One truism about this industry - it's never boring. It seems there's not a week (or sometimes a day) that goes by that eBay isn't announcing a major change to its site. One week ago, eBay Australia banned all payment methods other than its own PayPal service, and naturally members on other sites around the world are concerned this will eventually effect them. Is this a case of anti-competitive behavior? Buyers and sellers both want a choice of payment methods on what is supposed to be a venue only. Or is eBay's playground, and they can dictate the terms? Join the discussion in our blog and let us know your opinion! (http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2008/4/1207774925.html).
Last week, eBay announced it was shutting its Live Auctions platform at the end of the year - AuctionBytes broke this story on Monday (http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2008/4/1208221221.html). An interesting by-product of eBay "shedding" a part of its business is that it often leads to other sites succeeding in the niche. For example, when eBay halted the sale of firearms on their site in 1999, other sites such as GunBroker and AuctionArms took up the slack in Internet sales.
In today's issue, we write about an alternative to eBay Live Auctions called Proxibid, and there are other services that have already announced they are jumping into the space.
eBay announced last week its financials for the first quarter 2008. While the company did well overall, the metrics don't show signs that the domestic marketplace is gaining new ground. I'd say beyond its PayPal business and growth in international markets, eBay is looking to classifieds and advertising revenue to be future growth drivers. I'd expect additional acquisitions in the classifieds arena, and I expect to see more ads on eBay.com.
I received a letter from a seller who wanted to know if her recent sales performance was part of an overall trend. I posted the letter to the AuctionBytes blog, and sellers are sharing their sales data. Let us know if your sales are up, flat or down and to what you attribute changes, if any (http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2008/4/1208479770.html).
Lastly, I'm excited to be one of the judges of the BlogHer Heroes contest sponsored by Wiley, publisher of Blogging Heroes. The contest recognizes bloggers who have inspired a community of women through their blogs while also demonstrating passion and innovation. The winning blog will receive a chapter in a mini version of Blogging Heroes, and the grand prize winner will receive a trip for two to San Francisco for the 2008 BlogHer Annual Conference in July.
I'm looking forward to reviewing the nominated blogs and expect it will be challenging to pick out which are the best! Visit the BlogHer website to learn how you can nominate your favorite bloggers (http://www.blogher.com/whos-your-blogher-hero).
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.
