Sorry about that title, but honestly I am pretty worked up about this. Billionaire, Pierre Omidyar should stop writing tweets about the state of America and start concentrating on the state of eBay. Maybe if we shame him publicly, we can get him to do his job for the good of each of eBay’s stakeholders.
The problem with eBay is not John Donahoe (he’s a hired gun), the problem is Pierre Omidyar. He is the majority shareholder and Chairman of the Board and the only one with any real power.
He created a site that became the single best “personal empowerment” story ever told and turned it over to Wall Street and the MBA’s. They enriched him so he could pontificate about the terrible state of America when he has in his grasp a tool to empower real Americans.
I have lost all respect for the man. He has no real principles he’s […]
Read More…
I know how much you all love my stats, well now that my Webstore is up and running and taking orders, I have some early stats: (From Oct 17th through the 27th).
Unique visitors: 322
27% of visits are from returning visitors. (Probably some of you).
34.16 % of traffic has come from Google Product Search. (Google Base)
29.21% of traffic has come from My Blog Utopia - Thank You
10.64% of traffic has come from Yahoo organic search.
Sales to date: $132.16
6 affiliate sales (2 from my readers, thank you)
2 of my own items.
Now you may laugh at those sales, but I’m very pleased. I haven’t even started to actually market the site yet, this activity is pretty much straight out of the box. Once I fine tune my SEO efforts and add a blog to the site and start to do some merchandising, I’m feeling very confident that this will turn into a nice […]
Read More…
Bonanzle just keeps growing! In less than 2 months they have registered over 6,000 users, with 250,000 items listed and sales are starting to occur with growing frequency.
They had a little traffic hic-cup last week, because the GoogleBase feeds were being dropped, but team Bonanzle found a solution and once again traffic is on the rise.
Just my 15%
Read More…
Monday at 12:00 noon EST, I will be speaking with Marlene, The Savvy Seller about selling online. Why don’t you join the call. I’m not 100% sure how this works so you may not be able to speak to me on the call, but you will be able to join the chat room.
When: 12:00 pm EST (9:00 am PST for you Left Coasters)
Where: Dial in number: (724) 444-744
Call ID: 19245
We will be talking about all things ecommerce and who knows maybe I will even be positive about eBay. Here is your chance to ask me a question, you’ve been dying to ask. Just follow this link and join the chat room to ask any questions. If you don’t register, you will be anonymous and the pin # is 1#
Just my 15%
Read More…
I haven’t spent a lot of time at the site yet, so I can’t give you a thorough review, but Mashable has a nice write-up. It looks like niche website geared towards mom’s.
Mashable says:
“If you’ve had brothers or sisters or cousins older than yourself, there’s a reasonable chance that you’ve been the recipient of objects most frequently described as hand-me-downs.
Rarely would such an exchange elicit happy thoughts. Except for your parent or guardian, who saved some cash in the process, as well as the giver of said object, who could net some so-so karma for passing it along. (Major feel-good moments are had with Good Will donations and the like.) Well, there is now a service crafted to accommodate precisely this process. Fittingly, it’s name literally spells out Handmedowns.com. And quite frankly, it may actually be worth your while.”
What happens when you don’t have any more kids to “Hand Me […]
Read More…
Several years ago, eBay had a banner ad program for sellers that allowed them to bid on certain keywords and have a banner displayed at the top of search. I participated in this program at Glacier Bay DVD.
I remember that I loved the idea of my company name getting millions of impressions on eBay, but that the click thru rate was terrible. It made sense for me at the time because, I sent buyers to my store and the FVF at the time was 5%.
Now, many years later eBay is trying to sell ads to sellers again, with AdCommerce. In fact several select sellers are now part of a pilot program that will begin running soon.
Thanks to ColderICE, for pointing me to a video for the new service, explaining how it works.
I’m on record for not liking this idea for a couple of reasons:
For low margin businesses, it doesn’t make […]
Read More…
Everybody knows I’m very bullish about Amazon and though they have adjusted their guidance for the 4th quarter, to account for the uncertainty, they are still growing in this economy.
Here is what the analysts are saying:
Jeetil Patel - Deutsche Bank “We maintain BUY rating on shares of Amazon, as the fundamental growth (in metrics) remains solid, albeit affected by the strength in the US dollar and modestly by weak consumer spending. While FX headwinds and the current economic downturn have temporarily muted near-term growth and margin expansion, we expect unit growth in 2009 to power 19% operating profit dollar growth, which we think should lead to share price appreciation over the next 12-months.” (Bold is mine)
Justin Post - Merrill Lynch “Three positives for long term shareholders: 1) strong customer growth in 3Q at 17%, 2) midpoint of 4Q guidance implies a still solid ~20% ex-currency rev. growth in 4Q even in the heart of the recession, […]
Read More…
Amazon announced 3rd quarter numbers today after the close of the market and quickly saw it’s shares lose 12% in after hours trading.
You know that I’ve been very bullish on Amazon as a business and it appears they are not immune to the economic slowdown, though they fared better than many of their peers.
Here are the numbers:
Net sales increased 31% to $4.26 billion in the third quarter, compared with $3.26 billion in third quarter 2007 - Wall Street was looking for $4.27 billion so they missed the estimate.
Net income increased 48% to $118 million in the third quarter, or EPS of $0.27 per diluted share, compared with net income of $80 million, or $0.19 per diluted share, in third quarter 2007. - The Street was looking for EPS $0.25 So they beat on the bottom line.
The problem comes with their 4th quarter guidance. Much like with eBay, Amazon is expecting […]
Read More…
With all the talk about the new eBay being a retail haven for the Internet 500, I thought it would be good to take a look at some of these companies.
Here are some interesting facts on these retailers:
The 2007 annual sales of the Internet 500 range from : #1 Amazon.com at $14.8 billion to #500 KneeDraggers, Inc. at $6.5 million. It is interesting to note that several current eBay sellers sell more than $6 million a year on eBay alone and they aren’t getting any special listing deals. So my guess is you’d have to be doing $50 million a year or more for eBay’s salespeople to come a knocking, but who knows maybe they are desperate..
208 of the top 500 Internet retailers had sales of less than $25 million last year. Several current eBay sellers do more than $25 million a year on all venues. eForcity being one of them and because […]
Read More…
No he hasn’t visited My Blog Utopia, though I will begin working on that shortly. He actually is participating in a discussion thread on the eBay Stores Board.
A user posted a link to his most recent blog post which I have linked to here and Alan jumped into the discussion. There is some very interesting conversation going on.
Check it out.
Just my 15%
Read More…