Pushed for time this week, so the Bloggosphere round-up is a little short – I’m off on another real-world assignment to the darkest corners of Asia this coming week, but I’ve left you with plenty to read below, and have scheduled a load of articles to appear each day while I’m away – have fun y’all.

Bloggosphere

For those involved with home-production in the US, the hottest story right now is the proposed Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) from the CPSC.  Etsy, as a site dedicated to handmade items, is championing the cause against this piece of legislation.  Their blog brings news of a new organisation set up to further champion the cause of home industries and handmade goods producers.

BuyHandmade.org’s new blog includes resources and news updates, and registrants can get a special online badge to show they’ve taken the Buy Handmade Pledge, supporting sellers of children’s items by placing the badge on their websites and blogs.

As I’ve previously blogged, this new US law will have a far-reaching global effect on cottage industries, especially in developing economies.

A quick run around the usual suspects shows Randy Smythe compared eBay alternatives on the Alexa traffic rankings this week, and that he is anticipating a nationwide Internet Sales Tax for all sellers listing on the USA (any site) or offering affiliate link advertising for any company with a New York connection.  He was none too impressed with eBay’s Q4 earnings call, and like the rest of us is awaiting Amazon’s version.

Over at Red Ink, Henrietta has reviewed her experiences of putting an eBay exit strategy into effect – the results and tidbits regarding some of the sites she tried are worth reading.  She also had a lovely little rant about one of my favourite rant themes – eBay’s new version of international visibility, and Dinesh Lathi’s advice to cross border sellers, in which she perfectly examples why Dinesh will never make a sales person, let alone an online entrepreneur.

Amazon Strategies, and AuctionBytes, have covered the new Amazon A-Z Buyer’s Guarantee claims process thoroughly, therefore there’s no need for me to do so – thanks guys.  Must admit though, I still have real problems finding articles on AuctionBytes if I’ve accidently deleted the latest AuctionBytes Updates email – please Ina and David, update your navigation system so I can quickly and easily find articles from, say, the last month or so.

Blog quote of the week

It’s from Bonanzle Bill on the topic of marketing a website venue like Bonanzle -

A good place to start when analyzing the marketing question is to question the question itself: why do people frequently wonder about our marketing approach? The answer I most often hear is something to the effect that “no successful product can become mainstream without getting good exposure.” And I tend to agree. But dig a little deeper and the new question becomes: just where should this “good exposure” come from?

Oooh – that opens so many cans of worms from a marketing perspective.  As eBay has learned in the last year or more, existing users just cannot be relied upon to continually promote “good” exposure when the company stops listening and dismisses paying customers as “noise”.

International

Rant alert – When it comes to charity organisations and feeding donations to the targeted recipients, one of my pet peeves is over-bureaucracy.  Worldwide, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of philanthropists who daily go about there kindnesses without seeking publicity or recognition, and are better able to serve their beneficiaries because of it.  Bureaucracy and the “look how good we are” culture of publicity seeking foundations and organisations leech-off much-needed donations from the recipient pool.  The parasitic pot-shrinking of self-interest does nothing to assist those most needing assistance.

From the above stand-point, I have always had reservations about the corporatisation of eBay’s charity departments (MissionFish, eBay for Charity, and eBay Giving Works, and the new money drain – World of Good, which launched in 2006).

Imagine my horror to receive an email from an eBay appointed PR firm telling me that the USA program, eBay Giving Works, had increased donations received by 20% in 2007, reaching $36 million donated to “not-for-profits” in 2008.  OK, the increased donations is highly laudable under current economic conditions, but how much was donated to “for-profits” organisations like Text 100 Public Relations of San Francisco, who sent me the email?

Why did the internal eBay departments for their charity programs not distribute this good news, saving additional donations for distribution?  Oh, that’s right, John Donahoe “disruptively innovated” the Marketing and PR departments into redundancy last year, didn’t he?  Would the term “quango” now be applicable to eBay’s “charitable” efforts to extend employment in the non-charitable sector?  – end Rant!

Money Matters

Have you been filing UPI claims on eBay unnecessarily?  Over on the Coyoteblog, Wiley has found a back-door loophole in the PayPal system that means some of your payments could be going to someone else’s account.  Give it a read – apparently PayPal staff know about the source issue that revealed it, and have done for some time, but have been unable to implement a fix.

Mobile Banking Awards for 2008 – On the Mobile Banking blog, Brandon McGee listed his 2008 award winners in various mobile banking categories a couple of weekends back. It mainly focussed on US services, and was a little thin on detail such as the criteria for evaluation.

Online Channels & Venues

Amazon ran a webinar on Tuesday the 13th Jan for the Amazon Checkout product.  I can find lots of links to the booking form and to the pre-announcements, but no links to the archive for post-webinar viewing.  If anyone has one, I’d be grateful if they could forward it or post it in a comment below – as with most US-based events, the timing is completely off the clock for those of us in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean areas, therefore I was unable to tune in to the live event.

eBid’s January newsletter arrived during the week, sporting the good news that the sites have topped the 2.3 million listings mark, and now have 6,400 live seller stores.  They have a competition running for the 3 millionth listing uploaded manually (rather than using the bulk lister) which carries a prize of US $3,000 for the lucky seller.  Their offline equivalent to eBay’s Turbo Lister, the eBid Ninja Lister, is back in the works after being severely let down by the original programmers – I can’t wait for it.  They’ve also extended their promotion of half-price Seller+ lifetime membership, which is still a bargain under any considerations – up to 5 free online stores accounted for under a single login (greatly eases admin and accounting compared to running 5 IDs and stores on eBay, let alone the cost saving) plus Seller+ accounts can list and sell for free, or pay just 2% FVFs if using the Gallery thumbnail option – so that’s still free to list if it doesn’t sell.  Additionally with the ability to list an item for 10 days, and relist up to 10 times, if there’s still unsold stock, their formata are perfect for running quarterly marketing campaigns.

AuctionBytes‘ EveryPlaceISell.com (EPIS) is being revamped. The Steiners’ are reassessing some of the venues on the drop-down list and venue page.  They’ve instituted a minimum requirement to remain listed in both these areas.  A marketplace must have at least 5 merchants who list them as a venue on EPIS, otherwise they’ll remove them from the drop-down box.  You can still select “Other” to include them in your listing.
There are definite benefits to being listed on EPIS.  It sends traffic to your sites and listings, and it supports your sites with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  EPIS has a Google Page Rank of 5 (PR 5) – and when a PR 5 site links to your site, Google will rank your site higher in search results.

The Etsy blogs have been busy since new year, with far too many posts for me to find time to read or comment about, however, one particular post caught my attention.  It appears that Victorian-era items and “chic” are making a come back.  The post features plenty of pictures of “pretty things” and it’s worth noting that despite the reign of Queen Victoria being the heyday of British industrialisation, globally it was also a period of intense home-crafts production, hence the focus by Etsy staffers.  If you’re stuck for new projects for 2009, you could do a lot worse than read through the niche reports in the Etsy staff blogs.

Staying with Etsy for a moment, they’ve put together a brief survey (which takes about 3-4 minutes to complete) focusing on issues unique to international sellers.  The survey is open until next Friday, January 23, 2009.  If you are a seller who runs your business from outside the U.S. you are eligible to take the survey – although it is targeted at existing Etsy sellers, it is possible to complete it without having already registered, and therefore useful if you’re thinking of joining in the near future.  Results will be published through Etsy at sometime after they’ve been compiled and analysed.

Suppliers & Services

Google Base made a major SNAFU recently, telling content providers that their Google Base Display Name didn’t comply with the Google Base policies.  Users all over the web world were getting the message.  An obscure, tucked away, and hidden announcement in the Google discussion boards provides the answer -

Hello Google Base Users,
As you’ve all been made aware, we’ve incorrectly sent an email regarding Google Base account display names to a number of content providers. At this time, you may feel free to ignore this notification. We’re currently investigating the cause of this error. Once the issue has been resolved, we will resend any notifications only to those accounts that do need to make changes to their display names.
To ensure your display name adheres to our guidelines, please review http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?&answer=106840
We apologize for any confusion.

Many thanks to Bill at Bonanzle for finding the answer.

On a totally different topic …

“Airlines have been devaluing their frequent-flier programs for some time, stepping up the number of miles required to qualify for free flights and adding restrictions. But until recently, banks had still been sweetening their rewards programs – adding more flexible redemption options and bigger cash-back bonuses to snag customers.  Now, with the economy contracting and fears rising about credit-card delinquencies, banks are trying to cut costs and bolster profits. Many card issuers have been testing shorter expiration periods, higher redemption fees or earnings caps on rewards.”

… wrote Jane J. Kim for the Wall Street Journal.  It’s a heavyweight analysis of how the economic crisis is affecting incentive schemes from the financial heavyweights, and although mainly looking at the US markets, there’s a number of names in there that originate in other countries.  Whereas the “big boys” are having to trim everything left, right, and centre, just to survive, it opens opportunity for smaller firms and businesses to expand their incentives for competitive edge.

Webifying

Although its not something I’ve played with myself, I’ve noticed the rapidly spreading influence of video on the internet, and particularly as a tool to assist selling.  Since last summer I’ve been wondering how to get involved with this medium in an implementation to aid my wife’s eBay business and our joint efforts elsewhere on the web.  Now, thanks to an Auctiva Edu blog post from Brad and Debra Schepp (the couple who brought the Griff interview that leaked about immediate payments for auctions and the forthcoming eBay checkout), I finally have some clues and pointers for how to begin.  A great read from a couple who really know their ecommerce practicalities.

Also on the Auctiva Edu blog, Janelle Elms looks at the practicalities and benefits of buying your own Internet domain name and auto-forwarding it to your eBay Store or Shop.  I’ve heard mention of this around the web a few times, and always considered it as just another expense that might not be necessary, but with traffic and sales collapsing on eBay, it might be something now worth considering if eBay is to be retained as a sales channel.  In the past, I’ve always subscribed to the theory that I pay eBay for two things – a place to host and display my product adverts, and the readership (circulation) that they have.  Of course, that’s looking at them in a very off-line news media manner.

Recently, with all the site tweaks and changes, eBay have demonstrated that the old “contract” of what you got for what you pay is no longer applicable.  They have fundamentally changed the basis of the contract by introducing seller rewards and punishments based on customer feedback assessments.  Now they are much more of an e-tailers’ “club” where you have to buy your visibility based on your membership level, then promote and market yourself externally to be able to maintain that membership level.

eBay fees are no longer about paying for eyeballs and click-traffic, they’re about paying for prestige and rank within the structure of eBay membership.  As that becomes more demonstrable, it brings eBay as a channel further and further into the “unnecessary expense” sector of the marketing budget – if sellers have to perform the lion’s share of marketing their wares to the broader Internet, then why pay eBay to no longer do what they originally promised to do?

World Affairs

Recently in Sunday Papers, I took a broad look at emerging markets’ payment providers. Now I’ve also learned of a new mobile payments initiative for micro-finance. India’s mChek are a mobile payments and security company that has developed mobile banking and payments technology for applying to microfinance applications, and mass banking, in a pilot with Grameen Koota, a microfinance institution in India.

In a series of videos, mChek introduces the service, demonstrates how it works and shares some initial results.  As evidence that mobile payments adoption is really happening in India, Bharti Airtel have announced that more than one million users have registered for the mChek on Airtel service since its commercial launch in June 2008. Sanjay Swamy, CEO of mChek said -

“Consumer adoption and repeat usage of the service has been extremely encouraging.  With the Reserve Bank of India’s mobile payments guidelines now in place, banks and merchants are fast adopting our open-platform to build a thriving eco-system, and a compelling suite of services for consumers.”

Personally I must confess that the traditionalist in me queries why the developing world’s poor, seeking microfinance, have ownership of a non-essential item such as a mobile phone? In times past, the natural option would be to pawn, or sell, the luxury device to raise the funding needed to create an income opportunity. I guess the world has become dependent on borrowing rather than saving?

Or, is it purely down to multinational marketing pressure?  Sanjay Swamy’s statement indicates it is not the microfinance-seeking poor that are taking up the service, but the thriving middle class merchants and manufacturers.

Looking Ahead

Valentine’s Day is just 4 weeks away, and Chinese New Year on the 26th of this month.  Whilst many of our readers will be using the 14th February as another sales and marketing flag on their calendars, how many have thought about Chinese New Year?  It’s traditionally associated with debt collecting and clearance, as well as the more well known rituals for enhancing good luck and chasing out bad demons (a bit like the western New Year rituals).  The primary colours for the event are red and gold – red for good luck and gold, obviously, for wealth – so be sure to decorate your home and business with the right colours for a prosperous 2009.

You can, of course, also leave the red decorations in place ready for Valentine’s …. and spread a little “lurve” amongst your family and staff – it’ll help to extend the happy feelings of the Christmas goodwill season for a few extra weeks.

Ed