eBay Australia’s decision to force all sellers to ONLY accept PayPal (with few exceptions for cars, motorcycles, aircraft, boats, caravans, trailers, trucks (commercials), services, real estate and businesses for sale) seems like an extremely bad strategy to me.

eBay own PayPal.

Imagine going into a supermarket and then only being allowed to pay with a credit card from that same chain (so the supermarket can make some extra fees)… that’s not much different to what will happen on eBay over the next couple of months!

Not only are competing payment systems like Paymate and others removed from the payment options, even cheques and money orders will be banned.

Isn’t it strange that eBay don’t mention they make NO extra fees when you use these competing payment options like direct bank transfers or money orders, but they do make LOTS of extra fees when you accept PayPal?

I didn’t see any mention of their increase in profits from forcing you to accept PayPal in their sales push for the changes.

Surely the banks — who do make money from online transactions and cheque accounts — and Australia Post (who make money off money orders) will have something to say about their payment methods being banned.

And about PayPal vs banks — is it more trustworthy? PayPal is owned by eBay — are they regulated and watched closely like the banking industry?

And if it’s such as good idea, why do eBay say they have no plans for a PayPal-only model in the USA?

eBay spokesperson Nichola Sharpe said the new policy applies only to eBay in Australia. “There are no plans to go to a PayPal-only model for eBay in the US and we haven’t announced any other markets at this time.”
– http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m04/i10/s01

eBay tell buyers that PayPal is “free” — but sellers have extra costs with PayPal and undoubtedly they will be passed on to the buyer.

Right now sellers can accept fee-free payments: not once this new policy is in place!

Also, doesn’t it work with PayPal where there may be a dispute, that PayPal can not only take the money back out of your PayPal account, but if you don’t have enough there, they take it straight from your bank account?

PayPal horror stories abound.

And that’s not all.

This from eBay’s own site:

To further reduce the number of buyer disputes, PayPal may delay the release of funds for up to 21 days or until the buyer leaves positive feedback.
– http://pages.ebay.com.au/useprotection/changes-sell.html

Most buyers don’t leave positive feedback until the goods are received… so you have to send them before you even get the funds released!

On the same page, they also say “This is targeted at a small percentage of items which pose the greatest risk; the overwhelming majority of sellers will not be affected.” — but don’t explain any further.

Wouldn’t forcing customers onto a single payment method be anti-competitive? Especially when you have over 5 million customers and you dominate your category.

There is of course COD cash on delivery. But how many eBayers transact that way though? Many sellers even ban you from picking up items, and charge a small forture for shipping even in your own city.

You don’t have to bid of course. Nor do you have to be part of eBay. But eBay claim 1 in 3 Australian adults as members — now they’re forcing their own payment system down your throat.

eBay claim it’s all about trust and safety … and that it’ll be good for everyone (surprise surprise). Strangely they neglect to say it’s also very much about their profits!

Marketing lesson: if you rely on one marketplace, you’re at the mercy of the changes in that marketplace.

I’m rather shocked to read that from later this month (20th Feb), eBay sellers can no longer give buyers negative feedback.

Having helped more than one seller improve their eBay trading results through better marketing and presentation of auction listings, I know for certain that there are buyers out in the land of eBay that simply have no intention of paying for something they bid on.

Even eBay admit non-paying bidders make up about 6 percent of auction results: that’s MILLIONS of eBay results that are affected.

And suddenly sellers won’t be able to tell other sellers about it, because eBay fears that such negative buyer feedback “drives them (buyers) away from the site.”

So it should!

Bad buyers should NOT be encouraged by eBay to waste the time, money and potential auction returns of other sellers. Sellers have to lodge alerts, chase up bad buyers via email, wait and hold on to an item for longer, potentially have to re-list and then not attract the same level of bids from other buyers who missed out the first time, but may not bid again.

It’s a strange marketplace indeed. First of all eBay “powersellers” aren’t rated on PROFIT, but simply turnover. Even losing money on eBay can cause you to become a Powerseller, simply because eBay are happy with the fees you’re paying them!

And now bad buyers can’t be given negative feedback by sellers.

Sadly, for a lot of hobby sellers, this change will affect the way they interact with eBay.

Here’s the marketing lesson: if this affects you as an eBay seller, and you have no other “marketplace” to make money — then you risk your profits because you rely on only one outlet for sales. Be careful, it’s a dangerous selling strategy. As I’ve heard many times, the most dangerous number in business is “1″.

I’ve noticed a couple of times a recent mini infomercial that, to me as a viewer, is completely over-hyped and goes beyond my level of believability.

It’s for a vacuum cleaner called the GaleForce.

At the start of the presentation, they show a user holding a full dust collection bag from another vacuum cleaner. This user is furiously “pumping” the bag to make the dust fly out (something you’d NEVER do yourself!) in an attempt to provide “proof” that a bag-system is an inferior option.

This scene is shot in “sepia” color tone to attempt to associate that dust bag technology with the olden days… so you don’t perceive it as real and alive and part of your normal environment. It’s an NLP method to assist you, subliminally, in not associating experiences to your current environment.

The company then attempts to prove how good their product is by vacuuming things light materials like pet hair out of a drinking glass! What a joke — since when would any vacuum not cope with such a challenge? They also vacuum smarties/M&M’s off a hard surface — again, hardly a challenge and, to me, proof their vacuum is not worth buying.

They then show their “bagless” system is so good by having to completely empty the dust/direct contents of a large container into a kitchen bin — but before the contents start transferring to the bin, they cut off the scene so you can’t see the dust go everywhere!

On a bag-system, the opening in the bag is only as big as the suction tube — and it usually has a small closing flap so you can quickly shut off the opening and prevent dust from escaping.

On the GaleForce, you enjoy no such feature — a gaping huge opening, as big as the vacuum’s main body, which you’d struggle to then contain dust from escaping when it comes time to empty the vac.

Would you prefer dust being held in with just a small opening a few inches wide, or a huge gaping open cylinder that’s probably five times the width?

So, one of the main “features” of the vac is, to me, completely false and in fact a negative — having that bagless option would cause all sorts of dust and mess!

As for the demonstrations of power that are shown, I reckon the cheapest vac could have performed the same job of getting the materials out of the drinking glasses and the loose objects off the hard surface. Neither were a challenge. Perhaps their only upside was the suction power generated against the bowling ball/lounge table — but I’m not convinced other systems couldn’t do that anyway.

So — two of the three main selling points have been shot down in flames.

And the vac is so good… you get a second vac for free. Bonus? Or Burden?

What kind of viewer believes the demonstrations during the informercial? They’re easily picked apart with very little thought — so the “proof” of the product’s power is disintegrated.

Credibility can help persuade a buyer to respond to your message … but it has to be believable. Seeing as the ad keeps on running, there must be a big enough crowd of hungry buyers to keep up the sales.

I don’t expect to ever have this product on my shopping list! I don’t gather I’ll ever be sent a demo model either!

Here’s one thing to keep in mind when you’re devising your multi-step email campaigns.

Timezones.

One of the best ways to learn about effective and current techniques for marketing is to be on the lists of the top marketers! Sign up for their online email lists and even their offline lists if you can. Watch, learn and adapt for your own needs.

Best of all, it’s virtually a free marketing education.

One thing that I have noticed from a couple of recent campaigns is how timezones can affect the impact of your message.

Case in point: just today I’ve had a product offer close with a time-specific deadline — 5pm Eastern Standard Time in the USA.

(That’s a great “urgency” tactic — cutting off an offer at a very specific time, and sticking to your plan, not leaving the offer open!).

But… at 5pm EST it is 7am AEST in Australia — Australian Eastern Standard Time. Speaking for myself, that’s not generally a time of day that I’m online.

So… in this email campaign, there were two “last minute” email reminders… one sent out 8 hours before the deadline, and another 4 hours (”240 minutes”) before the deadline.

For me, the emails arrived at 11:32pm and 3:12am. Both arrived well after I was in bed asleep (around 10:30pm). By the time I saw them, it was 8:25am this morning — nearly 90 minutes after the offer had closed!

In this case, the Australian and New Zealand time zones are probably at the worst point on the clock compared to US EST.

Now that’s not to say that these 2 emails were the only 2 messages I received: I also received a “Only 2 days left” reminder and also the launch email 5 days ago — this was only a 5-day offer.

That means, in this 4-step email sequence, I missed seeing half of the sequence at a suitable time to act on the info as I was tucked away in bed sleeping.

The important issue here is sending out your emails when the majority of your audience will be seeing them. For this case, the number of Australian and New Zealand readers would be far smaller than the number of US readers… although I’d guess there’s still enough of us to be a reasonable market.

Because of the quality and expertise of the marketer involved (copywriting expert Clayton Makepeace), I’m certain he would always be testing that kind of offer, and would actually reach the majority of his list at a suitable time.

How well do you know your list? Are you creating deadlines that make sense to the majority of your list members? What if you knew where your list members lived and could personalise the offer and closing time based on that information?

The only real way to find out would be to ASK them, as even email addresses don’t necessarily reflect where you live. For my mailing lists, I use a gmail.com address — so it doesn’t readily give away that I live in “.au”. And friends of mine in Melbourne use yahoo.co.uk free addresses — and they’re 10 hours ahead of London time.

So, if you want to get that information… a short online survey (and maybe an incentive)… and suddenly you might have more of your list seeing your offer at a time of day when they can respond!