trying to list on .com

soolin

Gosh it was difficult today trying to list on ebay.com. usually I don't have any problems but today it just kept forcing me back to ebay.uk..and I didn't want that! I do hope they aren't 'fiddling' again, maybe they would prefer us Brits to stick with ebay UK due to the fact that they can force us to pay extra for US visibility?

Anyway, I put up multiple BINs, 30 days with gallery for 35 cents which I thought was quite good.

ArmitageShanks

We've fairly recently started listing on .com and .com.au. Haven't had any problems as you speak off, just time consuming have two google tabs open converting $ to $ and vice versa.

Certainly worth it though, with a combination of Airmail, Mail House and FedEx we can list and ship our whole range which goes up to 20kg for under £25. Probably increased our ebay sales by 25%. .com is proving very successful, .coim.au still needs tweaking however.

Out of interest what do you do with postage costs. Do you inflate the item price to cover some the postage, and how do margins compare? Early impressions are that there is low perception of how much it actually costs to ship to US form the U.K

Also .com's fee structure is much more appealing then .au which has hopeless shop visibility as well.

soolin

I use a belt and braces approach on the basis if I say something enough it might sink in.

I say the item is coming from the UK, I also say it will be sent via airmail from Britain (I think I even get England in there as well somewhere). Then I list it for the US and Canada only and state the appropriate post and packing to cover UK airmail.

Then when I sell something I mention at least twice in my thank you email that the item is coming from the UK.

Some things sell well in the US but I am terrible at guessing which so I am rather naughty and watch what sells for other people and go with that. I stick with items below $20 and where postage is less than $10 so I don't have customs, duty or tax problems.

iieee

They're probably trying to get you to list on ebay UK and pay them an extra 2p per listing for your US visibility instead of getting it free by listing on .com. :rolleyes:

soolin

Well, for anyone considering listing on .com I would say go with it. I've had 2 sales in just over an hour compared to no sales at all on Ebay.uk for the past 4 days.

greeneye

Anyone thinking of doing this remember you've got to factor in converting the dollar payments back into sterling at paypals competitive (cough) exchange rate.
Out of interest Soo/Armitage why did you go with listing on .com rather than international visibilty on .co.uk? Is it just for US ebayers who search with USA only selected?

Given that sterling has been crashing against the dollar for a few months, now is a very good time to be selling anything you think Americans would be interested in. And if you've got anything that might appeal to the Japanese (who seem to use .com as there home site- there's no japanese ebay), sterling has fallen 40% I think against the Yen recently.

soolin

I don't find I lose much, if anything at all on the conversion rate, I am paid in dollars and I have one conversion only when I withdraw in bulk from paypal to my bank account. So far I have found those rates quite competitive.

I find listing on ebay.com gets a hundred times more response from US buyers than listing on ebay.uk and paying extra for enhanced visiibilty. My items listed yesterday are 2nd or 3rd in the lists under best match and I am all but sold out now. My ebay UK listings aimed at the US market have not made a single sale in the past 6 days.

I keep the listings very simple though, US or Canada only usually, one standard postage rate (I have to select selelrs standard rate of course as I can't specifiy an internal postage method) but I put all over my auctions, at least twice about this item coming from the UK via airmail.

I have also opened up some of my listings to Europe as I took a lot of questions yesterday and for some reason they said they were using ebay.com rather than ebay.uk and had not previously seen my UK listings.

greeneye

You might want to read this advice Digerati gave me Soo, probably a bit out of date - but you may find your getting charged more than you think.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=412379

Not sure which UK bank accounts he was referring to (Nationwide seem to be good with dealing with foreign currencies) but as an example interbank rate now is 1.57794, just checked for sending via paypal in US dollars and it's 1.52485 (maybe more for recieving payments).
Not huge but if your selling a lot soon adds up. But given the weakness of sterling maybe not worth splitting hairs over.
But definitely worth keeping an eye on the exchange rate and withdrawing your dollar funds into sterling and out to your bank at a favourable rate - exchange rates can fluctuate quite wildly over the course of just one trading day (when I've been watching sterling/euro I've seen it go up and back down 5% in a matter of hours).
Keep an eye here:
http://www.xe.com/

StaffsSW

I've been listing separately on international sites for a while, but since the September shop changes I have upped the activity a bit - pretty much duplicating my Uk listings onto .com

At the time the exchange rate was quite favourable towards the ££, but over the last few weeks it has dropped, effectively making my prices a lot more expensive to the US buyers.

When I first listed in $$, the equivalent price about £24 including P&P, but now it works out around £27.50 for the same item - even though I've changed nothing!

soolin

I withdraw $210.60 USD from paypal this morning at a rate of 0.622940 and received £131.19 GBP

At the time I did it the price on Google was 0.6313 which would have net me £132.95 which I actually thought was no too bad, the rate has moved a little since so I would have gained about another 40p if I had waited but it is always a gamble.

For the ease of selling to a foreign buyer I am sort of OK ish about losing a small percentage on the exchange rate, if I didn't do it this way I would have spent a fortune converting cheques and such like, which would have been a nightmare.All my items were sold overnight, all on BIN with immediate payment required and all shipped first thing this morning..that is my ideal business model. I didn't even have time to put the items into my storage, most sold within a few hours of being listed.

I just wish I could make a few UK sales now..just one would be nice to show my account is actually still alive!

dougk_2

Soolin., why do you think you are not selling on the UK site?
I think its because people have had enough of the blatent profiteering by ebay/paypal in the UK and the fact they take no notice of their customers wants/needs/suggestions.