Selling and Ranking On eBay For Amazon Sellers

Richard Morgan
December 7, 2018

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Julius Oliveti gives us insight on Selling and Ranking on eBay covering the software and tools available, similarities with Amazon FBA, fulfilment options and promoted products ads on the eBay platform

Julius has been selling on eBay since 2000 and has 336,379 Feedback score
There is a massive difference in someone driving all the traffic to a platform that you sell on, rather than selling on your own platform and driving your own traffic
Julius when he started on eBay in 2000 selling Pokemon cards was working as an ice cream man
It started selling £10k / month on eBay and that’s what got Julius started on eBay

Move to Amazon

In 2006 Julius got invited to go onto Amazon
Slowly and in 2009 he started with FBA which was a pittance but it then went through the roof
At the time, Amazon was offering his eBay stock for free with shipping free of charge for 9 months
Amazon took over for 7-8 years but in the last 2-3 years eBay has had a real resurgence
No operating at 70% eBay

Structure on eBay Tiers

The shop is really just a shop front
Helps with fees and how many you can list, etc.
For most people a featured shop is what you will need
When you’re selling thousands of listings then an anchor shop would be what you would need – drop shippers use these

Danny started Selling on eBay

Danny wanted to clear up the ‘counterfeiters’ in his space when entering eBay so he contacted VeRO (Verified Rights Owners Programme)
The angle is that Danny’s images are being used on their listing on eBay for his product
It was amazing how quickly they were appearing on eBay – 2 were appearing a day
Danny placed his product on eBay at 3-4 pence of the Amazon price and they all disappeared overnight as they were using software to match the Amazon price and now couldn’t compete (they were all dropshippers)
Drop shipping is less attractive on eBay now

Software and Tools for Selling and Ranking on eBay

Review software for eBay is pretty non-existent
Julius send out follow up emails asking for reviews and some do
A lot of it is with the after-sales you provide
A lot of eBay sellers are not as savvy on after sales as Amazon sellers
Vendsta is software that Danny is investigating currently to ask for reviews rather than feedback
Terapeak for keyword research on eBay but pricey
eBay Title Builder is a free tool – constrained as it’s 90 chars
The first 4 words in the eBay title are the most important ones

Order Management

Multi-channel fulfilment
On Amazon Julius has Merchant Fulfilled as well as FBA in order to cover any FBA shortfalls
Channel Grabber multi-channel ecommerce software works for Julius
Julius does not use cross platform like JoeLister Cross-platform is managed by the software to aggregate inventory

Pan-EU Selling

eBay is not as integrated for selling on different marketplaces
They have a tie-up with web-interpret but not so good
Julius has translated 70% of his UK listings French, German, Italian and Spanish
Market penetration in these countries has not been so good, might be because a lot of the products are Julius’ own brand
Also, the reviews from the UK do not carry over into the other countries
Only if a buyer from France leaves a review will it show on the French site for example
Look at reviews differently to Amazon
Julius is now selling some branded products on eBay and are selling well in Germany

Listing Templates

No Helium 10 type keyword tools
Julius uses his Amazon templates for eBay
Tweaks the listing template to be more visible to Google and google snippets
Having 5-6 short bullet points and a description
Desktop nad mobile views are important as 70% of eBay sales are now mobile
Julius uses a company called ‘fruition’ for eBay templates

eBay Algorithm

Cassini algorithm on eBay has some factors that affect selling and ranking on eBay:
- Pays to be a top rated seller
- Free shipping helps
- An extensive sales history
- Account-wide elements such as top rated seller
- There are new service metrics coming in next year – like late delivery rates
Each individual product will have element of the account-side scores and individual product scores for Clickthrough and Sell-through rates on a daily basis
Monday performance will take to Weds to show up and rank

New Seller Launch Ranking

No Honeymoon period on eBay
Being out of stock for 2-3 weeks you seem to keep your rank and when you re-stock you’re back up and running
List products with a small false stock level
Place items up for a loss to get sales
Get great followup emails to get reviews and sales velocity

On-page Optimisation

Title optimisation front loaded at the beginning of the title
Terapeak tells you the most important keywords for selling and ranking on eBay
No search volume in Terapeak
To do manual search volume research just look at the top of ‘best match’ in eBay search – see the top 5 Sellers and click into the ad and see their sales to see their last 100 sales, if they are selling 100 over a week then it’s 400 a month
RFID cases for car keys
Pre-filled data in the search box that helps give you keywords
Put that into eBay title builder to get the most commonly used keywords for that search
Bullets and Description
- Para to describe the product
- 5 bullets like Amazon
- Further description further down
- Contents of the box
- Size of the product (avoids buyer mistakes)
- Fill in the ‘item specifics’ section on eBay to help avoid mistakes and guarantee you show up in the right categories

Subtitles?

Don’t go for the subtitles – a waste of time
It doesn’t help and is not relevant in search
Be a top rated seller and benefit more

Photos

You can have upto 12 slots
eBay like to have more images
eBay had a problem with graffiti (Chinese sellers putting union jack flags when it wasn’t UK stock)
Same as Amazon
- White background is better
- Infographics help
- Picture quality makes a difference on eBay
- Julius is selling more products at a higher price than competitors

Is eBay the ‘Bargain store’?

No – Julius is selling branded products at premium pricing to the high street and selling very well

Selling Details

Fixed Price – Good until cancelled is Julius’ model
Get sales history going – more is better
Some of Julius’ products are top of best match and have been there for 2 years with Sales History fo 10,000
Very hard to displace Julius in this space with these metrics

Return Options

Seller pays for the return and customer keeps it, return within 60 days
eBay has a more sophisticated returns process than Amazon
Julius offers 90 days return policy – eBay likes you if you do this, makes you a good and honest trader
Two types:
- Remorse reason where Buyer changes their minds – the Buyer pays for the return
- Item Not as Described – you can provide a pre-paid returns label, or eBay can provide or thirdly you can refund them

International Selling

You wouldn’t do free shipping overseas – they can buy off the other markets if you sell through them
You have a UK listing with a business policy setup for postage
- Free post in UK
- Set price for Europe
- Set price for different places (i.e. North America slightly higher)
- And a Rest of World price
Depending on product price – Julius’ are mostly sub £10 so more cost-effective to send out himself
If you have a higher sell price then you could use eBay’s Global Shipping Programme
You send the item to eBay’s UK warehouse and then they do the rest
Like FBA but only for International orders and it works really well
Selling an item for £30 and the buyer is in Argentina so eBay charges them £10 for shipping
You can also have a situation where you can list on multiple eBay sites UK, France, Germany, Italy
However if you list on these countries AND ALSO have a UK listing selling to these countries then eBay sees that as a Duplicate listing
They see two offers from you and is a contravention of eBay’s policy
If you are setting up in other countries then you need to turn off the capability in your UK listing to sell to that country

Promoted Listings

eBay is a ‘pay per sale’ platform
Was setup like a dream
eBay have different placements in Best Match that are allocated to sponsored products
The Top Sponsored product placement was at position number 5 on the page
If you’re top of Best Match you don’t need to spend on sponsored products as the best you could get is number 5
They have now just changed it to Position Number 1 now plus number 4 and number 5
Julius is Position 1 and 2 because he is top product (organic position no 2) and spending for sponsored ads to get position 1

Promoted Launch challenge

New eBay account, new listing, no reviews and only 50 units available – is this stopping getting ad impressions?
Where can you monitor your ads? There’s no keywords to check against
There are reports but they are not very good – it’s in its infancy
There are a few ‘experts’ that manipulate and dominate the algorithm on Amazon in PPC
As eBay is less sophisticated system its fairer for the new guys
Selling a product at £10.99 and 100 units a week between the top 5 sellers with you making £3 profit per sale
If you were on amazon you might put in £300 on sponsored products to get it to rank
On eBay you would put them on at a cheap price, get a few sales, put the price up and get some more sales, then put it up again
This builds sales velocity while getting up to your target price and get the product selling in its own right
Reduce the pay per sale ads on it and you’re at the Top

eBay take on Friends and Family

eBay uses a verified review
On eBay, people copy your EAN and they instantly have your 200 reviews
Or they will copy the images or title and get the reviews across
eBay has an ePID – a unique ID, think of an umbrella with EAN, MPN, Title and Images
If someone copies these elements then they also get your reviews
Julius files forms to VeRO to complain about people copying his elements
VeRO are removing these within a few hours but it’s every day Julius is filing these

Payments

Using Paypal to get payments in
Drawing out on a Monthly or Weekly basis
Accountant manages it on a cash accounting basis
Reports come out of eBay with monthly sales and commissions

Fulfilment Options

Can use JoeLister to bring over from Amazon
eBay has good opportunities
Fulfilling your own orders can be seen as a barrier
If you can do Merchant Fulfilled for eBay then brilliant
Julius despatches 700 items on a Monday morning – no problem as he has his system in place and can get upto 300 per hour
There are third party fulfilment centres that will despatch for you at a set price per item
Good blog from ‘Andrew Minalto’ on fulfilment houses options
eBay is working really well with Royal Mails click & Drop system
- Buy your postage on-line and print it out A4 or 6×4 label printer
- Post mostly 2nd class within 48hrs
- Not fully tracked but do have delivery confirmation
- eBay will always side with you if you have proof of delivery