Summaries and Snippets from the last week.

Whizzing round the world of blogs and news-sites, this weekend shows a primary focus on eBay again, and the forthcoming changes continue to dominate discussion.

Over at AuctionBytes, Ina Steiner has again looked at their survey of sellers and the fact that 90% of respondents are seriously unhappy with the eBay changes, while only 5% approve.  All of the 5% being in the ultra-high GMV grouping.  Ina also interviewed Amazon.com’s Director of Business Solutions Matt Williams regarding the types of seller accounts available for eBay emigres, and how Amazon handles feedback between buyers and sellers.

Back to eBay, and Scot Wingo of ChannelAdvisor blogged (on eBayStrategies) an interesting piece about strategies for maintaining high DSR’s under the new trading conditions, in addition to posting official answers from eBay regarding cross-border trading, and its effect on seller discounts.  The same piece also obtained the official stance regarding DSR and Feedback averaging when the same buyer buys more than one item (in different transactions on non-combined invoices) in one week.  Some interesting observations were given in the comments to that one.

The ChannelAdvisor blog this week, contains a snippet about changing formulae in the Google Adwords visibility priorities, important to those using Adsense to market their business, or Adwords to monetise their website.  There’s also a report from the ChannelAdvisor Insite event last week.

On “OnlyeBay” a news scoop surfaced regarding a demo given at eBay Inc’s January roadshow, that involved an under consideration change to a split screen browse and search page, that shows auctions to one side, and Fixed Price on the other.

The proposal prompted Randy Smythe to comment, “Wow, I knew there was something I would eventually be positive about. Now if they would just find a way to display Store items on that page I would be practically giddy.”

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Randy on that one.  Now if eBay could implement this as a 3-column, independantly scrolling, display, allowing browsers to line up items in each of the three columns on a personally selected “best comparison” basis, then it could be the tech-scoop to put them back at the front of the market.

OnlyeBay also reported that MedVed recorded 4 million listings pumped into eBay.com for the 20-cent listing day on the 13th - that’s a cool two-and-a-half million bucks in the bank, even if not one item sells, nice business if you can get it .  It also puts in perspective the degree of competition that sellers face when using the primary marketplace.

Over on Randy’s Blog Utopia, he’s again musing that all eBay sellers should be tackling the eBay changes as the incentive to diversify markets and channels.  He’s also insisting that sellers’ own web stores are the way forward under the new eBay regime.  Randy also has an extremely pertinent reminder of the differences between Amazon and eBay, and their management styles, which includes a call to eBay management to wake up and realise just what they are managing.

Meanwhile on the Official eBay Chatter Blog, the gushy-feelgoody-twaddle continues without any addressing of issues raised by paying customers.  They discuss the return of the “pay it forward” Travelling Lab Coat which is auctioned to raise money for charity, and the predictable verbosity for Valentine’s Day with a special dedication to “To all American serving our country “OVER THERE” - over there of course being that special policing action which the US public believes is being fought solely by US troops, and that no other nation is involved - bit like they still believe regarding World War Two .

On the PayPal Blog, Monroe Labouisse, Director of PayPal’s Business on eBay in North America, realises their revenues will be hit and explains to paying customers about the new Safer Paying initiative announced in January.  Sarah Livnat of PayPal’s risk management group focusing on merchant protections, posted about the new Expanded Seller Protection policy and rules.  She sneaks in something that was unannounced - “We’re excited to offer these improvements, starting with eBay PowerSellers located in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Hong Kong.”  Oh yeah?  and just where did that come from, especially considering HK is on every western buyer & seller’s list of worst offending item-location-abuse countries on eBay?

Over on TameBay, Chris and Sue must have gone out for the night, last night, as they posted nothing after 7:30pm, which is unusual for them .  Earlier in the week, they posted an interpretation from a lone forum post by an eBay staff member, that the new PayPal Extended Protection Policy will apply to all sellers later in the year.  Chris banged on (again) about sellers needing to exceed the provisions of the UK Distance Selling Regulations (without caveats regarding sellers outside of the EC legislative zone (again)).  At this rate he’ll be saying the entire world should be subject to UK law and no other.  Sue gave an interesting piece about Skype looking at adding Emergency Services call functionality Europe-wide, so that roaming Skype users with handsets will be able to summon ambulances, fire services, police etc via Skype.  She also pointed out the pitfalls and increased intrusion from security requirements.

Guy at PheeBay has some interesting comparison data and thoughts regarding Amazon and eBay traffic ratios between 2002 and the present day.  In the same blog, JunkYardJim surfaces some unseen problems in eBay strategies regarding listings volume on eBay.  Night Owl echoes Randy Smythe’s sentiments about getting your own webstore, but looks in-depth about branding your eBay store and own webstore as a single entity.

Rounding off the round-up, Dan Wilson’s blog has a very succinct summary to all the discussions of the last 3 weeks regarding the eBay changes, including a call to sellers to look at other venues and channels.  He also has a few articles for the pro-active, including one about Off-eBay Marketing, one about Classifieds and Comparison Shopping sites,  another about Other Channels and Marketplaces, and of course, one about opening your own website.

It would seem that the lone voice in the wilderness (of the eBay UK PowerSellers’ Forum), several years ago, forewarning everyone to diversify and move their eggs to multiple ebaskets, has finally been heeded by the sages of eBay evangelism.  Almost every blog and market pundit’s site that I read nowadays, is telling eBay sellers to severely reduce their reliance on the auction giant.  Inertia will prevent some from doing so, but I wonder if it is at all possible for John Donahoe & Co to reverse an exodus bigger than the one led by Moses?  JD’s Red Sea of Buttons will easily be parted by sellers and their staffs - they’re already moving to new promised lands, on other venues, and creating their own.

Ed