We're doing the anti-rain dance here in our Darien, Conn. offices, as a big storm moves in threatening our Saturday at the great Limerock — the racing capital of the East. Not cool. But, we'll keep our hopes up for a sunny day tomorrow. Meanwhile, it's time to get down to business and talk about eBay.
Another Week, Another Player
They just keep coming and coming. SoldItLive.com launched it's online auction and virtual marketplace this week. According to a company release, the site features "competitive prices and a charity-friendly heart, delivering worldwide buying, selling, and bidding power at the blink of an eye."
"Hosted on monster servers, this new auction engine was developed from the ground up to handle a vast number of user requests per second. The fresh uncluttered design enhances item display and the extensive sorting capabilities help the user maneuver around the site more efficiently than other similar sites. SoldItLive.com has taken the sorting process one step further by utilizing an unprecedented color coding system, green for auction items and blue for classified or fixed price items, offering users instant item recognition," the company states.
SoldItLive also claims classified customers will be "thrilled at the low rates for listing fixed price items. When compared to advertising in the classified sections of the print or electronic media, SoldItLive.com listing fees are a steal."
We'll keep our eyes out for this one in the future.
Cash Doesn't Talk
As we reported Thursday, eBay is now strictly enforcing its latest Safe Payments Policy in order to stem the tide of bogus sellers ripping off naïve buyers. The new policy was announced in October 2005, but not enforced until January. From now on, sellers are not permitted to include cash as a preferred form of payment in any listings.
"It governs the types of payments services that sellers can market in their listings. Of course, due to the nature of eBay being a marketplace, we can't monitor or control how buyers and sellers actually complete payments and transactions," said Hani Durzy, director of corporate communications for eBay.
"What we can do is make it against policy for a seller to encourage certain types of unsafe payments by putting them in their listing pages. Regarding cash, we allow sellers to say they accept COD and cash for in-person transactions, but not via mail," Durzy added.
"Where eBayers Go Shopping"
B2BLiquidate.com, an Internet auction portal for businesses needing to liquidate products (sellers) and businesses looking for below wholesale goods will open for business listing auctions on May 26, 2006 and will begin taking bids on June 1, 2006, according to a company statement released this week.
The site will reportedly be a good source of wholesale, end-of-life, shelf pulls, salvage, customer returns and refurbished goods for the hundreds of thousands of eBay stores, flea marketers and other business-to-consumer retail businesses. The site will provide manufacturers and other large businesses with a large, high-quality base of buyers, to ensure the maximum return for liquidation auction sellers.
"Businesses with large lots of products to liquidate will have a unique market in which to do so. Every product lot will be available to 100's of well-qualified professional buyers. On the other hand, businesses in need of below-wholesale, unique product lots will have a single online marketplace from which to supply their inventory," says B2BLiquidate.com.
"Businesses needing to sell off inventory will be able to liquidate goods easier, faster and with higher returns than ever before, while at the same time, eBay stores and other retail operations will be able to purchase unique inventory at below-wholesale prices, quicker and easier than previously available," the company adds.
Google Off Base?
Hitwise, a major Internet traffic watchdog group, reported an interesting blurb this week about the highs and lows of Google's Base, a shopping/classified search launched in late 2005. As with most Google products, Google hasn't exactly been promoting Google Base with gusto, so its slow start doesn't come as much of a surprise to us. (We will be covering Google's e-commerce initiatives in the coming weeks.) However, it seems as though Base is on the backburner for the time being.
"So what is Google Base?," writes Hitwise's Lee Ann Prescott. "Part shopping directory, part recipe search service, part classified service. It remains to be seen which of these services will take hold with Google Base users."
"Hitwise market share data shows that Google Base, after a fairly strong start, received approximately the same market share of visits for the week ending April 1, 2006 that it did a month after launch. The January increase…can be attributed to the yearly increase in visits to Employment sites after the start of the New Year," she says.
A posted chart shows traffic spiking for Google Base just after Christmas and steadily declining through last week.
We hear eBay isn't shaking in its boots yet over Google Base.
eBay for Impatient People
BusinessWeek.com has a great introductory piece on eBay Express, today.
What is eBay Express? We'll let the site speak for itself: "At eBay, we know that it's our job to help you grow your business by continuing to attract new customers for your products. After talking with thousands of real-life shoppers, we've found that many customers are looking to buy new, fixed price goods in a more conventional e-commerce experience. To meet their needs, we are building a new specialty site — eBay Express."
BusinessWeek.com writes, "By late April, the company best known for its online auctions is expected to launch an entirely new e-commerce site for busy consumers who just want to click and buy. Already, eBay offers fixed-price goods from individuals, small businesses, and retailers. But they're scattered among auction search results and elsewhere."
"eBay Express will aggregate those fixed-price listings in a snazzy, picture-rich design quite unlike eBay's plain-vanilla lists. Available via a link from eBay.com, the new service will be more like Amazon.com and other online retail sites, offering largely new merchandise ranging from books and DVDs to apparel and electronics. Customers will pay with a credit card or an account with eBay's PayPal online payment unit," the article continues.
Also good news is that eBay sent out an e-mail to its current affiliates via Commission Junction that affiliates will have the opportunity to expand their earning power by linking to eBay Express.
Devin Comiskey is the managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.
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