Last year, Tamebay put together a guide that brought together all the various tools and services out there that will help any ecommerce SME streamline and grow their enterprise. This year, we’ve drawn together even more invaluable tools and services that will help anyone who wants to make more from online sales.

Even we’re surprised by how much the sector has grown in a year: the 2012 guide is bursting with bright ideas and brilliant tools and services. Literally hundreds of services are out there to help make your life easier and your business more lucrative. They’re all in the guide.

Thank you to every Tamebay reader who made suggestions on what should go in the guide (too many to note here!) and thank you to our advertisers. Their support means we can make this guide available free of charge to everyone.

The high-res PDF version is available now. That’s ideal for computer reading and use. You can also easily use it on your Kindle or e-reader. Print versions and other formats will be available shortly. Let us know what you need.

We know you won’t be shy about sending us feedback. So do let is know what we need to do to make the 2013 guide even better. As always, we’re all ears.

Of course no such article would be complete today without advice on how to protect your Detailed Seller Ratings and Mark covers this as well along with how to give gold star service and handle eBay communications.

Mark has done his homework with quotes from Angus McCarey, eBay’s Retail Director, Patrick Munden, eBay Head of Communications and he’s even squeezed in a quote from TameBay.

There’s advice for everyone trading on eBay whether it be how to rack up your customer service a notch, how to get to grips with eBay search, or just how to lower your eBay fees then the article is worth perusing.

If you’re near a reputable newsagent or WHSmith then a copy will set you back a mere £5.99, but as an added bonus you’ll find a £50.00 Google adwords voucher inside (valid to 14/2/12 dropping to £35.00 until 31/3/12). That’ll pay for the magazine and more, but to be honest if you run an eBay business (or especially if you are thinking of setting up an eBay business) then this is a must read article.

You can also buy the digital version of the .net magazine with the eBay article direct from the .net website, or directly from Apple for the iPad or iPhone.

When you sign up to use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) Amazon takes care of picking, packing and delivering your products sold on Amazon’s European sites to customers throughout the EU from just one seller account. With FBA, your inventory and orders are processed leveraging one of the most advanced fulfilment networks in the world, allowing you to focus on selling, not shipping.

With Multi-Channel Fulfilment, FBA sellers can choose to use their inventory in Amazon’s fulfilment centres to fulfil part or all of their orders originating from their own website, other third party platforms (Yes that includes eBay!), catalogue or even in-store sales. With FBA Export for Multi-channel, you can now offer your customers who order from outside the UK a smooth and reliable delivery almost anywhere in Europe using Amazon’s highly-efficient and extensive supply network. Once you submit a multi-channel shipment request, you will see the estimated delivery date which can then be shared with the customer.

Amazon FBA sellers now have the option and flexibility to fulfil domestic Amazon and non-Amazon orders as well as EU Amazon and non-Amazon orders from one single, local inventory pool.

There has never been a better time to let Amazon help you expand internationally and grow further in 2012. Join the many FBA merchants already benefitting from increased sales, lower costs, and time savings.

Also FBA Media sellers can now adjust their export settings when using FBA to have their products sold on Amazon.co.uk exported to customers across the whole world. This brings FBA on a par with Amazon’s own online retail sales. There are currently no extra charges for the seller – eventual delivery costs are borne by the buyer.

Previously FBA sellers were limited to export their products sold on Amazon’s European platforms to the 27 EU member states. With this feature, Amazon gives sellers the option to export their Media products worldwide. Sellers can activate this additional region on their FBA Export settings page in their seller account. As part of the activation, Amazon will collect their signature which will be printed on the customs label on all shipments exported to non-EU member states.

If you don’t already use FBA then it’s well worth trialling the services with a few product lines. Once you’re familiar with FBA you can either expand if it suits your operations or simple use FBA for selected products or at busy times of year to ease the burdon on your own warehouse operations. Why take on extra temporary staff and have to train them or rent additional warehouse space when you can use Amazon FBA to handle picking, packing and shipping your orders for you?

That’s all pretty normal though, eBay always under promises and over delivers on earnings, or has done for as far as I can remember so it’s business as usual.

What was more interesting was some of the titbits later in the call. One question concerned eBay and specifically PayPal management. John Donahoe proudly pointed out that since he took over from Meg Whitman he’s scythed though top level management and replaced 75% of the top 100 eBay executives. Whilst on the face of it it’s good to weed out the dead wood, it does go some way to explaining why eBay is changing so much and why many of the long term sellers are complaining.

eBay has changed and will continue to change and the new management haven’t experienced the old eBay from where it grew as an online auction business. They are all about “Buy it New, Buy it now!” which is the direction in which John Donahoe is steering eBay today.

The next interesting point is what’s happening at GSI, the ecommerce platform that eBay purchased in March 2011. GSI have some of the worlds biggest brands in retail on their client list and eBay aim to bring these brands onto eBay.

13 GSI merchants are now selling on eBay, and eBay are gunning hard to bring more GSI retailers onto the site. By definition GSI merchants are all huge retailers (otherwise they couldn’t afford the solution) and so expect to see ever increasing numbers of retail giants competing with you on eBay.

eBay had changed over the ten or so years I’ve been using the site and it will continue to evolve, but it’s changed more in the last five years than it did in the previous 10 years. John Donahoe talks about his so called “inflection” point that ecommerce has reached where consumers are changing the way they buy – mobile, convergence of online and offline commerce and a seamless multichannel world. The question you should be asking yourself is how will you compete in the ecommerce world of 2012 as it’ll be very different to 2011.

Up until now StubHub have had tickets for anything up to 30,000 events available on the site. Zvents adds up to 600,000 events and over 3,000,000 during the course of the year increasing the choice of tickets 100 fold.

There aren’t many acquisitions that result in a 100 fold increase in business, whats more interesting is that unlike StubHub, Zvents also has pretty good coverage in the UK…

…which brings me back to StubHub, eBay doesn’t appear to have mentioned anywhere that they’ve launched a new StubHub country site. The big question of course is how will this affect ticket sales on eBay UK? On eBay.com StubHub is integrated into a partially catalogued ticket category experience. In the UK currently the ticket category isn’t catalogued, but it would be reasonable to expect this to change in the near future.

eBay say that for over a decade StubHub has helped fans in the US get to the events they love and sell their tickets when they can’t go. They’re just getting started in the UK but Zvents should ensure that the site is a success.

If you’re thinking of taking in a show over the Christmas break then check out StubHub, you might get lucky and snag some bargain tickets. If you’re a tickets seller let us know how you think StubHub and Zvents will affect the UK market.

The big advantage of PayPal Access is that shoppers don’t have to key in shared information such as their real name, shipping address and email address every time they make a purchase from a new website. They can authorise PayPal to share this data on their behalf. “Smart” profiles present a more stream-lined experience for customers and enable merchants to provide personalized shopping experiences for their visitors. This inspires customer loyalty, which leads to increased sales.

PayPal Access will be installed on Magento Go stores as an extension which means that merchants can enable it in just a few clicks and of course it will then mean that PayPal take a cut of every transaction. That brings me to the point of eBay’s strategy in making X.Commerce an open developer platform… In doing so eBay could win a huge slice of revenue in the form of PayPal fees. Of course that won’t happen all of the time – there’s nothing to stop developers integrating other payment methods.

X.Commerce is intended to join the dots in on-line and off-line commerce and enable not only all of eBay’s properties to be connected but also every developer’s non-eBay property as well. This can include EPOS systems enabling off-line inventory to be easily displayed on-line on websites and marketplaces (such as, but not limited to eBay).

Having a common X.Commerce interface allows credentials to be shared and used across services from multiple developers and will in the future give integrators the ability to more easily build custom solutions to fit their clients needs and merchants the ability to market their products more effectively.

In the first article I wrote about X.Commerce I said that there was nothing much to see yet that’s of interest to merchants. That’s still true but every website owner, eBay seller and off-line retailer out there should be keeping a close eye on developments and talking to their software suppliers and developers to ensure that when solutions are ready that they are amongst the first to take full advantage of the new technology coming down the line.

The Wall Street Journal directly compares a possible Google Marketplace with Amazon Prime (which costs $79 in the US to access free next day delivery). The WSJ says that the Google Marketplace would enable major retailers and shippers to create a service that lets consumers shop for goods on the Web and receive orders within a day for a low fee.

Scot Wingo points out that Google have the four main constituents needed for a marketplace – Buyers, Sellers, Catalog (Google Product Search) and a Payment system. If they do go ahead the WSJ suggests it would begin with a trial in the San Francisco Bay area in conjunction with retailers such as Macy’s, Gap and OfficeMax.

The Google Marketplace would join the dots between Google Shopping, Retailers Inventory and available shipping options to determine if the product could be delivered next day. This suggests technology similar to eBay’s Milo which brings local retailers inventory availability onto the web. However Scot Wingo also points out that retailers aren’t set up to accept orders over the web (a technology issue) and that also local retailers “typically have a) terrible inventory systems and b) little to no outbound shipping capabilities”.

It’s very doubtful that in the immediate future a Google Marketplace would embrace small retailers or be available outside of the US. However if trials are successful then undoubtedly it would be rolled out in more countries.

The big question has to be whether smaller retailers would ever be included or if it would be limited to larger retailers with stock held in multiple locations across the US. Having multiple locations is a very different requirement in the US to the UK – in the UK pretty much anything can be shipped anywhere in the country within 24 hours so long as it’s in stock. In the US shipping coast to coast within 24 hours across six time zones isn’t quite as simple.

However this pans out it’s going to send an electric shock through Amazon and eBay management. A Google marketplace is possibly the biggest threat to the incumbent marketplaces, although the threat may be tempered if the offer is limited to large retailers with multiple locations.

If smaller retailers can cut a slice of the action I’d predict that they’ll leave the incumbent marketplaces in droves. I’d recommend against this though, regardless how much business you gain from Goodle why would you cut off the income from existing marketplaces? If you do get the opportunity to add Google as a marketplace look at it as an addition, not a replacement for eBay and Amazon.

We first reported this glitch back on the 12th November and on the 16th all indications showed that the problem had been rectified. Now once again there’s a high probability that although they’re looking for your product, desperate to spend their money and buy from you in the run up to Christmas, buyers just won’t see the item that you’re selling. If buyers do happen to select the Time Ending Soonest search view your items will magically reappear, chances are that they won’t and in Best Match they’ll just think eBay’s selection and availability is rubbish.

The image sent in by TameBay reader Jon shows a search for an A3 Epson Printer with 66 search results found, but eBay are only showing us 5 results comprising just 7 items. That means that 89% of matching search result items are hidden from buyers.

I’m a bit lost for words on what to say, so I’ll leave you to express your thoughts in commments.

Following last year’s mega sell out Waitrose ordered 75,000 this year – three times what they ordered last year, but early indications are that they’re going to be sold out soon. There’s little chance of Waitrose getting many more as it takes seven weeks to produce the candied orange which goes in the centre.

If you’re a Heston fan then this year there are also Heston Blumenthal Puff Pastry Mince Pies with Pine Sugar dusting on offer. At £3.29 for six these are also fetching inflated prices on eBay.

However our friends at Terapeak have come up with an opportunity for UK sellers. Fijit Friends are selling like mad on eBay and are starting to sell for prices higher than the retail price. Toysrus in the US are pretty much sold out, but Toysrus in the UK still have a few in stock although they’re limiting online sales to four items per order.

Terapeak has the sell-thru at 49.75% with 300+ sold in the past 30 days. This is trending quickly with most of the sales in the past week so it’s rapidly becoming a really hot product.

So if you’ve got some Fijit Friends in stock there are a couple of things you should be considering:

1. Don’t let them got for low prices even on eBay UK, Fijit Friends are getting hot.
2. Consider putting some of your inventory on 99p no reserve auctions – there’s a reasonable chance they’ll fetch higher and higher prices towards Christmas
3. Seriously consider adding in postage to the US for Fijit Friends. If stocks totally dry up then the prices parents will start paying will go through the roof
4. Finally… if you’re a parent buy them now if they’re on your child’s wish list!

If you do think you’ve found a killer product that you can make some money out of then don’t forget you can use Terapeak to check exactly what the opportunities on eBay are.

Happy selling, and if you’ve got any more tips for hot selling products let us know. (Also if you have any idea what the attraction of Fijit Friends is please feel free to enlighten me!)

Royal Mail say on their website: “We are still experiencing technical difficulties with our SmartStamp product and the service is not available. We are sorry if you are experiencing difficulties. If you have any urgent mailings for today please make alternative arrangements to visit your local Post Office. We are working hard to fix these problems and will email customers as soon as the service becomes available.”

Problems first emerged yesterday when PayPal admitted on Twitter that there were problems with SmartStamp. Comments on Tamebay have shown huge seller frustration. Many that rely on the service have been unable to despatch their weekend sales and worry about buyer retaliation via Feedback and DSRs (Detailed seller Ratings). At the time of writing eBay has not made an announcement to buyers and sellers informing them of the problem.

Sellers are still having problems today, although some say they have had some success. It is not currently known when this SmartStamp issue will be fully resolved.

All we at Tamebay can advise is that sellers unable to despatch sales make a trip to the Post Office, get hold of some stamps, or find an alternative carrier.

It is particularly annoying that this error has occured during what is one of the busiest weeks of the eBay year and sellers will typically be making more despatches and need everything to work like clockwork.

We’ll keep you updated with any new information we receive.

eBay and Ecommerce Tools & Services Guide 2012

The 2011 edition was a phenomenal success. More than 5000 copies were downloaded from TameBay (such was the demand, the site went down for a while: but we’ve fixed that now!) and several hundred print copies were circulated. Our aim in 2012 is to build on the 2011 guide and compile something bigger, better and more comprehensive that’s ready for launch in January 2012.

If you want to reach small and medium sized online businesses and other ecommerce professionals, then the eBay & Ecommerce Tools and Services Guide from TameBay is a unique opportunity to talk about your products and services to a highly targeted audience.

You’ll be in great company. Last year we counted respected brands like Alibaba, Channel Advisor, Terapeak and Tradebox amongst the contributors and this year we hope you’ll join them and dozens others.

How to make certain your business is in the 2012 guide

We’re aware that there were many new tools and services released in the last year and we want to make sure that your business is highlighted in the 2012 guide. We also know that many developers recently attended the X.Commerce Innovate Developer Conference and are in the process of building the next generation of ecommerce applications; if that’s you we’d love to include your new applications in the 2012 guide as well.

If you would like your business to be featured in the 2012 guide we need to know by the 19th December 2011. To make sure that you’re featured in the 2012 guide and for content format requirements send an email to chris@tamebay.com.

New on eBay are wish list links on all listings alongside the bid/buy button making it a more visible section of the site. A single click will allow you to add a new item to your wish list. Once the item is added all you then need to do is to decide how to share the list with your friends, family and anyone that might be kind enough to splash some cash from their PayPal account and make a purchase for you!

Once you’ve created your wishlist on eBay sharing via Facebook is then easy in just two clicks and from then on your wish list items will be posted onto you Facebook account, if you want to share via email then you can add up to 20 email addresses to have your list sent out to.

What surprises me though is that eBay haven’t added the ability for a friend to buy on your behalf. Sure they can buy the item but there’s no way currently for them to automatically ship to your address, mark the item as purchased on your wish list so that no one else buys it for you, and automatically notify you that the item is on it’s way. If you go creating a wedding wish list be prepared for all your friends to buy you the same tin opener!

It’s not perfect, but for a first stab at wish lits it’s not bad. The list sharing is ok, but not brilliant – if you add new items to your wish list or change the theme you’ll need to repost your list to Facebook or resend manually via email to let your friends now your list is updated. However it’s a start and if gets a few more sales over the Christmas holiday period that’s ok by me!

Initially I thought the particular product I was searching for was appearing correctly in the list view of search results. It’s on a catalogue product card and I’m currently the only seller listing against that catalogue entry so all looked well.

However when I changed to show search results in Gallery View the I spotted the same listing on the same Catalogue Product Card but this time eBay had changed the Item Condition from “Used” to “New”. Instead of now being a great deal this now looks like an unbelievable deal for buyers!

Thankfully the glitch is only appearing on eBay catalogue items so hopefully most buyers will spot that the items for sale are used and now new. The concern is of course if buyers are being told that items are new at worst they’ll not spot that they’re used until the product arrives and at best will simply get fed up with shopping on eBay and go elsewhere.

Just for avoidance of any doubt the computer flat screen monitors I have on that listing are in cracking condition but are most certainly used.

The news has been full of horror stories suggesting that in no time at all Royal Mail will be charging as much as £1 for a 1st class stamp, but that’s unlikely to happen in the near future. The price of a 2nd class letter stamp (currently 36p) will still be capped by the regulators and too high a differential between 1st and 2nd class would simply result in customers abandoning 1st class post.

What the relaxation will do is to remove some of the restrictions which don’t allow Royal Mail to effectively compete with their competitors, whilst retaining the Universal Delivery Service which ensures they deliver to every household in the country six days a week.

The price proposed for deregulation are:

• First Class deliveries – letters, large letters (A4 in size and up to 750g in weight) and parcels
• Second Class deliveries – for large letters and parcels up to 1Kg in weight
• standard parcels
• business mail – metered or franked mail and pre-printed envelopes
• bulk mail – mainly large businesses sending a large volume of post in a single mailing for example, bank statements

Royal Mail will still be required to provide access to their competitors, meaning that the likes of TNT Post and UK Mail will still be able to get your credit card bills delivered. Royal Mail would have the freedom to set the wholesale price to their competitors for access to its network but would be subject to rules regarding the allowed margin between the wholesale and retail prices so they won’t be able to price them out of the market.

Royal Mail’s chief executive Moya Greene has insisted that maintaining the universal services and not having freedom to set prices would mean the company couldn’t survive. The latest proposals which are now subject to 11 weeks consultation should go some way towards addressing her concerns.

What is likely to concern online retailers is how much the cost of sending packages could rise. The good news however is that Royal Mail now have so many competitors in the packet delivery space that that alone should ensure Royal Mail have to remain competitive if they want to keep your business.

It’s worth remembering that Royal Mail have to provide a more comprehensive Universal Service than anywhere else in Europe. With that in mind if you want to make your voice heard you can submit your response to the public Universal Postal Service consulation on Ofcom’s website up until the 5th January 2012.

The most striking feature of catalogued items is that auctions are not being sorted by “Time Ending Soonest”, even if that’s what you’d normally expect. In many categories such as Televisions, or Computer Monitors half of the first page of search results are Catalogued listings. I’ve just been re-checking live listings and currently I’ve found a catalogued auction with just 24 minutes left to run on page 7 of search results. In the past all auctions about to end would have risen to the top of page 1 of search results!

Click to see more search results

So what appears to be happening here is that your fixed price listings are no longer sorted by Best Match and your auctions are no longer sorted by Time Ending Soonest. Your listings are sorted according to the eBay catalogue entry sort order.

Previously if you had a fixed price listing attracting a large number of sales then in eBay’s eyes it would have a high “popularity” sales score and would appear at the top of Best Match search results. Now it appears that your high performing listing may be being dragged down in search results by other sellers under performing listings. It’s the order that the catalogue products are presented, not how well your individual listing sells that counts. Worse still your auctions about to end are also being dragged down in search results and may never even reach page 1.

In some Tech and Electronics categories this might not matter – for instance if you’re searching for a White, 64GB, Wifi and 3G iPad 2, then (apart from eBay insisting on showing you Black ones) there are only a couple of options to choose from (SIM free, Vodafone etc). This means your listing will be found by interested buyers.

In other Tech and Electronics categories it’s much more disturbing for sellers. A buyer looking for a new LED TV or a Flat Screen Computer Monitor is probably not being as specific as in the case of an iPad. They may not mind which brand or model TV they purchase, but be more interested in particular features. In this case catalogue’d listings which hide bargains about to end on the 7th page of search results aren’t a great solution. Not displaying the most popular listings at the top of search results but instead amalgamating popular listings with overpriced under performing listings into a single catalogue entry dumped way down in search results isn’t a great buying and selling experience.

Currently there is no information apart from empirical data as to how search is sorted. If you can figure out what the sort criteria is for Catalogue Listings we’d love to hear from you. If you can’t figure out how they’re being ordered just bear in mind that the auctions you’re paying for may never make the first page of search results so you’re not likely to get great sale prices.

The one thing we can tell you that eBay haven’t, is that your auctions in catalogue categories are not being sorted by Time Ending Soonest regardless of what you thought your insertion fees were paying for.

This is leading to a raft of complaints from buyers and sellers alike. Both want to be able to verify the product matches the images. If you have a number of similar used items you want to be able to check the pictures to check exactly which product to despatch. If you’re the buyer when the item arrives again you want to be able to check it to make sure you’ve got the item you paid for.

Terapeak first highlighted the issue of missing pictures on ended items, explaining to their users that “Terapeak does not control this content”, and that it’s a change that eBay have made.

eBay have in past years placed growing importance on images, and increased the attractiveness of using eBay’s gallery images by including them all (not just the first image) in eBay search. In clothes, shoes and accessories you can display up to 12 gallery pictures for free, in other categories you have to pay for them and then pay again for Gallery Plus to display them in search results.

Removing images once an item sold makes eBay Gallery pictures an unattractive option and will drive sellers back towards self hosted pictures embedded in the item descriptions.

Both sellers and buyers want to be able to view images after a listing has ended. eBay need to find a solution for this and fast, in the mean time for any ended items on eBay.com that are missing their images you can view the same listing on eBay.co.uk and the images will be shown as demonstrated in the image on the above.

Google recently introduced rules for merchants to include shipping and tax information in their product feeds to Google Shopping and enforcement was eventually due to start on the 1st of September.

However it appears that not only are some sellers still not including this information, but others are offering “No tax and free shipping” on their Google product feed but when you go to make a purchase these charges are added on the merchants websites.

Andrew on the CPC blog has highlighted the issue along with screen shots, but if you follow this link to Google you can see for yourself some of the merchants who offer free shipping in Google but then add it on their websites when you go to purchase.

Andrew has highlighted three main problems with the lack of an even playing field on Google:

1. Shoppers get a bad shopping experience. Though traffic, sales, revenue, and conversions went up, it’s still safe to say that there’s a portion of those customer that were displeased to find a shipping charge when going to checkout.
2. Merchant traffic decreases as a whole. Shoppers who find that Google Product Search consistently sources inaccurate product information will find more accurate sources to shop from.
3. Merchants that abide by Google’s requirements lose out on traffic, revenue, transactions, and even higher conversion rates.

This isn’t the only example of poor policing on behalf of Google. Many a time I’ve search Google shopping for a product just to find that the best priced deal is from retailers who are out of stock of the product. Offering the best price when you’re out of stock in the hope that a consumer might purchase an alternative from your website is underhand at best, but in reality it simply eats away at the trust that Google has built up over the years.

For Google to remain at the forefront of search they need to start policing their merchant feeds and enforce their requirements equally for all merchants. Currently those that comply fully are losing out on sales as they appear more expensive than those who have failed to enter shipping and tax information, or worse have quoted free shipping or a price which the product simply can’t be purchased at.

Allowing a situation where merchants who quote free shipping on Google but don’t provide it simply can’t be allowed to continue. Google, it’s time to enforce a level playing field for all.

Doug’s new role will be threefold – including Enterprise Partner Engagement, Senior Government Relations and Leadership Development. He will be working with the senior management of top retailers brokering deals for eBay’s three platforms – the eBay marketplace, GSI who eBay acquired early this year and already have some of the biggest brands in retail on their client list, and of course PayPal.

Government relations is something Doug is very keen to be involved in as he has a great interest in influencing policy. This is an important role and one which Doug believes he can really make a difference in. Whilst to me Governments both national and EU, are alien and impenetrable, this is an area Doug will enjoy and it’s one that affects every online (and offline) seller.

The third area Doug will be involved in is leadership development. Doug has already shown his skill at this in preparing Clare Gilmartin to take over when he moved from eBay UK MD to his European role. Devin Wenig who is just 6 days into his new role as President global eBay Marketplaces, and is on his 2nd day in the EU will be spoilt for choice to choose a replacement for Doug from within the eBay and PayPal management. Whilst it’s expected that Doug’s successor will be named in Q4 2011 (and in the meantime Doug will remain in his current role to assist with the transition), it’s not expected to take too long for an appointment to be announced.

I’ve known Doug for many years since I met him at the first ever eBay UK University in London. Whilst there’s often been many months, or even years, between contacts, Doug is one of the nicest and most gracious men I’ve ever had the privilege to know. Without a doubt he’s had a huge influence on my eBay career and with TameBay, maybe most of the time not directly, but it’s through his work in leading eBay that opportunities have been made available to myself and everyone else that trades on the site today.

Doug told me that he’s very grateful and pleased that eBay are enabling him to develop his career in the ways that he wanted to, in areas that are not only of interest to him but which also expand some of the most strategic and exciting parts of his existing role. He also said that he has every confidence in the team that he’s built to carry on the work of running eBay on a day to day basis for the future. Knowing Doug I can believe that, from the day he became Senior Vice President and General Manager of eBay Marketplaces Europe he would have been preparing his team to take over just as he did with eBay UK when he was MD there.

We wish Doug all the best for the future and my personal very good wishes and thanks for all his work over the last decade.

Many people have asked whether we will be having a get together to remember Sue, and bowing to popular demand we couldn’t really resist the opportunity to gather folks together for Sue’s Symposium.*

We envisage a convivial gathering, with drinks and nibbles, in a pub. Nothing fancy or sad. We’re asking anyone who worked with Sue, knew or appreciated Sue’s many endeavours to come and raise a glass.

Time: Friday October 7th at 7pm

Place: All Bar One, 108 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1HD

photo credit: GViciano

Also, for those interested, some keen folk are going to have a tramp around the British Museum. Sue loved the British Museum and in particular loved the Anglo-Saxon galleries. That’s what she studied at Uni too. We’ll gather on the steps of the British Museum at 5:30pm. The British Museum is free.

Please let us know in comments below if you’re going to attend and we’ll email everyone a mobile phone number so that you can make contact with us on the day.

* A symposium was an Ancient Greek “drinking party”. Unlike back then, women are free to attend. And we won’t have slave boys playing the flute.

The acquisition represents a significant step in Rakuten’s continued European and Global expansion and marks the company’s third acquisition in Europe, joining French e-commerce pioneer PriceMinister, acquired in 2010, and the rapidly expanding German online shopping mall, Tradoria, which joined the Rakuten Group in July of this year.

“The UK market is one of Europe’s largest and most mature e-commerce markets. Play.com is not only a pioneer in the market, but also one of the UK’s most successful e-commerce businesses. We aim to leverage our e-commerce strength and experience to further expand and develop Play.com’s business model and channel its loyal user base, merchants, and deep product offerings into Rakuten’s global e-commerce network.”
- Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten

This has the potential to upset the incumbents – eBay and Amazon – as Rakuten plans are for long term UK investment. Back in May this year Rakuten announced their intention to invest in the UK and Germany and with the acquisition of Play.com they now have a large UK buyer community of 7 million registered users, with 8 million listed products on the site.

Play.com is one of the UK’s largest online retailers, selling a wide range of goods, from music and books to electronics, clothing, and accessories. Founded in 1998 and head-quartered in Jersey, British Isles, the company has grown to employ approximately 500 dedicated staff.

Play.com still has a perception, similar to Amazon a few years ago, that it’s largely a platform for media – CDs, DVDs and computer games. With the investment of Rakuten behind them expect marketing efforts to ramp up to let customers know that they also sell Clothing, Sporting Goods, Computing, Mobile, and of course especially important in the run up to Christmas – Toys.

Do you already sell on Play.com and if not would you consider it now that it’s a Rakuten company? If you’re a developer of 3rd Party multichannel seller tools do you already support Play.com and if not will you be building in support in the future?

“Outlets are the fastest-growing retail channel, and we’re excited to bring that shopping experience and value to our shoppers – anywhere, anytime, anyhow”
- Miriam Lahage, eBay Head of Global Fashion Brand.

One of the advantages for Fashion Outlet retailers is the replacement of the eBay Top Rated Seller badge with the retailers own logo. This appears both on the view item page as well as in search results.

The eBay.com Fashion Outlet has launched with 12 Outlet stores on eBay, but they haven’t made the mistake which the UK did of excluding fashion items brands from non-Outlet eBay sellers. The Fashion Outlet is part of the Fashion tab in the eBay navigation bar and although the Outlet is prominently highlighted on the site shopping by brand, Womens, Mens, or Kids & Baby will take you to site wide searches for the products you’re interested in.

In addition to the Fashion Outlet eBay.com also have the Fashion Vault. The Fashion Vault offers limited time (2 or 3 day) exclusive online events wtih substantial discounts on brand new designer fashions from celebrated brands.

What will be interesting to see is how the new eBay.com Fashion Outlet impacts the US Deals program. In the UK the daily and weekly deals are dominated by Outlet sellers (In the UK there are Outlet sellers who don’t sell Fashion). However the US deals program doesn’t currently major on fashion items anywhere near as heavily as UK deals.

One thing is certain, the success of the eBay.com Fashion Outlet will be measured against the UK. The UK fashion Outlet has had an enormous influence on the site as a whole and eBay have focused heavily on fashion to draw new buyers to the site. The eBay.com Fashion Outlet has been set a high bar to meet to match the success of the UK.

Gifts, gifts and more gifts

Notonthehighstreet.com brings together over 2000 small creative businesses that combined sell a wide range of products through a single checkout. Their unique selling point is that all the goods offered are unique or personalised products, which are arranged into gifts for “her”, “him”, “children”, “grandparents”, “birthdays” or “weddings”.

The company was an overnight success when it launched in April 2006 with 16,000 unique visitors to the site on the first day. Notonthehighstreet.com’s turnover leapt from £100,000 in its first year to £15.1 million in 2010. Currently 40 small businesses a day apply to join notonthehighstreet.com with only a small percentage accepted to ensure the best quality.

New senior management

Now notonthehighstreet.com have announced three new senior management positions in preparation for international expansion – Jason Weston as Chief Operating Officer, Mark Hodson as Chief Marketing Officer and Maya Moufarek as Director of International Development.

Jason Weston, Mark Hodson, Maya Moufarek.

The founders Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish

Holly Tucker, Sophie Cornish.

I think they’ve succeeded – I’ve just ordered my nephew’s second birthday present from notonthehighstreet.com and, whilst he probably won’t think much of it until he is older, my brother and sister in law will love it!

Is it the marketplace for you?

If you supply unique and unusual gift items then you should consider joining notonthehighstreet.com as a seller, but bear in mind they probably turn away more suppliers than they accept. Your products need to be great as do your photographs.

I think this marketplace is successful because it is filling a niche. By screening sellers they ensure that only the unique, personalised and beautiful appears on the site. Photographs are encouraged to be lifestyle images and not standard product shots as these increase sales and I have to say for me the site is working. Thankfully they don’t accept PayPal (yet?) or I’d have no money left at all!

The links take you to a Star Wars Landing page where you can purchase Star Wars: The Complete Saga for £67.95, Star Wars: Prequel Trilogy for £35.85 or Star Wars: Original Trilogy for £35.85, all on Blu Ray from Zavvi. There are also links to buy all things Star Wars on eBay and starting from the 16th September there will be a set of eBay for Charity auctions to benefit Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) who fund ground breaking cancer research.

Star of the charity auctions will be a one-of-a-kind Star Wars edition 2012 Volkswagen Passat. Lucasfilm has partnered with eBay to create this exclusive auction, allowing fans to bid on rare and exciting Star Wars items and experiences. They invite you to participate “Use the Force for Good” to raise funds for this cause.

You can also list your own products to support SU2C so if you have some Star Wars memorabilia hidden away in your closet now might be the time for it to come out and be sold.

photo credit: Rego – d4u.hu

Do you want to win an Apple iPad 2? iContact, the email and social media marketing company for small businesses, have teamed up with TameBay to offer our readers the chance to win an Apple iPad 2 just for sending an email. Best of all it’s totally free to enter and entering the competition should also help you to grow your business.

To enter the competition, participants need to register for a FREE 30 Day Trial of iContact’s Email Marketing Software via this link, upload a minimum of 25 contacts (including the email address ipadcompetition@icontact.com) and send an email marketing campaign or newsletter to their list before November 5th, 2011.

Entries will be judged on the quality of email creative (subject line, design and body text), landing page experience and the creative use of social tools.

Don’t worry, if you are new to email marketing, iContact provides a whole range of easy to follow video tutorials and email marketing best practices free of charge.

John Hayes, iContact’s EMEA Business development Executive, told TameBay, “This is a great opportunity to get your teeth into email and social media marketing and receive constructive feedback from a panel of experts on your initial campaigns.”

The winning entry will be announced on TameBay on November 20th, 2011.

For your chance to win register today and don’t forget to include the “seed” email address ipadcompetition@icontact.com in your uploaded list of contacts.

We’ll break the steps you need to take to enter the competition down over the next four weeks.
Step 1 of 4: Register for iContact’s FREE 30 day trial

The legal small print

Competition Rules
The Promotion is sponsored by iContact Corporation, with offices at 5221 Perimeter Parkway, Ste. 200, Morrisville, NC 27560 USA (“iContact”) and Tamebay, with offices at 23 Mount Road Thatcham, Berkshire RG18 4LD. The Apple iPad 2 are provided by iContact. Prizes will be fulfilled on or about November 21st 2011 by mail to the billing address in your iContact account. All recipients of the prizes must comply with the iContact website (http://www.icontact.com/permission-email-marketing) and the Tamebay website (http://www.tamebay.com) Terms and Conditions as well as these terms. THE APPLE IPAD 2 IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, AND ICONTACT AND TAMEBAY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WITH RESPECT THERETO. iContact reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to modify, suspend or cancel the Promotion at any time. All decisions by iContact in regard to this Promotion are final and binding in all respects.

Email entries will be judged on the quality of subject line, design and content. The winner is selected by a panel of iContact experts. All decisions by iContact in regard to this Promotion are final and binding in all respects. iContact and Tamebay reserve the right to publish the winning email and feature winner details on www.tamebay.com and www.iContact.com.