Aug 14 2008
Getting ready to head out to the airport, so I’m not going to be blogging today and tomorrow but you can still follow me on Twitter. Of course if I hear anything of importance or get a chance I might still pop in for a post.
I will be enjoying a couple of days in the great northwest.
Just my 12%
Aug 12 2008
And the beat goes on!
Inactive and NARU sellers accounts grew 3% since they were last measured on July 16th according to Seller Dome:
NARU: +3.1%Inactive 1 month: +3.9%Inactive 6 months: +1.1%Inactive 12 months: +2.6%
These are just the numbers of sellers who have ceased selling on eBay, many other have diversified to their own websites or other marketplace sites. In Q2 Amazon announced that seller registrations there increased 18% Y/Y
This will be an interesting trend to follow, especially as we get close to the 4th Quarter.
Just my 12%
Aug 11 2008
This is a repost of an earlier post about Amazon Prime, yes I am lazy and didn’t want to rewrite it. I do have one update though; I still Love Amazon Prime - Try it out for One-month Free just click on the promo button on the right side bar.
Okay, I’m jumping the gun here with this post, because I just signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime on Monday and made my first order Monday evening, so I haven’t even received my items yet, but I’ve had enough exposure to the service to write about it.
Here is my 12%:
With Amazon Prime and One-Click turned on, shopping on Amazon is a breeze. In fact I would dare say it was fun. No way, eBay ever comes close to this shopping experience.
When shopping with 3P Merchants, I just selected “Eligible for Prime” offers and whola I narrowed down the […]
Aug 10 2008
eBay has become known as GlitchBay to many users over the past few years. They have been rolling-out numerous changes to the live site for a couple of years. These glitches actually have increased in frequency and really wreak havoc on the “buying and selling experience” on eBay.
Here is a blow-by-blow accounting of the most recent glitches:
***Original: DSRs Displaying Incorrectly***August 07, 2008 11:49AM PST/PT
Some Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) are currently displaying incorrectly. We are working on this issue with the utmost urgency, and expect to have it corrected soon. We absolutely understand the necessity of displaying accurate DSRs for our sellers, and we apologize for the frustration and confusion this may be causing you
***Updated: DSRs Displaying Incorrectly - Resolved***August 08, 2008 04:17PM PST/PT
Between 11:00am PT Wednesday morning (8/7/08) and 3:00pm PT Thursday afternoon (8/8/08), some Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) were displaying incorrectly. The issue is now resolved, and […]
Aug 07 2008
eBay announced today that beginning Aug. 18th Best Match would become the default sort for eBay Motors and just to drive home the point, knowing that there would be a seller uproar they said:
“As a reminder, Best Match has been the default sort option on eBay.com since March, and it has been the default sort even longer in other international markets, such as France and Germany. Best Match helps buyers find relevant items quicker and easier than other sort methods. In fact, since its launch, our data show that Best Match has a better buyer conversion than any of our other sort methods, such as “Time: Ending Soonest.”
Okay, so why will sellers be upset? eBay says “our data show that Best Match has a better buyer conversion than any of our other sort methods, such as “Time: Ending Soonest.” but this is not seller’s personal experience.
So, if it is […]
Aug 05 2008
Not much interested me this morning, at least not enough to write a blog post on it so I decided to spend the day on other things. I will be posting regularly on Twitter today so if you get bored go to www.twitter.com/rksmythe and follow what I’m saying. Some of it might even be interesting.
Just my 12%
Aug 04 2008
Guest Blogger Steve Lindhorst is the author of “Selling on ‘the River’ - The eBay Seller’s Guide to Selling on Amazon.com” and he blogs over at GenuineSeller.com
eBay’s Business Prevention Dept. Strikes Again
With unbridled enthusiasm, the business world has begun adopting eBay’s new strategy to provide a better shopping experience.
…okay, well not really. In fact eBay sellers are outraged yet again. eBay’s newest policy comes in two parts:
If a seller has multiple identical items, eBay will only display one on the search results page. Once the displayed item has a bid, the items are no longer identical, and eBay will show another.
eBay search results pages will display a maximum of 10 items for any given seller. If seller #1 has more than ten items listed, and a buyer performs a search, they will only see 10 items from seller #1 on the first page of search results. Seller #1’s […]
Aug 02 2008
I was musing about this idea over coffee this morning and came to the conclusion that there were more reasons for eBay and Amaqzon to merge than to stay separate. Now, before you investors, eBay execs and Amazon execs. start picking this apart, let’s at least keep an open mind until you’ve read the entire post.
First, let’s look at some of the main reasons not to merge:
Amazon is growing fine on its own - They really don’t need eBay; they have a plan to rule ecommerce and they are working hard to accomplish that goal — it just may take awhile.
Regulatory issues - If the top two online marketplaces joined forces, there might be some issues with the reduction in competition, but I think a merger would pass muster fairly easy.
Corporate Cultures - You cannot find two more different corporate cultures and it would certainly be very difficult […]
Jul 28 2008
I’ve been hearing that traffic from Microsoft’s Live Search has been rising as a referrer for eBay Store sellers, in some case’s moving up just behind Google in traffic. I just wanted to ask guys if you are seeing the same thing.
Live, recently launched “Cashback“ through their search engine, so it would make sense that traffic would be up, but the big question would be; are sales up? The searcher only gets “CashBack” after a purchase, but can earn up to 25% on some eBay purchases.
It would be interesting to test the traffic coming from Live, by identifying a few items in your store inventory to fine-tune for CashBack search and then tracking the conversion of those items. I’m not sure if Omniture provides that capability though.
To conduct this test, go to Live’s Cashback site and search on your items. Check out how you compare with the other merchants and […]
Jul 25 2008
Amazon has launched a video tutorial section on listing and selling through Amazon. It is available in your Amazon Seller Central account.
There are multiple videos on several different topics:
Set UpYour Account
ListInventory
ShipItems
IncreaseSales
DesignYourStore
You may not be able to view these unless your are logged into your Seller Central account.
Just my 12%