TIPS
From MediaSell
[edit] Overview
Welcome to our Quick Tips section!
We will continue to post information that we think is useful to media sellers listing on multiple channels. If you have tips of your own that you would like to share, please feel free to email us at mailto:news1@fillZ.com and we will post them here for you.
[edit] International Sales
[edit] Inventory Tips
One of the most common tips we hear from sellers is the benefit of adding new inventory often! Here are some other things you should pay attention to:
[edit] Condition Codes
New: When you list an item as 'New' on any marketplace, the item should be:
- brand new
- unused
- unopened
- In original packaging
- include all original materials
[edit] Policy Violations
Please familiarize yourself with the Policy Guidelines of each Marketplace to ensure that you are not in violation of any listing rules. If you have received a warning notification from any Marketplace and require assistance, please feel free to contact us. For your reference, we have provided a link to a page we created of all Marketplace Policy Guides and/or Participation Agreements below:
[edit] Purging Marketplaces
If you are overhauling your inventory and would like to remove all of your listings from your marketplace, follow the instructions below:
[edit] Marketplaces
[edit] AbeBooks:
[edit] Alibris:
[edit] Amazon:
[edit] Non-Catalog (formerly "zShop") Items
Do you have "Non-Catalog" items that aren't appearing on Amazon? Not sure what a "Non-catalog" item is? Click here.
If an item can't be matched to Amazons catalog, it will come up as "Not Found" in FillZ. This could be because it isn't in Amazon's catalog, or it could be that we just weren't able to grab the data on our first attempt. To have FillZ try again, find the item in your FillZ inventory, click on the SKU, then click on "wrong title?". This will force FillZ to retry, and hopefully update the listing with bibliographic data. If FillZ can't get the data, you will need to fill it in yourself.
- If an item doesn't appear in Amazon's catalog, Amazon allows ProMerchants to create a Product Detail Page for that item (for more information about Product Detail pages, click here). Without a Product Detail Page, your listing will not appear on the Marketplace.
- Whether you are importing a file to FillZ, or adding listings directly to your inventory using the FillZ UI (User Interface), Amazon requires the following five fields to develop Product Pages:
*Title* *Author* *Media* *Publisher* *Publication Year*
Note:If you have supplied the above information and your item is still not appearing on Amazon, we recommend that you contact Amazon's Customer Support for further information.
- Listing a Non-Catalog Item through FillZ:
- Importing a file: You can import a file to FillZ using the "FillZ Experimental" format. Click here for a sample file.
- Listing through UI: In FillZ, you can use the Single Item link to add individual Catalog and Non-Catalog items. After you have clicked on Single Item, click (Switch to Non-Catalog item). Enter all required information in the fields provided. For publication year, you will need to add the date to the "Additional Attributes" box. It must appear as shown:
Acceptable: Not Acceptable:
PBYR|1982 PBYR|March 1982
Note:If there are more than four characters in the PBYR field, the field will be ignored by Amazon, causing
your listing to be rejected.
[edit] International/Expedited Shipping Overview
Ever wanted to know
- where you can control the shipping charges displayed to buyers?
- who provides shipping credits?
- which markets make international shipping mandatory?
Review the chart below to find out:
| Description | AbeBooks | Alibris | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Biblio | Chrislands | eBay | Gemm | Half.com | TextbookX | Valore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| International Shipping | | ||||||||||
| Expedited | | | | | | ||||||
| Method of Shipping Fee Collection | | | | | |
[edit] Enabling/Disabling International/Expedited Shipping Flags through FillZ (Excluding eBay)
- Most sellers offer International and Expedited shipping where the option is available. If you choose to begin offering or wish to discontinue International and/or Expedited shipping, please read the information below that is relevant to your situation:
Small Inventory (<1000 items): Disable or Enable Expedited/International Flags Individually or Bulk
*You can disable or enable the Expedited and International Flags for all of your items using the FillZ User Interface. *To update your listings in bulk, the feature only allows you to only disable/enable both offerings (International and Expedited). This feature disables or enables one page at a time.
Instructions:
1. Log in to your FillZ account 2. Click "Inventory" > "Condition & Price" 3. Remove all check boxes and click "Search". Your entire inventory will appear 4. Click either "Disable All Int'l/Expedited" or "Enable All Int'l/Expedited" and Save. This will update all of the items on this page 5. Continue until all items on all pages have been updated
To update your items individually, follow Steps 1 & 2 above and search your inventory by using the SKU or ISBN in the "Search" field. Click on the box beside the feature you wish to update and click "Save."
Purge appropriate marketplaces to update the feature(s)(excluding eBay). For a list of appropriate marketplaces, see above
Medium Inventory (<60,000 items): Disable or Enable Expedited and/or International Flags Individually or in Bulk
*You can disable or enable the Expedited and International Flags for all of your items or select titles by importing a file.
Instructions:
1. Log in to your FillZ account 2. Click "Start" > "Export" and change format under Manual Export - Inventory to Amazon - tab separated format 3. Click "All Data" and Save the file to your computer (this is a copy of your entire inventory) 4. Open the file using a Spreadsheet program such as Excel, Access or Open Office 5. Remove all column headers except "SKU", "will-ship-internationally" and or "expedited-shipping" 6. Remove any SKUs you wish to exclude from the update (if any) *To offer shipping to US only, enter 1 *To offer shipping internationally enter 2 *To offer expedited shipping enter y *To disable the expedited shipping flag enter n
Purge appropriate marketplaces to update the feature(s)(excluding eBay). For a list of appropriate marketplaces, see above
Large Inventory (>60,000 items): Disable or Enable Expedited and/or International Flags in Bulk
*If you are unable to modify your inventory due to the lack of appropriate software program (Access, SellerEngine, Seller Magic, etc), you may contact us and we can make a one-time adjustment to your inventory to update the shipping status.
[edit] Enabling/Disabling International/Expedited Shipping Flags for eBay
Sellers have much more control over shipping rates for eBay through FillZ. Here are your options for Paperback, Hardcover, Music, Video/DVD and Video Game listings on the eBay Settings page:
*Set prices for First Item and Additional Items for Standard Shipping *Set prices for First Item and Additional Items for Expedited Shipping *Set prices for First and Additional Items for Regular International Shipping *Set prices for First and Additional Items for Expedited International Shipping *Leave all fields blank and invoice the buyer instead *Leave Expedited and International fields blank and these will not be offered to buyers *Add Shipping Insurance
Note: If you make any changes to the Shipping Matrix on the eBay Settings page, you will have to click "Update All" for the changes to take affect.
[edit] Order Processing Tips
[edit] AbeBooks/Alibris Auto-confirmation
Because AbeBooks and Alibris require sellers to confirm an order before a customer's credit card is charged, we implemented a feature that requests payment processing from both markets before a confirmation email is sent to the buyer. In some cases if you wait until you move an item to "Complete" in FillZ you may be exceeding order expiry dates on Abe (4 days) or Alibris (2 business days).
On the "Configuration" page for each market there is a flag sellers can set to indicate that the market should process a payment when an order is updated to "In Process" status in FillZ. To enable this setting, follow the instructions below:
1. Log in to your FillZ account 2. Click "Settings" -> "Marketplaces" -> "Configuration for AbeBooks or Alibris" 3. Check the box beside "Enable auto-confirmation on marketplace (when order moved to 'In-Process')?" 4. Click "Save"
[edit] Repricing
Clients we've talked to have indicated that re-pricing inventory often is the single most important action a seller can take to generate sales.
- Are you looking for a way to reprice your inventory but are afraid that your sale price will drop as low as a penny? Try our Basic Repricing tools! If your item(s) has been listed for more than 30 days and still hasn't sold, you may want to consider competitive repricing strategies.
- Have something a little more complex in mind? Advanced Repricing through FillZ may be your answer. Look over some of these questions to help you determine how you can customize your prices to help boost your sales:
- Do you have a strategy that works well but wish that you had a tool that could rapidly reprice your inventory automatically? Check out our Premium Repricing service:
http://wiki.fillz.com/wiki/index.php/FillZRepricing#Premium:
If this still isn't fast enough, send us an email and let us know how we can assist you with your repricing strategies.
- Need to rethink your pricing strategy and want your market-specific prices to return to your Base Price while you work out your new strategy? Run the script below:
return(item.basePrice);
[edit] I use IE, have a large inventory, and my script won't completely run. Why is this?
Response from the FillZ server when running a large script may be far apart.
By design, Internet Explorer imposes a time-out limit for the server to return data. The time-out limit is five minutes for versions 4.0 and 4.01 and is 60 minutes for versions 5.x and 6. Also, the time-out limit is 30 seconds for Windows Internet Explorer 7. As a result, Internet Explorer does not wait endlessly for the server to come back with data when the server has a problem.
To extend this time-out period in Internet Explorer 4.01 Service Pack 1 or later, follow these steps:
- Add a ReceiveTimeout DWORD value with a data value of (<number of seconds>)*1000 in the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings For example, if you want the timeout duration to be 8 minutes, set the ReceiveTimeout data value to 480000 (<480>*1000).
- Restart your computer.
- Note: This setting does not work on versions of Internet Explorer that are before Internet Explorer 4.0 SP1.
[edit] Trouble-Shooting Marketplaces
[edit] AbeBooks-Missing Listings
- If you have added inventory to FillZ and notice items are not appearing on AbeBooks, check the description field of your listings for the following prohibited information:
- Website URL
- E-mail address
- Phone and fax number
- Full shipping address
- Shipping Terms
If you are unfamiliar with AbeBooks' policies, we recommend that you click here to review them.
[edit] Alibris-Missing Listings
If you have added inventory to FillZ and notice items are not appearing on Alibris, check:
- the description field of your listings for the following prohibited information:
- Website URL
- E-mail address
- Phone and fax number
- Full shipping address
- Shipping information and Terms of Sale
- Any information not related to the item's condition or description
- to ensure that the title, author, binding and price fields are populated. These are required fields.
If you are unfamiliar with Alibris' policies, we recommend that you click here to review them.
[edit] Amazon-Missing Listings
- If you have added inventory to FillZ and notice that the items in that file are not appearing in Amazon, you may want to check your export log to see if Amazon has rejected your listing for any reason. To review your export file logs:
1. Log in to your FillZ account. 2. Click Start. 3. Click MarketStatus. 4. Under Amazon Marketplace Status, click Show Exports 5. The files are listed chronologically. If you know when your item was added and updated, look for the export closest to that time and click on report-amazon-XXXXXXXX.txt to find the item. You may have to look through a few files before you find your item.
If you see a "Warning Message" assigned to your listing, your item should still appear on Amazon, but they may have made some changes, such as truncating the title.
If you see an "Error Message" assigned to your listing, Amazon did not post your item.
For a list of Amazon Warning and Error messages and also for resolutions, please click here
If you have any questions about the information above, please do not hesitate to contact us.
[edit] Barnes & Noble-Missing Listings
If you have added inventory to FillZ and notice items are not appearing on B&N, check:
- the description field of your listings for the following prohibited information:
- Website URL
- E-mail address
- Phone and fax number
- Full shipping address
- Shipping information and Terms of Sale
- Any information not related to the item's condition or description
- Return information
- to ensure that the title, author, binding, condition, description and price fields are populated. These are required fields.
- to ensure that your listings are at least $1.99 and not priced higher than $2500.
- that any new book you have for sale that is also listed by BN.com isn't priced higher than the BN.com price(unless the book is a First Edition or is signed by the author).
[edit] eBay-Missing Listings
- If you have added inventory to FillZ and notice that the items are not appearing on eBay, you may want to check your eBay settings page(Login to FillZ, click Settings, then Marketplaces, then Configuration for eBay):
- check settings under Filter and Promotion
- check to see if you have items set to 30 days. Once 30 days have elapsed, your item is removed from eBay and not re-listed until you click refilter
- check your pricing script
[edit] Half.com-Missing Listings
If you have added inventory to FillZ and notice that the items are not appearing on Half, it may be for the following reasons:
- Half.com does not upload non-catalog items. If the ISBN does not appear in their catalog or if an item is Pre-ISBN, the item will be ignored by Half.com.
- Your item is below Half.com's minimum of .75.
- Your item is restricted. Please click here for a list of prohibited items.
Some prohibited items may appear on Half.com if you match the item to a valid ISBN, however, Half.com will suspend accounts that violate Listing Policies.
[edit] Other-Missing Listings
If you have added inventory to FillZ and notice that the items are not appearing on the markets, it may be for the following reasons:
- If an item does not have an ISBN or if it is not found in Amazon's catalog, the item can't be listed (This applies to *Half.com, Valore, a1 Books, TextbookX only).
- Your export status is Delayed or Suspended. If you see either of these statuses on your Start page, please contact FillZ right away using either the Contact Us link at the bottom of any web page or email support@fillz.com.
