Source : http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

Momentum is growing against eBay’s coming changes to the fees it charges to sellers and the way it handles feedback, with a “strike” that started Monday against the San Jose online auction company.

“I expect this to be the largest boycott of eBay to date, and I think this year will be very rocky for eBay,” said Ina Steiner, editor of AuctionBytes.com, a publication for online merchants, and author of a book about selling on eBay.

Steiner said that eBay changes always prompt reactions, and she admits that striking against eBay has been “difficult” in the past, as nonstriking sellers see an opportunity when rivals stay away from the service.

Still, she said, “eBay is shifting more of the burden to sellers, and there’s no question in my mind that for a certain percentage of sellers, it will be untenable.”

In January, John Donahue, who becomes eBay’s president and chief executive officer in March, announced changes to the fees eBay charges. The cost to list items will be cut 25 to 50 percent, but the commission that eBay charges for completed sales, what it calls its “final value fee,” will increase.

Besides those fee changes, eBay also said it will hold some PayPal payments for up to 21 days on certain transactions and will prevent sellers from leaving negative feedback comments about buyers.

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Source : Selfseo.com

Do a quick search on Google, Yahoo, or your favorite auction resource site, and you’ll quickly discover there are several software programs targeted to vendors who want to promote hot selling products on eBay.

The infatuation with hot selling products exists because sellers believe if you target items that have a robust sales pattern, you’ll have a better chance at profiting on eBay. This is both true and false.

Yes… hot selling products can improve your bottom line. But unfortunately by the time the average eBay seller (a) realizes what the hot selling products are, (b) purchases stock to sell on eBay, and (c) actually puts the items up for sale, the demand is already being met by other eBay sellers who probably started the hot selling product trend some time ago.

Not only that, with thousands of people also having access to the same hot selling product lists, you’ll have to contend with other eBay vendors who have the exact same ideas that you do. So you’ll be up against the original sellers who are currently feeding the demand, AND doing the tango with newer sellers who have jumped on the same hot selling product bandwagon that you did.

Okay maybe this won’t happen to you.

But suppose it does.

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By : Nidhi Gupta

PayPal, the payments service arm of online auction leader eBay Inc, is set to release a convenient way for its customers to make payments on Web sites that don’t accept PayPal directly.

The new software utility, called the PayPal Secure Card, recognizes when a user lands on an e-commerce checkout page and automatically helps the user fill out the payment form in a secure way that also offers stepped-up fraud protections.

It answers an innovation by Google Inc, which a year ago introduced Google Checkout, which stores financial details to make shopping more convenient, analysts said.

Through a partnership with credit card issuer MasterCard Inc, Secure Card generates a unique MasterCard number each time a PayPal user arrives on an e-commerce sales checkout page that does not otherwise accept its payments.

“From a merchant’s perspective this looks like any other MasterCard transaction,” said Chris George, director of financial products for PayPal. “And it’s just another PayPal purchase to the customer.”

Secure Card has been tested by 3 million PayPal customers in the past year. The plug-in will be available to U.S. customers on Tuesday, with international customers to follow.

When a PayPal customer wants to pay for something on a site that doesn’t normally accept PayPal payments, users click a downloaded PayPal button on their browsers to generate a unique, single-instance Secure Card transaction number.

“Actual PayPal activity goes up,” George said. “It makes sense, because it just makes shopping easier and safer.”

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