Looking for a Home for Your eBay Guides?

by: sellerchick

I didn't even know these existed. I would love to read a carefully curated collection of useful guides.

by: Deacon Blues

A user generated content section might be a great addition to EB if it was setup in such a way as to keep the spammers out. Would be Curious to know how many guide articles in total are on eBay.

by: maxmad

Our poor ebay guides we spent hours making will now be history, this company is on a mission to remove all traces of independent sellers, oh well it's for the best, one less thing attached to our company products and this vile name of ebay

Plus most of the guides were totally useless as people linked ebay items to them, which only worked for as long as the item was listed, then ebay just redirected the link to other items that in most cases did not even coe close to the same items

We went from being so proud to sell  our products thru ebay to totally wanting nothing to do with this damaged brand,

by: iheartjacksparrow

I think it would be great if ECB became the home for these guides. I'm sure there are some sellers who don't know this site exists, if they come here to read the guides, they will also learn the truth about what really does on at eBay, not just what eBay thinks they should know.

And as Maxmad mentions, the guides should be restricted to the author's knowledge and/or experiences, not promotion for their listings.  

by: Ina

Thanks for the feedback!

We're looking for some beta testers for a new Guides section on this site. Email ina@ecommercebytes.com letting me know you are interested in submitting a guide, and in the next day or two, I'll send you instructions.  

by: Snapped

The elimination of eBay's Guides is just the latest chunk they are chipping off from what once constituted a vibrant helpful and friendly eBay community.  

eBay doesn't want a community anymore.  They only want anonymous impersonal  automaton fulfillment entities who are willing to pay exhorbitant fees for the 'priviledge' of serving eBay's business goals.

Can't have valuable server space being taken up by pages 'information' they can't monitize don'tcha know.

by: steveylang

Apparently, since Amazon doesn't have guides (no matter how useful or well-written they are), EBay won't too!!

I think the guides were never as well-integrated into the EBay site as they could have been. Every time I came across a guide it was from a google search, not from browsing or searching in EBay. It's a shame they are removing them; many of the guides are very detailed and well-written and an asset to the site (or more accurately the members who wrote them.)

by: MainelyVintage

I have read many eBay guides over the years... always found from a Google search.

Great choice to bring them here!

(I do think that vintage sellers would do well to blog about something in their area of expertise. But I’m not an expert, hehe.)

Ina, the provision will be for text but no graphics?

by: David Steiner

@MainelyVintage I'll take this one...

The early phase of the guides section will not allow authors to include images into their articles themselves, but there will be a process where they can submit images for a guide separately and we will insert them prior to publishing.

The guides on EcommerceBytes will be a bit different than the guides were on eBay. We will add more curation to the process (we want to see what is going up on our site), so we need to find a manageable 'middle ground' that allows users to easily submit content, but still allow us to oversee the process a bit.

The benefit to authors is that by setting up a bio in WordPress (where our NewsFlash articles reside), authors will be able to link to their off-eBay listings as well as their eBay listings. That bio will display at the bottom of all of the guides submitted by a user.

We're already getting submissions and testing the flow, so we're optimistic that the section should be live soon. In the meantime, if you would like to help test, send an email to ina@ecommercebytes.com and let her know.

D-

by: thehosst

I would add them to a blog, many blogs are taking good written and useful content. Depending on the type of guide, for example, Wikipedia.org, decor.guide, handyman.tools, digitaltrends.com, lifehacker.com, kitchen.construction, and I'm sure ecommercebytes.com will take some useful content as well.  

by: Barbbie

I was thinking of adding mine to my website.
I  think it would be interesting to see some here.
Do they still have pages in the ebay stores? Are sellers able to just make a web page in their store for the guide?

by: val2525

We discussed this on my seller forum.  The general opinion was that eBay was doing away with the Guides because so many had incorrect info, bad info, or were never really updated.  Ina, be very careful in which guides you post because so many had bad information in them.

by: eXtinctBay

Kudos to the Steiners for helping keep these helpful guides active. And, yes, there are some guides which are incorrect or used as vehicles for advertising.

There is a very well written article on SeekingAlpha.com today which estimates that eBay will lose an estimated ONE BILLION (with a ''B'') hits to their site by doing away with these. But don't worry, sellers can use Promoted Listings to make up for this. NOT!

The Promoted Listings failure will become even more pronounced when the rate of Top-Rated Plus sellers greatly declines soon (due to the many that refuse to offer Free Returns).

There will be no more $30 monthly handouts available for TRS+ sellers to ''try'' this program, and, in my opinion, not very many sellers will participate since the fees are just too steep.

Seems like eBay is ridding themselves of the guides to free up server space for the new selling format without having to purchase more hardware. It is assumed that they will have to show every item which is listed by all sellers by price.

No more hiding of items by selling limits or geographic locations will be in play, no matter what it states in their User Agreement. If a great deal of folks who pay for an eBay Store subscription can prove they are not receiving a service (listings) they are paying for, it finally would be time for the US government to become involved. I honestly hope and believe their counsel has advised them of this fact before the format change.

by: Windkissed

I don;t have guides on ebay.  If I gave advice to anyone on things I posted them on linkedin or Facebook when I advertised an item.  in some instances I leave advice and tips in my descriptions on ebay.

by: Studiolines

Sounds like a great idea to start a guides section on ECB. I have never written any, but have read many. As many others have said some are well written great information,and others not so much.  

by: Don Wagner

I wrote a few guides and have read several, but they had nothing to do with driving people to the authors' listings.They were just trying to share the legwork people had done, such as identifying maker marks on vintage collectibles . But what the heck 'we spoke, and eBay listened', so now, instead of Buying Guides, we have Promoted Listings - Wow, eBay can read us like a book!

by: FidoMaster

Hope to see these guides flourish and be successful here on ECB!

Couple quick thoughts:

1) REQUESTS - some simple process (or even just a thread) allowing readers to request a guide topic for an expert to fulfill & publish.

2) VOTING - Stars/Thumb or just up/down (or just up) to help reward and encourage high quality content.

3) COUNTS - A visual of some sort showing the number of guides in each section would be helpful.  Possibly leaving those without any while in these early stages greyed-out so readers don't click through multiple sections only to find there's no content yet (perhaps a CTA to "be the 1st!" for those without a guide yet as those will presumably get good visibility & traffic.