This week in the Bloggosphere and beyond … lots of chatter and gossip and more than a few sellers declaring their Christmas selling season is finished.  Put your feet up and spend an hour or two checking what others are saying.  You deserve the break.

Bloggosphere

eBay vs. Amazon Traffic Data, Plus Holiday Shopping Figures is an ongoing theme for reporting at AuctionBytes this month.  Nielsen-Online provided Ina with new weekly traffic data for the months of October and November. The new data shows Amazon.com’s unique audience numbers continue to catch up to eBay’s numbers.

RedInkDiary ran a couple of thought-provoking posts this week.  One I am still thinking about and trying to understand revolves around the eBay account guard tool bar.  Webmaster Gaz tells me that the network Proxy and Firewall Server has taken to the habit of popping up a window asking for user authentication to pass through the firewall every time a LAN user switches eBay site or goes to PayPal.

It started doing this occasionally back around the time that eBay introduced their supposedly Flash-based Seller ID verification system in early summer, but of late has been doing it almost constantly – smells of deep drilling to me, but I’m not a techie.  Henrietta’s other “expose” style post of the week makes a disgusting pudding of DSRs, Diamond PowerSellers, Feedback manipulation, and other nasty topics.  It’s obvious something smells in the PowerSeller Pantry, but the absolute evidence is hard to pin down.

If you’re still trying to come to grips with how the eBay tie up with Microsoft’s Live.com cash-back deals work, you could do a lot worse than reading a post by Scott Pooler on Trading Assistant Journal.  It seems both companies are shattering what should be a good buyer experience by installing a 60-day delay into the cash backs.  What Scott was hoping to buy cheaper through the program, turned into a better deal on Amazon.  Randy Smythe also covered the same topic, from a different angle over at his MyBlogUtopia.  And JennyHow has posted about things to avoid related to Coupon Codes.

The other Scot, Scot Wingo of eBay Strategies, also spotted errors in eBay’s marketing hype and one of their newer policies – this time it relates to eBay’s latest wheeze of restricting the visible quantity available in Buy Now listings.  Based on the marketing world’s opinion that inventory on eBay is “a mile wide and an inch deep”, Scot reveals how depth of inventory, as well as width, is a key metric for success on the platform.

Meanwhile Max at Amazon Strategies posted a salutary warning to sellers who don’t like competitors undercutting prices, which after all, is all part of a fair and open marketplace.  BrewsNews reports that Amazon are giving money away for sellers to complete a survey that seems to hint at improved Amazon stores and web hosting being in the offing.

Whine Seller is not a blog I read very often, but this week Hillary has run a lengthy post concerning Paypal address verification with which I cannot argue.  I love the new catch-phrase, which might just take root, “eBay foil hatters” (see issues Gaz is having with the firewall above).  She’s also run a lengthy “what eBay must do if ..” post regarding their “free” shipping fixation.

Malaysia based JennyHow reports that PayPal are testing an account type for “students” as young as 13 years old – surely this would not let them onto eBay, where the minimum age for members is variously stated as 16 years old (old enough for a bank debit card) and 18 years old (minimum age for a credit card)?  Is eBay so worried about losing adult sellers that their Australian MD tagged as drug addicts, that they are now using drug-pedlar tactics to recruit children from the playground?  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.  How low will they stoop?

This post is a few weeks old, sorry about that, but it’s still a good one – GenuineSeller has done an early “year in review” post centred on quotes from John Donahoe.  One commenter likened it to reading a summary of Bushisms, referring to the outgoing US President’s habit of talking with a foot in his mouth.

Blog quote of the week

“Oh Poo!  That wasn’t supposed to happen” – contributor will remain anonymous. 

Discussions & Forums

A quick list of hot and important topics from the BuildaSkill forums this week.

• Mark Dorsey of Bonanzle joined our forums and will be assisting Henrietta in providing adhoc support to Bonanzlers who like to chat over here.
• Will you be giving up eBay after Christmas? asks a new poll in our eBay forums. Cast your vote.
• ShopIt, the social networking e-store system, joins Ning – find out more
• Following on from this weeks editorial about eBay.de banning non-prescription products, the EU has a new vision for the pharmaceuticals sector – some scary reading in there.
• The UK economy has been under discussion in the Canteen Chatter Club
• … and finally, any visitor this week cannot have failed to notice the huge number of new forum threads appearing that discuss and review different online auction sites and other channels.  The good news for you is that there are a lot more targeted.  Come New Year, BuildaSkill will be THE source for multi-channel vendors seeking new outlets.  My thanks to all the Skill Buildas who are contributing.

Money Matters

This week I’m devoting the whole Money Matters section to something new from Skip McGrath, Steve Lindhorst and others, as featured on Skip’s Auction Seller’s Resource blog.  Pushed for time, I apologise to Skip for pinching part of his post and using it near-verbatim.

This week is the official launch of the Official Geezer Guide Website.  Skip has been working on this project in secret for several months.  The Official Geezer Guide is an information website aimed at helping seniors, retired, and about-to-retire folks, learn about ways to make money online in a scam-free environment.

Besides reviewing and recommending various online business training programs, Skip and Co. will also publish a free monthly newsletter and publish “The Official Geezer Guide” line of books and training courses.

Their first two books available now are:

• The Official Geezer Guide to Starting an Online Business from Home by Skip McGrath
• The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Amazon, by Steve Lindhorst.

They have two more titles in the works that should be available later this week:

• The Official Geezer Guide to Selling on Craigslist by Richard Geasey
• The Official Geezer Guide to Creating and Selling eBooks by Julie A. Fast

For the next few months they’ll be rolling out several more titles including a new book Skip is working on for Geezers who want to sell on eBay, and books about making money with blogs, Google AdSense and content-rich niche websites.  They are also planning a series of webinars and monthly conference calls and eventually hope to put together an annual Geezer Get-together.

This all sounds quite exciting.  I’m entering late middle age, and although not a Geezer in Skip’s sense of the word, I certainly rate as one in the British meaning of it.  I’m hoping I’m not too young for his new program, and if so, maybe he could start a section for “kindergarden Geezers”?

Online Channels & Venues

Etsy reported the highest sales ever for November according to AuctionBytes.  The handicrafts and handmades site reported 12 record sales-volume days.  The site has also said that incoming new legislation concerning safety testing will harm handicrafts producers.

Suppliers & Services

Steve Lindhorst, blogger-in-chief at GenuineSeller, and author of the best-selling ebooks “Selling on ‘the River’ – the eBay Seller’s Guide to Amazon.com” and the future best seller “The Niche Book – How to Pick a Niche for Profit” is running a special offer this month.  Sign-up for his new newsletter “The MultiChannel Surfer” and you get a free download of his latest ebook “10 Things Small Sellers Can Do to Get Their Mojo Back” – it’s a 40-page ebook, and I’ll be downloading it later today, I might even run a book review on it later in the month.

Webifying

The much pre-announced WordPress v2.7 arrived this week.  It is an almost complete rewrite of the admin back end with a complete interface redesign touted as making blog administration much faster.  BuildaSkill.com’s webmaster Gaz is champing at the bit to get his hands on v2.7, because it is the first iteration to incorporate “one-click” upgrading of the actual blog engine.  This feature has been available for plug-ins since around v2.5 and I’ve noticed that although it is slick and effortless, it has led to an increasing frequency of plug-in updates – i.e. there are far more minor upgrades that previously would have been bundled into less-frequent, larger updates.  I’m hoping this habit doesn’t creep into the core engine too.  I’ve had to rein-in Gaz’s enthusiasm, reminding him to wait for the initial wrinkles and bugs to surface and be fixed before doing his “last manual upgrade” – a task that takes the blog offline for a couple of hours each time it occurs.

As celebration of a successful year, UK web hosting company web-mania.com are offering 25% discount on new domains registered, and on new web hosting packages. To claim the discount, you simply need to enter the discount voucher code DEC258 into the confirmation page when you order and the discount will automatically be added to your order.  This discount expires midnight 31 December 2008.

Webhostingpad.com have made changes to their hosting plan prices and options, that now give customers web hosting for less money each month.  They have dropped the 1-year pricing from $6.95 per month to $4.95 per month – a 28% reduction.  Their 2 year plan has also dropped from $4.95 to $3.96per month saving 20%.

However, they have removed the 6 month pricing option, which is not important to serious webmasters as search engines now factor into page ranking the amount of time the domain has been registered for – both past and future.

Practicalecommerce has written a “5 things you must know and do” post regarding ecommerce websites – it carries an “Ed says you must read it” rating.

World Affairs

It would seem that the anti-government protests that closed Bangkok’s two airports for over a week recently, have achieved their aims.  Now their opposing pro-government movement have held a mass rally that forebodes more troubles ahead for Thailand.  The ThaiVisa expatriates forum and info site reported worrying news from the National Stadium in Bangkok this weekend.  This latest potential unrest comes immediately after the Thai authorities enacted punitive changes to visa regulations for expatriates and tourists, immediately following the reopening of the airports.  As expatriates commented, Thailand seems hell-bent on financial self destruction with these latest law-tightenings, which are only part of broader changes.

Looking Ahead

Phew – knackered now – off to the hammock.

Ed