eBay sellers were buzzing on Thursday upon hearing that a brand-new seller with 22 feedback was featured prominently in a special "fashion deal" sale similar to the eBay Daily Deals marketing feature (link). Comments are still coming in to the AuctionBytes blog about the special perks and the handling of the matter by eBay, which continues to push shoppers towards hand-picked or branded retailers as part of its latest strategy to revive the marketplace.

On Friday, the New York Times picked up on data we published last week from Nielsen on eBay traffic trends. eBay page views for May 2009 were down 32% from a year ago. We looked at eBay traffic data back to 2005, and then compared it to Amazon.com's traffic back to 2007, and found that and that while the number of unique visitors to eBay was down 7% in May compared to a year ago, the number of unique visitors to Amazon.com was up 7% from a year ago.

Both eBay and Amazon.com are set to announce second-quarter earnings this month, eBay on July 22 and Amazon.com on July 23, so we'll see what effect traffic has had on sales.

You can view the traffic charts in Thursday's AuctionBytes Newsflash article (link).

As a merchant, there are several things you can do to boost traffic to your own listings, whether they are hosted on a marketplace or on your own website. It's worth the time to fully explore Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so your products show up in search results on sites such as Google, which recently posted a helpful video on the Google Base blog.

Email marketing is also a very effective traffic driver and is used effectively by sellers of all sizes who want to boost traffic to listings on marketplaces or to listings on their own online store. Today, Lisa Suttora covers email marketing, and in Part 1 of her series, she explains the basics and reveals fifteen criteria for choosing the right email marketing tool.

Also in today's issue, Greg Holden examines a small site with a new approach to handmade and crafted goods in his profile of Beehive Co-Op; Michele Alice entertains and informs with her article on Wedgwood; and the This & That column takes a look at recent online marketplace news. A reader shares her story about the first item she sold online, and readers sound off about issues in "Letters from Readers."

Thanks for reading, and a special thanks to all the people who email me regularly with news and tips that affect online sellers, most of whom prefer to remain anonymous, and to our sponsors who enable us to cover the industry without charging for our content.