• Starting on September 2, 2008, all members will qualify for FREE insertion fees on their first four vehicle listings – a significant discount compared to the current $40 Insertion Fee.
• The Successful Listing Fee for the first four
  vehicles will be $125, but this is only charged when a listing ends
  successfully with a winning bidder.
• Sellers who list more than four vehicles in a
  12-month period will be charged a $20 insertion fee and a $100
  Successful Listing Fee when a listing ends successfully with a winning
  bidder.

These fee changes apply to listings in the Cars & Trucks, Boats,
and all Other Vehicles categories. Vehicles listed in the Motorcycles
and Powersports categories follow the same structure, but with slightly
lower fees.

I am now working in Washington, DC for AMTI, Inc as a Senior Air Traffic Control Specialist. I provide contract support for the RNAV/RNP Group at L’Enfant Plaza. It is a totally new experience for me, but one that I hope will be meaningful and important for the aviation industry.

I am continuing to do some things outside of my real job like eBay Education and helping people use Google Apps to make their businesses more efficient. I am starting a new blog called Embrace The Cloud. Cloud Computing is an interesting new concept, and one that I’d like to explore. Please join me there if you are interested in learning how to use the concept to your benefit.

I also hope to post here more often to help people with using eBay and other online marketplaces to build a business.

If you have any questions, please email me at steve@goingoncetwicesold.com.

After the CaterSource show, it will be off to Albuquerque for the Fiery Foods and BBQ show. I will be there from Feb 29 till Mar 3. I won’t have a booth there, but I will be circulating and trying to see if it will be worth having one next year. If you are in town, shoot me an email, and I’d be happy to try to connect!

The show will feature guest interviews with eBay sellers, other Education Specialists, and third party software vendors. Viewers will be able to phone in or email questions for Drew, Steve and the guests. The shows will be produced live, and they will be replayed several times during the week. I will have updates with show times, etc as soon as they are available.

Thanks Debbie…this post is right on the mark!

>>>One of the changes that eBay just announced is that you won’t be able to be (or stay) a PowerSeller if you have DSRs under 4.5. Many sellers I know who have low DSRs tend to have them for shipping. So let’s take a look at what could be going on here.

• When people leave DSRs for shipping, they are told that a score of 5 means VERY REASONABLE and 4 is REASONABLE. Both are good! Both imply happy people. So what’s wrong with 4?
• Reasonable is a subjective word. The same item with the same shipping sold to two different people could get a 5 for very reasonable or a 1.
• Someone saying that shipping was unreasonable doesn’t mean it was. I know of plenty of sellers who sell rare, fragile, collectible, expensive, and other items. eBay wants the seller to be good, and ship carefully. You even learn in Griff’s Basics of eBay Selling to use brand new packaging and not reuse any packaging. So it’s important to understand that eBay sellers HAVE to pack amazingly. For some, that means double-boxing… extra peanuts… airbags… extra tape… If the item requires that, sellers should use that, and buyers should pay for the materials and time. End of story. That’s REASONABLE. Unreasonable is throwing a fragile item into a padded envelope.
• I think that in general, I’d leave lots of 4s for good sellers. I’d reserve 5 for a really amazing seller who wows me. But since 4 out of 5 is good, I’d think I were leaving someone a good rating. In essence, I’d be helping someone lose their PowerSeller status, and I’d never know that.

So now great sellers might lose their PS status because their shipping DSR might be 4.3. That’s an 86 out of 100 on a test, and that’s not a bad score. You would pass that class. But it means that if these sellers lose their status because of these DSRs and the perception people make up about what’s reasonable and what’s not, then it means that the % of positive feedback comments didn’t mean much. It almost seems easy to have 98% positive feedback with how DSRs are going for many sellers.

I’ve been asking for years for the PowerSeller program to be redefined. I wanted that changed, and I wanted standards raised. In a sense, I still do. But when I see some of my clients about to lose their status, and some of the sellers who were at the eCommerce Forum in danger of losing their PS status, I’m not sure that this change is the right change. I want change. Please bring change! But let’s make sure that this is a change that strengthens good sellers and removes bad sellers. I’m just not convinced, and I’m afraid of who’s going to go extinct because of this.

Maybe if you’re not disadvantaged in search until your DSRs are 4.2, maybe that’s a better threshhold? It’s still an 84 on a test, which is not so bad. But if that’s the line eBay is drawing for Best Match disadvantage, maybe it should be the same line for PowerSeller status, at least on the shipping DSR. I’d still want to see high standards for item as described as that’s darn important!

And this is something I think sellers can help too. If shipping pricing is about expecting shipping to cost or be something, then a seller does have a chance to communicate more about the shipping in the listing. The trade-off is to not get too wordy or grumpy, but you CAN use images of how you pack and some to-the-point bullets about your packing to set up expectations.

PS: My client with feedback of over 30,000, 100% positive, and DSRs that are awesome except for shipping (4.3) suggested a 10-star scale so that eBay can decide, for example, that the threshhold is 8 or 8.5. At least with that, someone like me who doesn’t like to give perfect ratings unless the shipping were AMAZING and exceeded expectations can still give great sellers a 9, which would be GOOD for them. Now, the 4 I might give hurts them.

Evidently, eBay will no longer be holding eBay University, which sent eBay and PayPal staff around the country with classes on the basics of eBay selling. This is because eBay’s Education department has a program that designates people as an Education Specialist Trained by eBay. The better of that crop are designated as Certified Education Specialists Trained by eBay. These are typically eBay sellers who know eBay quite well, and are hopefully good with public speaking.
They hold classes on a variety of levels, usually near where they live. So chances are that there’s a least one near you, and you can attend their classes for reasonable rates.

Classes right now include:

The Basics of eBay Selling

Beyond the Basics

The Basics of Buying

eBay Giving Works

eBay Stores

This program is also designating better instructors as eBay Business Consultants. I’m still a little wary of this since we ARE eBay Business Consultants, yet we’re not listed in there since I don’t qualify to be listed based on the criteria from the Education department. So that’s a bit weird, but hopefully the people with that title are good at what they do.
Another place to get education would be our conference! http://www.aswasconference.com We may not be looking at the basics of selling on eBay, but we’ll be looking at intermediate and advanced topics to help eBay sellers at all levels grow and be more profitable. As a business event, you can write your whole trip off on your taxes, plus we’ll be teaching you how to make more money. So it pays for itself. You can find Education Specialists and their classes at www.poweru.net/ebay.