Get List'd

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.

Businessweek is reporting that eBay and Google have signed a deal that will allow Google to serve up ads on all of eBay’s international sites. These ads will come with a “click-to-call” button for easy access to the seller.

Under the partnership, Google would become the exclusive provider of text advertising on eBay outside the United States. In May, eBay announced a deal with the No. 2 Internet search engine, Yahoo Inc., to serve all its domestic advertising.

The second component of the alliance calls for the two Silicon Valley companies to work together on developing a service that lets Web surfers place telephone calls through their computers or handheld devices when they click on a link in an Internet ad.

It’s interesting to see how eBay is working so closely with both Yahoo and Google. They’re natural enemies, so it’s a fine line between giants that eBay walks here.

(hat tip GoogleSystem blog)

Many eBay sellers host their images on Photobucket to save money with eBay listing fees. We’re proud to announce that List’d has partnered with Photobucket to make it even easier to list an item on eBay. Anyone with a Photobucket account can easily select images from Photobucket when creating eBay listings through List’d Express.

Photobucket (www.photobucket.com), named the fastest growing site of 2005 by Nielsen/Netratings, allows members to store and share their visual digital content online, such as video, images, and graphic art. With over 22 million users growing by over 65,000 users per day, Photobucket serves over 50 billion images every month.

Of course, all users of List’d Express get free image hosting (whether using images from their own computer or Photobucket), free scheduled listings, and free listing templates. This is a partnership that makes a lot of sense for us at List’d, and we’re excited to offer it to our users.

So, what does it look like? See below:

Choosing images from “my computer”

Choosing images using the new Photobucket plugin

Again, you can choose images from both your computer and Photobucket for a listing. We hope you enjoy it. Let us know what you think in the List’d Community Forums.

(Note: our new partner, Photobucket, has just had an increased round of investment. It’s amazing to see just how popular they are.)

It’s fun to see the List’d tool start to get a few people noticing it in the Web 2.0 world. Ajaxian, a rather well known reviewer of Web 2.0 sites that use AJAX (like we do) noticed us today.

To all the non-techies out there, AJAX is the type of code we write to make the user experience better for you. AJAX makes List’d Express work fluidly and behave intelligently and that saves you extra work – you can particularly see it when using the keyword category finder.

Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes was also kind enough to think of us in her recent newsletter This & That: Online Auction Roundup. Thanks Ina, AuctionBytes is one of our daily reads, so we appreciate the nod.

It was neat to see the first international blogger pick us up, Benoit Descary from France did just that today.

Postbubble recently ran a story on us. I particularly like this one because it covers both our strategic business moves in the months ahead and also the fact that eBay’s lack of change has even allowed us to create List’d Express at all.

Other bloggers who have covered List’d Express:
World Tech Logic
Swik.net

I came across a really neat eBay and Virtual Earth Map application online by a guy named Drasko Markovic. Basically, you can search for an item and then plot it on the Virtual Earth map embedded in the screen. Screenshot below:

You can also search by zip code, which I think is a particularly neat feature (even if you’re in the UK). You can also see the price, end date, category and city for any search. All in all, a very well put-together mashup of eBay and Microsoft maps, and definately worth trying out.

“eBay Seller’s Dream: 1-Page eBay Selling Tool with AJAX”
No more going through 5 pages to list an item on eBay. A new application, List’d Express (www.listd.com) makes it simple and easy to list an item in one AJAX-enabled page. Best of all, it’s free.

Vote for it if you get a chance and have a Digg registration.

read more | digg story

What is also interesting is seeing some of the other bloggers who have picked up on the piece and tried the tool out. See their posts:

iBloggedThis (love the title of this blog, by the way)
Ryan’s Life
BlogCharm
PowerSellerKing

You’ve Got History
We’ve added a new section in List’d Express that tracks your history of listings using the tool. You can now sort and find past auctions, view upcoming scheduled listings, and also see what the current bids are on your live eBay auctions.

Those who have listed an item will see that it at work already.

Additional Refinements
Since our goal is to make this the easiest, simplest and best eBay listing tool on the market, we continue to refine the tool. In this newest upgrade we’ve added a link to the eBay shipping calculator tool (a request) and notifications of when a scheduled listing has been processed (another request).

So, thank you again for giving List’d Express a try. Without going into great detail, I can tell you that we have some pretty big things ahead.

More Templates to Choose From
You can now choose from two more great looking listing templates within List’d Express. We noticed that many of our users were going with the simple yellow and black template, so we added a new magenta colored one that also has a simple and elegant layout as well.

If you’re a technology seller, you’ll be happy to see that we’ve added a new technology template that will make your tech look more professional than ever.

Lastly, there is now a “none” option. So, if you don’t want to use any template at all, choose this option. This last one was a direct request from a number of users – so, we are listening, keep talking to us.

Give List’s Express a try, it’s FREE!

I’ve really gotten interested in the some of the eBay buyers tools that are on the market. I’ve just run through Gumshoo, a tool for buyers to find deals on eBay. The team behind it has done a great job putting together a number of tools and widgets that make your life easier.

One of the items that I really liked was the Gumshoo widget that you can add to your blog/website (as I have done) that allows you to easily search eBay using the Gumshoo tool. It’s a cool marketing tool that is actually fun and useful.

Once you search for a deal on Gumshoo, you are taken through their own interface of eBay (see screenshot below). It’s very user-friendly, and helps you navigate the site easily. The tab at the top lets you search by “mispellings” as well.