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  • eBid February 2017 Newsletter


    News from Gazza

    3,275,721 Live Listings
    22,126 Categories
    $1,119,451,156 Gross Listing Value

    Welcome to the eBid February Newsletter.


    This past week has seen a major change in the methodology behind the way the eBid website is served to the world. Some of you who frequent the forums will have already heard me mention that we are now running the whole site over the HTTPS protocol and no longer using HTTP at all. "What is this all about?" I hear you say. Well, simply put, it means that all traffic between you and eBid is now encrypted and completely secure. Your browser will now display the padlock icon on all pages and not just pages that contain personal data which is where HTTPS was already in use. Google encourages all websites to use HTTPS everywhere and has recently put in place measures to force sites to always use HTTPS for login and sensitive information, there are some out there that still don't use it even for personal data. We are ahead of the curve on this and encourage all users to use "https://" URLs for any images you include in your listing descriptions from now on.

    We receive quite a few requests from regular sellers asking us if it is possible to remove the limit we have in place of 99 individual items on a single eBid invoice. The reason this was put in place originally was down to a PayPal limitation that only allowed 99 items to be paid for at one time. The method in which invoices are sent from eBid to PayPal from eBid has recently been updated and has allowed us to remove the 99 item restriction. A few of our stamp sellers will be overjoyed by this news, some sell hundreds of stamps at a time and had to split them into 2 or 3 invoices. We got there in the end guys. Thanks for keeping on at us!

    Another resolution put in place this month was one related to the eBid Spreadsheet and bulk uploads in general. A lot of eBidders edit their listings in bulk using Excel or similar spreadsheet programs. Excel has a strange way of handling very long numbers, such as barcodes. I expect quite a few of you will have noticed numbers in cells showing up as 5.06033E+12. This is an Excel formatted scientific number format and is the default way long numbers are often shown. When the spreadsheet is then saved to a tab delimited text file containing these incorrect numbers and uploaded to eBid you will see a full explanation and error message in your bulk upload log. Until now the error wasn't explained fully and caused some confusion about how to continue. Always ensure you set Excel columns to TEXT format if you are using long numbers.

    Around 200 new categories have been added this month and we have been very building our database of related product attributes that we will soon be launching to improve our search and browse systems.

    eBid offers a range of payment options that sellers can use on their listings. One of these is Skrill. Until now Skrill standard account holders were able to accept payment to their accounts for their sales but this has now been changed. In order to continue to accept Skrill payments your Skrill account will need to be a Business/Merchant account. See their website for upgrade information. We will be looking into incorporating other payment processors into the eBid ecosystem in the near future. If you have any you think we should take a look at drop us a note on the
    Website Suggestion Forum.

    Other updates this month :

    UPDATE - Added another check when mass-reposting listings from within My eBid to ensure duplicate reposts cannot be made
    BUGFIX - My Gallery > Webcam Photo Upload not saving correctly after upload on some occasions

    Selling Tips


    Photo, Photo, Photo

    The importance of adding great photos to your listings should never be underestimated. Buyers always want to see, in as much detail as possible, what they are buying. For over a year eBid has allowed sellers to upload very high resolution photos of their items, the high-res version of photos are shown when a buyer clicks on the photo on a listing details page, this loads the high-res version of the photo into an overlay above the page and allows inspection of marks, colours, small text etc. All you have to do is to make sure the photos you upload are at a large resolution and our systems will build all the thumbnails for you after you upload them. Don't forget you can upload Zip file within My eBid > My Gallery and also include photos in a Zip file (which would also contain your data file) when bulk uploading listings.

    Update Your Listings In Bulk


    One of the more frequently asked questions we hear is "How do I make changes to multiple listings?". For example, you want to add a new payment method for all of your listings, or you want to change the delivery options available for some of your listings. The "My eBid > My Bulk Edit" facility is the way to go to make these changes quickly and easily. This HTV will show you just how easy it is.

    We also see quite a few questions about our "Make an Offer" facility and how this works. See this HTV that explains all.

    Competition Time



    Last Month's Question :

    What is the maximum Final Value Fee that a sale on eBid can incur as a percentage of the sale price if you have a SELLER+ account?

    a) 15%
    b) 10%
    c) 2%

    The correct answer was (c) 2% (GALLERY LISTING). Congratulations go to jbsales222 from Camarillo, California for winning last month's competition, your eBid Goodie Bag and iPod should be with you now.

    Now for this month's question :

    When a webpage is served over the secure HTTPS protocol. What is the icon that appears in your browser address bar to confirm this fact?

    a) A KEY
    b) A SAFE
    c) A PADLOCK

    To enter send us :
    Answer to the competition question
    Your eBid username
    Name and address for sending out any prizes
    Incomplete entries will be automatically deleted. Closing date 10th March 2017. Email answers to competitions@ebid.net

    Until next month,
    Gazza & Mark
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