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
Vzaar - embedded videos for eBay 2007-07-05 09:08:21 I have just learned about a new service called Vzaar which is specifically designed for eBay sellers to embed videos
in their listings
This service differs from the likes of Youtube as it is intergrated with eBay’s API enabling user to easily integrate the videos into their listings without playing around with the code.
I think that putting videos into eBay ads is a great ideas as it will give users more information about the product, leading to more bids and higher prices. Video should however be well produced as I am sure a dodgy video could put buyers off! Read more:embedded
eBay firefox extension 2007-07-05 07:04:44
eBay and firebox have just launched an eBay firefox extension. At a quick glance this has a lot of the features of the eBay toolbar, but is more integrated into the browser. My browser now has a rather neat button on the main menu and i can launch a sidebar to get more detail on items I have won/lost. features
Secure sign in
Customisable alerts
Instant update
Spoof alert
There has been some discussion on TechCrunch as to whether by providing a service like this to eBay, mozilla is selling out. If it is a good tool do we care?
links for 2007-07-05 2007-07-04 19:43:20
Sclipo: broadcast your skills
(tags: sclipo skills video)
Tasty Data Goodies - Swivel
(tags: swivel data graphs)
BlogBackupOnline - Sign Up Now
(tags: blogbackuponline blog backup)
Read more:links
eBay and Squidoo 2007-07-04 09:38:39
I have recently noticed that more and more eBay sellers are using Squidoo
to promote their items and so I have decided to reassess Squidoo as a way of driving traffic to eBay and other transactional websites.
Quite a few eBay sellers seem to be using Squidoo to promote their products. These seem to be the smaller sellers with niche, funky products which people will like to read about. Here are some examples:
http://www.squidoo.com/Suncatchercreations http://www.squidoo.com/cactusandcoyote http://www.squidoo.com/titaniumringsandweddingbands http://www.squidoo.com/nickandnorapjs http://www.squidoo.com/whattosellonebay
The team at Squidoo have also written an eBook encouraging eBay sellers to get on board. You can download it here
What do the top lenses to do get up the list
Although it is not possible to get traffic details about the different lenses on Squidoo, it is possible to see their ranking. From a quick analysis of some
MyThings and iTaggit - Creating an new asset class 2007-07-04 08:46:23 On reading techcrunch the other day I came across two new website which help people catalogue and value their valuables
Mythings.com is a site which allows users to enter details of their assets to create an online portfolio. Items can be included in the database, with tags and pictures. Once listed users are able to obtain a valuation for the item, warranty and purchase insurance. If you on longer want the item you can post it to eBay (My things is integrated into the eBay API), donate it to charity (there is a list of Oxfams on the site) or recycle it (the site links to a recycling website). Here is the techcrunch post for more information
My things is VC backed in has offices in the US, UK and Israel.
iTaggit is a similar service. It also allows users to build up a portfolio of products and then perform actions like buy accessories and take out insurance.
Unlike MyThings iTaggit is not integrated with eBay and is US only.
Here is the techcrunch post Read more:Creating
, class
links for 2007-07-04 2007-07-03 19:40:06
Openads - Home
(tags: Openads online ads network)
MyThings U.K. - Find out how much your valuables are worth and manage your collectibles
(tags: mythings asset tracking)
iTaggit - Organize, research, and securely track the value of your items and collections
(tags: itaggit asset tagging)
Read more:links
eBay Vs Google - The Stats 2007-07-02 17:51:12 These has been much excitement and speculation in the blogosphere regarding the spat between eBay and google
Background
Google
scheduled a Checkout Freedom Party in Boston during eBay Live conference to pressure eBay into accepting Google’s checkout payment solution. eBay temporarily stopped buying Google keywords. Rumbled, Google canceled the party.
Dropping the ads revealed some interesting information about the relationship between Google and eBay which I thought I would cover
Google and eBay’s Statistics
Here are some stats about eBay’s relationship with Google
Bill Tancer from Hitwise says that 10.6% of eBay’s traffic comes from Google (they don’t differentiate paid/natural). He does note that a big chunk (25%) of it comes from the branded terms (ebay/ebay.com/www.ebay.com).
Jordan Rohan cited that eBay spends about $25m/Q on Google Adwords
Using these figures Scott Wingo of ChannelAdvisor that paid google search account for around 20% o Read more:Stats
eBay seller get fined $475K for Shill bidding 2007-07-02 17:18:54 A jewellery company in the US who were shill bidding
on a massive scale has been fined $475K.
Ezra Dweck and employees of his company, EMH Group, placed more than 232,000 such bids worth some $US5 million over about a one-year period.
Full story here
I find this pretty hard to believe! At auctioning4u if we get one of our employees bidding on an item we get hammered. eBay detects this by IP address and also shipping address and email etc.
Also how did they find the time to do place all those bids? Amazing
Bebo overtakes eBay as the most searched term 2007-07-02 16:52:14 Hitwise has reported that searches for Bebo, the social networking site, has overtaken eBay.
see the press releases here
Except for one week in September 2006, the term "ebay" has topped the list as the highest volume search term in the UK. However, Bebo again became the #1 most searched for term in the UK for the week ending 26th May 2007 and has held the #1 position for the past three weeks. Share of UK Internet searches for "bebo" have increased three fold in the past year and two-fold in the past six months. (the press release was 11th June)
eBay is still ranking about Bebo in share of traffic.
1
Google UK
www.google.co.uk
8.20%
2
eBay UK
www.ebay.co.uk
2.70%
3
Windows Live Hotmail
www.hotmail.com
2.64%
4
Google
www.google.com
2.44%
5
MSN UK
uk.msn.com
1.54%
6
Bebo
www.bebo.com
1.52%
7
Orange
www.orange.co.uk
1.47%
8
MySpace
www.myspace.com
1.36%
9
Yahoo! Europe Mail
uk.mail.yahoo.com
1.24%
10
Yahoo! UK & Ireland
uk
BuySafe eBay Data 2007-07-01 05:01:43 I came across some interesting information from BuySave on Steve Woda’s blog and though I would make some comments. In general the figures reinforce the notion that eBay is a very competitive marketplace and demonstrate the importance of selling through multiple channels.
BuySafe analysed the sales data from their top sellers which produced the following results - my comments in blue
1. Margins on eBay are very tight. Taking into account all costs of business, including listing fees, fixed overhead, product sourcing costs, etc, the average net margin on eBay is 8%. Product sectors such as cameras, cell phones and consumer electronics are particularly fierce with net margins falling to the 2-4% range.
This is quite a scary figure and demonstrates that eBay is a very competitive marketplace. I wonder if there is a BuySafe effect? Are Buysafe customers operating in cut throat marketplaces which require the use of a product like buysafe.
eBay store Design - Does it help? 2007-07-09 09:25:19 There was some interesting information contained in the newsletter from Aswas. Debbit Levitt states that some sellers found that custom designs reduced the amount of traffic driven to their products.
We had a few sellers tell us that they had their custom eBay Store home pages "professionally" designed, but that when they checked their Traffic Reports, they noticed that they had MORE people (than before) leaving their Store from the home page… as in people were hitting their Store and leaving without clicking on ANYTHING. That’s bad! This supports our theory that even a professionally designed home page has the potential to confuse or distract visitors, who are used to seeing items as soon as they get to an eBay Store. This is part of the reason that we try to talk everybody out of doing custom eBay Store home pages.
This is very interesting as the likes of frooition say that their designs boost sales. That said, there are custom homepage and
links for 2007-07-09 2007-07-08 19:41:02
SitePoint
(tags: technology info site)
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:links
Blogging Tips - Part 1 - Customising your blog 2007-07-08 05:24:56 I have been doing quite a lot of work on my blog recently and I wanted to share some of what I have learned. This post will be in three parts
Part 1 - Customising your blogs
Part 2 - Monitizing your blog
Part 3 - Promoting your blog
Blogging
platforms
I use Wordpress. This is probably a little more difficult to use than the likes of Blogger, but I can host it myself and hack the code. Wordpress offers two options, the self host option which I use (I signed with the hosting provider Bluehost, who offer an automatic Wordpress installation).
As for presentation I have used the standard Kubrik theme, but customised the header image. This ca
Plugins
Wordpress is great as there are loads of plugins which can be easily added to improve functionality. This is a godsend for people of limited programming ability like me. Here are the plugins which I find useful
Anti-Spam image. This displays one of those "enter the number in the image" f
links for 2007-07-08 2007-07-07 19:36:15
Chitika, Inc. - A Contextual Advertising Company - EminiMalls – Interactive Merchandise Kiosks
(tags: monitize blogs chitika)
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:links
eBay India starts a shopping cart 2007-07-13 11:08:40
eBay India
has incorporated a shopping cart into its site. This will allow sellers to add items into a ecommerce style shopping basket from multiple sellers and pay for these all at once. This is a great improvement on the current situation where items have to be selected and bought at the same time, there is no ablilty to interchange items, unlike in most websites.
I have not tried out the basket as I don’t want to buy anything, so I will be curious to find out how it works for auction items. Also what happens when an item is in the shopping basket but is not yet paid for - can other people buy it or is it reserved?
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee!
links for 2007-07-13 2007-07-12 19:57:20
Quidco - The web’s cashback cooperative
(tags: quidco cashback cooperative)
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:links
Google Launches Search Query Performance report 2007-07-12 17:10:40 Google
has launched a search query performance report
, which allows advertisers to see the actual search queries which triggered their ads. It is about time that they introduced this feature as it will prove very useful for improving the relevancy of keywords, especially for businesses who cannot easily measure the ROI on their adwords spend.
Previously the only way to get at this information has been through an analytics package or a service like Hittail.com. Helpfully it is not a service which is available through Google Analytics.
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:Search
, Query
, Performance
, Google Launches
Local Classified - eBay launches Kijiji 2007-07-12 07:19:22 There have been some interesting new products launched in the local ads space. Up to now the main players have been Craigs list (25% owned by eBay) and Gumtree (owned by eBay - not in the US). However eBay has now launched Kijiji in the US which looks like a Gumtree 2.0.
Kijiji has some great new features such as the map which is on the homepage, allowing you to easily search by area to see you local ads. I hope that they bring this functionality over to the UK soon.
I wonder how long it will be before these site start adding a checkout and calling themselves an marketplace? It would be easy for eBay to do as they already have the infrastructure needed (i.e. PayPal) and the traffic.
There is also another entrant in the US market called Cozybug. This is a site for sites which are too big to sell on eBay. It differs from Kijiji/craig’s list in that there is a small fee to list and they offer storefronts.
I think that they will hve Read more:Local
, Classified
links for 2007-07-12 2007-07-11 20:06:44
Google Finance
(tags: Google Finance)
Yahoo! Finance UK - FTSE, Stock Exchange, Mortgages, Loans & More
(tags: Yahoo finance)
gumshoo - ebay searching app
(tags: ebay gumshoo search)
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:links
gumshoo - ebay searching app 2007-07-11 16:53:45 Gumshoo is a new eBay search application. It’s main difference the with ordinary eBay search is that shows typos results along side the eBay results. I don’t like it as it has none of the fuctionality of eBay’s advanced search, so I don’t really see the benefit over searching
through eBay….call me old fashioned
clipped from www.gumshoo.com
What is gumshoo?
A simpler, safer, smarter way to shop eBay™
Filter out junk, accessories, used items & more
Find misspelled auction bargains
See the seller’s 30-day feedback trend
Identify potential auction risks before bidding with Risk Alerts:
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Spacetime - a 3D eBay search application 2007-07-11 09:09:49
I have been asked to review spacetime - a new web application which allows 3D search of eBay, Google, amazon, YouTube Yahoo! and Flickr all from one visual browser.
the application allows you to scroll through entire screens, or just the item images. Here is an example:
Now although I think that we have a long way to go interms of nagivating through search pages, I think that the appliations like this, whist looking pretty, slow down the whole process. The site by it very nature is an intermediary, coming between you and information you want to find. It is also rather processor intensive, requiring a high spec PC.
That said it is nice to be able to search all these plaforms from one place.
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee!
eBay Cheap Listing day 2007-07-11 06:43:51
I am probably a bit late in announcing this but there is an eBay cheap listing day tommorrow.
It would be interesting to know whether these actually work for sellers. There is some evidence to show that prices are much lower on cheap listing days as there is much more competition. They are also on days which tend to be low traffic times e.g. between christmas and new year
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:Cheap
links for 2007-07-11 2007-07-10 19:47:56
Bargainshopper | WebSiteBroker: Buy and sell websites!
(tags: website domain broker)
Buy Premium Domain Names, Domain Name Registration, Web Hosting
(tags: buy domains domain broker)
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:links
Blog Tips pt 2. - Monitizing your blog 2007-07-10 08:06:13 There has been quite a bit written on this and so I won’t pretend that this is a comprehensive list, just a profile of the methods which I have been using. The revenue which you can gain from these methods obviously depends on the amount of traffic which you can generate.
Advertising
Google Adwords
Google offer an easy to implement advertising program called Google Adsense. Simply sign up to the program and insert the ad generation code into your blog template (there are plugins to help do this). Google will then serve ads to your website, relevant to the text on your pages.
These ads are pay per click, meaning that you only get paid when someone clicks on the ad.
Text links
Companies such as text link ads sell links will sell links in the text of your posts to advertisers. This obviously advertises their products as well as building their pagerank.
I have found this to be the most effective way method of producting advertising revenue.
Direct Adver
Analysing Websites 2007-07-16 05:07:48 I have some across some interesting information recently about analysing the traffic going to competitor websites.
Firstly, Andrew Girdwood wrote an interesting post on the eConsultancy website on the matter - Andrew is head of Search at Big Mouth Media, a leading SEO company so probably know what he is talking abou.
Secondly, was just looking on the TechCrunch website and found a post on an interesting new service call Xinu which shows all the publically available info about a website in one place
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:Websites
links for 2007-07-15 2007-07-14 19:40:18
30daytags.com
(tags: directory of tagged sites 30daytags)
Subvert and Profit
(tags: subvert and profit)
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:links
Using Social Bookmarking sites to boost traffic 2007-07-14 12:01:12 Social bookmarking sites are increasingly being used by people to record what they find online and share this with their friends.I have been very impressed with the results I have got from submitting my blog to social bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us and Digg. Submitting my pages to these sites produced a definite peak in site traffic
.
Here are profiles of my favourite social bookmarking sites.
Delicious
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site which allows you to record your bookmarks and share them with others. They also have a useful tool which allows you to post your bookmarks to your blog on a daily basis which is great for creating content without much effort. Each entry is tagged and people will use the site to research popular websites in a given category.
I have found that submitting my pages to Delicious have produced some traffic for my blog but nothing spectacular. However it is a very useful tool.
Here is my Delicious Profile Read more:Social
, Bookmarking
Anchor Stores - are they worth it 2007-07-18 12:31:57
I have always wondered if Anchor Stores were worth the extra £270 a month over featured stores. To recap, the advantages of a Anchor store over a featured store are:
More emails - 5000 vs 2500
More custom pages - 15 vs 10 (but who is ever going to use that many)
Logo on the store homepage
More frequent exposure in the related shops box on the eBay search results.
A full comparison shop subscription levels can be found here
Out of these the only thing for which might be worth paying £270 is the chance of more traffic to your listings and shop homepage. The problem is there is has been no data available on whether having an anchor shop actually has any effect….until now. Being the scientific types we are at Auctioning4u we did an experiment to establish if having an anchor shop had any affect on our traffic.
Before I get into figures, I should first point out that as Auctioning4u is constantly changing its stock and the number of ite
links for 2007-07-18 2007-07-17 19:42:56
Say hello to Web Analytics 2.0 | Clicky
(tags: clicky web analytics)
Lulu.com - Self Publishing - Free
(tags: lulu self publishing)
If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee! Read more:links
Blog Tips pt 3 - Building Traffic to your Blog 2007-07-17 06:39:44 Part 1 - Customising your blog
Part 2 - Monitizing your blog
Part 3 - Building
traffic to your blog
Getting traffic to any websites, blogs included, is difficult and requires dedication and hard work. Competition for eyeballs is fierce and to get traffic you need to take every opportunity to optimise you blog and provide a good user experience. Here is a list of the tactics which I am employing to build content.
Write Quality Content
It seems obvious but having quality content will encourage people to visit your website and read what you have to say. Other bloggers will read your content and link to it from their blogs. Furthermore, the more content you have on your site, the more content there will be for search engines to include in their search results.
Pings
When you write a new article, it is possible to have your blog software ‘ping’ blog search engines such as Technorati, to have them index the new conent. This increases the changes of your
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