eBay Express Offers Exciting New Selling Options

Recently eBay launched its new "eBay Express" and it's almost

certain to be a major profit center to eBay sellers.



As everyone knows, eBay began as an auction site. Catering to

small, mom and pop sellers, eBay evolved into a more traditional

online shopping channel with its stores and such features as Buy It

Now (BIN) which allows buyers to purchase merchandise

immediately, rather than waiting for an auction to end.



With eBay Express this transition to online store is complete,

although eBay will certainly retain the auction format for which it is

most famous.



In 2005 eBay bought shopping.com and the similarity in format

between the two is apparent. The format is almost identical

although there are far more items on eBay Express than

shopping.com. For instance, this morning in 'women's apparel'

there were "469,207 matches found" on Express and "79,000

items from 525 stores" on shopping.com.



One great difference: with the eBay Express system every

purchase goes to the same shopping cart, even though there are

thousands of merchants. The shopping site, on the other hand,

leads directly to the individual store that owns the displayed

merchandise.



eBay sellers cannot sign up for eBay Express, although they can

opt out. Instead, the merchandise is automatically listed if it's in

the BIN format or if it's listed in an eBay store. At this time, there is

no charge for this dual listing on eBay and eBay Express, although

I feel certain that this will change in the future and that eBay will

charge for this service.



Sellers will receive not only more exposure for each item listed, but

there are other benefits as well:



1. Buyers can choose to purchase multiple items all in one

transaction, just like any traditional store. If the buyer wants eight

different items, it can be handled in one transaction, with one

payment and one shipping charge. This is so much simpler than

dealing with eight different auctions, eight different sellers and

eight different shipping fees that it's almost certain to encourage

multiple sales.



2. This will, in turn, solve one of the biggest gripes of eBay sellers:

the dreaded Non Paying Bidder! For reasons known only to

themselves, there are multiple dead beats who deliberately win an

auction - but never pay the seller. Usually they don't even respond

to repeated emails. This is very costly to sellers - not only in the

obvious sense of unpaid merchandise but also because of the loss

of other buyers who were legitimately interested in the

merchandise but have most likely gone elsewhere. With eBay

Express, everything will be paid in advance so the buyer won't

withdraw her merchandise from the market yet never be paid for it.



3. There is a shopping cart for eBay Express and it includes

multiple ways to pay.



4. eBay has promised to aggressively promote eBay Express in the

search engines and there is every reason to trust that promise.

After all, it is in eBay's interest to use their considerable muscle to

ensure the success of eBay Express. This is certain to mean more

traffic to sellers.



Although the starting point of seller participation is either an eBay

store or Buy It Now items, there are additional requirements:



* At this time, the Express is only available to American and

Canadian sellers. If eBay Express is a success, this is very likely

going to expand to other countries.

* The items for sale must physically be in the US

* There are PayPal conditions: the seller must be either a PayPal

Business or a PayPal Premier participant

* Every item listed in eBay Express must include a picture

* If applicable, the "condition" field must indicate whether the

merchandise is Used/New/Refurbished

* Such items as books, movies and DVDs have a "pre-filled item

information" component to their listings and this must be used

* There are three choices for shipping on eBay and these must be

clearly indicated in the 'shipping' field of each listing in order to be

included in eBay Express

- Calculated

- A flat fee of "X" amount of dollars

- No cost for shipping

* Sellers feedback must be a minimum of 100 points

* Seller feedback must have at least a 98% approval rate



Items will be listed in up to three different locations on eBay

Express. According to eBay's president:



"Results are sorted on relevancy against the buyer¡¯s search by

default. Searching brings back listings that may not be an exact

keyword match and sorts them based on a range of factors. The

buyer is able to re-sort by total cost, i.e. item price plus shipping

cost."



With all these exciting promises, there are eBay seller gripes about

one feature and that is that sellers will sometimes be presented

with orders from unconfirmed PayPal addresses. This is significant

because PayPal offers some fraud protection but only if the

merchandise is shipped to an address that has been confirmed by

PayPal. If the address is not confirmed and the buyer is a fraud,

sellers will lose out.



In spite of all the outrage over this provision, it isn't that different

from online sellers who have their own merchant account.



In the United States, for example, there is an Address Verification

System. If we, for instance, receive an order from an address that

doesn't match the address on the buyer's credit card, we know

that we are taking a much larger risk than normal. In fact, many

merchant account providers forbid turning off the AVS and breaking

this rule can cost the merchant his account. In this case, all orders

that don't have an address match are automatically rejected.



If eBay sellers don't want to agree to these terms, they have two

choices:



1. The first seller choice involves opting out of eBay Express

entirely. This seems to me to be a foolish choice. Yes, there is

added risk but the possibility of increased business will most likely

more than make up for an occasional bad transaction.



It's imperative that we make it easy for buyers to do business with

us. Perhaps the strongest example I've ever seen of eBay fear

was a notice by a seller that we had to mail him and get

permission to bid on one of his items! Undoubtedly he had been

burned by an unscrupulous buyer and tried so hard to protect

himself that he most likely destroyed his business. I seriously

doubt that people are willing to do as he requested (unless his

merchandise was irresistible - and it wasn't!)



2. There is an option to decide on a case-by-case basis if the

transaction should be honored. This might be useful in the event of

very expensive merchandise, but it could quickly grow to be a

problem in the event of many sales.



Most everything that eBay touches turns to gold and eBay Express

will likely be the same. We cannot know the results as yet, but the

increased sales will probably far outweigh the increased risk. We

cannot know without testing but sellers would be wise to

concentrate on these exciting new opportunities rather than

focusing on fear of loss.



Wandering around eBay Express as a buyer, I cannot help but be

pleased with what I find. I have the option of viewing up to 90

items on each page, the volume is gigantic, the pictures are great,

and I can buy whatever I want with only one payment. It's more

like Amazon than eBay. With the vast resources behind this new

selling venue, success is the most likely possibility and this seller

doesn't intend to miss out!



Instead of looking for "hot" products to sell on eBay, turn the process around ... find the suppliers first, then choose from thousands of products to find profitable ones.

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