Get List'd

If you were me and if I were rich that is. The dream that I’m talking about would be owning every game that Nintendo produced for the original NES. Yes, I know that I could download every game ever created for the system period but that would be illegal and way too much work. If I was rich I could just hop on eBay and win seller sonyabscott’s auction and achieve that goal legally. Not only is the auction for 670 games licensed by Nintendo, but it also includes the following accessories:

• NES Nintendo System Console (in the box)
• 4 Controllers
• 2 Turbo controllers
• NES Advantage Controller (Joystick and Button console in box)
• Zapper Gun
• Power Pad
• Power Glove
• ROB the Robot (with accessories)
• 4 Player wired controller (with Turbo) allows up to 4 players
• 4 Player Wireless Satellite and Receiver
• Grey Joystick controller
• Game Genie and the Code Book
• RF Switch and AC Power Cord

Why do I want this massive collection of Nintendo gaming history? Well besides the awesome Power Glove, I’ve always wanted to whip out a picture from my wallet show off my collection like it was my kids or something. Yeah….one day.

eBay has been fighting a long standing war with scammers, those of us who have been heavy users of the eBay platform know this firsthand.

One casual seller’s story

The question is, what can eBay do to really fix this?  Well, Bill Cobb had addressed this in his eCommerce keynote last week.  Here’s one excerpt:

First, times have changed since the early eBay days — the internet has evolved a lot, and so, too, have the fraudsters.   (Think the internet equivalent of an arms race, where as sites get smarter about security, the fraudsters do too.)  Bill made it clear that eBay is taking a more proactive approach to Trust & Safety, which sometimes means sacrificing transparency in favor of increased security.  He mentioned projects like Safeguarding Member Ids, as an example, as well as behind-the-scenes efforts to step up protections against counterfeits.

We’ve been quietly working on some new features for the last couple of months, and we are finally ready to unveil them.

New Premium eBay Templates!
We have added a new section to the template area. You can now choose from our “premium” templates area for 14 amazing new designs that each has multiple color choices. We have also added 3 new FREE templates!

For 50 cents, List’d users can choose from 14 “premium” templates, each with multiple color choices, in themes ranging from technology to baby clothes. Users can also choose to pay $5.00 for 30-day unlimited use of any of the premium templates. They also have three new free templates to choose from.

As always, all of the features that you’ve grown to love about List’d are still free to use. Premium templates are our first stab at creating a value added feature that we think you would be willing to pay for. These payment will be made through PayPal, since 85% of you have that capability. Thanks for giving them a try!

Default Your Favorite Settings
You can now go into your profile page to save your favorite settings. We had a lot of heavy users asking us for this ability, and we think it will really make your lives easier. All you need to do is login and click on the “Profile” link where you can:

• Add a default “boilerplate” text area into each listing
• Change your password
• Set your shipping options
• Pick a default template

Login and try out the new features. Tell us what you think, that’s how we’ve been able to get List’d to where it is already. Your feedback is what made this tool great

Prepare to witness a “site” like none other. You will be mesmerized, tantalized, and electrified right down to your pinky toe. We the interns (aka the Permaterns) have created such a monster of a contest, we thought the perfect time to unveil it would have to be on Halloween.

“What is this contest?”, you may be asking yourself. Jason, Meagan, and I were tasked to create a T-Shirt design contest for List’d from scratch. We had to create the entire website, voting system, content, and even find ways to mass produce the awesome shirts we plan on seeing come our way.

Ok, let me be honest. At first we were told that we need to come up with a t-shirt design for List’d. Being the awesome interns that we are, we convinced upper management to trust us with creating a contest. This not only took our attention off of less exciting projects but it also gave us a venue to display our awesome talents, besides those of fetching coffee (not that we ever did that or anything).

So here are the details:

1. You can submit as many designs as you want, but you can only vote for a specific design once.
2. The top ten entries with the most votes will automatically received the new t-shirt which will be crafted from the ultimate champion winner person’s design.
3. Once we have a top ten, the Permaterns will pick the one we like the best and they will receive the grand prize in addition to their artwork on a shirt.
4. The grand prize will be a $50 iTunes music gift card that you can use through iTunes for games, movies, and of course music.
5. The contest begins November 1st and runs through November 23rd. After the 23rd, we will not receive anymore submissions but you will have an extra week to vote on your favorite design. Keep in mind that you can vote anytime you want throughout the contest.

eBay has jumped into emerging web technology even further with their launch of eBay MyWorld. Basically, it’s an eBay knockoff of MySpace. More importantly, it’s a serious upgrade for sellers over their current “About Me” page.

After a quick review of the service, I’ve found it pretty easy to use. MyWorld links in well with individuals current profile, listed items, reviews and eBay blogs. What I’d like to see them do is open it up even further and allow people to create links out to their own personal blogs and stores.

If you are a consistent seller on eBay, it would probably be worth trying MyWord out. Test it out and see if you are able to create a network of other sellers and buyers who are interested what you do.

Here’s some interesting news. It looks like eBay is selling out to Tom.com – PayPal at the least. Read more:

Auctionbytes and here

TechCrunch

Shanghai Daily

Blogging Stocks

Looks to be an interesting road ahead for us third-party developers!

We’ve got some new updates to List’d that everyone is going to be excited about. We launched just 8 weeks ago, and during that whole time we have been listening and responding to each and every feedback email. Your feedback has been instrumental in us making these changes, and we’re grateful for your insights.

Calculated Shipping
First off, a number of you have been asking for eBay’s “Calculated Shipping” feature. This has been added and is now part of the new listing tool. You still have the options for “no shipping” or a flat fee, so this third option should give you even more control and will also provide a better user experience for your buyers.

The new Calculated Shipping interface

Listing Length: More Options
You’ve asked for the ability to create listings of varying lengths. Now you can put an item on eBay for 3, 5, 7, or 10 days.

The new interface for listing length

There are a number of other small tweaks, all made to tighten the application up and make your experience better. As always, please contact us if you have any suggestions or problems. We’re always interested in hearing your thoughts.

For those of you who have heard from us about coming features that aren’t listed here, be assured that we are working on them, some changes take longer than others.

The Professional eBay Sellers Alliance, also known as PESA, is having it\’s Fall summit in San Francisco September 20-22.

It does look like an interesting conference with some big names in it. What I find most interesting though, is the fact that the organization grew up in and around eBay, but is looking at multi-channel selling solutions now. So, they\’re going beyond eBay.

An exerpt from the email they sent me:

PESA has brought top level executive decision makers from eBay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, Overstock and other major marketplaces to San Francisco on Sept. 20th and 21st for two days that could very well signify an important eCommerce milestone. These two days will become known in history as a first of its kind event.

Now, I don\’t know if it will be a \”first of its kind event\”, so if you go to it you\’ll have to tell me. However, I do think it looks very interesting.

One of the discussions we’ve been having around the List’d office lately, is the fact that eBay is not the end-all be-all of eCommerce. These thoughts were born out of some research that we did into eBay trends and eCommerce statistics.

We believe that eBay is a great place to list your items, but it might make sense to think of it as a marketing channel for your eCommerce store.

It’s time to stop thinking of eBay as representative of the opportunities available within the ecommerce marketplace. Though eBay holds 14% market share in the $313 billion global ecommerce market – that only serves to highlight how much more is available.

It appears that eBay is having a demand problem – for some reason, people just aren’t buying as much.

(HT: Scott Wingo)

The Sellers’ Story
At the micro-level, there has been a growing amount of resentment towards eBay and its heavy-handed policies. What was once grudgingly accepted as the price of making a lot of money on eBay is not accepted any longer – since not as much money is being made.

Merchants are beginning to transition off of a heavy eBay diet to a multi-channel one. For many individuals and small businesses, that means opening their own web store, many times on their own domain. Most are realizing that there are other marketplaces and pushing some inventory towards those channels. Examples include Yahoo, Amazon, Craigslist and Google Base. The truth is, once eBay merchants go multi-channel, the other channels are typically more profitable.

There are a growing number of sellers who see eBay more as a marketing channel than an actual sales channel. Because eBay does provide a good deal of traffic, they can keep the cash flow positive by selling on eBay. However, this comes at the cost of higher margins which are found elsewhere. Many are moving their own core inventory to their own websites and using eBay only as a marketing tool.

Summary
We believe List’d is one of the best tools you can find to list single items on eBay. If you’re strictly an off-eBay merchant, take the time to see what can happen when you sell a few items on eBay. See if it increases the number of people coming to your store – you might not have as big of a margin on that sale, but you’ll raise awareness of your store for when they decide to buy again.

Marketwatch has done an excellent job of analyzing the recent partnerships between eBay, Yahoo and Google. It’s well worth a read.

Shares of eBay rose 2% Monday, partly because eBay would be monetizing the search traffic internationally. Additionally, Google will help distribute Skype, the voice over Internet technology eBay paid $2.6 billion (upwards of $4 billion) last year. Skype will also distribute Google’s toolbar, a deal that will likely give Skype future payment for searches conducted on that search toolbar. All this is positive for eBay’s shares.

But clearly, the fact that eBay had to partner with Google to distribute Skype says something very negative about eBay’s own community and ability to distribute Skype. But I won’t get into that here.

Further thoughts:

Indeed, Google and Yahoo advertisements aren’t designed to keep buyers on eBay’s marketplace. They’re designed to send the audience out onto the Web. Driving buyers away from the marketplace wouldn’t help sellers at all. And, those sponsored ads become a reminder to sellers that they too need to find other ways to sell their wares.