There hasn't been this much unrest among eBay sellers since the fee increase last year or, before that, the category rollups that accompanied the launch of Item Specifics. What's the beef these days? Poor sales, according to some sellers. And getting blamed are the eBay.com search function and eBay Express.
It's hard to know just who is affected and to what extent, and eBay said last month that any sales slowdown is caused by seasonal factors.
eBay Live 2006 was the fifth conference bringing eBay executives, staff, buyers, sellers and vendors together. Attendance was up 50 percent to 15,000, and it felt like it!
I went to Las Vegas early to cover the eBay Developers Conference, so I was gone just over a week. Overall the show was a lot of work, but rewarding. This year, along with stories and photographs from the convention, we provided video interviews. You can see an index of videos here (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/pages/tvguide_ebaylive2006). Among my favorites are the seller-organized eBay Live 2006 Meet & Greet, where I got lots of eBay sellers on camera, and interviews with Karen Dudnikov (Tabberone) and Stephen Wargel (MotionDynamics). David was able to put up 50 minutes of Meg Whitman and Bill Cobb's keynote address along with tons of interviews, including the heads of other online auction sites.
Logistically, it's nearly impossible to interview people and attend events AND write it all up, so by doing the video interviews, I felt I was able to publish more content than relying on the written word. We have even more segments to add next week (including an interview with Dan Levy, Senior Director for Trust & Safety at PayPal).
We've had many requests to create MP3 audio files from the AuctionBytes.TV programming and add those to the site for people who prefer to listen to podcasts. We'll try to accommodate those people over the next couple of weeks.
Julia Wilkinson contributed many articles and photos to the eBay Live coverage, and I couldn't have done it without her. Julia's new book, The eBay Price Guide, is coming out this month from No Starch Press, so be sure and check it out! (http://digbig.com/4kpjx). My thanks also to Phil Davies, photographer, Jim Whittaker, video producer, and Tom Shaughnessy writer & photographer. And as always, thanks to our advertisers for making it possible to bring you all this content at no charge.
Next year's event takes place at the new convention center in Boston. It may take me a year to recover from this year's show!
One last announcement: it's been a while since we've added a new area to our discussion forums, but we think we have a fine addition. A Coin Forum, hosted by Daniel S. Smith, should please the numismatists. Dan has been a numismatic collector since 1965 at the age of nine. He became a full-time dealer in 1976 and brings his expertise in modern coins, bullion coins, world coins, and collector coins, as well as many other areas, to his forum. Stop in and say hello! (http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=40)
Thanks for reading.
About the author:
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
