ONLINE RESOURCE OF THE MONTH

Amazon.com Displays Optional Feedback Responses to Sellers
By Ina Steiner

Amazon.com announced it was making additional buyer
feedback information available to sellers in the Feedback
Manager tool in the Seller Account section. Amazon has
been asking buyers three optional questions as part of
the feedback collection process:

• Did your item arrive by (date)?
• Did your item arrive in the condition
as described by the seller?
• If you contacted this seller,
did you receive prompt and courteous service?

Sellers will now be able to see the answers to those
questions in three new columns in Feedback Manager
called Arrived on Time, Condition Described, and Courteous
Service. The buyer's answer to each question is indicated
in the corresponding column. A dash in the column indicates
the buyer did not answer that question.

Amazon.com said buyers would not be able to view
this information.

eBay Alternatives: Alibris, Atomic Mall, Etsy, OnlineAuction.com, Wigix

By Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com

Here is a roundup of news coming from online marketplaces
and eBay alternatives.


Alibris is publishing a new column by founder Richard Weatherford that promotes books that could be considered
affordable collectibles as opposed to "antiquarian books
sitting in a glass case." Alibris said sellers with
those types of books ("Whether its an autographed Janet
Evanovich or a modern first edition, like Stephenie
Meyers New Moon"), should expect to see an increase
in sales of this type of material.

The world's largest book fair. Buy and sell blue-ribbon
books at bake-sale prices.

Atomic Mall added two new store functions.

Coupon Codes allows merchants to create and store up to
three unique promo codes with attached discounts (either
a percentage or a fixed dollar amount) to give privately
to select buyers or to advertise publicly. Country
Discount helps sellers who ship items internationally
and wish to offer shipping cost adjustments to buyers
in certain countries.

Atomic Mall is a storefront setup wherein members can
list items in their Mall store in a fixed-price format
with or without multiple items within each listing.
Atomic Mall offers free membership, 100% free listings
with commission fees, and a free Storefront with
various membership upgrades for a fee.

Etsy.com posted a message from its Product Team to summarize
recent developments and to announce its priorities for
the second half of the year. The marketplace said its
top focus continues to be helping shoppers find and
discover unique items and making it easier for them
to check out, more information is found in
the announcement.

If you aren't familiar with Etsy.com, it is a
marketplace devoted to all things handmade,
everything from crocheted toys to custom made
corsets, as well as vintage items and craft supplies.
Etsy is the largest selling venue online for handmade
products with $12.9 million dollars worth of goods
sold in December 2008 and growing.
Etsy has kept its fees steady and low with constant
improvements, the latest being the addition of
Google Analytics for users to track their visitor stats.

OnlineAuction.com said sales are at an all-time high
and still climbing. The auction site said year-to-year
sales increased over 185% during Q1-2009 and increased
over 350% during Q2-2009, and reported that second-quarter
sales in 2009 exceeded sales for the full-year 2008.

Wigix launched Craigster to publish items to Craigslist.
Wigix spokesperson Steve Young said, "We believe in
doing whatever we can so that our sellers are able to
maximize their sales. Craigster is just another way for
us to do that. We already have tools for sellers to
publicize their items on Twitter and Facebook and now
with Craigster, they have a localized option."

eBay Alternatives: eBid, OnlineAuction & Overstock Auctions

By Edward Tomchin
EcommerceBytes.com

There is a tremendous hunger for information
about online auction sites beyond the industry
giant eBay. Sellers want to know which is the
best venue in terms of being easy to use,
inexpensive, and most importantly, drive
shoppers to listings. But there is no one
clear winner that is best for all sellers or
categories of merchandise. What follows
is an evaluation of three auction sites written
from the perspective of an online seller.

eBID.net
eBid currently has around 2.0 million active
auctions across 9,080 categories in 18 different
nations including the U.S. and accepts PayPal,
pppay.com and Google Checkout for payment.

eBid's pages tend to be a bit cluttered and it
can be confusing and time-consuming finding a
feature, link or information until you're more
familiar with the site.

eBid offers a number of different accounts.
Just for signing up you get a Lifetime Buyer
Account where you can place bids, purchase
Buy Now items and list items you want. The
cheapest seller account is a free Single
Auction Seller Account that allows you to
buy and list one auction at a time with no
listing fees and allows you access to
PPPay.com for checkout for your buyers.
This account requires a credit card
authorization verification.

Standard Auctions have no listing fee, a
3% final value fee and severe feature
restrictions. Platinum Auctions have a
5-cent listing fee and 3% Final Value
fee but includes all the features eBid
offers including BuyNow Price, Fixed
Price, Run Until Sold, Video, Auto Extend,
Custom Start Date, Custom End Date,
Gallery Picture in Search Results,
Cross Promotions and Integrated Checkouts.
Many of these features can also be purchased
for a small fee in other types of auctions.

For auction descriptions, eBid offers a
simple and an advanced WYSIWYG editor.
HTML is allowed as well as hosting your
own photos.

Feedback can be left, replied to and
edited by both parties.

OnlineAuction.com (OLA)
OLA offers items for sale across a
plethora of categories.

OLA is not the easiest site to get around.
For instance, I could find nothing on
searching closed auctions until I queried
customer support twice. The first time I
got no response, and the second time
I got an immediate response and replies.

The closed item link was neatly tucked
in the left hand column as "What's Sold."

Unfortunately the sold listings do not
include the unsold auctions, so there is
no way to determine a sell-through rate
for them. Instead, I tried to determine
how much bidding activity there was on
active listings, keeping in mind it was
not an apples-to-apples comparison to STR.

Verified Sellers are charged $8 a month
and are entitled to bid without limitations,
communicate between Buyers & Sellers via a
private O-Mail account, use Chat Rooms,
and view/post feedback. Verified Sellers
are also allowed to list and sell unlimited
amount of items with no listing or final
value fees. Verified Sellers are security
checked through a monthly credit card
validation process.

OLA also offers a Charter Membership for
$96/year or a Founding Membership for $196
for the First Year and $96 per
year thereafter.

Off-site hosting of photos is possible but
you cannot use your own HTML code. You must
use OLA's rather bland auction format.

Overstock Auctions
The upside of Overstock Auctions is its
simplicity and ease-of-use for both buyers
and sellers.

Overstock Auctions offers more than 100
major categories and features such as
Subtitles, Make It Mine (similar to a
Buy It Now), and 10-day auctions are free.

Insertion fees range from 10 cents (for
opening prices of 99 cents or less) to
$3.15 (for opening prices of $500 and
above). Closing Fees are broken down
according to the selling price of a
successful auction. Items selling for
up to $25.00 have a 3% closing fee.
Items selling from $25.01 to $1,000 charge
3% of the initial $25.00 ($0.75), plus
2% of the remaining closing price balance
up to $1,000.00.

HTML descriptions are allowed in the auction
descriptions but there is a maximum limit
of 100,000 characters which I think works
to save buyers from page after page of some
overly cautious seller's endless disclaimers.
Only basic HTML is allowed.

Uploading photos is easy and Overstock
supports jpg, gif, png and bmp formats
up to a maximum of 10 Mb in size for
each photo which seems like a waste
of bandwidth.

Overstock.com Auctions' payment options
include Google Checkout, PayPal, credit
cards, personal checks, C.O.D. money
order or cashier's checks. Overstock
also allows buyers to pay via credit
card through O-Auctions Checkout,
designed to make closing and collecting
on an auction very simple and convenient
for both sellers and buyers.

The downside of Overstock Auctions is
that you are competing with Overstock.com,
which lists its own merchandise.

Overstock also offers one-day auctions
for sellers with hot items - the popular
kind not the stolen kind - and there are
a small number of forums for members to
discuss issues and receive updates
from Overstock.

OnlineAuction.com: Lower Fees, Fewer Bids

By Jan Perry

A lot of long-time loyal cyber-sellers began
looking for an auction alternative following the
recent controversial fee and policy changes
imposed by the perennial auction mega-site - eBay.
Although it has had competition online for several
years, as of yet, no one site has stepped up to
truly give it a run for its customer base. But the
folks at OnlineAuction.com (or OLA as they call it)
are hoping to do just that.

The biggest advantage OLA offers sellers is a flat
membership fee with no listing or re-listing fees
and no final value fees (that's the percentage of
the highest bid that goes as a commission to the
auction site). Plus OLA offers some important
freedoms that eBay does not allow. Sellers are
welcome to include personal website information
in their listings and communicate directly with
OLA members about the items up for sale. Also,
multiples (say 20 identical hammers intended for
20 separate sales) are listed on one page rather
than the eBay system, which forces sellers to
create 20 individual listings (and pay 20
individual fees).

You do pay for listing upgrades like extra photos
(over four) or prominent placement on the listing
page. But those fees are the same or lower than
most auction sites.

There is another important difference. The set
closing time for items on eBay allows an individual
to grab an item at the last second. (It's called
sniping). On OLA, if multiple buyers are still
actively bidding when an auction reaches its
official closing time, that time is extended
so that, just like at a traditional auction,
bidding continues until only one bidder is left.

Creating a listing is straightforward and will
be extremely easy for anyone that has sold on
other auction sites. (There's a good tutorial
and a Chat Room specifically for anyone that's
new and wants some help.) But sellers that are
used to fancy backgrounds and themed page designs
may be disappointed with the site's "no frills"
appearance. And those that like to have the
auction site step in when there's a problem with
a buyer or seller or item might not be comfortable
with OLA's stance on the subject. All they do is
bring buyer and seller together.
They do not mediate disputes. (Their feedback
system does allow for changes of heart and late
follow-ups, however.)

Joining OLA is a two-minute process and is free
for basic buyers (who then have a maximum bid
total per-day limit of $1,000) or $4 monthly for
verified buyer members. (They have unlimited
bidding/buying privileges.)

Sellers have three options. A "Verified Seller"
($8 monthly) is entitled to bid without
limitations, communicate between buyers and
sellers via a private O-Mail account, use chat
rooms, and view/post feedback. They may list and
sell as many items as they choose with no listing
fees or final value fees using the simple form on
the site or the free downloadable bulk listing
tool, O-Lister.

A "Charter Member" ($96 annually) is entitled to
the same benefits but they also receive $100 worth
of auction enhancements (additional photos,
featured status for selected auctions, activation
of "End-It-Early" feature) at no cost.

Finally, there are "Founding Members" ($196 the
first year and $96 guaranteed each year thereafter
for life). Founding Members receive the same
benefits as Charter Members although the
enhancements package bumps to $200. A special icon
identifies them, and their links are accessible
from the site's home page.
And they can set up a virtual store (called "My
OLA House,") that is linked to their auctions.
The store is free for the first 12 months.

The sight is campaigning heavily for the latter.
In fact, they're actively looking for a million
sellers to take advantage of the "no fee increase"
promise and benefits package and join the Founding
Member movement. (So far they've signed up
approximately 500.)

So it all sounds great.

The tough part for the OnlineAuction crew is
going to be delivering enough buying traffic to
tempt established eBay sellers away from the
security of the auction giant. While I found tons
of items listed, it's much harder finding
listings with bids. As one PowerSeller put it,
"It's all about name recognition. There's eBay
and then there are all of the nameless others.
Everyone knows what eBay is. Very few people
could even name another auction site."

That may be true today. But with discontent among
eBay members, some well-timed national exposure
and an ever-growing groundswell of word-of-mouth
support, OLA just may have what it takes to
overcome anonymity and play David to
eBay's Goliath.

Link to Fee Information:
onlineauction.com