Cyber Monday has dropped to ninth of the top ten online spending days this holiday season according to a ComScore Networks report (http://www.comscore.com/press/pr.asp). However, the online spending increase over last year is currently only 23 percent, a little short of the predicted 24 percent. This doesn't sound like much of a difference, but $128.5 million is not to be counted lightly. As with 2004, the highest days were mid-December (12th and 13th came in first and second with $556 million and $554 million, respectively).

The fastest growing category of websites in November 2005 were those offering Jewelry, Luxury Goods and Accessories with 16.4 million unique visitors (39 percent growth over October 2005). It appears buyers are becoming more confident trusting online traders of fine goods, which is a good sign for online auction sellers of similar items. The most popular sites in this category were Coach.com (2.71 million visitors) followed by Zales.com (1.72 million).

Recently, eBay sent out a mass email promoting auctions with overnight shipping. It remains to be seen if this will entice last-minute shoppers to choose eBay auctions over malls, but ComScore predict another $3.9 billion will be spent online before year end. This prediction brings the 2005 holiday season total to $19.6 billion and overall yearly online spending to $82.7 billion.

Terapeak released a report that stated over twice the number of auctions closed on January 3, 2005 than on December 19, 2004 (http://www.terapeak.com). The data is not surprising, given that January 3rd was when 7-day auctions ended for listings started on December 27, 2004, the day eBay held a special 10-cent listing day promotion. A chart showing the number of listings for the month of December 2004 on MedVed (http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND) shows the increase in the number of listings on December 27, 2004. The data is still encouraging as it indicates buyers were buying the week after Christmas.