Archive for February, 2010
February 27th, 2010
I am a notorious “pack-rat”. A fact that my wife finds little joy in. Maybe this is the promotion for her. eBay Classifieds marketplace, Kijiji, is currently running a promotion that enables people to “Take your Loved One to Clutter Court.”
Simply submit a brief description and photo of the object in question, along with your contact information. We’ll then pick a deserving entrant to win an in-home consultation from one of our “Clutter Judges, ” who will help to reorganize your living space so that you two can live in perfect harmony.
If you’d like an opportunity to win an additional prize, simply follow @KijijiUS and retweet, “Take your loved one to @KijijiUS’s Clutter Court! Retweet for a chance to win a $50 organizing supply store gift card bit.ly/kijijicc ” Once you retweet, we’ll automatically enter you to win one of eight $50 organizing supply gift cards!
I can’t think of a single item I’d want my wife to submit… which kind of proves her point I guess. Maybe she won’t see this post and I’ll get to keep all my stuff.
Cheers,
RBH
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February 27th, 2010
Everyone’s business is slow. Unemployment shows no signs of abating. Consumer confidence is down and everyone is being cautious. Everyone wants to sell the newest, latest hottest product –but that business is cratering. My eBay sales are off over 50% from the same time last year. We are still making money –just not as much of it.
But there is a bright spot. Used and Vintage Goods. When tough times hit, people pull back their spending overall, but they still need some things. I have been watching the markets and talking to other sellers, and the sellers of used goods are doing pretty well. I spoke with one woman who specializes in used children’s toys. Her business has doubled from this time last year. Another lady specializes in used blue jeans –same thing.
The simple truth is that people need and want to save money and they are willing to check their egos and buy used. And its not just online. When I went to the post office the other day, I drove by our local Rotary Club Thrift shop and it was crowded. Same thing when I drove to our local Costco. The Costco wasn’t that busy, but the parking lot at the nearby Value Village ( a used clothing store) was packed.
The advantage of selling used goods are many. Products are easy to find. You buy them at flea markets, thrift shops and garage and lawn sales. The markups are high. The lady who sells used baby toys routinely makes 75% margins on her sales. The lady who sell blue jeans gets most of them at local thrift shops for about a buck a pair and sells them for between $10 and $20 a pair.
The downside to this business is time. I can order a case of new kitchen knives to sell with a simple phone call and they are delivered in about a week. But when I want to find used merchandise, I have to go out and look for it, haul it home, clean and photograph everything and then ship it. And yes, time is money. But in this case I am making a lot more money. I found a 1975 vintage stereo system at a church rummage sale a few weeks ago. I bought it for $20 and sold it on eBay for $375. Now thats the kind of markups I like.
I have even started to work on a new product. It is a book called The Electronic Trader – how to buy, sell and trade on eBay, Amazon and Craigslist. I have about 3 more chapters to write and hope to have it ready for the next newsletter. In the meantime, you may want to take a look at Ten Little Known, Highly Profitable Niche Markets on eBay. All of them are about selling used products that are easy to find and even easier to sell. I have just finished updating the book for 2010.
February 26th, 2010
As you know I was lucky enough to attend the Bloom Energy launch event yesterday at eBay Inc. in-person. In addition to covering the event on Twitter, I managed to capture some of the proceedings with my Flipcam.
I’ll update this page with additional clips as I upload them to our YouTube channel.
Cheers,
RBH
February 24th, 2010
This morning, eBay hosted the unveiling of a new, state-of-the-art technology at its PayPal campus in San Jose. It’s called the Bloom Energy Server (or “Bloom Box”), and some are saying it will revolutionize the world.
Developed by Bloom Energy Corporation, the Bloom Energy Server is an SUV-sized box that corporations install outside their buildings to generate their own electricity from almost any fuel source. Bloom Energy introduced its groundbreaking technology at eBay Inc. headquarters along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, General Colin Powell, and several of its early customers.
The Bloom Box was previewed on CBS 60 Minutes this past Sunday that included an on-location interview with eBay CEO, John Donahoe, as he showed the futuristic servers eBay has had in place for months now:
Fuel cells are effectively skinny batteries that can run at all times. Bloom fuel cells work by feeding air and fuel–often natural gas or biogas, but even energy from solar panels–into its system, which converts the two into electricity that can be used by homes, offices or even cities. What makes these fuel cells so appealing is how inexpensive yet efficient they can be. According to Bloom Energy, a stack of fuel cells the size of a brick would be good enough to power an average US home.
Unlike other fuel cell types, Bloom’s technology takes ordinary beach sand, bakes it and compresses it into a ceramic disc about the size of a Polaroid image. Special inks are applied to either side of the disc where chemical reactions will take place that will ultimately create energy.
In order to power a larger facility, hundreds of those discs get stacked upon each other and go into a box the size of an SUV. At eBay, five of these boxes were installed just behind the LEED-Gold certified San Jose North campus nearly nine months ago. In the first six months of having the system installed and running, it generated 2 million kWh of electricity, or enough to power over 150 average U.S. homes for over a year.
“eBay believes in the power of our business model to make a real difference in the world, and that includes how we embrace innovation to reduce our carbon footprint,” said eBay Inc. CEO, John Donahoe. “When Bloom came to us, it was an easy decision to become an early-adopter of their cutting-edge new technology. As a result, we’re meeting financial and environmental goals with the project while fueling a more energy efficient global marketplace. That’s good for us, our customers and the planet.”
According to Bloom, customers like eBay who purchase Bloom’s systems can expect a 3-5 year payback on their capital investment from the energy cost savings. Depending on whether they are using a fossil or renewable fuel, they can also achieve a 40-100% reduction in their carbon footprint as compared with the U.S. grid. Customers announced today include Bank of America; The Coca-Cola Company; Cox Enterprises; eBay; FedEx Express; Google; Staples; and Walmart.
Since the first commercial customer installation in July 2008, Bloom’s Energy Servers have collectively produced more than 11 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, with CO2 reductions estimated at 14 million pounds – the equivalent of powering approximately 1,000 American homes for a year and planting one million trees.
I’ll be covering the live event this morning via Twitter. You can see the full Twitter conversation by searching the hashtag #BloomEnergy. Look for photos and video from the event shortly thereafter.
Cheers,
RBH
February 23rd, 2010
We have two (well three technically) events coming up I wanted to alert everyone to:
- eBay Webinar – Tomorrow, Wednesday Feb 24th we are holding a customer-only webinar on some different strategies around the eBay changes that are rolling out in late March / April. We'll spend the most time on the fee changes and that they mean, but also hit on eBay Motors topics (fitment!!!) as well as the much discussed eTRS program / DSRs, etc. Customers can go to www.channeladvisor.com/webinars and then login to your account to get the details. We'll have a lengthy Q+A with many experts from CA so come with your questions and if you have any strategies to contribute, bring those too!
- Catalyst - every year we host an intimate (under 500 attendees) conference that highlights an area of e-commerce we don't think gets a big enough spotlight and one we are obviously very passionate about – e-commerce channels. We do two of these – one in the UK (London) and one in the US (Research Triangle area of NC):
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- Catalyst UK – This year Catalyst UK is April 12-13 at the Brewery (woo!) in downtown London. You'll be able to have two days of intensive learning with talks from eBay, Google, Amazon, Dell and many other channels and retailers.
- Catalyst USA – We moved the US back a little this year to May 3-5 and will be at the prestigious Washington Duke Inn. We have a great line up of speakers and topics this year including Bing, eBay, shopping.com and more and lots of great retailers like Crocs,
Toolup, eBags and more.
Catalyst fills up every year, so be sure to reserve your spot today. I'm sure some past attendees will chime in on the comments, but we receive feedback from many e-commerce companies of all sizes that are looking to take things to the next level on Search, Comparison Shopping and Marketplaces and they find Catalyst is, well, a catalyst for their business growth a year later. We always have a good mix of existing customers and general retailers that come each year. One thing you can count on – this is not a ChannelAdvisor sales event, in fact we do little to no selling of ChannelAdvisor and step aside and let the industry knowledge flow.
I look forward to seeing everyone there and learning more about
February 23rd, 2010
Over on Amazon Strategies, we have the complete story of the acquisition of Monsoon by Alibris. Monsoon has some eBay sellers as customers and has exhibited at eBay Lives and is a certified provider in the eBay world, although they are mostly know for their Amazon support. If interested, head on over and read the details.
February 19th, 2010
The e-commerce World is buzzing with a related change in the senior ranks of eBay and Google. Stephanie Tilenius was the General Manager for all of eBay North America and announced her departure September of last year (2009). Stephanie has laid low since then, but popped up back on the radar in a big way this week as the new 'VP of Commerce' at Google which is a newly created position.
When asked what she's going to be doing at Google, she states:
"…overseeing development of digital content and commerce in the cloud, plus she’s responsible for everything commerce-related, including product search and payments. This means she’ll be in charge of Google Checkout, the online payments system that rivals eBay’s PayPal. With all the new devices coming out for consumers, she says, there’s huge opportunity for innovation in mobile and local commerce."
At ChannelAdvisor we have the opportunity to work with most of the senior management teams of eBay, PayPal and Google. We've known Stephanie since she was on the PayPal side of things and worked directly with her on PayPal Express Checkout. When she made the move to the eBay/marketplace side of the house, we worked even more closely with her. In fact, Stephanie was one of our keynotes at last year's Catalyst event.
Knowing Stephanie for many years, I am really encouraged by this move on a couple of levels and discouraged on others. Let's look at it from the eBay and Google perspectives.
What does this mean for eBay?
This is not good for eBay. You have one of their most senior execs that not only has the PayPal off-eBay (merchant services) playbook in their head, but also the marketplace business in their head as well. The only worse defection I can imagine would be the PayPal CEO going to Amazon payments or Lorrie Norrington or John Donahoe doing the same.
You have to ask yourself why they would allow this to happen in today's World of non-competes and what-not.
What does this mean for Google?
To date Google's e-commerce efforts have been a second-thought at best. Google checkout came out of the gate strong, but seemed to lose support internally as other Adword related areas of the company required more attention. The Doubleclick acquisition and focus on display advertising took Google's thoughts even further from the world of e-commerce.
This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for Microsoft. According to the January comscore data, Bing continues to take share from weaker rivals (Yahoo!, AOL, ASK), and also for the first time, Google. I believe the secret to their success is Bing Cashback and first forecasted that as a potentially fruitful strategy back in June of 08.
So I view this as an (admittedly early) signal that Google is finally realizing they have a gaping strategic hole in their lack of a cohesive e-commerce / retail vision and they have found one of a handful of people that could really help them take it to the next level. It would still be a moderately positive signal if they created the position and put someone from say, the AdWords team on there. It's extremely positive to me that they realized their internal shortcomings and lack of insight and experience in the world of e-commerce and tapped someone outside the company to fill those holes.
Stephanie has an uphill battle, but think of the assets she can bring to bear:
- 65% search market share (US – higher in other geos)
- Dominant position in mobile (android, apps and search)
- Google product search - already one of the top CSEs by traffic and definitely has wide retail adoption
- Google checkout – Has some good technical underpinnings, but lost strategically
- Other google assets – billions of dollars, millions of advertisers and of course an army of brilliant engineers.
What next?
Once Stephanie gets her sea legs, we'll try and get an interview for the blog and certainly will keep you posted on any happenings in the world of Google's e-commerce efforts. It will also be interesting to see if we have any more eBay/Google flare ups from this high-profile departure.
You can read more about Stephanie's career moves here:
SeekingAlpha disclosure- I am long Google and Amazon. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor, where I am CEO.
February 19th, 2010
PayPal is being introduced as a way to pay in two important areas of Facebook: Facebook Ads and Facebook Credits.
According to the PayPal Blog:
Advertisers around the world will soon be able to pay for Facebook Ads with PayPal… PayPal will also become a payment option for Facebook’s virtual currency, Facebook Credits, which is currently being tested in a small number of games and applications.
You can read the full blog post HERE and the press release HERE.
Cheers,
RBH
February 18th, 2010
The eBay Android is now available for free at the Android Market and can be downloaded by searching “eBay” from the Android Market on your handset. In addition to traditional type search, the eBay application – like most Android apps – comes enabled with speech-to-text voice search. Simply tap the microphone button near the search bar and say what you’re searching for. The app will then automatically search for that item…
With the eBay application for Android, you can search, buy, pay, and check status of your eBay activity no matter where you are. The app will alert you about your auctions, so you never miss the opportunity to get that hard-to-find item! The app also features convenient voice-enabled search, status updates for sellers, and the ability to leave feedback. Whether it’s finding that special collectible, checking the status of your auctions, or paying with PayPal, eBay is open for business anytime, anywhere on your Android enabled phone.
My eBay for Android:
eBay Item View for Android:
From what I can tell visiting the Android Market website, the app is not yet available via their site, but I’ve been assured by Android users that the app is available directly from devices. I’ll update this post as I get new information.
Cheers,
RBH
February 16th, 2010
An interesting thing happened when I opened my mailbox yesterday. There was a certified letter from a law firm in Houston Texas. I am always the optimist. After all it could be a notice that a distant Aunt had died and left me her cats and a $2 million dollar trust fund to take care of them. But certified letters from attorneys rarely contain good news.
I had to read the letter a couple of times to make sure I got it. It seems that I had written an article last year about the interesting and profitable niche of selling coupons on eBay. (Here is a link to the article).
In the article I showed a list of recent coupon sales on eBay as an example of the types of coupons that sell and what they sold for. One of them was a coupon for a large bottle of Bertolli Olive Oil that had sold on eBay for just over $12.
Well it turns out that the coupon was fake –a counterfeit. There are a lot of completely legitimate Bertolli coupons –but none of them were for a free bottle of oil. (Which is too bad as Bertolli is my favorite olive oil).
So Bertolli and the nice folks at Unilever hired this law firm to get everyone who was promoting the sale to cease and desist. In my case they felt that mentioning the value of the coupons on eBay would incent others to try and reproduce and sell more of the counterfeit coupons.
I called the attorney in Houston as instructed in the letter to see what this was all about. Not knowing what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised that she was actually a very nice lady whom I enjoyed speaking with. She explained her client’s position and asked me to remove the offending line from the article. I explained my position, that I was reporting on a fact that had occurred –not promoting others to do that. In the end I made a counter offer. I said I would remove the offending passage, if Bertolli would send me a free bottle of olive oil to compensate me for the web costs. She said she would pass my request on to Bertolli.
The offending passage is now gone and I am waiting for my bottle of olive oil.
Yes, I could have objected and played hardball. Since I carry advertising liability insurance, a court proceeding wouldn’t have cost me any money. But heck –my time is more important. And the fact that Bertolli’s attorney took the time to be pleasant and reasonable, instead of belligerent, went a long way towards finding a solution. Also, the cost to remove the line from the article was not that great, so why get in a fight over something so minor?
If you blog or write newsletter articles, this points out some of the pitfalls. Even when you are working with the best of intentions, an innocent mistake can cause you problems. As things go this one was pretty minor, but that is not always the case. A couple of years ago, I inadvertently broke some arcane consumer law in a state where a company I was writing about was located and it cost my insurance company $5000 to settle the case. So you do want to be careful.
Carry Advertising Liability Insurance
Always check your facts and carry advertising liability insurance. If you blog for a hobby, you can get this protection as a rider on your homeowners insurance. If you blog for money, like those who read my book, How to Make Money Blogging From Home, then you should take out a basic business liability policy with an advertising rider. This type of policy pays attorney’s fees, court costs and even damage awards if you are sued or threatened with a lawsuit. Had this been a more serious case, I would have called my State Farm agent and he would have put me in touch with an attorney in Houston to deal with the matter.
So all’s well that ends well. But my current bottle of Bertolli Olive oil is about half-full. I hope the new one gets here before I have to buy a new one.
Skip McGrath