The July newsletter from UK-managed auction & stores network eBid is in, and the achievements are impressive.

The site hit the critical-mass one million active auction listings during July and are correctly trumpeting it proudly - this moves them from the “small fry” into the “big fish” pond, and leaves self-proclaimed competitor TazBar flapping in the shallows. Of course, eBid still have a long way to go to catch up to eBay or even some of the middle tier US-only sites, but with a million listings in the search engine results, it’ll drive traffic, sales, and additional listings. That’s something the site are pushing hard for, with twice monthly uploads of the whole (eligible) inventory database to GoogleBase certainly helping, with a reported 25% increase in GMV, month-on-month, between May & June 2008.

Pushing hard to capture volume from the eBay negative press, eBid are still offering Seller+ lifetime membership at only £49.99. This means sellers get up to 5 stores FREE, options for FREE listing, FREE photo inclusion and NO Final Value Fees, depending on how you list, and that’s FOREVER!

(more…)

You can always tell when the going gets tough, because the tough get going. In other words, when the economy slows down and sales performance goes with it, smart businesses don’t cut back on sales & marketing expenditure, they increase it.

The logic for this is simple. If your competitors are reducing market exposure, that is when you should be increasing yours and get increased value for your marketing budget.

US web hosting company NameCheapHosting are doing just that with some great offers this month. Not only do they have aggressive pricing, they also throw in lots of special offers and freebies when you sign up with them.

(more…)

Apologies to William Shakespeare, but after the winter and spring of discontent comes the summer of reflection. It appears many eBay sellers are seriously questioning whether they should continue using the company’s sites, and those questions are not related solely to fees, but a growing awareness of the dirty tricks being played on them.

One seller has written to me, and I quote them below with identifying data changed to generic information -

I usually have 500-600 store format listings running at any one time. The prices range from around 100, nickel-&-dime multi-item listings (to help with total items sold counts), through several hundred listings in the site-wide ASP range of $10 - $30, up to items running in the hundreds of dollars. This has always been a good mix for generating both revenue and PowerSeller status.

Back in January it was announced that from the summer, stores format on eBay.com and eBay.ca would have introduced a minimum per item price of $1 and I mentally noted it, but it then took so long to arrive that I forgot about it because no reminders were issued.

Now, weeks after it was put into force, I find that many of my sub-$1 store-items are still auto-relisting according to Selling Manager Pro (SMP), and according to my Seller Account, I’m still being invoiced the insertion fees, but those US & CA listings are not visible anywhere on any of the sites to buyers - they are only visible within SMP, which had caused me to believe they are live on the site for buyers to find. I stress this only affects store items under $1.00 price per item.

(more…)

By Adam Urbanski (c) 2008

If you’ve tried your hand at building an Internet-based business but haven’t yet reached the success you want, find out about these 11 deadly mistakes and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1 - Not Treating What You Do as a Business.

The difference between a hobby and a business is that a hobby doesn’t make you money - it costs you money. If you’re earnest about starting a profitable online business, approach seriously and focus on generating revenue. Treat your online business as you would any regular business.

Mistake #2 - Being Distracted by Too Many Good Ideas.

You can light up a room with a light bulb, but you can cut through steel with a laser beam. The same is true with your effort and ideas.

(more…)

Microsoft and Yahoo!, Search Engine Partners?
How Mergers and Acquisitions May Change the Search Engine Playing Field - and Where Google Comes In
By Scott Buresh (c) 2008

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring - Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

What’s Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

(more…)

Both North American eBays - Canada and the USA - have announced two weeks of cheap listing fees for fixed price listings.

On both sites from July 16th to July 29th (inclusive), insertion fees for Fixed Price (FP or BIN) lisitngs are fixed at $0.25 in all price tranches.  Listing upgrade fees and other options, including final value fees still apply.  Some Business and industrial categories are not included.

The announcements don’t state if multi-item listings are permitted, though they usually are on these sites’ promotion days.  Try a test listing to find out.

Unusually, the Canadian offer applies to non-residents, something the site has frequently disallowed in past years, but has been opening up to more frequently in 2008.

If you’re outside the US or Canada - watch the eBay exchange rate daily for your currency against the $ - eBay UK updates their exchange rate around 11am during BST, and it is now diverging rapidly from the exchange rate used by PayPal - even though they are both supposed to pull the rate from XE.com

The weak US dollar means that as long as eBay UK are exchanging at under 50-pence to the UK Pound, UK sellers will benefit from rounding down and save an extra 1-2 cents per listing.  Watch you Seller Account daily billing to see where the exchange rate is at.  (I’m betting that exchange rates on eBay will move counter-intuitively to the money markets for the next fortnight, and bump the dollar over 50-pence for better fee receipts for dot com).

Ed

eBay Italy have thrown a surprise Free Listing Day (FLD) today July 16th, announcing it at only 4pm yesterday.

The announcement states -

From 00:00:01 to 23:59:59 on Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Rates of the listing are free for items sold in auction-style format with a starting price of less than 1 € in all categories except the categories Cars, Motorcycles and boats.

They can participate all users who will put on sale in auction-style format with a starting price of less than 1 € and have a seller’s account.

… according to Yahoo online translation.

Once thought to have disappeared forever, and to have been replaced by Cheap Listing Days (CLDs), various eBay sites around the world have been returning to the FLD format with increasing frequency this year.  Both eBay UK and eBay Belgium had Free Listing Weekends in March, and other sites have thrown either CLDs or very extended Cheap Listing periods (weeks, months, even whole calendar quarters).  Many long term eBay users see this as evidence that this years policies are having a heavy toll on seller retention on the site.

Ed

In an announcement made “in the interests of transparency”, the eBay Spain team have posted an announcement of their national DSR averages for sellers during the month of June 2008, and for the 12 months to the end of June.

The numbers are quite revealing, and I’ve repeated them below with the national averages currently displayed for eBay UK and eBay US as shown by the Seller Dashboard (note - UK & US averages are as of today 11 July, not for June as a whole).

The average is calculated as a simple average of all ratings that buyers give sellers.

The calculation for the past 12 months, with the following results for eBay Spain:

Item as described:	4.43	(UK - 4.73 )	(US - 4.73 )
Communication:	4.43	(UK - 4.69 )	(US - 4.68 )
Despatch time:	4.32	(UK - 4.63 )	(US - 4.62 )
Shipping and handling:	4.25	(UK - 4.58 )	(US - 4.59 )

In the past 30 days, with the following results for eBay Spain *:

Item as described:	4.51	(UK - 4.74 )	(US - 4.76 )
Communication:	4.51	(UK - 4.70 )	(US - 4.70 )
Despatch Time:	4.40	(UK - 4.64 )	(US - 4.64 )
Shipping and handling:	4.31	(UK - 4.59 )	(US - 4.63 )

* These results are of June / 2008

Looking at those results, it is hardly surprising that eBay Spain recently made an announcement in which they let slip that they only had 10,000 or so sellers (it’s recorded in our forums somewhere) - if that’s their national average for DSRs then no sellers there will be getting the seller performance discounts.

It also points to an opportunity and a threat. UK & US sellers who list onto eBay Spain should be automatically elevated above Spanish sellers by virtue of DSR ratings, leading to above average sell through rates for those “foreign” sellers on the Spanish site. However, conversely it also raises the threat that the apparently intolerant Spanish buyers are going to heavily ding the sellers DSRs regardless of service quality.

Either way, I feel that it demonstrates a need for a concerted and sustained education program in Spain for both buyers and sellers - those national averages clearly demonstrate the Spaniards are just not getting “It”. Perhaps it needs an eBay Inquisition to teach them the error of their ways? Or is that what’s already caused those numbers?

Perhaps this is an opportunity to revive a dormant seller account, build up a DSR rating in the UK or US, then try to finesse those higher DSRs as higher visibility on the Spanish site? Perhaps, perhaps not.

What do you think?

Ed