This week in the Bloggosphere and beyond … It’s not been a good-news New Year week for, or from, eBay.  The messages and announcements from the ailing auction giant have smacked of a toddler’s temper tamtrums, as pointed out in my blog posts either side of the year change.

Other commentators, and even competitors, have also heaped the bad news onto the bonfire – traffic and sales data show eBay shrinking and Amazon gaining advantage from it, whilst eBay’s “big buy of the year” (receipted at US $945 million), BML, lost its biggest customer on New Year’s Eve in a tit-for-tat service ban by Amazon.  Be sure to read all of this edition for guidance on how to “do IT online in 2009″.

Bloggosphere

The Auctiva Seller Education blog carried a stern warning about eBay’s New Year changes that sellers must comply with or face being prevented from listing on the company’s sites.  First up is the Paperless Payments Policy and the shipping cost caps arriving on 15th January.  Other topics include the compulsory Returns Policy amongst others.  It’s interesting that eBay are now stating that difficulties in returning items are the number one talking point amongst buyers – whatever happened to excessive P&P, scam listings, item location misrepresentation, and all the other whipping points that eBay has used to beat-up sellers over the last two years?

Ina at AuctionBytes has been charting traffic and listings data throughout December, she also kept a close eye on sales performance and relied heavily on Comscore for data.  Today she’s announced the results of her multi-channel seller survey are due imminently – I look forward to seeing the results.  Ina’s also added an excellent summary of 2008 on eBay with the warning that the paperless payments policy is due to come into force in the middle of this month.  Accompanying that review of eBay 2008 is a review of the eBay Alternatives who burst out of the shadows – a “must read” for every seller.

eBay’s Global Ivory Ban is meeting mixed reactions.  NGO’s and do-gooders are heaping loud applause on the site, whilst traders affected by holding stock of antique items are up in arms about it.  Myself, I have mixed feelings.

Whilst I certainly support anything that will constrain or eliminate new poaching efforts, I do feel that “damage done” many decades ago is irreversible, and a more logical policy would have been to introduce a compulsory levy to support anti-poaching and animal welfare groups when selling (for example) pre-WW2 items.  eBayInkBlog is crowing about the IFAW praise for the policy, their front page story about it being the only post on the eBay mouthpiece blog in the last seven days.  In the bloggosphere, not posting for 7 days is a lifetime, and a cardinal SEO-sin; they’ll have dropped tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of positions in search for failing to post daily.

Blog quote of the week

Brews News gets it this week, with a simple realisation -

I had forgotten how much fun I was missing by working too many hours selling on eBay.  In 2009 I am going to work less and play more.

And so say all of us.  That’s a far cry from 18 or 24 months ago, when almost all sellers would have said voluntarily that selling on eBay was, of and in itself, great fun.

Discussions & Forums

In the BuildaSkill Forums this last week -

Our massive effort to catalogue all the eBay alternatives continues into its 2nd month, and throughout January we’ll be increasing the focus on Niche, Classifieds, Mall and similar venues, as well as continuing to expand the Newbie, and Big Boys lists of places to tout your wares.

Generally, apart from the alternatives-list building, the forums have been quiet for the last ten days or so. That’s to be expected over the holidays, as people focus on their families and planning for the New Year and Spring Season, so why not pop over and tell us what you’re going to be doing this year with your home and small businesses, as well as your online ventures.  Drop into The Canteen for a coffee and a gossip, and share a few jokes in the Office Joker board – you know what they say … a smile a day keeps the doctor away.

International

There’s several major legislative issues upcoming in the US in early 2009.  One that has the handmades and handicrafts industry quaking in its boots and with rage, is the proposed new legislation for certification of products for users under 12 years of age.  Many predict this will decimate the small manufacturers.  Another is the “price fixing” proposals of manufacturers that prohibit resellers from discounting MAP or Manufacturers Advertised Prices.  eBay went to Washington to fight the latter case, but the fact they seem to have ignored the first bodes ill for the company’s attitude to its core members.  Etsy are fighting vigorously on the former, but may not have the strength of voice to be fully heard – pop across to their blog and lend your support.

Money Matters

AuctionBytes broke the news on New Year’s Eve that Amazon cut their relationship with new eBay acquisition Bill Me Later (BML).  Having been reported as an investor in the online purchase instant credit payment service, Amazon had integrated the borrow and pay service into it’s North American site in the middle of the year.  Answers to questions, posed by AuctionBytes‘ Ina Steiner, to both BML and to Amazon, clearly shows that the relationship was ended by Amazon, and without warning, once the pre-Christmas sales glut had ended.  Ina positions that the chop could be due to eBay’s Q4 acquisition of BML, and that the auction site would be gleaning too much information from Amazon transactions for fixed price items.

The move means that neither of eBay’s payment services – BML or PayPal – are now accepted on Amazon.  Reciprocally, Amazon Payments and Checkout by Amazon are banned on eBay.  In the accompanying blog post to the news article, Ina speculates that having acquired credit-sales data from the six-month relationship with BML, Amazon probably now has enough data to expand payment services to include an in-house instant credit offering, though why any company would want to enter that market during a recession is beyond me.  Personally, I’m chuffed that a service which held no benefit for eBay sellers outside of the hallowed United States has had it’s wings and viability clipped.  Had eBay been less introspective and parochial, they could have acquired a global service and this agreement revocation would have been far less damaging.

Online Channels & Venues

AuctionBytes blogged on 30 December that eBay had seen a listing growth from an early year monthly peaking of 13-14 million listings to a December peak of 31 million with 24 million onsite by year-end and no sign of the traditional cheap listing day to boost numbers.  Meanwhile Medved reported an average sell through rate (STR) drop from 40% to 20% in the fixed price format.  Gossip says that Diamond mega-listers like Buy.com are enjoying only a 3% STR.  AuctionBytes report also positions that the Art and Antiques categories are shrinking by listing numbers, whilst the media category has bloated by nearly 500% across the year.

BrewsNews had an interesting comment in their lengthy New Year’s post -

In the last quarter of 2008, we stopped providing a response to potential eBay buyers who asked for a better deal on product prices or shipping.  We simply blocked the potential buyer and moved on.  The result has been significantly less time spent answering emails as well as an improvement in our DSR ratings.

I have seen this “ignore and block” methodology creeping into more and more blog and forum posts across the wider internet.  As yet, I have been adverse to trying it out (sales have collapsed so badly that I am loath to turn anyone away) and yet it sort of makes sense to me.  It also harks back to advice I was given decades ago – “Only do business with people who want to do business with you”.

To me, eBay and other similar channels are a dual marketplace.  On the one hand there are auctions, where buyers can negotiate with themselves by only bidding to their own self-imposed maximum price.  on the other hand there is the fixed price element of those channels where the sellers’ terms and discounts are set in black and white for all to see.  If you, as a buyer, are looking for some further discount or value, well then, stop pandering to eBay’s belief that they have to direct buyer search efforts (because buyers are too dim to use the site properly), and learn how to actually use the search tools fully.  Additionally, don’t waste the precious working hours of sellers who have already told you how much they’ll take, and what you’ll get for it, life is just too short for that.

Suppliers & Services

For US sellers, the BrewsNews article, already linked (twice) above, has some interesting comparative statements regarding service received from USPS, UPS, and FedEx by Brews during the peak Christmas season, and particularly the weekend between Christmas and New Year.

JennyHow.com’s Online Auctions Daily blog has addressed a number of perceptions around the free shipping expectations of customers, with a useful tips list on how to move customer eyeballs away from “free” and onto more realistic service options.

Looking Ahead

The new year is here already.  It hardly seems like a few weeks above 12 months ago that I was frantically trying to extract the meat from the announcements at the Washington eCommerce Summit when Meg Whitman announced John Donahoe would be taking over the reins at eBay, and he then turned the marketplace upside down.  Last year was so tumultuous that it flew past, and at my age I want the years to drag by, not disappear with yesterday’s newspapers.  So here’s to a slower paced, less stressful, and more profitable year, this year.

Ed