“Beware the Ides of March”, Shakespeares soothsayer warned Julius Caesar in the play that bore the Emperor’s name.  The “Ides” was the Roman nickname for the 15th day of a month.  Did anything drastic happen yesterday?  Not that I’m aware of.  Hohum – onward and upward then.

What’s been happening in the world of online selling this week?

On Monday, AuctionBytes blogged that Jim Ambach dropped a bombshell regarding the promised PayPal Extended Seller Protection.  It seems that not all PowerSellers will get the unlimited protection, nor will all addresses be treated as verified for everyone.  In fact, PayPal will be inviting selected PowerSellers to receive the protection “if they qualify”.  There’s no word on the eligibility criteria yet, despite the revised roll-out being “mid March”.

In the UK, eBay announced they began running the repeat feedback for buyers and sellers.  GazLanNaThai submitted a lengthy article on Wednesday revealing flaws, bugs & glitches in the new display, and concerns regarding the foundation technology for the new seller dashboard, available to sellers from May to “improve their performance”.

PC Magazine picked up on an article originally run on AppScout.com on Monday.  It covered the 9th March end of the extended February sellers’ boycott, and the upcoming open-ended strike from May 1st.  More importantly, it covered some of eBay’s listing-total manipulations last week, and some other recent shenanigans the company has been up to.  Several readers posted follow-ups lambasting the article for being weak and insufficient, though it was actually quite damning and clearly exposed an attempted coverup of the Shopping.com-listings-in-eBay-core fiasco.  It’s well worth clicking through to read the original article and the readers’ responses.

America’s Better Business Bureau announced Monday that eBay Inc. will receive the BBB President’s Award for sustained superior performance in April this year. “In just 13 years, eBay had truly changed the marketplace and shaped the definition and expectation of trust between buyers and sellers.  eBay has demonstrated clear leadership and fostered trust between members by keeping the marketplace safe for consumers around the globe.” They’re also accolading that eBay is “a model for active, meaningful involvement in communities.”  I guess no-one told them about how eBay’s paying customers feel right now?

On Tuesday, Germany’s internet watchdog, Falle-Internet.de broke to the world’s media that a major and long-standing security flaw exists via listings on eBay.de and the full story was distributed in an excellent AuctionBytes article.  Although most blogs picked up on it, many ran it in a “ho-hum” style – perhaps miffed that they couldn’t compete with the depth of detail in the AuctionBytes report?   The security vulnerability is not new – the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) wrote about the cross-site scripting vulnerability on eBay in a research note in 2006.

There’s an interesting training workshop coming up in the eBay workshops board on Tuesday 18th March – Drop Shipping, the myths, the facts, the strategies is a must-attend workshop in my opinion.  Before attending, read this earlier blog post about drop-shipping, and this one about the Doba-MoneyBookers tie-up.

Registration for eBay Live has opened.  This year it’s being held in Chicago on June 19-21.  Read the full agenda here.  It’s rumoured that this may be the last eBay Live, or at least the last one in the current format, as it’s widely held that eBay are moving towards focussing such events at the larger and business sellers, so this might be the last chance for “little people” to bend the ears of senior management.

Amazon Strategies this week blogged about the new seller phone support, and that Amazon is bringing the hammer down on it’s “no watermarks or copyrights in images” rules.  One seller apparently had to take down all their listings and lose 10 days of sales plus bring in a contractor to get them all squared away quickly.  On the “plus” side, if you’ve a webstore and generate $40k+ in sales, Amazon are apparently offering to do a free conversion of your website into an Amazon Webstore. 

Only eBay and Scot Wingo are singing the praises of eBay’s new pricing strategies.  Wingo says “listings are up, conversions are up and that means….. yep, GMV is up nicely and so far it’s continuing its upward path.” whilst Only eBay points out that it’s all despite no promotion running on dot com.  It seems JP Morgan’s Imran Khan thinks so too (I thought he was a cricketer turned politician, not a Wall Steet analyst?).  Here at BuildaSkill, we’re of the opinion that despite proclamations to the contrary, eBay UK’s Free Listing Weekend, on the 8-9th March, has had trans-Atlantic visibility switched on.  Maybe the Free Listing 2-days on eBay.be (9-10th March) also showed up too?  The MedVed graph used by Only eBay gives a clear signal that this is happening (with a 48-hour switch off on Monday & Tuesday) graph’s for late this week will be the confirmation or refutal of this, but the source of bids on our listings these last 8 days have mostly been from the US – and the US are not even supposed to be able to see UK promotion day listings.  More eBay book-cooking a-la-Shopping.com-in-core?

The Official PayPal blog has an interesting post about non-for-profits, and the fact that PayPal already work with organisations like Kiva, the micro-lender for third world entrepreneurs.  Seems there’s a conference coming up and PayPal will be attending.  The post also mentions they’re developing more tools and facilities for non-profits.

Randy Smythe has a neat snippet about Meg Whitman’s political aspirations (and advancement), and Auction Insights are reporting that Etsy.com is severely annoying sellers by suspending them and issuing Federal Cyber-crime report forms to buyers at the merest hint of a problem.  (Please don’t let any eBay senior staff read that post).  GenuineSeller ran a tutorial with video about leveraging Turbo Lister for moving listings between seller accounts – useful.  Skip McGrath, this week, concentrated on the next eBay Live, and on the Elliot Spitzer sleaze case and how eBay sellers are cashing in on it.

Have a great Sunday and enjoy your coffee.

Ed