ebay.com, ebay.co.uk

[mikronauts]

I am trying to expand my reach, and with the new changes, I am forced to open a store.

Would I be better off, in terms of visibility, to open the store on ebay.com?

As far as the UK goes, I intensely dislike (ie hate) the "visibility" fee.

Is it feasible for me to open an ebay.co.uk seller account, so that my items will be visible in the UK, even though I am physically in Canada?

Soon, I intend to start using a freight forwarder that ships from outside of Canada, as Canada Post rates are insanely high, and thus would not be shipping from Canada and UK.

[38e_avenue]

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@rose-dee wrote:

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I'm trying to understand this.  Do you mean if nothing is offered from Ebay.de sellers on the EBay.de site, the items from international sellers will appear?  

I think that's what exactly what happened in my tests above when I did the search in English.  When I searched auf Deutsch, a few German sellers' items appeared.

It depends on the kind of item, too. If we offer something very specific, with a proper name.

Another situation with the Kugelschreiber. Because 35 of Ebay.com sellers decided to use that word in the description -  NO INTERNATIONAL RESULT WERE SHOWN, even if Ebay.de sellers have offered 35.000 Kugelschreibers for sale.

So even if you are the world best Kugelschreiber seller with TRS for0life status - NO will see your Kugelschreibers on Ebay.com - just because Ebay system decided that 35 Ebay.com items are enough to choose from.

[rose-dee]

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@38e_avenue wrote:

I add German keywords to the Germany-related items, so they can be catched by Google. I have customers who found my items on Google and opened Ebay account only to buy them.

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I don't think Google is the only answer, although obviously that would help.  I would think that including German keywords into item titles should have a similar effect on eBay.de, as per my experiment.  

As I mentioned earlier, I have found that the U.K. visibility is a different scenario.  When I do occasionally pay the extra $0.50, I find I get a brief boost in U.K. sales, and I've noticed those items are then displayed in the "regular" search list, rather than amongst the "other international sellers" section on eBay.UK. 

[38e_avenue]

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@rose-dee wrote:

As I said, I learned from this little experiment that one of my main competitors has already thought about this problem and is including German descriptions in her titles, even if those listings are composed in the U.S. on eBay.com.   Tsk, tsk, I'm going to have to do something about that. 

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That's exactly what I am doing. Also German sellers do the same, and use often both - stamp and Briefmarke, or coin and Muenze (btw, WHO here knows that a coin is a MUENZE in German? 😉 as their keywords.

[rose-dee]

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@38e_avenue wrote:

Another situation with the Kugelschreiber. Because 35 of Ebay.com sellers decided to use that word in the description -  NO INTERNATIONAL RESULT WERE SHOWN, even if Ebay.de sellers have offered 35.000 Kugelschreibers for sale.

So even if you are the world best Kugelschreiber seller with TRS for0life status - NO will see your Kugelschreibers on Ebay.com - just because Ebay system decided that 35 Ebay.com items are enough to choose from.

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I'm going to try this specific search to see exactly what you mean, because I'm a bit confused by your last sentence ("NO will see your Kugelschreibers on Ebay.com") -- did you mean on EBay.de??). 

[38e_avenue]

Sorry, should read "NO ONE WILL SEE"

(I am definitely more fluent In German than in English )

[38e_avenue]

Ebay.de sellers offer 35.000 Kugelschreibers. On Ebay.com you find only 35 Kugelschreibers and NO LINK to 35.000 Kugelschreibers offered by Ebay.de sellers. No one of 35.000 is visible on Ebay.com.

[rose-dee]

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@38e_avenue wrote:

"Ebay.de sellers offer 35.000 Kugelschreibers. On Ebay.com you find only 35 Kugelschreibers and NO LINK to 35.000 Kugelschriebers offered by Ebay.de sellers."

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OK, I just did this search, on both eBay.de and eBay.com, and I think I see what you mean.  The listings on .com were shown as coming from all over the world (including Germany and Austria), but there were also two U.S. listings that included the words "Kugelschreiber" -- these both also had the English words "ballpoint pen". 

I'm actually not surprised if this is the case, since we all know how U.S.-centred the eBay.com site is.  

So what you're saying is that eBay.com won't display international items with the German word Kugelschreiber from .de sellers.  However, eBay.de, on the other hand does display international items with the English word "ballpoint pen" in the title (or in my case, "antique sewing pattern")?  

In other words, as they say, what's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander in this instance -- am I understanding this correctly?  There is no "universal" visibility? 

[38e_avenue]

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@rose-dee wrote:

In other words, as they say, what's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander in this instance -- am I understanding this correctly?  There is no "universal" visibility? 

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Exactly. And this thread is about this and not about "how smart must be my customers to find my items".

The rules changes from site to site. They are currently 27 different Ebay (or Ebay associated) sites in the world.

Some of them work closer than others (For example Ebay.com. Ebay.ca and Ebay.com.au.). Other sites are completely disconnected.

All of them use the local language - try for example to list something on THIS Ebay   http://export.ebay.co.th/

it give an option to list in English, too, but switches automatically to Ebay Singapore.

[rose-dee]

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@38e_avenue wrote:

The rules changes from site to site. They are currently 27 different Ebay (or Ebay associated) sites in the world.

Some of them work closer than others (For example Ebay.com. Ebay.ca and Ebay.com.au.). Other sites are completely disconnected.

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Yes, I think I must have always knew this about eBay, but had never actually looked at the situation so closely.  

Thank you for bringing this issue up.  It's been very enlightening, as clearly some assumptions I'd been making about European exposure on eBay may have been completely wrong.  

It does make sense to me that eBay.com would "block out" listings in other languages from other eBay sites, perhaps primarily to protect American sellers from being swamped by worldwide listings.  Nonetheless, as sellers registered on eBay.ca, we do get excellent exposure on eBay.com (at least I do ), which for most of us is the biggest concern.  

However, knowing these factors exist will cause me to consider changing how I list my items in the future.