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With the announcement that Lorrie Norrington is leaving eBay (covered here), there has been a lot of speculation in the press, Wall St., and seller community.  This is one of those rare times where everyone in the eBay ecosystem gets a chance to armchair quarterback and since we're well into football season, I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring.

Why outside?

The first topic that is being widely discussed and speculated is eBay's statement that they are looking externally for a replacement. That blurb wasn't in the official eBay press release, but:

• NY Times: "EBay said that it will conduct an external search for her successor."
• Bloomberg: "…and that it’s looking outside the company for a successor."

So evidently in conversations with reporters eBay was pretty explicit in stating they are looking outside the company for a replacement.

What problem(s) need to be solved?

Before we begin our eBay fantasy league draft, let's think through this challenge.  The eBay President effectively works for JD and has these pieces that report to it:

• eBay.com, eBayMotors.com, eBay classifieds (the site previously known as kijijijijijijijiji), stubhub and bunch of global pieces too.
• customer service
• Buyer and seller experience (includes tsam, trust and safety, large merchants, partner programs)
• Marketing

What does the eBay president NOT do?

eBay's technology team, headed by Mark Carges, reports directly to JD, so that is in a separate silo along with Paypal and of course Skype is gone now.

So really this person is effectively in charge with turning around the eBay marketplace.  eBay is 50% through a 3 year plan to turn the marketplace around and isn't showing much progress.  This chart really tells the story as simply as possible – it compares the growth rates of eBay, Amazon and e-commerce.

As you can see, eBay has been growing slower than e-commerce for over two years now which is bad enough, but when you look at that blue line, you see that Amazon is just mopping up market share.  So this person is going to be like the relief pitcher going into a very tough situation with bases loaded and a 3-0 count.  In other words, they are going to start behind the eight ball.

I've long been on the record (I'm thinking of updating my ebay 2.0 mini-novel here soon as it's been a couple of years since we really dug into this) that eBay needs to focus on:

• The buyer experience  (ease of use and merchandising) is still, by eBay's own admission, a 4/10 and it's not moving fast enough – in fact it continues to lose ground IMO.
• Trust and safety- eBay has made some strides here, but still a lot of ground to cover to get up to state of the art.
• Selection - hard to say, my sense is they are losing ground.
• Value - Also hard to say, but again, it feels like they are losing ground.

With this backdrop, here are my thoughts on who should run eBay…

My top picks to run eBay…

First, I think eBay's problems are unique to eBay and it would be a huge mistake to think that getting someone from a top 10 retailer can come in and apply some pixie dust to solve things.  For, example, JC Penney is doing really well online, what if they recruited a top manager there?  That person would have a set of core competencies that would be around selection, value and buyer experience, but from a retailer's perspective.  A retailer controls all their inventory, they have buyers that understand consumer needs and how their selection will meet those buyer's needs.

That's 180 degrees from how eBay works, so I think that would be a mistake.  eBay has a lot of product talent so I don't think they need to look there.

In short, I think eBay needs to look internally vs. externally so that the company doesn't miss a beat training someone new and risking that they don't 'get it'.

Thus, I've decided to look internally to see who would be the best fit.  This was an interesting challenge.  eBay has something like 300 VPs and very few SVPs on the operational side of things so it's a flat organization that can be hard to tell who the next in line is (at least based on publicly available information from the site and linkedin, etc.).  I also wanted to keep it to a list of ten options so that it's manageable.

• Nobody - Yep you heard me, nobody.  When Stephanie Tilenius left, eBay decided to not replace her and instead widened the responsibility of 2-3 existing VPs and were left with a flatter organization with broader span of control that seems more nimble.  JD could add 2-3 reports (now that Skype is gone, this is do-able) and keep the organization flat.
• Dinesh Lathi – Dinesh started at eBay in the finance dept and then left for a startup.  When he came back, he took over the seller experience and then added buyer when Stephanie departed.  Dinesh obviously is a rising star that gets the eBay marketplace and has been behind many great improvements.
• Chris Tsakalakis – Chris is a super-smart executive at eBay that currently runs Stubhub.  In addition to having a fun last name to pronounce, Chris has an entrepreneurial background and has had success at every stop at eBay.  Stubhub has a great buyer experience, has nailed the trust and safety angle and is growing like a weed.  Chris could bring some of that mojo over to the rest of the biz.
• Andre Haddad – Following in the steps of Lorrie, Andre is the current CEO of shopping.com and I believe also carries one of the few SVP titles at eBay.   Andre is a triple threat – entrepreneurial, gets product and has already run eBay international.  
• Greg Fant – Greg is the VP of Marketing at eBay and has been with the company since I can remember.  He worked his way up through the ranks of category management and knows every nook and cranny of the eBay business.
• Rob Chesney – Ok, Rob isn't at eBay any more, but he's in the 'recently departed' bucket so I'm cheating a little bit having him on the list.  Rob ran eBay Motors through some tough times and to his credit did a great job with the parts and accessories part of that business. P+A is one of the fastest growing categories at eBay and if eBay is really focused on different vertical shopping experiences, Rob is your man.  He's an EIR at a VC now, so not sure if he'll come back or not.
• Miriam Lahage - Miriam is new to eBay, but enters as a GM of fashion which appears to be eBay's big strategic focus (which I somewhat disagree with, but that's a topic for another time).  If fashion is the most important focus, why not put Miriam in charge of the whole enchilada?

Who do you want to run eBay?

That's my list.  Several customers have been  already politicing for Todd Lutwak who is wildly popular with the seller base and some feel that this is a great time to put a top eBay seller in a senior position at eBay.  Also, I didn't dig deep into the ex-ebayers like Dearing, half of linkedin, a chunk at facebook/goog, etc. Would an Amazon exec take the plunge?

I'm eager to hear everyone's thoughts on my short list and anyone else you think would be a good choice to steer the good ship eBay? 

SeekingAlpha disclosure – I am long Amazon and Google. eBay is a strategic investor in ChannelAdvisor.

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Earlier this week, eBay announced that eBay marketplaces President, Lorrie Norrington, is leaving eBay for personal reasons.   Lorrie has been at eBay since 2005 when she came into the mix via the shopping.com acquisition.  From there she quickly worked her way up the ranks by running eBay international and then when JD replaced Meg, she became the eBay marketplace president – effectively running the whole business unit as a peer to Scott Thompson who runs Paypal.

College football rivalries aside (Lorrie is a Terp, while I'm a Wolfpacker), we've worked with Lorrie at ChannelAdvisor on a regular basis for the last 5+ years and she's always been a joy to work with.  Lorrie has a lot of traits that are admirable in an executive:

• She does what she says she will
• She is a straight shooter
• She knows the eBay marketplace backward and forward.
• She understands the value of partnerships and how to nurture them.
• Finally, Lorrie has been a tireless advocate for sellers. I've been in many situations where Lorrie came down squarely on the side of sellers and did things like tweak policies, pause potentially disruptive initiatives and most importantly spend a lot of time understanding sellers and their businesses.

I and everyone at ChannelAdvisor and our customers want to take this opportunity to thank Lorrie for 5+ years of great interactions, partership and advocacy and wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors and dealing with whatever personal items require her attention.  Lorrie, we'll really miss working with you!

SeekingAlpha Disclosure- I am long Amazon and Google. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor

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Best Time to Sell on eBay is Now
The best time of the year to sell on eBay is fall, August through October, according to Martin Herbst, general manager of eBay Classifieds. Buyer traffic is at a peak early in the week and towards the start and end of the workday. [via New York Times]

Mobile Giving
The Android and iPhone PayPal app allow users to donate to popular and reputable charities in an instant. Currently there are 5 million users using PayPal Mobile and the average donation is $11.72. [via New York Times]

Opinion: Exempt small online retailers from sales tax requirements
With 70 percent of new jobs in the U.S. over the past decade created by small businesses, we need small business to lead the way — and small businesses need our support. John Donahoe is president and CEO of eBay Inc. He wrote this article for this newspaper. [via San Jose Mercury News]

eBay Launches LookBook
eBay rolled out its newest e-commerce endeavor, eBay LookBook, this week. Users can upload snapshots of their outfit to LookBook, where other users then vote the look and are also able to find similar pieces on eBay. The site will also have one grand winner chosen by a celebrity panel who will receive a shopping spree, photo shoot and fashion consultation. [ via Los Angeles Times]

eBay Announces User Friendly Site for Visually Impaired
eBay is now offering safe online shopping to its visually impaired users. eBay sites in the U.S. are now compatible with screen access reader technology, which allows a program to interpret text on a web page as speech. [via Shopsafe]

Further News
+ TwitterMoms providing social media seal of approval on store products
+ Social media greatly influential in the purchasing decisions of U.S. consumers
+ Ultimate business goal for social media efforts is brand awareness, according to recent survey of U.S. marketers

eBay Ink Weekend Roundup is a summary of news and updates around eBay, PayPal, Social Media, Technology and E-commerce. Let us know what interests you.

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Chuck Pletcher has a new post over on the eBay Classifieds blog about updates to the eBay Classifieds Pets iPhone app and the Classifieds iPhone app itself.

The eBay Classifieds Pets iPhone app has recently been modified to ensure the best user experience. Version 1.0.1 includes the following:

* Retina display optimization throughout the app
* Recommend app to a friend via email, Facebook, and Twitter
* Minor bug fixes

The eBay Classifieds iPhone app had a more extensive update. The latest version, 1.1.0, was made available a couple weeks ago and includes the following:

* Full Retina display optimization
* Browse “Free Stuff” category and sub-categories from home screen
* Distance search
* Speed improvements throughout app
* Get directions to ads from View Ad on Map screen
* Responsible Pet Ownership & Re-homing tips button on all pets ads and in About Us
* More prominent “Find Closest Area” button for setting your location
* New ebayc.us short URLs for Twitter sharing
* Minor bug fixes

For more information coming out of the eBay Classifieds group, be sure to check out and subscribe to their blog: http://blog.ebayclassifieds.com/. You can also follow them on Twitter: @eBayClassifieds.

Cheers,
RBH

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Today’s post is a tounge-in-cheek guest post by Adam Bertrand.

Adam is a normal guy who sold 15 books one day in July of 2008 on Amazon instead of trying them at the yard sale.  He noticed that the books sold within the first 3 hours of listing them and that was the beginning of his super-successful venture into online book-selling.  He’s no book-selling superstar with 557 employees, 2 industrial warehouses and with 1,000,000 books listed, but he has achieved over 1,200 feedbacks with a 98% feedback rating on Amazon, 100% feedback rating, Powerseller and Top-Rated Seller status on eBay, is currently grossing over $10,000/month part time and is teaching others how to do the same much quicker than the 2 years it took him.

Adam has a blog at sellyourbooksonline.com where he discusses his proven strategies, powerful tips on where to find books, how to list books for maximum profit and much more.  For the more serious sellers, he also currently is offering an eBook called Used Books: Big Business which has been a huge hit with his readers.  If you’re interested to find out what Adam has to offer head on over to his blog or register and pop your head in at his message board at sellyourbooksonline.com/forum where you can get access to other sellers just like yourself.

___________________________________

Here is Adam’s Post:

Do you know what an arms dealer is?  If not, it’s OK.  This is an eCommerce blog and I’d hope you weren’t involved in any unscrupulous activities other than possibly selling a Teacher’s Edition book on Amazon.  An arms dealer is an international figure that typically sells millions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition to war-torn countries, groups of terrorists, or basically anyone that may want to purchase a surface to air missile or 500.

In a bloody civil war, each side of the battle needs as many weapons and ammunition as possible.  A savvy arms dealer knows this.  He doesn’t care which side “wins”.  All the arms dealer cares about is making as much money as possible so he offers his merchandise to BOTH sides while the civil war is raging.  He’ll sell a rocket launcher to North Korea, watch them blow a helicopter out of the sky in South Korea and then turn right around and sell a missile to South Korea to launch at North Korea in retaliation.  It’s a brilliant business model but not one that would guarantee  you a long lifespan, good morals or earn you popularity with the laws in any country.

Now, why in the world am I talking about international terrorist activity on an eCommerce blog?  Because this kind of business model is perfect for us as sellers to not get involved with either side while coming out smelling like roses at the end!  Think of Amazon as North Korea and eBay as South Korea for a minute.  I know, Jeff Bezos couldn’t pass for Kim Jon Il in a dark alley but just go with me on this.  If North Korea and South Korea were trying to destroy each other why would you want to join either side?  Isn’t this what Amazon and eBay are doing?  Chances are you’re gonna get blown to bits either way you go.  If it were me, I’d become the arms dealer, become a neutral party and squeeze every ounce of profit I could out of both sides.

These two giant eCommerce platforms are always vying for top spot and I see sellers on the blogs and forums ranting at eBay about how they’re never going to go back because they’re being forced into buying a store or how they’re getting screwed in the search results.  They’re going to show eBay and sell on Amazon!  What about the Amazon seller that can’t brand his business how he’d like because he can’t advertise his own site to his customers or customize his store like he can on eBay?  He’ll show Amazon!  He’s going to eBay, open up a store, market himself to his heart’s content and show that HE’s in charge; not Amazon!

According to compete.com, Amazon is currently getting 68,437,136 unique page views every month while eBay is getting 68,615,422.  Let’s just call them dead even at this point.  That’s a total of 136 million something pairs of eyeballs searching for things to BUY!  Barring all the other variables, choosing either side essentially cuts your chances of making a sale in half!  That arms dealer gig doesn’t sound too bad now does it?

Just like an arms dealer needs a weapons manufacturer, possible blood diamond source and a killer (get it?) inventorying system, an online merchant needs the same.  Online sellers have at their disposal services and tools like Monsoon, Indaba, Channel Advisor, FillZ, Art of Books et al.  These are the tools that are used to play both sides while they are both duking it out with each other.  Do you have a rare collectible book not selling on Amazon?  Turn on eBay!  How about the latest on Oprah’s book club?  Turn on Amazon!  These services allow you to play both sides at the same time and tell that eBay buyer that finally comes along, “Sorry, but I sold that book 6 months ago for 20% more on Amazon”.

Strategies an Arms Dealer Would Envy

1. Research each marketplace for the types of buyers that hang out there.  From experience I know Amazon is not known for it’s collectible books.  You’ll find those guys at Abebooks or on eBay, but don’t give Amazon the cold shoulder just in case!  Since Amazon is free to list you might as well offer it there as well.

2. For large sellers, no matter how small the listing fee, it really adds up.  I pay a nickel for a listing but if you multiply that by the nearly 8,000 books I have that’s a recurring $400/month!  Find a service that will allow you to take less risk on eBay by, for example, not listing books with an Amazon sales rank of over 2,000,000.  The sales rank is a good indicator of market demand so if you have that metric at hand why not use it to your advantage and not take a risk on paying a listing fee on eBay and it never selling?

3. Do not list very popular items on both sites at once.  Even though these services do an excellent job at removing a SKU from all the other sites when it sells out, none are instantaneous.  If you’ve got yourself a copy of the latest Harry Potter pick a side and stick to it.  You’ll know it will sell like crazy on any site so why take a chance on a dozen double sales, refunds and customer service headaches when you have a sure win anyway.  Don’t run out of grenades that South Korea wants when you’ve sold them all to North Korea! They might not like that too much.

4. Finally, take advantage of shipping differences in Amazon and eBay.  eBay offers higher search visibility to sellers that offer free shipping.  However, Amazon will always give you the $3.99 shipping credit for a book order.  What’s a seller to do?  Why not offer a price that is $3.99 higher on eBay, offer free shipping and reap the rewards of higher visibility all while having that same book listed on Amazon for $3.99 less but with the shipping credit?

I hope this tongue-in-cheek approach has taught you to never make snap decisions and to carefully strategize each one.   Also, to always be the guy ON the fence admiring both lush, green fields when your fellow sellers are jumping back and forth OVER the fence trying to always find something greener.  Sometimes it really does pay off to take a step back from the chaos, think outside the box and instead of making a million dollars selling to Side A, selling to BOTH sides, making a much larger profit and taking your ball and going home.

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There are two ways to make money with Social Marketing but most people only know about the first.  The first, or usual way, is to use sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote products or services or affiliate relationships for sale and earn an income from that process.  But the other way is to learn how to help others use Social Marketing.

About four months ago I introduced my readers to a program called Lets Get Social. About 25 of my readers purchased the training program and now I am starting to hear back from them.

Several of them have told me that they finished the training –some over a couple of days and others over a few weeks, and found it very easy to implement the program and start finding clients.  One lady said she got her first client before she had even finished her training and within a couple of weeks that client had sent her two more.  Since she works full time, those three clients are all she can handle, but she is now making a nice monthly income on top of her regular salary just from those three clients.

I would love to tell you how much money these folks are making, but new Federal FTC regulations require me to state the average income of everyone who bought the program if I state any figures at all.  Since I have no way of knowing the “average results” of everyone who bought the program then I have to say something like “The average income of everyone who purchased the program is a penny,” or just not give any numbers at all.  But I can say that all of the people who emailed me made back far more than the cost of the program and are very pleased with the results.

Like anything you do, you get back what you put into it.  And yes, I am sure that out of the 25 or so readers who bought the program, several of them took the training and then never did anything.  There is nothing automatic about this program.  You have to actually spend a few hours a week working on it (for a part-time income) or much more for a full-time income.  But it is not that difficult, you do not need any advanced technical or computer skills and there is no investment required beyond the cost of the training.

So if this interests you, take a look at the video that explains the program.

WARNING #1 – The video is a bit long and there is no stop/pause bar on the bottom, but the video will actually pause if you just click in the center of it. Even though it’s long you will learn a lot of great information about social media marketing and I strongly encourage you to watch the whole thing even if you decide its not for you.

WARNING #2 – The fellow who runs this program is a very aggressive marketer and once you decide to buy he offers a number of upsells.  This is not a sales method I am fond of or use, but the experts say they do work, so I can’t blame others for trying.  So weather you buy the upsells is up to you.  But I do want to stress that no matter what you think of the marketing, the program is excellent (I have it myself and my daughter-in-law is working with it now).

WARNING #3 – As I stated above, if you buy this training, it will take some work on your part.  The work is not difficult  but you do have to actually do it.

Despite many claims you hear from others there is no Autopilot Income –I have looked at hundreds of opportunities and have yet to find a way to make “unlimited streams of income on autopilot while you sleep.”

So if you would like to learn a new way to make money with Social Media that actually works, click here to watch the video.

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There’s a new kid on the blogging block…
The eBay Tech Blog (http://ebaytechblog.com) was launched earlier this week and I for one am very excited at the possibilities. Partner this with our eBay Developer Blog and I think we’ve got some pretty cool information on cutting edge innovation coming out of our company.

I realize that “speeds and feeds” aren’t for everyone but this could end up being a great resource for those that are…

About:
eBay is the world’s largest internet marketplace, with hundreds of millions of listings live at any given moment. To support that marketplace, eBay has tackled technical challenges at a scale that few others have. With the eBay Tech Blog, we want to share our experiences working on those challenges with the technical community. We’ll talk less about eBay’s business (there are plenty of blogs already for that) and more about the internal workings of eBay’s search engine, data, and architecture.

If the first blog post (from Hugh E. Williams – Vice President, Buyer Experience Development) is anything to go by, we could be in for some great behind-the-scenes, under-the-hood reports:

Site Speed for eBay Search Results

First, welcome to the eBay technical blog! Each month, we will publish one or two entries describing technical challenges at eBay, and how we go about solving them. We look forward to your comments, and we welcome your suggestions for articles.

It’s my pleasure to write the first entry in our new blog. In two parts, I’m going to introduce you to how we’ve worked on site speed over the past year, and the results that has delivered. The bottom line is that improving site speed has helped our customers and driven our business. With improvements in site speed, sellers have sold more, buyers have bought more, and eBay’s business has grown as a result. Site speed matters, and we continue to drive improvements.

Read the full blog post on Site Speed for eBay Search Results.

They’re also up and running on Twitter so be sure to follow @ebaytechblog for updates and conversation moving forward. I’ve added them to our comprehensive directory of official eBay Twitter handles too.

Cheers,
RBH

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eBay’s new Duplicate Listing policy will go into effect on October 26^th. eBay says the purpose of the new policy is to prevent search results from being dominated by multiple duplicate listings of the same item from the same seller.  It’s about time!

Here is how the duplicate listing policy will work:

The item offered in a seller’s Fixed Price listing must be significantly different in buyer benefit and value from items offered in their other Fixed Price listings. In short, sellers may have one Fixed Price listing per identical item. Multiples of an item must be sold in a single multi-quantity Fixed Price listing.

Starting October 26, eBay will automatically end duplicate Fixed Price listings, keep the best performer, and credit Insertion Fees and listing upgrade fees for the ended listings.

Sellers who continue to create duplicate listings for identical items may be subject to a range of additional actions including listing cancellation, loss of fees, limits on account privileges, loss of seller status, and account suspension.

If you have any experience with eBay you know that when eBay does something like this it is done by automatic robots –and there will inevitably be listings cancelled that should not be. So you may want to take action before then to cancel your duplicates and add the quantity to your best performer before October 26 to ensure continuous selling.

eBay is developing a tool to help you quickly and easily identify your duplicate listings but its not here yet. So stay tuned to the eBay announcement board so you can get access to the tool when its released.

Newly listed Fixed Price listings will no longer receive an upfront allotment of impressions in Best Match search results. (Ok – that sucks)  eBay says the advantage for all sellers will be to list quantities of the same item in one low-cost, multi-quantity Fixed Price listing.  But getting an early boost in best match will go away –so I don’t see the “advantage.”

For sellers with more than one user ID, eBay will apply the one-listing rule per seller across all selling accounts—i.e., the seller can have one listing per item, not one listing per user ID.

The new policy does not apply to Auction-style listings.

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The eBay & Online Sellers News is the largest and oldest FREE Newsletter for eBay and Amazon Sellers and small online website sellers.

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eBay announced a management change to eBay Marketplaces this afternoon. Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay Marketplaces, will be leaving the company for personal family reasons. While the company conducts an external search for her successor, the global Marketplaces management team will report to eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe.

“Lorrie has led eBay Marketplaces through significant fundamental change as we drive a multiyear turnaround strategy to enhance the shopping experience for buyers and sellers and evolve eBay as a global ecommerce and mobile commerce leader,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “For personal family reasons, Lorrie made a decision to do what’s best for eBay and for her family, and I respect that. I wish her the very best and thank her for many contributions to our company and our nearly 92 million active eBay users.”

Lorrie has led eBay Marketplaces since July 2008 and has been with the company since 2005. I have had the opportunity and very great pleasure of working with Lorrie a lot over the past 3 years and I will be sad to say goodbye but wish her all the best.

In addition to announcing this management change, the company said it expects its third quarter 2010 results to be near the high end of the guidance provided on July 21. The company expects to report third quarter 2010 results on October 20. I plan on live-blogging our quarterly earnings call as usual.

-RBH

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