me

January 2009:

• eBay makes improvements to the discussion boards.  The dissuasion boards had a major makeover and now posts include avatars of members and a change in navigation.

February 2010

• Moneybookers and Paymate are now available as new approved payment methods - as eBay moves towards paperless payments site wide two new ePayment services were available to sellers on the site.

March 2009:

• Making It Easier to Recover Listings - now if a listing is pulled by eBay for a listing violation you can easily recover it from the eBay site and make the needed changes and get it live quickly (There are some situations where a listing will be pulled and not recoverable though)
• Digital Downloadable Goods in Classified Ads Format Only - a big change to how you can sell digital goods on eBay.
• eBay Motors Vehicle Purchase Protection Increased to $50,000 - designed to increase buyer confidence on the site.
• Beta launch of eBay Bucks rewards program =- a new rewards program from eBay - still in beta at the end of this year.
• Updates to Seller Dashboard throughout the year eBay has made changes to the seller dashboard proving sellers more detailed information about their DSR's and allowing sellers to create and save reports.

April 2009

• Seller Release 1 (SR1) announced
• eBay Stores upgrade; news about searching - cosmetic and search changes were made to eBay stores.

June 2009

• Start today! List 5 FREE every 30 days! - eBay now allows you five free listings a month if you use the SYI form.

July 2009

• eBay Announcements Board gets a fresh look with great new features - a fresh new look came to the eBay announcement board.
• eBay live ends and the birth of eBay on location events
• Seller Release 2 (SR2) announced

August 2009

• Top-rated seller badge - a new (and some say controversial) way to promote buyer confidence on the site.

September 2009

• Goodbye, eBay Blogs - after 3 plus year eBay closes the blogs.  Many have suspicions to the true reason or the clsoing.
• Bill Me Later on eBay!

November 2009

• Major site outage the weekend before Thanksgiving - eBay Update on Weekend Site Restoration – Lorrie Norrington, President, eBay

Also this year eBay giving works will let a seller donate as little as $1 to a charity via an auction and 1% of a sale in the eBay motors.

What will 2010 bring?  Keep following my blog and the news I post daily on my website www.powerwheelerchris.com for more.

Have a Merry Christmas and a happy and safe new year.  May God bless you and your family during this holiday season and your sales and your customers in the coming year!

See you January 7th!

They are hard to find on the store shelves across America - and if your child wants one for Christmas I hope you turn to eBay and have some extra bucks to spend.

According to an tweet from eBay, in the month of November alone 206,466 Zhu Zhu pets and accessories sold on the site.  eBay has even launched a map of where the Zhu Zhu pets sales are happening on their site.  The map can be viewed at www.ebayholiday.com/zhu-zhu

This little hamster is raking in the dough for sellers.  In fact when I took the screenshot for this article, there was less than 1 minute left in the listing and the price jumped $8! 

You can track the low and medium price and more for Zhu Zhu pets on a special webpage eBay has set up at http://www.ebayholiday.com/

In previous years hot items were the Nintendo Wii and Tickle Me Elmo - this year the furry hamster (all the fun  of a hamster without the mess) seems to be the hot item for Christmas 2009!

eBay did address the problem with system announcements Saturday afternoon and a post on their announcement board Sunday Search functionality restored to eBay.com – Lorrie Norrington, President, eBay and on eBay's official blog - the eBay ink blog: UPDATED: eBay Restores Search Functionality

eBay has addressed the cause of the problem (an spurge in listings from sellers for the holiday season) and that eBay is working on how to compensate sellers for the outage, but I feel there may be a few other concerns that eBay may need to address:

eBay needs to somehow convince both buyers and sellers that the site is reliable. 

This recent outage, probably the biggest since eBay's 22 hour outage in June 1999, probably happened at one of the worst times.  First, the holiday shopping season is ramping up and sellers want to feel the online platform they are using is stable and buyers want to feel the same.  Second, in this rough economy no one can afford to loose a sale.  Third, some reports show that eBay is falling behind Amazon and this outage will not help eBay regain ground.  Finally, this had to be a major embarrassment in New York City at the eBay pop up location - a place where eBay has set up a ship with kiosks die potential new buyers to try out the site.

I hope that eBay does an adequate job of compensation sellers and eBay does reassure the community that eBay is a stable platform for the holiday season and beyond.

It started at eBay Live in 2003 from Orlando Florida today eBay Radio leaves WSRadio.

What started out as a one hour bi weekly radio show called eBay Radio, which featured a host of Griff, who had guests and took calls, grew into a 2 hour weekly program, followed by a one hour weekly program - the eBay radio PowerSeller Hour and of course Ask Griff a 2 hour phone in program that is now called Ask Griff and Lee.

This past Tuesday Griff announced on the air during eBay radio that starting November 3d the eBay radio programs (including the town hall) were being brought in house and will be done completely through eBay. 

There is a lot of "buzz" about this move.  In fact AuctionBytes did an article on this announcement (link) and received many comments including speculations to whey this move was made by eBay.

Griff stats that the move was made as part of a business move by eBay.  eBay wants more details demographics on who is listening, how many users are listening, etc.  This makes sense.  even though WSRadio has provided information on listeners, eBay hosting it on it's site will be able to tell which members are listening and better target those who are tuning in.

My thoughts:

First, congrats to Lee Miribal for becoming an eBay employee and producer of the eBay Radio shows.  I wish her the best.

Next, I do understand that a business wants data to see what is working and wht is not, and having it in house will be able to gain more data for eBay. 

One drawback I see is that the only way to access eBay radio will be to be signed into your eBay account.  Unfortunately this will prevent the person who is thinking about using eBay to listen to the program  When the show was on WSRadio it had the potential of brining new members into the eBay community.  This change will cut out the option of using the program to promote eBay to non members.

This will also become an obstacle if a person has a suspended account and needs to contact Griff as often other channels do not work when you are suspended.

My last concern is: will you only be able to listen to the program live?  (At this time I do not know if there will be archives of the shows or will you only be able to listen live)

This point sounds like I am being paranoid but it should not be taken this way - I am stating this as one thing that I see could be a problem.  With it being in house will eBay "Filter" callers and comments to be only positive comments about their site?  Will it turn into a infomercial, a tool, to promote eBay instead of being a place where eBay members can feel comfortable (within reason) to express how they feel about eBay, a policy, etc.

Time will tell.

If you were listening to last weeks town hall (October 21st, 2009) link about an hour into the program you probably heard my phone call to the town hall.

In cased you missed it I called in about two issues:

The first issue was in regards to articles I have read/seen about some limited test eBay has preformed n feedback where the feedback questions may be completely overhauled.  I did not get a firm answer on if there will be change and if so what kind of change will be made to feedback - however I was told by Brian Burke that eBay is running these limited tests and is continuing to evaluate the feedback system.  The tests being run on feedback are very limited with the goal for sellers to receive more information to help them become better sellers and so eBay can better identify the top sellers on the site.

The second issue I brought up was in regards to a telephone customer support issue I had with eBay this past August. 

In case you missed the call here are the facts:

On August 8th I was having a potential problem with a buyer and I wanted to know what my options, as a seller are to best protect me and my feedback.  eBay had already switched from live chat to a toll free number for support so that evening around 7:30 I called the toll free number and entered in the pin provided to me from the eBay site.  I waited on hold for 90 minutes and then was disconnected without ever speaking to a rep.  I immediately called back and waited about 60 additional minutes - still no rep- I finally gave up.

Todd Lutwak and Lorrie Norrington apologized all over themselves for this issue.  Lorie stated that eBay is re shaping their reps (who previously provided customer service via live chat) to provide customer service via the phones.  Norrington went on to say that eBay has went from having a very small percentage of the reps on the phones to a growing number of reps answering phone calls with the goal of having 100% of the reps answering the phones..  Initially some of the reps were trained to only offer support via chat or email and must be trained on providing telephone customer support.

I received a phone call from eBay Friday afternoon.   During the phone call I proved additional information that I did not give out during the town hall (but is in this blog entry such as date and time of incident,. the number I called, etc.).  Again eBay did apologize for the problem.  I was informed during the time the incident occurred eBay was closing it's Vancouver support center and there were problems with switching the calls to the right reps - or to reps at all. 

I also was told that eBay does not want anyone to be on hold for more than 10 minutes to get a rep.  I was given the impression that in the futue (if not being done already) that when you click onto help or support on eBay, if the wait time is more than 10 minutes you should be re directed to chat support.

I was curious as to if eBay was going to do away with "Live chat" entirely as I know of a few eBay sellers who are hearing impaired and live chat is the only way they can talk to support.  I was given the impression that live chat will not fully go away.