Could the pant suit be the new Elmo TMX for the holiday season this year? Will crazy shoppers be storming the local Sears store at 6AM to get the last orange pant suit?
U.S. politicians, especially presidents have set trends in fashion for many years. Presidents wore top hats to their inaugurations from the days of honest Abe Lincoln until Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated in 1965. First Lady Jackie Kennedy set the tone for women in the 1960's. Now Senator Hillary Clinton is making her mark.
Could the pant suit be the new "little black dress"? If Breakfast at Tiffany's was remade today, would Audrey Hepburn wear pant suits?
Get ready for the holidays! Start shopping now while there is still a choice. You do not want to be the one in an ill-fitting (and God-forbid) floral print pant suit at the family Christmas dinner this year.
You can be on the cutting edge of pant suit fashion right here. Go shopping! Beat the rush!
Popularity: 27% [?]
The big news broke about Barack Obama's choice of a running mate last night as I was finishing my Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie. Joe Biden, the Democrat Senator from Delaware is the man. I did a quick search with Terapeak to see how eBay items related to the Senator have been performing.
Between August 12 and August 18, there were only 12 (yes, one dozen) items with the keyword "Biden." The sell-through rate was only 25% with an average price of $6.31. Not too impressive by any stretch.
When I looked this morning, there were 150+ items. (Actually, when I started writing this post there were 140, now it's 152.) This is a good example of how to ride a wave of media coverage. Lots of items are obviously CafePress creations by quick thinkers. 
This phenomena will happen again during the run-up to John McCain's announcement, and the Republican convention. Will you be ready?
Some cool political memorabilia will be rolled out - such as Joe Biden's Senate cufflinks listed today. Here are the latest Joe Biden items. Will they be a good investment?
Popularity: 29% [?]
Researching one thing often leads to another. I was researching antique radios for my site RadioGems.com, and found ham radios high on the list for eBay.
Using Terapeak, I searched ham radio and found the keyword tuner in many of the top sold items. Searching for ham radio tuner led me to a pretty nice niche for someone using Build a Niche Store or phpBay Pro. Here is a Terapeak screenshot of 90 days of eBay activity on the term ham radio tuner:
In case you can't see the results well. The Avg. Price is $130.59, and the sell-through rate is 81.61%. Pretty good.
Many other ham radio items were also doing well. Ham radio antenna was another item that stood out.
If you're looking for a niche to build around. This could be a candidate, especially for an eBay affiliate site. Here are the current eBay listings for ham radio tuners:
Popularity: 26% [?]
eBay has release the monthly change list, and it's a big one. I'm not going to rehash the announcement. You can read that for yourself. But here are my gut reaction predictions, pros and cons.
Pros
Fees are generally going to be lower. I've already closed my eBay Store. That'll save me $15.95 per month.
Visibility for fixed-price listings will be greater. They will last longer, and if a seller sells multiple items with the new 30-day duration, they'll get indexed by search engines. This will hopefully bring some organic search visibility for your eBay listings.
Another positive, the more recent sales an item has had, the higher that listing will appear in Best Match results.
Cons
Lower upfront fees, and longer durations will likely mean more items on eBay. More items essentially more competition, both in a literal way, and due to eBay's new "Finding" system. Sell-through rates will likely fall across the site.
Small sellers of one-of-a-kind items will benefit the least from these changes. The bigger sellers with multiple items will get the benefit of greater visibility over time.
Automatically suspending sellers with less than a 4.3 DSR. There's not much screaming about this yet. But it will likely lead to more sales of Selling on 'the River'.
Bigger media sellers will be affected by the new fee structure / fixed shipping. Ultimately, it will cost buyers more to buy media items. These large sellers make a little bit on shipping, which they'll now pass on to buyers.
Summary
It's a little harder to pick on these new changes. Overall, I think the changes are positive. I still disagree with some of the other changes made this year, but this set is more positive for the masses.
Maybe eBay's Q4 2008 will not be a bust after all. Time will tell.
Popularity: 27% [?]
