Source: Mlive.com - Seth Gordon - Sunday, December 10, 2006
Bob Clayton took six pages of notes because he wants to get started. Ellen Gillun and Heath Smith picked up a few tips that will enhance the work they've already done.
All three, and a couple dozen more, will be more savvy post office customers and eBay auctioneers thanks to the couple of hours they spent Wednesday with Dan Lesperance and Darrow Scruggs, members of the U.S. Postal Service's Business Development Team.
At least 250 million people are registered users of the online auction site eBay, Lesperance said. And many more are about to be.
"We consider eBay people small businesses,'' said Lesperance, who has been an eBay seller for six years. "Every person that we teach to sell on eBay becomes a postal customer that ships through us, so it only makes good sense for us to teach these classes.''
Lesperance and Scruggs presented two free eBay seminars Wednesday at the Augusta Township hall, hosted by Whittaker Postmaster Linda Gurka. They outlined the eBay process and shared tips on how to best take advantage of the Postal Service when shipping items sold online.
Clayton, an Ann Arbor resident, said he hasn't tried selling on the Web site yet, and found the seminar more informative than he expected.
"I have a roommate who has done this type of thing, but I've never watched him, or done anything (myself),'' Clayton said. "This is much more thorough and complete than he could have ever told me.''
In most cases, Lesperance and Scruggs run the seminar while connected to eBay and the U.S. Postal Service Web site, but because there was no Internet connection available in the township meeting room they were using, they presented a slide show to walk people through each step.
Gillun and Smith, both from Whittaker, have been selling items on eBay for about a year, but both picked up a few new ideas.
"We had to figure everything out on our own,'' Smith said. "We're neighbors and we were constantly going back and forth with questions.''
Smith was having problems scheduling his auctions to end at the most advantageous times - weekend evenings - but Lesperance quickly identified the problem: eBay operates on Pacific Standard Time, not Eastern Standard Time.
"I saw three of us (sellers) with the same item, and theirs went for three times the price of ours because their auctions ended at 7 or 8 in the evening, and mine finished at 2 o'clock in the afternoon,'' Smith said.
Willis resident Kathy Grougan and her daughter, Kathy Tepper, plan to sell clothing, glassware and other items they no longer need after the holidays. Grougan, who is not familiar with computers, appreciated how easy it was to follow along with the seminar.
"I'm not good at doing yard sales, so I thought this would be a great way to get rid of these things,'' Grougan said. "I have all of these Taco Bell dogs and I know people like those.''
The Postal Service's Business Development Team is a pilot program developed to assist small businesses with growth, shipping and advertising. Aside from their regular duties and appointments, Lesperance and Scruggs give presentations all over southeast Michigan.
Because of his regular schedule, Lesperance said he has cut back the number of events he leads to about three a month, but the demand is much higher. He ran two seminars on every business day for the entire month of August and said he could present one a day for the entire year and not exhaust the demand.
"As we were doing them, people would ask where we were doing them next,'' Lesperance said. "We had to pass out schedules because people would come to this class, then the next day they would go to that class with two friends. A week later we would see them at another class with two other friends. It just grew and grew.''
Lesperance said several sessions are scheduled in Livonia in January, but most post offices have sign-up lists, and once the interest is high enough, they schedule an event.
Gurka, who had a sign-up sheet at her Whittaker post office for people who were interested in the seminar, said she spots new eBay sellers all the time, tipped off by questions about how much it will cost to send packages of various weights.
"I was glad that even what I consider my seasoned people, who have been doing it for a while, took home tips that they didn't know before,'' Gurka said of the seminars. "I'm pretty happy, and from the response, people want to do this again. So maybe in January or February we can do another one.''
For further information, contact the Business Development Team at 734-728-4910 or e-mail
bdtdetroit@usps.gov
