Successful Amazon Selling: An eBay PowerSeller’s Tips

Gary Richardson is a true e-commerce pioneer. A long-time eBay PowerSeller, he was one of the first PowerSellers to also become a top 5 category seller on Amazon. Here Gary shares some of his impressions of selling on Amazon versus selling on eBay.

Gary, you've sold on eBay for 3 years under the ID Harleyglasses, building a thriving business selling sunglasses, goggles, and reading glasses. But now, from what we've seen you're having a lot of success on Amazon with your store GogglesandGlasses.

What are Amazon customers like compared to eBay customers?

Ah… man worlds apart. I really don’t know much about my Amazon customers. I hardly ever hear from them, they don’t ask questions, they seem to be very confident and trusting in their purchases. On eBay we frequently get questions like “Are the new sunglasses really new” and “did this really ship”? Our Amazon, customers seem to be willing to pay for service and product, while our eBay shoppers are looking for the lowest price only. Shoppers definitely trust Amazon.com

I have noticed in the returns department that Amazon customers seem to return items in better condition than eBay customers, that’s just my micro observation. But we do have more returns from Amazon customers.

Does Amazon’s famous A-Z protection policy make your life better or worse?

I think it makes it better. I have had two claims as a seller, one won and one lost. I tend to enjoy the trust that buyers so confidently give to Amazon 3^rd party sellers in their purchases--they buy freely because of that A-Z safety net. I can tell you it’s real, it works, and customers keep coming back and recommending Amazon to their circle because of it.

We’ve been poking around and it seems you’ve become the go-to guy for insider info on Amazon selling. What do you see as the keys to successful Amazon selling as a third-party merchant?

• A toll free phone number and email for customers to contact you at any point in the sale. While they usually don’t use it, it’s good to have it available should any problems arise, it will save your feedback.

• An easy returns process. If customers find it difficult to return items they may skip the process and go directly to leaving you negative feedback. Endicia has a great return label feature. We can email, fax, or snail mail a return label to a customer passing our great postage rates on to them.

• Excellent feedback. Your feedback on Amazon is a one-way process and buyers don’t hold back when things go wrong. Amazon can remove sellers from the platform for excessive negative and neutral feedback. My advice is to do whatever you can to maintain perfect feedback, attempt to truly resolve every problem, and if the buyer is agreeable, try to remove the bad feedback. Buyers don’t look at how many feedbacks you have, they look at how good it is by the percentage.

• Positive Reviews on your products. Reviews are everything. A good review can shoot your product to the top, a bad review can send it flaming to the bottom of the basement. A good place to garner reviews is your own good feedback. You might tactfully ask your buyer who left positive feedback if they would be willing to write a review of your product. Some of Amazon’s top reviewers will review media or products if you send them a sample.

What do you think the future holds for eBay and Amazon?

Ooh…. Tough one! I see a big future in new fixed-price commerce. I feel most barn and attic finds have been found and I actually think there is a limit to auction fever. I think the Amazon Pay-Per-Sale (PPS) model will become more prevalent in the future and I’m not sure if eBay can make the leap to PPS without destroying auctions. I see increased competition for eBay in the fixed-price market with players like Neweggmall jumping into the action soon. eBay may become smaller as fixed-price commodity sellers flee to platforms with better pricing structures and fewer hoops to jump through to continue selling.

I don’t see a revival of Amazon auctions. Amazon needs better tools for sellers and better communication from the alliance department (Trust and Safety). I think Jeff Bezos has a long-term vision for Amazon, and it looks like it’s about to pay off. You can see it all coming together at once.

Amazon is forcing eBay to rethink its marketplace fees. This is good for sellers and also buyers--lower seller fees mean lower prices!

Use Blogs to Find eBay Products to Sell

You're reading one so you know that Blogs, or web logs, are informal Internet newsletters, sort of dispatches from the front. Blogs have taken the world of publishing out of the hands of the big guys and put it directly within the reach of all of us. Anyone can have a blog, and for that reason, blogs vary greatly in quality and content. But, one thing is for certain, reading blogs can help you discover what other people are thinking about, hoping for, and dreaming of. They can be a great way to spot emerging trends, and therefore product ideas that others aren’t tapping into yet.

You can search for blogs through Google just by clicking on the “more” button from the main Google page. Select the “blog” search option. Now, your search results will only include blogs. You can also use a blog directory to find relevant blogs. A good example of this type of directory is blogcatalog at http://www.blogcatalog.com/. Finally, you can go to http://www.weblogawards.org to view a list of award winning blogs. Each December a vote is held to determine the best blogs in more than 45 categories. In December 2006, more than 525,000 votes were cast!

Starting with these blogs makes it a little easier to get your feet wet in the world of blogs, which is so broad, that getting lost and losing hours of valuable time are both easy and likely. Still, if you want to get a glimpse of up-to-the-minute insight into what concerns people who are your potential customers, blogs are a fascinating place to start.

From the book eBay PowerSeller Secrets , 2nd edition, to be published November 2007. Another book you may be interested in is eBay PowerSeller Million Dollar Ideas.

USED CAR HELL @CRISWELL

Do your poor palms sweat when you set foot into a car dealer's "showroom?" Maybe that's because you've heard the horror stories of salesmen who strong arm their hapless customers. Who cajole, threaten, cheat, and yes, lie to their customers. We've heard them too. But with so many people exchanging information about cars and dealers on the Internet, I thought perhaps things had changed--That I could go into a dealership and maybe even have a pleasant experience. But pigs don't fly out of rumps, and I guess good experiences at used car dealers don't happen either. At least it didn't for us that day in May, 2007.

Yesterday my wife and I were shopping for a used car for our college-aged daughter at Criswell Automotive, a dealer in Gaithersburg, MD. We were told by Corey Pardue, the sales manager that our chosen car came with a 30 day "bumper to bumper warranty. Great, we said. Can we see details in writing? What does that warranty cover exactly? (We learned from Consumer Reports that you should know these things.) Well, Corey said, you'll need to sign all these papers first, and then our "business manager" can give you those details. Right. Ok, we wanted to please our daughter so we tried something else. Well, Corey, can we add language to the contract that says we can take the car to our mechanic and return it within 48 hours if he finds problems. "SURE," Corey said, let's add that language (which he did).

In the meantime, his repair shop was fixing a steering problem with the car. This was taking hours (we really love our kid), which gave us plenty of time to read all the paperwork. Guess what we learned? The contract stated that the only warranty language that was legal was the language on the car's sticker (in our case the vague, unspecific, 30-day or 1,000 mile warranty). That means that any language to added to the contract was meaningless. When I asked Corey about this he told us to leave! Gosh!

So folks, it's true. Hell exists, and we entered it when we went though the doors at Criswell Automotive in Gaithersburg, MD. Do yourself a favor and shop elsewhere for a Honda, Chevy, Hummer, Lexus, or whatever else you may be in the market for.