This has been on my plate for a very long time - probably close to 8 months. Finally we got the move on eBay. Even though there were a lot of requests coming left and right, I decided to ignore them for a while to be able to get to a milestone with eBay. Otherwise it never gets done. It is such a complicated system and I have to spend about a day every time to remember the basics of eBay and what I did last.
I used to see people buying eBay books - trying to make it big on eBay. I guess it is possible. Actually the previous owner of our house used to make a living like that. The reason we know this is because when we came to see the house, it was full of ... err, stuff. The garage and a room in the house was dedicated to eBay. I used to think to myself: "what is so complicated about it? just trying to sell something online." Boy, was I wrong!
Lesson learned: if there are a lot of books on a subject, if there is a site that claims to be the university of that subject, well, it probably is a complicated subject. Do not underestimate it.
Looking from the software angle, I can understand what they tried to build. However, I think they failed miserably. eBay continuously makes surveys about customer satisfaction - buyer or seller. It looks like these surveys are telling them to focus on stuff like: clear refund, shipping, payment policies, more specifics about the item condition, etc. What is probably not captured is the complexity of it. I read a lot of material on eBay and I did not see a nice introduction to eBay for car dealers.
There are three concepts that make posting on eBay so complicated: sites, specifics and listing styles. eBay has many sites but let me make it clear: for American car dealers, there is only one site that matters: eBay Motors. To make things complicated, the listings on eBay Motors may be listed on other websites as well depending on the listing type - read on.
Item specifics is a general concept that I understand is necessary for a site like eBay. For car dealers (or vehicle dealers) a car or a vehicle is an Item in eBay terminology. The specs of that vehicle (like horse power, engine size, color, VIN, etc.) are the Item specifics. There are different categories to post different items and for vehicles, pretty much each make-model-trim has a category. In order to post in these categories, you need to enter certain specifics like VIN, condition, etc. Now this does not sound too complicated but if you look at the software model built for it you would understand what I mean. Very esoteric language.
Finally, there is the listing type. This is the part that most books on eBay spend pages explaining. For car dealers there are two types of listings: local or national. Local listings are classified postings - fixed price or best offer. National listings are mostly in auction style and have a whole set of complicated rules for managing the auctions. As I understand it, you should try to sell your vehicles in local markets first and if you can't sell it for a long time, use national auctions to get rid of the vehicle with a decent price.
Read more on Carsinia dealer software for eBay Motors.
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