Policy Changes Prompt eBay Sellers to Diversify

Frustrated with eBay policy changes? One established eBay seller looks to alternative Wigix for additional sales.

In an attempt to keep buyer’s shipping costs lower, and also to increase his overall customer service, Husvar said it is not uncommon for he and his partner, Marisa Torres, to jump into their own Jeep and drive all over the Eastern U.S. to deliver parts. “We do deliver a lot of our own freight, simply because this saves our customers money.” Even after paying the couple a set fee, which is enough to cover their own fuel and accommodation costs, TunerJunkyard.com customers can save hundreds of dollars on their purchase when they don’t have to pay freight charges to a shipping carrier.

Policy Changes Prompt eBay Sellers to Diversify
By Vangie Beal, August 26, 2008

From eBay to Bidtopia: Bargainland’s Success Story

Bidtopia is born after high-volume liquidator Bargainland says bye-bye to eBay, which requested it to cut its business by 75 percent.

According to St. James, Bargainland (which is also a company named for the popular eBay user ID), was greatly affected by changes at eBay. Policies on designer brand names, for example, limited Bargainland to listing only five of these items at a time, and in other instances, Bargainland was required to have a 98 or 99 percent positive feedback. St. James said that when you sell this type of product, even if you list every single item as damaged in the description, you just cannot achieve that high of a rating. The company also believed that eBay, through its new policy changes, was discouraging the types of listings that was the core of its business.

St. James told Ecommerce-Guide.com that they were asked by eBay to cut back the number of listings or change to a different type of auction. According to St. James, eBay wanted Bargainland to cut its eBay business by 75 percent. He said, “We were doing tens of millions of dollars worth of business with them, and really, how can you cut back 75 percent of that in three months?”

From eBay to Bidtopia: Bargainland’s Success Story
By Vangie Beal, August 12, 2008

Open AIM: What’s In It for End Users?

When AOL launched its Open AIM program to the developer community over two years ago, it offered open access the AIM code base as well as access to the 27 million plus monthly users of AOL’s instant messaging network.

“In a nutshell, Open AIM provides developers with access to AIM presence functionality, the AIM Software Developer Kit (SDK ) for building plug-ins and custom clients, and also Web-based API s for incorporating IM functionality into web pages.

Most users of the AOL instant messaging network really don’t put much stock in phrases like “unfettered access,” APIs, SDKs, or other developer jargon, but what they do get out of the Open AIM developer community is new ways in which they can use the AIM service itself. Open AIM 2.0 directly serves the developer community, but it’s the developers themselves who help add novelty to the network.”

Open AIM: What’s In It for End Users?
August 12, 2008, By Vangie Beal

eBay Listing Issues Irk Sellers, OS Shopping Carts

EBay cans its Listing Policy changes but rolls out what some sellers call an “unfair” Multiple Listings policy, and the eBay Partner Network announces a new affiliate compensation plan. Plus, PayPal gets ready for back-to-school spending and PrestaShop announces version 1.0 of its free, open source e-commerce solution.

“Under the new policy, duplicate items from the same seller will be limited to a single showing in search results. eBay defines identical items as listings from the same seller that have the same title and the same listing format. King did say that multiple auction-style listings with the same title with a different number of bids and different prices are not considered identical and will all be displayed in the search results.

Sellers who list many different items will also be limited to up to 10 items shown on the search page. So, any seller who has twenty unique items listed, for example, will see only up to 10 shown on the first page, with the remainder shown on the second and subsequent search results pages. These changes are being reported by sellers in all searches, not just eBay’s Best Match. Under the new change, if you list 10 items, all with the same title and price, buyers will only see one of those listings in their search results. Once a bid has been placed, however, the listing with a bid, plus a second listing theoretically should show on the first search results page.”

eBay Watch: Listing Issues Irk Sellers, OS Shopping Carts
By Vangie Beal, August 6, 2008