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Who will have the most traffic - eBay or Amazon?

As someone who has bought on Amazon but never sold on the site the webinar hosted by Amazon’s William Cook and ChannelAdvisor threw up some interesting tips for getting started.

Which sellers do Amazon want?

Amazon have fewer categories than eBay so look for sellers who can supply specific product lines. For the Clothing, Shoes, Jewellery and Watches sellers need to be authorised with Amazon (which takes about two weeks). The Consumer Electronics, Home, Toy, Baby, Tools, Sporting Goods and Video Games categories are open to all sellers without prior authorisation.

What do Amazon look for in a seller?

Amazon are looking for for sellers who can provide a range of products to expand their own selection and provide availability when Amazon are out of stock. 31% of products sold on Amazon are now sold by third party merchants. They also hold sellers to high standards both for the product information and for customer service. Amazon also stipulate that prices must be the same as on a seller’s own website - they don’t want buyers to find the same product cheaper elsewhere.

There are some technical requirements - products listed on the site must have EAN/UPC codes (bar codes) along with high quality data (descriptions) and product shots (white background with no text or water marks).

The detail page and the “Buy Box”

It’s important to realise that on Amazon no one “owns” a description. The item detail page is created either by Amazon or by the first seller to list a particular product. From then on all other sellers offering that item for sale will use the same product details and pictures. Whilst it may be frustrating to take quality product shots and create an item description simply to see another seller listing against it, that’s simply the way Amazon works.

The buy box is the area of the detail page where Amazon highlight the seller (or Amazon themselves) who is deemed to have the best offer for a particular product. All other sellers will have their offers listed from links just below the buy box. Generally to win the buy box a seller needs the best price and availability, which is markedly different to eBay where items at the top of Best Match often aren’t the cheapest available on the site.

What fees do Amazon charge?

Amazon operate on a revenue share which includes all of the costs for payment processing, fraud and driving traffic to the site. There is a flat cost of £25/month and then a percentage which varies according to product category:
Consumer Electronics 7%
Tools 12%
Jewellery 25%
Everything Else 15%
There are no other fees to pay including no insertion or listing fees.

How much traffic does Amazon have?

Last Christmas Amazon saw a spike in traffic to over 14 million unique visitors in the month of December. During the busiest selling month of the year they virtually drew level with eBay for traffic, and there’s no reason to suggest they won’t do the same this year. If you’re not already selling on Amazon with the exception of the toys category it’s not too late to start selling on the site.

Amazon is a remarkable success story, as one of the few original .com sites to survive their sales are still growing. It’s a site that all eBay sellers should consider as their second online presence, especially if they don’t already have their own website. The big question is will they have more traffic than eBay this Christmas and which site will produce the most sales for sellers?

Top tips for trading on Amazon UK

ChannelAdvisor are holding a webinar in conjunction with Amazon.co.uk, focusing how third party sellers can take maximum advantage for Christmas sales via the Amazon Merchants@ online marketplace. The seminar will be hosted by Amazon.co.uk’s William Cook and ChannelAdvisor’s Max Leisten, and held on Thursday, October 30th at 2pm.

The webinar will detail all aspects of trading on Amazon from registration and listing processes through to best practices and advanced selling strategies.

They have also published “10 Christmas Strategies for Winning on Amazon” which you can download for free.

If you’re not already selling on Amazon it’s time to take a serious look at the site. Amazon is growing rapidly (41% growth in Q2 2008) and the run up to Christmas is the perfect time to maximise sales across all ecommerce platforms.

Amazon UK: spend a fiver, get free delivery

Amazon UK have cut their threshold for free delivery from £15 to £5. “Super saver delivery” allows UK-based customers buying eligible products to elect a free-but-slow delivery service: eligible items are those purchased directly from Amazon, or shipped by them through the Fulfilled by Amazon service. The Telegraph reports that 90% of Amazon UK’s sales will now be delivered free of charge.

The MD of Amazon UK, Brian McBride, said the change was “to get people lifted for Christmas. Times are tough out there and this will come as a welcome bonus for people.” It will certainly raise the stakes for Amazon’s competitors in the run up to the holidays, and could make FbA a much more attractive proposition for many merchants too.

Last Call: Small Business 2.0

Small Business 2.0, the event for small businesses that want more from the web, is happening this Saturday and there are a few tickets still available. In a week that’s seen extraordinary economic events and, perhaps more importantly, seen many eBay sellers confused by changes to search, there’s never been a better time to explore the possibilities of the net.

On Saturday, at the New Connaught Rooms in London’s Covent Garden, attendees will have the opportunity to quiz eBay executives, meet folks from Amazon, Microsoft, PayPal and dozens of others. Needless to say, I’ll be there as well as TameBay’s very own Sue and Chris. If you’ve been wondering whether it’s time to diversify your ecommerce activities, improve your website or have a go at SEO, there’s something for you on the day.

You can register here. And if you enter this promo code, you won’t have to shell out: free.

And because it’s Saturday night,  we certainly can’t rule out a few nourishing beverages after the show. So come and join us for pint at the pub across the road.

High powered lasers to be banned on eBay & Amazon

Both eBay and Amazon are to ban sales of high powered green laser pens, according the BBC 5 Live, Donal MacIntyre programme.

There have been reports of lasers being used to blind both commercial airline pilots and police helicoptors. Laser under 1mW are considered safe for use and are ideal for use in presentation, but some laser pointers for sale on eBay are up to 240 times as powerful, one listing on eBay even offers a laser supplied with balloons for testing - the laser beam is so powerful it simply shining it at a balloon will burst it.

The Donal MacIntyre programme is due to be aired on Radio 5 Live at 7pm this evening.

Amazon to attend Small Business 2.0

Small Business 2.0, an event for small businesses and online retailers who want to get more from the web in London on October 11th, has recently revealed that Amazon will be joining eBay, Microsoft, BT, Royal Mail and many others and presenting to attendees. Amazon’s Matthew Henderson will be talking about how you can plug in to the fast-growing marketplace which is increasingly popular with disaffected eBay sellers.

New sessions have also been announced including an SEO panel discussion and an ‘eBay Surgery’ Q&A. The eBay panel will include Tamebay’s very own Chris and Sue (who have been too coy to mention it yet). Don’t forget that eBay’s Richard Ambrose and Rafael Orta will also be presenting earlier in the day.

We’re looking forward to a great day, and I hope to see you there. We’ve got a few tickets still left and in a special just for Tamebay readers enter FREE into the registration form and you can come along for nowt.

Amazon, eBay and finding

Amazon and eBay have two quite different solutions to assist buyers to find the product they’re looking for. Up until now eBay have relied on ending soonest, a lottery of which product happens to be at the top of search results at the time the buyer happens to search. Amazon in contrast present just one listing for each product with the best price/availability highlighted to the buyer.

eBay is about to change radically to present products based on Best Match, a complicated algorithm including relevancy, prices, feedback and soon popularity as judged by recent sales. (It’s worth spending five minutes to read eBay’s best match patent). eBay’s biggest issue is how to present the most relevant item a buyer is searching for, out of many instances of the same product.

Amazon’s radically different approach has always made relevancy easy. With only one listing (known as the ‘Detail page’) for each product, price/availability/seller reputation are all that’s needed to present the best item to the buyer. Even here though there are issues such as the way that listings are created.

On Amazon the first person to sell a particular item creates the detail page with the picture and description. The product will be assigned an Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) which all other sellers of the same item will then list against.

In the future other sellers may update the product information, the decision about whether or not to display any changes is processed automatically according to automated business logic known as ‘ASIN Authority’. The information displayed on an Amazon detail page is drawn from multiple seller contributions based on this logic and so the information the buyer sees is a collaboration of different sellers listings.

This ‘Wisdom of the Crowds’ approach brings with it it’s own problems. You may have listed a particular product against an ASIN when another seller with makes edits to the detail page. This could then result in selling an item you don’t possess due to the changes made by another seller. With a large inventory it may not be until buyers start to receive their items that the change is revealed.

Amazon advise that because the product details for an item are drawn from multiple sources, it is your responsibility as a Merchant on Amazon to continually monitor your listings for accuracy.

eBay and Amazon’s approaches to displaying the most relevant items to buyer both have their flaws. In the future eBay’s will rely heavily on displaying listings from the best sellers with the most relevant products, but each seller will be in control of their descriptions and are able to ensure accuracy. Amazon ensure every item detail page for every product has the same information in the same place, but this can produce mis-matched products as contributions from multiple sellers (including Amazon themselves) are rationalised into one detail page.

The next few weeks as eBay roll out 30 day listings with recent sales influencing search results will be interesting. With sellers able to ensure product descriptions are 100%, eBay should have an advantage over Amazon on accuracy. If the search result page produce a similar set of sellers to Amazon’s detail page, ranked on price/availability/seller reputation then buyers finding experience will be much improved.

Amazon requirements for toy selling at Christmas

Sellers who wish to sell in the Toys & Games category on Amazon over the Christmas period will need to meet the seller standards laid down in their Christmas Selling Guidelines.

Amazon will stop accepting new sellers in the Toys & Games category from September 12th, and from November 17th exisiting sellers that don’t meet the following criteria will be unable to sell toys again until the 5th January 2009.

• Seller’s first sale on Amazon.co.uk must be prior to 19/09/2008 (sale does not need to be Toy-specific)
• Seller must have processed and shipped at least 25 orders by 18/10/2008 (orders do not need to be Toy-specific)
• Seller has no greater than 1% defect rate. Order defects will be evaluated for orders placed between 06/07/08 and 04/10/08.

Amazon say “Customers have high expectations for purchases during the festive season. We want to ensure that our sellers in Toys & Games provide high-quality customer experience and that all orders are fulfilled and delivered in a manner that meets or exceeds our customers’ expectations.”

Amazon is performing exceptionally well and is a marketplace eBay sellers should strongly consider, if they’re not already listing on the site. It’s good to see Amazon will be ensuring seller standards remain impeccable during the holiday selling season. If you will be offering toys for sale it’s time to make sure your account is set up and ready to take full advantage of the Christmas selling season.

Amazon launch 3 payment services

Amazon have today launched Amazon Payments to enable sellers to accept payments from buyers using their Amazon log on credentials.

Amazon Flexible Payments actually launched in limited beta back in August 2007 and Amazon have rolled this in with their new product offerings which are Amazon Simple Pay and Checkout by Amazon.

Checkout by Amazon allows buyers to pay with their Amazon log on, but the seller has to check their Seller Central account to verify payment has been completed. It enables buyer to use Amazon’s patented one click checkout to complete their purchase and provides sellers with tools such as shipping calculators, tax rates and custom promotions for customers.

Amazon Simple Pay is a cut down payments system which redirects buyers to the Amazon Payments website to complete the transaction. There are simply cut and paste HTML code to enable sellers to get up and running quickly and easily but without the additional features of Checkout by Amazon.

Fees for both Simple pay and Checkout vary between 2.5% - 1.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, but payments under $10.00 incur a rate of 5% plus $0.05.

Flexible Payment Services which is now out of beta is designed for web developers for full integration using Amazon API calls.

It will be interesting to see how many merchants start offering Amazon Payments, there’s still time to add it to ecommerce sites before the Christmas selling season begins. At this point Amazon payments appears to be limited to the US. Although Amazon have been unable to comment at the time of writing, I’d expect it to roll out for the UK at some point in the future.

So will you be adding Amazon payments to your own website? Do you mind Amazon gaining access to your sales data which they undoubtedly would? One thing is certain - the more payment options that you can offer a buyer the less likely they are to abandon a shopping cart at checkout and more than 80 million potential customers already have Amazon account.

Amazon, Etsy, eBay and the eCommerce Land Grab

With much doom and gloom pervading comment about eBay, it’s easy to forget that ecommerce is still a frontier. The IMRG forecasts year on year ecommerce growth (in Britain, Europe, America and Asia) all the way to 2012. And even the very real threat of recession in the UK and US doesn’t seem likely to dent that. Even though eBay is languishing, Amazon has proved that the old guard can still find accelerating growth. The ecommerce land grab is still underway and there’s everything to play for.

With that in mind, an article from Y Combinator (a respected venture capitalist firm) called ‘Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund‘ makes for interesting reading. Not only does the piece prove that there’s still money out there for winning ideas but the comments regarding online auctions will be familiar to eBay sellers:

“Online auctions have more potential than most people currently realize. Auctions seem boring now because EBay is doing a bad job, but is still powerful enough that they have a de facto monopoly. Result: stagnation. But I suspect eBay could now be attacked on its home territory, and that this territory would, in the hands of a successful invader, turn out to be more valuable than it currently appears. As with dating, however, a startup that wants to do this has to expend more effort on their strategy for cracking the monopoly than on how their auction site will work.”

Y Combinator thinks that eBay’s dominance can and should be challenged. But it’s the belief that only the monopoly stands in eBay’s favour that should be most disquieting. eBay doesn’t have brilliant marketing, a superior product or a vibrant culture of innovation to protect it from an onslaught, it would seem.

One company that certainly can’t be criticised for lacking innovation is the crafts marketplace etsy, which has been in the news this week. Chad Dickerson, a former Yahoo executive, is joining etsy as Chief Technical Officer. Much of the coverage, mindful of Yahoo’s current difficulties, make much of this being a blow to Yahoo. And while that’s true, it’s also a huge boost for etsy: they’ve hired a talented operator from a big firm and that can only a be a vote of confidence. Even before this, etsy has been encroaching onto eBay’s territory and doing it with style, inventiveness and generating not a little admiration.

What does all this mean? Whilst eBay is struggling to find a little bit of ecommerce growth, expending a great deal of energy tinkering with feedback, search and fees, Amazon is successfully taking a good chunk of the fixed price action and attracting professional eBay sellers. Auctions are, it seems, up for grabs and yet eBay isn’t defending this flank and is concentrating on the faster growing But It Now business. Critically, eBay seems to be losing the battle: Amazon is growing faster than ecommerce and eBay isn’t. As for etsy, they’re a shining example of a specialist site taking some of eBay’s action and looking at a bright future.

eBay Inc. might be enjoying great results from Skype and PayPal but meagre growth in the marketplace business should be sounding alarm bells. eBay’s challenge is not just defending existing territory but squaring up to the frontier again and aggressively joining the land grab. Regrettably nothing in the Q2 results, report or investor call suggested that was the plan.

Dan Wilson is a writer and consultant and the bestselling author of ‘Make Serious Money on eBay UK’.

Amazon increase international sales 47%

Amazon reported their 2008 Q2 results last night confirming that sales are accelerating with what looks set to be a record breaking Christmas selling season.

Amazon sales are growing faster Internationally (47%) than North America (35%) and it’s not just traditional media products driving the growth. Whilst media grew 31% Amazon’s consumer electronics and general merchandise grew 58%. A third of items sold on Amazon are now not the media products Amazon are famous for.

Third party selling is growing on Amazon and almost 1 in 3 products sold is from a seller rather than Amazon themselves. Amazon emphasised in their investor conference call that many large sellers use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) which keeps service levels high as Amazon themselves handle the shipping. Jeff Bezos said “When sellers move into fulfillment by Amazon they end up selling more…. a third party item can be married together and put in a box with an Amazon retail item”.

It’s also worth pointing out that if you use FBA then Amazon will also ship products to customers for off-Amazon sales, which can include your own website and even eBay sales.

If you’re already selling on Amazon have you seen the same increases on sales compared to last year? If you’re not an Amazon seller will you start selling on the platform by Christmas?

Pixmania, Amazon and PayPal attending Insite

Pixmania, Amazon and PayPal have all been confirmed for the ChannelAdvisor Insite events taking place around the country this summer. All three companies will make a short presentation and then host a round table where interested sellers will have the opportunity to talk directly three of the biggest names in ecommerce.

Amazon sales are growing at a fast rate than any other marketplace and many sellers listing on Amazon are seeing better results than on eBay. PIXmania are due to announce news on their PIXplace marketplace. PIXmania boast 15 million customers a month visiting the site. PIXmania is a part of DSG (Dixons Stores Group) and looks likely to be a great new venue for many sellers in the run up to Christmas, I’ll be interested to hear their plans on opening up the site for business sellers.

If you want to talk to Amazon, PIXmania or PayPal the Insite conferences will be a great chance to talk direct to the management of each company. The first Insite takes place in London on the 21st August with further dates in Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester.

US start-up takes on eBay

  A new startup is being billed as the marketplace that will rival eBay. Launched in public beta today, though apparently only open to US residents, Wigix is aiming for the Buy It Now, new items end of the market. The site, whose name stands for “want it get it exchange”, offers a stock exchange-type price matching mechanism, where buyers and sellers can add their desired prices for items, and the system will notify both parties when there is a match. Wigix will offer a ticker showing recent transactions and prices, hoping to entice browsers to become sellers.

No fees on items under $25

As has become the norm with eBay competitors, there is no fee to list on Wigix. Items sold for under $25 are fee-free even when sold. From $25 up, there is a downwards sliding scale for sellers:

• $1.50 for a sale $25 - $100;
• $1.50 + 2% of the amount above $100 for a sale $100 - $1,000;
• $21 + 1% of the amount over $1,000 for a sale of more than $1,000.

Buyers will - unusually - pay $1.50 per item themselves. This pricing structure obviously tends towards the higher end of the market.

But members also have the opportunity to earn money from the site, without needing to sell a thing themselves. Those who add new products into Wigix’s Amazon-style inventory, will earn 5% of the site’s transaction fees when items are sold from that listing. There’s a great opportunity for someone with a large database of products there…

Members can also become category experts, overseeing product submissions, blogging, posting on forums and dealing with other members’ queries: creating community around their categories. For a fairly hefty time committment, these members will earn 1% of the revenue from their category.

PowerSellers wanted

eBay PowerSellers will be able to import their catalogues into Wigix, and they say that from July, the site will offer store fronts.

I must admit, I’m more impressed with Wigix than with pretty much any “the next eBay” I’ve ever seen. Concentrating on higher-end consumer products rather than trying to take on the breadth of eBay’s marketplace, looks like it may attract experts in the relevent categories, as well as serious buyers and sellers. It’s a shame they’re limiting it to US residents at the moment, but perhaps that will change in time.

“Selling on the River” : Amazon for eBay sellers

Many eBay sellers are worried about keeping all their eggs in one basket, and looking to expand beyond just selling on eBay. One venue that often comes highly recommended is Amazon, but how do you get started? eBay has a thriving community around it, with experienced sellers happy to give newbies all the advice they need; there’s nothing similar for Amazon. Enter Selling on ‘The River’.

Selling on ‘The River’” is an ebook written by eBay and Amazon seller and blogger Steve Lindhorst. It guides eBay sellers through the basics of starting out selling on Amazon, looking particularly at the differences between the two sites, and how eBay sellers can leverage skills they’ve already learned selling on eBay, to ensure their success on Amazon.

Steve particularly concentrates on the differences between eBay and Amazon: differing types of seller accounts, for example, and how they control your activity on the site. eBay sellers who are used to just writing a description and getting on with selling may find Amazon’s catalogue model, with Product Details covering both your own items and competitors’, confusing, but Steve provides step by step instructions on adding a new product to Amazon’s inventory, and on using Condition Notes to distinguish yourself amongst the competition. Pricing has always been one of the things that has put me off selling on Amazon: I see dozens of books listed at 1p, and I wonder how anyone ever makes any money. Steve covers this again in great detail, discussing pricing strategy in a realistic way that many sellers - not just those on Amazon - would do well to read.

Selling on ‘The River’ can get just about anyone selling on Amazon. Actually, if you’ve never sold a thing online anywhere, this ebook is still exactly what you need to get started. Clear and straightforward text is matched with plenty of screen shots, and there are even a couple of videos to take you through listing processes. I’d strongly recommend it to anyone even thinking about selling on Amazon.

Amazon fix for eBay DSRs on international shipping

Sebastian Gunningham, Senior Vice President, Amazon Merchant Services gave an overview of Amazon services this morning at Catalyst. In truth there was nothing earth-shattering in his presentation for anyone familiar with Amazon services - Selling on Amazon, Webstores, Enterprise Stores, Product Ads and Fulfillment by Amazon.

However there was, as is often the case, one gem of an idea that made sitting through a sales pitch worthwhile. Sebastian made the point that Fulfillment by Amazon is an ideal way for a merchant to expand overseas.

Fulfillment by Amazon allows sellers to ship stock in bulk to an Amazon warehouse, and from then on Amazon with distribute it when sold. They’ll even ship product which isn’t actually sold on an Amazon site so the merchant could even list on eBay or their own website.

The service is available in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan. With 500 US merchants listening to the presentation I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of them ship container loads of product into Amazon in the UK. With the advantageous £/$ exchange rate it enables them to establish a UK presence with no infrastructure investment.

Equally for UK sellers who want to take advantage of the US market placing product in Amazon’s US warehouse would cut shipping times to days instead of weeks. If your dispatch eBay DSR is being impacted this is a real opportunity to exploit overseas markets with prompt international delivery. With eBay DSRs becoming more and more critical this is an option worth considering.

Time to book for ChannelAdvisor Catalyst

There’s been quite a lot of interest in ChannelAdvisor and Amazon lately, and for those that are serious about finding out more tomorrow (Friday 29th) is the last day for booking for ChannelAdvisor Catalyst at the discounted price of £129.00. From then on the price rises to £179.00

Not only will Amazon and Play.com be represented, but it’s been revealed that Bill Alexander, Managing Director of Red Letter Days will be their to talk about building a brand for your business. It promises to be a fantastic event with the opportunity to talk to the speakers in person at the Dinner Cruise on the Thames which is included in the booking fee.

Sue and I both intend to attend Catalyst in the UK so let us know if you’re going, it would be great to meet you. I’ll also be in Pinehurst NC for Catalyst US and look forward to meeting some of our US readers. Both the UK and US events are looking to be superb!

How Amazon produced a tenfold increase in business

I can’t help but be impressed with the recent stories I hear about Amazon sales. Almost every seller that uses Amazon as part of their sales channel has stories of hitting the “Buy Box” and being instantly flooded with orders until they run out of stock. Unlike most other channels where orders come in a steady flow Amazon is the one venue where, if you get everything right, your biggest problem will be how to despatch the deluge of orders.

ChannelAdvisor have just produced a video case study of Normans Musical Instruments which tells the story from a lack lustre website, to discovering eBay and using shopping comparison sites. They finally branched out to selling on Amazon which they describe as “almost impossible to cope” with the amount of orders generated.

Having generated a tenfold increase in sales Normans is now looking to the future with more reliance than ever on their online strategies.

The Amazon opportunities

Amazon is the name at the forefront of many sellers thoughts at the moment. Sales are up, everyone is talking about it, and of course news of the strike supposedly taking place this week is prompting debate on the best sites other than eBay.

ChannelAdvisor’s latest video newsletter tells just why you should be interested in Amazon with a personal testimonial from a client as to how powerful the Amazon Buy Box really is.

ChannelAdvisor add Amazon merchants@ support

It’s been a busy week for ChannelAdvisor, first they announce the opening of a new Product Development and Business Support Centre in Limerick and today they announce the launch of ChannelAdvisor support for Merchants@ on Amazon UK.

Merchants@ is Amazon’s third party sellers platform which allows invited merchants to compete with other merchants, and even Amazon itself, for the main “Add To Shopping Basket” button on the site (often referred to as the “Buy Box”).

Winning Amazon’s Buy Box, where customers can add products to their shopping basket has the potential to dramatically increase sales when compared to listing products on the traditional Amazon marketplace alone.

Normally Amazon reserve this prime selling position for themselves, but if Amazon are out of stock or a merchant has better pricing they can become Amazon’s recommended merchant for that product.

ChannelAdvisor have integrated support for Amazon Merchants@ support in their MarketplaceAdvisor Premium software solution. Twenty three of their clients will be using ChannelAdvisor’s technology to expand their business onto the Amazon Merchants@ program from today. If you’re interested in finding out more you can contact ChannelAdvisor on 0800 345 7504 and Amazon.co.uk regarding the Merchants@ program on 0208 636 9252

eBay UK was top Christmas shopping site

A little bit of good news amongst all the speculation for eBay today: eBay was the most popular shopping site again this Christmas for UK shoppers, and was the nation’s fourth most-visited site on Christmas Day itself.

Figures released last week showed that Amazon beat eBay.com in the US for the first time ever. What ought to be read into this depends on your point of view, with ex-seller Randy Smythe believing that Amazon is just better, while optimistic shareholder OnlyeBay thinks that the rise in the use of BIN is responsible for the fall in eBay’s traffic.

Accounting solution for Amazon & eBay

Platformone have announced the latest version of Tradebox Finance Manager which has the ability to import orders from Amazon, as well as eBay. Tradebox links to both your eBay and Amazon sales and automatically updates Sage accounting software with your sales at the click of a button.

Stephen Bales, Director of Platform One, said, “The ability to import orders from Amazon addresses the needs of many of our existing customers, who sell across both eBay and Amazon. The next step is to roll out the subsequent version of Tradebox which will have the ability to import orders from websites”.

Many eBay sellers are starting to discover Amazon as a second selling venue, and for many it’s even more successful than eBay. Managing sales accross multiple venues is always a challenge but Tradebox makes this simple. It can download your sales from eBay and import sales from Amazon, and even update Amazon when you mark the orders as despatched. For volume sellers accounting is made simple with customer records created automatically, invoices generated for each transaction, stock management and of course VAT liability for each product and buyer calculated accurately.

On top of this Tradebox also captures and holds data from the online sales platform and provides the user with a raft of analysis, graphs and reports of their online sales.

If you’re looking to automate your accounts in 2008, or are already a Sage user it’s time to take a look at Tradebox to simplify your finances.

It’s an EasySell on Amazon for casual sellers

Amazon.com has invaded another bit of eBay’s space with a new initiative to allow casual sellers to sell books, CDs, video games and DVDs via their consignment program. EasySell is an extension of the “Fulfillment by Amazon” (FBA) program, where sellers ship their items to Amazon, and Amazon in turn ship them to buyers.

It seems an odd time of year to be starting up a new sales program, especially in the face of some pretty bad criticism of the FBA program by professional sellers. But Amazon are offering a $15 gift certificate to new sellers even before anything’s been sold; if you’re only clearing out your own old junk, rather than needing to turn a profit, it might be enough of an incentive for you to ship them a box of stuff. And of course that gift certificate keeps the cash in-house for Amazon.

Sellers are charged $1 per item if priced under $25, and $2 per item if over $25, plus a weight handling fee of $0.40 per pound. Items remaining unsold after 60 days attract a storage fee, or sellers can elect to have them disposed of.

Though FBA is currently available to UK sellers, EasySell is apparently US only. For now, at least.

Story shamelessly nicked from Auctionbytes.

The eBay story on BBC Radio 2

Last night on BBC2 a programme presented by Kate Thornton traced the story of eBay and online selling with the giants eBay and Amazon. It dispels the rumour that Pierre Omidyar started eBay for his wife to trade Pez dispensers with the truth that he wanted to create an online trading site for ordinary people.

Pierre wrote the code for “Auctionweb” the original name for eBay over a holiday weekend. His first listing was for a laser pointer he’d bought as a cat toy. When it was broken he listed it on Auctionweb for $1 and it then sold for $14. The buyer… a collector of broken laser pointers! He announced Auctionweb on online forums and users started to visit the Auctionweb site which launched with just a dozen items listed on the first day.

When Meg Whitman joined eBay it was still called Auctionweb and since then the site has changed immensely including the name eBay. At that time the site was still black and grey and even the original eBay logo lacked the bright primary colours so familiar to eBay users today. The first Auctionweb logo was simply a white to black gradient with the words Auction web.

It’s a far cry from the colourful feature rich eBay site so familiar to millions around the world today.

The program covers everything from unusual items sold on the site to celebrities who have traded and even been kicked off eBay. David Baddiel explains how he got banned from eBay when his emails ended up in his junk email folder. The program also covers some of the more common scams on eBay warning how to stay safe on the site. Meg Whitman explained that most sales are perfectly reputable and safe.

Amazon is featured as the only real alternative to eBay, unbelievably when they started Amazon had a beeper that went off every time a sale occurred on the site. That soon had to be disconnected as Amazon employees were driven mad by constant beeping! Unlike eBay the programme highlights that it took years for Amazon to make a profit, eBay was profitable from the start. Richard Ambrose explained how dumping their own payment system Billpoint and buying PayPal drove the business even faster.

Pierre Omidyar became an overnight billionaire and the richest 31 year old in the world. He quietly stepped down from the day to day running of the eBay business and since 2004 has spent his time giving his wealth away though the Omidyar Network.

You can listen again to the first three programmes in the series including “SHOP TILL THEY DROP: eBay and the online retail revolution” on the BBC Radio 2 website. If you’re wondering what to do for your lunch hour it’s well worth a listen.

Amazon launch Flexible Payments Service

It’s been rumoured all week, and now it’s official: Amazon have announced the launch of their new Flexible Payments Service. FPS is now in “limited beta”: I’d better say up front that possibilities for those outside the US are currently pretty limited, but nonetheless, this looks like a very interesting product.

“Designed from the ground up specifically for developers”, Amazon Flexible Payments is designed to be a platform upon which individual payment solutions can be built. Buyers use the same login and payment information which they would use on the Amazon site, which should allow the convenience of stored payment information at the same time as offering the security of the Amazon brand. FPS accepts payments through balance transfers within its own system, transfers from bank accounts, and credit cards. Reflecting the different fees charged to Amazon, merchants’ fee structure for each payment type is different: bank transfers are cheaper than credit cards, and balance transfers are cheaper still. Transactions under US$10 have their own fee structure, and a low fixed cost of $0.05 even makes micropayments look like a sensible possibility. For those who want to accept lots of very small payments, these can be aggregated over time to reduce processing fees. There is no set-up or monthly charge for using FPS.

One interesting aspect of FPS is that developers can specify that they take a cut of each transaction: I can imagine a time when ecommerce developers are paid not with an up-front fixed fee, but with a cut of every transaction that goes through a website that they’ve made.

So what does all this mean for eBay sellers? Well… nothing yet. Amazon FPS isn’t a payment method in itself: unlike Paypal, Nochex or even Google Checkout, you can’t just sign up and start taking payments. Nevertheless, it seems inevitable that a payment solution for eBay would be one of the first applications someone would develop. As eBay are still refusing to allow Google Checkout on the site, it seems likely we’ll see a ban on FPS-based applications fairly shortly - and equally likely that, with rates in many cases much lower than Paypal’s - sellers will fight to be allowed to use those applications. Watch this space: we live in interesting times.

Many thanks to Ina Steiner for the heads-up.

ChannelAdvisor Insite Conference booking now open

ChannelAdvisor have announced the 2007 Insite Conference dates for the UK, and if you haven’t attended previously and are serious about building your ecommerce business then I’d highly recommend attending.

The events will focus on areas key to expanding your business both on and off eBay. The agenda covers topics such as eBay, Amazon Seller Central, Google Checkout, PayPal Express Checkout, Paid Search Marketing and Shopping Comparison. There’s time for networking over lunch and a further networking reception (with drinks) in the evening.

ChannelAdvisor hold many events throughout the course of the year including online seminars and the annual Catalyst Conference. The Insite Conferences are designed for small groups to encourage networking and group discussions. Spread around the country in Bristol, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and Dublin there’ll be an event near you.

I attended Insite last year and it was a throughly productive day. All too often it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day running of your business. It’s well worth setting aside just one day this year to review the industry and how you can move your business forward. If there’s just one event that you attend this year’s Insite would be a great choice to make a positive impact on your business.

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