I sell on both eBay and Amazon.com (much more on eBay). When I was thinking about the recent changes to eBay’s feedback system, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to Amazon’s current system. It appears that eBay has taken a page out of Amazon’s book when it comes to feedback.

For those of you not familiar with Amazon’s feedback system, here are some of the highlights and differences:

• Ratings are based on a 5 star system (1-2 stars = Negative, 3 stars = Neutral, 4-5 stars = Positive)
• A buyer will see the following information when deciding to buy from you: Average number of stars, feedback percentage for last 12 months (rounded up the nearest whole percentage i.e. 98.5%=99%), number of ratings for last 12 months and number of ratings for lifetime.
• When you dig deeper you will get a grid that looks like this:
  

  Feedback	30 days	90 days	365 days	Lifetime
  Positive:	100%	96%	98%	98%
  Neutral:	0%	1%	1%	1%
  Negative:	0%	2%	1%	1%
  Count:	69	209	3241	3382

As you can see there are much more options to see the reputation of a seller. With the ability to break down feedback into 1 month, 3 months, 12 months, and lifetime percentage you can get a clearer picture of who you are buying from. Only the 12 month percentage is shown on eBay.

Both sites now use neutrals in the calculation of percentage.

Most buyers don’t even know to give feedback on a transactionon Amazon. An email is sent out from Amazon about 2 weeks after the transaction asking sellers to rate the transaction. On eBay, it is much more of a community spirit and everyone (both buyers and sellers) know that feedback is expected from them.

There is no need to leave buyers feedback on Amazon. You do have the ability to, but no one will see it and the buyer doesn’t care (and probably doesn’t even know where to go to look for it).

You will see sellers with a much lower feedback percentage still be successful. There are several sellers with a percentage as low as 92% who sell thousands of items a year. There are hundreds of successful sellers with a 96% rating.

Buyers are much quicker with the neutrals and negatives on Amazon than on eBay. Several times I have gotten a neutral on Amazon saying “Perfect Transaction”. I am not sure if this is because of the 5 star feedback system or lack of buyer education about giving feedback. It seems that buyers on eBay are much more selective when giving neutrals and negatives. Also, Amazon’s main business is built around books, movies, and music. That could also be a contributing factor.

It is yet to be seen if the buyers on eBay will be quicker to leave bad feedback without the fear of retaliation from sellers. My opinion is that you will see a slight increase in neutrals and negatives but it won’t be near the problem that some people fear. I have ALWAYS given positive feedback the same day an item is paid for. My seller’s never had the fear of retaliation and with the exception of a few uneducated buyers I have never had a problem with people being quick to give me a bad feedback without giving me a chance to fix their problem.

Amazon still does have the posibility for buyers to remove a bad feedback (or change the feedback). By taking that option away, I think it will hurt eBay. However, eBay did take some steps to eliminate unjustified negatives from new sellers. Now, when you go to leave a negative feedback, you must manually check these three boxes before you can continue:

• I have contacted or tried to contact the seller to resolve issues
• I have allowed enough time for the item to arrive
• My comment is factual and avoids personal remarks

Amazon’s feedback system seems to work for buyers. EBay’s system did work - it wasn’t broken - we will see if the changes will improve or hurt eBay. My opinionis that seller’s and buyer’s will both adapt to the new system and eBay will remain the leader in online auctions.

In a recent post, I had come to the conclusion that the eBay feedback changes wouldn’t affect me very much… I was wrong. One thing I left out in my conclusion of the new changes is that neutral feedback will count as much as negative feedback when it comes to calculating feedback percentage.

Here is how the feedback change has affected me:

Previous Feedback Score - 34780
New Feedback Score - 38430

Previous Feedback Percentage - 99.3%
New Feedback Percentage - 98.4%

In the overall scheme of things, the 4,000 added to my score is not that big of a deal. Sellers with 34k and 38k are held in nearly the same regard by buyers. However, the second one is a BIG difference. I know that some of my potential customers will notice that I am well below 99% and want to know why. They may even decide to shop elsewhere.

However, once I got over the initial shock of my percentage going so much lower, I can see how this will be a good move for eBay and will make it a stronger marketplace. Bidders are the backbone of eBay. Without bidders, you will have no one to buy your wares. This change will make sellers pay more attention to customer service. I know that I have already taken several measures to ensure my customer service is much better in order to get my percentage higher. I have no doubt that this was a kick in the butt to make my customer service much better because I will have no other choice. This, in turn will make the buyers happy, which in turn will bring more bids and sales to my eBay business.

So, if you are down about the feedback changes, just look at it as an opportunity to improve on some things you have been wanting to improve on for a while. Sure, eBay changed the rules of the game, but the rules were changed for everyone. This is your chance to improve your business practices and possibly move ahead of your competition who is feeling the same pain in the feedback change as you!

This is my first post on the actual purpose of this site - Finding stuff to sell on eBay. So, I will start off with the easiest and quickest place you can find stuff to sell (and what I started with)… Stuff sitting around your own house.

Not only is this the quickest and easiest way to start selling on eBay, but it is a VERY important step in starting your eBay business! It sounds easy to start selling on eBay and it is, however it does take a little time to get used to all the steps involved in selling. This is the perfect opportunity to get your eBay business off the ground with no investment in inventory and without having the pressure of trying to get your investment back from an inventory purchase.

There are thousands of different items you could sell, but here are a few ideas to get your brains going:

• Gift Closet - I am sure you have a closet full of gifts that you received and never opened. I am sure there are hundreds of people out there looking for that exact item.
• Books/CDs/DVDs/Video Games - How often do you actually use these products? These are great sellers on eBay and a great way to get started.
• Jewelry & Watches - Broken or not, these items sell really well.
• Clothes - I know you have tons of clothes in your closet that you haven’t worn for a very long time… Well, now is the time to get rid of those old rags (especially the ones that still have the tags).
• Old Sporting Goods - No time to play golf? Too out of shape to hit the tennis courts? Now is the time to get rid of those sporting goods that you no longer use.

So, if you are new to EBay, get to searching for stuff around your house… You will find more to sell than you think and you will gain valuable experience and get some money in your PayPal account to start buying some inventory.