Get List'd

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.

eBay has done a great job of integrating wireless (mobile phone) functionality into the buyer-side of the eBay platform. They’ve even partnered with a company called Unwired Buyer to give you a phone call 3 minutes before your bid would be up, thus making it easier to ensure you get the item you were bidding on.

This morning I’m enjoying a very good seminar at eBay Live by Andy Sernovitz of Gaspedal.net, where he is discussing “The eBay Entrepreneur: The Secret Sauce for Selling Stuff”. What I’m really enjoying about this presentation is that Andy is talking a lot about blogs (like this one!), social networking among people on blogs, message boards and chat, and about finding inexpensive ways to market yourself online.

Here are some recaps from the presentation:

Acronym of the day “GREASE”:

• Guerilla promotion
• Reel them in
• Encourage trust
• Amaze your buyers
• Sign them up to help
• Entrepreneurial Energy

Since the Guerilla marketing piece was my favorite, here are the highlights of that section. All very good advice!

eBay is a crowded space, you can’t wait for people to find you – go out and get them
A million ways to do it
– Participate in the online conversation (blogs, message boards, chat rooms)
– Mention your auctions
– Respect the network/channel that you’re in – DON’T blatantly “sell” your stuff.

Word of Mouth marketing (WOM)
– Word of mouth is cheap
– Word of mouth favors the little guy
– Be remarkable (references Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow”

Easy Publicity Stunts
- Auction to raise money for charity
- Link to related products
- Gives people something to write about
- Gives someone a reason to link back to you
- Sell something WEIRD (ex: Jones Soda: Sells the worlds most awful flavors of soda)

Find a Partner who doesn’t compete with you and has a reason to link to you
- Who will link to your listings?
- Who benefits your successes?
- Find a NON-Competing ally
- How to motivate them:
- Give them a commission
- Put their promo in your box
- Put a sample of their product in your box
(ex: Tieyak could partner with fishing lodges)

Here’s hoping that Andy puts the rest of the slides up on the web somewhere.

A much anticipated announcement is set to hit eBay Live goers tomorrow during Bill Cobb’s keynote speech. As eBay’s North American President he is purported to reveal a much deeper connection between eBay and their 2005 acquisition, Skype.

eBay already offers a way for interested buyers and sellers to communicate via text, voice, or video chat, but Rueters is reporting that tomorrow’s announcement might serve to extend the usability of this feature beyond higher priced items like cars and real-estate.

Others seem to think that the announcement will be just as much of an upgrade for Skype as it will be for eBay. From Andy Abramson’s VoIP Watch:

I also feel though that there is also likely some integration that will occur the other way, where information about your eBay auctions and bids will appear inside the Skype browser.

Yes, Skype browser. So much of what they are doing leads me to believe that Skype will be more than just a phone client.

Could this be the full-scale integration that’s been expected, or something even larger still? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.

eBay is set to launch it’s new ad program, eBay AdContext, that allows those who own affiliate websites to make 40 -70% off of the items that are sold via the link on the affiliate website. Reuters reports that:

The eBay Developers’ Conference is showcasing how eBay is changing from a one-stop shopping center, where everything happens on the eBay site, to a supplier of auction, payment and communications technologies that can be used on any Web site.

This move to allow small website owners to make additional revenues off of ads for eBay should do very well. After all, many of the sellers on eBay have their own stores, websites, or blogs that they could run these ads on. Who knows, maybe we’ll even run some on this blog to test them out.

Also mentioned is the opening up of the eBay feedback system to outside developers (like us). I would be interested to see what companies like Rapleaf would do if the feedback system was able to be tapped into by them.

If eBay is truly trying to open up their platform and make it a disembodied web, branded by eBay owned technologies like Skype and Paypal, then it would make sense to open the feedback area up as well. We shall see.

Last week, eBay went live with their new eBay Blogs feature. Understandably, eBay is working to get into the “social networking” game. The blog platform should allow their sellers to network better and increase the seller’s marketing exposure.

As Steve Rubel points out:

Conversation drives commerce so integrating blogs, wikis and tags into the eBay toolkit is a natural extension to their core platform, which has long included discussion boards.

It will be interesting to watch eBay blogs unfold. If they can convince their sellers to embrace the platform, there will be an even bigger jump in blog ownership.

However, the one drawback I see is that it takes a lot of time to get things listed on eBay. With sellers spending a great deal of time taking pictures, writing descriptions, and researching price points, I hope they have the time to keep a blog going as well.

At eBay Live this next week there will be a session called, “It’s not About Me, it’s eBay Blogs!” that I hope to attend.

TechCrunch has released a news item about eBay and Kaboodle collaborating on a bookmarking service for eBay users called MyCollectibles. You can find it on eBay at ebay.com/mycollectibles.

eBay users who purchase and sell items in the collectibles category will be able to showcase products they’ve purchased on ebay or elsewhere, tag them and allow comments (all standard Kaboodle functionality). The site already allows users to auto-import items they’ve purchased on eBay. in the future they’ll be able to list items within MyCollectibles for sale on eBay with a couple of clicks.

This is a welcome and useful tool for eBay users, and will be unveiled in its full glory at eBay Live this coming week.

It’s interesting to watch eBay move into the Web 2.0 space through greater community building mechanisms like Kaboodle and their recent announcement of blogs (which is something to comment on at a later date). The good thing is watching them embrace the change, even though they could possibly execute on it better.