From the Editor – September 12, 2021

eBay released the Fall Seller Update last week on September 8, 2021. At first blush, it seemed it wouldn’t be too disruptive to sellers, but as always, the devil is in the details.

Don Heiden pointed to a major disruption in certain areas of collectibles on his Auction Professor YouTube channel, using postcards as an example. eBay is eliminating almost all subcategories in Postcards, requiring sellers to add Item Specifics if they want shoppers to be able to find their listings.

Check the following video at about 9 minutes in – as Don points out, you can’t simply bulk edit listings – each postcard is unique (posted versus unposted, for example).

What’s incredible is that eBay is making this disruptive change on October 12, giving sellers who are impacted by the various category changes no time to update their listings ahead of the holiday shopping season. Don said the last time he was impacted by such a change, he had to outlay cash to have someone help him slog through the edits of his listings. In this latest case, he has 4,300 postcards in just one store that need to be edited, he said.

As far as eBay’s new cost-per-click ads announced in the Fall Seller Update, a comment from a seller has us wondering if the new ad format will be doomed: “I shall click the living hell out of my competitors every day.” Ouch! Check out this Wikipedia entry if you’re unfamiliar with click fraud.

In the meantime, we’ve been slogging through eBay’s new User Agreement that goes into effect on October 8, 2021. eBay provided no way for sellers to easily compare the new UA to the old one, as we noted on the EcommerceBytes Blog. Stay tuned for more.

Amazon also made a big change recently by requiring more sellers to obtain product liability insurance. Kenneth Corbin dug into the issue of what’s required and how much it will cost sellers in today’s issue. (It may not be as bad as you think.)

Don Heiden is also back with another installment of his series, “Online Selling as a Business” and offers tips that can help your bottom line (and your cash flow). You may not be an accounting whiz, but that’s all the more reason to review your business for ways to save money and operate more efficiently.

Collectors Corner looks at how a documentary is keeping the interest in Bob Ross paintings alive, and why you should pay attention to video game cartridges, which are setting auction records.

Thanks for reading.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.