eBay celebrated the one year anniversary of its fee-raising fracas this week by doing…nothing. Ah, the sweet sound of silence. We think users will be safe for the rest of the year fee-wise, but look out for 2007. That's just our big, bold prediction for this year.
Smoke and Mirrors?
Meanwhile, more claims are being made this week that nearly a quarter million people now make a living off eBay. According to a release from Amazing-Offers.com, "The number of people who earned a full or part-time income on eBay topped 720,000 in 2005, according to Jessica Montgomery, spokesperson for the eBay Profit Creation System."
"Since it's inception, eBay has become a quick way for average people to earn extra money from home. Because their site is easy to use, there's generally not a lot of technical experience required, and potential sellers can get started without much investment," says Amazing-Offers.
"With increasing job losses and a downturn in the economy, more and more people are looking for opportunity, and they are finding it online," said Montgomery. "We have clients who spend 20 minutes rummaging through their attic, and then turn around and sell their 'junk' for hundreds, even thousands of dollars."
Now, we're going to gout on a limb here and say these claims are, well, hard to swallow. The reason being is neither eBay nor anyone else has been able to offer a true breakdown between those who make a full time living on eBay and those who make part time wages. This is disturbing because, hypothetically speaking, 1,000 people could be making $100,000 per year on eBay while 719,000 could be making $1,000.
We're waiting for someone to step up to the plate and give us solid numbers. eBay declined to do so last summer.
Drop-Offs Drop Off?
A piece in AuctionBytes this week caused us to take notice of something we here at ECommerce-Guide have had an inkling of doubt over: eBay drop-off stores.
"The oldest eBay drop-off store has gone out of business. Sellers Market began operations on January 2, 2003 in Danbury, Connecticut, 60 miles north of New York City. Owner Andy Balbus said the store never took in enough items to cover the cost of overhead, labor and marketing. After 3 years of running his store, he is pessimistic about the viability of the drop-off store model," writes Ira Steiner of AuctionBytes.
AuctionBytes said it surveyed drop-off storeowners in January 2005 and found the majority of stores responded that they served between 1 and 30 customers per week, and each customer, on average, brought in between 1 and 10 items to be listed. In our opinion, that's not a promising number, as it is difficult to cover overhead and payroll expenses with such low traffic. Other auction drop-of chains are expanding across the U.S. and into Europe, so the dilution of the market only spells trouble for those already struggling to make it in this business.
AuctionBytes also reported Mr. Lister, a central New York state auction drop-off business, went out of business recently and closed seven of its stores. See a trend developing here?
Take Two
Apple geeks converged on San Francisco this week for the annual Macworld convention drooling with anticipation over new product announcement and whether or not Steve Jobs would wear a different color mock turtleneck. Among the myriad announcements during the conference this week, iwascoding released Version 2 of its popular Mac-only auction management program GarageSale.
According to a company release, GarageSale 2 is one of the first certified clients to use eBay's new 'Unified XML' interface, allowing GarageSale to access the system after June 2006, when current interfaces will be terminated.
"The product is an all-in-one solution for eBay auctioneers, allowing them to place their auctions through an easy-to-use interface. It features a description editor and imports images directly from iPhoto, a digital camera or iSight. Version two allows users to revise their auctions from within GarageSale instead of going through eBay," the company says.
GarageSale retails for $24.99.
One-Click Comfort
BBSpot.com reported this week that eBay is finally implementing a one-click bid system after settling a dispute with Amazon over the technology.
"After paying a pricey patent license to Amazon, eBay has implemented the long-awaited one-click bidding system. Users will no longer need to continuously check the website to see if they are winning the auction or not. The days of being overbid are gone," says BBSpot.
"One-Click bidding will ensure that the user is the winner of the auction by selecting bids so ridiculously high nobody in their right mind would try to beat them. It will also pay immediately once the auction is over if the user has a PayPal account, and will leave positive feedback for the seller," the article continues.
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Auction of the Week — You're Famous!
Looking for your 15 minutes of fame? We may have found the thing for you. Seller Anthony Pernika, an amateur author, is auctioning off the opportunity to be a named character in his latest book "Legend of Dreams." The book is a fantasy book with elements of horror and sci-fiction added in, Pernika says.
"It is truly a new voice in literature that will create a big stir in the literature world," he claims. "Imagine your name living on forever in a great classic fantasy book that people will read about for years and years. Can you fathom the idea of having the chance to place your name within one of the Lord of the Rings series? Well, this book is going to be huge."
Of course it is.
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Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.
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