eBay News & Announcements
eBay Giving Works, a program dedicated for charity listings, announced that the program now has 10,000 nonprofits registered. eBay Giving Works launched in November 2003 and enables nonprofits to raise funds online while letting buyers and sellers support the causes that are most important to them. To celebrate the milestone, the eBay Foundation will be giving $2,500 to the 10,000th eBay Giving Works nonprofit participant — The Lollipop Theater Network, who helps hospitalized and chronically ill children by bringing the magic of movies to their bedside.
eBay hosted several workshops this week including "10 Things No One's Ever Told You About Starting Your eBay Business" and "Attract more buyers with Markdown Manager". Today, Friday, February 23rd from 2:00 pm PT to 3:00 pm PT eBay's Janelle Elms, lead instructor with eBay University, and Phil Dunn, Fortune 500 marketing consultant, will be hosting the seventh installment of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" workshop series. You can get workshop details here.
No eBay for UK DSA
The leading UK disposal services organization, Disposal Sales Agency (DSA) has launched its own online auction Web site to sell off surplus equipment on behalf of a number of government departments. Through its Web site, the public can bid on surplus Government equipment. Potential buyers can also use the DSA Web site to buy equipment directly from contractors who supply the Government. Currently, the site lists assault boots, office furniture, pattern combats, and even a "4x4 fitted Perkins Phaser turbo diesel; quick release 4in1 bucket and forklift set". In the auction section you'll find an anchor from RFA Sir Percivale (which weighs approximately 4 tones) as well as "His and Hers Army No.2 uniforms".
According to DSA spokesman Les Taylor, with more and more transactions being carried out online, the DSA recognized the need to adapt their business to maximize the return to both the Ministry of Defense and to the taxpayer.
Third-Party eBay Services & E-commerce Tools Round-up
Clint Guerrero, Google Base Support has contributed to the Google Base Blog discussing, yet again, the importance and correct usage of defining attributes when uploading to Base. In his post, Guerrero says that they have e-mailed users requesting they submit bulk uploads with a richer set of data. In doing so the list of required attributes has been revised. You can view the Blog update to get specific details and examples for setting values for the following attributes; brand, condition, product_type, expiration_date, id, color, department, and made_in.
Bright Builders Inc., recently released its new eBay listing tool, Bright Lister. Bright Lister is designed to help new sellers manage their eBay listings more effectively. It offers a step-by-step wizard to guide new sellers through the listing process, and also provides advanced features for those who want a more custom design for their eBay listings, such as themes, listing scheduler, advanced HTML editor, and automatic re-listing functions.
Online classifieds provider PriceLooKup.com launched a promotion aimed at expanding its share of the online classified market. To help raise awareness of its fee-free service, PriceLooKup.com is offering a cash reward for every listing made during the offer period. Throughout the promotional period, sellers will be offered the chance to qualify for up to $20 in cash-back on their listings. Cash-back is not dependent on the sale of the items posted, and is accrued at a rate of $0.10 per qualifying posting. Buyers will also be rewarded with a free gift for each purchase during the promotional period, although transactions must be completed through PayPal.
Earners Forum launched a new webmaster marketplace that connects webmasters globally, allowing them to buy, sell, and trade their various Web properties and services. The new webmaster marketplace features custom tools targeted to buying and selling full Web sites, plus a new software application called Kaching! that allows buyers and sellers to be notified instantly of new marketplace listings based on their preferences.
Virtual Iris is currently offering a promotion that allows sellers to offer rich media to their auctions or e-commerce Web site. For $10 per item pictured, you can add features such as interactive zoom, hot-spots, measurement, text boxes & color change to their 2D pictures.
In expanding its selection of free reverse-auction tools, WhyAbe.com has released its bid-decrementing enhancement. Using the free online tools, buyers can create reverse-auction events and choose a percentage increment that each supplier must decrease their next sequential bid by in order to place a lower bid. Bid decrementing eliminates "bidding locks. where suppliers become tied for a bid and choose not to lower their offer.
 |
The Sting Signature Fender, autographed by The Police, went for $7,100 on Thursday.
|
Research Says...
According to recent research conducted YouGov and the Centre for Economics and Business Research for price comparison service uSwitch, UK online shopping is expected to quadruple and account for 40 percent of retail sales by 2020. According to the report UK online sales in 2002 accounted for only 2 percent of total retail spending, which is expected to reach 15 percent by the end of 2007.
Only on eBay...
This week, our favorite IT are courtesy of the GRAMMY Foundation, which has several highly collectible signed guitars. A Les Paul Classic "1960" model guitar has been autographed by the legendary Les Paul himself and it was selling for $4,888. Another great item worth seeing is the Sting Signature Fender "P-Bass" that was autographed by The Police backstage at the 49th Annual GRAMMY Awards telecast. This one went for $7,100 yesterday. Other GRAMMY signed guitar auctions include offerings from Barenaked Ladies, David Grohl, Daisy Rock, Al Gore, Hall And Oats, and others.
Have an interesting tip, auction or news item to submit for eBay Watch? Tell us about it!
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
