Chick Chat

Now, if you live in Canada, you can get gallery images on ALL of your listings on the ebay.com site for $50 a month with the eBay.ca Seller Pack.

What sort of impact will this have?

Scott Wingo from Channel Advisor did the math:

Gallery is usually $.35 so if you list more than 143 items a month, you safe significant money on this plan. In fact here’s a schedule:

Listings / Savings
143 / break-even
1000 / $300
2000 / $650
5000 / $1,700
10k / $3,450
30k / $10,450
100k / $34,950

Some are speculating that eBay is using the CN site as a testing ground for this. (I’d rather they use sellers located in the state of Georgia.) I’m doubtful/skeptical. I think they hope to use the CN promo to try to *force* more US sellers to use gallery images in order to *compete* with the CN sellers.

Sorta like the monster store fee hike which they hoped would *force* more sellers to list in core. According to medved, that plan isn’t working very well.

Sonja Larson 18, of Deerfield Beach, FL
Christina Powell, 17, of Jacksonville, FL
Christa Hoyt, 18, of Archer, FL
Manuel (Manny) Taboada, 23, of Carol City, FL
Tracy Inez Paules, 23, of Miami, FL

May they rest in peace.

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What’s HOL99 #1? Its’s the first of two holiday themed special sales put on by the sellers of club99. These are no reserve auctions running on eBay.

Search during the sale week for HOL99 in the title to find all kinds of goodies including:

Holiday Gifts for the young, old, and in between!
Shoes, accessories, gloves, hats, jewelry, clothing; seasonal decorations; anything RED or GREEN; drink, goodie and feast cookbooks; Christmas, Jewish, Thanksgiving or Kwanzaa holiday craft books, booklets or patterns of any kind; magazines or books from November or December; angel; Santas; elves; reindeer; lights; menorahs; crosses; Christmas trees; ornaments; November or December themed items: textiles, art, figurines, holiday stationery, postcards; dolls, toys or plush animals; holiday music and movies or books. Anything that fits in with the holiday rush!!!! Don’t forget that Veteran’s Day falls in November. You could find military stuff, too!!!

We’ll be listing stocking stuffers for young and old as well as a military care packages (stockings to go to deployed soldiers!) and other patriotic items.

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Go to a trade show without the expense!

This fall’s show is 10/24 – 10/26. And it’s FREE to attend?

What is it?

eComXpo: 100% Virtual & Online

* First online virtual tradeshow for eCommerce Marketers.

* An easy, quick way to keep up with this rapidly evolving marketplace including email, search, affiliate, regulatory, branding, advertising, and technology trends and challenges.

* All the benefits of a top tradeshow, without the costs, hassles, or travel that make traditional tradeshows out of reach for 98% of participants.

Speakers include:

Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine and John Battelle, FM Publishing
Steven Denton, LinkShare
Nick Mihailovski and Paul Botto, Google Analytics
Alan Lewis, eBay
John Kim, Yahoo! Search Marketing

and more . . .

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An example of what is NOT copyright infringement

Apparently, SalonQuest is threatening to sue an eBay seller for copyright infringement . . . . for including a photo of the bottles of Aquage shampoo she is selling in her listings.

Apparently, SalonQuest’s lawyers missed the day they taught fair use doctrine in law school.

SalonQuest is making other, equally frivilous claims.

If I could get my hands on some Aquage, I’d list it.

Hey, SalonQuest . . . did ya notice I used a photograph of your product on this blog entry?

Read more here!

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Articles, blog posts, and analyst coverage have taken note of seller grumblings about eBay’s new fee increases for stores and eBay’s rationale that it was needed to “rebalance” the inventory levels between stores and auctions. eBay built its business off of core auctions, and developed a strong business model with the addition of stores. The addition of eBay stores was the very reason hundreds of thousands of businesses could run off of the eBay platform each year. By hitting these businesses where it hurts, eBay is forcing them to re-think their long-term business strategy, and the company is underestimating the ability of these businesses to sell off of the eBay marketplace. As someone who speaks to hundreds of eBay sellers each year, what’s surprised me in the coverage of this recent issue is what is not mentioned:

1) They don’t discuss the inevitability of where this big eBay debate is heading: that some sellers will strongly focus on building their businesses outside of eBay. This is healthy and shows a maturing of the e-commerce market.

Multi-channel selling is the future- and it’s often misunderstood by the mainstream media.

2) They don’t understand seller motivations- or at least they don’t seem to accurately report on them. As the quote above echoes, eBay sellers are businesspeople (many are quite sophisticated and are former investment bankers, lawyers, accountants, etc. with MBAs and other advanced degrees). Some articles have been quite patronizing in their discussion of eBay sellers and their reactions to fee increases and other new rulings such as the removal of many sellers’ stores listings.

Read the entire blog post here!

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Great SEO article using analogy for the non techies – like me!

Just for a change, rather than a technical article, I would like to tell you a story. To begin, imagine your website is a little country bar, now let’s go back to when the internet began, and reciprocal linking was being done properly. Now just sit back and picture the following…..

There you are running your bar, it’s a fairly busy little bar with plenty of regular customers. You also get other customers who come from all directions. Some make their way to your bar using all the little country back roads (from links on other websites), others come on the big highway (the Internet) from the big bars in the city (The Search Engines).

Read the whole thing here!

Many on the eBay Stores Board have long loved chopsueysisters’ spunky kitty. Now the cat is taking on the Megster!

Does this mean we get SIS again?

Current Stats

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