Selling on eBay by Craig Stark 8 February 2010

Some of you may have seen Karin Bergsagel's NewsBlog post on Tuesday referring to remarks made by Todd Lutwak, eBay's Senior Director of Selling Experience, in an interview with AuctionByte's Ina Steiner, specifically referring to a test conducted sometime in October and November of 2009 in which Store items were placed in Core - an announced change that will become permanent this Spring. If not, the complete interview may be accessed here, and I recommend listening to it.

Following last week's BookThinker, I heard from several of you who didn't share my optimism that the upcoming eBay changes would help Store sales as they did for a brief period in 2006 (the first time the Core experiment was tried). Reasons given included the now overwhelming presence of competing megasellers, a search experience that has been significantly degraded, and an ongoing exodus of buyers.

Naturally my curiosity was aroused about the late 2009 experiment, and I immediately checked my October and November Store sales against my September and December sales - and I also looked back at my 2007 and 2008 sales for the same months. I was encouraged by what I found. My sales in both October and November were approximately double what they were in September and December, and 2007 and 2008 sales for these same months did not reflect this pattern - in fact, December for both 2007 and 2008 was my best month. I then canvassed a small group of booksellers who had proven track records with eBay Stores, and their sales had conformed to a similar pattern.

Of course, there are still questions, but this initiative certainly has my attention now, and I'll be watching my sales results in April and the following months closely and reporting back. Given that the changes will be rolled out at the onset of what has traditionally been a slow sales period for booksellers - April through July - this might prove to be a welcome shot in the arm. Meanwhile, we have several months to review the changes and do whatever is necessary to minimize cost and maximize outcomes.