eBay Strategies

Double your eBayBucks back until end of month!

I'm at 4% and this tips me to 8%, throw in some coupons and 20-30% Live search goodness and you're getting to 50% off.  HULK HAPPY!!!
Details in the image below, or click here.

For details on other programs check this post.

2 new strategies to improve your DSRs

I'm cautiously posting this because every time I mention DSRs, I'm flooded with a river of anger in comments, but for those sellers that do want to improve your DSRs, I wanted to add two new strategies to our 12 tips for increasing your DSRS (now 14).

At ChannelAdvisor we spend a LOT of time working with sellers and helping them improve their DSRs and these two strategies come from those discussions, tests and results.

Here they are:

Improve your DSRs Tip 13 - Consider selling some DSR-friendly goods (or loss leaders)

One group of sellers we've had a hard time getting improvements to their S+H cost DSR are those sellers that sell heavy items (laptops, furniture, anvils, vacuum cleaners, etc.).  We had a caller on the webinar that was the embodiment of this challenge.  The caller is a computer seller (avg 10lbs - $30 S+H cost) and was shipping US only as we have advised and had taken into consideration all 12 ChannelAdvisor DSR tips, yet couldn't get the dreaded S+H DSR over a 4.5 (30-day).

One thing we've seen work is for people to start mixing in items that are almost guaranteed to have good S+H DSRs.  In this example, I'd say computer accessories would be good.  By mixing in some < 1lb items like mice, usb drives, keyboards or whatever - maybe even with free shipping on those items, the seller could start throwing some 5 stars into that S+H DSR to balance out the 1/2/3's they must be getting.  In some business models, it may make sense to lose $1-5 on these kinds of items to get your 'core' business into the golden 4.6/4.8 DSR range and achieve those FVF discounts and BM advantaging.  Imagine you sold 100 computers a month (ASP of $500). If you sold 200 items you lost $1-2 on ($400 cost let's say), but had great DSRs to get the 15%.

Cost of our "DSR juice" program: $400/m
FVF fees you pay:

• 100*$500 =$50k GMV
• Assume 10% take rate - FVFs are usually about 60% of that so 6% FVF, yields a FVF cost of $3k
• 15% fvf discount: $450

Here you're ahead of the game (in this example) $50 on the discount ALONE. If you could get your conversion rate up 1-2-3% from BM advantaging that would be well worth it IMO.  I'd argue that you could run a program like this up to double the FVF credit and the program (boosted by BM advantage) would be huge.

Improve your DSRs Tip 14 - Consider NOT filing for UPI credits
I have to thank eBay Strategies friend AC for turning me on to this one.
This one is probably going to be controversial, but before you flip out, follow this logic.

Here's how it works from a buyer's perspective:

• You said you'd buy something and didn't.
• 7-10 days later the seller files a UPI claim against you
• After that week, you get a UPI strike - the messaging around UPIs in the eBay help system and on the site are pretty nasty sounding. I'd argue it's as bad/worse than getting a negative feedback.
• So what's your natural reaction - are you going to give that seller 5 stars?  Heck no, you are going to neg them and you are going to give them all 1's - take that you UPI-filing meanie-head!
• If you were a real smart buyer what you would do is leave a positive and then all 1's -that's going to really hurt the seller because they can't get the neg expunged - the pos+1's is the most damaging feedback potentially to a seller in the UPI process.
• eBay's help system tells you to go into the console and start doing stuff, if you do that then your feedback will stick and you will be able to dodge the UPI on your account.  Really a win-win for the buyer and well worth your time when you consider the downside (from eBay help docs):

Note: If a buyer gets too many strikes in too short a time period, their account will be suspended indefinitely. In some cases, limits may be placed on the buyer’s account in advance of suspension.

So as a seller if your DSRs are really important to you, then why risk them by starting this dance at all?  Sure it's eBay's fault the UPI process is so broken and all, but you do have the option to opt-out of it.  Sure, this puts more FVF $$ in eBay's pocket, but maybe you can take more out by opting-out and do what's right for YOUR business.

Here's an example of how this could pay off.

You sell 1000 items a month.  10% UPI rate (100 UPIs/month).  Let's assume 25% of those people 'burn' you on DSRs in there - so that's 25 '1 stars' you are getting from UPIs.  eBay doesn't publish or provide any transparency on DSR data, but let's assume a distribution like this for your 1000 transactions: (yes i know that only 75% leave DSRs, but let's say it's 100% for argument's sake):

5 - 745
4 - 200
3- 20
2 - 10
1 -  25

This yields:
3725 - 5 stars total
800 - 4 stars total
60 - 3 stars total
20 - 2 stars total
25 - 1 stars total
4630 total stars/1000 transactions = 4.63 DSR

Now you stop filing UPIs.  Here i've assumed a very generous UPI star distribution and taken most out of 4's, but some out of 3/2/1's: (now we have 900 transactions)

5 - 745
4 - 149
3 - 2
2 - 2
1 - 2

This yields:
3725 - 5 stars total
596 - 4 stars total
6 - 3 stars total
4 - 2 stars total
2 - 1 stars total
4333 total stars / 900 transactions = 4.81 DSR (the heaven's part and a beam of sun shines down on your head as you my friend are now on some DSR hallowed ground!)

Now you're saying, "Hmmm, ok he may have a point here, but what's the cost?!"

Let's stick with our example.  Let's assume this seller has a $50 ASP:

Situation1: seller files UPIs and gets a 4.6 DSR.
$50*1000 items = $50k and of course $10k of that never ships.  so the seller files for UPI FVF credits on that $10k.  Let's assume this seller has a 10% take rate, 4% is listing fee and 6% is FVF - so they get 6% back (yes this assumes a 100% success rate on UPIs which isn't the case, but stick with me) - so they get back $600/m in FVF credits.

This seller is at 4.6 DSR so they enjoy the fvf 5% discount.

 

Situation2: seller does NOT file UPIs and gets a 4.8 DSR.
In this scenario the seller does not get $600 in FVF credits.  However, they do get a 10% increase in cash back because they are now in the 15% 4.8 tier. Perversely that FVF credit is on a larger amount thanks to not filing UPIs so it is really a 11-12% difference, but let's stay with 10%.

10% benefit - (seller has $6k FVF) - $600 cash back.

So in this case (it's the 10% UPI rate that is doing this BTW), the seller is net neutral from a FVF cash perspective (e.g. instead of the $600 in UPI credits, they got an additional $600 from the discount).

BUT, and it's a big BUT.  They are now hyper advantaged in BestMatch and let's face it, you sleep better with a 4.8 vs. a 4.6.  A 4.6 is just 20 1-stars away from a 4.5 which is the path to being suspended for SNP.

This strategy will vary:

• If you have a > 10% UPI rate, it could be more expense vs. breakeven.  If you have a < 10% then it could be very profitable.
• If your UPI 'fee recovery success rate' is very low, then that will improve the profitability of this strategy.
• If you do this and your DSRs don't move, you are hosed (I think this is highly unlikely BTW)
• If you have an unusually high ebay FVF take rate (higher ASPs), do the math for your model. 
• If you have a low ASP, this could really help you
• If you have a low conversion rate (meaning more of your fees are in listing and not FVF), then the BM part of this will be killer positive for you.

I'd love to see some brave readers try this for 30 days and see what they experience.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you did this plus our other 12, you could be looking at a 4.9 - definitely if you don't ship outside continental USA.

A word of caution...
Recently we're finding that TnS has an ever-expanding definition of 'Feedback manipulation' and some more creative/aggressive strategies are causing suspensions, so be careful how far you take these.  I can't possibly see adding some new products that your assortment could possibly be a violation, but be careful out there.  The one thing we have seen is suspensions for what I call DSR farming, which has two flavors:

1. Creating accounts to get fresh DSRs - the seller creates a new ID every 30/60 days, or once the previous ID is 'tainted' (under 4.5 DSRs).
2. Moving products around seller IDs - we had one customer suspended for life for taking some free shipping goods and moving them between 2-3 seller IDs to 'reform' the DSRs on those seller IDs.

Recap of the 14 tips

1. Specify reasonable flat-rate shipping - the eBay shipping calculator is broken, do not use it, do not use zone based shipping (although best for the consumer, it is very broken on eBay)
2. Highlight your shipping, return and other important policies ‘above the fold’
3. Provide 2-3 shipping options CLEARLY spelled out (buyers like expedited shipping)
4. Call out international shipping information –set expectations around time and customs, and other international ‘gotchas’.
5. Provide a clear and easy to understand return policy
6. Provide (and communicate) discounted combined shipping
7. Keep it simple (if your shipping+handling section is over 10 lines, that's too much)
8. Ship to US only? (or consider a dirty seller ID that is intl only)
9. Amp up your customer service
10. Consider free shipping as an option (doesn't have to be all products)
11. Communicate, communicate, communicate - always mention 5 stars EVERYWHERE, do a package insert too.  Send buyers to 'www.leavingfeedback.com' to help them understand how this works and the impact on you the seller.
12. Leave feedback first (use the words '5 stars' in there)
13. Add DSR-friendly products to your mix, especially if your core business involves heavier/bulkier items.
14. Consider not filing UPIs - depending on your CR, TR and ASP, this could be a big win for you.

Finding 2.0 - a good guide to what it is and how it works.

At eBay Live, I found a lot of confusion around Finding 2.0 and BestMatch. Most sellers+wall st. analysts assumed that BestMatch was the major enhancement to Finding that eBay has made.  That's not the case.  The way I describe it is:

• BestMatch - changes the order of the search results (not the results themselves)
• Finding2 - changes the result set (usually smaller) by trying to be smarter about helping the buyer find what they want. 

Of course BM has been live for a while, but Finding2 is just now making its way to the site.  In the UK, they seem to be at 100% F2 and in the US I believe they are doing 10% sample tests and you can find it in the playground.

In the AU, eBay published a guide to F2 that does a great job of explaining how this new system is different and how the system looks closer at the search string to pre-select attributes and what not for the consumer.  The result is definitely fewer results (that then go through BM) and hopefully a better buyer experience and more conversions.  If you are interested in the topic (and I think most sellers should be), I'd recommend downloading the PDF and giving it a quick read).

Msft vs. goog: "We've analyzed their attack pattern, sir, and there is a danger...."

**Note to eBay readers, this is kind of related to eBay, but more of a search post, but hang in there, you'll see how it ties together - I hope - it's really no different than shooting womprats in Beggar's Canyon back home at the end of the day.

UNNAMED (soon to be space dust in about, oh, 3 minutes) OFFICER:(continued) "should I have your ship standing by?"

Grand Moff Tarkin (incredulous and visibly agitated at the junior officer) (also soon to be space dust): "Evacuate? In out moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances!"

Microsoft vs. Google Food for Thought

Last week at eBay Live, I met with a bazillion Wall St. analysts and tried to get this point across to several of them without success and thought maybe either a) I'm off my cracker or b) I wasn't making a good/clear argument.  I found sometimes having to write the logic makes it clearer or, heck, you guys can at least use the comments to tell me I'm off my cracker.  Here's what I'm thinking.

Role play with me for a minute...
Ok, pretend you and I are in a conference room in building 12 in Redmond, WA.  We work for a software company called Microsoft.  We have been tasked by this crazy jumping around dude named Steve with one simple goal and not a lot of constraints:

"I don't care what it takes, how many people you need or how much money it takes, how do we take share from Google in search?"

Ok, that's a pretty interesting question and given the lack of constraints (on money and people) you could dream up some big plans.  Here's what I would contribute to the meeting:

Things I would poke holes in:

1. Let's run $200m in TV ads about our search being awesome (heck we don't even know what to call it - which one do we promote?)
2. Let's try and out innovate Google on search and put 1000 devs on the problem and have a 'better' search engine. (How do you use the Microsoft 'embrace and extend' strategy when the winner is 'simple, quick and easy'?)
3. Let's try and take all of google's advertisers by giving them free ads or something.  (Google's magic is in the searcher, not in the advertiser.)
    

Things we would brainstorm (I refuse to use the word 'ideate' which is all the rage these days) that I think we'd bounce off Steve (cautiously):

1. Let's buy Yahoo! and consolidate our confused search brands(live/msn/vista) all in there and then go at Google head on.  We'd shutter Panama, replace with the better AdCenter and have mass to be a viable number 2 to Goog's #1. (cost: $40b+)
2. Let's buy facebook, surely there's some social angles and they are a likely competitor to google from a 'help people connect' perspective so that's a good asset (cost: $5-10b)
3. What if you paid consumers for searches?  Today, consumers go to google, give them searches 'for free' and then google turns that into pots of money and great food for the employees.  One way to disrupt the model would be to turn that around and 'pay' the consumer for searches.  Heck even if you gave them 50% of the cpc, you'd still be wildly profitable and you'd take share from google.
   • Challenge: fraud.  When you pay someone .001 for a search, they will setup robot arms to press keyboards and all kinds of wacky stuff you can't even dream of, much less stop/manage.
   • You could limit some of this with caps/verified user and using a USB thumbdrive thingy to have a physical key/tracker and what not, but it's never going to be easy/perfect.  A cyber currency could help too. (xbox points!)
4. When you peel the onion on Google's business, you see several interesting things that could give you more attack options:
   • One trick pony: 95% of Google's revenue comes from Adwords.  If you peel out Adsense, it's still mostly Adwords.  Conclusion: If you could theoretically kill adwords, you would kill all of google.  They are a one headed death star, I mean monster.
   • Geo: They are 50% international, with europe being the biggest contributor next to US. Conclusion: If you could beat them in the US and then Europe, you'd have them on the ropes.
   • Advertisers: As much as we all love to talk long tail/local, the bulk of Google's advertisers are larger brands and agencies.  The dream of the mom and pop is there, but maybe that's 10% of their revenues.  Conclusion: They don't have some defensible position around advertiser reach/scale.  If we had a great ad system, advertisers would come.
   • Verticals: Google's largest vertical is 'retail', representing 40% of their revenue (I'd guess even more margin), 'finance' is second (20%), then I'd guess you have Travel (15%) CPG (10%) Healthcare (5%), and then a long tail.
5. Add the above together and you could see a strong/unique verticalized attack having some potential merit. The theory being if you could 'out google' google in the retail vertical let's say and if you got 10% of that vertical, it would be 4% share, and maybe even a bigger chunk of margin.  That's a toe hold, which is way more than Microsoft's been able to get so far (or anyone by that matter).

Let's attack the retail vertical...

(still roll playing - isn't this fun!?)  We meet with Steve and he says:

"Great guys, thanks you've given me two things to work with here.  I'll go buy Yahoo!, that's a good one and of course Facebook would be good.  But this other thing, I need more there, I mean what do we do? Who do we buy?  What will it cost?"

As we now brainstorm the retail vertical, here's some ideas:

• Cash back - Hey this becomes a lot easier if we think about it in terms of the retail vertical.  What if we do it in the form of $ back on product purchases vs. a $/search?  That works much better because you can't create a robot to sit there buying things that you get a discount on and beat the system.
• Affiliate programs - We could plug into all of them, pass the $ on to consumers and augment with our own $
• Cost. US ecommerce will be $150b in 2008.  40% of that is driven by search ($60b).  Most expensive case, if Microsoft gave 10% cash back on all that, it would be $6b.  If it was 5% that woudl be $3b.  This turns out to be much cheaper than Yahoo!.  Admittedly, you would never get to $6-$3b, but even still, it's not nearly as expensive and you could really take some share from google if it works.
• Comparison Shopping - MSN shopping has lots of traffic, but lacks several key features to be the cornerstone of  a cash back strategy.  Thus, we'll have to acquire something like Jellyfish.com.

We get kind of excited and run this by Steve and he gives us the green light.

The Microsoft rebate program

Yes, the Microsoft rebate/cashback program is born!  The blogosphere is full of negativity on the program, but I'm going to be contrarian and say it is working.  Retailers are talking about it.  Consumers are definitely talking about it.

We recently covered the 10-35% off that eBay is offering in the program that has definitely attracted consumer's attention.

Personally, I'm anxiously awaiting the June search data from comscore.  I think we'll see Microsoft Live search take a little share.  If that happens, watch out world, Microsoft will be off to the races.

Another interesting thing about this program is I've asked several Googlers about it and many don't even know about it, or they dismiss it as 'that affiliate program' or 'that cpa' thing that microsoft is doing.

If the Microsoft rebate program works (takes share from goog), what's next?

Now if you're at Microsoft and this program starts to work, you think about how you would accelerate it.  Here's some brainstorming on that:

• Create a PayPal competitor - Having a checkout/payment system can be very helpful here.  If you give payments away free that's essentially another 2% you can pump through and it gives you the best possible tracking system and rebate flow engine (they use Paypal today and that will get expensive)
• Buy eBay - (Cost: $37b) If you want to be the best product search, eBay has 25% of ecommerce and the best closed-loop data on the internet.  Imagine you passed half the take rate to consumers to fuel search - you'd still have a profitable eBay, and you'd take share from Google like crazy.  You get Paypal with the deal so no need to build a competitor.  Finally, you get Skype.  You could put that in Windows and potentially leverage to take search share from Google internationally.
• Buy Amazon - (cost: $33b) Ok, this is more of a stretch, but Amazon has the 3P licked. Prime - imagine you got free prime by using microsoft search
• Buy affiliate programs - You could buy Valueclick all out (and get some CSEs) on the cheap ($1.5b) and get CJ.  There are rumors that Rakuten is considering selling LinkShare.  If you had both of those, you could give them away to retailers free and pass the savings on to consumers in your cash rebate program.
• Buy CSEs - 15% of ecommerce is driven by CSEs and they influence a larger %. If you buy eBay you get shopping.com.  There are rumors that Shopzilla and Pricegrabber are on the market.  Valueclick gets you smarter+pricerunner.
• Buy/partner with other ecommerce infrastructure players - Heck, you could buy GSI Commerce for <$1b and have some really interesting b+m retailers locked into your plans.  There are lots of ecommerce platform, channel management systems (!!!) and other ecommerce players that would give Microsoft leverage to keep increasing the share of commercial searches at Live and also improve the buyer experience and finally recruit+support retailer's/advertisers.

Put all this together and you could have not only some MAJOR product search volume massed up, but you'd be able to augment your pure 10% cash back and if you played it right, I think you could add another 8-10% in there by providing payment, affiliate, platform, channel pieces.  Now you have a sustainable 20% cashback program.  That's material and sure to get consumers attention.  On the eBay part, you could probably even go 30%.  The cool thing is nobody could match this because, well, you're microsoft, and by consolidating the payment/affiliate/channel/platform pieces you can charge fees for NON-microsoft traffic, you build a nice moat around your cashback program (google couldn't replicate easily).

Would half the consumers that use google to shop online switch to your system for 20-30% off?  I don't know, but I do know that in my experience, consumers will crawl through glass naked for a $10 off coupon.  My sense is they will do cartwheels for 20-30% off.

What do you think?
None of this is the equivalent of Luke in his X-wing heading down the trench with that one deadly shot, but as the poor Imperial dude said: "there is a danger....".

SeekingAlpha Disclosure: I am long google.

A little something for the DC and Wall St. geek readers

Ok, I'm a datacenter geek, but we're few and far between, but I figured at least the Wall St. guys would like this.  A local paper reports that Utah is putting significant development $ on the table to lure eBay to build their next datacenter (DC) in Utah.  The paper states it will be a big-one coming in at $300m+. How's that for a nice little piece of capex?

Thoughts on eBay changes...

We're getting lots of calls, emails, forum posts, etc. around all of the changes (fee, functionality, policies) that eBay announced over the last weeks culminating with eBay Live.  We're putting together our thoughts and the roadmap for everyone and also working on strategies you can start developing today for your business.

Max Leisten, ChannelAdvisor's MarketplaceAdvisor PM and I will be providing an overview of the changes, our thoughts on how they impact your business and then also any changes to our software that will be coming via a Wednesday webinar.  You can read more and register here.

Even if you aren't a customer, I think you'll find this useful as we'll be covering the details of the changes and how they impact any eBay business.  I hope you're able to attend.

eBay has gone discount crazy - 20% cash back now avail! Up to 30%+ off if you play it right!!!

(Sellers - be patient, read to the bottom for a great idea on how to use this to drive sales for YOU)

I've blogged here about several things going on right now like:

• Copious couponing (I'm hearing 10% off up to $100 is being flooded to registered users right now - see above and I just got a $10 off shipping for 3 items too!!)
• Paypal's 1.5% cash back
• The eBayBucks 4% (or whatever you get offered) back program

And now eBay has partnered with Microsoft's Live search engine to offer 20% cash back (some people say 35%, but I only have seen 20%).  Yes you heard me, 20% cash back (that's more than eBay's take rate so I don't know how the math is working on this one.) Here's the beauty - these programs don't seem to EXCLUDE each other at all.  I've had several readers report being able to use for say a $200 item:

1. eBayBucks 4% - $8
2. 10% off up to $100  - $10
3. Paypal 1.5% (fund from balance or bank) 1.5% - $3
4. And the biggie - 20% from live.com - $40

Yielding $200-$40-$10-$8-$3 = $139 left to pay or a whopping $61 in discounts or 30.5% off for those of you keeping track.  So if you've been waiting for a $200-$500 item and are willing to invest some time in this, you can get a rare 30% off.  This is evidently burning up all the discount sites out there so no telling how long it will last.

Sign me up!!

Ok, here's my quick and dirty 'how to play' instructions:

Step1:  Go to live.com, do a product-oriented search and you'll see a sponsored link for the program.  Click that and register for the cash back program. Make sure to choose paypal as your $ system and make sure it's the SAME account you'll be using for everything you want to layer in (1.5% cash back and stuff).
Step2:  Go BACK to live.com and do a search for a product (xbox games works as of this writing).  You will see an eBay.com paid-search advertisement.  Click on that link.

You see the first two steps below:

You'll know you've done this right if when you get to eBay it is splattered with live cash back icons and banners on the top and down the left side, like this:

Step3: Read and make sure you understand the terms (the eBay specific ones) that are here.  The biggest gotcha's I see are:

• Limit three per account
• You have to buy within 60 mins of click and pay within 30 days (to be safe do it all fast)
• no ebayexpress or half.com (NOOOO!!! kidding - nobody shops there)

Step4: Ok go buy something, use your coupons at checkout like you normally would.

Step5: You will be sent an email via mymessages confirming the deal!

To do your other 2 purchases, make sure to go to live.com, click on an eBay sponsored link and shop quickly.

If my instructions don't make sense or work for you, here is a more detailed set I found and sites like fatwallet.com are littered with them.

Tidbit for sellers

Ok sellers, here's how you can use this to drive GMV on eBay's dime.

1. Create an eBay store page with instructions like mine or the ones I linked to on how to use the program for your buyers.
2. Make sure your listings specify Paypal and you have lots of BINS/fixed price listings out there (store listings would be great if you already have some).
3. Email your customer base with a title like this:  Myshop - eBay 20% cash back summer madness sale via live.com+eBay partnership.
   1. In this email Point them to your instructions in your store as step one.
   2. As step 2 send them to your eBay store and tell them to start shopping.
   3. Maybe even highlight some listings in the 200-300 as 'optimized for the program'
   4. Maybe even remind the buyer to check their eBay mymessages (put a link) for any recent eBay coupons that work for your store as well.
4. Sit back and count the $$

Heck you could even raise prices a little bit before doing this as they will get 20% off ;-)

VIDEO: apologies to Todd and MJ

So I had three talks at eBay Live - one was how to scale your backoffice (warehouse and stuff) and another was around 'choosing the right software solution for you' that talked about the difference between eBay's listing tools like seller manager pro, blackthorne,TL vs. CSPs like ChannelAdvisor and finally '12 tips to increase your DSRs'.

The DSR talk is an internal 'best practices' we developed at ChannelAdvisor and use to help our customers work on their DSRs - specifically this usually focuses on the S+H cost DSR.

Due to being under the weather, I couldn't make the DSR talk on Thursday at eBay Live so CA's Michael Jones and eBay's Todd Lutwak (head of seller scalability) were nice enough to fill in for me.

Well turned out I was throwing them to the lions as there was this dude in there that sat in the back of the room and evidently yelled expletives and stuff and then some lady jumped in and kept just telling MJ+TL they were liars.

FUN!

To top it off, someone Flick'ed the guy and put it on YouTube and it's been on Valleywag as well.  So I wanted to thank MJ and Todd for taking the heat on this one.  Had it been me in a feverish state, my strategy would probably have been to try and get as close to both instigators and do a Monty Python-inspired Projectile Vomiting on them.

In any case, if you see this guy in the clap tunnel, trip him for me:

Live blogging from eBay Live keynote IV

(Lorrie continuing)

Buyer protection

Paypal rocks!  If a buyer pays with paypal for "eligible ebay transactions"**** you are covered!

Summary
Lorrie then summarized the changes she rolled out.

Lorrie then concluded with a story about how she sold some shoes to someone in France.

Then Lorrie had the eBay folks give a round of applause to everyone for what they do.

Then they showed a recycled

Community hall of fame

This was a video about danna who is an eBay educational specialist and all around community person.  She's an ebook seller (didn't they cancel all that?) 9k feedback, 4.9+ DSRs. sells about 50 items/month - GMV is about $1k/m.

(JD back on stage, did a little skit with Lorrie about their height difference)

In addition to the hall of fame award, the ebay foundation makes a $2500 donation to a charity of their choice.

Givingworks - has raised over $150m for charities to date (this is awesome, ChannelAdvisor supports GW).

Community Hall of Fame Awards:

1. danna
2. snowdealsnow - currently not selling anything. 4.6 S+H DSR
3. unclejoeadamson - 4.3 on shipping time - won't qualify to be powerseller
4. kathiesklown1970 - 4.7 S+H DSR
5. shoemetro (ChannelAdvisor customer - congrats David!!) - 4.5 S+H DSR, they are a big Givingworks participant.

Wrapped - more later, heading to my 10:30 'how to scale your biz' talk - should be interesting, I'm hearing that the individual sessions are getting pretty nasty.

Live blogging from eBay Live keynote III

(continuing with Lorrie)

Making Buyers Happy - DSRS

In Jan announced changes to reward high DSRS.  All sellers would receive better visibility in search.  Powersellers with DSRs above a certain level would receive discounts.  This was about giving sellers incentives to increase their customer service levels.

When we first announced the incentives we knew that 60% of powersellers had DSRs  over 4.6^67% now have DSRs of 4.6 or greater.

15% had DSRs of 4.8 and above, today 33% have DSRs of 4.8 or greater

We more than doubled the number of our best sellers!

Buyers are happier and are buying more.

Powerseller program

In addition to the discounts, they are rolling out more perks to Powersellers.  In July invoices, 20% discount on FVF for 4.9+ DSRs on all DSRs.  16% of all powersellers qualify for this new tier.

For all Powersellers, UPS is offering a 23% UPS discount for powersellers (not a big deal IMO, any large seller worth their salt can do better than this).

For Buyers.... (couponing)

• Improving the search experience, giving top buyers a reason to come back
• In May started sending coupons to top buyers
• Buyers that redeem a coupon, buy more frequently and more
• These are ideal buyers - the ones that every seller wants
• On track to deliver millions of coupons, and even more during holidays

Live customer phone support for top buyers coming soon too.

Back to sellers....

Our fee structure is critical to your success and the quality of items on eBay.  We aim to be the most competitive marketplace on the web for sellers.

In Jan we announced that we were going to move to success-based pricing.  It's working, we've seen an increase in volume.  Between now and the Holiday season we'll do more to ensure your success and make sure we're competitive in every category.

To be clear we want great products on eBay.

(Did a buyer video - Holy Still - hstill from Menlo Park)  She's a collectible buyer and ronically probably is primarily an auction buyer so this didn't really jive with the whole fixed-price thing.  Holy has purchased 24 things in the last 6 months.

Retaliatory feedback

We got rid of the ability to leave negatives for buyers (strong audience boos and jeers throughout this part)

Buyers told us this was the number one reason they were leaving.

I know this was painful and wanted to update you. 

• Repeat feedback has been a homerun
• Many of you feared that buyers would leave tons of negative feedback - but the combined neg/neut rate is unchanged
• Buyers are leaving DSRs 76% of the time now (no reference to what it was before)
• Buyers now have more trust in eBay

Looking at a new feedback withdrawal mechanism to encourage buyers and sellers to resolve issues on their own.  Our goal is to fix this by the holidays.  At the T+S session we want to gather your input and see how you feel.