I have been selling the EZ Cube Photo Studios on my website (www.ezauctiontools.com) and on eBay for the past 4 years.  The EZ Cube is an inexpensive and impressive photo solution that allows anyone to take excellent product photos for your eBay listings and websites. The EZ Cube is inexpensive compared to most professional photo equipment. It is also high quality and long lasting.

But in today's economic environment some folks just can't afford an EZ Cube.

I often surf photo sites and today I tried typing in the phrase "cheap photo studio."  As you can imagine the results contained a lot of junk, but there were two excellent and cheap solutions.  So if any of you are looking for a way to improve your product photos and can't afford one of my EZ Cubes, visit these two sites for a really cheap solution.

DIY Photography is a fabulous blog where the author shows dozens of ways to take great photos using handmade stuff from around the house instead of extensive studio equipment.  Here is the link to his Cheap Photo Studio. Be sure and explore some of the links in his blog to other photo solutions as well.

The other place I found is The Strobist. Here is the link to his studio you can build with a cardboard box and some white paper.

And, here is a link to my 20 Inch EZ Cube Light Tent on eBay.  I also sell them at www.ezauctiontools.com.

I hope everyone has a Happy 4th of July Holiday.

Skip McGrath

The Prize:  After the July 4th Holiday Weekend I will be releasing my latest book, Making Money With an Online Consignment Business ~ An eBay consignment business operations manual. The book will sell for $47 and comes with 7 different bonuses, all worth more than the book itself.

The contest:  I just sent out a message to my followers on Twitter, asking them to send me a tweet with their best eBay tips in 140 characters or less (the length of a tweet message).  So far I have received quite a few and they keep coming in. There are so many good tips that I really want more. So thats why I am having this contest.  All of the tips will appear in my next newsletter with hyperlinks to your twitter page. And, I will select the best tip and that person will win a copy of my new book. So you get some exposure and you could win a copy of Making Money with an Online Consignment Business.

If you are already on Twitter, just follow me and then send me your tip in a direct message. My Twitter link is: http://twitter.com/Skip_McGrath

If you are not yet on Twitter, you can join at www.twitter.com. It is fast and easy.  Once you join, just use the find people link to find me and they click to follow me. After that you will see how to send a direct message.

If you are wondering why an eBay seller should be on Twitter, look at the current issue of my newsletter where I explain how to use Twitter to drive traffic to your eBay listings.

If you want to learn how to get into the profitable consignment business on eBay, then subscribe to my newsletter and you will receive an announcement when the book is available next week.

Colin Sebastian, Digital Media & Internet analyst at Wall Street firm Lazard Capital Markets, estimates that Amazon.com's third-party sellers will generate nearly $9 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2009. This is up from roughly $7 billion in 2008.This may be why more and more eBay sellers are expanding their business to Amazon. Why sell on just one channel?

If you want to learn more about selling on Amazon, a great jumping off point is the SCOE – Sellers Conference for Online Entrepreneurs: The Independent Conference for entrepreneurs who utilize Amazon as a sales channel

The dates are July 10-13 2009 and the event will be held at the Seattle Airport Marriott and Amazon Headquarters (transportation will be available from the hotel to Amazon).

This conference is presented to allow sellers to network, learn, and grow their online businesses. Executives from Amazon.com will be on hand to lead sessions, answer questions and receive feedback and there will be a visit to Amazon headquarters.

I will be speaking on a panel led by Cindy Shebley about expanding your eBay business to sell on Amazon. Here's the line-up:

Monsoon's CEO, Kanth Gopalpur http://www.monsoonworks.com/

Alice Rudolph - eBay PowerSeller and Amazon Pro Merchant, from aliceinstitches http://www.aliceinstitches.com/

Michael Levit, EVP of Marketing and Business Development from Vendio http://www.vendio.com/

Cindy Shebley - eBay PowerSeller and Amazon Pro Merchant/FBA seller  http://www.websellerscircle.com

Here is the website for more information and where you can register: http://www.scoe.biz

If you can't attend but would still like to learn how to sell on Amazon, grab a copy of Selling on The River by Steve Lindhorst.

This story is so typical of eBay's seller service. I get emails from people constantly expressing the same frustration. This is by eBay Seller, Walt Auctionwally. Walt is a very interesting guy. He runs a website that provides appraisal and other auction related services at services at:http://www.auctionwally.com/

Read his article here: http://budurl.com/pysq.  Warning - you will want to tear your hair out.

Skip McGrath

Are you trying to build your Twitter Account but keep getting the same spammers over and over? If you have been following me on Twitter or following my blog or newsletter then you know that Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool. But you have to use it properly. This means that in addition of using Twitter to promote your business or your offers or your eBay listings, you also have to send out some good information that readers will be interested in.

I have built my list on Twitter to over 3000 followers in just three weeks, but it seems that I am removing the same ones over and over who are just sending spam –and some of them are running pure scams.  Here is a list of some of the biggest spammers on Twitter:

I was getting pretty tired of going in and manually deleting these same guys over and over. But I recently learned about a service called Twollo at www.twollo.com.   Twollo does two things: It can help you build lists of people to follow who share your interests. But most importantly they have an unfollow service. You simply put the username you want to unfollow in the box that says Stop Following.  Twollo will remove that person and block them from being followed again.

Best of all, Twollo is free. If you use the free service it does work, but is a bit slow. If you want to pay $4.00 per month, they make you a priority user.

If you want to learn how to use Twollo and other free services to build your Twitter list fast, check out The Twitter Traffic Machine. This is the system I have used to build my list of over 3000 people who are interested in eBay.

It’s not new.  The summer slowdown has happened every year about this time.  The weather is better, parents and teens are focusing on graduation, people are spending more time in their gardens, and in general, there are more things pulling people away from their computers.  What is different this year is that the economy continues to slow.

Yesterday, Warren Buffet gave an interview where he said the economy still stinks and will continue to do so for some time.  Then this morning, unemployment figures came out higher than expected. This of course affects shopping habits. In the past, Americans went into debt and spent as if their incomes would always increase.  The savings rate in the US was actually negative for the past few years. Now the savings rate is over 5% --higher than it has been in 20 years. Consumers are not only saving more they are reducing their debts. All of that translates into lower spending and eBay is not exempt from that.

So what to do?

Well first of all, don’t give up.  Yes, sales are down but there are still sales. They haven’t gone to zero.  My sales are way off from last year but still profitable.

Here is the strategy I am using to cut my costs and keep my profits up:

1. Reduce the number of listings – The first thing you notice during a slowdown is that your conversion or sell-through-rate (STR) falls.  This means that fewer listings close with a sale. When that happens your fees go up. Remember, you pay a listing fee whether something sells or not. So if fewer of your listings are selling then you need to reduce the number of listings to reduce those fees.  The trick is figuring out which ones to cut.

The simplest way to do this is to stop listing items that are not selling.  This doesn’t mean you have to stop selling them. Instead of paying expensive auction-style listing fees, you can move them to an eBay Store or Fixed Price Listing format where the listing fees are very low. Then concentrate your auction-style listings on your best selling products.

2. Raise Your Prices on Prime Merchandise – This may seem counter intuitive. When business is slow, most people cut prices and for some products you may have to do this.  But, when you raise prices in general you may get fewer sales but you make more money on each sale. I would rather have fewer more profitable sales than lots of unprofitable sales.  If there is one thing I have discovered is that there are always people who will pay for quality and good service.  If you can convince those buyers you can deliver that, then they will buy.

3. Cut Prices and Get Rid of Nonperforming Inventory – If you are like most eBay sellers, you have stuff that sells well and stuff that doesn’t.  In a period like this cash is king.  You want put raise as much cash as possible and put that cash into inventory that is selling well.  If you have nonperforming inventory (i.e. stuff that sells slowly or just doesn’t sell at all), then cut the price to the bone and get rid of it.  Yes, you may take a loss, but if it’s just sitting on a shelf in your closet and you are paying listing fees over and over, then you are already losing money.

4. Cut Your Optional Feature Fees – If you look at your eBay statement at the end of the month you will see that all those little optional feature fees (extra photos, bold, subtitle, scheduler, listing designer, etc.) can really add up fast.  Many of these features can help but you need to really look at your auctions to see if they are working. I find that they do help for some products but don’t for others.  I was able to save over $60 per month by removing them from listings that weren’t performing.

5. Use an Auction Management Service to Save Time and Cut Fees – There are about a dozen auction management companies that all provide a different level of services and fees. I have been using Vendio for a number of years, but am slowly switching over to InkFrog. Another good on is Auctiva. And if you use a Mac, give Auction Genie a try.

Here is how they save you money.  If, for example, you use InkFrog you will pay $9.95 per month for the service. But you will save the 15¢ per photo for extra photos, 10¢ per listing if you schedule your auctions (which most people do) and 10¢ if you use listing designer.  All of these features are included in the $9.95 month InkFrog fee.  So in my case, I list about 200 auctions per month –each with at least three photos.  So that saves me 30¢ per listing X 200 listings = $60 per month. I also use a template to make my listings look good. That saves another 10¢ per listing or $20 per month. And then I also save another $20 when I schedule my auction listing times instead of paying eBay.  That totals $100 month savings less the $9.95 fee, so my total savings are $90.05 per month or $1080.60 per year. On top of all that, these services save me a lot of time. They are much faster than listing items through eBay.

There is one caveat. eBay is running a temporary promotion, whereby you get your first five listings per month for free when you list using the eBay Sell Your Item Form. If you are listing an expensive product (one with a high starting price), then I would list those five items directly on eBay and use InkFrog or whatever service you use for the rest of them.

I talk about these tips and many more tips to increase your eBay sales and profits in The Complete eBay Marketing System.

Some of you may have missed the announcement, but a few months ago I started a new company aimed at the Senior market.  We publish books, articles and newsletters that are designed to help seniors make, save and invest money to insure a great retirement. We call our publishing company, The Official Geezer Guides. Although we are aiming at the senior market, don't worry if you are not there yet our books can help anyone.

We have just published our latest title, The Official Geezer Guide to Making Money on Craigslist by Richard Geasey.  Richard is one of our stable of Geezer Guide authors.

Craigslist is best known for selling physical products and services -but there are other ways to make money on Craigslist without a product. We will show you three ways to do this -but you have to do it right.   Break some simple rules and Craigslist will block your ads.

Some more of what you will learn in The Official Geezer Guide to Making Money With Craigslist:

• What sells on Craigslist -and what doesn't 
• Where to find products to sell on Craigslist 
• How to use Craigslist to sell even if you don't have a product 
• How to accept credit cards without a merchant credit card account 
• Learning the best times and days to post your item for sale 
• How to write a killer, attention grabbing title for your postings 
• The key elements you need to have in all your titles 
• How to price your items
• How to use Craigslist to build a profitable mailing list
• How to use the new netSpray selling service on Craigslist
• How to protect your identity on Craigslist
• How to start an event ticket business on Craigslist
• How to start a Craigslist consignment business

We have several other titles in the Geezer series including books about making money on Amazon, creating ebooks and a great overall training manual for anyone who wants to start an online business.

It is no secret that state budgets are under pressure.  States get their revenue form many sources but income tax, property tax and sales tax are the big three. As people lose their jobs there is less income tax. As proper values fall and homes are foreclosed on, then the property tax falls and of course as people buy less the income from sales tax falls.

When our income falls like it has this year, we spend less. But governments can’t seem to do that. So rather than tighten their belts they just look for new sources of revenue.

Some brilliant bureaucrat in North Carolina discovered that several of their citizens were earning affiliate commissions from Amazon. So they decided to change the law so NC could collect sales tax on those affiliate commissions.

Here is the text of the email that Amazon sent

We regret to inform you that the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) appears ready to enact an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with North Carolina-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of North Carolina.

Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned.

But because the new law is drafted to go into effect once enacted – which could happen in the next two weeks – we will have to terminate the participation of all North Carolina residents in the Amazon Associates program on or before that same day. After the termination day, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates program from North Carolina residents.

The unfortunate consequences of this legislation on North Carolina residents like you were explained in detail to key senators and representatives in Raleigh, including the leadership of the Senate, House, and both chambers’ finance committees. Other states, including Maryland, Minnesota, and Tennessee, considered nearly identical schemes, but rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states’ residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates program, and we will apprise you of the General Assembly’s action on this matter.
Sincerely,

Amazon.com

Well, Amazon is of course fighting this but if they lose they have already told associates (affiliates) that they will have to stop paying affiliates in North Carolina. So the action by the legislature will not raise any money but will kill a viable income stream for their residents.  Since that income could be used to purchase products that would generate sales tax for the state, passing this law will actually hurt revenues.  But governments generally don’t care about unintended consequences.

If laws like this pass, it will not only affect Amazon. You can be sure that major affiliate companies like eBay, Wal-Mart and even affiliate management firms such as ClickBank, Commission Junction and Sharasale will also be affected.

Here are the details:

 Regardless of your start price, your first 5 Auction-style listings will have NO Insertion Fees when you list with eBay’s Sell Your Item form or Simple listing form.

The Final Value Fee for these 5 listings with $0.00 Insertion Fees will be 8.75% of the sales price or $20, whichever is lower. Any additional items sold during the same 30-day period will have the same Insertion Fees and Final Value Fees as they do today. Learn more.

Choose the option that works best for you, based on how you list:

• eBay’s Sell Your Item form or Simple listing form – If you’re currently using one of these forms, you can either take advantage of the 5 free Insertion Fees every 30 days, or opt out by listing your items via an eBay tool or third-party listing solution.
• eBay tool or third-party listing solution – If you’re currently using one of these tools, you can either take advantage of this new pricing structure by listing your first 5 Auction-style listings every 30 days through eBay’s Sell Your Item form or Simple listing form, or continue with your current practices at the current pricing.

 The 5 listings with $0.00 Insertion Fees are especially helpful if you don’t sell a high volume, but offer the kind of unique and hard-to-find inventory buyers expect to find on eBay. I am also using it to list expensive items with a high starting price.  For example, I usually use Vendio or InkFrog to launch my listings, but once each month, I go into the eBay sell your item form and list five of my firepit barbeque grills at $227 each. Not only do I save the listing fee, the final value fee is also lower than on a regular sale.

Lynn is an old friend and an experience eBay PowerSeller who regularly sells over $100,000 a year on eBay.  Drawing from tens of thousands of eBay sales, a decade of eBay experience, and the wisdom of a beloved grandmother, Lynn puts together a roster of stories that will teach, inspire, and entertain her readers! You will learn dozens of eBay tips and tricks from this highly fun and easy to read book.

Sound good? Well, it gets even better...

For the next 48 hours ONLY, purchase Lynn's new book "Home Run" and you will also receive more than $534 in downloadable resources from ten of the most successful, well-respected entrepreneurs in the eBay community. All free of charge - no gimmicks, no catches and no hidden fees.

Click here to purchase right now: http://budurl.com/ajrc   

This is a great book and every seller can learn from it. and the bonus items (including one from me) are easily worth far more than the cost of the book. 

Skip McGrath 

Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Skip_McGrath

Here is a look at the auction count chart from Medved –a service that tracks eBay listings.  As you can see the number of listings has been climbing steadily since the beginning of the year although the rate of growth slowed a bit in the past few weeks.  That may be due to the normal summer slowdown on eBay.  

We won’t know if these listings are translating to sales until eBay comes out with the sales numbers for the second quarter ending a couple of weeks from now on June 30th.  The results typically come out a few weeks later. 

eBay will effect the changes they announced in April next Monday.  If you haven't revised your listings by then you run the risk of your listings being cancelled and/or not found in search.

The two biggest changes are that all listings must have a shipping and handling time stated and your items must be in the correct category.  Here is a link to the April 14th announcement. Be sure and read the entire announcement to see if your listings will be affected.

The other big factor is the new category and item specifics policy.  eBay has made some very important changes that will affect thousands of sellers.  Here is a link to the page with the category changes.  Get this wrong and your auctions will be cancelled.

The other big change coming in June won't happen until June 30th. That is when the free shipping promotion will end. If you offer free shipping after that date, then you will no longer get free subtitle and if you are a PowerSeller then you will no longer receive the double fee discounts.

Auctiva’s complicated and pricey fee schedule announced a couple of weeks ago had upset users and was driving business to competitors InkFrog, Vendio and others.

Jeff Schlicht, CEO and founder of Auctiva, the largest eBay auction management service, started out his message to users with an apology: “I am very sorry and humbly apologize for any frustration and anxiety we caused you to experience about the future of your business over the past week and a half. I know that these recent events have greatly upset our community and I take full responsibility for that. I am asking you to give me a chance to make it right.”

Jeff then went on to announce the new pricing strategy. Auctiva will move to flat monthly pricing of $9.95/mo .to include:

*         1GB Image Hosting

*         A Faster, Easier-To-Use, One-page Lister

*         Bigger Supersized Images

*         Better-looking Templates

*         eBay's Most Popular Scrolling Gallery

*         Free Scheduling

*         24/7 Customer Support

*         plus all of our other time and money saving tools

In addition to their Standard flat-rate plan, they announced a special Starter flat rate plan for ultra-casual sellers: $2.95/mo., up to 15 listings, 500MB image hosting.

Auctiva also announced that their marketing tools like the scrolling gallery will remain free for now.

eBay announced a really neat program today called the Sellers Challenge.  New or existing eBay sellers can submit a business plan. The Sellers Challenge asks entrepreneurs to answer a simple question: “How would you use $25,000 to grow – or start – an eBay business?”  Four winners will each receive a $25,000 business grant, along with marketing advice and assistance from eBay.

Entrants are encouraged to submit a business plan and an accompanying video in one of four categories:

• Current or former members of the Unites States armed forces;

• Individuals or small businesses who have not sold on eBay;

• Part-time sellers who want to go full-time on eBay; and

• Full-time eBay sellers who want to grow their business further.

 Submissions will be evaluated by eBay and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship.  Working with eBay, the Kauffman Foundation has also made available a wealth of information and resources for entrepreneurs – including tips for success, guidance for starting and growing an online business and advice on business plan development – at the eBay Sellers Challenge Web site at http://sellerschallenge.ebay.com.  I thought this was pretty cool when I saw it.  I wished I had something like this around when I started my business.  The neat thing about this is even if you don’t win, you end up with a business plan.  I looked at the materials on the Seller Challenge site and the Kauffman Foundation and this is some pretty good stuff.

You can also get some help in writing your business plan from the 2009 edition of the Complete eBay Marketing System.

I have been selling my Complete eBay Marketing System for 6 years now and it remains my flagship training product, but in all honesty I am not the only expert on learning how to sell and make money on eBay.  In fact I have always been a big believer that you should learn from many sources.  Every day I read about techniques from successful sellers that I don't use or prefer --but they do often work.

Everyone's business model is different; what works for me may not necessarily work for everyone.  Even if my strategies and techniques work for you, you should also look at those by others.

For the past 6 years while I have been selling my eBay training books and courses, I have also been recommending the training material from the Internet Marketing Center to those who are looking to go beyond eBay to setting up and selling from your own website.  And I continue to do so. The Internet Marketing Center master course is still the best resource for learning internet marketing from A to Z.

But now the folks at the Internet Marketing Center have developed an excellent eBay training course as well. Its called eBay Secrets.  I just finished reviewing the entire course and the bonus materials and I think it is both a great basic training tool for new and small eBay sellers and has good information for existing sellers wanting to expand their business.

eBay Secrets is filled with the selling strategies that are working right this minute on eBay (strategies that even seasoned eBay veterans don't know about).

Here are just a few of the things you will learn:

• How to identify the hottest markets on eBay and guarantee auction success!
• Where to find the products that offer the greatest profit potential!
• How to write “bidder magnet” listings that explode your final selling price!
• What you can do to automate your business — so you have more time to grow it!
• Ways to drive swarms of traffic to your auctions with top-secret promotion strategies!
• Advanced techniques tested and proven to grow your business further!

... and much, MUCH more

And because eBay's rules and strategies continue to change over time, you  will be constantly updated about the LATEST rules, and shown how to exploit them to make even MORE profits, through regular FREE updates.

Click here to read about eBay Secrets

And if you want the best of both worlds...Click here to get my Complete eBay Marketing System too.  With these two tools you can't go wrong.

Skip McGrath

I have been working with the folks at netSpray in Austin Texas to help them introduce their new service to eBay and online sellers. netSpray is a new service that allows you to create widgets and place them on online classified and social media sites.

This is a really cool service. It is quick and easy to learn --about 10 minutes tops from signing up to starting to sell. NO listing fees and NO final value fees.

I have written two free eBooks that are available to anyone who tries the service:

• 7 Secrets to Selling Online
• Using Twitter and netSpray to Generate Online Profits

Here is the link to get your free copies: http://www.netspray.com/SkipMcGrath/sellingSecrets.html

If you are like most eBay sellers in this slow economy, you are looking for additional places to sell. netSpray is an affordable lead generation e-commerce site and marketplace where sellers are given tools and services to create, distribute and manage items for sale all across the Internet. netSpray ads can be placed in a variety of online locations including blogs, forums, and social media sites.

netSpray is very easy to learn and simple to use. Basically when you log into netSpray, you fill out a form that describes your product and upload a photo of it. netSpray does the rest. It creates an ad than you can simply paste into your blog, website,  classified sites, or a social media site such as MySpace or Facebook. Here is what a netSpray ad looks like:

When you create an ad, the netSpray widget gives you a line of html code that you just paste into your destination site and you get an ad that looks like the one above.  When someone clicks on the ad, they are taken you a large page with a full description.

netSpray is a fixed price venue but has a “make an offer” option for advanced sellers.

Click here to learn more about netSpray and to get your free report

The site sells subscriptions to its innovative Ad Management Panel (AMP). The AMP is your gateway to selling on a wide variety of Internet sites such as blogs, Craigslist, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook,  and even eBay –using their classified ad format. The AMP is the simple listing tool sellers use to list and manage your items for sale. Creating and launching a netSpray listing is easier and faster than launching an item on eBay.  There are no listing fees to launch an item on netSpray.

There are three ways to make money with netSpray:

• You can sell your own products (new, used or vintage) on dozens of websites, blogs and social media sites.

• You can make money (affiliate commissions) selling other people’s new and used products on your blog, website or social media site
• You can make money recommending and signing up other people for netSpray

When you sign up for netSpray, you also get an instant affiliate program so that thousands of people can become your affiliate and list your products on their sites. And, you can earn affiliate commissions for promoting netSpray –or for selling other people’s products on your sites.

The uniqueness of its affiliate program is that sellers set the commission they feel comfortable with for the items they list for sale. Unlike most affiliate programs, netSpray's affiliate program allows a commission to be made on used items.

Anyone can distribute netSpray ad widgets – distribution of the ad widget is available to both merchants and affiliates.  Think about it – distribution of your offers anywhere on the Internet, no listing fees, an ad management panel for selling in social media networks, and an affiliate network –all of this for one low subscription fee.

As netSpray spreads, sellers will find new and unique ways to use it. This really reminds me of the early days of eBay. I think this is a site where a lot of money will be made.  

Some of the more unique things about netSpray…

• On classified sites like Craigslist, netSpray's lead generation widgets provide the opportunity for immediate sales through PayPal, which offers secure online payment, essentially giving your audience a direct link to a verified shopping cart.
  
• Commissions are set by the merchant, not the site – this is huge!
  
• Subscription-based fees with no final value and no insertion fee means one price for however many ads you create.

If you are having trouble understanding how this works, think of it as a giant eBay store where your listings appear all over the Internet and dozens, hundreds or even thousands of other sellers are helping you sell your product.

netSpray provides a great opportunity for e-commerce sellers who are interested in complimenting their existing sales strategy.  You can supplement your online sales using the site with no worries about final value or insertion fees getting out of control.  Also, netSpray's seller feedback is also fair.  Within its ad management panel, users can participate in netSpray’s user forum which is closely followed by the netSpray staff...so you can be sure your voice will be heard.

While some people are concerned about eBay fees or the recession, others are making money by finding unique ways to generate additional income.

I have created a special bonus for my readers who sign up for netSpray’s Seller Advantage package today.  You will get my free report Seven Secrets to Selling Online just for looking and a free special bonus report for anyone who tries the service for one month. 

Click here to learn more about netSpray and to get your free report

You really will be amazed!

eBay’s decision to cut partner program benefits for auction management companies roils the market.

Last month eBay announced that third party service providers such as auction management companies Vendio, InkFrog, Channel Advisor, Auctiva and others would no longer be allowed to earn commissions through eBay’s Partner (affiliate) Program on sales they made through the eBay check out process.

The process is a little complex to understand, but let me try.  When an eBay seller uses a third-party auction management company, those services have a feature where buyers are exposed to other items selling on eBay as part of the check-out and payment process.  Those companies were members of eBay’s affiliate program called the eBay Partner Network (ePN) that would pay commissions on the sales made during that process.   This income represented a substantial segment of the revenue of these companies.

eBay reasoned (correctly I believe) that these buyers were already engaged with eBay since they bought something. The purpose of the ePN was to bring people off of eBay into eBay to buy. Affiliates who did that are rewarded with commissions. But if someone is already on eBay including those who arrived via another affiliate, should eBay pay commissions when the purpose is to bring new sellers in?

I have not been active in the ePN since they switched over from Commission Junction, but I always wondered: If I send a customer from my website to eBay and they bought something from a seller who uses a system like Auctiva, does the Auctiva cookie replace my affiliate cookie if they also buy something during the checkout process? I don’t really know the answer, but since most affiliate programs credit the most recent cookie, I suspect I would lose my position.

The reaction from the companies has been interesting.

Auctiva –I think the largest auction management company in terms of users, went from a free platform (that earned their income from ePN and selling insurance to sellers) to a fee system that will cost $29.95 month for their most popular service.

InkFrog –stunned the market when they announced today that they would hold their $9.95 per month fee for three years for current customers and anyone who signs up before December 31^st of this year.

Vendio - Vendio which normally charges $10/month plus commission fees, will be completely free for Auctiva users through the end of the year, and will stay at $10/month with no commission fees for the full year, 2010. The Vendio platform allows sellers unlimited listings on eBay and Amazon and also includes the company's Vendio Store offering, which is currently free for all users.

Other third-party providers will soon be making changes as well.

Skip McGrath

+++++++++++

Learn all about how to use auction management systems to make more money on eBay and reduce eBay fees with The Complete eBay Marketing System by Skip McGrath.  Complete printed training manual shows you how to start and run a profitable eBay business. Written by an eBay Power Seller who sells on eBay every day.