Rob & Melissa from Flea Market Flipper talk about reasons to try using eBay’s new listing tool.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast – Rob & Melissa On Ebay’s New Listing Tool
Rob: What's up guys? On today's episode, we are talking about eBay's new listing tool. Good, bad, or indifferent?
Rob: All right. So are you using eBay's new listing tool right now? You have that option. eBay's not forcing everybody to use it yet, but in the top right-hand corner, there will be a button that will say switch to the new, listing tool. So are you using it right now?
Melissa: And they are moving towards everybody using it. And that's been kind of a topic of up for debate.
Like people are upset about it, people like it, or they don't want to be forced to use it. So we're going to kind of dive into a little bit about that today. So, and this kind of came up as a question in our group recently. We were helping somebody get through, they were having a, kind of a slump in sales and we gave them some suggestions to do so that's how this question came up.
Rob: Yeah, and this was one of the suggestions was actually to switch over to the new listing tool. One of the biggest features of the new listing tool, that you could not do before, was you can't upload picture, no, sorry, videos to the new listing tool and it is a drag and drop. So if you have a video on your computer, actually take a video on your phone, you throw it to the computer, you can drag and drop it from the computer up into the listing tool to anywhere in the picture section.
And it automatically puts your video as the second picture in the picture section, which is pretty cool I think.
Melissa: Because they don't have to go into the description to.
Rob: All in of itself. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Because before you had to actually go into the description, you had to upload the video into YouTube, which just took a lot more time, a lot more steps.
Now you do not have to do that. Now you can actually drag and drop it in there. The only downfall is there is a limit to how much they will, how long they'll let you do the video from my iPhone. I don't know exactly what the video settings are on, but it will only allow me to do, I think it's 50 seconds, anything over 50 seconds it pushes it back and says it's too large.
Melissa: But how much do you really need to go over? Unless you're selling a car or something. I mean, there's some things that maybe you would want to do more of, but for the most part, you just want to show that it works or show the condition. Maybe you can get in better detail, like on pictures, you can doctor them up so somebody can see a video. It's a lot harder to doctor up a video if you're seeing like imperfections or whatnot.
Rob: Yeah, and that that's, like I said, this is the biggest feature that I am absolutely happy with. I think it's amazing that you can actually do this now with a new listing tool.
Everything else is it's just more streamlined. The crazy part about it is people don't like change. So even though it is more streamlined, people get set in their ways and they like what they know me included. When you know how to do something and you get good at it. It's one of those things that you don't want to learn change, but, the bad thing is eBay typically platforms when they come out with new software.
Melissa: Every platform changes all the time, things are changing.
And it is frustrating because you just learned how to do something really well. And all of a sudden it's different. And even the button is different on your next update of the app. And you don't even know where to go to find this thing. So yeah, it's frustrating.
Rob: So most of the platforms, anything that does change, they favor that upgrade.
They want you to start using it sooner than later. And typically, we don't have proof for this, but the algorithms will favor it. So they will show your items to more people. They're going to push it more if you're using the new listing tool. So that's one of those things that it's very, a lot of people since they know what they like, and they like what they know,
they're gonna stick with the old one as long as they possibly can, the old listing tool. But I would encourage you to try the new listing tool out. eBay is going to phase out the old one, just like everybody who has new software, they phase out the old stuff. It just takes time. But it's inevitable. So if you're not using it yet, I would encourage you to upgrade to it.
You can switch back and forth if you want to. I did it multiple times to make videos, to show people how to use the tool. So it's one of those things that you absolutely can do. But I would encourage you to get used to the new tool because that's really what you're gonna end up having to go to sooner or later.
Melissa: And really, like we already mentioned every platform of social media, of any kind of platform, always favors their newest thing that they want out there. So they're going to, if you're using it and half of your competitors are not, you're going to get seen, your items are going to get seen for sure.
So it's definitely worth learning and it, yeah, it is frustrating too for change. I think one of the biggest things that I've read or heard about people were frustrated about with the video was that it takes some time to buffer, like it doesn't upload right away. Whereas if you do it in flipper tools or you do it in the description, then it's right away, it's uploaded.
So, yeah, but it doesn't take as long as they said it's going to take, right?
Rob: No, it's typically pretty fast and it depends on how fast your computer is as well. How fast your, if you're doing it from a laptop you're doing from a desktop, what it is, it does take a little bit of time to buffer. But it's still, it's not that big of a deal.
The other portion of this is eBay will not list that video immediately. They will actually go through, it goes through a reviewal stage if you would say, to where my first one that I ever did, it actually took eBay I think two or three days before they made it live. Now, when I put up a video, they make it live within a couple of hours.
It goes really, really quick, but I think they say give it up to if I'm not mistaken, I think it's like 72 hours, they might say, for somebody who is starting to list them. Once I think they know your account and the stuff that you're listing and you're there, they're just trying to stay on top of anybody listing that you know, any of that stuff that's going to be risque or whatever you, whatever you call it, anything that they just want to make sure that you're not listing something or you're not doing a video of something that should not be on there.
So. They're just you know, crossing their t's and dotting their i's.
Melissa: Vetting everything to make sure that it's all right to be on there. And that's a game changer for it to be in the actual 12. Is it 12 or 13? Does that give you a 13th? Twelve pictures plus a video. And it's the second one that people see. So when they're looking at your item, how many people don't even look at the description?
Like it's a lot of people. I mean, when you're getting into the higher dollar items, they're reading a lot more. People don't always read descriptions. So if it's right there in the actual pictures, and I think even if you're not using video, which we do think video is huge game changer, just using the new listing tool is going to be beneficial for your listing.
Rob: It is different, but it is one of those things that it's more streamlined to me, it's a quicker process than the old clunky listing tool that eBay's had for however many years it's been, this is a lot more streamlined. It's a lot quicker to use. Once you get the hang of it, you're going to blow through it a lot quicker than using the old listing tool that they had.
Melissa: So overall you like it?
Rob: Absolutely. Yeah. I haven't found anything wrong with it other than it's changed and nobody likes change. So, it's one of those things and to be honest with you guys, the majority of what we do is from my phone and the phone has not changed yet. It's still the normal format, but when I want to list pictures, I can't do it from my phone.
Sorry, videos. I can't do it from my phone. I have to put the video cause I take them on my phone, but I can't, I have to actually get the video onto my laptop and then I have to upload it and I have to go into eBay through the laptop. And that's the only time that I go into that format is the new listing tool is when I'm trying to put a video onto a listing.
Other than that, I still do everything from my phone is just the same. So. But that's what I would encourage you to try to switch over to the new listing tool, and just get used to it because it's going to be here to stay guys. That's what they do. They spend millions and millions of dollars on developing this stuff.
And it's not something that they're going to go back on and you know, they're going to scrap it. That's not what's going to happen. They're going to, it's here to stay. It's been here actually I think they rolled this out probably over a year and a half ago. So yeah, it's already been in the works and not everybody had access to it, but slowly but surely they started releasing it.
Melissa: And they are going to eventually make everybody do it.
So you might as well jump on early because the people who jump on early at, I guess a year and a half, it's not that early, but it's still in its newer phases. So you will have an edge on your competition. It's one of those things like this is something that we had recommended to one of our members, or we recommended a couple of different things cause she had a slump in sales and this was one thing that she did along with some cross posting on another platform. And those two things she got, she made over $7,000 in a week. Like she had a pretty big slump and now she hit over $7,000 in a week. So it's like, all right, that's pretty cool. So we don't have hard data to tell you, like, these people are using it. These people are not using it.
Here are their numbers, but we just have like circumstance. Would it be circumstantial?. I don't know what it's even called, like what we deal with and what we've seen in our members.
Rob: But if you just even think about the money that's put into updating this stuff. Ebay puts a lot of money. Every platform puts a lot of money into updating the software, updating their format, that kind of stuff, they want you to use it. So. They want you to change over to it. So it just makes sense that they're going to try to reward the people who jump over originally, are first, they're going to try to reward you guys by that. So just something to think about for any, any platform that you're working on when they do do updates like this, it is if we're creatures of habit, we like what we like, we like what we know. We don't want to switch over, but I just, like I said, I like to encourage you guys to do it sooner than later, and you should see better results with your sales, for sure.
Melissa: So don't get stuck in the old. Because things move fast. Like we're on social media, we're on all these things and they change in a heartbeat. I was against doing TikTok and reels for so long on social media, because I'm like, that's just for the young kids. I don't want to deal with that, but it's helped us grow in social media.
Like you know, you got to adopt some of the new stuff. So I was like, Reels annoy me. I don't even want to scroll on Instagram and watch them, but they, they work because the platform promoted them. So they were. That's it gotta do it.
Rob: All right. So change it over today. Guys, go do it and try it out and see how you like it.
And then, like I said, I would encourage you to just embrace it because it ain't going nowhere. So there's no sense in really getting upset with it. But you guys can do it. You guys can absolutely do it. You'll get good at it. The more that you list on the new listing tool, the better you'll get at it.
Melissa: And use those videos.
Rob: Videos are a game-changer in this integration industry, especially for us with the larger items, the higher profit items. Yeah. Okay. Yes, it's a total game changer and to be able to do it this quick and this easy versus having to YouTube, you know, upload it into YouTube and then pull it over.
This is just a lot, lot easier streamlined process. So, I'm very, very excited about the new listing tool. Especially with the video process in it as well.
Melissa: And if you do it, you change over and you see any difference. Let us know, like we want to know if are you seeing maybe some increased sales? Are you like, are you having difficulty with using the new listing tool?
Let us know. We want to hear from you. Probably the easiest way to reach us you can always email us or Instagram is usually the best place to DM us at and we'd love to hear from you.
Rob: You guys rock have a great day until the next episode.