Creative Compulsion

Due to state regulations (most notably in New Hampshire), eBay is in the process of making changes not only to advertising, but also to their current user agreement. They will be removing the term “auction” and no longer referring to themselves as an auction company or auction site. This is in order to avoid legal issues with the current New Hampshire law that requires auction sellers to hold a current state auctioneer’s license.

One of the speakers, Clougherty said, was an attorney representing eBay. Clougherty told the ED & A committee: “According to this attorney, eBay is in the process of changing their agreements with all of their 212,000,000 registered users. eBay will no longer advertise themselves as an auction or auction company and will discontinue the use of the word “auction” from their online and paper advertising.

… by Kathy Greer at AuctionBytes

Personally, I think the whole thing is ridiculous. You simply can’t equate running a live auction with running a 7 day online auction. They’re entirely 2 different beasts. It will be interesting to see if other online auction venues follow suit once these changes are made.

Read the whole Auctionbytes article here.

How generous! eBay has graciously offered a 50% off sale. Ok, so it’s auctions only.

It works for me, I normally only run fixed price but in the last few weeks I’ve been experimenting with some auctions and having some decent luck. I’ve found that you have to bear in mind that the environment on eBay is different these days. Auctions (most anyway) don’t result in the bidding wars and high returns of the past. With the body jewelry, I start the auction at my store price with no BIN. Sounds stupid, huh? It’s actually worked quite well. One of my belly rings that I normally sell for $9.99 just sold for a little over $21.00 by running an auction that way. At least I am sure to get what I want for them and most times a bit more.

The collectibles are a bit different. I normally run those auctions as loss leaders anyway, so I’m not so much looking at the dollar amount it closes for, but rather looking for additional business from the winner with that sale and/or in the future. Most sellers I know do this and it’s certainly not a new theory. It does work and that’s why people do it.

However you run your auctions — good luck and happy eBaying! But hurry… the 50% off sale is good for today only!

I think a lot of people have been waiting for something like this for a long time. eBay’s new Markdown Manager will allow store owners to hold virtual sales on their items. I haven’t delved too far into it, but it appears you can mark down a single item, sub-category, whole category or even your entire store. But, as we’ve come to expect, the name GlitchBay has been earned yet again.

From Ina Steiner’s Auctionbytes today:

Sellers welcomed eBay’s new Markdown Manager feature that allows them to put items on sale, but technical glitches are putting a damper on their enthusiasm. eBay notified developers of the problems, though it did not put an announcement on the Systems Announcement Board.

There are a number of ongoing issues with the “Markdown Manager” feature on the eBay.com site. Sales created through the API (which affects listings submitted via seller tools) are not becoming active at the scheduled time. Sellers also reported the opposite problem. A thread on the eBay Stores board relates sellers who put items for sale for a limited time, only to have the sale never end. “I had a one-day fashion jewelry sale on February 1st which never ended,” wrote one seller.

Nice try eBay. I attempted to use it to put a category on sale for the month of February. No go. No sale. Guess I better watch it carefully or my whole store may be on sale for the remainder of the year. Honestly, I think this will be a very useful tool for sellers once they get it working correctly. If you haven’t used Markdown Manager yet, you can get to it by viewing your Selling Manager main page and clicking the link under Manage My Store. Alternatively, go to Manage My Subscriptions -> Manage My Store -> Item Promotion -> Markdown Manager. Have fun!

I’m always looking around the internet for creative ideas and tips about selling on eBay. Of course you always get those, buy now and make a million tomorrow scams, but once in awhile you do find something well, creative. I found a cool website maintained by Jim Cockrum. He has a free eBay newsletter called Creative eBay Selling. I’ve gone through some of the back issues and he does have some really good information. Nothing to lose, click here to sign up!

Read on Auction Bytes today…

“Mpire has officially ended its strategy of providing auction-management services to eBay sellers, and it will instead focus on generating revenue through shopping tools for buyers. The company sent letters to customers stating it would discontinue offering and supporting Mpire Launcher and Mpire Builder as of January 31, 2007, and would instead focus on its Shopping Service and Mpire Researcher tool.” ~ Ina Steiner

I’ve never used Launcher or Builder, but have found Researcher to be helpful. Interesting decision given the programs are less than a year old.