My eBay seller community site for sale

As some of you may know, I recently built an online community site for eBay sellers, helping them protect themselves against bad and unprofitable bidders (since that eBay doesn’t allow sellers to leave negative feedback on bidders anymore).

The site has been getting rave reviews from ebay sellers and industry bloggers. Even the Wall Street Journal called me to ask me about it!

I’m looking to sell it now as I need cash for my next project! (and I like building things more than I like managing them…;-) )

 

eBay (a)Live and Kicking Sellers

“Next item on the block is eBay auctions: Going once, going twice, gone – to the big retailer in the back.”

Ebay is moving radically away from their roots – in what seems like a desperate attempt to boost their stock price. There’s a new sheriff (CEO) in town and all the mom-and-pop merchants who’ve made a living or sought additional income from eBay are pushed aside in favor of big businesses – like Buy.com using eBay as a fixed-price outlet for their overstock.

While eBay isn’t denying anybody from setting up their lemonade stand on the site, their new policy and fee changes are greatly favoring retailers with large, fixed price inventories over the little guy doing auctions. In addition, they are revising the revolutionary mutual feedback system between buyers and sellers that created a sense of trust. Only buyers can leave feedback on sellers, and sellers, unless they have something positive to say, are unable to leave buyer feedback on the transaction. Now sellers are unable to know if the bidder on their auction is a reputable buyer or someone who doesn’t like to pay for auctions they’ve won, or returns everything they buy damaged.

Furthermore, there are already reports of buyers extorting sellers for better deals after the sale is made using this new feedback system as leverage. This is a tough pill to swallow for merchants who’ve spend years building their eBay presence and reputation.

eBay Live, a show that traditionally feels more like a revival meeting than a business convention, is starting today. I wonder if the tone will change this year?

Never before have sellers been this critical and upset – resulting in the creation of a cottage industry of services, such as RepXchange – where sellers find new protection in sharing their blocked bidder lists, to fill in the gap where eBay has left a void.

The Demise of eBay?

After years of having pioneered reciprocal feedback and reputation management between buyers and sellers, eBay wants to abandon that system in favor for one where only buyers can leave negative feedback on sellers.

eBay’s reasoning is this: buyers who receive negative feedback are less likely to go back to eBay to shop. Why? Because sellers don’t want the business of buyers who have slighted other sellers in the past. eBay makes money on a transaction, whether it’s a deal ‘gone sour’ or not, thus they don’t want the seller to have a reason to cancel bids.

This ‘customer is always right’ model is more in line with how traditional retail works both online and offline where the merchant is the only party being scrutinized. However, this is a radical departure from the peer-to-peer roots of eBay, where the small, independent seller would be protected against buyer fraud or misbehavior.

Regardless of eBay’ s spin, this is not a win for them or the consumer. Well-behaved buyers will only suffer from this change as their reputation, just like a seller’s reputation, can be used as a valuable currency that brings in savings and efficiency to the market.

1. A buyer with a good reputation is not at risk of having their bid for a product canceled, whereas a buyer with a bad reputation will.
2. When dealing only with buyers with good reputation, the seller is able to offer products at a lower cost because they don’t have to factor in the cost of potential frivolous complaints, returns or buyer fraud.

As a former power-seller on eBay, I found that one of the most time consuming, and profitability-challenging parts of selling on eBay was to deal with customers who exploited the already ‘sacrosanct’ status they enjoyed on the site.

This new direction will cause many eBay sellers to look for alternative outlets or stop selling altogether. The ability to know and qualify your customer was a key advantage that the eBay platform had over other outlets. Adding this to eBay’s recent increases in the transaction costs from sellers, sellers are finding that eBay is turning into an undesirable venue to do business.

Latent Communities mean Social Networking Business

Are there communities, on-line or off-line, where its members are unaware of their memberships – or that the community even exists?

This might sound like a far-fetched academic argument, and in part it is (academic, that is). However, I believe that understanding the nature of this question will enable social networking entrepreneurs to create sticky communities in response.

My hypothesis is that a community, online or offline, can exist without its members’ knowledge of the existence of the community and thus does not engage in a mediated communication with other members. Maybe it’s not your father’s definition of a community. Or maybe that’s just what it is; let me indulge you with an example.

My in-laws used to have an old VW Camper. They tell me stories of going on road-trips in the 70’s where fellow VW Camper drives would honk when passing each other on the road, as to say “you’re one of us.” However, what’s “us?” My in-laws never attended any Camper owners’ fairs, or even knew if any such meet-ups existed. Did they feel, nonetheless, part of a distinct group of people with whom they had shared experiences, (albeit their shared experiences where derived individually)? You bet.

Speaking of freewheeling romantics; I remember in grad-school reading a somewhat obscure study about housewives in Des Moines who read romance novels. Unaware of the other romance novel reading housewives, the study make a case for classifying them as a community by virtue of their shared experiences as romance novel readers. (For the literary arts geeks: This study was a tangent of the concept of ‘interpretive communities’ – coined by Stanley Fish).

Now, you might not agree to classify these housewives or motorists as unknowing members of any communities, but consider this: Is red paint in a can still red when the lid is closed? The best answer might be “It’s latent. It’s got the potential for red.” Similarly, these people belong to latent communities.

Offering social networking solutions for latent communities could be a gold mine for social networking entrepreneurs for a multitude of reasons, including:

• They represent a new type of growth of the social networking ‘sector’ where membership growth has primarily been based on friend-networks, not subject matter networks.
• There is existing passion and engagement among its members that will lead to a lot of UGC.
• The subject matter may require a different platform for social networking than what’s offered by the one-size-fits-all platforms like Facebook.

One Page eCommerce Websites

I come across these one page websites from time to time. Most often via a link in an email newsletter that I shouldn't have subscribed too. These websites (i.e. one-pagers) are sometimes dozens of 'screens' long and tout one product, and one product only. 

The benefit of the one page is that it seems like such a quick read. But it never is. These pages are pushing products with a feel similar to cable TV infomercials running in the AM hours. ("If that wasn't enough, you'll also get widget Z free for just trying our product!")

However, something tells me that both of these marketing techniques work and give a pretty decent ROI. 

Are any 'serious' company using this marketing approach?  Should they? The jury (me) is out. How about you?

What’s Steve Jobs Thinking? There’s a 75% chance this is it

So, the answer to my previous post has been attempted to get answered by Piper Jaffray:

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1719

WEB 2.0 Hype, Hope and Unbridled Enthusiasm

One of the most frustrating things about working in an interactive agency is all the hype you have to sort through and explain to clients and prospects. They tear out pages from Wired magazine or send us a link to some article about a new technology that will solve everything, including world hunger.

“Why don’t we have this – why aren’t we doing this. I want my Web 2.0!”

I did say frustrating, but don’t get me wrong; it’s not something I’d rather do without!

It’s the price to pay for progress. In fact, I’m thrilled about the Web 2.0 hype – first of all because it is not all hype – but most of all because people are energized. Marketers are looking to the web for solutions, looking to dotcom agencies for reach and ROI.

It has really taken us quite some time to recover from the burst of the dotcom bubble. Not until the last couple of years has the web started to get its edge back; financially, in terms high-profile innovation and investments, ad spend and the impact on our lives in general. Dotcom is no longer a swearword.

There will be another shakeout, like in any maturing market. I don’t necessarily think the industry as a whole got it ‘right’ this time either. But smart companies are making new mistakes, not old ones. That’s what’s cool and that’s why Web 2.0 is more than new technology – it’s also new hope and energy.

Social tagging as marketing & spam

Marketers are still scratching their heads as to the impact of social tagging. It’s clear that it’s becoming a very powerful search methodology where any netizen, not Google or Yahoo! get a say in what’s relevant content. The search algorithm is no secret either: whichever site is most often associated (tagged) with term ‘X’, gets on top. At least it is for now.

Even Tom Hespos has discovered it, although his musings on the topic underscores that it’s seemingly not yet on the radar as a marketing tool.

Unfortunately, I think the democratic nature of this social tagging may lead to its downfall. It might be just a matter of time before sites like del.icio.us and Furl will be rendered useless by spammers who find ways to flood the system with bogus tags.

UNLESS, there is be a way to for these services to detect and block spamming. The best way to achieve this is probably to ask marketers to stay away from social tagging all together. With email the challenge in detecting spam is that spammers and legitimate marketers through their distribution methods have more in common with each other than with person-to-person email. How’s a poor spam filter supposed to know the difference? Don’t let the same thing happen to social tagging. Let spam stand out like a sore thumb!

That said, marketers, it about time you started to take advantage of social bookmarking and tagging!

Encourage and enable your brand loyalists to tag you. That’s not spam, that’s just another flavor of viral marketing, one that could actually improve the quality and usefulness of social tagging. It might be the closest thing to public service marketers will ever do. Don’t let that hold you (‘cough’… us) back.

Office Politics, Fortune 500 Style

Books have been written about it, lectures have been held and mentors have offered their hard earned lessons. Yet few have presented counter-office-politics strategies as succinctly as on Slacker Manager's blog. Great advice and tips for anybody who work with other people. Read it.

Warning: Following most of these tips may limit your career options in corporate America. During my time as a VP of marketing for one of the largest US banks I quickly realized that not playing the politics game made me a threat. Especially to a self-sustaining group of mediocre middle-managers who only wanted to secure their pensions, not the interest of their employer. Then, where would the US economy be without this group of yes-men soldiers! At least I confirmed that guerilla-style business management is more my cup of tea

What’s Steve Jobs Thinking? Probably Nothing.

There has been quite a debate with dystrophic and optimistic projections equally divided on the future of the MacOS and the Apple’s hardware. Everybody is trying to decipher Steve Job’s playbook as it really mattered what he’s thinking anyway. Granted, he made a bold move with moving to Intel chips, and he might have a handful of scenarios on its effect on the market and how to respond over time. Or maybe not.

Take the iPod, for example. When copycats started to integrate video with their products, Jobs dismissed it as a feature without merit. He said that while music is something that can be enjoyed to it’s fullest through any device that plugs into your ears, a small screen will can never to the same justice to video. I agreed then, and I agree now. However, the market begged to differ. Now video iPods are what’s hot and the cell phone industry attempts to bring small-screen video to the masses.

Thus, I’d be surprised if Jobs has more than a 2 year plan at the best! Jobs strength lies in making bold moves that shake the market and then adjusting his course to maintain momentum. Right now, to paraphrase Seinfeld, I think Jobs is thinking about “nothing.”

If only many small startups could be this nimble….