The evidence mounts against eBay, as they continue to cast away their franchise. It’s really sad to see this happen as they naturally own their space and should be unassailable if they were playing it right. They are not. Over the years the site has increased in complexity and decreased in humanity, until the community …
Continue reading “Trade Me trounces eBay, and eBay is in real trouble”
Well apparently that’s an indication of the marketing effectiveness of LanceWiggs.com versus the “hundreds of thousands” of other ranked websites on Hubspot’s website grader. It’s a pretty lousy measure, truth be told, as Trade Me scores lower at 96.3% and Stuff gets just 95.3%. More interestingly it provides bit more detail about sites’ marketing effectiveness. …
Continue reading “LanceWiggs marketing effectiveness is 97.9th percentile”
The nationwide embarrassment. The site we love to, err, dislike. Ferrit. Paul Reynolds answered two questions on Ferrit (they were not mine but from BarnacleBarnes). How did he do? Ferrit Q. One word: Ferrit. With an investment north of $30 million dollars and traffic that is less than a deal-a day site and only slightly …
We are going through the Lingopal design process at the moment for various products (J2ME, Website etc.). It’s all heating up as launch approaches. This is the worst nightmare result – design by committee: (via Slashdot’s new idle.slashdot.org) Above all the video demonstrates what happens when you have lots of people inputting and yet no …
Go to m.trademe.co.nz – even from your mac (or PC if you really must) browser. It’s simple, stark even and light. A staggering 6.9k home page, versus 292kb for the www home page. Forget about browsing any way but by search. Actually it is a really unfriendly place to just browse for stuff – but …
Michael has seemingly abandoned the Trade Me success Secrets blog, which was looking to be a really promising place to discuss and see all things Trade Me. He also seems to have left the Grey Group – where he was also writing an interesting blog. If you want to see what an untended blog looks …
Continue reading “Where in the blogosphere is Michael Carney?”
The housing crash is cascading around the world, and the dire predictions are coming true. Here’s the latest chart from The Economist – check out Ireland on the bottom. That’s a crash, not a “balanced slump”. Meanwhile Trade Me just surpassed 70,000 property listings, on the back of signing up one of the last few …
Continue reading “Real Estate is falling – what happens next?”
Massive changes today announced for eBay’s economic model, in response, I take, to the increasing power of Amazon and Google. Listing fees down 25 to 50%, especially for bigger sellers Gallery is free final value fees (commissions) are up – 8.25% under $25, which is up from 5.25% and huge. Most sales are in this …
AA bought into Bookabach – so what are they getting and how much is it worth? I’m arguing they got a bargain, even though I don’t know how much they paid for what % or even how much bookabach makes. Here’s the reasoning and estimation: The site looks great – very well laid out and …
Michael Carney launches a pretty decent looking blog to coincide with the re-release of his book Trade Me Success Secrets. Check it out.
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 …
Continue reading “eBay abandoning insertion (listing) fees?”
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 …
Michael Carney is a marketer that sends out an occasional newsletter to the community. It’s quite good (the last one even quoted my father :-). Michael is a influential guy on the NZ scene – he even wrote an excellent book on Trade Me. I do recommend that you subscribe t0 the newsletter if you …
Continue reading “The mysterious disappearance of Michael Carney”
Want to get deep inside Trade Me’s engine to understand how it works? Then apply for Trade Me’s Manager – Strategy and Analytics role, and you will know all. Well – you’ll be exposed to the data fire hose anyway, and you’ll use any insights you find to help grow Trade Me. This was the …
Continue reading “Know all of Trade Me’s secrets – and get paid for it”
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 …
Lance Wiggs 