Show 05-06-06: Store Name Hijacking, Amex 5% Off Fedex, $135K Con, First Fuel Bank, eBay’s Ad Format, Unclaimed Baggage, Common Keywords

Posted by Michael Donahue on 05/6/06 in Podcasts, eBay News, E-commerce News

Recently discovered Diebenkorn in E-Auction-Air’s attic…note the authentic signature…note too that my certificate of authenticity carries with it a certificate of authenticity bearing witness to authenticity of the certificate, if not the painting.

eBay Store loophole makes it possible to appropriate another sellers ID as your store name…but the real story is how you should be naming your store and its not what you’re probably thinking. Is the USPS going to allow “forever stamps”? Fedex users can be getting an additional 5% off their bill by using American Express. eBay fraudster, Kenneth Walton, comes clean about his $135,000 con…it ain’t art and it ain’t pretty. Lucky folks in Minnesota can use First Fuel Bank to hedge their gasoline prices…let’s hope this idea is catching on.

Is your IP rejecting e-mail files that are too large; either sending or receiving?…there’s a free service that will handle files up to a gig in size. Steve Weber’s blog is an excellent reference for all things re book sales and book collectibles on line….titled, appropriately enough, “Selling Books”. YLDFire is a site that will gladly do, for a price, what eBay already does for free….are too many third party apps spoiling the party for your buyers? Little talked about but definitely worth looking into is eBay’s “Ad Format”.

We revisit Marketing Experiments study re eBay Stores vs. stand alone web sites….and the results really bear repeating. Well, if you insist, there’s a site that sums up the 25 or so third party auction management services available…pick a number, any number. Chances are, if you need a special Reply Manager to handle your customers questions, you need to be paying more attention to your customers. Wordtracker’s 500 Top Search Engine words for the week…why bother?
We’ve found a services that will not only source your product’s for you in Japan but will aso drop-ship them to your customer. Unclaimed Baggage is a gold mine and now you don’t have to go to Scottsboro, Alabama to pick up their bargains. eBay’s Common Keywords is easy to use and can tell you a great deal about the voids in the market…that is, if you keep digging.

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Links from this week’s show:

Kenneth Walton’s Book on eBay Fraud - Care to buy a used moral compass?

FirstFuelBanks - Minnesota’s answer to the gas crunch…care to speculate?

MailBigfile.com - Free service for sending / receiving very large files.

SellingBooks - From A-Z, Steve Weber knows his stuff.

YldFire - Yet another third party add-on that duplicates a free service on eBay to no discernable advantage…other than to distract the customer.

eBay’s Ad Format - Expanded classification affords some interesting opportunities.

Marketing Experiments eBay store vs. web site test - Surprising results.

25 Auction Management Services - Neatly, all in a row.

Reply Manager - Why bother responding to those pesky customers when a program can do it for you.

White Rabbit Express - Buying and drop-shipping service for goods from Japan.