Archive for January, 2010
January 20th, 2010
The following was posted to the eBay Announcement Board earlier this afternoon. I wanted to share with Ink readers. Will share more as I get it.
Cheers,
RBH
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a consumer alert about Alli, a weight loss drug currently found on multiple websites and search engines. eBay works closely with the FDA and other agencies to keep our site and our users safe. As a precaution for our users, eBay wants all sellers and buyers of Alli to be aware of the FDA’s recent alert. To ensure your safety, eBay recommends you review this information prior to making a purchase of any Alli product from any source. Also, we encourage you to review our policy page concerning the sale of Food and Healthcare items.
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January 20th, 2010
According to the fifth annual NRF Foundation/American Express Customers’ Choice survey, eBay is ranked #12 overall for customer service in 2009 (up 2 from #14 in 2008).
The NRF Foundation/American Express 2009 Customer Service survey was designed to gauge consumer attitudes toward retailers’ customer service and to provide a listing of the top customer service retailers. The survey, which polled 8,600 consumers, was conducted by consumer marketing intelligence firm BIGresearch in September 2009 The consumer poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.0 percent.
Consumers answered the open ended question, “Thinking of all the different retail formats (store, catalog, internet, or home shopping), which retailer delivers the best customer service?”
Like I said when I wrote about this last year, it is the individual sellers on the eBay marketplace that should be commended for achieving this high ranking. After all, they’re the ones providing the customer service to consumers on a daily basis.
Congratulations!
Cheers,
RBH
January 20th, 2010
IM Report Card
I was recently introduced to the Internet Marketing Report Card (IM Report card). This is a wonderful free site where you can check out the reputation of any product, service or person related to making money on the internet.
I had no idea that I was reviewed there until one of my radio listeners (www.wsradio.com/skipmcgrath – 10 am every Wednesday) emailed me that I was ranked 5th in the country out of the top 25 internet marketers. You can read my review at the Skip McGrath Page on IM Report Card.
So take a look at Internet Marketing Report Card. Sign up for a free account (it only takes a minute) and post a comment. If you like any of my books you can write about them. I would love to hear your unbiased comments.
The other thing that is really neat about IM Report Card is that you can actually make money every time you rate someone or post a comment –or even when you recommend someone. You won’t get rich, but there are a few active folks who make an extra $50 to$100 a month or so for just a few minutes work each day. And you are also doing people a service when you warn them away from bad promoters or crappy internet products.
Cheers,
Skip McGrath
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Anyone who can point, click and type can set up a website with XsitePro.
January 15th, 2010
This is slightly off topic for all the eBay readers, but I know we have some Yahoo! store and Yahoo Shopping folks that read the blog so I wanted to let them know about a webinar we are doing next week.
Background
One of the biggest benefits of a Y! store is the ease of use and some discounts to get into Y! Shopping (their Comparison Shopping Engine – CSE). Y! sent out an announcement to all Y! Shopping and Y! store owners that they are effectively discontinuing Y! Shopping and replacing it with Pricegrabber.
This has created a whirlwind of confusion as there are several options, massive fee changes and Y! Store owners are super-fly upset in general.
Webinar
ChannelAdvisor is hosting a free webinar for anyone interested (Most likely Y! Shopping retailers and Y! Store users – maybe some PriceGrabber users as you will be impacted as well). We’ll dispel a lot of the misinformation out there, provide a good bit of data on what this means, and of course we have some strategy recommendations for all of the parties impacted.
The Webinar will be hosted by yours truly and David Harris, one of our resident CSE gurus. It is Tuesday at 2pm and you can sign up here. If you aren’t able to make that time we always record the webinars and put them up for replay within 24hrs of the original. If you have any questions before the presentation, feel free to include them in comments.
January 15th, 2010
eBay Inc. took first place in the Mobile Commerce Daily competition for the 2009 Mobile Retailer of the Year award.
Mobile Commerce Daily indicated that “there were many worthy nominations, but after careful consideration, eBay did an outstanding job in its mobile efforts,” citing the high number of items bought via mobile on eBay this past holiday season (1.5 million) and the generation of more than a half a billion dollars of transactions via mobile in 2009.
From the article:
Mobile shopping
Holiday shopping went mobile this season, with a surge in buyers using the eBay iPhone application and other eBay mobile properties to find great deals while on the go.The number of items bought via eBay mobile applications this year was triple last year’s holiday volume.
Mobile deals
EBay launched the Deals application, providing iPhone and iPod touch owners with a constant stream of the best deals across hundreds of millions of eBay.com listings.Available as a free download in the App Store, the Deals application features intuitive navigation, customizable search features and PayPal integration enabling mobile check-out.
EBay launched its first application for iPhone in July 2008 and ever since has continued to ramp up its mobile commerce initiatives.
You can read the full breakdown here.
Cheers,
RBH
January 14th, 2010
Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster is out today with a survey that has some bad news for eBay, but good news for Amazon (as covered over on Amazon Strategies) and good news for e-commerce.
eBay slipped from 26% to 13% when asked ' Which site has the best e-commerce shopping experience' – its lowest since the survey was started. Conversely you can see from the table below that Amazon is at its highest.
On the good news side, 20% of the shoppers plan to spend more in 2010 – the most positive indicator of e-commerce growth in 18 months.
The tables below provide more detail on the above trends. eBay Strategies readers – what do you think about eBay's and e-commerce's prospects for 2010? Let us know in comments.
SeekingAlpha Dislcosure – I am long Google and Amazon. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor where I am CEO.
January 14th, 2010
I’ll update this post with any new information and links as they become available.
On Tuesday, Jan. 12 shortly before 5 p.m., a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. According to The Red Cross, about 3 million people were affected by the quake — one-third of Haiti’s population.
In the wake of the devastating quake, more than 100,000 people are feared dead with thousands of others injured or without homes. Reports from the scene say that getting aid to the injured is difficult because many hospitals have been destroyed and medical supplies and heavy equipment are desperately needed.
To help with relief efforts, early response from eBay Foundation includes a special gift-matching program for global eBay Inc. employees making charitable contributions to organizations providing rescue and relief efforts in Haiti.
eBay and PayPal are also responding to the disaster by providing our communities of users with easy methods of donating to the relief effort.
** Buy, sell and/or donate items via a dedicated landing page on eBay.com, with proceeds going to Save the Children, The American Red Cross, and other nonprofits involved in the relief effort.
** Donate to the Red Cross or Save the Children through Give@Checkout. For a limited time, when you purchase an item on eBay.com, you can donate to these charities during checkout.
** PayPal is waiving the payment processing fees for donations to Save the Children for the next 30 days. Links to make donations to Save the Children (which accepts PayPal for donation payments) will be featured on various PayPal onsite placements, including the PayPal home page. Here is the link to the dedicated page.
Based on the tragic reports I hear coming out of the area, I can’t imagine what people close to this disaster are going through right now, but my thoughts and prayers go out to all families and people involved.
-RBH
January 14th, 2010
Please join me on Thursday, January 14th at 5 pm Pacific Time (8 pm Eastern) for a free training webinar with one of our senior coaches, Suzanne Wells. The topic will be an auction listing review. This will be an identical session that we give our coaching students. Suzanne and I will go through the listings and point out the good and bad parts and make suggestions to improve them.
The webinar will last about one hour. The purpose is to give our readers a taste of our eBay and Internet coaching program. The Webinar is limited to 100 attendees and spaces will go fast. Please click here to sign up.
If you are interested in personal coaching and would like a free evaluation, Call 1-800-578-3449 or fill out this contact form to see if you qualify. We only take a small number of students at any one time. All of our eBay coaches are active eBay PowerSellers and our Internet coaches all currently run successful online businesses.
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The Complete eBay Marketing System by Skip McGrath is the leading eBay training course on the market today. The 6 pound volume is shipped the same business day you order.
January 14th, 2010
My good friend, Steve Lindhorst, author of Selling on The River has just come out with a great new eBook called Amazon – The Quick and Dirty Guide.
This great little book makes a great companion to my book, How To Make Money Selling Used Books on eBay, Amazon and the Internet. In this book Steve lays out his recipe that shows step by step how he went from $0 to $2000 per month selling used books part-time on Amazon.
Making money selling used books on Amazon
Some of the things he includes are:
- Where you can find LOTS of profitable books, CDs, and DVDs consistently
- How to find thrift stores wherever you go
- How to choose what to buy and what to leave on the shelf
- How to use Amazon’s Sales Rank to determine the likelihood of a sale
- What to do if you find products with no barcodes or ISBNs
- How to improve your chances of a sale
- Why you should charge a little more than your competition – and still beat them to the sale
- How to clean and repair books, CDs, and DVDs to pull higher prices
There’s a lot more. Steve calls it “quick and dirty” because he didn’t spend a bunch of time on a website or fancy graphics. It’s pretty much just “meaty” stuff that can help you make money in a short time. This is all new stuff. There is little if any overlap between Steve’s book, Selling on The River or my book, How To Make Money Selling Used Books on eBay, Amazon and the Internet.
Here is the link to read about Amazon – The Quick and Dirty Guide
If you wonder if Steve’s methods work, I was speaking with him on the phone today and he told me about a book he found in the trash pile outside of a thrift shop that sold on Amazon within 2 days for $120 and another old Golf book, he bought for $4.00 and sold for right around $100 within 2 or 3 days.
The used book market on both eBay and Amazon is a great way to get started on the internet. It is low cost, low risk and has high profit potential. If you want go learn the basics, get my book: Make Money Selling Used Books on eBay, Amazon and The Internet.
Then get Steve’s book Amazon – The Quick and Dirty Guide and you will be fully armed to make money in this profitable and fun marketplace.
January 12th, 2010
Every company can point to a handful of employees and truly call them experts in their field. The best of the best. I think Dennis Goedegebuure is one of those people at eBay. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Dennis on a few projects over the past two years and I’ve attended more than one of his presentations dedicated to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So when I saw his in-depth interview on seobook.com, I had to share it with Ink readers. It’s long and it’s worth the read. Check it out HERE.
Cheers,
RBH