274 – Why eBay and How to Get Started with Kristine Diemoz of eBay

Gift biz unwrapped episode 274.

One of the main things that eBay gives you is eyeballs

of millions of buyers across the globe,

potentially on your list.

Attention gifters bakers,

crafters, and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one.

Now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode,

packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow.

Your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal Sue moon Heights.

Hi there.

It's Sue.

Well, and thanks for joining me here today.

How is your summer going a little bit different than planned?

I'm thinking me too,

the weather's really nice here in Chicago,

but I miss going out and eating Alfresco or hanging out

with friends,

you know,

all the carefree activities that the summer weather brings.

I mean,

we can still do some of this,

but it's so much more complicated with the masks,

even though they're getting fun and colorful and sometimes you can

even see people's mouth's now that's a little eerie,

but we still have social distancing.

The number of people who can be allocated when things are

indoors, it used to be just so easy and we didn't

even realize it,

given that I'm so thankful that technology allows us to stay

connected. Could you imagine going through social distancing without zoom,

like in the olden days,

I don't know what I could do the other day.

I realized that I've been going live on Facebook for almost

three months.

Now that seems crazy to me.

And that's also in addition to this podcast,

did you know about that?

Every Monday,

Wednesday, and Friday in our group,

gifted biz breeze,

We talk about all sorts of things and have guests answer

business questions and build relationships.

If you're new here and you haven't heard about this before,

why don't you join us?

Just jump over to gift biz breeze on Facebook.

It's a community full of fabulous creators of all sorts.

There are lots of things happening over there too,

which you can hear about all at the close of this

podcast. I want to move on to what we're going to

be talking about today.

We're kicking off a brand new series,

all about online selling platforms.

There are so many out there and it can be a

little confusing about which one you should choose from Etsy to

Amazon handmade.

And now the new Facebook shops.

It's kind of like all the social media options gets completely

overwhelming when making decisions well,

this series is here.

Make sense of all that today.

We'll be talking about E-bay,

you're going to learn why this platform attracts so many sellers,

how things have changed over the years and all the tips,

tricks, and tools for success.

Today. I have such a treat for you.

I want to introduce you to Christine DeMoz of E-bay.

Christie is the senior manager of go to market strategy and

operations at eBay in her role.

She's responsible for updating their sellers and key programs and changes.

Christine has been at eBay for over 18 years,

working in a variety of roles from customer service to project

management, to marketing.

One of the main reasons she stayed so long is because

she's passionate about the eBay mission.

We exist to enable economic opportunity for individuals,

entrepreneurs, businesses,

and organizations of all sizes.

Christine loves that they provide opportunity to anyone from college students

to stay at home moms,

to retirees and more all who want to start a business

selling almost anything online.

Christy, welcome to the gift biz on podcast.

Sue, thank you so much for having me.

When I heard about your podcast and had an opportunity to

listen to Psalm and hear the focus on small business.

I was just thrilled at the opportunity to talk about it.

I'm just so passionate about it and so excited to be

here. Well,

I'm thrilled that you're excited,

but I'm just going to warn you.

I have a whole list of questions,

so get ready.

I'm so ready.

That's great.

Perfect. Before we start,

I have a little bit of a tradition here and I

know, you know it,

since you've listened to some of the shows and that is

for you to share with us who you are by way

of a motivational candle.

So if you were to describe that perfect candle that represents

you, Christie,

what color is it?

And what type of quote or mantra would be on your

candle? Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

I love this.

It's so fun.

It made me really have to pause and think about myself

and my family and kind of our goals and how we

operate. And so for color,

I think I'm kind of like a turquoise color and bright

and hopefully warm and energetic.

And then as far as the motivational quote,

my family and I have been watching the last dance with

sports being not on right now with everything happening.

And my husband grew up watching and loving the late nineties

bulls. And so one of the quotes that really has been

sticking out to me is you must expect great things of

yourself before you can do them.

Some people want it to happen.

Some wish it would happen and others make it happen.

And that's of course by Michael Jordan.

And I just love it because my kids sometimes I've noticed

it, my boys,

that they only want to do something that they're automatically good

at. And so I just want them to know that you

have to work really hard and it's great when things come

easy, but in business and life and everywhere you go working

hard gets results.

I always say about myself,

I'm never going to be the smartest in the room.

I'm never going to be the most strategic.

I'm never gonna know all the answers,

but I'm sure going to work hard.

And so I just try to instill that with the way

I operate and then the way I operate with my family.

And we also have a small business of our own.

And so in the way we operate with that.

So yeah.

Well, you've got to tell us,

cause we're all curious now what's the small business of your

own. Yeah.

So it's really,

it's more so my husband's side.

So like I mentioned,

we're a sports family we're really into fitness and activity.

So we actually just have a small gym here where we

live. And so we have about few trainers that work with

us and my husband does personal training and stuff.

So unfortunately it's not anything we can sell online,

but, but we're a good balance because I'm more of that

constant. I like the consistency of having more of a corporate

job, whereas he somewhat more creative and kind of where it

finds where he can feel his passion by helping other people

with their fitness goals.

And so we kind of are a family of both sides

of the entrepreneur side and then sort of the more official

sort of corporate world.

I love it Because you can have great conversations at home

together. Absolutely Different,

but you're still pretty much in line with each other.

So that's cool.

So Christie,

I have to tell you something else,

Michael Jordan,

you still live like maybe five minutes from me.

No. Where you went to my gym.

Like the big thing for all the kids when they were

younger was to try and trick or treat at his house

so they could see him.

Oh my gosh.

That is amazing.

I'm so jealous.

Yeah. I just love him.

I loved the last day.

I'm like,

I just thought it was so inspirational.

And another podcast I listened to,

one of the girls said,

she said,

I don't know sports.

I don't watch sports.

But then I realized that it's about hard work and winning

and I was in,

so like,

I just think it's so interesting because it really can apply

to, like I said,

like all facets of life,

just that hard work and that kind of wish they,

instead of just wishing to make it happen,

working to make it happen.

Absolutely. Totally agree with you there.

Okay. So let's talk more about you for a second.

So what was your life before eBay?

Just walk us back.

Yeah, for sure.

Oh my gosh.

Did I have a life before eBay?

I don't know.

No. So I actually went to the university of Wyoming and

so I had got my bachelor's and I at the time

of managing a movie theater.

And so one of our theaters in Colorado needed some help.

So the summer after I graduated,

I moved to Colorado and I was managing this movie theater,

but always with the intent that I would probably move to

salt Lake because my boyfriend at the time,

which luckily now husband was there and then September 11th happened

and I was still in Colorado and then September 11th happened

and I felt like,

well, I better get there and figure out what job I'm

going to have.

And like I mentioned,

we're way into fitness.

So my original education was actually an exercise science.

I thought I would help people with their fitness goals or

I thought I would help people after they had an injury

or I thought maybe I would go into physical therapy.

But after I moved to salt Lake,

I looked for jobs a little bit and I wasn't finding

any of those jobs.

And so my mom and I had shopped on eBay and

we thought it was cool.

And I happened to see that they were hiring.

And so I thought,

well, I don't want to go too long without having a

job. So I'll just go get a temporary job there.

I find something that I want to do.

And then what made you stay first off?

What department then did you start in?

So it was obviously entrance role,

right? Yep,

exactly. It was an entry level role.

I really just started in customer service.

so@thetimeebayhadacquiredalittlecompanycalledhalf.com. There are probably some book lovers out there who remember

it. And so@thetimetheyweresortoftransitioningtheircustomerservicefromthehalf.com

company to the eBay side.

And so I helped answer half.com

emails and I set up some new processes and really,

I just immediately fell in love with the company and the

opportunity it provided for both buyers and sellers all over the

world. And then also for employees,

like I had a lot of opportunity to constantly learn and

challenge myself and then I just kept staying because of that.

I loved our mission.

And then I love that I had a chance to continue

learning. I think a lot of corporate jobs,

you have to do the same thing all the time.

It gets exhausting and boring.

And I just found that if I raise my hands and

kind of go into uncomfortable situations and try to challenge myself

that I was able to continue to learn and grow in

new ways.

So that just kind of has caused me to stay.

You also have a really unique perspective because you came in

when the company was so much smaller too.

So you've been able to see the growth.

That's been like a big investment for you also.

Absolutely. It's yeah.

It's, I mean,

I've been through extreme growth,

which was kind of like those early,

early two thousands.

And then of course we all know there was the economic

So I was there through all of that.

And so there's really been a lot of ups and downs

and it's just neat to see that eBay has done a

good job,

sort of just staying relevant in some of these harder times

because when people are in this case,

stuck at home or they lost their job or whatever the

case may be,

if they have a passion and they have something that they're

interested in and passionate about a lot of times they can

make a great business with that on eBay.

So it's been really interesting to watch all the different phases

from like extreme growth to some less growth to economic challenges

and things like that.

So it's been such a learning experience.

Like I say,

I've been at one company for 18 years,

but I've been through all of those changes and I've been

through, I think I'm on my fourth or fifth CEO and

I think I've had 10 jobs.

And so even though it's one company,

it feels like it's probably been five or six.

You've gotta be so valuable because you have such a unique

perspective just through all those experiences.

All right.

So E-bay,

I'm thinking about my customers and from their mind,

and to be honest,

I think it's human nature that we all go for.

Like the newest,

biggest thing that's going on.

Right. A lot of our creators,

even those who are just starting are like,

okay, what platform do I go on?

And lots of different types of opportunities and where you can

be have gone by the wayside because social media seems to

be the place to be,

even though they're not brand new,

they're still the newest one on the block.

For sure.

So I'd love to hear from you as to who he

bays for and why you think the strength is at eBay.

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

That is such an excellent questions.

So E-bay is for everyone.

So that's one of the things I love about it.

And so me,

for example,

being home eBay has moved us all to work from home.

So of course,

like most people,

I have a corner of stuff that I need to get

rid of that is either I didn't use it or it's

old or whatever.

So it applies to me like I can just easily list

that and sell it on eBay as a side gig or

side hustle.

Sometimes we call it and then it also can apply it

to like,

I could apply to someone who has a big business and

maybe they sell vases or something.

Obviously they can come online too.

So it applies to everyone.

And I think one of the things that make it great

is that we've been around for so long.

Obviously it's still funny to say that a 20 year old

company is really a baby,

but actually we're coming up on 25 years.

I shouldn't say that,

but that's just a baby,

but actually in e-commerce they started during the bubble and we'd

been here throughout.

And so we provide a lot of things that some of

these new platforms don't always have.

We provide great protection to our buyers and sellers.

So I remember in the early two thousands,

we didn't really have buyer protection.

In fact,

I was on the team that helped launch that in the

later two thousands.

And I was like one of my most exciting moments in

my career because prior to that,

when people would buy something on eBay and have a bad

experience, they'd say,

Oh, Chrissy,

I did this happened and it didn't work out.

What do I do?

And it was kind of like,

Oh, well,

how did you pay?

You should contact them and they'll help you.

And then once I was able to say,

Oh, well let me point you what to do.

And we will protect you and you don't have to worry

about anything.

It felt so good.

So just having had that experience,

we have lots of protections for buyers and sellers,

but you're not always going to find when you're kind of

on the social platforms or in newer areas and things like

that. And then the other thing is just our scale and

our reach.

We have millions and millions of buyers across the globe.

So another great thing about eBay is that shipping internationally and

selling internationally can be very scary and intimidating,

but there's so much opportunity.

And so eBay has a lot of different tools and resources

to help sellers do that.

And so if someone's doing great with their North America business,

but they're ready to expand to the next thing,

we have a lot of different programs to help with international

shipping. We have a global shipping program where the seller only

has to ship it to a special address in North America

and then eBay takes care of the rest to get it

to the international buyers.

So that,

and then just,

of course,

like I said,

our scale,

there are millions of buyers shopping online on eBay every day.

And so you can reach so many buyers with just using

one website.

So that's another huge opportunity.

And then lastly,

one thing I would just say is we'd never would compete

with our sellers by see a lot of these companies that

are coming on and around today that basically use the insights

to say,

what are buyers buying?

And then sometimes they want to create that on their own.

And we don't ever do that.

And we will never do that.

We'll never compete with our sellers.

We want their success is our success.

We wouldn't be anywhere without them.

And so our plan is we would never compete with sellers.

We would never try to like say,

Oh wow.

It looks like XYZ item is selling a lot.

We should try to create our own and sell that as

well. So again,

we don't have inventory,

we rely strictly on our sellers for that.

So those are a couple of reasons why I think it's

a great place.

Okay. So one of the things that I think of as

I'm talking with different platforms to my clients would be not

just the platform and everything that the platform has,

but what's the level of ability to be visible on a

platform. I mean,

with all the different platforms,

there are a lot more people coming on to every single

platform right now.

Right. So with E-bay in particular,

what would you say in terms of someone coming on a

new hour?

I want to later,

so give biz listeners stay tuned because we're going to take

it from the start in a little bit,

but how does somebody let's say they're already established in their,

on with products?

How do they make sure that their products get seen?

Yes. Oh my gosh,

that's so important.

That's a huge part of it because you're investing time and

resources and getting those listed.

So you want them to see buyers.

So as you can imagine,

it really varies based on the category or the product that

the person is selling.

So example,

if like someone was selling iPhone cables,

that's going to be a pretty competitive area.

And the best way that sellers are going to get visibility

and something like that is potentially having a great price or

a great photo or a great title.

So there are a few different ways,

but really,

it depends again on the category.

So say I know a lot of your users,

they make their stuff and they often have customized things and

whatnot. So that's a really great place to be because you're

not necessarily competing with a lot of other people.

So say that you make frames or something.

We don't have millions and millions of sellers selling frames on

the site is like we do at electronic type of items.

So there's a few best practices we always say,

which is generally,

you want to have great photos because the buyer wants to

know what they're getting.

And especially in like a more unique and more custom way.

And then also you want to have a great description and

a great title.

That's how they're going to find your item and look at

it and whatnot.

And then of course we have other tools that can help

you as well.

So we have a program called promoted listings,

and this is basically like an ad program where you can

say, you want to kind of increase the visibility on some

items for a small fee.

And then that way you'll be able to show up in

more places across the site and sometimes more towards the top

of the search funnel.

And so those are just a few small things,

but we have tons of tools and resources in our seller

center to provide sellers with other things.

And in fact,

this month we're calling traffic month and we're telling sellers about

all the ways that we bring traffic to their listings.

And one thing that eBay does that a lot of other

platforms don't do as part of what sellers pay in their

fees, but we actually pay advertising dollars to Google.

And so we basically work hard to make sure that if

someone's starting their shopping journey on Google,

that eBay sellers listings are showing up as often as possible.

So that's automatic.

It's part of what we do with sellers listings on the

site. They don't have to pay extra,

they don't have to do anything different.

We just do that automatically.

So we try to not only give their items visibility from

when buyers start their shopping destination on eBay,

but even when they're starting their shopping search outside of eBay,

we still are working hard to make sure that you buy

items are showing up in those areas as well.

Okay. Is that then by people optimizing the different words that

they would use in their products and descriptions,

You are so good.

Yeah, exactly.

You just want to use those kind of specific items,

specifics that tell you exactly what it is.

And the photos like funny enough,

Google looks at photos when they're serving products.

So if you have photos that have writing on them or

weird backgrounds or anything like that,

it gets less likely that Google will show that.

And so we always say like a clean,

crisp white background is ideal.

And in fact,

we, even this year,

we launched a new tool in our apps where if you

take a photo of something,

like say you have a handbag that you take a photo

of and you've have it on your carpet and you take

a photo,

you can actually,

within the app,

you can cut the background out and just make it a

crisp white background,

which really helps that product pop.

And then again,

more likely that it would show up in other search channels.

Okay. So this is really important.

And Christie you'll hear me explaining this for a second,

but so gift biz listeners,

just a few episodes ago,

we talked about brand visibility.

So you being the brand and photos for your product and

all of that.

And we talked about having lifestyle photos,

so someone wearing your product or having your product be part

of some type of a lifestyle,

like a cup on a table,

things like that.

Christie, what you're saying is for E-bay,

you should do the opposite.

It should be just a very clear image of the product

period. Yeah,

yeah. For sure.

So the good news is I would say yes.

And so to show up in those other search engines,

it's great to have that crisp Y background,

simple photo,

but that's only to get the buyers to click on your

listing. Then once they're in your listing,

actually seeing more photos of the product in those lifestyle ways,

wouldn't be negative again,

say it was like a unique belt that you had painted

or something that I've seen really cool popping up.

I've seen it on a lot of TV shows.

It's like denim jackets with cool hand painted things on the

back. So you would want the crisp photo of the denim

jacket on the white background,

but then you have additional photos for free as part of

your listing.

So then you could add additional more lifestyle photos that would

also help then convert the buyer.

So you've shown up in Google search.

Now a buyer's actually on your listing considering if they want

to buy it or not.

If there are additional photos that really sell it and sort

of represent your brand,

that certainly wouldn't be a bad thing.

And I think that would actually help buyers instill that confidence

and trust in what they're buying.

And then also probably inspire them in some ways on how

they might use a product like them.

Perfect. That was a great explanation.

So, and there's a way to designate which one is your

lead photo versus the subsequent photos.

Yep, exactly.

So important to do that.

If you're going to upload multiple photos,

always have that single image as your lead photo.

Absolutely. Yep.

Nailed it.

Okay, perfect.

And so let's talk a little bit about search terms.

You want to pretend like your,

the person going to eBay who is going to buy your

product and what the words are that they would be using.

Right. So not the fancy words,

but more basic detailed words specifically of the product.

Am I right?

Yep. Yep.

Exactly. Pretty much.

So obviously we've already talked about Michael Jordan.

So staying on that trend,

as you can imagine,

sneakers are all the rage right now,

especially after the last dance.

So sneakers and the example of sneakers is you would want

to use the specific product.

Like, are they the air Jordan retro one Royal toe or

whatever. So you want to be as specific as possible,

but then you wouldn't include things like a lot of former

eBay sellers have kind of short terms that they used to

use back in the day to describe new inbox and IB,

you wouldn't do that today because Google isn't going to look

for nib.

They don't know what that is.

And so the nice thing is you have your title to

add those terms.

And then you also have your item specifics.

So like in the case of the Jordan shoes,

you would have the brand which is Jordan.

Then you'd have the type and you'd have the style and

then you'd have the size and then you'd have the color.

So there's a lot of opportunities to add details and really

your title should be pretty Chris,

but it should have detail.

And then if you have more information in those items,

specifics, all other search engines also look at those items,

specifics and sellers also filter down using those.

So for example,

if you are searching for what the Jordan retro one Royal

blue toe,

and you searched that on eBay,

you probably are only interested in one side.

So there's ways that you can filter down on the left

hand side of the page to get to those.

So that's a great way.

Again, you want to have those details in the items specific

so that if someone's searching for a size 11 and you

haven't put that in your item specific,

you won't get lost in the results.

If someone filters down using size.

Okay. Got it.

So it really sounds like not just putting a photo up,

doing a very basic description and calling it a day,

but really spending time on having good quality photo.

And maybe I'm almost thinking of it like a book cover

and then the insides,

the base,

the product,

and then like the other detail of it through way of

imagery. And then also the title,

the description,

all of that,

like really spending some time there,

because that way you're more likely to be found and let's

face it.

If you're not found,

no one can buy it from you Period.

Exactly. The nice thing is it sounds like a lot of

work and it is like,

I don't want it to say it's not work,

but we've actually have a bunch of cool tools that we've

launched this year to kind of even tell sellers,

they'll give you again,

listing those Jordan retros and you haven't included that you'll get

a little alert in your selling page that says,

Hey, these are some recommended items,

specifics, that'll help you.

The nice thing is we have lots of tools and resources

along the way to teach and show sellers because of course,

if you're new to the site and you've never listed before,

you don't know all these things.

So we have lots of different ways that we help guide

sellers and give feedback and things to try to make their

items more visible to buyers.

Okay. And so a lot of our listeners also,

they make one of a kind items for sure.

But then there are also people who make candles and so

they will be selling maybe 50 of their candles or they're

available for 50 candles.

Do they list each one individually?

Or how would that work?

Yeah, great question.

There's a multiple way they can do it.

So candles is a great example.

So say you had like a specific jar candle,

but you had different colors or different sense.

You can create one listing.

Like imagine if you search for it,

you can say,

I have these different scents or these different colors.

And then the buyer can just sort through those in check,

but say that you have like,

they all look very,

very different and you want them to have individual listings.

You can also create individual listings.

So it's really up to the business person to kind of

decide what might be best for them.

But if it's easier to just create one listing and then

have a list of all the different sense or colors,

that's another easy way to do it.

We just call it item variations.

And so you can easily set that up in your listing

as you create it.

We'll bring it down to a smaller number.

Let's say I have seven,

I'm looking at something yellow here.

So I'm going to say it's a pineapple.

You might've thought I was going to say lemon,

but I didn't.

It's a pineapple scented candle and there's seven but only seven.

So how do I make sure there aren't eight purchases?

Yes. Oh my gosh.

That's so important because we know it's quite a negative experience

if they oversell and then you have to cancel or something,

right? Yeah.

You could easily just set the quantity.

So like once you lift it,

so say for example,

you know,

you have your seven,

you take your photos,

you upload it,

you can just set your quantity to seven and then it

automatically removes them as they get purchased.

And so the one thing is we're not blind.

Like there are a lot of sellers who sell multichannel.

So say for example,

you also have those listed on another platform.

That's totally fine.

There are actually a lot of third parties and tools out

there that help you sort of manage that and look at

all of the different quantities.

And they might say like,

Oh, this sold on XYZ platform.

So we'll remove it from eBay.

So there are a lot of third parties that can help

with that,

but otherwise you could always just go in and automatically remove

it if it's a smaller scale.

So yeah,

you just set that quantity and you're good to go.

Perfect. Okay.

So since you've mentioned other tools to integrate the different platforms,

is there one that you would suggest,

Oh, good question.

We have a lot of awesome partners actually.

So channel advisors,

one of our old standbys,

a lot of folks use them.

They help you kind of do multichannel.

Gosh, there's so many out there.

So it kind of depends on what you're solving for.

Like another one that we've been piloting with is one called

street pricer.

And it's one where basically it helps the seller find the

right price for their item.

Cause that's another important thing.

If you aren't pricing your items,

right, again,

you might not get found and buyers might not buy them.

So it kind of depends on what part of your business

you're solving for.

But I think we have pages out there that tell you

all the different tools and resources that can help.

And then of course,

just within eBay itself,

we also have a ton of different tools and resources to

help. So,

yeah. Okay,

perfect. So I love the fact that you brought up that

you might have products that would be selling on other platforms

because I don't think it's bad to have things in different

places when you're trying to sell your product.

I mean,

different people let's face,

it are going to gravitate to different places.

I love this conversation so far because it sounds very user

friendly. It doesn't sound that hard.

Oh, hero's my question.

I knew it would come back to me if I have

those yellow candles,

but then I also have,

and I'm going to list them just the yellow ones separately

from the blue ones from,

okay. Is it okay to take the same wording and just

switch out the color and the scent?

Yep, absolutely.

Or should we switch up the whole wording in our descriptions?

No needs.

Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

And when we jump back in,

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So if you're an individual seller listing your own inventory using

our mobile app is so fast and easy.

So you can literally list an item from end to end

without ever having to hit your PC.

So you can you list it all through the app and

then say,

for example,

you've created your yellow candle lifting.

There's actually a way where you can say duplicate the listing

and then just change some details.

And that's totally fine because you've already invested the time and

thought to get the right details in there.

So that's totally fine because you've already know the good stuff.

So no reason not to reuse it.

Yeah. So put your time in up front to get it

really sounding perfect.

Then it's easier from there.

Exactly. Yup.

And I'm guessing,

let's say a product isn't moving.

Okay. One facet of that could be price.

We get that,

but it also could be descriptions.

So maybe if you see a product that's not moving,

maybe tell me if this is an idea or not.

Okay. Christie,

maybe you take the same product and you list it with

a different description.

Yeah, for sure.

And see if it moves better,

maybe you take half the inventory and put it into a

different description or something.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's the nice thing again,

like, so in both our seller hub and our,

my eBay will sometimes provide feedback recently,

as an Example,

I mentioned a couple of times I have two boys and

they, my oldest used to love Disney cars.

And so whenever I was out shopping,

if I saw any car,

I thought that he didn't have,

I would buy it.

And in effect,

I ended up with extra.

So I've been selling those on the site and I had

one that was listed for quite a long time.

And it gave me a little alert.

Like this listing has been here a long time.

Maybe you want to refresh it.

And so you can refresh to your point,

you can refresh the description,

the photos,

the price,

there are lots of different ways and we'll provide those little

tips and tricks right there on the site.

Cause really,

If you think about it,

the success of E-bay is having product moving.

Yeah, Absolutely.

Yep, yep.

Yep. That's what we want.

Because again,

buyers, aren't coming to the site and finding the good stuff,

then we won't have buyers coming,

so we definitely want sellers to convert and for them to

make sales.

For sure.

Yeah. Okay.

So now let's back it up to the front.

Okay. I wanted people to hear and get a little bit

excited about eBay and boy,

maybe I need to check this out and this sounds good.

And all of that,

how does someone get started?

Walk us through like really easy someone who's interested now.

Maybe as soon as they're done listening,

they're going to jump on their computer and check everything out.

How would they create an account and get going?

So great.

So yeah,

I'm so glad you asked.

So again,

we've seen so many small businesses who want to be able

to get up and running online because they've just had a

brick and mortar that they've had great success with.

But now with all these stay at home orders and potential

longterm challenges that we'll be facing with COVID-19.

So we have a lot of different ways for sellers to

get started.

So they can go to ebay.com

flash up and running.

And this provides them immediately with basically tools and resources they

need to get started.

But it's so easy.

Really. You just create an account and it's free.

You will have to sign up for a way to get

paid. So you'll be prompted to sign up for our payment

system, which allows you to have buyers pay you right there

on the site.

You don't even have to have a PayPal account or anything.

So all payments go through your school First.

So yes.

Okay. So great.

If you aren't set up with shopping cards on your platform

With eBay,

you don't need that.

It integrates in.

Yeah, Right?

Yep. Exactly.

Okay. We're currently launching it right now,

but by about mid July,

when we're all chatting with all of you guys,

this will be where any new accounts coming on,

we'll just go straight into our new payment platform system that

does all of this for you.

So yeah.

So we're so excited not to talk too much about payments.

So just while we're on it,

it's something we've just been launching over the past couple years.

And we're basically about to fully go live with it in

the middle of July.

And the reason it's so big for eBay and so important

for sellers is it gives buyers all of the options to

pay. So as we all know,

everyone has a different way that they want to pay.

Some people have Apple pay.

Some people have Google pay.

Some people only are comfortable using their credit card.

Some people love PayPal.

So with our new payment platform,

buyers can pay you any way that they like and we

handle the payment.

And then the money comes to you.

The idea is that in case a buyer shopping online and

they reach eBay and they're like,

Oh, I don't have a PayPal account.

That sounds like a hassle.

That's all gone starting in the middle of July.

So buyers will then be able to pay on most listings,

all kinds of different ways from Google pay to Apple pay

to credit card.

I also liked that.

Cause it seems to me,

I'm making an assumption here so you can correct me if

I'm wrong,

but it seems to me then when it funnels into your

account, you'll know that it's coming from eBay.

So that's a nice way to be able to separate and

see what's performing for you.

Absolutely. Yep.

That's such a good call out.

You'll see it come straight from eBay and go,

as we were talking about before,

the other nice thing is like,

we have lots of different reports you can download.

If you end up signing up as a business and you

have access to our seller hub,

there's graphs and charts and things that show you how you're

doing this month versus last month and things like that.

So you can track your performance and find opportunities where you

might want to change things or mix it up.

Oh, I love that because we all talk business here.

We are talking as if it's a business.

Okay. So they come in,

they create the free account.

They connect to however they want payments.

So that I'm assuming that's probably a business checking account.

You guys not your personal account business checking.

Cause you want to keep your fund separate.

If you're running this as your business,

is there a place where we should be putting in information

and like a description of our company or more information on

the seller?

Oh good.

I'm so glad you asked.

So when you register,

we don't do a great job of showing this,

but we actually have a business specific registration.

And so when you go to ebay.com

and you go to register,

if you just register regularly,

right there,

you're registering as an individual,

but there's a little link at top that says register your

business. And so,

yes, I totally recommend for all of you out there who

are running a business,

which is most of you,

listeners is definitely register as a business because then it helps

us know that you are an actual business and it helps

us give you the right information,

helps us give you the right promotions,

helps us know who you are and potentially even allow you

to list more.

Because as you can imagine,

when someone's just coming on the site to start out,

we don't let them list as many things as they want,

just because we have to protect our buyers that like someone

isn't coming on and listing stuff they don't have.

But if you register as a business,

you'll get more what we call limits straight away,

because we know you're a business,

we've got the information about that.

So definitely look for that little register as a business link

when you're registering on ebay.com.

Okay. And does that give you an opportunity to share more

of who you are as a business?

Just for credibility purposes?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, perfect.

So I'm assuming it's pretty easy.

You just follow the prompts,

fill in the information.

And I really advise you guys,

if there's a space for you to fill in something,

fill in something,

because that just gives more value to your account.

Any platform that you're on,

make sure you're filling in all the spaces.

Don't just leave them blank,

like business name and that's it,

you know,

if there's descriptions,

whatever. Exactly.

Okay. So let's say it didn't matter how many products,

but what would you suggest a business should do in terms

of the number of products that they should start with?

Yeah. Good question.

So what I would suggest would be like,

whatever is most manageable.

One important thing I guess I would say is that when

you set up your account,

you get to pick your handling time.

So you can say like you're going to ship same day

or you're going to ship in three or four days.

So my best recommendation would be to set that up and

the amount that you can handle.

So if you can handle shipping a bunch of items in

a row or in a certain amount of time,

setting that up is honestly even more important because that when

the buyers are searching based on what you said is your

handling time.

And then based on where they're located and based on the

shipping services you're providing,

it's gives the buyer an idea of when to expect the

item. And so your listeners might be creating unique items that

might be gifts and things like that.

So a lot of times buyers are going to be really

interested in,

when am I getting this?

So I think really it's whatever you can manage.

So I would say sometimes it's better to start small and

test it out,

but on sometimes if you're ready and you know what you

have and you want to get it solid,

there's no reason not to go bigger.

As long as you can fulfill the orders that you might

get. That's a really good point.

Yeah. It really just is individual based on their operation and

the product and things like that.

But you shouldn't only list one product.

Like I'm just gonna just tell you that,

like, that doesn't look well,

I guess it doesn't matter with eBay,

does it because they don't necessarily see a whole store unless

I click that way.

Right. That's true.

Yeah. I mean,

I think that's a good advice as you have more products

to list.

Definitely certainly can't hurt,

but you're right.

Like you probably won't have a lot of feedback to start.

So the nice thing is you are listing more products and

getting more purchases.

You'll build your feedback a little bit faster,

which it can be good,

but also it's not necessarily required by any means.

So yeah,

it's just one of those things it's like really based on

the individual business needs and what they're able to do.

No, I'm kind of going back and forth on that because

let's stick with my yellow candle.

If I liked that yellow candle,

I might want to see what else they have.

Like maybe there are some other types of candles I want,

so I might go look at other things by that seller.

Right? Yeah.

But then if there's nothing else I might say,

Oh, you know what?

There's nothing like how credible is the seller.

If all they have is this one candle True?

I think that's a great call.

And the other nice thing,

like just hearing you describe our candle,

it reminded me of a couple other cool things that we

have is like,

we have what we call,

how do we,

how do we call it?

It's basically a way where you can offer.

If they buy more than one,

you can get it at a discount.

So like a lot of times,

if you have again,

we'll do your candle example.

If you have them all in one listing with the different

flavors, if someone buys like pineapple and mango and guava,

maybe they get 5% off each additional one.

So we have tools that can allow you to set that

up, which allow buyers to sort of be incented to buy

more and get a discount,

which can be really cool.

And then same with shipping.

We have lots of ways where like,

if you buy X amount,

you can get a shipping discount and things like that.

So I think with all that said,

if you have more inventory,

it's probably to your point earlier.

So to definitely start with at least a few products and

you can again,

maybe use some of those tools and resources to get more

buyers converting on those,

if they're kind of related and they're a product that someone

might want to buy a couple of.

Okay. And so then how does the cost structure work?

I mean,

obviously there's a price to listing and Sally and,

and all of that.

So how does this work with eBay?

Yep. Yep,

totally. So this one's of course,

a little bit more complicated,

but not too bad.

Just started from like the beginner person.

There are two,

really two main we'll call it fees you might pay.

So you might pay an insertion fee,

which would be just a small fee to list the item.

But actually for new businesses,

we regularly have great promotions where they're very little insertion fee,

so be aware of it.

But typically we offer lots of free insertion fees for new

sellers And fee.

That means actually putting the product on the site.

Yep, exactly.

Again, this is a fairly small amount of what you'll pay.

And a lot of times there's free ones.

Like we always have different promotions going on where we want

to provide people with free listings because we of course want

them to be able to list their products with as little

risk as possible.

So the main fee that you need to be aware of

is what we call our final value fee.

And so this basically is your item sells.

And then obviously we take a commission.

This can vary based on the category.

And so depending on which category you're listing and the final

dive may be different.

And so the best thing is,

make sure you're thinking about that in your margins.

Obviously you want to price it,

right, but you don't want to sell it and then go,

Oh geez.

I didn't know there was going to be a final value

fee and now I've lost all my profit.

So definitely research the fee for the category that you're going

to be selling in and make sure you've sort of built

that into your cost.

And then the other thing is we have a few different

what we call stores.

And so each store comes with a different set of benefits.

As you can imagine,

we have a starter store,

which is for like the very basic person just starting out.

It kind of gives them some basic tools and resources.

And then it goes all the way up to enterprise level.

And each store tier kind of comes with a different amount

of free insertion fees.

It might come with a different other benefits like in some

stores I think are basic and above you actually get a

coupon and a credit for shipping supplies.

So we love doing sellers,

use our eBay boxes and eBay tape and stuff.

So regularly sellers get credits and coupons to buy those shipping

supplies and things like that.

So each store tier sort of has a different benefit.

So starter would probably good be for a lot of us,

we'll just be starting out it's for that exact reason,

just kind of a starter store to get people going.

And then if things are going well,

you can always upgrade to like a basic or premium and

so on.

So yes,

it's complicated,

but not too bad.

The benefits make sense because they're probably aligned to what you

need at that point of your business development.

So that all makes sense to me.

Why are there different commissions per category?

So it's not too to Denver category,

I guess ultimately like we want to be competitive in whatever

that market is.

So one of our big strategies this year is trying to

provide those more vertical,

specific experiences.

So as an example,

again, sneakers,

even before the last dance came out,

we knew that sneakers were a very,

very popular item and we felt like we wanted to have

the best inventory on the web.

And so last December,

we actually created a brand new fee structure for sneakers over

a hundred dollars where there's actually zero final buyer fees.

And so just because of the landscape of sneakers themselves,

we actually found that that was the right business decision to

make for right now.

Because again,

that allows us to get the right inventory and the right

buyers to the site.

And so basically our strategy is to look at each individual

vertical, almost like its own business.

As you can imagine,

we have thousands of people working at eBay,

not each but many verticals have their own,

what we call GM.

And then their goal is to look at the competitive landscape

and make sure that selling on eBay is one of the

best places to sell.

And so say for example,

you're selling guitars.

And so if you're looking at what's the cost of selling

its guitar on eBay versus reverb or something in that vertical,

in that category,

we want to be competitive as possible.

And so that's sort of why it varies across the different

categories is just each business is honestly really different.

And we just want to try to be competitive and be

a great place to sell for all the different verticals.

You're talking about this.

I go back to the fact that it doesn't even matter

what the cost is.

If the product just sits there,

you could put your product on a platform that doesn't cost

a lot in terms of pulling commissions.

But if it's just sitting there,

what's the point.

Yeah. It's the flow through of the product more than the

investment. I mean,

yes. As you were saying earlier,

Christie, I mean a seller has to walk away with some

profit. That's why we're in business.

But if you've got that in line,

I think it's less important what the commissions are not totally,

but a little bit less than is your product actually moving.

Exactly. That's so important because that's,

I mean,

one of the main things that eBay gives you is your

eyeballs of millions of buyers across the globe,

potentially on your listings.

And so,

so you sort of have to look at like the value

of the platform.

So like you said,

it fees may be different across platforms,

but just thinking of the end to end value of all

of the buyers,

they get to see your items when you list on eBay.

So couldn't agree more.

Okay. One more question.

And then I know I have two more questions actually.

So someone buys a product.

What information on that buyer comes down to meme the candle

maker. Oh,

great. Good question.

So yeah,

so essentially you get notified that you got paid and to

shift, so you basically get their name and their address and

their shipping information.

And then the nice thing is that's one of the things

I'm kind of going off the rails of your question,

but just talking about what you get.

That's like my mom,

for example,

she has a lot of things she wants to sell on

eBay and she was so intimidated by shipping.

She just was like,

how would I know?

Like what's the cost?

Like, what do I do?

And so we know that's one of the biggest sort of

concerns and barriers for new people starting out if they're not

used to shipping their products.

And so yet again,

we have of course,

a bunch of tools and resources,

but actually like when you sell something,

it'll basically fill in what they think they know about the

product. So if you're selling shoes,

they pretty much know the size of the box.

They pretty much know the weight and they can pretty much

estimate what the shipping will be.

So the nice thing is you can print the label right

through eBay.

So you get the buyer's address and whatnot,

but you don't even really have to worry about it.

You just go to your,

in your seller hub and you say,

I got paid print the label,

you click through the steps and you print the label and

slap it on the box and you can even call USBs

to come pick it up.

So you don't get a ton of information on the buyer,

but you get exactly what you need and we make it

really streamlined and simple for you to just ship that item

out to them right away.

And of course,

if you have your own shipping,

if you're already selling a lot online and you have your

own way that you print and do labels,

that's okay too.

You don't have to use the eBay labels.

But if,

for example,

you say you're a skateboard shop and you're just starting out.

You had a brick and mortar and you've just now started

selling online when you're not,

you don't have a way to ship easily.

You can again,

print those labels directly through eBay and you actually get a

discount because of our volume with the different partners and stuff.

Okay. Alright.

And then any questions back and forth between seller and buyer

go through the eBay communication system.

So you don't get an email or anything.

Yep. That's right.

Exactly. Okay.

But you still have that communication link there available.

Yep. Always so that you can reach out to them.

They can reach out to you.

We never want to like stifle the communication,

especially we know in custom items,

sometimes the buyer,

you have to say like,

Oh, this is a sign for my boat.

And I want it to say like Christie's boat or whatever.

So you can,

of course the buyer and seller can message each other back

and forth about that.

And that's no problem at all.

What would you say?

This is my final question.

What would you say are the most common two or three

mistakes that you see that you could advise everybody about before

they get started?

Oh, for sure.

That's such a great question.

So you won't be surprised.

It kind of goes back to what we've talked about,

which is having that great listing.

So there's the infamous picture of the guy selling the teapot,

where the reflection was himself and the reflection.

And so it was funny thing,

but the photos make all the difference.

So if you're selling like a dress,

you don't want to have the dress laying on the bed

and kind of like crumpled up.

Ideally you would have the dress on a mannequin and then

you would have a great photo of it with the crisp

white background and things like that.

So a lot of times you'll kind of flip through and

see, Oh gosh,

that doesn't instill confidence.

When you see like the sneakers sitting on the dirty carpet

or whatever.

So all about those photos,

they make such a difference.

Both in having buyers find your item from anywhere from Google,

through eBay direct.

And then also when buyers convert.

So when buyers see those,

Chris, Chris photos,

it instills confidence in them to make that purchase.

So that's one and then two is not spending the time

to do the I'm civics.

It takes a little bit of time,

like we talked about,

but it helps so much in the visibility of your items.

So sometimes people will be like,

Oh, item specifics.

I don't know what that is.

I'll just skip it and seems not important.

I'll just put it in the description and I'll put it

in the title and I should be good and that's not

bad. Like,

that's certainly,

you'll still probably get some eyeballs on it.

But the more details you have,

the more opportunity you have for buyers to find those items.

So item specifics,

you're meaning are like new what the size is color brand.

Yep. The brand,

the color.

Exactly. Yep.

Totally. And the other one would just be kind of that,

what we talked about on the shipping and handling,

make sure whatever you set it up to do that you

can do that because the worst thing is you've set it

up where you say you're going to ship the next day

and then you weren't able to,

and then you're not meeting buyer's expectations and then they're getting

angry and then you're having a bad experience and your customers

are having a bad experience.

So kind of just making sure you're realistic about what you

can do and when you can ship and whatnot so that

it sets the customer's expectations correctly.

Yeah. Because if your ratings go down,

that's not going to help with future sale.

Exactly. Exactly.

And it will help with like you're being found and all

of that.

Yep, exactly.

Right. Oh my gosh.

So great.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for all this information.

Is there any final word that you would give in terms

of the power of eBay?

Just as a motivator for all of us to consider as

we're looking at all the different platforms available to us?

Oh my gosh.

That's such a good question.

So the power of BB,

I would just say that we are all about small business.

Like that is our lifeblood.

Like I said,

in the beginning,

it's like eBay is nothing without our sellers.

So the one thing I hear a lot of times from

our sellers is they also have a relationship with us.

We have emotional connections,

not only when you come and sell on the site,

if you join our community boards,

you might find other candle makers or candle enthusiasts,

and you might become friends online or whatever.

eBay is the original sort of social media,

if you will,

because we've had people connecting online for 25 years about their

passions and about things that are important to them.

So I would say if anything,

like, hopefully if you do come and sell on eBay,

you'll feel a connection to eBay.

And you'll see that we feel that same connection back that

we care so deeply about our sellers,

our executives and our senior leadership team are regularly meeting with

sellers. They're regularly out in our community boards,

talking with sellers.

They're regularly out in Facebook groups talking with sellers.

And you just don't see that in all other platforms where

we care so deeply about our sellers and the experience they

have. And we want to make sure that eBay is the

best marketplace to sell online.

And we work really hard to try to do that.

And we listened to our sellers.

So when sellers reach out to our execs or our customer

service team with concerns,

we take that feedback very seriously and we try to adjust

whenever we can.

So yeah,

it's just a great place to be and we couldn't do

it without our sellers.

Yeah. I see the connection with the salary is represented throughout

our whole talk.

Right. Because from the 20 years,

I'll call it 20,

but I know it's over 18,

but the time that you've been there,

the company's continued to evolve and it's been evolving in alignment

with what the sellers need and you've done so much towards

that end.

So that's the proof right there.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, thank you.

That's so nice.

Yeah. Well,

thank you.

I really appreciate all information.

I've Got links over in the show notes page,

you guys.

So, so you can link directly to Kristi through LinkedIn,

but then also just the information for eBay with business.

Also the apps that she's mentioned,

I'll have linked up there.

If anyone has any further questions on this,

where would you direct them to go?

Oh my gosh.

Great question.

So there's a few different places.

So like you said,

I'm always happy to make new friends on LinkedIn.

And so you're always welcome to reach out to me directly,

but also I mentioned our community boards.

If you just search eBay community online,

or if you go to ebay.com/community,

you can find a community of just about anything there.

And our sellers love to help other sellers.

We have so many sort of resellers out there.

Their whole passion is helping other businesses come online.

And then also like you mentioned,

we're on Facebook so you can reach out there.

And then of course we have regular customer support as well.

We've mobilized everyone working from home,

as you can imagine to be as safe as possible,

but you can still reach us.

My thing,

if you're just on ebay.com,

you'll see customer service and the top,

and they can always reach out there.

And then just in all the links you provided will provide

a lot of great information there.

And we would just love to have everybody come over and

try it out.

Great information.

We covered so much in really a short time.

I really,

really appreciate you coming on and sharing everything about eBay with

us today.

Oh my gosh.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's my passion,

like I mentioned,

and I'm just so honored to have been here and been

able to talk to you guys about it,

To be honest,

I haven't heard a lot of you talk about eBay in

relation to selling your products.

I really liked the idea Kristi presented in terms of using

eBay in conjunction with other online platforms.

And remember always in addition to your own website,

perhaps I've gotten your wheels turning here by the time we're

done with this series,

you'll have resources to refer back to at your convenience and

to do that,

I have a great way for you to find what you're

looking for.

Have you ever listened to a podcast here knew you wanted

to write something down,

relisten it another time or come back to grab a resource

that was mentioned,

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Well, now you can find it instantly.

If you go to gift biz,

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enter keywords on any topic you want.

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Yay. I am so about it.

And quite honestly have been using it for myself as well.

That link again is gift biz,

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Make sure to join us again next week,

where we'll be covering everything you need to know about Amazon

handmade. I can't wait for us to be together again then,

and until that time be safe and be well,

Bye for now.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift is breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and our community to

support each other.

Got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week.

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Wait, what,

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if not make sure to jump over to Facebook and search

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