Transcript of The Auction Wally Show - Episode #12
Aired - 3/8/2008
More info: Auction Wally
WALT KOLENDA: Hey, start it way down low and then let it go…this is Walt Kolenda from AuctionWally Radio, you’re listening to THE AUCTION WALLY SHOW. I’d like to thank everybody for tuning in tonight. As you listen to it live it’s 8pm Eastern time on Monday evening. I have a guest host on the show tonight that was on a couple of weeks ago, Mitsy Swisher from www.vintagegoodness.blogspot.com. I had to twist Mitsy’s arm and really bribe her, but she’s back. We’re going to do a show on online website tools, websites and online software specifically shaped for the auction and antiques and collectibles world. Or maybe it wasn’t specifically shaped to begin with and Mitsy and I are going to put our flavor on those tools and give you hints and tips on how you can use them in the antiques and collectibles world.
So, without further adieu, I’d like to introduce Mitzi Swisher again and thank her for coming on the show. Thanks a lot Misty. How are you doing tonight?
MITZI SWISHER: I’m excellent. And you did not have to twist my arm! I’m more than happy to come on whenever you want me here.
WALT: Okay, that’s excellent. Thank you. We had talked throughout the week and got some things lined up. What I wanted to do with folks is, of course there are always a lot of new adapters coming onto the internet everyday, but I think more so with the antique and collectibles folks. You know, they’re tuned into eBay, they know how things work on that end but a lot of them are trying to figure out, A- how to do eBay better and how to market their antiques. They’re old school people with a lot of traditional marketing background, but many aspects of the internet, especially Web 2.0, are kind of new to them. And that’s why I asked you on the show. You’ve got a great blog at www.vintagegoodness.blogspot.com and you’re a web entrepreneur as well as a retro collectibles expert. I wanted your input on some of these tools. So what we had agreed to do, for the folks out there, we were going to swap back and forth with tools or websites or software. And I think you’ve got me outnumbered because you’re actually much better prepared for the show than I am. So I am going to let you go first. What’s your first tool, or tip or software?
MITZI: First I wanted to talk about Etsy because I mentioned that the last time I was on. It’s a site that is up and coming and the main focus of the site is for handmade, crafty-type of items. But they also allow vintage items. But that doesn’t get covered so much when Etsy gets its press. When it gets its press it’s all about the handmade crafts. I think the vintage side of it is really picking up. And it seems like more and more sellers are opening shops there. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit. I just joined a, kind of social network site, specifically for buyers and sellers of vintage on Etsy.
WALT: Can I just stop you for a minute? For people that might not be familiar with it, I know when I first heard it I was like, “Huh? What? Etsy?” Could you just spell Etsy for folks? And Etsy.com?
MITZI: Yes. It’s E-T-S, as in Sam, -Y.
WALT: Okay, so it’s like Betsy without the B. E-T-S-Y.com. Okay, go ahead.
MITZI: The site that was just starting up that I joined and that I’m completely in love with is called The Etsy Vintage Buyer’s and Seller’s Community. And the link for that is EtsyVintage Ning. And that’s for buyer’s and seller’s. The majority of people on there are sellers, but there are some buyers too that are trying to give some juice to the vintage side of Etsy. It’s really exciting. I think there’s about, last time I look there were about 166 numbers all together.
WALT: So this is etsyvintage.ning.com?
MITZI: Yes.
WALT: We’ll put a link to that in the chatroom in case anyone wants to see what’s going on there. Go ahead.
MITZI: It’s kind of set up like a MySpace. You have a profile, they have forums for chatting, that kind of stuff. And of course everybody links to their blogs and their Etsy shops. So far it’s been a really great tool to meet all the other people that are selling vintage on Etsy. And sharing tips and experiences, what’s selling and not selling. So that’s been really great. Also, Etsy has something called “street teams”. And what those are are groups of sellers that get together and promote each others’ things, kind of like a promotion group of sellers and they call them Street Teams. So there’s a Vintage Street Team and they moved the central place for this Street Team to meet on this community site. So I joined that, which is very cool, and they’re planning a Promo Swap. Where if you have a business card or an insert that you put in your packages, we’re going to submit them to the group leader and then the group leader will distribute them amongst all the sellers. And when we send packages, we’ll include other people’s promos, with the packages. So everybody will be promoting everybody else’s shops. On Etsy one of the ways to find items is with tags. When you list something, you have 14 slots for tag words.
WALT: Like a label?
MITZI: Yeah, and they call it tags. It also coincides with the subcategories there. If you’re listing on there, you want to check what the subcategories are, under category view, and make sure you get your right tags, so your stuff is showing up in the categories right. The Etsy Vintage Street Team puts “etsy vintage” as a tag. So it makes it real simple if somebody wants to find somebody’s stuff from the team. They can just search that simple tag and it will bring up everything, which I think is really cool.
WALT: So it sounds to me like Etsy is putting a lot more of the responsibility, and ability of its sellers, to incorporate their own skills into the marketing on Etsy.
MITZI: Yes. It’s very much up to you to promote your shop. It doesn’t have the built-in traffic that eBay has. So you can’t just plop something up there and expect people to see it. You really have to put some work into promoting your items. Promoting your shop, getting the word out and what I’m trying to do by talking on your show tonight is getting the word out that there is Vintage on Etsy period.
The founder of Etsy was on Martha Stewart Friday. Didn’t say one word about vintage categories, it was all about the crafts. So that was really disappointing to me. I’m sure it’s great for the crafters, but on our side it was a little disappointing. That seems to be the trend. It was the main focus of the site, so that’s kind of the way they go with the promos. Hopefully we can get the tides turned a little bit and get the word out about the vintage.
WALT: I did sign up and have a presence on Etsy, although shortly after I got on I was much too busy to make much of it. But what I found is first of all, they have a wonderful community of people that welcome you. They’re very proactive. I threw some questions out to the community on the board and one of the things I was blown away by was how many answers I got right away. And the question I asked was, obviously I’m an auctioneer, I sell antiques and collectibles and I wasn’t there to make any hand crafts or to sell any hand-crafted items that I had done, but what I asked the community was if there was a need or demand for products such as old scrapbook supplies, ephemera, paper, etc. and I was told, “Absolutely.” They told me that one of the biggest categories on Etsy was for supplies, especially vintage. That there wasn’t enough of it. So I got a very good feeling and welcoming from the community.
From what you’re saying it sounds like there’s a little bit of a disconnect. Which I’m sure they’ll probably take care of. But it sounds like there’s a little bit of disconnect between the crafters and the vintage community and getting those together and saying, “Hey you can make some great stuff with our vintage supplies and vice versa.”
MITZI: Yeah, definitely. And I do think that, supplies is a big segment even new commercial supplies. I think that vintage supplies is one of those things that is really growing. I think more people are learning that they can find that kind of item. It’s a matter of the people knowing that it’s there. So it’s taking some time for the people to connect the vintage category with supplies. But it’s happening.
One thing I’ve found too with Etsy, if you are a member of the Etsy community, you want to shop on Etsy. So I think that if you’re going to open a shop there, you should try to target to those people who are selling those crafts, who are regular buyers, the crafty-crowd. Because that’s who is there all the time and that’s who wants to buy on Etsy. They aren’t necessarily going to go to eBay. Even maybe just on principle. They want to shop on Etsy. It seems like to me. I’ve got a lot of stuff in that area that I’m getting ready to post. The “Martha” supplies kind of area. I think it’s really growing.
WALT: One of the reasons, I forget where I heard about Etsy, but one of the reasons I decided to go on there and start selling the vintage supplies is because I’m convinced that people who do crafts and things like scrap booking, collages, and unique artwork, can really have a great use for the vintage items because if you think about it, every crafter, what’s the one item, the common denominator that every artist wants? They want individuality. And they can get that with vintage things. You can’t order the kinds of ephemera, paper, postcards…you can’t order what we’re selling on Etsy out of a catalogue. Nobody is going to build the same scrapbook with the old Larkin soap ads or the jello ads, or find the same Campbell’s soup kids that you did in the old dutch cookbooks. So I really thought that there would be a good demand for that on Etsy. And I think there is. I think it’s just like you said, they’re not really quite aware that it’s there yet.
Can you give me, in the chat room I’ve got the etsy.ning.com, is there a URL for the Street Teams as well?
MITZI: Yeah, the Street Team is here. Want me to type it?
WALT: I think I’ve got it and we’ll be all set.
MITZI: We have a blog also which, they haven’t put a ton of work into it yet, but I think it’s one of those things that’s “on the list”, to work on the blog more. And the blog is on that page I just gave you the link to.
WALT: Etsy specifically has a blog or the vintage?
MITZI: The Street Team has its own blog.
WALT: I see.
MITZI: And also on that page is a link to everybody that is a member, to their stores.
WALT: What’s your address on Etsy?
MITZI: Mine is vintagegoodness.etsy.com.
WALT: I’ll leave you to type that in there. Is there anything else you wanted to say about Etsy?
MITZI: Well, I did want to talk about a couple of the shops real quick.
WALT: Absolutely. What are some of the great shops you’ve found there and interesting things you‘ve found for sale?
MITZI: There are so many great shops, first of all. It was hard to narrow it down, I narrowed it down to three or four, but it was tough. I spent several hours going through everybody’s things and there’s just the coolest stuff up there. It’s really worth checking out. That’s another thing I wanted to mention about Etsy too, as compared to eBay. I think there’s more browsers on Etsy. I think it’s more you go and try to look around and find cool things rather than you’re going and searching for something specific. Ebay seems like people know what they’re looking for. They do a search, it brings up…I think on Etsy it’s a little bit more of a browsing thing.
WALT: On Etsy they want to buy something, but they just don’t know what yet.
MITZI: They’re poking around looking at everything. Because you seem to get lots of “looks”, way more than you get on a normal eBay listing.
WALT: So you’ve been studying this? Good.
MITZI: Yeah, I’ve been trying to pay attention a little bit (laughing). So a couple of the stores I wanted to mention, these are all people who are members of the community.
WALT: Okay, if you can give me the first part of the address that I want to put in, then if there’s a forward slash and I name, I’ll try to get that in the chat room as well. The chatroom will have a permanent record. Oh, wait a minute, can you send these to me and we’ll put them in the show notes. Why don’t we do it that way. Then we won’t have to interrupt each other.
MITZI: Sure. The first one I wanted to talk about is Amber’s Store and it’s called The Nostalgic Nugget and she kills me because I met her and she wasn’t on Etsy. So I was telling her about Etsy and she was like, “I’m going to set up a store.” And she sold like six things. And I hadn’t sold anything yet. I’m like, “What’s going on?” But what she sold is just what we were talking about, vintage supplies. Which I haven’t listed anything yet. She sold some really cool old lace trim, and she has these really great garment catalogues from the 20s that show the different styles and they have little fabric swatches. It’s just perfect for somebody that sews and wants to make things from vintage patterns. She’s doing really well with it I guess. So her store is really fun, and she’s sold things, which I think is really awesome.
WALT: I’m on Etsy now trying to pull it up…
MITZI: She’s got a great graphic of an aqua blue car pulling one of the old style camper trailers. Another one is a girl who I’ve talked to a lot. You can do conversations on Etsy, kind of like eBay’s internal message system. On Etsy they call them conversations where you can mail people and ask them questions and so I kind of know her from that. Her store is Vaudeville Vintage 1. Her name is Kelly and she sells a lot of things very similar to what I sell - dishes, kitchenware, pottery. She’s got a really great eyes. There’s tons of cool stuff to look at in her shop.
WALT: She’s commented, left some comments.
MITZI: Oh, good. Yeah, she’s a real sweetie.
WALT: So she’s had some luck selling there. And she sells a lot of vintage and retro type things then?
MITZI: Yeah, she does the old dishes, like I do, with the crazy atomic patterns on them. Very cool. Another one who she kind of sells similar kitchenware, Pyrex and stuff is Nice and Sweet. I’ve got her blog on my links list, called Frisk the Frigidaire. Her blog is really fun. She does a great job of promoting her stuff with her blog and going back and forth between the two.
WALT: I’m looking at it now, this is Nice and Sweet, and she has …geez. It just goes to show you how different the market is that different people has because she’s got the 1960s Singer sewing machine kit, and Pyrex and I’ve got to be honest with you Mitsy, I love that kind of stuff but it’s just starting to take off up here. The purists, if I had an auction and put out a bunch of that stuff on tables, people would get up and leave. The older school, yankee-style auction folks and the retro stuff is “brand new” to them. Now there are some savvy people that own shops more in the cities and the larger towns, and they come out to the country auctions. When there’s Pyrex and the old Anchor Hawking and Fireking, they scoop it up for pennies because it’s selling so well elsewhere.
I don’t want to give the impression that we’re all a bunch of hill-billies out here, because it’s definitely not true, but even if somebody sophisticated is sitting there in the audience and knows the market and that it’s pretty good elsewhere, if they don’t have a market for it in their shop, they’re going to sit there and let somebody else buy it for a dollar. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sold pyrex and Anchor Hawking and things in box lots and have said, “You know folks, this is really doing well elsewhere.” They don’t want to hear my crap.
MITZI: Well, I’m gonna come shop at your auction. Sounds like a dream to me.
WALT: Now that being said, on the other hand, because that’s the situation, consignors don’t often bring that to auction. We don’t see it as much. We’re more apt to see the older primitives, oak furniture, the old measures and scrub-boards, wash boards, yokes, things like that. But we do see it. I have a sale coming now in Westfield MA, where it has a lot of that. I can’t wait to get in because it’s going to be a lot of fun. And it’s right near Springfield, MA, which is a sizeable city, so there’ll be a good demand for it.
Back to her shop. What else did you notice about what she was selling? Or what are the reasons you thought she had some success with it?
MITZI: She is really sticking with the items that have the super, in-your-face, vintage style. That retro style, you know what I’m saying? She has really great examples, some of these mixing bowls and the melmac dishes, the colors of them are really great. She’s just got a really nice shop set up.
WALT: Right, I’m looking at it now. Didn’t Alf come from the planet Melmac? Right? I was sitting there sorting them, I sold a bunch on eBay one time, and where did I hear that before, Alf? It’s amazing to see that stuff come in and get its due, it’s about time. And at the very end I notice she’s got a Star Wars vintage Darth Vader book, for ten bucks down there. Which sounds like a deal. She’s got a vintage Star Wars game, some yellow fireking and brown. Now I’m curios, vintage brown woodland?
MITZI: With the white flowers, yeah.
WALT: That’s interesting because I’ve not really seen that before. I thought I saw every single pyrex dish out there and I haven’t seen that one.
MITZI: I don’t think that one’s quite as common.
WALT: Kind of an unusual one.
MITZI: She’s got a few of those. So that was just a few of the stores that gave a representation of what people are selling.
WALT: Now what, I told you a member of Etsy and hadn’t done much, but I actually did sell a few things, and had some luck but was unable, with everything else I had no time. Maybe you can give a quick run down to folks that are interested in finding out more about it. What’s their fee structure like Mitsy?
MITZI: Actually they have a really great fee structure. The store set up is free. There’s no monthly payment just to have a store. That’s completely free. You pay 20 cents to list an item and that will keep it listed for up to four months.
WALT: Four months! Wow.
MITZI: Yeah, four months. So it’s like five cents a month, if it stays up there that long, which of course you hope it doesn’t. And the commission final value fee is only 3 ½ %. It’s really great.
WALT: That’s a fantastic deal. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, I saw when I first got on Etsy that somebody was actually having an auction of their items. But I don’t know how they were running it. I should have taken a closer look at it. But she was going to have some kind of an auction. It was when I was researching to see how my vintage items would sell. She had a whole forum of people commenting how much fun and anticipation they were building waiting for her auction. She actually had about, there had to be 50, 60 posts on this forum in anticipation of her auction. How does Etsy allow folks to do auction? Do you have any idea how she ran that?
MITZI: No, I have not heard that before. That’s interesting. I wonder if she ran it in the forum?
WALT: She might have run the auction right in the forum. Geez, I wish I had her name because I thought it was such a clever thing.
MITZI: Yeah, that’s interesting.
WALT: I don’t want to go saying anything that I’m not sure about, so let me make full disclosure. Here’s what I think she was doing, I think she was taking the items at the end of her Etsy listing that didn’t sell and auctioning them, like you said, right from the forum. Let everybody in her audience know that she was going to have those items up for auction no matter what the price. But I don’t know how it ran and I don’t know exactly how she did it or what kind of luck she had with it. But I imagine she had a pretty good time with it because she had like I said, a lot.
MITZI: Yeah, if there was that response. Wow. Clever.
WALT: So we welcome them to the online community. We wish them well. I’m an eBay guy myself. I love it--
MITZI: Yeah, I’m not going anywhere, I’m still on eBay.
WALT: There’s always room for more. Anything else about Etsy?
MITZI: I think I covered everything.
WALT: That sounds great. Thank you for the research on that. Anybody that is interested in finding out more, we’ll have the information in the show notes.
Now I want to talk about some software that I found a while ago called Auctiva that is free auction software. And in the interest of disclosure, I am not an affiliate. I may be mentioning later on some products that I sell, but I have no financial interest in Auctiva. I just want to let people know about it because it’s wonderful software.
MITZI: Yeah, I use it to.
WALT: Do you? So that’s Auctiva and their tagline is “Powerful solutions for eBay sellers”. Now I found Auctiva about a year ago. I list an awful lot of items on eBay. I have like 40 now, but I usually try to get 100 a week up, I’ve been slacking lately. I was using Turbo Lister, which in eBay’s defense is a pretty decent tool for free. I used TurboLister a lot but it had an awful lot of problems with it. Like I said, for free it was good but I did have a lot of problems. I found that it was taking more time to list things than it was actually worth. And I went back and forth between using Turbolister and eBay’s listing item page. That’s kind of difficult too because if your browser goes down or if you have some issues, even if eBay is not having any issues, maybe your browser or your connection is running slow, you can have a devil of a time trying to list things, if you’re listing in bulk. If you’re listing one, two, three big ticket items, then you’re golden, who cares.
So in the meantime I fooled around with, I guess I won’t name these companies, but I fooled around with just about all the trial versions of the paid software, and I’ll tell you, the stuff for paid software, those guys ought to be ashamed of themselves. They were so feature heavy and complicated to use. Now, I’m not an online genius but I’ve been doing it 9 years so I know my way around online. And I just got so bogged down with trying to figure out the features and the learning curve for these paid programs. So I went back to Turbolister. As I went back to Turbo lister I kept looking and I said, “Well, let me find out, see if there’s anything else out there” and I found Auctiva. And I was really doubtful at first. I thought, it’s free, how good can it be? But I have never looked back. They are a wonderful company. I keep waiting for that notice in the mailbox that says, “Auctiva is now a subscription only service.” And if they do, I’d be happy to pay for it although I guess I shouldn’t encourage them to do that.
MITZI: I would too. I think the way they make their money is they have their insurance program.
WALT: Right, they have a wonderful insurance program.
MITZI: I’ve used it. I made a claim and got money. I was really happy.
WALT: Oh really? I’ve used their insurance program. Of course, what Mitsy is referring to is Auctiva has a program that you can opt in, provide insurance as a seller, and make a profit on that insurance too. Auctiva allows you to make a profit on it. So that’s kind of nice.
MITZI: Yeah, that’s extra nice.
WALT: But they have very classy, I think close to 1,000 different templates right now. I use about six to twelve different ones. But I use one or two almost all the time for my auctions. So they’ve got auction templates, they run at a very stable platform, 99% of the time they’re up and running, very stable and it’s just easy to use. I’m a big fan of going somewhere, clicking on something and what you click on is what you get. That’s nice. I hate it when you get five different pop-ups and it’s like “Well, we’re glad you decided to open up the template. Now would you like 32 other options?” I don’t want that. The templates are wonderful.
Then they have a very easy to use, you can open up an Auctiva store which is all on eBay , and an Auctiva gallery in addition to the eBay gallery. Folks have probably seen this. When you open up someone’s listing and they have an Auctiva auction, down at the bottom of the page, or down the side, or even at the top, they can choose to have a scrolling gallery of Auctiva listings. Now the great thing about this is, if you have a website, you can take and cut and paste the code for that and put that gallery on your website. Now I run on blogger, and blogger doesn’t allow it. But I had it when I had another website and it was all right on that website.
MITZI: So I couldn’t put my scrolling gallery on my sidebar or the bottom bar on blogger?
WALT: I’m going to say no, because every time I’ve tried to do it, it hasn’t worked. But I’m not the world’s biggest geek so there may be a way around to do it. Or it may be something that I’m doing incorrectly. What I do use a lot is, I have links on my site that say “click here to see my eBay auctions” and it takes them right to my Auctiva store, which is of course right within eBay because Auctiva only works with eBay. That’s another thing I love about Auctiva, they’ve got this great piece of software, it works wonderful, it’s on a stable platform, and instead of expanding and trying to be everything to everybody, they’ve remained focused on taking what they have, making it better, making it more stable and staying only within eBay. And I really admire that. They’ve said, “Here’s what we do well, this is our forte. We’re going to stick with it and make it better.” Instead of trying to branch out and being everything to everyone. I just think that’s a great thing. They have a referral thing where you can submit testimonials and I’ve been meaning to email them and ask them how I can submit a testimonial to their splash page to get on there. So they have the templates. Obviously, you put your listings in the templates. It works very similar in principle to TurboLister or the eBay listing page, which makes sense because it would have to. It would have to follow eBay’s format. Everything that you would put in an eBay or Turbolister listing, is on Auctiva as well. Then, and here’s what I love about it, you can put up to 24 images on Auctiva for Free.
MITZI: Free! That’s the best part.
WALT: It is fantastic. And it’s great for people like us because people who have stock products or are drop-shippers they don’t care. The one picture will suffice for them. But if you have like a Seth Thomas clock or an entire set of pyrex, you want a bunch of pictures, right?
MITZI: And if you have a flaw, you need pictures of the flaws.
WALT: Well, Auctiva has hosting service, absolutely free, and again, easy-peasy to use. I love it. It uploads in a second. There’s no FTP involved, you can upload it html or javascript upload right from their site and you can host up to 24 images per auction. Now, I don’t know how many pictures you can put on Auctiva total, but I’ve been hosting with them for about a year now and not one of my pictures has ever come down and I haven’t deleted very many of them and they’re all still there. I don’t know how they do it or why they do it but --
MITZI: Yeah, mine too. I keep waiting for a message to be like, “you’ve got way too many pictures, delete some.” But I’ve never gotten it.
WALT: Right. I’ve never gotten it either. And you know what I’m using Auctiva for now? I’m using Auctiva to host images for different things. Like my blog. If I just want to upload a picture and be able to send it to somebody somewhere. Their format is for eBay, but their image hosting you can use it for anything. It sends it to their URL and you can use that image hosting.
MITZI: Oh, that’s cool.
WALT: Absolutely. I don’t believe that’s a violation of their rules. You can use it for anything. Now, getting on here to profiles. Their profiles are the answer to Mr. Lister’s details templates. In other words, you have a master profile that contains from one to all four individual profiles. And the individual profiles are, item details, you can put certain item details so if you’re selling widgets one week and gadgets the next week you can just click the profile for widgets and you’ll come up with that. You can have a profile for marketing tools. In other words, one certain profile can have your gallery, or your gallery plus, etc. Shipping you’d have a separate profile. You can make up different profiles for shipping. And last but not least, check out. You can have several different profiles for check out. And then you can blend them all into a master profile. So that’s also very nice as well.
There’s so much on Auctiva, even in the year that I’ve had it, I’ve not used all of these. But they have transactions. All their transactions that you can manage are akin to something that you pay for on eBay like myeBay pro or selling manager pro. And this is all free. And to be honest with you, I’ve found Auctiva much easier to use and navigate than eBay selling manager pro. I’ve had eBay selling manager pro for a while and it was pretty good, but for the price it was much too confusing for me. And I found myself not using it at all just to avoid the confusion. It was getting mixed up with my regular eBay auctions and then for a while it seemed eBay couldn’t tell the difference between the two of which I wanted. Now in fairness, I’ll say maybe they’ve worked those bugs out, maybe not. But I’ve just found that once I had Auctiva I started using those.
Then what you get if you move along the tabs up top, Auctiva gives you a full reporting that you can have downloaded onto your computer with .csv value reports. Moving on, we have the store. You can go in and customize your store, talk about it. You can really set it up like your own eBay store. It’s within eBay only, but it is an Auctiva store. You can place meta tags, put your contact information on it. And here’s another huge thing that I really, really like on Auctiva, not so much for myself because I have my own blog. I’ve had it up and running for a while. But for somebody that wants to be up and running on eBay, doesn’t have their own blog, doesn’t have the time for it, but wants to blog about their items, in their Auctiva store there’s a section where you can blog about your items and stay within eBay’s policy. So if somebody goes to the eBay store and you want to blog about the item and then send them somewhere else, it’s perfectly legitimate if you go through eBay, through the Auctiva store. It’s really nice. It’s kind of a work-around to eBay’s rule that you can’t go off site.
MITZI: Oh, I didn’t know that.
WALT: Yeah, if you go in the store tab you’ll see store, scrolling gallery, edit item, and then the next item to the right of that is “blog”. But I do want to say one thing about eBay’s policy off site. Let’s get off Auctiva for a minute. I called eBay about a month ago to make sure this practice was kosher as I read it in the rules and it is. Did you know you can link to your blog from eBay?
MITZI: No, I didn’t think you were allowed to do that.
WALT: You are allowed to do that, here are the rules. And I asked. I said, “Look, I’ve been on eBay nine years and I don’t want to get taken down for a violation, make sure.” And the gentleman I was talking to gave me the list of criteria and you can. Here’s what it is. You can blog, as long as …if you go to my auctions you’ll see it will have something about my shipping policy. And I’ll explain, “for more information on that, click this link.” No, when they click on that link it takes them to my blog explaining my shipping policy.
MITZI: So like on your blog you about--
WALT: Right, about my eBay shipping policy. Also, I have a blog called MY WEEK ON EBAY, that I explained earlier. I sent a newsletter out today explaining that I was going to be doing a separate blog just dedicated to my week on eBay. Well, on AuctionWally I have a section dedicated just to my eBay sales. And what I do is I talk about where I got the item, the background and the history on the item, how I sell them on eBay. So it’s an eBay related blog and that’s why they don’t have a problem with it. Not because it’s eBay related, but the rule eBay has linking off site is you must link to information directly about the product. Don’t try to sell them anything. So if I were to take them to another page on my blog, or the main page on my blog, that’s illegal. You can’t do that. But if you take them to something who’s main subject and main reason for getting them there is for more information about the item you’re selling, it’s perfectly fine.
MITZI: Even though you might have a side bar that has links to all the other pages on your blog and like my sidebar I have an Etsy Widget, My items on Etsy, that wouldn’t throw me out of?
WALT: Right, right. As long as the page you take them to opens up to …as far as I understand it as long as the page you take them to involves direct information about that product. The reason I was inspired to look into this was because I had found pages like this, when I went to look at book grading, how other people grade with standard grading. I clicked on links and it took me offsite. And I said, “Geez, you can’t go off site on eBay. How did they get away with that?” So I looked into it, called up and they said, “You can go off site. If you look at the policy.” Ebay has a lot of policies where people go, “huh?” It’s very vague and very detailed. You have to look at the minutia. What they say is, absolutely you can go off site, provided that the only reason you’re taking them there is to give them information about the product that they found on eBay I the first place. Now within that blog post, if I had a link that said, “click here to buy this,” and it’s not an eBay item, it’s no good. You can’t do that. But, the only thing I have in my blog post, that’s not including the sidebar though. I have sidebars that have to do with my other business. I’m talking about the specific post, that has taken them off site, the only ones I have are ones linking me right back to eBay that say, “To see my eBay items click here.”
We often hammer eBay for not doing the right thing and not having great business sense. But they have some smart people over there. And the reason they allow something like this is, think about it, they’re getting double-dipping on this. If I take somebody off eBay, for a minute, to look at my site, and there’s a link back to eBay, I’ve lost nothing. Because if they’re really interested in shopping there they can get right back to my site very easy. But what about all the other people that never really were on eBay at that time to begin with but come to my blog? That read about my week on eBay and then click to go see what I have on eBay.
MITZI: So they’re getting extra traffic.
WALT: So they’re getting extra traffic and they’re making out on it. So eBay if you’re listening and thinking, “No we shouldn’t do that,” you should. A rising tide really does lift all boats. As a seller, think about it, why would you want to take anybody off eBay to go to your blog anyways. All you’re doing is hurting your eBay sales. Unless you’re taking them off to educate them about something on your site.
So anyway, that’s why they allow Auctiva to do it. On the Auctiva store you can go and you can blog and you can link to anything. In fact, if you notice Mitsy, when you have the Auctiva listing templates, they have a link button right there that you can make links. They just don’t want you dragging people off eBay to make a sale off of eBay. But as long as your intention is to give them education about their product, about a product you’re selling on eBay, you’re fine.
MITZI: Cool.
WALT: I want to finish up because we have burned through so much already. Auctiva has a little spot for consignments. You can manage categories. You can manage different commission plans, which I don’t do because I don’t consign anything I have on eBay. But that’s it for Auctiva.
MITZI: I have one little thing about Auctiva that I love that you didn’t mention. Is that you can schedule ahead of time for free. I love that. That is so handy to me. And the fact that it is free is even better.
WALT: It just works well. It’s always stable. When you schedule the auctions they go off on time. I’ve used scheduling with other programs and it didn’t get the dates right all the time. So you had some other things on the list Mitsy that you had waned to talk about. What’s your next one? If we go over time, we go over. I’m talking to Mitsy Swisher from Vintage Goodness Blogspot, the vintage expert. And this is Auction Wally from www.auctionwally.com. Go ahead.
MITZI: I wanted to talk about some of the sites I use for research. You know how you go out and find something and you really don’t have a clue about it, and so you have to come home and find out who made it, how old it is, that kind of stuff. And most importantly, how much people are paying for it. I have a pretty set of sites that I use to do that, to find out pricing, figure out pricing, figure out the pattern name, the maker name, the date. I wanted to mention a couple. I haven’t actually used these because they charge a monthly fee. But that’s just because I’m cheap.
WALT: I hear you on that one.
MITZI: I have heard nothing but good things about these two places so I wanted to make sure I mentioned them, for other people that might not be as cheap as we are. The first one is www.priceminer.com. And that is specifically geared towards antiques and collectibles. And they draw data from eBay, from some of the other online sites, the antique mall-type sites. They’re actually owned by GoAntiques. They pull information from there. That used to have a store, on Go Antiques. And they also, I think, pull some information from live auctions. It’s supposed to be a really great way to see what the real value of your items are. I was really shocked, they’re in Columbus. They’re supposed to be the number one that I’ve heard of, to price your antiques and collectibles. And it’s $9.95 a month, which isn’t bad.
And the other one is www.hammertap.com. They are the big eBay research site. Where anything that is sold on eBay you can research it and it breaks it down into all kinds of different levels. It helps you figure out what the best day to end on is, what the best starting price is, what the best features are to use. Like if you wonder, maybe if I made it bold maybe it would sell for more. Well, the Hammer Tap Software breaks it all down for you. They charge like $20 a month. But if you’re selling newer items, if you’re going to have a lot of competition, having a little bit of edge …
WALT: It helps a lot.
MITZI: If I wasn’t cheap I would definitely have that one. I’m cheap, so there are two other ones that I use that are free. And the main one I use is Terapeak.com.
WALT: Terapeak is free? I didn’t know that.
MITZI: I think you can upgrade, and get more options. But the basic search is free. It gives you some of the same information Hammer Tap does. Like what the most popular ending day is, the hours to end it, it brings up the top sellers so you can go in and look at the auctions that have recently sold for a lot.
WALT: Are they geared towards antiques and vintage or new items?
MITZI: It’s kind of like Hammer Tap, anything you can find on eBay. And the other one that’s free is www.mpire.com/research. Which is very similar to Terapeak. I started out using mpire and the only reason I switched to Terapeak is the loading factor. The pages load a little bit faster. Those two are really great, especially for free.
WALT: I just want to add one to that. If people want to go and see the back archives of appraisals for free at www.auctionwally.com. Also, I do have a paid program. I just added a service for antique authentications. If you want to find out before you invest big money if what you have is a real antique or collectible, or if it’s a fake or a repro, I provide that service as well as an appraisal.
I want to let everyone know, in case we go over, that next week my guest will be Russell Burt from the COME LET ME WHISPER podcast. Now Russell is an author in the horror genre, it’s a little bit off topic, but I’m going to be talking to him about how he was able to build such a huge and very successful fan base. He’s a great podcaster. He just ended it last week after 50 episodes because of lack of time and he got something published on pseudopod. He’s doing really well and his podcast is still out there with all the back shows to listen to. I can’t wait to talk to him. Russell is a great guy. Very humble and very giving to the podcast community. Have you ever heard any of his shows Mitsy?
MITZI: No, I’ll have to look him up.
WALT: I like to say he’s a cross between HP Lovecraft and Steven King. He’s an excellent marketer. One of the things he did that I think is very interesting is that he got all his fans, every episode, to do the intro. He wrote a poem and he had the fans email in the mp3 readings of his poems. So he’s very good at getting the fans involved in the show. So we’ll be talking to him next week.
So Mitsy had found some great places to research eBay tools, to research items for eBay, and did you not have a couple more? Is there a site like replacements.com?
MITZI: Yes. That’s the main other one that I use because I sell a lot of dishes. They have an enormous selection of information on dishes. Any pattern, any maker, it’s going to be on Replacements. I always go there first and usually I’m able to find what I’m looking for. Or if not, they have it set up so that you can go in a little picture gallery and surf through. Like if I wanted to see all the patterns for Mikasa, then I could just look at all the little pictures until I saw one that matched mine. Which is great if you don’t know the name! Which a lot of times you don’t know the pattern name. I also kind of use it to help me price my dishes too. I figure on eBay I’m going to get around half the price of what is on Replacements. Especially in my store. At auction, I’m going to put it lower than half, maybe between a quarter and a third. For my store, unless my research on eBay shows that it’s not getting anywhere near that, or it’s getting way more than that…you know what I mean? So it’s kind of a starting place for me.
WALT: I brought up Replacements because I’ve used them myself and they are a pretty good company. I had a pattern I thought they might be interested in buying outright and I called them and they’re going to mail me a catalogue of the things that they’re looking for. One of the things folks may notice is that compared to other markets they’re a little bit pricey. I’d like to explain probably why. Because they have to carry a huge inventory to accommodate people. And the value at Replacements.com is you don’t have to wait to see if somebody else has it. You don’t have to wait to shop for it on eBay, it’s there when you want it. So if you’re having a dinner party, or you have a very special event coming up, or you just want to complete a collection of Johnson Bros. Currier and Ives Pattern or whatever, you can go to replacements.com right there and then and order what they have. Of course what you’re paying for as well is the convenience of what they have. So they are a wonderful company and provide a very good service. But you’re not going to get it for free. In fact I was like, if I could get half of that … of course they’re only willing to pay what they can make a profit on, so not everybody is going to be able to sell to them. I can’t wait to get that catalogue in the mail.
MITZI: That was the last one that I had for research, that I had on my list.
WALT: I want to mention a company that I use a lot and am so grateful for, and that’s www.auctionzip.com. Now what AuctionZip is, it’s the biggest online directory of auctioneers in the country, in the United States. They don’t have everybody, but they have most everyone. And what it is, it’s free for auctioneers to list their auctions, their live auctions. This is live auctions only there are no online auctions on there. It’s free for auctioneers. You go and list your live auctions and post it and you can advertise it. As an auction customer, you go to AuctionZip and punch in your zip code of where you want to attend an auction and it will come up with an auction in that area, the date, the time and the items they have for auction. When their auction is, their terms, their policies, in other words, every bit of information that the auctioneer has posted about that auction. It is simply nothing more than the best online database of what is going on in the live auction world. It’s an absolutely fantastic tool. I’ve been using it. It’s great for auctioneers and it’s great for customers.
The perfect use for it would be, let’s say you’re going on vacation next week to Florida and you’d like to spend a couple of days at auctions out there. You punch in the zip code and the date and it will come up with all the auctions in the area. The type of auction, what types - antiques and collectibles, storage auctions, equipment auctions. I love convenience. I love features, but nothing turns me on like something that’s easy to use and works every time.
MITZI: Yeah, I’ve actually been on there and I like to just go through and look at all the pictures. I haven’t actually been out to the auctions yet but I’ve been at site and it’s very cool.
WALT: They also, I don’t know how much it costs, but they have a premium service. Let’s say you collect Roseville pottery, now you can type “Roseville pottery” in to their search engine and it will search by item. And every auctioneer that has a piece of Roseville pottery and listed for sale, in their auction, it will come up. If you leave absentee bids, left bids, that service is incredibly useful.
I ran a promotion with them a couple of months ago, they were allowing people to sign up and use it for a while. Of course, I buy out of estates so it’s not a service that was particularly interesting for me, as an auctioneer I’m looking to sell more than buy. But if you’re a collector or a dealer in a specific item, I can’t imagine a much easier--
MITZI: That’s a great tool.
WALT: So that’s a fantastic tool at www.auctionzip.com. And even if you don’t sign up for the premium service everybody should have access to that site for their basic services. I’m excited because I got an email last month that announced they have a new forum board for auctioneers. So I can’t wait to get on that and start talking.
MITSY: Get on their and talk shop.
[break]
WALT: So this is Walt Kolenda from www.auctionwally.com, you’ve been listening to The Auction Wally Show. Thanks for listening folks.
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