Special eBay Live update Issue

The eBay Seller's News, June 2007, Volume 7, No. 6A

Learn How To Sell More on eBay with The Newsletter for Professional
eBay Sellers by:  Skip McGrath

Another eBay Live is behind us. You have probably read the news from eBay Live in other blogs and newsletters. If not, I will give you a brief overview, but my real job is to put the news in context for you: "What do the changes coming from eBay mean to sellers?"

Before I get to that there are a couple of things that are timely that I want to point out to you. As you know I have been a fan of --and endorsed, WorldWide Brands for some time. In January of this year they came out with a new offering called OneSource that replaced all of their previous directories.

Since January of this year WorldWide Brands has been offering a discounted upgrade to all of their old customers who purchased one of their products before January. Well this will end at midnight on Monday, June 24th. So if you had purchased any WorldWide Brands product in the past two years (before January of this year) and have not upgraded, go here now, to take advantage of this offer before it expires.

The other offer that is about to end soon is their $50 discounted offer and my $20 coupon for new customers. So if you would like to take advantage of the best wholesale information available on the web today, go to this link to get the combined $70 savings offer.

When I visited WorldWide Brands in Orlando a few months ago, I recorded a video with their president, Rob Cowie, on Niche Marketing. It is about 35 minutes long. You can click here to watch the video. This link will also take you to an order page where you can get the special $20 off coupon for my readers.

The other thing I wanted to tell you about is a new book. It is by online entrepreneur, Tim Knox, and it is called Everything I Know About Business I Learned From My Mama. Tim is launching his book with a massive Joint Venture offer that includes free bonus offers from the following eBay and internet gurus:

This is a great deal. I have seen a review copy of Tim's book and it is inspiring and educational to anyone who wants to be in business for themselves and the bonus materials (including one from me) are worth far more than the purchase price. So take a look at Everything I know About Business I Learned From My Mama.

Observations from eBay Live

We like to think of middle age as when you enter your 40 and 50s, but in the internet world eBay seems to have entered middle age at 11. Growth is slowing, seller conversion rates are down, the stock price has been going sideways for almost a year (after falling 25%) and sellers are looking to Yahoo Stores, Amazon and other places for new venues to sell. The good news is that eBay realizes this and seems to be on the verge of a middle age makeover.

As Meg Whitman outlined in her Keynote speech, eBay wants to make buying things easier, make eBay fun again and give the feeling of security that buyers get when buying from established stores. In an interview with USA today Meg stated the obvious: "Our user experience has always been fantastic, but it didn't keep up, in my view, as well as it should have. You will see more changes to eBay's buyer experience in the next 12 months than you probably have seen in the past three or four years."

I also detected a new emphasis on listening to sellers and considering some of their problems. eBay announced a temporary minor fee cut in the 1st level of the final value fee from 5.25% to 4.50%. The fee cut is supposed to last from June 17 to August 5th. Bill Cobb also announced that there would be no fee increase in July as is traditional every year. Personally, I think the temporary final value fee cut will be extended beyond August 5th or replaced by a new fee change. I have predicted for some time that eBay will cut listing fees and replace them with higher final value fees. This is a move that has been wanted by eBay sellers for some time and could stop the hemorrhaging of sellers going to Amazon and other sites.

I ran that idea by a couple of senior eBay execs privately and was told it is a strong possibility. One exec told me they were testing it in the UK and the results were very positive.

Feedback 2.0

When Bill Cobb spoke at the Keynote Address, the first thing he mentioned was Feedback 2.0. Whereas other lines had received some applause, the mention of Feedback 2.0 received stony silence. Bill seemed perplexed for a moment then gave a short bit defending it. I think eBay realizes that sellers almost universally hate it, but Bill made it pretty clear eBay thinks it will finally solve the shipping charge abuses and that good sellers will naturally rise to the top and not be hurt by it. So bottom line, Feedback 2.0 is here to stay --we might as well get used to it.

Searching (Finding)

Finding is eBay's new term for searching. Both Bill and Meg made it clear that this is the one area where eBay will roll out some big changes this year and we can expect to see them soon.

PayPal and eBay Security

Security and fraud protection are going to continue to be major efforts by PayPal and eBay to help bring buyers back to the platform. PayPal announced Payment Review that will launch later this year in an effort designed to reduce fraudulent transactions. PayPal will identify those transactions it believes may pose a risk and will keep those transactions pending while it investigates them. Examples could be high value items listed by new sellers, famous name designer goods that could be fake or high priced items in the coins and rare stamps categories.

Once PayPal reviews and approves a transaction, buyers and sellers will be fully protected. Normal transactions will still be covered under the existing seller protection policy.

PayPal also announced that the beta test for their security key was completed successfully and the key is now available to all users. The key is a keychain sized device with a random number generator that generates a security code synchronized with PayPal and eBay. When you log into your account, you simply type in the number displayed on your key. If it matches the correct code you will be admitted --if not you are blocked. This will once and for all stop Phishing attacks and more importantly account takeover.

eBay Google Rift and Could eBay & Yahoo Merge?

Probably the most newsworthy and interesting thing that happened at eBay Live, didn't really happen at all. Google, in an attempt to promote their payment system Google Checkout, was trying to crash eBay's party by throwing a party of their own. eBay responded by canceling their $10 million per month advertising buy on Google. Note: I erroneously reported in my earlier blog post that eBay spent almost $1 million/day. This turned out not to be correct. eBay or Google would not confirm the amount but the figure of $10 million/month is from a reliable source in eBay.

Google immediately backed down and canceled the party, but the damage was done. eBay did not, as expected, resume the advertising. It seems that after a few days without the ads, eBay noticed that their traffic had hardly fallen at all. According to some tracking services, total traffic, week over week, fell less than one percent.

And right on the heals of this event, Yahoo announced the firing of their CEO Terry Semel. Although unrelated, it started speculation that Yahoo and eBay could merge. This makes sense for a lot of reasons. It gets Yahoo back into the auction business in the US, and eBay back into the auction business in Japan, and eBay a good foothold to try China again.

It also gives eBay/Yahoo/PayPal a strong Google Checkout competitor. The Yahoo toolbar with a Skype-me button combined with eBay's new desktop tool is a killer app. eBay sellers could buy Yahoo’s graphical ads on eBay search results and Yahoo graphic ads could help monetize Skype. Yahoo Stores is a great fit for eBay because ProStores have never found traction. I don’t know if you remember the Alibaba/Jack Ma/Meg Whitman fight from last year but it still steams eBay. This would get revenge.

I honestly don't know how real a merger prospect is. Certainly eBay and Yahoo deny it, but that is normal. As pointed out above, a merger would make a lot of sense and I am sure Wall Street would applaud it --but who knows. Personally I would give it a 50/50 chance to occur later this year.

Well that is is for this special issue. I will be out with the regular July issue right after the July 4th Holiday weekend. This will be a big year for changes on eBay and we will be following them and bringing you our interpretation as events unfold.

Skip McGrath