Michael Carney launches a pretty decent looking blog to coincide with the re-release of his book Trade Me Success Secrets. Check it out.
Category Archives: auctions
eBay abandoning insertion (listing) fees?
The murmurs are that eBay is going to be dramatically lowering listing fees and increasing final value (success) fees accordingly. Bear Stearns was the first to come up with this, and others have said that apparently this will differ by category. Total rumour, but if true it is about time. The fees eBay charges are …
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eBay re-enters Japan
As with New Zealand, eBay failed to make an impact in Japan, and exited the market after Yahoo! established the dominant auction site. (eBay still talks about NZ as an eBay market though, which is pretty amusing) Now eBay and Yahoo! have announced that they are linking forces to give Yahoo! Japan auction members access …
Trade Me 1, old time Auctioneers 0
Way to go – accuse Trade Me of not following good business practise, then be forced to cringingly back down in the face of overwhelming evidence. I’m not sure how this one played out, but is sure is amusing reading the resulting article. (Auctioneers).. Association chief executive John Ward had said Trade Me did not …
Bestof eBay: Auctions and Social Networking
Not bad. eBay’s new site let’s you combine with the masses to vote on popular auctions – and thus drive more traffic to those auctions and eBay in general. It seems good on first appearance – there is the obligatory eye-candy – in this case the classic Web 2.0 rounded corners and Digg-like voting buttons …
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eBay results – up and down
eBay reported a loss of a huge $936m – due to the recent huge write-down of Skype value. However otherwise theu showed some good signs, and some not so good signs. Good – PayPal made $470m of revenue – up 35% Not so good: Auctions (marketplaces) listings fell 5%, and GMV (the value of stuff …
Nobel Prize for Auction efficiency
Trae Me and eBay customers can breath easy – the Nobel prize wining trio of Hurwicz, Maskin and Myerson are fans of auctions as the most efficient way to clear a market when information is not freely available to all. (Actually – their work helps to understand which auction mechanism is best in which situation.) …
Trade Me: one million served
I missed the first time, but it seems Trade Me exceeded 1 miilion listings yesterday, October 13th, according to the TM message board. Right now the site is running at just under 1m, but expect it to steadily grow. Amazing. Meanwhile eBay Australia has just over 1m items for sale located in Australia. Remember that …
Please sell me iPhones Trade Me. or not.
So as Sophie points out, Stuff confirmed the Trade Me policy on “no iPhones” this morning. Adam also helpfully points out that perhaps I was behind the times – oh the horror. But yes – Trade Me has recklessly decided to arbitrarily ban sales of the absolutely essential and patently legal to sell iPhone. This …
UK iPhone – what to do in NZ?
So the iPhone is in the UK – with O2. The interesting thing is that, like the USA, the iPhone is not coming with any 3G high speed mobile internet. Instead Apple and O2 have signed a deal with The Cloud, giving iPhone users free WiFi access at 7,500 UK locations. We don’t have that …
eBay blows cash on TV Ads that are 20 seconds old
eBay UK is placing ads on TV that feature listings with prices that are 20 seconds old. That’s some pretty cute technology, which requires slick systems from end to end. Now the media companies have a system that can deliver ads that quickly, it’s a short leap to designing, creating and placing ads that are …
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eBay shakes the model, but still doesn’t get it
eBay is still figuring out this auction thing. For a start, all eBay neutral feedbacks are now counted as negative, as from a couple of weeks back. If big sellers start getting a bad karma ratio, then the amount of stuff they can post to sell will be restricted. They’ve also been playing with the …
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eBay.fr drops gallery fees
eBay France will now give away Gallery for free – when you pay for listings. eBay, unlike Trade Me, charges a listing price, which varies by the size of the reserve. eBay France have now boosted that price, but every auction gets a picture in their search results for free. Interestingly eBay.fr has also dropped …
Trade Me launches Pay Now
Trade Me have quietly launched Pay Now. This is a really important development, as it is the final barrier falling between Trade Me’s traditional model and true eCommerce. Now you can Buy and Pay with a credit card in one move, and just walk away from the screen. All for free. (Sellers pay a credit …
Is Perth cool or not?
So everybody who I’ve talked to has raved about Perth, what a great place it is, the wonderful climate, fantastic people and so on. All that seems true. But why didn’t anybody explain to me that Perth is closed from Saturday at 1230 until Monday morning? That late night shopping or 24 hour supermarkets don’t …
Lance Wiggs 