Amazon bucks trend : Q4 sales up 18%
January 29, 2009
Amazon have released their Q4 2008 figures today. Sales for the quarter were up 18% (to $6.7 billion) compared to the same quarter in 2007. Sales from Amazon’s international sites did even better, up 19%. Business was up across all segments of Amazon’s business, with media sales up 9% and electronics up an impressive 31%. Jeff Bezos said that the company is “particularly grateful for the unusually strong demand for Kindle” over the fourth quarter.
Amazon bucks the general trend, which saw a drop in online sales over the holiday shopping season (November – December 24th 2008). eBay’s Q4 results announced last week saw a fall of 16% in revenue of their marketplace businesses.
There’s no breakdown of sales into those made by Amazon themselves and those made by their third party sellers, though the press release does mention 3 million items shipped by FBA.
After last week’s news that Facebook’s traffic has overtaken that of eBay in the UK, this is another blow to eBay’s online position.
PayPal maintenance 7am Friday 30th Jan
January 29, 2009
PayPal will be undergoing maintenance for half an hour tomorrow (Friday) morning beginning at 7am.
During the maintenance most PayPal website features will be unavailable, including the ability to send or receive payments.
Friday mornings are always the time that eBay and PayPal undertake site maintenance but it’s unusual for PayPal to be totally unavailable. If you intend to be working early it’s normally a good idea to print orders off ready for packing on Thursday evening, or accept that prior to 9am Friday the site may be intermittently unavailable.
eBay begin to enforce paperless payments policy
January 29, 2009
eBay.com have begun blocking listings which offer to accept paper payments. The new Accepted Payments Policy was introduced on 20th October 2008, but sellers were given a grace period up to 15th January 2009 to update their listings.
eBay say they’ve started blocking “based on descriptions where sellers are most likely to still have violating text, and where we are confident our filters have high accuracy”. In other words if your listing still offers to accept checks (cheques for our UK readers 
) or money orders you won’t be able to list them.
eBay will scan sellers additional checkout instructions (additional payment instructions in the UK) to start with as that’s the most likely place sellers will mention payment methods. They’ll then step up their filters to scan listing descriptions as well when determining which listings to block.
Sellers should be reassured that eBay’s filters are intelligent enough to differentiate between “check out my Store” and “personal check”, although I’d probably recommend you don’t include text like “We don’t accept personal checks” as that might be filtered incorrectly.
eBay advise all sellers who list on eBay.com to update their listings to remove mentions of banned payment methods as quickly as possible, but in particular to update checkout instructions immediately to ensure your listings don’t fail.
Most most third party tools will display an error to the seller if eBay block a listing based on this policy. In the Sell Your Item form a clear message will be displayed if the listing is filtered based on a banned payment method.
If listings are reported, even if eBay’s own filters didn’t block them, then they’ll be taken down by customer services on a case by case basis.
Wallace and Gromit help Blue Peter raise funds
January 29, 2009
Nick Park the creator of Wallace and Gromit has designed a one off collectible plate as part of a collection being auctioned in aid of the current Blue Peter appeal.
To mark their 50th anniversary Blue Peter has partnered with three charities, ContinYou, FCFCG and Save the Children to raise funds for Mission Nutrition. The appeal has the ambitious aim of putting 2 million meals on plates for children around the world
and many celebrities have decorated plates for the eBay auctions.
There are some great plates from the likes of Richard The Hamster Hammond, Harry Potter star Emma Watson and Harry Hill, but the prize for the best decorated plate has to go to Nick Sharratt for his Tracey Beaker creation.
eBay Australia change the way User IDs are displayed
January 29, 2009
eBay Australia will change the way that bidder IDs are anonymised from the 3rd February. Instead of displaying “Bidder1, Bidder2″ it will change to randomised aliases consisting of two random characters from the member’s User ID such as “a***b, c***d” etc.
The change is said to be because many eBay users prefer the transparency that the aliases provide, although to be frank identifying a user from the alias is almost impossible.
Currently eBay UK still use the “Bidder1, Bidder2″ format when displaying bidding activity but use randomised aliases for Best Offers.
More ads in My eBay
January 28, 2009
Just a few days after eBay UK launched the new My eBay, users woke up to a huge new banner ad across the top of the screen this morning. Many users have complained that the flashing adverts are distracting, and slow their computers considerably when they’re trying to use My eBay: ironic, when you consider some of the content:
Some ads are being tailored to individual eBay members based on age, gender, buying and selling history and so on. Members can opt out of this in My eBay > Site Preferences, but this won’t switch off the ads altogether: you’ll just see random banners not targetted to what eBay think your interests might be.
If you use Firefox, Adblock Plus will get rid of the ads. If you’re using IE, Adblock Pro should do the trick: there’s a 30 day free trial, or it’s $19.95 for a lifetime subscription — unless anyone knows of a free ad-blocker for IE users?
Amazon protect sellers from fulfillment negs
January 28, 2009
Just hours after the story breaks that eBay are gauging sellers interest in a fulfillment service, Amazon have announced that they’ll be protecting sellers from negative feedback caused by FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon).
If a seller receives a negative feedback where the buyer calls out an issue with shipping or customer service performed by FBA then the negative can be struck off.
New policy effective January 27, 2009, for FBA orders with negative feedback
FBA sellers are now able to petition for strikethrough of customer feedback ratings for Amazon-fulfilled orders. If you have received feedback on an FBA order regarding a fulfillment-related issue or customer service-related issue, you may submit a Contact Us form to request to have Technical Account Management review and “strike through” the customer’s rating. If any portion of the comment applies to the seller or the condition type (New, Used etc.) of the product, the rating will remain
A thread on the Amazon chat boards has been running for almost two years, with negatives that are out of the sellers control being a big concern. If eBay do go ahead and introduce a similar service, they too will need to address feedback issues and how to protect sellers from issues caused by eBay’s own shipping agents.
Max Leisten on Amazon Stategies has more information on other enhancements Amazon are making to FBA.
eBay still one of best companies to work for
January 28, 2009
eBay is still one of the top 100 companies to work for, says Fortune magazine. Despite laying off 10% of their workforce last year, eBay is at number 83 in the list, down from number 68 in 2008. Why are they so good? “Departing workers got at least five months’ pay and three months of outplacement services.” In the current climate, how you treat your laid-off staff counts for a lot.
Bone items removed under eBay UK’s ivory policy
January 28, 2009
When eBay banned sales of ivory last December, most of us were pleased to see them finally taking a tough line with sellers who broke that law. But now it seems that eBay UK have extended the ban on ivory sales to cover items not even made of ivory, and that they’re deliberately concealing this policy from sellers.
PowerSeller Sheila who trades as Incidentals-Plus had a listing carved bone keyring pulled under the policy banning ivory sales earlier this week. She says, “I spoke to Powerseller Support and have been informed that all items made from bone or horn are no longer allowed on eBay. When I asked for a copy of the relevant ruling they refused, saying it was not openly available.” Further conversations with Support led back to the ivory policy; though Sheila explained that her items are made of buffalo bone, Support remained insistent that she could not list them for sale: she told me, “Powerseller Support advised me to take down all my listings that contained bone items stating that they were not allowed at all and if any more were removed then I could be suspended.” A thread on the UK PowerSeller board found more sellers whose non-ivory listings had been removed under this same policy.
Then, finally, Sheila had clarification from Trust & Safety:
“If it’s cow bone, please clearly state so in your listing. Due to member circumvention, we are removing all ivory-like items if they are described as bone without elaborating on what kind of bone it is.”
As Sheila points out, “bone” is available in item specifics, but does not allow sellers to specify the source: if eBay are going to remove non-specific bone items, they should at least allow sellers to specify more easily which animal provided the bones.
Admittedly, this is a difficult line for eBay to tread. Few of us want to see the site used to facilitate the illegal ivory trade, and to some extent, I can understand eBay’s secrecy about this policy: they don’t want to alert those who are breaking the law. But Support should be briefed on this: when they get a call from a seller saying “you removed my totally legal listing because you misapplied the policy”, the route to reinstating the listing and removing the strike against that seller’s account should be a simple one. Secret policies that take a dozen phone calls to uncover do no one any favours.
eBay UK to show more detailed DSRs
January 28, 2009
Some nice news for UK eBay sellers in yesterday’s business newsletter: as of 24th February, DSR reporting will be more detailed, so sellers should be able to see more easily where they’re being marked down by buyers. Reporting improvements should help sellers identify which listings result in high or low DSRs, and there will be new reports dealing with Buyer Satisfaction Ratings.
The new reports will show DSRs based on buyer location, category, date range, P&P and item numbers; it’s this last which is most surprising, as eBay have consistently said that they do not want to make it possible for sellers to identify the DSR scores left by any individual buyer, for fear of some kind of retaliation by sellers who’ve been marked down. Sellers, of course, have argued that as they can no longer leave anything but positive feedback for buyers, there isn’t much we can do by way of retaliation, so we might as well be given the information and allowed to see where our faults may lie. But it’s not clear yet just what level of information will be visible in practice.
As soon as we see the new dashboard roll, we’ll be taking a more detailed look at exactly what new information sellers are being given, and how it might be used.
Would you use Fulfillment by eBay?
January 28, 2009
eBay are surveying North American users to gauge interest in a fulfillment service. A seller would ship their inventory to a third party who would then pick and pack orders on their behalf.
eBay is exploring the potential idea of offering fulfillment services to its sellers. This service will allow sellers to send all or part of their eBay inventory directly to fulfillment centers associated with eBay where their products will be organized, stored, packaged and shipped directly to the buyer upon sale.
The main benefits of the service are:
- Hassle free: sellers can focus on sourcing/merchandising/marketing rather than order operations
- Potential cost saving: processing/storage costs as well as shipping charges can be cheaper, because this solution consolidates sellers’ items into one
- Improved service quality: faster shipping time and more consistent operational components (such as product descriptions), resulting in higher buyer satisfaction and DSR.
Amazon of course already have Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) so it would be interesting to see how eBay’s service (FBE?) stacked up against it. In fact users of FBA in the US can already have their products to fulfill non-Amazon orders so potentially could already be using the service to satisfy eBay orders.
Fulfillment services are best suited for multiple quantity identical items that are already boxed or bagged preferably with bar codes. It’s not so suitable for individual items or large, heavy or awkwardly shaped products that require specialist packaging – cost will be considerably more.
The big question is how many sellers would choose to put a third party in control of their feedback? Sure a fulfillment center should be able to ship promptly (although I’d argue no quicker than I do myself), but who takes the blame for mis-picks, item not received, broken in transit and returns? No doubt a contract will cover the legalities, but that’ll be small comfort for a seller who receives negative feedback or 1-star DSRs.
(I’m also curious as to how the service can improve product descriptions…. will the fulfillment center be listing the items as well?)
A fulfillment service sounds like a utopian dream. Sure for most sellers the picking, packing and despatch is the most arduous part of an eBay operation, but it’s also the part where quality control can be enforced. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve substituted a product because it wasn’t in A1 condition. A damaged box, a scratched item – would the fulfillment center show the same care and attention to detail as you?
What about branded packaging, enclosing flyers, business cards and website discounts? The parcel is probably the best opportunity you have to market to a buyer and turn them into a regular customer. You are likely to lose this impact with a fulfillment service.
Would you pay to have your shipping and packing outsourced? Would it mean laying off staff or closing a warehouse? Perhaps most important of all would you entrust your feedback to a minimum wage warehouse picker/packer who’s only interest is how many more hours there are before they can go home?
VeriSign secures UK PayPal accounts
January 26, 2009
VeriSign and PayPal have today announced the introduction of strong authentication passwords in the UK. They will be enabled either through the use of the PayPal security key or passwords delivered via SMS text message to users mobile phones.
Essentially up until now PayPal users have been playing russian roulette with phishers desperate to steal their password. VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) offers an extra layer of security to protect your online identity and secure your PayPal account.
There are two options – PayPal or VeriSign keyfob or creditcard style tokens (costing £3.00 from PayPal), or SMS text messages via your mobile phone. Both options can secure accounts by using a new one time password each time you log in.
Once you’ve activated your security key (from the profile section of your PayPal account) you simply log in as normal and there’s an extra screen which will ask you for the number displayed on your security token. This number will change every 30 seconds so it doesn’t matter you seeing my “password” on the screen shot above – it’s already out of date!
If you prefer you can skip this screen by entering the six-digit code displayed on your Security Key immediately following your password (e.g. if your password was PASSWORD and the security key is displaying 123456 then enter PASSWORD123456 as your one time password.
I’ve had a PayPal security key since eBay Live! at Boston in June 2007 and was at last able to activate it today. If you already have a Verisign token which you use for work or secure banking you can use the same token for your PayPal account – there’s no need to carry multiple tokens around. Alternatively if you don’t have or want a hardware token then using your mobile phone is just as secure and possibly more convenient.
“Offering the Security Key via text message is really important as we want to make it as quick and convenient as possible. You just need your mobile phone to use it, which prevents having to carry another gadget around with you.”
Garreth Griffith, Head of Risk Management at PayPal UK
Whilst the PayPal security key isn’t a cast iron guarantee that your account will never be hacked, it is a huge leap forward in securing it and does protect against phishing. No one will be able to log into your account without knowing your password and having your security key or mobile phone.
If you’re a business user and want to protect the thousands of pounds passing through your account I’d recommend ordering a security key, or signing up for PayPal text message passwords today.
eBay Elsewhere : links for 25th January 2009
January 25, 2009
Inevitably most of this week’s eBay news has centered around the earnings call: variations on a theme of “ohshit”. In the light of JD’s insistance that eBay has no stated goal to change its mix of sellers (conspiracy theorists, do your worst with that one), Internet Retailer has an interesting piece talking to Stephanie Tilenius and Neel Grover, the CEO of Buy.com: it sounds like Buy aren’t getting quite the stellar results some had feared they would.
AuctionWally had an interview with eBay spokesman Usher Lieberman.
Seeking Alpha has a couple of interesting pieces. Why Google should buy eBay is written by an anonymous person who claims to be an eBay investor, so this looks less like news than wishful thinking: when’s that share price going to sink below $10? (IMHO Seeking Alpha should drop anonymous authors altogether.)
Meanwhile, tech investor Kenn Registe has some advice for business-challenged eBay. Kenn was right on the money with “forget about issuing guidance and blame it on macro conditions that make it difficult to predict anything with surety”; that’s exactly what eBay did. He also makes a suggestion:
Eliminate your high priced consultants and listen to your “sellers”. They are the best source of input and their advice is free. Maybe create a high level management position like a seller czar, so to speak, whose sole function is to work with the sellers.
eBay of course already have Dinesh Lathi, VP of Seller Experience.
And finally, the lovely Mr Lindhorst from Genuine Seller has rewritten eBay’s core values statement in the light of current management practice. It’s funny because it’s true.
25% off FVF for UK DVD sellers
January 23, 2009
From 27th January all DVD listings must offer at least one domestic postage service with free P&P. As promised in December, eBay are running a promotion giving 25% off final value fees to sellers who offer free post on DVD auctions or multiple quantity fixed price listings. The promotion runs from 27th January until 31st March 2009.
In order to qualify for the FVF discount the following conditions must be met for the listing to be classed as offering “Free Post”:
- Domestic postage needs to be set to “Flat: Same cost to all buyers”
- The first domestic postage service needs to be specified and ‘0′ needs to be entered into the £ cost field or the “Free P&P” tick box needs to be ticked.
- Insurance must either not be required or have its cost set to zero
- Postage service should not be “Local Delivery/Pick Up” or “Other”
- There cannot be any surcharges
- If the listing is a multiple item listing, the postage cost for additional items must also be zero
- Improved in-store search ability and merchandise suggestions for misspellings and low results.
- Improved look and feel in line with the rest of eBay
- Enhanced promotion boxes with a new promotion box filmstrip.
- Updated the eBay themes for professional-looking shops without any HTML knowledge needed - Improved buyer features
- Ability for buyers to refine their search preferences
- New 3 column Gallery View - Future flexibility – With this new version eBay can continue to build enhancements to eBay Stores quickly
There are a few exclusions, the most notable of which are Dutch Auctions (multiple item auction style listings).
Whilst the discount will be welcomed by DVD sellers many will be about to start the process of editing listings to offer free post. Prices will probably rise in the category to compensate so the reduction in fees should make the change revenue neutral to eBay. The big question is will the discount become permanent at some point in the future?
ChannelAdvisor make a profit and reorg for future
January 23, 2009
ChannelAdvisor are reducing their global workforce by 19%, at the same time as announcing that they reached operating profitability in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Since their last reorganisation in September, at which time they received their final round of investment, the downturn in the economy has worsened and Scot Wingo explained “The restructuring steps we’re taking are designed to better position the company for potentially deteriorating macro economic conditions. These steps will lower our overall operating costs and enable us to weather the current economic storm.”
Scot told us that they intend to put resources into support (it’s easier to keep a customer than to win a new one) and that engineering will also be key, which tends to suggest that the sales teams will bear the brunt of cut backs. They will however continue to maintain an office to support their customers in the UK.
Interestingly Scot also said that ChannelAdvisor will stay current with eBay but not innovate around the platform – focus will be on other routes to market, where the growth is, such as Amazon and Google (who announced their 2008 Q4 results yesterday up 18%).
ChannelAdvisor had $10m revenue in Q4 2008 which was the first quarter of profitability since it was founded in 2001. They currently process $2.6 billion in sales per year on behalf of their merchants.
Earnings call : eBay’s income fell in Q4 2008
January 22, 2009
eBay’s earnings call for Q4 2008 tonight saw the company post its first ever decline in revenue. eBay CEO John Donahoe blamed this on an “almost unprecedented external environment”, where all ecommerce saw negative growth for the first time. Overall revenues for the entire company were down 7% year on year.
The real bad news was for eBay’s Marketplaces businesses, which include the eBay sites, Shopping.com, StubHub, Kijiji and other classified sites, where year on year revenues were down 16%. GMV fell 12% compared to Q4 2007, and was up only 1% against Q3 2008: it was a cold, cold Christmas on eBay this year. Worse still were Motors, with GMV down 30% y/y, and Shopping.com, which declined 50%, blamed on changes made by search engines.
“I’m as frustrated as anyone”
Despite these frankly dismal figures, eBay’s management remain convinced that the track they’re on is the right one. JD pronounced himself “as frustrated as anyone” that the radical changes made during 2008 haven’t produced the results eBay had hoped for, but he blamed this squarely on the economy; it’ll be interesting to see Amazon’s results next week to find out if they were able to buck the trend or not.
There are some glimmers of hope; JD said that sellers with DSRs of 4.8 and above saw their sales grow 17%. As this was presumably at the expense of “disadvantaged” sellers, I’m not sure it says much about the health of the eBay marketplace overall, but it does suggest that one of eBay’s goals, to reward merchants who offer a better buying experience, has been met.
In response to a question, JD avowed that eBay is “still committed to individual small business sellers”. eBay has “no stated goals to change the seller mix”, but remains committed to having a variety of smaller and larger merchants on the site.
The outlook for 2009 remains upbeat. In a statement, JD said “While the holiday season was tough and competitive, our overall results for 2008 were strong. We will build on our strengths in 2009 while managing our business prudently in the continued challenging environment.”
PayPal
In a pattern we’ve come to expect, PayPal is the jewel in eBay’s crown. 2008 saw off-eBay payments exceed on-eBay payments for the first time; total payment volume grew 14%, and active accounts increased 23% to 70 million. There’s no question that PayPal is doing extremely well, even in the current economic climate, but in response to a question, JD apparently ruled out a spin-off of PayPal, saying that synergies between eBay and PayPal were still good.
Skype
Asked a similar question about Skype, however, and he seemed to hint that a sell-off might be on the cards in the medium term. “Synergies are minimal” between Skype and the rest of the portfolio, so eBay could be selling. Skype had a good quarter, with 35 million new users added (just how many of those are brand new to Skype, I guess we’ll never know) and revenues of $145 million, up 26% y/y. SkypeOut minutes (which are pay-for) increased 61% y/y, driven by particularly good performance in Asia. I think perhaps it’s time for someone to make more of Skype than eBay really seems to know how to do.
More info
eBay Ink’s summary of the call
Press release (with lots of numbers)
Call recording, with slides
Price changes no longer affect Best Match
January 21, 2009
eBay UK has said that from next month, changes in price will no longer affect the Best Match placement of Buy It Now items listed on the site.
The change was announced in an email sent out from eBay/PayPal account managers to some top sellers, and will be implemented from 2nd February. We’d obviously expect an official announcement for everyone before then, and I’ll update this post when it appears.
From the week commencing 2nd February, sellers will be able to increase or decrease their prices without affecting their recent sales score in Best Match. It’s now possible to change prices even on listings which have had sales, so this could be a useful way to boost your recent sales score: start off multiple item listings at a lower price to encourage quick sales, and then increase later once you have the sales to boost your position in search.
Changes to item title, category and item condition (new with/without tags, used etc.) will continue to affect Best Match standing.
Remove listing features on GTCs
As of 3rd February, sellers will be able to remove listing features (e.g. subtitle, Featured First) from Good Til Cancelled listings, even if they have had sales. Again, this should make it possible to boost your recent sales score for Best Match by piling on the features at the start of the listing, but removing them later on.
It hasn’t been clarified how this will affect fees: if you’ve bought a feature for 30 days but remove it after 15, don’t count on getting half your fee back. This is something I’d expect eBay staff to clarify shortly, so I’ll update this if we find out.
Free P&P ‘could’ boost Best Match score
eBay have reiterated their slightly mysterious statement that “free P&P could boost your exposure in Best Match”. From 27th January, sellers in media categories will have capped P&P prices, and all sellers must specify at least one domestic postage price. Sellers currently have the facility to edit postage costs even on listings which have sales through the SYI form and Turbo Lister; the same functionality will be added to Selling Manager and SMP in the next couple of months.
My eBay classic retired, new My eBay rolled out
January 20, 2009
Be prepared for a bit of a shock next time you log into eBay, it’s been announced around the world (although not in the UK) that My eBay Beta is about to become the default for all users. Today the old or “classic” version is set to be retired for good.
Back in August we took a first look at the new My eBay Beta and found it good for buyers but lacking in functionality for sellers, but many of our complaints addressed with added functionality. There are a few differences worth calling out:
Best Offers
Items with outstanding Best Offers aren’t as visible as in the old version. Whereas they’d be highlighted at the top of the selling tab in the classic eBay, in the new version they only appear in “Selling Reminders” on the “All Selling” summary view. If you’re on the “Selling Tab” you don’t get selling reminders and so won’t see any prompts to accept, decline or make a counter offer.
Even in Selling Reminders Best Offers could be handled better, if you counter offer to a buyer it still displays as “1 item with offers from buyers”. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to respond just to find out I’m waiting for the buyer to make a decision.
Unsold Items
Another major display change to be aware of is with unsold items. The quantity displayed will now be the starting 
quantity, regardless how many items have been sold on a listing. In the classic version of My eBay the unsold item view displayed the quantity remaining when the listing ended. It’s a minor change, but a frustrating one for those who rely on these numbers for stock control.
Sort Options
The old My eBay was highly configurable with sort options for almost every attribute displayed. The new My eBay is severely limited with sorting limited to just the Watchers, Bids, Price and Time left columns.
In the past I’ve used sorts such as for highest/lowest shipping charges, to look for listings with outstanding questions to answer, or even available quantity. That’s no longer possible which makes managing your eBay listings that little bit more difficult, and TurboLister that little bit more attractive.
The biggest change facing most buyer and sellers is that the focus of the new My eBay shifts to the listing title rather than the User ID. This is somewhat perturbing at first although in fairness I soon got used to it when using the Beta.
Currently those who use Selling Manager Pro will escape the worst of the changes, but we’ve managed to get a sneaky preview (shown left) of what the new SMP tabs will look like when they get a minor makeover in the near future.
If you’ve been using the new My eBay let us know what you think of it. If you’re still using My eBay classic today is the last day it’ll be available on many eBay sites.
L’Oréal charity auctions on eBay
January 19, 2009
L’Oréal, the French perfume company, are honouring Hollywood’s most talented women with a collection of compacts, designed by Carelle.
For each of award ceremonies – the Golden Globes, Sundance Film Festival, Screen Actors Guild Awards, Red Carpet Compact and Tribeca Film Festival – L’Oréal will present an award and then auction an identical limited edition Carelle designed compact, on eBay, to raise funds for Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.
It’s no surprise that a company such as L’Oréal would use eBay for high profile charity auctions, nor that they’d use the auctions as a chance to plug their About Me page to plug their entire range of products.
What is a surprise is that L’Oréal have chosen to work with eBay at the same time as they’re suing them in several European countries having claimed that up to 60% of perfumes sold using its brand names on eBay are fakes.
Killzone 2 for the PS3 pre-release on eBay
January 17, 2009
If you’re an avid gamer and liked Killzone than you’re probably hyped about the release of Killzone 2 for the Playstation 3 which is due for release at the end of February.
No need to wait that long though, some one has been a little naughty and is auctioning a pre-release not for resale press kit containing Killzone 2, on eBay.
The auction description says “The pack includes artwork and descriptions of characters and weapons featured in the game, as well as an additional disc packed with artwork and an information sheet about setting up the game for online play. The game itself is a pre-production disc from December which is over 99% complete code (the entire game is on the disc)”
The listing has been live since just before lunch time today and bidding is already up to £205.00. I’m interested to see if this one gets pulled and if not what the final price will be.
How a bottle of wine can fill a restaurant
January 17, 2009
I went out with friends for a meal last night to a restaurant that I haven’t visited for months. It’s way out in the country and normally I’d expect no trouble in getting a table without a booking but that’s no longer the case.
They’ve recognised that the current financial situation isn’t encouraging spending and have a whole raft of incentives in place and it’s winning them business – discounts on meals, £10 off a bottle of wine when two dine, set menu for £5 (and still take the wine offer so two meals plus their cheapest wine comes to just £11.50)! When you leave they offer a card with a link to review the restaurant online with a cash prize draw – that ensures they’ll get your email address for future promotional marketing.
They may not be making as much profit from each customer, but the restaurant was packed with a queue for tables. That led me to wonder what promotions online sellers can offer to attract buyers.
The most obvious are coupons, gifts and free shipping. Coupons aren’t easy to offer on eBay, but for website owners to mail a money off voucher to all previous customers is simple. For sellers in the US both coupons from eBay themselves and Microsoft Live cash back promotions are working well.
Getting something for free needn’t cost a lot. Book sellers could offer a free bookmark with all orders (in fact many book sellers already ship a free branded book mark with all orders anyway – tell your buyers you’re going to in advance!). Anything that you can send with orders for free sets you apart from your competition.
Free shipping is contentious, sellers don’t like to feel they’re paying fees to eBay on shipping, but there’s no getting away from the fact that buyers like it and it’s becoming a defacto standard. Everything from Play.com ships for free. John Lewis have one of the simplest postage policies ever which reads “Standard delivery is FREE on everything you order from John Lewis, either in our shops or online.”
Like the cut price bottle of wine that fills a restaurant free shipping is worth considering on all products and it’s imperative that sellers experiment with shipping offers to keep ahead of their competition.
What incentives are you offering to keep buyers buying from you, either on eBay or on your website?
Recommend a friend to vzaar to win a Nikon camera
January 16, 2009
Want to win a Nikon Digital Camera? The guys at vzaar have started a “Recommend a Friend” program and are are running a draw with a Nikon Coolpix camera as the prize.
To be entered into a draw all you need to is to recommend a friend, business or eBay seller that you think would be interested in hearing from vzaar.
The competition will stay open a month and the form to recommend friends is on the vzaar website. The winner will be notified on the 16th February.
eBay charity donations up 20% in 2008
January 15, 2009
Last year eBay buyers and sellers helped raise over $36m for charity which is up almost 20% on the previous year. Despite (or maybe because of!) the tough economic times sellers are increasing their charity donations with almost 1.5 million people supporting their favourite good causes.
There are really two basic reasons for sellers to use eBay for Charity (or Giving Works as it’s known in the US) – firstly because they genuinely believe in the work the charity performs and wish to assist. There are thousands of eBay sellers who only sell on the site to raise funds to assist worthy causes.
The other reason is because it makes business sense. By listing an item with a percentage donated to charity the item gets more exposure through promotions on the site – auctions often reach a higher final value and charity generated page views result in a greater sell through rate for fixed price items.
I have to admit that I use eBay for charity for the later reason, although the charities I chose to support are for the former. For me it’s purely a business decision to use eBay for charity to increase profits, but the causes that benefit are ones I wholeheartedly support.
Congratulations to the many staff who work for eBay Giving Works, eBay for Charity and Missionfish for making the program such a success. Without them eBay buyers and sellers would never be able to raise the enormous sums that they do.
Clarification of duplicate listing policy
January 15, 2009
From 27th January eBay UK will begin to enforce the new Duplicate Listing Policy which limits sellers to a single fixed price listing and no more than 15 listings in total for each physical product that they stock.
Many sellers have been asking exactly what is considered a duplicate. Essentially if the product is different (eg size) then it should be highlighted in the item title. For myself this could include products such as used printers with different page counts.
It’s a little less clear how to handle products which fit multiple items. e.g. a battery may fit a watch as well as a hearing aid, a spark plug may fit a Ford Ka, A Ford Mondeo and an S Type Jaguar and there simply isn’t room in the 55 character title of an eBay listing to fit this information.
eBay have confirmed that they will allow multiple listings of the same item to cater for fitment across a range of devices/products. Sellers will be allowed to list a total of 15 identical listings, with a maximum of one Buy-It-Now listing in each variation of the listing. This in effect means a seller could have 15 fixed price listings if each was in the form “XYZ widget to fit ABC device”.
Sellers should be aware that even though the fitment relaxation of the Duplicate Listing Policy allows for multiple fixed price listings there is still a limit of one per title and 15 per physical product. Launching 15 of each variant (even if only one of each variant is a fixed price listing) will not be allowed.
With just 12 days left before the policy comes into effect now is the time to cast an eye over your listings to ensure that you’re compliant or will be by the 27th.
eBay announces new eBay shop design
January 14, 2009
eBay.com have announced an overhaul of eBay shops (or eBay stores as they’re known in the US). eBay shops haven’t changed significantly for many years and the face lift by brings the design more in line with the rest of eBay, which makes it less confusing to buyers when they land in an eBay shop.
Key enhancements are:
eBay.com sellers can preview their eBay store in the new format and opt in if they like what they see. All users will be upgraded some time after the end of March, but expect to see the new shops starting to appear on the site as users opt in. Anyone opening a new eBay.com shop will automatically be opted in to the new shops experience.
One of the major changes eBay are addressing with the new eBay shops is to bring them into line with their Site Interference Policy. Up until now sellers have been able to heavily customise their eBay shop using CSS and JS but any customisation conflicting with the policy will now be blocked.
eBay will also make some changes such as blocking the use of stores tags (e.g. {eBayStoresItemList}, {eBayStoresItemShowcase}, eBayStoresItem}, {eBayStoresItemDetail} and {eBayPromo}.) from the shop header.
If you have heavily customised your eBay shop you’ll need to preview it and make any changes needed to bring it into full compliance prior to opting in to the upgraded shops.
New format Frooition Shop
The changes to bring the rather dated eBay shops solution out of the 1990’s is long over due. Sellers will benefit from better merchandising of their products and with the new shops search buyers will find it easier to find the products their looking for.
It’s expected that similar changes will be announced in the UK, with sellers available to upgrade to the new shops experience in the near future.
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