Archive for July, 2009
July 20th, 2009
I am kicking back a bit to enjoy this good weather. But here is a great article by Ina Steiner that everyone who sells on eBay should read. It supports something I have been teaching on eBay for the past nine years.
Research Shows Sellers with Focused Expertise Do Better on eBay
See Also
- Learn How To Make Money with an Online Consignment Business
Complete training manual with forms, advertisements and contracts.
Posted in 
July 18th, 2009
Think you’re a social media maven? If so then you should watch this Web Site Story, a clever video takeoff of Westside Story from the gang at College Humor.
July 17th, 2009
While everyone is paying attention to Health Care, the Sotomayor hearings and Cap & Trade, congress is quietly getting ready to impose sales tax on all internet sellers
Great Magicians master the craft of misdirection. They create a diversion with their right hand while the left hand is doing the real work. It seems our congress has studied the craft of magic too. Everyone pays attention to the big bills while hundreds of small –yet critically important bills are being crafted out of sight –and with no debate.
Lobbyists from firms such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and the National Retail Federation are throwing millions of dollars at House and Senate members to draft a series of bills that will force every internet retailer –large and small, to collect and pay sales tax in all 50 states. The pressure is not only coming from the retailers, but from state governments too who need the revenue.
Such a bill would kill millions of eBay and Amazon sellers and any small business that sells online. There are over 6 million people who make all or part of their income from online activities and they represent a huge chunk of the economy. And many of these companies employ people. All of these sellers will be affected. Such a bill would cost millions of job losses by small business.
If you sell on eBay, can you imagine how much work it would be to collect and pay sales tax in all the different states. Just registering for a sales tax number in all of the states would take weeks of work and cost thousands of dollars in fees.
These bills are being crafted and debated now. eBay, Amazon and other big online companies are lobbying against them, but they are outnumbered. But its not hopeless. Lobbyists may have the money, but we have the votes. And congress does listen when they get emails and phone calls.
Just go to: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml to email your congress person and senator. If you don’t make some noise then this is coming. Be polite – but tell them NO TAX ON INTERNET SELLERS!
See Also
- Learn How To Make Money With an eBay Consignment Business
Complete business manual with forms, advertisements, contracts and everything you need to start an online consignment business
July 16th, 2009
In mid-June, Google made some changes that have caused traffic from GPS to plummet 60%+ for merchants in the UK and around 30-40% for those in the USA.
July 16th, 2009
eBay Live to be replaced with smaller regional events dubbed eBay On Location
Lorrie Norrington, President, eBay Marketplaces announced that eBay’s annual convention, eBay Live, has bit the dust. The last eBay Live was in Chicago in June of 2008. At that event, Norrington announced that eBay Live 2009 was cancelled but that eBay would resume holding eBay Live with an event in Orlando in August of 2010. Yesterday’s announcement confirmed several rumors that eBay would also cancel the Orlando event.
eBay’s announcement stated that eBay On Location is:
“…a new program that will bring eBay fun, learning and networking to cities around the country in 2010. eBay: On Location will kick off in Orlando in February, replacing the previously announced August date for eBay Live! Many sellers and buyers have told us that although eBay Live! is a terrific way to learn and network, they would enjoy more local events that don’t require costly travel. eBay: On Location will provide just that – an easier way for you to come together, learn about eBay from experts and each other, network and, of course, celebrate. Our goal is to provide eBay: On Location within a day’s drive for as many sellers and buyers as possible. eBay: On Location will deliver a compelling experience that will be easier on your wallet and require less valuable time away from your eBay business.”
Norrington also announced that eBay will celebrate its 15th anniversary with an On Location, “family friendly event” in eBay’s hometown of San Jose, CA. on August 15th.
Karen and I have attended every eBay Live since the first one in Orange County, CA in 2002. Although I will miss it, I think this is a good move for eBay. In this economy, sellers would be reluctant to spend $1000 or more per-person that it takes to attend the event when you factor in travel, hotels, meals and the cost of the event itself.
eBay needs to repair its relations with sellers and a series of smaller events that allow more personal interaction with sellers could be a good step. I just returned from a small Amazon event in Seattle (see next story below) that set the perfect tone for the type of event eBay could hold.
Just before I posted this, a Wall Street Journal reporter called me about eBay Live. Here is a link to his article: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/14/ebay-live-is-going-going-gone/
Amazon Sellers Gather in Seattle
I spent last weekend (July 11-13) at a conference of Amazon sellers put on by SCOE (Sellers Conference of Online Entrepreneurs). This was a highly fun and informative event attended by 250 independent sellers who sell on the Amazon.com platform. The event was not sponsored by Amazon, but Amazon provided speakers and a visit to Amazon’s headquarters, situated on Beacon Hill in Seattle that offers a breathtaking view of Seattle, the Puget Sound, the Cascade Mountains and the Olympic Mountain Range.
Compared with the last eBay Live in Chicago and reports I have received from other eBay events, , I was struck by the positive atmosphere and genuine mutual respect that Amazon employees and Amazon sellers have for each other.
The event was focused, upbeat, and contained valuable learning opportunities for sellers. The keynote address was given by Peter Faricy, Amazon’s VP of Seller Services. Peter drove a very clear stake in the ground when he made it clear that Amazon values, and wants more, independent sellers on the platform. His statement: “Amazon is a customer driven company and we consider our sellers to be customers too…” drew wide applause and set just the right tone for the rest of the day that consisted of several excellent seminars and feedback sessions put on by the 25 Amazon employees and executives who attended. The next day’s visit to Amazon’s Headquarters provied a 2-hour Q&A with top Amazon executives and managers.
If you would like to learn how new sellers can get started on Amazon, go to Amazon Services. Another resources is Steve Lindhorst’s excellent training manual, Selling on the river (see below for more info).
See Also
- Selling on The River – A complete training manual with videos that teaches small online sellers how to sell on Amazon.
Learn how to sell on the world’s largest shopping platform, Amazon.com
July 14th, 2009
I had the opportunity to see Beyonce up close and personal the other night at the Oakland stop of her “I Am” tour. Blown away is an 
understatement. She is a superstar is every sense of the term—a once in a lifetime performer who has in my opinion, no competition. Her voice, her dancing, her costumes, her all-girl band, her Thierry Mugler garb, her ability to relate to the audience…impeccable and original. The multi-age, multi-faceted crowd was in awe and was screaming with every flick of B’s hips. I have seen a lot of shows in my time but I do believe that this one tops my list. I basically screamed for the entire duration of the performance and took copious amounts of camera phone pics like I was 12-years old. Smell ya later Madonna, Christina, and Brit-Brit…this was the highlight of my weekend and perhaps my music-loving career.
*Photo licensed to: Photorazzi.com
July 13th, 2009
eBay Trading Assistants Smiling. Consignment selling on eBay is a bright spot in a slow economy
It wasn’t that long ago that the consignment business model was considered pretty much dead. That was never really the case, but consignment selling did take a big hit when hundreds of eBay drop-off store franchise stores went out of business. It turned out that the franchise model of opening high-overhead retail stores that relied on people walking in with goods was flawed –but other types of consignment selling have been operating profitably under the radar for years –and lately, the slowing economy has spurred consignment sales once again.
The severity ot this recession has caused record unemployment, record home foreclosures and record bankruptcies. This results in people and businesses needing to raise cash or sell off goods and merchandise from bankrupt people and companies. This is a natural market for consignment sellers. And its happening not just on eBay. I have been attending an conference of Amazon sellers in Seattle this weekend. Yesterday I spoke with three different sellers who have made money selling goods from companies going out of business. One of them got his start on Amazon liquidating bookstore inventories on a 50/50 commission basis.
About 5 years ago I first wrote, How To Start and Run an eBay Consignment Business published by McGraw-Hill. The book is quite out-of-date, but there are still a few copies available on eBay and Amazon. However, this week I just released a completely new book, Making Money With an Online Consignment Business. Although it focuses primarily on eBay, I also cover selling on Amazon and other venues such as Craigslist –as many consignment sellers are utilizing these additional platforms to grow their business.
Here is a link where you can read more about Money With an Online Consignment Business.
My next post will talk a little about what I learned when I visit Amazon on Monday, and I will be writing a wrap up of the SCOE Amazon Sellers Conference in Seattle for AuctionBytes.
See Also
- Learn How To Sell on Amazon
Selling On The River is a complete business manual that shows you how to make money selling on Amazon
July 12th, 2009
I am a big fan of Twenga. I think it is great from a retailers POV as it is free, and great for customers as it has a huge range of products. i managed to get a interview with the founder, Bastien Duclaux, where he gives some insights into Twenga and the furture of shopping comparison
Could you give us some background on Twenga?
Twenga is a shopping search engine, price comparison site and shopping guide. The company was founded in 2006 by Bastien Duclaux and Cédric Anès, to fill an unsatisfied need for an open shopping search engine.
Before us, first-generation shopping search engines were “walled-garden” price comparison sites: Firstly, they were focused on price comparison, rather than on product search to match consumer needs. Secondly, they were only displaying the offers of those retailers with whom they have a commercial relationship (hence the term ‘walled garden’).
There was a need to break these limitations. We wanted to offer online shoppers the democracy of free and open choices, to give them access to all retailers, not just a few. This is why we developed a technology that gathers shopping data from the entire web and displays it in one searchable interface. One main element of our technology is a dedicated and proprietary “crawl engine” which automatically scans and analyzes the retail offerings of 200 million multilingual Web pages every day.
Why should consumers use Twenga instead of Shopping.com or Google product search?
Looking at the category of price comparison sites, rather than at a specific competitor, we can say that current leaders have pioneered the first generation of price comparison sites. As we mentioned earlier, these competitors operate in a “walled-garden” mode in that they display only the offers of the retailers with whom they have a commercial relationship.
For consumers, the main benefit of using Twenga is to gain access to a much bigger, more diverse, and more representative set of retailers, which in turn brings more objective and better search results. ‘More products from more online shops’ means for consumers the assurance to find what they want at the best price on the market.
We use our technology to automatically index all of the retailers and we are adding hundreds of new retailers every day. We are comprehensive and democratic. On average, we display three to ten times more offers than our competitors in a similar shopping category. Our ultimate goal is to be exhaustive and to become the primary destination for online shopping.
Among our differentiating services, those that are most popular among our users are price history and price alerts. Consumers can check the price trend of a product and create an alert to receive a mail when the price of that particular product drops.
We also offer a free mobile iPhone price comparison application. We are one of very few sites that allow international price comparisons across countries. And we have many more innovative services in store.
Could you explain the promotional options for merchants on Twenga?
We offer the retailers a complete range of promotional options. We offer standard advertising placements such as banner ads or sponsored links, as well as custom advertising packages for specific campaigns.
Our most innovative marketing offer (and our main source of revenue) is performance-based marketing. Retailers who want to boost the visibility of their brand and products on our sites can join our affiliation programme to get additional visibility in dedicated placements on our sites. In addition to being listed among natural search results, their offers are then displayed in dedicated premium placements which are clearly high-lighted and contextualized to best match user searches – thereby driving significantly more traffic and sales.
The retailer’s participation in our affiliate program is completely risk-free because our commission is based solely on completed sales. Retailers increase their visibility and pay Twenga only if it generates revenues. Our 100% performance related model means that every marketing penny spent with us is actually linked to a completed sale!
In the current economic climate, online retailers love Twenga’s performance-based model because it gives them full control on the return of their online marketing investments.
What do you think that the future holds for Twenga and the shopping comparison? Do you think that that other services will move to a CPA based model?
We position ourselves as a shopping search engine, not only as a price comparison site. Online consumers, especially these days, are focused on price. Hence, price comparison is indispensable, but it is not a sufficient condition to serve online shoppers well. We must also show consumers the right product at the right time. Our ambition is to give to online consumers access to the full richness and diversity of the shopping Web, without the complexity of having to tread through thousands of different sites and irrelevant offers.
We are of course 100% convinced that performance-based marketing is the way of the future. We have no doubt that our competitors want to follow suit. However, it is difficult for them to drop their CPC model, simply because it is a “comfortable”, if not easy model. Performance-based marketing has to be earned by performance; it’s much harder to make money in this model. Twenga was founded on the basis of the CPA model, thus we’re entirely geared to it. We believe that it is much harder for a company who was geared to function in a CPC model to switch to CPA because CPA involves the full complexity of the visit-to-sales conversion process.
Thanks to the pioneering work of companies such as amazon, performance-based marketing models are now well-understood. Their logic is compelling. The tracking technology necessary to make them work well is mature. This is the right time to shift gear and drop the outdated CPC model from the eCommerce space. And that’s what we’re doing. In the future, we anticipate that performance-based marketing will gain ground in multi-channel distribution.
July 12th, 2009
I recently had a bit of a run in with one of my suppliers, sleepytot. They have decided to stop supplying companies who sell their products on eBay and amazon or those that sell below the RRP. I’m not sure if it is strictly speaking legal to constrain the channels which retailers use, or their prices, but anyway, lets look at the two sides of this arguement. I will try, and almost definitely fail to give a balanced view.
The reasons normally given for not wanting items sold on eBay/amazon are they it devalues the brand, mainly for two reasons
- eBay is seen as disreputable in some way. I suppose as eBay sells such a wide range of items including new, old and yes, fakes, it is not seen as the kind of neighbourhood people want their brand hanging out in
- Prices. Prices on eBay are rarely the RRP and their don’t want their offline and off-marketplace customers to be undercut.
- They are going to be sold their anyway. There is no way they can stop the sale of second hand items
- International exposure. A significant propotion of marketplace activity is international
- Search exposure. For any given product search, eBay and amazon items will probably rank quite highly
- Additional sales opportunities. The more a product can get in front of customers, the more chances there are for a sale.
July 11th, 2009
With Richard out sick today, I’m filling in. This morning, General Motors announced “The new GM,” and the company’s press release mentioned something about a partnership with eBay Motors that confused some dealers, many of whom sell on eBay. Here’s the excerpt that quoted GM President and CEO Fritz Henderson:
“We’re also working on new ways to make car buying more convenient for our customers, including an innovative new partnership with eBay in California to revolutionize how people buy vehicles online,” Henderson said. “Customers will be able to bid on actual vehicles just like they do in an eBay auction, including the option of choosing a predetermined ‘buy it now’ price. We’ll be testing this and other ideas with our dealers over the next few weeks, and hope to expand and build upon them in the coming months. In all cases, our goal is to make the shopping and buying process as easy as possible for GM customers – on their time and their terms. Stay tuned.”
I just spoke with the folks on the eBay Motors team, including Rob Chesney, VP of eBay Motors, about the developing situation with GM. What’s clear is that eBay hasn’t finalized its plans with GM. Here’s what I learned:
eBay Motors has been in discussions with General Motors to identify innovative ways to help dealers market vehicles. As the no. 1 automotive site on the Web (Nielsen/NetRatings – March 2009), eBay Motors has unique knowledge of consumer automotive shopping behavior and a community of more than 13 million unique automotive visitors. Currently, more than 30,000 U.S. franchise and independent dealers in the U.S. utilize eBay Motors as a complementary sales channel for their businesses. In addition, several automakers, including General Motors, display certified pre-owned inventory on the eBay Motors marketplace.
Related Reads:
- EBay Says It Has No Deal With G.M. (New York Times)
- EBay Says Plans To Sell GM Cars Not Finalized (DowJones)
