 Welcome everyone to the second episode of eBay Live the podcast and today is going to be more my musings of just where the business where the platform is going, how I'm feeling about things, my mindset towards these things and just what sort of things I'm going to be doing going forwards when I'm thinking of trying to do to improve my my mental state, the profitability of my business and also just general all-round improvements. There's so many things and avenues to take or try and it's easy to get lost in amongst the forest of views by people and yourself easily easily lost in this this crazy world of reselling. I mean just how I feel about the business for myself, my business, I have to keep telling myself that it is a marathon. It's for me it's been a long journey of research, trial, error, mistakes and trying to correct those and improve that machine that I call my business in order to be a fully functioning self-supportive income for the family and it's been a difficult road I mean I've made some really wrong choices I've made some really right choices and then it's a case of staying on top of those right choices before eBay pulled the rug from under you and they change it constantly and what worked for you last week may not work now and that can be very frustrating especially if he's taking you more than a week to actually figure out what that problem is. It's easy to get lost in amongst the the white noise of other youtubers and no offense to any of them they all have great things to input into the mix but it's easy as an individual to get lost in amongst that white noise and not progress forwards constructively and to be able to see the wood for the trees you know it's it's difficult and I'm sure I'm not alone I mean there are many of us out there that we're all learning at different levels but on the same track of where we want to be it's how can I say it's there's so much frustration that we aim at other people or at the platform or inwardly towards ourselves and sometimes we just need to step back and it's not that simple I know but to be able to step back and then detach ourselves from all the static of the business the platform the the ideas and just focus on the key elements of the business it's easy to how can I say it is very it's like an engine you know if you don't put enough oil in it it's gonna seize up and I think that's the the analogy I'm gonna use there for that part is that white noise becomes the lessening of the oil within the engine and before you know it your your your business is slowing it's grinding to a halt and it may not be as simple as you've done something wrong it could whatever that thing is in it may be more than one thing that's grinding your business down in its momentum forwards it's it's frustrating you know I mean let's I mean just the the amount of things that's impact your business you've got the platform and just by that alone you I don't just mean the old was it's embarrassing we're sorry it's timed out we can't find the information this is embarrassing blah blah all those glitchy things on the platform we're not talking the the inability for the search algorithm that they implement to find our products properly the learning curves of the AI as it's learning the platforms new new way of indexing we're not talking those type of things individually but just as a whole they all impact the constructive productivity of your business and your way forward and your ability to be able to see that path in front of you and know which decisive move can put you back on track and it may not be platform it could be to do with your sourcing or it could be with your time management or it could be your just your your physical or mental health state that has a knock-on effect on to the business but being able to find those points is half the battle and then from there you start to try and implement things you try things and so many of us out there are doing just that we're trying out these new ideas these new fixes I mean we can call them hacks we can call them cheats they're not they're just ways to find the quickest results to get us back on track without having to completely strip our businesses down to the bare bones and begin again and that's not something any one of us wants to do and I don't think that's ever really a case of that's what you must do but the fixes as it were that we come up with just may not be an overnight resolution but it's a case of hoping that the resolution of getting to that end stage of that fix or that implementation that we put into the business reaches a financial and productive results before something else jumps into the works and slows the system down again it's a constant battle and I guess that maybe is what business is about and maybe not all of us realize this when we went into it and maybe not all of us can cope with it or find coping mechanisms within it as a business owner so many of us may have just came in come into this as a part-time side hustle it may have been implemented to take place of a full-time job and working for someone else which has its benefits but it also has its negatives but we all have to find our own journey our own resolution to the issues that come up along the way now they may be as simple as implementing a better price structure for your products or better images better titles cheaper and more sustainable sourcing methods or promoting in some manner shape or form we don't like the promoted listings we know but then that's another thing I mean there's so much talk around promoted listings and off-site ads at the moment and I've covered it so many times on my channel already and I'm sure there'll be many more to come because that is the the the company flag at the moment for eBay and it's more for us to manage the fact that okay yes promoted listings are becoming the most predominant money earner for eBay however you look at it and they're constantly taking from the pot and yes they will be it doesn't matter how much we complain and whether we use it or not if we don't use it depending on the categories you're in you may still stay afloat without them there are those that can't survive without them because of the categories they're in then becomes the next question who do you pivot to new categories you pivot to a less saturated market but with the fact that eBay has been running for so many years now I mean we're coming up to nearly nearly 30 years I don't think there's really any category within the marketplace that isn't saturated to some degree so there will always be that competitive edge that you have to either meet or exceed and you may well have to find that promoting level for you and that will have to be factored into your business plan and your your your your your costings and yes we don't like it but I think the only way to look at it as is there are only a few things that are guaranteed in life and one of them is death and one of them is taxes and you can look at it as part of a tax if you wish and if you want to play the game at the levels that you were at if you want to carry on forwards at those levels there are a few options open to you for a quicker fix and the quick returning fix is going to be promotion of some kind now you don't necessarily have to go down promoted listings you you don't necessarily have to use off-site ads campaigns from eBay that there are other ways to promote but then it's down to how much time and effort you're going to want to put into that promotion in order to regain the traction that you had prior to the the ramping up of these money grabs costings however you want to word it it's something you need to seriously step back sit down make a coffee whatever it is you need to have and really analyze your business and structure and work out are you going to rely on the remaining in-platform promotion to give you your return from what you're selling and if that's the case then you're going to have to work on a scaled-up version of what you're on now because there are so many out there that you can see already that they sell or they have tens of thousands of listings but the return revenue has greatly decreased without promotion it may well be that that is okay for you to not promote and if you can source more product to get that up then and that's great or source better you could be looking at a higher ASP instead but keeping your costings down now for our cousins in the US this is definitely a structure that can work better for you than say for someone in the UK I'm not saying that the the ability isn't there but the margin is greatly reduced for the UK seller for an example compared to a US seller the US society has an incredibly high throwaway mindset of items from their home or their their their belongings and the is that like that turnover that constant turnover creates a sourcing ability that is always going to be there for a lower cost and keeping that profit margin higher for you the UK is a slightly different financial margin animal we don't have that throwaway mentality and we all think that our products are worth something so if you were saying right let's get rid of all this stuff on a car boot for example which is a bit like your your markets then I mean from my experience you can find a few good bargains but you won't be able to rely on it as a sourcing method for a high profit 5x 10x sort of level it doesn't work that way that the individuals are more attached to their products and the value that they feel they're worth maybe that's down to bartering possibly but it is a little more difficult in my eye so you have to look at better sourcing methods there are those that will work in or what their businesses work on bulk buying stock and they're a lower price and that could be the more profitable way to source and sell in the UK I think unless you have a very specific category that you wish to work down and it's down to time as well putting into it's how much time you're going to be putting into that sourcing and once you've done your sourcing then it's down to getting it listed then it's out down to the quality of that listing what you're putting into that listing the the time and effort to absolutely optimise it all these factors play into the bigger time-sucking cost of what you're doing for your business and you got to find the right model for yourself it may work for some but not for all I use for example multiple different sourcing and selling avenues I don't stick to one I don't just go to wholesalers I don't just go to thrift stores or the equivalent in the UK I don't just do boot sales I don't just what's the word I'm looking for arbitrate from buying and selling say straight from eBay which there can be profits in there if you pick the right items I try to keep that very and I think you have to keep it varied especially in the marketplace and the the society that we're currently in there are just so many factors and again I may be just preaching to the converted but I feel if you're coming into this business you need to keep your eyes wide open to what you're walking into you know is when I first started selling on on this e-commerce world of platforms I had no idea what I was doing I mean yes I understood eBay you buy it you sell it you auction it buy it now etc etc yeah I got that I understood that the dynamics of the basics but as a business and all the intricate parts of that machine to make it work those I learned by trial and error and if any of these points can give tips to new sellers or even some sellers that have been running their business for a long time on the same model and have never changed it and are seeing reduced earnings maybe it's time for you to also just take a step and see where can you improve because I mean you may just want to have a steady turnover and you're happy with that or you may be looking to grow or improve and I think we should all be looking to improve the more you improve your business the more time you're going to have for the important things in life which is living you know I mean you don't do this just to pay the tax man although maybe some of us are doing at the moment especially in the current climate but you've got a kind of you've got to change your mindset I think in so many things as you've got to change your mindset to your business you've got to change your mindset to eBay I mean we can all sit there and go oh they're money grabbing they're taking our cash there they're making the profit margin so small we can't make anything maybe they are but that's the business that's their platform it's their platform to sell how that or to provide us with a service however they wish it doesn't we can rant and complain all we want that's not going to make any difference to the to the platform the platforms not interested in us saying oh we don't want you to do that well they're going to do it and they've done it and it is what it is so you can either work with it or you can leave that's kind of it so we have to change this mentality of it's eBay's fault well there is no fault this is a business this is what you've got to make it work now that may mean that you can't do your business through the eBay platform or at least not on the hundred percent scale that you may currently work at you may need to look at other platforms you may need to look at other business plans other outlets or you may need to reassess your profit margins what worked two years ago won't work anymore you know I mean you may be able to have lived on a 50% profit margin but now with the current marketplace you're only making 25 well okay if it's 25% it is 25% now you need to think where can I trim my costs down is there any way that I can trim my cost down that don't impact my business in a negative way is there anything that I can implement into my business to increase that profit margin it's easy to say look out look outside the box but I think in this case it's a case of looking outside of your monitor screen step away do some brainstorming think about what is available what is available for sourcing where is it available for sourcing if eBay are going to make it a pay-to-play platform as far as the quick fix get you back to the traffic levels you were getting you need to decide one do I want to go down the route of investing that profit into the business to increase the revenue to get me back to where I was that may take me higher than where I was or do I need to look at other avenues now those other avenues could be investment in a pay-per-click it could be investment in software to help you promote your products or it could be other avenues that give you free promotion and then it's a case of factoring in the time and financial input that you need to put into that side of the business it's all well and good saying oh you know I I've always managed to sell a I don't want to bring up any particular product because there are many sellers that sells specific products and I don't want it to sound like I'm pointing at them because I'm not but let's just say a cardboard box for the sake of conversation so I sell cardboard boxes and they've always sold this way and it's been absolutely fine and I don't want to be faffing around for three hours putting in item specifics on it and doing all this techy stuff well okay if you don't want to do that then you either need to find another way to get your from your your traffic to your store on your products or you need to learn it's that simple you need to make a choice if you seriously counting this as a business then you need to pivot in those directions and you need to take those factors into account the platform is a marketing pit of choices that eBay are making now and marketing is the money grabber for them they are no longer doing all that marketing for you off-platform on platform absolutely it's there it's available and that's another that's a whole nother conversation for another time into more depth but keeping this more broad you've got to you've got to take ownership of your own business and you've got to decide for yourself what works for you and what are you willing to do what are you capable of doing and what are you comfortable with doing that is not a detriment to your happiness your personal life your financial bottom line beyond what you're willing to deal with it's all about getting that ball moving forwards now instead of backwards because it has definitely taken a turn in the wrong direction for a lot of us and then it's a case of hoping that we can find that result resolution to our sticky six situations before the platform changes again so that we can then have the available mentality and mindset and time to be able to address that new road block in front of us and then always be roadblocks unfortunately that's business it doesn't stand still it's always evolving it's always changing so as many of my my followers and subscribers already are aware my take on things is to always analyze and crunch and question between the lines I I don't go always go for the obvious questions I look for the questions that you don't necessarily see and I think there's a lot to be learned from those it's we know that eBay isn't forward with its information and we'd look at those situations as well but sometimes it's a case of looking into the the dark areas of what's not said the clarity of the things that are said and I think there's much to be learned from those missing spaces they're there for a reason if they haven't answered them or if they haven't made it crystal clear there's a reason they haven't made it crystal clear there's a reason they've made it vague generally it's a legality thing but that the galaxy thing it has a knock-on effect to us of understanding what is happening what we're getting what we are entitled to what we're no longer going to be entitled to it's that information that helps us learn personally that is how I feel the obvious things and questioning all the platform broken okay well fine is that is our point of view there may be things that seem broken but they're not necessarily broken they're just in flux to getting to an end result we just don't know what those end results may well be for a very quick example the AI implementation to creating item descriptions it's not to make it look pretty to the buyer I'll guarantee it the platform knows like we do most buyers don't bother scrolling to read the item description box if you're looking on a phone you have to click multiple buttons just to get to the item description box that item description box is there for one and one reason only to capture keywords to capture specifics from the listing so that it can file your listings into a simple quick find process for the algorithm to then throw back out to potential buyers to put it in front of them the listing not the item description box buyers don't go looking for an item description box they're looking for a product and it's that the AI is using those item description boxes for and I made this very clear at the beginning of September and so many people miss it but thankfully more and more people are now starting to see that bigger picture but let's move on from there I mean for me going forwards what am I going to do different and what am I going to do I'm not going to stop asking the non obvious questions I'm not going to stop questioning and trying new ways to improve the visibility for the community and myself I mean for this channel that this this is one of my outlets to brainstorm to learn from the community as well as informing the community when I find something that is beneficial and is working always not working so that they can save their time and not do it come out with the same results but I'm definitely going to have to put more and more time into the promotion where I'm going to be going with that promotion and how I'm going to be investing or not investing to get that traffic to my listings I'm never going to use pay-per-click on on the site I just they're not clear enough that they're vague with what they're using and until I know what I'm investing in I won't use it promoted listings standard we know what's happening there is promotion within the platform we know how that works we can see that on a day-to-day basis they're putting our items in other people's listings they're putting our items as a store in front of other people in their listings they're using it across the the category pages they're putting you in better search placements that's fine we understand that and that's I can make an informed decision as to what level of my profit margin I want to use towards that and I can gauge and factor that into the bigger picture with regards to what products I'm selling I'm definitely going to have to look at higher sell-through products as on not necessarily saying what I have doesn't sell through fast but I need to expand to increase what is selling as far as the numbers on the system because we do know that the sell-through rate is very important there's a lot of things going forward in 2024 that we're going to have to readjust and pivot it's that simple and it's always going to be changing and we all need to grow so as individuals we all have to look at our own individual business and decide what's best for us and the direction we want to take but there is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing our experiences our feelings and our thoughts with the community to benefit the community because we are a family we're a family of like-minded sellers that turn to each other for progress for understanding for support and for answers so everyone keep it real and I'll see you in the next episode