Get List'd

Some big news rolled out today. It looks like Google has finally gotten around to releasing their payment product. It’s a pretty interesting one too, that I think can be leveraged by eBay sellers as well as most other eCommerce stores.

The standard rate for Checkout merchants will be 2% of the sale plus 20 cents – compare that to Paypal’s standard rate of 30 cents plus 2.9% of the transaction. Google is hoping that this will encourage people to buy from smaller merchants, and give them more access to information on both the buyer and seller.

What’s even better is that Google will waive some or all of the transaction fees for companies that buy advertising from it. What is more, for every $1 a company spends on search advertising, Google will waive the fees on $10 worth of purchases. Factoring in the 2 percent fee, that represents a rebate of at least 20 percent of advertising spending. (Source: NY Times)

So, as an eBay merchant I doubt eBay and Yahoo will play kindly with Google. However, if you have an off-eBay store, you can now offer an additional way to pay, and also cover a lot of your Google AdWords advertising costs. It’s a great deal for online merchants, something worth testing.

One of the great things about eBay is the community and the way that eBay supports its members. As always, I was thoroughly impressed by the conference this year. It really is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen (and I’ve been to a few).

If you stopped by the eBay Store, you might have been disappointed that the item you wanted was out of stock. There’s good news however, you can go to the eBay Shop online. If you’re lucky, that same shirt, cup or hat will be in the inventory there. Check it out!

So, I’m back at our office in Orlando now, after a good week at eBay Live! in Vegas. After talking to our users, and (hopefully) potential users, we have a lot of great ideas. The great thing about talking with all of you is finding out what you REALLY are interested in doing, what you really need, and what would make your life easier.

List’d Express is designed for the eBay beginner. Someone who wants to try and sell something on eBay, but doesn’t want to trudge through the 5+ pages to actually list an item through eBay. What we’ve done is take the guesswork out, give you some guidance on what might make sense for your listing, and make it a lot more fun.

List’d Express will be evolving over time into a wider suite of products under the List’d brand. List’d Express will remain the easy-to-use, simple tool but will have history and profile sections added to it.

In the future, you’ll see new tools emerge under the List’d brand that will make life easier for eBay consignment sellers and eBay trading assistants. One of the big things we heard, and believe me we heard you, is that an easy accounting and cost tracking tool would be greatly valued. Especially as it applies to consigners and trading assistants.

So, please sign up for our emails (just to the right of the screen), leave comments, and email us (erik [at] getlistd [dot] com). We want to hear what you have to say, and we want to let you know of the changes and new releases as they happen. Here’s your chance to really affect the outcome of the a new eBay tool!

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.

You can find more information out about their solutions at eBay Wireless.

Everyone who attends eBay Live knows the madness that ensues around the collectible eBay and vendor pins. Whenever that music starts you get to see the mob descend upon and dismember eBay employees in order to ensure they don’t miss getting a pin. It’s fun, crazy, and thoroughly addicting!

So, seeing the fun everyone was having, I too decided to get into the game. Like most things I do, I decided if I was going to do this, I needed to do it right. Using my connections through the eBay developers community, eBay employees and smooth talking to eBay Live attendees, I was able to gather a FULL set. I also was able to get all 3 lanyards: attendee, eBay developer, and eBay employee (try and find that collection on eBay!)

Except…

Yep, you know it’s coming. I couldn’t get that most elusive of pins – the sparkly shiny, only-1000-were-made, highly-prized one. The Rare Rhinestone Pin of eBay Live Greatness! (that’s actually not the official name). So, In order to complete this set, I’m going to have to buy it on eBay.

There’s good news in here though. When our new eBay sellers product is launched, List’d, I’ll be listing the full set on eBay for some lucky soul to win!

Keep checking back for when that is going to happen, or you can sign up for our email in the right margin of this page to get updated via email.

Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, has a couple things to say about the following:

• eBay’s size (200 million!)
• Skype integration
• PayPal
• eBay blogs
• eBay wiki
• New Trust & Safety Policy
• Crack down on Excessive Shipping
• Cross-Border Trade – A Privilege, Not a Right
• Grand Opening for eBay Express

You can read the full report here.

Well, we’re on the last day of eBay Live! 2006. As everyone knows, this is the date that you run around to all the booths and try and scoop up their hand-out loot. We’ve been lucky with having the two hottest commodities:

• The best eBay pins
• A polaroid of you with Las Vegas’ hottest showgirls.
• Yoyo “Cush” balls (fun for the kids!)

We’ve only got 100 of our gold collectible pins left. If you come by today and tell me the secret word I’ll give you one.

Secret Word: “Showgirls!”

Hope you come by and see us at Booth 326.

Here are some more pictures – thanks for coming by eBaby!

    
(click for larger images)

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.

One of the big messages that eBay has been pushing at this year’s eBay Live is “The Power of 3″. The three being:

1. eBay.com – eCommerce
2. Skype – Communication
3. Paypal – Payment

Truthfully, these are three of the best applications in their class. Below is Meg Whitman talking about it at eBay Live tonight:

(Please forgive the quality)

Come by and see us in Booth 326

We’ve been having a ton of fun today for the first day of eBay Live. It’s been great meeting many of our customers who use MarketPlacePro, as well as people who we hope will try our products one day. We’ve also been telling people about List’d, our newest product that will be out in 2-3 weeks (signup for email updates on the right).

We did luck on to one of the biggest attractions to any booth at eBay Live… that being our fabulous show girls. You can come to our booth and get a Polaroid shot of you with the twins. It’s really been a lot of fun, and everyone’s been enjoying it.

Here are a couple of shots from today. Thanks everyone!