International Selling - Know what's important for new seller, 6 Oct, 4-5 PM

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Users,

At eBay, our sellers have acess to a huge buyer base of 203 million registered users spanning across 150 countries. This opens a wonderful opportunity of international selling for our sellers. Many sellers from India have already tapped into this opportunity and started selling globally.

We are sure that you will be keen to know more about this opportunity and have a lot of queries regarding this. To help answer them, we have Amarjit from International Selling Team who will help you by answering your questions on what all to look out for when you want to start you international business.

If you have any questions related to international shipping, check out the Online workshop where DHL answered various questions on International Shipping.

To find answers to your questions, or to just say a hello, drop in this Open House discussion on 6th October, 4 -5 PM

See you on 6th!

Warm Regards
Sapana
Community Development Team

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear harryfashion

The best people to advise you on documentation required for export via courier would be your courier company. Else you can also post your question on the workshop thread
http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=600001084
That DHL had conducted, and they would try and respond back to you as soon as possible

Thanks
Amar

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear laphilatelia,

We agree that Coins & Stamps is a growing category (internationally as well as in India)

However, given the current market situation in India, it would be difficult to justify splitting the current Coins & Stamps category into 2 separate main categories.

Current Indian Stamps are mapped to the Asia (#47174) category. Your suggestion of remapping it to Br. Comm. Other (#263) category is interesting. We shall look into the merits of remapping it & should have an answer for you soon.

Thanks
Amar

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear amitava123gems,

Thanks you for the suggestion.

You have seconded laphilatelia’s suggestion that Coins & Stamps should be separated

For now, given the current market situation in India, it would be difficult to justify splitting the current Coins & Stamps category into 2 separate main categories. However, we will again review this in 2007. For the time being, we will look at improving the category mapping for the categories that you have mentioned. Also another option for you is that you can list on US or UK site if you are targeting International buyers.

Thanks
Amar

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear harikrishna9622

Please refer to our Export Resource Center and you will find all the details on how to sell internationally. The link to this page is http://pages.ebay.in/globaltrade/

You may also want to visit the ‘Buy’ and ‘Sell’ section on the eBay India homepage for more details on buying and selling

Thanks
Amar

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear princesswalkeshwar_in1

It is heartening to know that you find it easy to sell internationally.

We have been talking to courier companies to help work out attractive rates for our sellers. The challenge we face is not on the price but the mechanism under which this will be rolled out. For example, we had done a pilot with a reputed courier company almost a year back, but we found it a challenge to operationalise the process to include all sellers. However, we are open to look at it again, if it can benefit our sellers and will initiate talks again with some courier companies.

Thanks
Amar

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear pooja_jewels & halwawala_in1

We regularly track our business based on where the buyers are coming from. Over the last few months, we have found no notable drop in business coming out of the countries mentioned except for Singapore and Spain. Singapore is directly linked to the launch of the new eBay Singapore site. However the quantum of business for Indian sellers from Singapore buyers was anyway quite small.

For Spain, we are investigating the reasons for the drop. Thanks for bringing this to our notice.

Thanks
Amar

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear cosycom

Thanks for the suggestion. We have already created an Export Resource Centre
http://pages.ebay.in/globaltrade/ that contains information for new sellers. However it might not contain all the information that you have mentioned, and it would be the best to talk to courier companies who can advise you the procedure for shipping and the documentation required.

The Export Bazaar already includes items listed on India with WWS option. So if you are listing on the eBay India site and check the WWS option, your item will appear on the Export Bazaar.

On your question of getting buyers from Africa, Middle East, most of these buyers go to the eBay.com to shop for products. We are currently exploring options on how we can get more International buyers to directly come and buy on India site.

Thanks
Amar

[sejob123]

dear sir,
how do i determine to which category/category number a product belongs to?
thanx

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear Assemblez

If you want to list in an exact category or sell to a specific country, it will always be better if you list on that eBay country site, say ebay.co.uk or ebay.com.au.

Listing in eBay India site with a world wide shipping option helps you target both domestic and International market with the same listing. The category structure is designed specifically for the domestic market but to ensure that your items appears in that category on the International site, we do the category mapping with International sites as well. But it is difficult to exactly match each category as the category structure and the numbers of subcategories are different on India site and other eBay sites. The good news here is that International buyers normally use search rather than browse on the eBay international sites.

I would disagree with you that the WWS option is waste, as a number of sellers are successfully using this option to sell to International buyers. Moreover if you compare the cost of listing on India site WWS option with the cost of listing on International site, the price advantage makes up for the slightly sub optimal search.

To add here, we are continuously looking to map the India categories with the appropriate category on other eBay sites, so if there are any suggestions, please write to us on the boards and we will try to incorporate it if possible.

Thanks
Amar

[amarjitb2005@ebay.com]

Dear sejob123

You can get the category numbers when you click on 'See all categories' and check 'Show category numbers'. Example is the link below:

http://listings.ebay.in/_W0QQfclZ3QQloctZShowCatIdsQQsacatZQ2d1QQsalocationZatsQQsocmdZListingCategoryList

Also at the time of listing in the sell form, you can enter the name of the product in the search and the system will suggest you the possible categories that it can be listed in.

Hope this answers your query.

Thanks
Amar