eBay Strategies

eCommerce Times article about stolen goods on eBay...

I don't know if its the holiday's, being burned out on elections or what, but in the last week there has been a surge in ebay Fraud articles in local/national papers.

This one is actually pretty good.

eBay continues to take a hands off policy with this requiring a police report and other items to actually take action->

We have to get direction from law enforcement, that they believe something is stolen and a report has been filed, before we can start looking for it," Durzy said. "It can never be pre-emptive, because we are not a law enforcement agency ourselves."

Durzy emphasized that eBay never took possession of the items sold on its sites. As a result, he asserted, it was impossible for the company to check whether the items were stolen, or for it to sell stolen goods deliberately. "Criminal liability requires the intent to commit a crime," he said. "We have never been sued in a case of stolen property."

ebay - thebestofallofus

and the the best place to fence stolen goods as this article illustrates. This student stole some John Kerry books from the library and just auctioned them off for > $2k!!

But alas silly thieves, eBay keeps pretty good records on where you live so expect a rap-rap-rap at your door shortly after your auction closes.

Top ebay powerseller, time-warp, starts drop off biz...

Good article about a couple that started selling on ebay under time-warp and now have a drop off business in Santa Cruz called "Time Warp Trading Post".

This is a growing trend - top powersellers opening a retail outlet to take in consignment business. I think this model works much better than the AuctionDrop approach.

There's a PESA member - bbguy who has a drop off center called Auction Zone that is doing VERY well we hear.

Article about ebay evangelist...

What's an eBay evangelist? Read this red herring article about Adam Trachtenberg and find out. Embarrasing confession - kareoke's to a song from Dirty Dancing (ouch). If you ever meet this guy tell him that "nobody puts Baby in the corner!!!!"

Interesting article on PayPal's free day...

RED HERRING covers the paypal outage and subsequent refund. Their thesis: "It ain't enough." Fun fact for you:

In paypal transactions - 54% are paid via credit card, 33% are bank account transfers and 14% come out of paypal balance.

It's free PayPal day!!!

PayPal "does the right thing" and offers sellers a free day of paypal transactions to cover the loss of revenue from the recent severe paypal outage

Strategies to think about:

1. Post auctions that close thursday with immediate pay only (paypal)
2. Send out reminders to anyone that hasn't paid you on Thursday - maybe offer them something free (free shipping - $2 off shipping, etc.)

The logic is that the more PAYMENTS you can drive on Thursday, the more of a 2.2-3% discount you will get!!

Paypal is now the only player in town

Yahoo to scrap online-payment service and then there was one.

Can a one payment system world be a good thing? I guess we still have credit cards, but still...

eBay's new ad campaign

eBay unveiled their latest ad campaign, titled "The Power of All of Us". This week.

You can see the first two ads here:

www.thepowerofallofus.com
Fun fact - if you call the phone number left on the car in the belief commercial, you get an ebay marketing message.

The beginning of the end for the drop-off center trend?

B2 reports

the demise of ebay drop off store "DropShop" which was evidently big in the Twin Cities.

Buh-bye.

ebay/google/yahoo on collision course?

From today's WSJ -->

From today's WSJ ->

"Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay are on a collision course," says Bill Gross, chairman of venture-capital firm Idealab, which introduced a search-engine company this week at a conference here. "They're all stepping into each other's territory, and it's going to lead to interesting battles."

Also they have a table of comscore ratings for top 7 trafficed sites: (august data)

1. yhoo - 113.1m visitors
2. aol/twx - 112.1m
3. msft - 111.0m
4. goog - 61.9m
5. ebay - 58.9m
6. ask - 38.9m
7. amzn - 33.1m

I didn't realize that google had passed ebay in august - interesting.