I would like to hear about your insights on what it's like being a Canadian eBay seller. Please post your thoughts here, what works, what doesn't, ideas for improvements to the site or for new features, etc. Please keep the topic on selling.
Note: This is not a thread like our weekly Board Hour. I'll try to stay active on here as much as possible but please keep any questions or site issues (including any comments on what is not working with GSP! ;-)) for our weekly discussions. What I'm hoping to do here is get a sense of your business insights and perhaps even find an idea or two we can look into implementing.
Looking forward to read you!
“insights on what it's like being a Canadian eBay seller”
Let’s start at the beginning. What is eBay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKtlK7sn0JQ skip the ad.
In fact, eBay is a venue, nothing more than a venue: a place to advertise our products to potential buyers. Fortunately, I was already experienced in the mail order business (direct marketing) and adding eBay as a method of advertising my products was easy.
At the beginning, fifteen years ago, I used eBay, Yahoo and Amazon, three online venues, in addition to my own website and my regular mail customers (many collectors without computers or online access). Over time eBay proved to be the only online venue consistently attracting buyers and this is where I concentrated my marketing efforts.
From being an “auction” site in the early days (it was an exciting novelty where just about everything sold), eBay has gradually become an e-commerce facility where buyers come to buy things at fixed price with pre-determined shipping costs. Successful sellers have adapted to the change.
It is important to note that what is “good for eBay” is not necessarily “good for sellers”. In the last many years eBay expanded its marketplace by adding high volume sellers with huge inventory (large number of SKUs). Their goal is to present more items to buyers. While it works for eBay generating more fees, it also means more competition for buyer’s eyeballs and pocketbook.
Looking at it from a Canadian perspective, one important factor over the years has been the value of the US dollars in relation to the Canadian dollar since a very large percentage of sales on eBay finds its way to the American or overseas markets (priced in US$). Back in 1999, Canadian sellers were getting Cdn$1.50/$1.60 per US$1.00. By 2004, it was Cdn$ 1.40 per US$1.00. In 2009, we were getting about Cdn$ 1.20 per US$. Now the dollar trades around par (give or take a nickel either way). The de facto devaluation in the value of the US$ had more impact on Canadian sellers than all the eBay fee increases combined.
Other factors working against Canadian sellers have been the never ending annual increases in postal costs and eBay/PayPal insistence in using “tracking” (or delivery confirmation), a low cost American shipping method, not easily available for most products shipped out of Canada.
Over the years, we have also seen eBay becoming a micromanager of every transaction, trying to standardize every aspect of every transaction. Frustrating!
Constant changes in fees and policies have made it difficult, more so for Canadian sellers who are often subject to policies based on the American experience (tracking requirements for TRS badge for example).
Now, I am more or less retired. I look at the challenges facing new Canadian sellers and often wonder: do they have a chance to succeed? Too many come here trying to sell the wrong items (stuff not meant to be sold by mail), unprepared for the huge competition and difficulties to sell to an international marketplace through direct marketing.
Suggestions for new Canadian sellers (in no preferential order):
- Sell what you know – Know what you sell
- Study and analyze your competition
- Make sure your products are meant for “mail order”
- Leave paranoia behind. This is business. Think of protecting your buyers (not yourself)
- Since the marketplace (not you) really controls selling prices, profit is made by buying at lower costs than your competitors!
- Guarantee your products. Be positive and proud of what you sell.
- Absorb your packing and shipping costs into your selling prices – as much as possible
I wish all Canadian sellers the best of luck.
Low cost suggestions for eBay -
1 - In addition to telephone add a link for email to Customer Support. Many users prefer or need to use email (or cannot use telephone) for a variety of valid reasons. Preferably, have all emails coming from Canadian users handled by specialists understanding the Canadian marketplace.
2 - To protect Canadian buyers against scammers (yes they do exist), eBay should require that all Canadian sellers wishing to use eBay's invoicing system to calculate GST/HST provide eBay with their registration number and assure the number is included on the invoice (as required by law). It may not eliminate every scam but will certainly help in some instances.
You asked that this thread be limited to selling on ebay, but a similar thread for buying is important.
IMO there are many more issues facing buyers than sellers at this point in time.
For example, the GSP.
Even though you requested that comments be restricted to selling, you mentioned the GSP.
As far as I can see the GSP should only be good for Canadian sellers and sellers should be cheering it on .............. (unless it scares other international buyers away) and so those comments are really about buying and not selling.
I have numerous comments about buying.......
Selling? Not so much.
Hello i*m-still-here,
Thanks for your comment. As I'm eBay Canada's Country Product Manager looking over the Seller Experience, at this time I'm looking to get insights from sellers on the site. Bryan, my counterpart who looks after the Buyer Experience, may opt to create a similar thread on the Buyer forum at some point if he chooses to.
Regarding GSP, it's important to keep in mind that it's a new program that is currently going through its growing pains and that we are diligently working with the GSP team to make it better for Canadian buyers. That's a topic that is 100% buyer facing at this time and something that is vastly discussed in all our weekly Board Hour sessions, I'm hoping we can move to other topics in this thread.
Thanks,
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