Making a Living from Your eBay Business (2nd Edition)

eBay Express (express.ebay.com) is an odd bird. As you can see in Figure 26.1, eBay Express is eBay's attempt to provide a fixed-priced marketplace for buyers intimidated or otherwise put off by the online auction process. eBay Express offers consumers the ability to shop from multiple sellers yet pay via a single shopping cart and checkout. Buyer peace of mind is enhanced by a special Buyer Protection Policy; payment is via PayPal.

For sellers, eBay Express really isn't a separate thing. That is, you don't explicitly list items for sale on the eBay Express site. Instead, any fixed-price item or auction item with the Buy It Now option that you have listed on the general eBay site or in an eBay Store is automatically made available to eBay Express shoppers. When a customer makes a purchase via the eBay Express checkout system, you're notified the same way you would be if it were an eBay or eBay Stores purchase.

Listing Requirements

That's not to say that you don't have to meet some listing criteria. After all, eBay Express is intended to be a "safer" marketplace than the wild and wooly world represented by eBay auctions; they don't want a lot of riff-raff clogging the virtual aisles with shoddy merchandise. To that end, if you want your merchandise listed on eBay Express, you as a seller have to meet the following requirements:

• You must be a registered U.S. seller (or a Canadian seller shipping from the U.S.).

• You must have a minimum feedback score of 100, with at least a 98% positive rating.

• Your feedback profile must be public.

• You must have a PayPal Premiere or Business account. (All eBay Express payments are via PayPal.)

• Your PayPal settings must be set to allow shipping to unconfirmed addresses.

In addition, the merchandise you sell must meet these requirements:

• It must be listed on the eBay.com site, and it must be located in the United States.

• It must be listed in fixed-price, auction with Buy It Now option, or eBay Stores inventory format.

• The Item Condition field (New, Used, or Refurbished) must be filled in.

• You must use prefilled information when available.

• All shipping costs (either flat or calculated) must be spelled out in advance, and the appropriate listing fields must be completed.

• The item listing must include a photo.

• The selling preferences for this item must allow shoppers to pay by a single combined payment for their purchases.

• Post-sale, purchasing must be routed via eBay's checkout system or a registered third-party service.

• The price of the item must not exceed $10,000.

Assuming you fill in the right fields, most items you sell should meet these criteria.

Listing on eBay Express

As I said, you don't have to do anything to have your item listed on eBay Express. If an item meets the requirements, and if you meet the seller requirements, the item will automatically be listed on eBay Express.

You can check to see if your items are listed on eBay Express by going to search.express.ebay.com/merchant/ USERID. Replace USERID with your own user ID, of course; the resulting page, like the one in Figure 26.2, will list all your items that appear on the eBay Express site.

Shopping at eBay Express

An eBay Express item listing looks a tad different from the same listing on the eBay auction site. As you can see in Figure 26.3, there's a lot more information at the top of the listing, including item condition, quantity available, and shipping costs and information. Your standard item description appears at the bottom of the listing; the customer makes a purchase by clicking the Add to Cart button.

The purchase isn't complete, however, until the customer checks out. All purchases (from multiple sellers) are stored in the eBay Express shopping cart, shown in Figure 26.4. When the customer clicks the Checkout button, all items currently in the cart are officially purchased; the buyer's credit card is charged, and the sellers of each item are notified of the respective sales.

Is eBay Express for You?

Here's the thing about eBay Express: If you're selling fixed-price or Buy It Now items on eBay or in an eBay Store, you don't have any choice as to whether those items appear on eBay Express. As long as you meet the minimal seller and product requirements, your items will appear on both the original site and eBay Express.

Note

eBay Express isn't available for all product categories. To be specific, eBay Express doesn't include categories not covered by PayPal Buyer Protection (such as eBay Motors), those that don't have Item Condition values, or those where eBay's Category Managers have not yet worked out all the necessary details. For a list of non-Express (eBay-only) categories, see pages.ebay.com/sell/itemcondition/list/.

In other words, if you want to sell on eBay Express, all you have to do is create a fixed-price eBay listing or an auction with the Buy It Now option, or enter that item as fixed-price inventory in your eBay Store. You can't not list on eBay Express; as long as you're selling fixed-price or Buy It Now items, you're a member of the eBay Express retailer collective. (That's not entirely true; you can edit your general selling preferences on your My eBay page to opt out completely of eBay Express selling for all your listings.)

Caution

eBay Express search results return new products only. So if you sell used merchandise, you'll be at somewhat of a disadvantage against other merchants selling the same item new.

The good part of this is twofold. First, you get more exposure for your items. Second, you don't have to pay for this privilege; any item listed on eBay Express is subject to the standard eBay or eBay Stores listing and final value fees only. Not a bad deal, overallmore exposure at no extra cost.