Common Sense eCommerce

I’ve been exploring the consignment selling aspect of eBay (called ‘Trading Assisant on eBay) for some time now and can’t say that I’ve very successful at it. This is really no surprise, but it seems the thing that people MOST want to get rid of is furniture.When people contact me about helping to get rid of their stuff, almost without fail one or more pieces of furniture is going to be on the list. Part of the consignment process dictates that the Trading Assistant takes temporary possession of the merchandise. This is common practice across all consignment models that I know of.

So furniture presents a problem for this, at least for me. My eBay business is one that I largely work myself and since I am not Hercules, I can’t haul sofas, love-seats, desks and so on by myself. I can sometimes arrange for help, but even then, my 50 plus body doesn’t like hauling furniture. So my only choice is to hire someone to do it for me. This eats into what I can make on the deal.

In addition, there is the storage issue. I have rented storage for the purpose of my eBay business, but one furniture load can easily fill it up. So if you are planning to be part of the eBay consignment gig, make sure you have a way to deal with furniture!

Tags: eBay Consignment, Trading Assistant, Trading Assistant Challenges, eBay Consignment Challenges

Ever since I did a partial sign-up for Doba I have been getting spam from them. I never finished the sign up; it was a little experiment to see how far I could get before they asked for a credit card (which I never gave them). Supposedly they have this 7 day trial offer (ooooo boy, a whole 7 days!) and I was trying to see it if was legit or not.I’ve read a lot of complaints about this company and I have to wonder. I see them everywhere — Doba here, Doba there. They must spend a fortune on Google adwords! I have them in my Squidoo Lens too in the places where I cannot edit them. Part of the sign up process had me putting in my email address. In fact, email and password is the very first step along the way. If you read the fine print below the sign up, here is what it says:

Doba will not disclose your email address to third parties. We use email only as a means of communicating with you.

Means of communicating is exactly what they use it for: illegitimately! Here is a snap shot of my Gmail spam box.

All Doba! And Gmail knows Doba is spam; it puts all their emails in the Spam folder straight away. These are not phish emails either; they really do originate from Doba. If you open one of the emails , the only thing in the email body is a hyperlinked image to their signup page. There is no way to ‘unsubscribe’ from their emails. Isn’t that a violation of the Can Spam law?

Am I going to do business with a company that has to resort to illegal spam? Don’t think so. And read what some eBay sellers have to say in the Doba Review forum (link here). Not very favorable and lots of truth in those guides. If you want to do real dropshipping, and make money from it (rather than loose money), you’ll need to work with real wholesalers directly in a niche. Not a middleman. Check out the WorldWide Brands Video Center. Look at Top 5 sourcing Tips, then Tip #2.

Tags: Doba Spam, Doba Scam, Doba Drop Ship, Doba Email

Such is the case with some eBay shoppers. Each week we get the questions on auction items “I need 2 of these for a gift, what’s your best price” blah blah.We respond by telling them to visit our eBay store where there are plenty more with free shipping including. And of course we include the listing number of the store listing so they’ll have no trouble finding it.

Yet we seldom hear anything from these shoppers again. It’s as though they have a natural aversion to going to an eBay store. They come to eBay to wheel and deal, and compete for a good price. There will always be that group of folks who just won’t bite on the eBay store thing.

And of course eBay doesn’t make things any easier with their whopping store fees forcing sellers to hike their prices to make a profit. Oh and it never hurts to point to out we sell them cheaper on our website (heh).

A few weeks ago, I starting noticing this little text ad nugget appearing at the bottom of each of my listings.

I remember being a little miffed at the time, but shrugged it off. Then I read Sydney Johnston’s newsletter where she says:

When you pay your eBay listing fees, what you are buying is advertising space on eBay’s giant site.”

I got to thinking, how true! And how unethical on the part of eBay. When you consider that we pay for listings on eBay (and oh how the listing fees have gone up over the years) the space inside the auction listing should be ours. At the very least, we should have a choice whether or not to display eBay advertisements. There’s no telling how much extra revenue this little ad brings to eBay. But the bottom line is that we’ve already paid for that space and we should have some control.

Aside from that, it’s not even relevant advertising. All the ones I’ve seen go to a Credit Bureau ad. Unless I’m selling something credit-related, this has no business on my auction listing. Now, I thought eBay was going to try to ‘improve the buyer experience’ this year. Isn’t that what they said? Hmmm. Dishing up junk ads is not improving, but it’s deteriorating the buyer experience if all they’re going to show is credit bureau ads.

As if that’s not bad enough, the text ad links do not initiate a new browser session. That means if the buyer clicks on it, he or she’s gone! Gone away from my listing which presumably they were intersted in to begin with.

This is one of those little things that is bad news for sellers. It’s not like we need any more things to complain about is it? Now, the ads are tied to the counters. Sydney points out that a way around is not to use the eBay counters. This might be a good reason to go with an auction management system like Vendio where counters are provided.

However, what will they do next? Build ads into the main eBay listing CSS?

Tags: eBay Credit Ads, eBay Experian Ads, eBay Listing Ads, eBay Counter Ads