Entries from August 2007 ↓

Popularity: 4% [?]

[tag]Paramount[/tag] Pictures and [tag]Dreamworks[/tag] Animation have just announced they will not continue to support [tag]Blu-ray[/tag] technology on future releases from their studios, opting instead for the less-expensive [tag]HD-DVD[/tag] format. There has been much talk of a "war" between these two [tag]high-definition[/tag] video technologies recently. This is especially bad news for Sony, who has thrown their support behind Blu-Ray technology.

If Blu-ray eventually gets pushed aside it won't be the first time for [tag]Sony[/tag]. Many remember the old VHS vs. Sony Betamax video wars of the early video recorder days. While this current battle is far from over, it's very interesting to see what's taking place on [tag]eBay[/tag]. Over the past 90 days, HD-DVD and Blu-ray players have been nearly identical in the sell-through rate within the Consumer Electronics category. Here are some other comparison points:

Is Blu-ray the new Betamax?

While we can see the sell-through rate is practically the same for players, HD-DVD outsold Blu-ray by over 30%. In a marketplace like eBay where people are looking for deals, a nearly $200 average price difference makes the HD-DVD players much more appealing to shoppers. When looking at the movies for sale in the Movies and DVDs category on eBay, we see a flip-flop of the numbers. There were nearly 30% less HD-DVD movies sold in the same period, and with a lower sell-through rate. There are approximately 50 more titles available on Blu-ray than on HD-DVD.

The world of [tag]VHS[/tag] vs. [tag]Betamax[/tag] is long gone. I don't think this digital format war will be a war to the finish as the tape wars of yore. For one thing, there are many players available which will play both types of discs. Secondly, in the early '80s we only had a couple of choices when it came to buying or renting movies. Remember the video stores that had an ever-dwindling "Beta" section? Now we have eBay, Amazon, and so many more places to find the obscure products to fit our needs. In fact, you can still find plenty of Betamax players and movies on eBay. The "war" seems up in the air at this point. As long as one side doesn't start making discs ½-inch bigger than their rival, we may just all be able to get along and play everyone's disc in the same player.

Strategy for sellers

Sellers may want to think twice about getting in very deep with inventory that only plays one of these formats. This is a type of product that could see profits drop quickly if other corporations make announcements similar to Paramount. While both formats may be around in the future, the best bet for eBay sellers for the near future seems like the players that play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD.[tags]trends,eBay sellers[/tags]

Popularity: 5% [?]

If he is, you can find a campaign button on eBay that testifies to that. In fact those buttons are about all that pushed Ron Paul past Hillary in this week's eBay Presidential standings.

What are they selling?

Ron's supporters are busy selling campaign related material such as bumper stickers, yard signs, campaign buttons, and pens for the 2008 U.S. Presidential race. The items for other candidates are primarily focused on historical items such as signed books, and photos. Again I believe the difference in the items reflects the difference in the supporters passion for their candidates. In fact, many of the collectible items don't really show support for the candidate so much as an opportunity to grab a cool book or autograph while it's hot. They could be supporters or not. But if you are selling or buying 50 Ron Paul bumper stickers, chances are you feel Ron Paul is your Homeboy - as the expression goes.

Hillary Nutcracker

One item that has me a little flummoxed is the super hot Hillary Nutcracker. My research puts this item in the "Hillary" column, however I'll wager they are not laying around in the break room at Clinton for President Headquarters. I don't really think it's in support of Hillary per se, but I can't really start judging individual items within the results now. There's no clear way to throw nutcracker support to any particular Republican candidate. So I'll leave the results as is for now with the reasoning that if Hillary wasn't running, nutcrackers in her likeness would be at a virtual standstill. So lets give her some credit. And hide your nuts.

[tags]Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, nutcracker,eBay,campaign,giuliani,mccain,obama,presidential race, hillary nutcracker[/tags]

Popularity: 4% [?]

If [tag]Skype[/tag] is not working for you, don't do what I did. I just spent an hour or two fooling around re-installing, playing with firewalls and anti-virus programs, and even doing a system restore trying to get Skype to [tag]connect[/tag]. Then I did a search to see if the site was having problems. Guess what? It is.

Outage Continues
The Skype system started having problems Thursday and they said it would be fixed within 24 hours.

Of course they can't really say that for sure and as we creep up on the 24 hour mark, my Skype still shows as "connecting..." PC World reports on the continuing problems here.

Skype vs. Regular Phones
I love Skype, I primarily use it for business. I have the webcam set up and I am getting to rely on it more and more for business meetings, and also to see my parents in Michigan. There have been many occasions where people have told me they've dumped their regular phone for Skype. While I'm a big Skype fan, this outage shows how dangerous that could be.

First of all, eBay and Skype recommends not replacing your regular phone with Skype. The biggest reason involves the ability to call 9-1-1 if there's an [tag]emergency[/tag]. The emergency system is set up to use the regular phone system. If you call emergency services through Skype they cannot follow your [tag]phone[/tag] line to get your location, which could mean life or death. You should keep basic phone service and have at least one "old-fashioned" phone that does not rely on house current to operate.

Second, I know computers are great and all, but would you really like to trust your ability to connect with the outside world to your computer?

[tags]telephony,connecting,eBay,9-1-1,outage[/tags]

Popularity: 4% [?]

What does it say about a candidate that they haven't got enough buzz to show up on eBay? Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye for thirty+ years, Mitt Romney is making gains, and Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani have girls fighting over them on YouTube. Yet Ron Paul supporters have trounced all of them in the world's largest online marketplace.

Other eBay Item Details

I'm not sure what it means, but there are a few other differences in items mentioning the Hillary and Ron.

• Ron Paul items ending on Sunday between 9-10AM (Pacific) have the highest success rate.
• Hillary Clinton items have the highest chance of success on Tuesdays, between 10-11AM (Pacific).
• The most successful Ron Paul items contain the keywords "for" and "bumper", and are found in the Collectibles category on eBay.
• The most successful Hillary Clinton items contain the keywords "2008" and "president" and are also listed in the Collectibles category.

The amazing thing is still Ron Paul's high conversion or sell-through rate. It just dipped below 70% this week. That's still very high for eBay, where people are always looking for a successful product line to sell. So Ron Paul supporters, this is your chance! The other candidates supporters seem to be missing the boat here.

How are they doing it?

First of all, the passion for Ron Paul, by Ron Paul supporters is amazing. They really believe in him and want to spread the word. It really shows a difference between Ron Paul and the other candidates. A lot of them are making things to sell on their own to support their man.

If you're not familiar with it, CafePress.com is a great site to make your own t-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, etc. with your customized design or slogan. Then you can either sell the items through [tag]CafePress[/tag] or eBay. Just shopping there is interesting. There is some extremely funny items as well as unique merchandise you won't find on eBay or anywhere else. Take a look at their 2008 Political stuff here.

Shop Political T-shirts and More at CafePress.com

[tags]eBay, Ron Paul, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Giuliani, 2008, president, Cafe Press, Mccain, election, polls, politics[/tags]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Sellers on [tag]eBay[/tag] are quite emotional about their [tag]Feedback[/tag] rating. Rightly so, since it is one of the most important ways for sellers to convince shoppers to trust them with their hard-earned dough. It's not the end of the world to get a negative comment, but it still hurts. In eBay University crowds there is always at least one person that asks how to get an "unfair" comment removed. Sad to say, it's pretty hard to get a comment removed. At least eBay offers [tag]Mutual Feedback Withdrawl[/tag] if a buyer and seller can work out their differences. Sometimes though, the comment remains like a Jägermeister stain on your favorite "Free Paris Hilton!" t-shirt.

If you have a couple blemishes on your otherwise stellar reputation, knocking you down from a solid 100% positive rating, you can recover.

A very cool little tool

If you have received a negative comment, your Feedback will reflect that with a percentage near you user ID as you buy and sell. It may say 99.7% or 99.8%. Can you ever get back to 100% you ask? or at least 99.9%? Yes, you can. eBay removes negative comments that are older than two years old, so those old transactions won't haunt you forever.

Another way though is to build positive Feedback up to counter the [tag]negative comment[/tag](s). For example, if you have 1500 unique positive comments, and 3 negative comments, you'll have a feedback rating of 99.8%. To push that back to 99.9% you'll need to keep your nose clean and get a your positive comments up to 1997. Don't forget you can get positive feedback from sellers if you buy things on eBay.

There is a cool little [tag]Feedback Calculator[/tag] that someone created to see what it takes to get the [tag]percentage[/tag] you really want. The more feedback you have the harder it is to bump it a notch or two. Have fun. You can find it at: http://home.alltel.net/micrep/feedback.html

Popularity: 5% [?]

My little boy, has at times refused to eat certain foods. He's seven. I expect it. I've learned that when he gets hungry enough though, he'll eat nearly anything on his plate. He can't go earn money for food on his own, so he generally eats what the family eats. The fact is, we have to move him along from baby food to grown-up food. He thinks we're big bullies some times, but as parents we have a little-bit larger picture of life than he does.

You are not the center of the universe

Some [tag]eBay sellers[/tag] are much like my little boy. They get mad and frustrated when [tag]eBay[/tag] feeds them something new. And they seem to think that eBay should base it's entire platform on their individual desires. While there are many sellers sell a tremendous amount of merchandise on the site. Even those that sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on eBay are still a drop in the bucket. Like it or not, eBay and its thousands of employees, along with a helpful community, have a bigger picture. If sellers will realize that, and accept certain facts, life gets a lot more pleasant. Fighting eBay, griping, [tag]complaining[/tag] about every new thing eBay does, does not make you happy, and that comes through in your selling. You can always spot sellers who hate eBay. They refuse to take PayPal, they threaten buyers with negative feedback in their descriptions before they even make a purchase! They resent the fact that there is no real choice when it comes to selling online. And they spend a tremendous amount of time on the discussion boards trashing every single thing eBay does in an effort to improve the site instead of improving their businesses.

Remember when?

Does anyone remember when [tag]eBay Motors[/tag] began? People absolutely hated it. But now it's the largest automobile marketplace in the world. Remember BillPoint, eBay's original online payment system? It was clumsy and difficult to use, people had constant complaints with it. And there was virtually zero protection for sellers OR buyers. How 'bout Mr. Lister? It was the free listing tool before Turbo Lister came out. It could not do a fraction of of what Turbo Lister does, but people complain about Turbo Lister all the time. Turbo Lister rocks! Yes, it has had a few bugs, but it will do nearly anything you ask if you work through the occasional problem rather than getting on the boards and throwing a fit.

Do you remember when there was no [tag]Selling Manager[/tag]? No [tag]eBay Stores[/tag]? [tag]Feedback[/tag] had to be left one at a time, emails were totally on your own, there was no My Messages section in your My eBay pages. Remember when feedback was permanent? even if someone accidentally left you a negative? There was no way to remove it. Remember when there was no penalty for non-paying buyers? Yes, it's true.

There are lots of other things eBay has done to try to meet the needs of sellers. In every case above, people whined and griped, threatened to leave eBay, and then embraced the feature quietly when eBay ignored them. eBay is retooling its search methodology now. People are griping and whining again. Good grief. Just stay off the boards and go sell. I suggest complainers take just half the time they spend griping, and teach themselves how to solve problems with applications (such as Turbo Lister), and read some good business books, they'd be much more successful and happy.

Fees - the number 1 challenge?

AuctionBytes just posted the results to their recent survey of eBay sellers. I was not surprised at the results. Of the 988 respondents (there are well over 200 million eBay users worldwide) they sited "[tag]eBay Fees[/tag]" as their biggest challenge. Are fees really a challenge? Did they think they can be in business without a cost? Is there such a business? I think of a "challenge" as an unanticipated situation that I have to overcome. Are eBay fees unanticipated? Generally, costs go up, they always have. A big problem is many of the people who say they are in "business" have never been in business before and so [tag]business expenses[/tag] present a challenge. Fees are predictable, and should be expected.

What are reasonable fees to you? Seriously, start a website, load it up with merchandise, and try to get some traffic, let alone buyers - because only a small percentage of your shoppers are going to buy from you. How much do you think it'll cost? Buy some Google or Yahoo advertising and drive some traffic to your website? Get out your wallet... and do you have the time to design a website, and an advertising campaign? Plus sell and run a business?

It costs money to run a business. If you cannot sell your merchandise and make a profit, then find something else to sell where you can make a profit, or go out of business. [tag]Seth Godin[/tag]'s book "[tag]The Dip[/tag]: A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)" can help you see if you are better off quitting than living in mediocrity. (I've added a link to the book from Amazon - for the eBay haters.) eBay does not owe us anything. I think it's great that people have built businesses from scratch on eBay. If though, you needed to make adjustments in your business to increase your profits, would you stop and think of your customers, scratch your chin and say, "I'd better just keep doing things the way I have been, I'm making enough money." Of course not, why do you think eBay would do the same?

There are untold thousands of people happily making money on eBay. The silent majority if you will. They don't get on the boards and gripe, they don't file class-action suits against eBay or [tag]PayPal[/tag], they don't answer surveys about eBay. They work hard, are positive and sincere, and that comes through in their listings and they sell. Simple.

The true picture of the 988 respondents came though from two of the questions in the AuctionBytes survey.

The first question I refer to was:

• "What is the best feature eBay has added in the past two years?"
  46% responded "none", with the next group being 13% for Markdown Manager, and 10% for Turbo Lister.

The other question was:

• "What is the best policy eBay has implemented in the past two years?"
  the largest group, 33% said "none".

Why even bother to take the survey?

These responses are childish and unprofessional. Period. The response to these two questions makes me embarrassed for the eBay community. Like a bunch of little brats with their arms folded, refusing to eat their broccoli...

eBay is run by smart people. The company is one of the most successful in recorded history. Maybe they know what they're doing. Small sellers continue to get mad because this company just "doesn't get it". Sounds very similar to what a seven year-old thinks of his parents for serving up a helping of broccoli at dinner time, "they just don't get it".

Look people, either go do it on your own, or eat your broccoli.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Sales of Ron Paul items on eBay last week put [tag]Ron Paul[/tag] back on top in the eBay Presidential Race over Hillary Clinton who had taken the top spot for the two previous weeks. Items include bumper stickers, signs, and commemorative silver dollars - but also the backlit car top sign which has been reduced in price to $89.95.

Rudy and Barack doing better this week

Items for Rudy Giuliani and Barack Obama have done better this week, solidifying both of their number two spots for this week.

Changes on hand for next week?

It will be interesting to see if there's any changes in store for the Democrats after the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas. The attendees have a lot of influence through their blogs and those online readers are also online buyers. We'll see next week.

Differences in the research this week

When researching eBay for these results, I've used saved searches for consistency over the past several weeks. However, I've decided to tweak a few things to make this contest more realistic. Lots of factors play into this decision, such as [tag]Hillary Clinton[/tag]'s association with Bill Clinton and their place as historical figures not related specifically to the 2008 race. For example, if people are selling Bill Clinton's book, with Hillary's signature, that's not a real indication of support for her [tag]run for President[/tag], but a historical collectible. If someone is selling items that deal specifically with Hillary though, I'm leaving them in the mix. So I've gathered results this week on Hillary and excluded Bill. I've looked back over the past couple of weeks to see if that would have changed the standings, and although it would have been tighter, it didn't change the order. Also, for [tag]Obama[/tag] and [tag]Giuliani[/tag], I've only included research on their last names, since they're pretty unique and many sellers don't mention their first names or spell them wrong.

One thing I'd like to do is drop the laggers at the ends of both lists. But I think their weak showing makes a strong statement, so I'll leave them on for awhile.

As usual, comments and questions are welcome.

[tags]presidential race, 2008 race,presidential candidates, Yearly Kos, bloggers, Bill Clinton, eBay[/tags]

Popularity: 4% [?]

The following article was written by my friend and fellow eBay University Instructor, Jack Waddick.

Big eBay Store News!

If you already have an online eBay store or if you’ve been thinking about opening one, I have some very good news for you.

There are several new developments that will help you either open or update your eBay store and then sell more product. (That is the whole point, right?)

1. If you look at eBay.com, you will notice that there are now several new high-visibility links to [tag]eBay Stores[/tag]. Each eBay Stores link takes your buyers/bidders to the new eBay Stores Hub.
2. The new eBay Stores Hub has been completely reconfigured to make it quick & easy for eBay Store [tag]shoppers[/tag] to quickly search, select & purchase.
3. If your current eBay Store needs to be improved or if you need some help in opening a Store, I’d like to welcome you to the New and Improved eBay Stores Toolkit. Here you will find a complete basket of tools to open, build, and manage your eBay Store.


"That’s all great Jack, but I need help [tag]designing[/tag] my eBay Store!"

4. Check out the New [tag]eBay Stores Design Center[/tag]. And be sure to download 1 of the 4 Brand New FREE eBay Stores Design Templates to give your Store a professional look and feel. See which one you like best.
5. You won’t want to miss the eBay Stores audio tours and tuturials page for a more hands-on educational experience.


Do you still have some questions?

6. Grab a cup of coffee and take a walk through this exhaustive FAQs page.
7. And…if you’d consider upgrading from Basic to a Premium or Anchor eBay Store, be sure to read these September '07 Enhancements.

Well…I hope these new tools & features make it easy for you to either go ahead and open an eBay store or to sell more from your current store.

Take a minute & check out my eBay Store at www.eauction101.com

Best wishes,

[tag]Jack Waddick[/tag]

Jack Waddick is an eBay University Instructor and Certified eBay Business Consultant.

Contact him at jwaddick@oakviewtraining.com or by phone (847)322-0088.

[tags]Oak View Training,chicago,Free, eBay Store Templates[/tags]

Popularity: 4% [?]