Posts from — May 2006

We will be at eBay Live on June 12-15 in Vegas. Remember, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so don’t forget to mark the date and be there or be square.

Why do we recommend it? There are lots of other sellers, lots of networking opportunities, and generally speaking lots of folks willing to share information. For the cost of the ticket you will find that you’ll be informed and you’ll be knowledgeable about eBay selling and on the gala night you’ll be well fed. We strive to go meet our eBay clients every year at eBay live, so if you have a chance look us up. We will be at the PESA (Proffessional eBay Sellers Alliance) suite, and around.  Also, make sure to stop in at Marsha Collier’s Coolebaytools booth at the show. Marsha is one of our favorite clients and one of the top eBay players,  so make sure and say hello to her.

Due to our attendance at eBay Live! we will not be operating business that week, so please be patient if you are waiting for a quote or completion of projects.

We hope to see you there.

There are several tricks that we use to build templates for eBay. Eventhough it is said that you can not use script items in your listings this is not entirely true. In fact, most of our templates use both script items and formatting tricks that change html to respond differently than your normal run of the mill webpage. In addition using ascii code can allow you to code into an ebay listing which greater flexiblity to get over the eBay search maniupulation issue. You can find some conversion tools by googleling the words ‘ascii conversion’. Most of the auction management systems, such as ChannelAdvisor and Marketworks support these script items, but be careful as some of them only take the some of the tags in what I like to call reverse ascii code. This is simply that not only content areas but also inside html tags need to be coded in ascii type.

You can also change the entire eBay page using .css (cascading style sheets)rendering the eBay look quite different from what it actually is. Not all of these changes are that great, but the fact is that you can mess with the entire auction listing page. For starters we often use form css which makes the form submit button look different, changes the color of the button, etc.

We also use a font style that nearly ensures that no matter what is used by the person who is submitting the auction that the template will retain it’s integrity and the look that was originally crated. Other sites, like Overstock Auctions also allow for styles although their tags differ from those on the eBay templates. Instead of the ‘a name’ tag you can use a ‘div’ tag at Overstock. Overstock will otherwise strip out some html tags making it much more difficult to use standard html tags on the site. Quite a bit can be changed in your auction listing throught a listing template with style sheets and scripts creating a marketing template that will surely outshine your competition. Take a look at our services – we create eBay templates.

We’ve started a list of websites, on a page (click left navigation to get there) that inspired us this month.

Our favorite inspiration site, holds you from the minute you get there. Take a look at the Sundance Film Festival: http://festival.sundance.org/2006/

Some of the  eBay Power Sellers have noticed, and made a big deal about, the falling stock prices of eBay. It’s a surprising development, but are the stock prices at eBay really going to affect eBay sellers?

I had the pleasure of attending an analyst dinner with folks from Piper Jaffray and took away a few notes. The dinner was attended by some of the major shot callers for stock pricing for eBay. As I understand it the price will stay as a buy. Eventhough many are squaking about it, the fact is that eBay is diversifying their business to include their payment system (Paypal) and VOIP product (Skype). The auction business may have matured, but in fact there are many other avenues to make money on the internet, most noteably Pay per click, and why wouldn’t any public company enjoy those avenues.

Skype is a product used by millions of users and although it is still not fully developed by eBay - they are certainly looking for ways to improve their pocketbook with this product. Bringing to the table pay-per-click, ads on the Skype platform, and eBay visibility will play well for eBay. This might even bring more buyers to the eBay auction site, and eBay Express.

I wouldn’t discount eBay as the largest ecommerce platform out there, because in reality it is! Alexa ranks as the top 5 sites, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, MySpace and eBay, and while Yahoo certainly has ecommerce, it does not have the available buy it now mentality and the volumes of listings that eBay has. None of the others come close.

Take a look at all the ruckus about GBase. Here is something that is said to have the capability to rival eBay, yet in reality, it is nowhere close to the ecommerce portal that eBay is, and honestly, I don’t see much there when I look at other Google attempts to go, like Froogle. Froogle is a search for product entity that doesn’t contribute but a minor portion of any etailer profit. In fact I’m hard pressed to find any ecom site that has good results from Froogle and a good conversion.

What many may not realize, especially sellers on the eBay platform, is that eBay is more than just an auction site anymore. It now has interests in many markets and the most profitable is likely to be the Skype and Paypal areas, not the core auction business that it has been in the past.

While sellers are clamoring and disgruntled over this, the fact remains that eBay can only justify to their stockholders moving forward and reaping a fortune. If the core site has matured, they are smart for going out to other avenues. As a seller, that should be the key as well. Diversification is where sellers will continue to find new opportunities for growth while still maintaining their base. This is what eBay is doing and this is what eBay sellers should be doing too.

We recently moved our website to another server. This may result in a variety of issues for our customers, including, oops, images missing?

Please let us know if you have a template or a store which has missing images. Normally we don’t serve our client files from our web site, but on occassion in the rush of development one or two of them may have remained. We’ve been cleaning house and think we got them all but there is always the event where we goofed.

Some eBayers have asked me about alternative shopping cart systems to for example Miva which I highly recommend. Two alternatives come to mind: 1. ProStores: for an eBay seller this one is a natural. The reason is that it can interface with eBay like no other. It’s a quick study to get started and I will post some additional information here to get you started quickly and easily. This system carries some issues, such as pricing on the transaction end, but overall I would rate it highly for eBay sellers. Check out the offering of ProStores here. 2. OSCommerce. This solution is fully customizable, but who would want to. To get going quickly there are no issues, it’s pretty much install it and run. But there, that’s the key issue. If you are going to use this type of system you will need to understand how to install it, or get a host to install it for you. The customization for headers and site design are not that difficult and I will post some additional information as time permits on quick starting this project.

If you want your online business to be a success, you have to accept credit cards. Statistics showed that right after starting to accept credit cards; the sales can increase by as much as 400%. To do this you need to have an Internet Merchant Account.What is an Internet Merchant Account?
Essentially it is a bank account for an online business, it allows merchants to deposit and refund online payments. In trust, the bank agrees to allow you to charge people’s credit cards for goods and/or services you provide. The bank in turn, has the responsibility for debiting the funds from the customer(s) and depositing it into your account. What kind of options are there?
Typically, you have two when it comes to acquiring a merchant account. First, the normally preferred method is to acquire your own merchant account. The second option is to use a third-party merchant account. This means that another party allows you to accept credit cards using their merchant account. This can be more expensive, percentage-wise, but is a good option for people with very low volume or who are unable for some reason to get their own merchant accounts.What are the advantages of having my own merchant account?

Working on eBay is a great business if you can maximize profits and minimize the time you spent doing it. If you are faced with growth there are many things that you will want to consider before hiring assistance to save costs and make life easier. Consider a listing program.eBay has fundamental tools, like Turbo Lister and Selling Manager that do backend work, like invoicing, ad creation, and payment collection, but there are several others that are noteworthy. In addition, note that when you use a listing program you will not only save on man-hours but you will also save on features such as image hosting, with the ability to use multiple images in each ad. The cost of these programs outweighs the money vs. time equation with added features that will save money on eBay listing fees as well.ChannelAdvisor:

1. This sytem is a compelte auction management program online with a short startup for those who want better services than the standard services offered by Selling Manager, and Selling Manager Pro.
2. Contains Ad Templates that can customize and conform your listing to look very proffessional
3. Will do Inventory management
4. Can launch auctions instantly or schedule ads to launch
5. Has an inherant checkout system that can take payments and upsell from your ChannelAdvisor Store.
6. Has Image Hosting included
7. Generates invoices, shipping notices and auto feedback.
8. ChannelAdvisor Pro starts at $29.95 per month

Sign up with ChannelAdvisor and get 14 days free.

SpareDollar:

1. Has Ad Templates
2. Has Image Hosting included
3. Generates invoices, shipping notices and auto feedback.
4. Has Gallery feature to add cross sell to your ads
5. Is very inexpensive at only about $8.95 per month

Try SpareDollar

There are many others, but these are just two of the options available. For more information and eBay consulting, contact us.

Recently eBay has put in an entirely new structure to combat fraud on the site. New sellers who do not get verified need to do this in order to stay online. One recent client reported that after he had uploaded several auctions and had over 7 bids on each, he was pulled because he had not been ‘seller verified’.To become verified, make sure you click on myeBay account, and enter both a credit card and bank account.

Small Business owners face many decisions when starting a web site. There are many types and choices for building sites and there are many opportunities available. Making the right choice can play an important role in website traffic.When considering where to build a website several things should enter into your decision.1. Do you have the funds for updates to the website, or will you do it yourself?2. If you plan to access the backend yourself is it a simple straightforward program that will make your job easier?

So now we have the blog spammers. These are the guys who arene’t really writing anything except buy this, buy this, buy this. Rank me, Rank me. and so on.

There is even software for those spammers who are too lazy to write anything. It will post you out to thousands of sites. I get submissions every day. I don’t act on them.

Then there are the auto submitters that post comments to your blog conveniently including their own url in the response in hopes of jumping off of your PageRank with a link of their own.

According to one blogger, CNN has even engaged on the battlefield, posting comments to blogs in order to win the rating wars.

I think we’ve disabled posting to our blog via comments, so not to worry, but if you have a blog, beware of the blog spammers and prune those messages!