PowerSeller revolt looms as eBay CEO Donahoe tinkers with business model
Alex Salkever
Jul 27th 2009 at 8:20PMText SizeAAAFiled under: Company News, Technology
More
Online auctioneer eBay's legions of sellers are digesting the likely fallout from a significant raft of policy and fee changes announced by company CEO John Donahoe today. The quick and dirty version -- kiss the old, quirky fun eBay (EBAY) goodbye and say hello to a site that looks a lot more like Amazon.com. I spoke at length to Ina Steiner, editor of AuctionBytes.com, a noted eBay expert who has been critical of the website at times.
Steiner has a decidedly opinionated take on the likely impact of the changes, which she sees as both carrot and stick. "For companies that are selling one-of-a-kind items such as antiques or rare jewelry, these rules could have a really negative impact," says Steiner. That's because the company will now offer a higher 20% discount on fees paid to eBay for its new Top-Rated Sellers category who have the very best customer ratings, while offering a diminished 5% standard PowerSeller fee discount to longstanding vendors whose customer ratings don't qualify them for the higher discount.
The move underscore the dilemma CEO John Donahoe faces as he tries to move the company away from a maxed-out auction model, to a more staid e-commerce platform without causing faithful eBay sellers to bail out in droves.
The fee discount difference can mean thousands of dollars in extra costs or extra savings for many eBay sellers. To access the newly created Top-Rated Sellers category, eBay merchants must have virtually zero negative feedback ratings from customers. This is not a problem for buyers of items such as electronics or office supplies.
But it will hurt eBay resellers moving quirkier or more unique wares, says Steiner. It's much harder for vendors to move specialty items and avoid all negative feedback. That's due to the inevitable disconnect between buyers' expectations and the reality of their purchases, which many times are not always exactly what they imagined or equal to what they saw in an online photo. For vendors of unique wares, making disgruntled customers happy through discounts or refunds may not be an option. "They want sellers to do what it takes to make a buyer happy. On eBay, that's not always a practical approach," says Steiner. "Sellers who are selling valuable antiques or high value item, its not as easy to say, keep it and I'll refund you because you are complaining."
She also noted that new search results pages on the website will look a lot more like Amazon results pages, with a product description, some product information, and a "buy box" with two or three leading eBay merchants. Links to other eBay merchants will be lower down the page. And, Donahoe has announced that eBay is aggressively moving toward more fixed-price item sales, much like Amazon.
Not that Donahoe has a made a secret of his intentions to abandon eBay's core to become a more polished e-tailer. Donahoe is on a mission to make eBay ubquitous with a massive keyword acquisition strategy to goose search engine results for eBay items. He's going to need all the help he can get if traffic to eBay continues to fall and faithful sellers abandon ship for greener pastures at niche auction and e-tail sights like GoAntiques and Etsy.com. And there is cold comfort in locking horns with Amazon, an online retailer that has increasingly sucked up a larger percentage of the e-tail market. But judging from its recent earnings call, eBay's management team sure seems eager to get into that race.
Alex Salkever is a Senior Writer at AOL Daily Finance covering tech, clean tech and green tech.You can follow him on Twitter at alexsalkever.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Big Ticket Depot Marketing
From: Brad Harris/VP BTD-BVDDate: July 21, 2009Time: 11:47 A.M. CSTTo: 300 Elite TeamElite Team/Marketing Info-Strategy-From CEO
Good Afternoon 300 Elite Team,
It has been several weeks since I have sent out a communication to the team. Your CEO/Joel Sauceda has put together some fantastic things utilizing FaceBook and IContact to keep this team up to speed every step of the way as we move forward with BVD/BTD. I have been extremely busy with new programming that is going to rocket us forward for the coming weeks, months and years.
There is not one thing that we are doing that has short term vision but only long term vision. Joel and I are not in this for just ourselves. We have built this vision around this team and what we ARE going to both give you to be successful and what we plan on doing for you.
This week marks the start of the rollout of new things which we know you both need and want to take your BVD/BTD business to the next level. What we have both already done and are continuing to work on, will also help us catapult your business as part of the 300 elite team. Know this..Not one of us will take this to the next level alone. It is as a team that will do that.
***New Advertising Banners***
This past weekend there was a communication put out which gave you a glimpse of all the new banners we created for your online advertisement. We displayed all of them on a webpage just for your viewing. What you didn't know was that we had already programmed these in your BTD affiliate back office.
Yes they are live and 100% ready to use. Simply go to your static banner link in your affiliate back office and then select all banners. We added 11 new banners which are for both BVD and BTD to the existing 8 banners for a total of 19.
As you will see they are 100% coded to send your potential client or new affiliate prospect signup to the appropriate page when they click on your banner. Each banner is also coded so it will track every single click to your client signup or affiliate signup pages.
THESE ARE LIVE!!! You can use them now.
***Coming Next***
There are several other new things which are also about to go live to help both you individually and us at corporate to do everything we are planning with our marketing campaigns.
1.) New Client Splash Pages: Many of you have already seen a glimpse of these (Both BVD and BTD client splash pages). They should be completely programmed into the system for your unique affiliate ID link in the next 2 days at the latest. Once that is completed, you will receive a detailed communication with all of that information.
2.) New Affiliate Splash Pages: These will come right behind the above Client Splash pages. They have already been created and now sent to the programmers for proper coding.
3.) Personal BVD and then BTD Webstores: This one is huge, and I mean huge. I am not going to go into detail on this right now, but will tell you this. The personal webstore and the packages attached to those are going to enable you with the ability to build big monthly residual commissions from your future clients. More to come in the next 7-10 days as this will go live by the end of July at the latest.
4.) New Client Training/Autoresponder System: We are in the process of putting together a new extensive autoresponder system for all of your future clients which you WILL HAVE with all which we have done and are doing. This will take them from being a new client just joining and listing a free item all the way to showing them how they can activate their own webstore and even become an affiliate.
***Until our Next Update***
As you can see there is and has been a lot happening. I look so forward to our next communication as we continue the unveil all the new things that are being completed.
Have an awesome day.
Brad HarrisVP JBInternetBVD/BTD
Good Afternoon 300 Elite Team,
It has been several weeks since I have sent out a communication to the team. Your CEO/Joel Sauceda has put together some fantastic things utilizing FaceBook and IContact to keep this team up to speed every step of the way as we move forward with BVD/BTD. I have been extremely busy with new programming that is going to rocket us forward for the coming weeks, months and years.
There is not one thing that we are doing that has short term vision but only long term vision. Joel and I are not in this for just ourselves. We have built this vision around this team and what we ARE going to both give you to be successful and what we plan on doing for you.
This week marks the start of the rollout of new things which we know you both need and want to take your BVD/BTD business to the next level. What we have both already done and are continuing to work on, will also help us catapult your business as part of the 300 elite team. Know this..Not one of us will take this to the next level alone. It is as a team that will do that.
***New Advertising Banners***
This past weekend there was a communication put out which gave you a glimpse of all the new banners we created for your online advertisement. We displayed all of them on a webpage just for your viewing. What you didn't know was that we had already programmed these in your BTD affiliate back office.
Yes they are live and 100% ready to use. Simply go to your static banner link in your affiliate back office and then select all banners. We added 11 new banners which are for both BVD and BTD to the existing 8 banners for a total of 19.
As you will see they are 100% coded to send your potential client or new affiliate prospect signup to the appropriate page when they click on your banner. Each banner is also coded so it will track every single click to your client signup or affiliate signup pages.
THESE ARE LIVE!!! You can use them now.
***Coming Next***
There are several other new things which are also about to go live to help both you individually and us at corporate to do everything we are planning with our marketing campaigns.
1.) New Client Splash Pages: Many of you have already seen a glimpse of these (Both BVD and BTD client splash pages). They should be completely programmed into the system for your unique affiliate ID link in the next 2 days at the latest. Once that is completed, you will receive a detailed communication with all of that information.
2.) New Affiliate Splash Pages: These will come right behind the above Client Splash pages. They have already been created and now sent to the programmers for proper coding.
3.) Personal BVD and then BTD Webstores: This one is huge, and I mean huge. I am not going to go into detail on this right now, but will tell you this. The personal webstore and the packages attached to those are going to enable you with the ability to build big monthly residual commissions from your future clients. More to come in the next 7-10 days as this will go live by the end of July at the latest.
4.) New Client Training/Autoresponder System: We are in the process of putting together a new extensive autoresponder system for all of your future clients which you WILL HAVE with all which we have done and are doing. This will take them from being a new client just joining and listing a free item all the way to showing them how they can activate their own webstore and even become an affiliate.
***Until our Next Update***
As you can see there is and has been a lot happening. I look so forward to our next communication as we continue the unveil all the new things that are being completed.
Have an awesome day.
Brad HarrisVP JBInternetBVD/BTD
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
