eBay News & Announcements
eBay made two announcements this week that detail new policy changes. With the impending launches of two anticipated video game consoles, the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, eBay clarified its listing policy for those selling these particular consoles through online auctions. Since sellers listing these items now are listing consoles that they don't have in hand, but have been 'guaranteed' to get through pre-order purchases at various online and retail outlets, eBay wants to ensure that the sellers deliver the goods. The new policy changes include the following seller obligations:

• Only one of each console can be listed per eBay account prior to the launch of the console, with PS3 expected to be available Nov. 17 and Wii on Nov. 19.
• The seller must accept payment only through PayPal, and have at least a 50 feedback with a 98 percent or greater positive rating so that they qualify for PayPal Buyer Protection.
• The pre-sale item must be listed in the 3-, 5-, 7- or 10-day formats, and cannot be placed in the Buy It Now category.
• The listing must include a photo of the pre-order receipt in the description.

In other policy changes, eBay banned "Canned Hunts." eBay decided that listings for canned hunts, in which the seller guarantees the killing of an animal, violates eBay's Animal & Wildlife Products policy.

Christine Hipwell, who works on eBay's Trust & Safety team, recently announced three new tutorials to assist eBay buyers and sellers in complying with eBay policy. The tutorials cover topics related to Buying Safely, Account Protection, and there is also a new Marketplace Policy Tutorial that provides detailed information on eBay's site policies.

Auction Services & E-commerce Tools Round-up
Infopia, a multi-channel online selling solution provider, released version 6.4 of Marketplace Manager. It incorporates several new features to assist online merchants net more transactions. New features include the addition of several selling Channels, such as uBid, Bid4Assets, and comparison shopping sites, including Google Base, Froogle, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber and others. Version 6.4 also offers integration and support for Google Checkout, Shipworks, PayPal Express Checkout and PayPal Website Payments Pro.

Vendio launched a new service to help eBay sellers say thank you. Called "Vendio Buyer Appreciation," this free service for eBay sellers sends out automated thank-you e-mails to bidders that can also be used to showcase their other eBay listings or to offer incentives that encourage buyers to continue bidding. The Buyer Appreciation service can be used alone or in conjunction with Vendio's Sales Manager product.

Doba, one of the largest drop-shipping companies in the industry, and Affinity Internet, a provider of e-commerce and online marketing services, teamed up to launch a new "Push to Marketplace" tool that claims to be a seamless product sourcing solution for online retail businesses. It combines the Doba product catalogue with Affinity's WebStore. It lets Doba members upload any of the 250,000 wholesale products available through Doba to an Affinity Internet ValueWeb WebStore. Integration between the two services removes the need for members to copy and paste descriptions, images and other product information from the Doba product catalogue to an Affinity e-commerce site. The Push to Marketplace tool is available to all Doba and ValueWeb members for an additional $14.95 per month.

In other Doba news, the company launched a promotion that provides two months of free membership to any retail customer that finds a drop-ship wholesale supplier offering a lower price for an identical product.

A recent newsletter distributed by Gary Sewell, the CEO of eBid, claims that the online auction site is experiencing its fastest growth spurt since being launched in 1999. Currently eBid is at double the daily amount of new users, compared to only two months ago, and contains about 330,000 listings. To coincide with the new growth, eBid plans to redesign the site.

BidVille (see Breaking Up With eBay) has undergone some changes. The site's member discussion forums have been tweaked and there are new rules designed to prohibit International sellers (outside Canada and USA) from selling.

Eye on The Little Guy: A Look at Wholesale Search Engines
Finding products to list can be a big task for shop owners, so this week we're highlighting three different wholesale search engines and suppliers. For the most part, anyone can look at products and locate wholesalers at these sites. But to do business, you will need to have a merchant account, business registration number or a resale tax ID.

Skip McGrath, author of "The eBay Power Sellers Manual" and "The Complete eBay Marketing System," offers several free tools on his Web site. One tool is a Web-based wholesale search, powered by goWholesale. Using this search engine lets you start tracking leads for drop shippers and suppliers for the products you are looking to sell online. Alternatively, you can choose to browse through several pre-defined product categories and see a list of the most popular searches. We tried a couple of simple searches for products, such as DVD Players and silver rings and found a number of relevant search results that provided links to wholesale Web sites. As an added bonus, this wholesale search tool doesn't require you to have a member account.

Also of interest to merchants and sellers using drop shippers and wholesalers for inventory is Global Sources, a company that provides supplier and product information to buyers worldwide. The Global Sources search engine allows you to freely search by a combination of category and keyword, by products, news or suppliers. Once you have found a supplier, you can then view an online catalogue that shows the products available that matched your search.

Another wholesale search engine we found through the ECommerce-Guide Discussion Forums is Inventory Source. While Inventory Source offers a large variety of services, including business tools, Web site automation and Web site and Storefront hosting, it also has an extensive product database allowing you to view products and categories of items from a large number of suppliers. You can register for a free member account on Inventory Source and get limited access to the wholesale directory.

Research Says...
According to the 2006 TRUSTe/TNS Holiday Shopping Online Trust survey, a majority of American online shoppers may limit their purchases at retail Web sites this year due to fears associated with the misuse of personal information. The survey found that 82 percent of the Internet users surveyed plan to conduct some online holiday shopping, while 13 percent say they never shop online. Among those surveyed who do plan to make purchases, 63 percent say they expect to limit their purchasing because of concerns about the potential misuse of their personal information. The survey also states that the top five factors that may curtail online shopping this holiday season are: identity theft, credit card theft, a preference for the "touch and feel" of traditional stores, spyware and spam.

Only on eBay...
This week eBay Canada announced a French language version of eBay Canada. According to the press release, eBay says that more than 775,000 Quebecois already buy and sell on eBay. They will now have the option to use a new "Français button" located at the top of every eBay.ca page allowing them to use the auction Web site in their preferred language.

Shoot, Score: Hockey star Cristobal Huet faces-off for new French Canadian site. (Click for larger image.)

To kick off the new French language-enabled eBay Canada Web site, hockey player Cristobal Huet began auctioning the opportunity for a lucky winning bidder to take part in a meet-and-greet (see auction in English or French). The auction includes airfare and accommodation in Montreal, tickets for two to a Montreal vs. Toronto game, $500 spending money and signed Cristobal Huet memorabilia. eBay said it will match the final selling price of the auction, with all proceeds going to the children of the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre in Montreal.

When we checked on the auction progress this morning, the Cristobal Huet auction still had 6 days left for bidding, but had already been bid up to $11,100 CDN (approximately $9,720 USD) with more than 70 bidders taking part so far. It just goes to show, once again, that Canadians do indeed love hockey .

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