This Week In eBay & Online Selling News
Online liquidators uBid announce a new fixed-price site launching next month to compete with Overstock.com, the eBay Shop gets a new look, iPhone moves up a rank in the most popular eBay search list and the eBay Desktop hits milestone download. Plus, iLister offers multi-language script, buySAFE rolls out its new Shopping Advisor Tool and we look at AuctionSound's new Giving Works integration.

RedTag Launching in August

The uBid team yesterday announced it's launching a new fixed-price online marketplace, RedTag.com, expected to go live Aug. 29. "We are delighted to offer a fixed-price sales channel to our base of over 7,000 sellers as an additional asset recovery solution," Timothy Takesue, an executive vice president at uBid, said in a statement. "And we are elated to offer our consumers a tremendous value on excess inventories, with a money back satisfaction guarantee and a fixed $1.95 ground shipping rate on the RedTag.com site."

The eBay Shop Gets a New Look
EBay recently redesigned The eBay Shop, its official brand merchandise store where members wanting to sport the eBay logo can pick up t-shirts, pens, drink ware and other branded items. With eBay encouraging sellers to list items for sale overseas, it's no surprise that a big part of the news here is that international shipping is finally available. Chenille hoodies, jellyfish yo-yos, eBay branded jelly-beans and energy gum are just a few of the more than 125 products available from  The eBay Shop. For sellers looking to promote their own eBay business, some products that are available on the The eBay Shop can also be customized with your own User ID or eBay Store name. There are also new products for Power Sellers and eBay Live 2008 merchandise is also available.

iPhone 3G & Other Hot eBay Items
Much like the first incarnation of the Apple iPhone, and other hotly pursued consumer electronics, eBay sellers are cashing in on iPhone 3G eBay sales. Seller Dre101685, who offered a set of three black 8GB iPhone 3Gs found the auction bid up to over $2,000 this week. Kosmos247's lot of four white 16GB iPhone 3Gs was also bid beyond the $2,000 mark.

Despite the high dollar sales on the iPhone, eBay Pulse data still shows "iPhone" as the fifth most popular search on the eBay.com site. Topping the iPhone as the most popular search is Wii, iPod, Xbox 360 and Coach. On the Canadian eBay.ca Web site, iPhone is currently the third most popular search with Xbox 360 and iPod taking the number one and two spots. For the UK eBay site, eBay pulse tracks the top four searches terms as Wii, followed by Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PSP.

eBay Desktop Celebrates Download Milestone
According to a recent blog post on the eBay Desktop Blog, the app has surpassed 1 million downloads. The eBay Desktop is a free desktop client for eBay that lets you track, purchase and browse items without ever loading your Web browser. The eBay Desktop works with the eBay auction site in real time. The latest release is version 1.0.6., which was announced at the end of June. It runs on Windows XP, Vista or MacOS.

AuctionSound Integrates with eBay Giving Works
AuctionSound, a Web-based eBay auction management system, is now offering complete integration with eBay Giving Works, enabling AuctionSound subscribers to take part in charitable fund raising and take advantage of good-will marketing rewards. 

EBay also rewards sellers participating in eBay Giving Works with a fee credit policy. When you create a listing with eBay Giving Works and that item sells, eBay will credit the Insertion and Final Value Fees back to you, equal to the percentage of the final sale price that you elected to donate. A free trial of the AuctionSound service is currently available on its Web site, and subscriptions to AuctionSound services start at $24.99 per month.

iLister Offers Multi-Language Script
WorksForWeb released a new multi-language version of its iLister classifieds script. With iLister multi-language, non-English-speaking customers are able to develop their own classifieds or online product catalogs in their own language to target a larger audience. This new version provides listers with the ability to translate an entire Web site into several languages. And, the administration panel of iLister includes two new sections, Language Management and Translations. The first one is used to manage languages while the Translations section provides an interface to manually translate some or all phrases into one or several languages simultaneously.

Other iLister features include SEO-friendly URLs, auto-populated templates, 2CO, PayPal and Authorize.NET integration and more. Pricing for the Standard Edition is $519 and a hosted version is available for $49.95 per month.

buySAFE's Shopping Advisor Tool
BuySAFE, Inc. has beta launched the buySAFE Shopping Advisor, a new Internet shopping tool that the company says helps consumers to shop online safely and securely. By providing objective ratings on every U.S. based e-commerce Web site, the goal of the buySAFE Shopping Advisor is to identify the safest online businesses in the search results of every major search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN and eBay) so that shoppers know which merchants they can trust before they click on the site links. The Safe Shopping Rating specifically looks for SSL Encryption, Web site security, privacy policies and bonded services for shopping when determining a rating for the Web site.

Merchants can partner with buySAFE to obtain a buySAFE Bonded Merchant Seal. The "Buyers Choice Plan" offers bonding to buyers as a checkout option and the buyer pays for the service, but it is free to merchants. The "Maximum Impact Plan" is designed to convert most shoppers to buyers and includes a free bond with every purchase. It's free for consumers and merchants pay a fee of 1 percent, per bonded sale.