Owner: eBay, ecommerce, life URL:http://www.trevorginn.com Join Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 02:30:26 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: News, views and best practice on eBay and other leading online marketplaces Site statistics:Click here
Buying Traffic from StumbleUpon 2007-07-17 05:55:44
I covered in a previous post that listing my blog posts in StumbleUpon
produced a massive spike in my web traffic.
Now I didn’t realise until this morning that StumbleUpon actually sells traffic. You can purchase stumbles at $0.05 (£0.024) per click. In terms of qualification you get to choose the category you want traffic from, the location, sex and age. You can also set a daily budget
The traffic will be pretty untargeted and so is cheap. I would recommend that businesses try it out and see what conversion rate they get.
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links for 2007-07-17 2007-07-16 19:47:43
My Article Marketer
(tags: article marketing)
Xinu - Check quickly your PageRank, backlinks
and much more
(tags: Xinu traffic website statistics stats)
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Comments on TechCrunch eBay Post 2007-07-20 10:48:01 I came across a post on Techcrunch today about selling on eBay which was based on an article in Christian Science Monitor. Most of the research which is mentioned is covered in posts on this blog, and so I thought I would link to them to make it easy to people to read what I have to say
Some buyers outbid the “Buy it now” price for a good, finding 45 to 50 percent of eBay auctions for a sample of iPods exceeded the “buy it now” price.
This was covered in this post.
The percentage of daily bids is highest at 8pm. The percentage of closing auctions is also highest at 8pm. The study says this may be counterproductive since it creates greater competition for bidders attention at that time.
I haven’t covered this actual study, but a German study produced similar results
Buyers seem to favor auctions with more bidders.
They don’t mention the source for this in the article, but it is cover in a study by Gillian Ku, reviewed in this post Read more:Comments
, TechCrunch
PriceFad - Price trends for consumer items 2007-07-23 07:40:14
PriceFad is a site which allows consumers to view the price behaviour
I find this site interesting as it show graphically the behaviour of commodities over time (in this case consumer goods).
Although this is for new items (I presume as it does not give info on its data sources), you can infer that second hand items will display a similar time-price curve, albeit from a lower base. This is once again support for the notion that consumers should sell their second hand items as soon as possible, before they depreciate to zero.
The site is interesting but lacks any decent search and browsing facility. The search for ipod did not produce any results, or even suggestions. To get a result the search needs to be an exact product.
Here is an example graph.
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links for 2007-07-22 2007-07-21 19:38:24
Remember The Milk
(tags: online task management gtd)
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eBay Q2 results 2007-07-21 11:40:35 On July 18th eBay posted their second quarter results
. Here is a snapshot:
Marketplaces net revenues totaled a record $1.29 billion in Q2-07, a growth rate of 26% over the $1.03 billion reported in Q2-06. eBay’s users posted a total of 559 million listings in Q2-07, 6% lower than the 596 million listings posted in Q2-06. These listings generated Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of $14.46 billion in Q2-07, representing a 12% year-over-year increase from the $12.90 billion reported in Q2-06.
Store inventory listing were down 25%
Improved performance then. Presumably increased marketplace growth on a lower number of listing must mean increased conversion rates. Perhaps to some extent the increase in SIF listing fees has weeded out the rubbish listings as intended.
It is interesting to note that eBay GMV is growing considerably slower than ecommerce as a whole (around 20%).
PayPal net revenues totaled a record $454 million in Q2-07, a growth rate of 34%
How to Use Facebook to Promote your Business and Blog 2007-07-26 04:35:30
It would be difficult not to notice the staggering growth of Facebook
over the last few months. Facebook now has 31 million members across the globe and its growth has been so large that some people are talking of it as the new Microsoft.
Where there are members there is the potential to acquire customers, promote your business and drive traffic to your site or eBay listings. After playing around with Facebook over the last few days, I have come up with a list of ways in which it can be used to your business.
Connect with your business contacts
Chances are that your colleagues and business contacts are on Facebook already. Invite them to become your friends and join your company network (if you have one - see below). Facebook is a much more friendly and interactive environment than social networks like Linkedin and can be used to form closer bonds with your contacts.
Create a profile for your company
To create a foothold on Facebook, create a profile for your c Read more:Promote
, Business
Interview with SpaceTime CEO and creator Eddie Bakhash 2007-07-25 04:58:25
Following my review of Spacetime, a new 3D search tool for eBay and other marketplaces, I have interviewed the CEO, Eddie
Bakhash, who has been kind enough to fill us in with some background and developments with his product.
Where do you see SpaceTime fitting into the browser market?
SpaceTime is a next generation media browser that features 3D Search and 3D Tabbed Browsing. By allowing end users to search an array of content through one search box, SpaceTime eliminates the need for users to hunt for information. In addition, by displaying information in 3D visual stacks, SpaceTime saves people time by eliminating the need to click back and forth between a list and the items you are looking for. As PCs become more powerful and bandwidth increases, consumers’ appetite for content will also increase. SpaceTime offers a solution to this.
How has the uptake been?
We have 200,000 downloads; 500,000 searches; and 5,000,000 impressions in Read more:creator
links for 2007-07-24 2007-07-23 19:43:35
Buy with Knowledge | PriceFad.com - The Internet Price Trends Company - Free Historical Price Trends
(tags: pricefad price comparison)
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Second rotation and other remarketing services 2007-08-02 06:44:33 Second
Rotation has been launched recently as a way for consumers to sell on their electronic items for cash. This is an interesting development in the drop-shop model which uses the fact that for some categories (mainly electronics) eBay is a liquid market with steady (ish) marketprices. Based on a number of criteria (condition, accessories etc) the site will give a value which it is willing to pay for an item. Presumably the items are then sold on eBay for a spread over the offer price.
I think that this model is perhaps the future for customer focused eBay consignment sellers, as it provides a good customer experiences (cash today) and allows the consignment company to only deal with items they know will sell.
The idea is not new with The Drop Spot offering to buy up iPods and gaming systems from their site Beyond the Pod. Similarly in the UK, services such as Mopay, envirofone and mazuma mobile offer to pay cash for mobile phones
If you found thi
links for 2007-08-02 2007-08-01 19:46:23
Yesmail - Permission-Based E-mail Marketing
(tags: yesmail email marketing oursourcing)
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links for 2007-08-14 2007-08-13 19:42:30
wiki
wikispaces family wiki
(tags: wiki spaces)
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Swapping sites - Why bother? 2007-08-21 13:45:35
On my travels around the internet I have come across several swapping websites. A new one called youSwop has been launched recently. Other sites are listed here.
Considering the development of money is one of the greatest events in the history of mankind, enabling goods and people to travel freely, I cannot help but think that this is a slightly backwards step! I can imagine that most of the stuff on these website are things that people really don’t want i.e. rubbish, any good stuff will go on eBay for exchangable elecronic pounds which I find useful in satisifying my consumer needs. In short, I don’t think that these sites will be challenging the eBay or the classified sites at any point soon.
It is also a bit of a mystery to me how these sites expect to make any money. Advertising perhaps?
I find a good service for getting rid of stuff which is not worth selling is freecycle.
Tags: you, swap, swopIf you found this post
eSellerPro supporting PlayTrade 2007-08-20 04:29:07
eSellerPro has become the first software provider to support Play.com’s playtrade platform. Playtrade allows third party items to be sold alongside Play.com’s own products, in a very similar way to the Amazon marketplace.
I have no data on how effective Playtrade is as a marketplace. However with low commission rates (about 10% - no listing fee) it is certainly worth looking into.
I think that Playtrade is an interesting platform and perhaps indicative of the future of online selling with high traffic websites (e.g. Amazon, Playtrade) selling other products alongside their own, turning their site into a marketplace. The website benefits by increasing choice without buying extra stock and getting commission from the sales monitizing their web traffic. The seller benefits from the potential to reach a bigger the websites large customer base.
With products like Ztail allowing products to be listed on any website in future ecommerce to becom
eBay Facebook App 2007-08-19 08:49:57
eBay has just launched a facebook Application called eBay Marketplace . This is hot on the heals of their eBay to go application for listing products on blogs and other websites.
This is clearly a no brainer for eBay as Facebook
and other social media sites are expanding so rapidly. The marketplace place app lets users monitor their eBay activity from their facebook account and promote their items to other facebook member. A quick look at the functionality reveals the following:
Items are listed on your facebook profile, but not in the facebook marketplace
Items have links to bid and buy, but these direct the user to eBay
You can allow users to see the items you are watching, items you are selling, sold and unsold (hmmm not sure if I want to show people what I am watching….)
There has been quite a few developments in this space recently. Buy.com’s launched its Garage sale application, which allows items to be listed and bought through Facebook.
Money supermarket vs. the rest 2007-08-19 07:18:12
On the tube the other day I noticed an advert for Money
Supermarket.com which was comparing it with other insurance comparison sites. This seemed to me a new development in the comparison engine market, comparison of the comparison sites, perhaps someone will produce a meta-shopping comparison site. This ad showed that they got their customers a better deal for a very specific insurance search, no doubt not chosen at random.
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The effects of hiding postage costs 2007-08-25 17:29:28 I have been reading a paper by Tanjim Hossain and John Morgan entitled Shorouded Attributes and Information suppression: Evidence from field experiments which makes some interesting points about how to treat postage charges on eBay. Their study looked at how differences in display of postage costs can effect the final price of the auction. They varied the opening bid, shipping cost and timing of the disclosure of shipping charge while selling matched sets of products. The study came to the following conclusions:
When the shipping charge was disclosed in the title of the listing there was no revenue effect of changes in the shipping charge (i.e. shipping + final price = Total price for variations in shipping charge)
When the shipping charge was disclosed in the body of the listing but not the title, a seller earns a higher revenue with a higher shipping charge.
They also found the the final prices achieved were the shipping price was displayed in the title of t Read more:hiding
links for 2007-08-25 2007-08-24 19:47:06
thumbalizr - a website thumbnail creator
(tags: screenshot service)
Shopify Marketplace
(tags: shopify marketplace)
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Loss of Stumbleupon traffic 2007-08-24 17:05:47 ???????
I am not sure what have been happening with Stumbleupon recently. I have been using it advertiser service to drive traffic
to this here blog ($0.05 a click seemed like quite a good deal, and I feel that surely someone must want to read what I have to say!). However in the last week the amount of traffic has dropped to zero for no given reason. Perhaps there is just not enough traffic to go round?
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links for 2007-08-24 2007-08-23 19:40:34
collectZing.com : manage and share your collectibles
(tags: collectors site)
Digital cameras, MP3 players, laptops and more at Aroxo
(tags: aroxo online marketplace)
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Aroxo - DOA? 2007-08-23 07:11:15
I have just discovered a new marketplace is launching called Aroxo. I can’t tell you anything about this site as they are still in private Beta. However, I think that they will be lucky to make any headway in a marketplace dominated by the likes of amazon and eBay.
The bus for generalist marketplace has left and I think that anyone would be daft to launch a generalist marketplace, that is unless you have a massive advertising budget. Yes, sites such as Tasbar and CQout have several hundred thousand listings, but these are mostly tat and do not compare to the tens of millions on eBay.
People of Aroxo, I wish you luck, you are going to need it.
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links for 2007-08-23 2007-08-22 19:44:19
Free Online Marketplace & Free Ecommerce Website Builder - get a Free Online Store at eCRATER.com
(tags: ecrater online marketplace)
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eCrater - Free online Marketplace 2007-08-22 11:56:34
Reading Randy Smythes blog today I cam across eCrater, a free online
marketplace and ecommerce shopfront provider. Initiall sceptical, I was actually pretty impressed with it, especially considering it is free. The product has the following functionality:
Shopfront with its own URL
Shop search
product listings (quite a rigid format - but that might be a good thing)
inventory management
Shipping rate definition by weight
Bulk upload
Search can either be at the shop level or the whole of eCrater, from the eCrater homepage.
I think that this would be a great product for hobbists to sell their products to a local market, or someone wanting to set up a low volume ecommerce storefront. Where I think that Randy is wrong about this is that it could replace eBay shops. What this product lacks which eBay has is traffic. Yes eBay fees are high, but they compare favourably with the price of Google Adwords, which is what is suggested as a way of driving traffic to Read more:Marketplace
Timing of Online Auctions 2007-08-22 03:17:27 Some new research by Uri Simonsohn entitled Excess Entry into High Demand Markets - Evidence from the Timing
of Online Auctions, throws some light on that difficult issue - when to end your auctions.
Competition neglect is the effect of people choosing actions which would maximise their profits in the absence of competition. In other words, they do not take into account the effect on competition on their sales, piling into the next big thing without thinking that everyone else is doing the same.
Simonsohn shows that competition neglect is rife in eBay, with sellers listing at high traffic times, without realing that they times produce lower sale prices. The research showed the following:
At peak times e.g. Sunday evening, there is a lower bids to auctions ratio i.e. auctions get fewer bids. For example between 8 and 9a.m. 3.9% of items end but 4.7% of bids are placed, whilst between 5p.m. and 9p.m. 25% of bids are placed but 37.5% of items end.
Consequently
Determinants of Final Prices in eBay Auctions 2007-08-28 17:28:46 I have just read two studies which look into the factors effecting final prices in eBay Auctions. Ryan Praskievicz studies the prices for 30GB iPods for his study The Determinants of Final
Bid Price in eBay Auctions and Lucking-Reiley et al use coins in their study, Pennies from eBay. The main findings of the reports were as follows:
Feedback matters, especially negative feedback. Lucking-Reiley et al found that a 1% increase in the seller’s positive feedback ratings yields a 0.03 increase in the auction price on average. The effect of negative feedback ratings is much larger opposite effect: a 1% increase causes a 0.11% decrease in auctio price on average.
Being a Powerseller matters. Praskievicz found that on average Powersellers got $7.71 for their iPods with all other factors being equal.
Buyers do not pay attention to postage prices. In much the same way that restaurant goers do not factor in the tip into the price of their meal, Pras Read more:Prices
links for 2007-08-30 2007-08-29 19:47:02
Toolhaus.org
(tags: eBay tools)
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links for 2007-09-26 2007-09-25 19:39:15
BPA Baby and Child | Home
(tags: baby and child show)
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How to get your blog indexed on Technorati 2007-09-22 14:18:39
Sometimes the old ways are the best. I registered this blog on Technorati
about a year ago but they never seemed to register my new posts, despite the fact I was pinging their server. I tried emailing but got no reply. The ‘top’ blog search engine clearly was not interested in what I had to say!
A quick web search showed that several other people were having a similar problem with getting their blogs indexed. I was not so bothered about getting traffic from Technorati, but a lot of people use technorati’s Authority rating to as an indication of the quality of a blog’s content. My low authority was brusing my pride and drastic times called for drastic measures
As a last ditch attempt to get through I wrote a letter to a bigwig at Technorati, stating how dismayed I was with their level of service. Within a week my problem was resolved. The eBay, Ecommerce, life now has an authority of 26 and all my posts appear in t Read more:blog indexed
links for 2007-09-21 2007-09-20 19:42:19
Baby Products Association - Home
(tags: baby stuff)
Baby marketing. Your guide to marketing to new parents in the UK.
(tags: baby marketing)
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links for 2007-09-19 2007-09-18 19:44:51
Top Seller List Live
(tags: top eBay sellers list)
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