A comment I read somewhere prompted me to think about domain names for websites ….

Our own domain name buildaskill.com might seem obvious enough, especially when we Capitalise within the name string - BuildaSkill.com - but there are people out there who like to play with words, and why not?  It is after all an ancient form of humour.

BuildaSkill.com could be punned as BuildAskIll.com (I’m sure eBay think so from some of our blog and forum posts and comments).  But it gets funnier, or more insulting, or dangerous, for some other domains.

Consider those famous Microsoft support professionals ExpertsExchange.com (providers of deep-core support for individuals and corporates running Microsoft Exchange Server and associated server suites) - how about someone calling them ExpertSexChange.com ?

Then there’s the leisure complex company, Pen Island Resorts, who aught to shoot their webmaster for opening them up to jokes about PenisLand.com - or they could change their marketing strategy to attract bored housewives and Club 18-30 female members?

As much as there is an aversion to using hyphens and underscores in domain names (a sort of stigma that doing so means you’re a Johnny-come-lately to the web world), there are clear cases for when it’s advisable.

As the online retailer Perfume Bay found out - online auction mega-site eBay took exception to their domain name taking them all the way through the US court system because of name-copyright infringement - www.perfumEBAY.com (All credit to TamEbay  for discovering the story).

Sometimes it pays to find your office joker and run a proposed domain name past them first

When eBay UK flipped the switch on UK to US visibility back in February, there was no announcement, and it took about a month before they finally admitted what they’d done.  During that period, the then Head of UK Search & Finding, Richard Ambrose, even tried to switch the blame to Google changing their algorithms.  Finally they had to come clean and Mr Ambrose appeared on BBC TV Working Lunch to try to explain it away, unfortunately the BBC interviewer was too lame to grill him correctly or fully.

Now it seems eBay may be repeating that methodology and practice.

Threads are appearing on eBay UK forums questioning where the traffic has disappeared to since early October (again about a month after the apparent drop).  In a PowerSeller discussion thread, the thread starter asks, “Sales suddenly dropped about the 1st October and haven’t really recovered. Did something happen to visibility or something at that time?”, and a 10,000+ feedback PowerSeller stated, “First 3 days of Oct absolutely fab then the strikes hit and it fell on its nose. My sales havent recovered yet”.  Another seller stated, “… i am down about 150+ sales since start of october”.

A BuildaSkill member and eBay PowerSeller has posted some revealing data in our forums.  It’s quite damning in the context of showing that eBay has indeed “flipped a switch”, but inconclusive on its own.  However you can add weight to the argument, for or against the hypothesis, by adding your comments to this post, or in the BuildaSkill eBay forum.

Ed

For the second time in a month, French transport unions have called their workers out on strike, immobilising the country’s rail systems.

Energy workers are reported as also joining the open-ended strike, and university students at several campuses have taken to the streets protesting proposals that could have business controlling curriculums.  I wonder how long before the road transport unions, and the agricultural workers (both known to be game for strikes and port blockades at the drop of a hat) join the rail and energy workers.

The knock on effect is that a lot of deliveries are going to be affected.  France borders many western European countries and their normally fast and efficient service shuttles a lot of mail and freight between Benelux, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain, in addition to the UK since the opening of the Channel Tunnel.

Following on from the UK’s months of postal strikes, this is not good news for mail order and online retailers and wholesalers, nor for offline business relying on postal and small freight delivery services into and out of Western Europe.  Be sure your customers and suppliers are forewarned and their expectations managed …… “the cheque is in the Chunnel”?

Ed

Many users have reported in the last 24 hours that the link from PayPal to the eBay selling manager pages is broken.

Instead of Seller Basic, Selling Manager, and Selling Manager Pro, displaying that a buyer has completed checkout and paid for the item(s), the sellers’ pages just show that a payment is pending through PayPal.   This is happening regardless of the PayPal payment funding method and payment type used by the buyer.

Sellers have to log into their PayPal account to see which payments have been received and which payments are cleared into their PayPal account.  They also have to do this to see which postage options the buyer has paid for, then manually change the postage in their eBay transaction records to display the correct service and value.  I’ve not yet been able to confirm if this is affecting non-eBay shopping carts such as osCommerce and Zen Cart.  If it is, then it will wreak havoc in the pre-Christmas ecommerce marketplace.

This is a retro-step taking eBay sellers back to pre-Millennium days, and is a crippling blow as the busy Christmas selling season is ramping up in earnest eBay-wide.

eBay UK’s response to many complaint-threads in their various forums has been a single post (from a newbie-Pink) stating he’ll report it to the relevant department.  There (as usual for eBay UK), has been no announcement on their announcements page, no apology or explanation in forums, and no warning message upon login.  A number of sellers are again complaining that eBay UK has shown its complete disdain for the people who fill its coffers.  I predict this will cost them in terms of yet more, established, sellers moving to other venues.

If sellers cannot rely on such basic core functions as the payment link between eBay and PayPal, then why should they pay the fees for advanced selling management tools has been asked on one forum.  Good point.  Sellers are again paying for a service eBay is not providing, and whilst it can be argued this may be an unforseen side-effect of a site upgrade (if that’s what caused it) then eBay/PayPal have a moral and legal duty to protect their paying customers from such problems.  The simple answer would have been to carry out more testing prior to implementation of the “upgrade” (again, if that was the cause).

What’s particularly worrying is that there is a new variety of phishing emails in circulation since yesterday….

The new phishing scam purports to be from eBay account management, and tells readers that due to section 5.2 of the eBay user agreement, their accounts have been restricted because they have used the same credit or debit card for more than one eBay account, and that this is prohibited under the user agreement’s terms.

Such a claim is, of course, nonsense, and the scam is revealed because it is addressed “Dear eBay user” instead of to the users real name plus user ID.  However, any inexperienced seller logging into eBay and seeing all those payment hourglasses, then receiving that phishing email, could be tempted to click the link to the “resolution centre” in the email, and give away all their personal information and login details (for both eBay and PayPal?).

For once, caveat emptor means Seller Beware.

Ed

I’ve been asked why I don’t add eBay’s Cheap Listing days to the blog everyday, like is done on many other blog sites that cover eBay.  Well ……

First up, those other sites blog ONLY about eBay and any directly related services, sites or events.  Here at BuildaSkill, we cover a whole lot more than just eBay, after all, there is a life to be had outside of eBay, and a whole wide world of other business opportunities too.

Secondly, we have an entire section of the forums dedicated to eBay, including one board dedicated to eBay’s cheap listing days globally, complete with hourly data feeds direct from most of the world’s eBay sites.

So….. if you want to keep up to date on saving fees on eBay, use the link at the top right of this page to click through to the forum, and make sure you register so you can see all the boards, then you’ll never miss the chance to cut your eBay fees.

Ed

  Have you ever wondered how to keep more up to date on exchange rates when you’re trying to organise pricing on your website or online-auction listings?

I’ve always considered myself to be pretty savvy with such things, especially listing on up to a dozen eBay sites in any one week, each in a different currency.  However, I recently discovered one of my favourite tools has (again) been pulled from the eBay UK home page, and it left me feeling a little bit lost.

For the last 18 months or so, there has been a link at the bottom of eBay.co.uk that took users to an eBay page utilising the XE.com universal currency converter (UCC).  This handy little tool uses mid-market rates to give a straight forward X of currency 1 = Y of currency 2. 

OK, when actually doing the transaction there will be a slight variation that’s not due to exchange rate movements, but due to the payment service’s “commission” rate, however, particularly for the short life of an eBay listing, it’s always been good enough and even PayPal’s punitive exchange rates didn’t throw the base calculation too far out.

Now it’s not there in an easy to find link, I needed to be sure I had easy access to it, so I went a-lookin’ for XE.com and am very glad I did. 

Their site has allsorts of free goodies, including a daily email service, to your PC,  giving the top 100-ish currency rates (based against your home currency), link farms for different free tools, and many other useful “toys”.  The spinning banner at the top of this article goes to their UCC that used to be on eBay, and I’ve also added it permanently to THIS site (over there on the left, just below the signin link) - it’ll be there for whenever you need it, and it’ll open in a new window that you can minimise, then continue reading BuildaSkill   .

Ed

In the UK, the 5th of November is the annual Bonfire Night and Fireworks Festival, held annually to commemorate (or commiserate) the unsuccessful attempt by Guy Fawkes to blow up the British Houses of Parliament, or Westminster Palace as it was then.

On planet eBay, 5th November 2007 will be remembered for many things -

•  India announced a 20% REDUCTION in Front Page Featured Fees which will last for 5 days.
•  Italy announced a week-long FREE listing period for Motors & Motorcycles.
•  Canada announced a 5-week period of FREE Gallery in core listings.
•  USA also announced a 5-week period of FREE Gallery in core listings.
•  USA announced a 5 week period of INCREASED STORE LISTING VISIBILITY in core search & browse.
•  USA
  announced that browsers can use GUEST BUYING to buy on eBay.com without an eBay or PayPal account.
•  India announced MAJOR CHANGES to PaisaPay terms including a maximum delivery period that must be adhered to.
•  Germany announced that seller email addresses will no longer be shown to buyers after a sale, in an attempt to curb harvesting for Spam purposes.
•  UK announced it was changing how SELLER ACCOUNT BALANCES and calculations are shown, this followed closely announcements on several other sites.

All these announcements come hot on the heels of a flood of announcements, during the last week, regarding all sorts of functional and cosmetic changes to how eBay are going to treat or do business with their buyers and sellers.  In no particular order, they included  -

•  eBay Gift Cards launched in the USA with a major marketing program.
•  Finally, eBay saw the light and announced Skype buttons would be allowed on all listings in all categories on the UK and USA sites.
•  USA announced a November competition for Stores Sellers with $2,500 prizes up for grabs, which looks miserly next to Canada’s $50,000 competition.
•  Hong Kong announced the Beta of their site in both English and Chinese, obviously hoping to pick up some international buyers for their manufacturing and exporting sellers.
•  Both UK & USA made announcements regarding re-introducing TRANS-ATLANTIC VISIBILITY in certain categories, subject to sellers meeting certain criteria, which discussions on eBay forums, backed up by comments by UK staff, prove to not be getting applied evenly on both sides of the pond .
•  UK then promptly announced that the trans-Atlantic visibility will not apply to CLD listings, nor to listings inserted between 10am the day before, until 10am the day after a CLD.
•  Meanwhile, almost every site has been announcing changes to the sign-in pages, and Canada announced the launch of a new shipping calculator, which will surely add to the global problems of the bug-ridden eBay checkout’s, combined shipping calculations?.

So, there’s lots of changes going on at eBay around the world, and the general impression is one of trying to improve the safety reputation of the sites, whilst further fragmenting the “global marketplace” that is continually touted in eBay marketing and PR.

There is also an increasing appearance of desperation to maintain volume of listings and the GMV of sold items.  This of course, is perceptual, and should only be thought about with long experience and knowledge of what has been happening on eBay over the last few years.  After 20 months of punitive measures seen as anti-seller / pro-buyer policies (always denied by eBay) the swathe of fee reductions (albeit only for limited promotion periods) brings some welcome relief to the long-suffering sellers. 

The changes and promotions do not change the basic position that eBay has milked and squeezed their paying customers to the point of causing a mass exodus to other venues, whilst trying to set itself up as a replacement for the government agencies that should be regulating consumer protections, and ignoring eBay’s own liability to the people who buy services from them. 

They do, however, show there is a glimmering of recognition that the sellers are no longer happy to use eBay, and that eBay is haemmorhaging the experienced and knowledgable long-term business sellers, who, no longer available to help the newbies, have moved off to their own sites, and other venues such as Amazon and eBid.  Such contractions of user-base knowledge must be having a punishing effect on eBay’s notoriously sluggish Customer Support, especially when coupled with the wholesale banning of many sellers from the eBay Community forums - newbies now have to rely on other newbies for help and advice, much of which is incorrect or misguided.

It would seem that, following eBay’s withdrawal from China,  they are living under the Chinese curse of “living in interesting times”.  Or, have they been preparing for the flotation of alibaba.com, which launched on the stock exchange on 5th November, and doubled it’s market value in the first 24 hours .  It is now China’s largest dot com by stock value, and now eBay’s largest business to business+consumer, online-marketplace competitor.  No doubt now being a public company, it will not be long before it expands dramatically in eBay’s core market regions, and that level of competition may also explain what is becoming a general reduction of eBay prices, by proxy of promotion days.

Ed

Discuss this in our forums