The old Tamebay may not have been broken but it was high time for an overhaul and today our new site is finally here.

For months, we’ve been working behind the scenes, and often late at night, on plans to make sure that Tamebay goes from strength to strength in the years to come. Step one was making sure we had the right hosting and ample bandwidth for the dramatic growth in traffic we’ve seen in the past few years. That was sorted a few months back.

Step two was a new site. Tamebay started as a labour of love and we never want to lose that enthusiasm. Nowadays Tamebay has tens of thousands of readers a week, we needed to make sure the site can take the load. Our last design has served us all well for four years, (does anyone still remember our original design?) but it’s time for another change and one that will work for a few years into the future and this is the result.

It’s been a new experience for us at Tamebay. In the past, Sue sorted out Tamebay’s look and feel and did a grand job. She also sorted all the techie stuff and the servers and the like but she isn’t currently available to guide us, so we have had to learn a lot in the absence of her expertise.

And we’ve had some sterling help. We’ve been working with a great bunch of guys at wearejh.com based in Nottingham. They’ve worked really hard to get this new site happening and we’re thrilled with their work. They’re young and brimming with clever ideas.

Needless to say, we’d love to hear your views and we know you won’t be shy. It’ll probably take you a while to become accustomed to the new look and feel of Tamebay so if you can’t find what you’re looking for please ask.

Tamebay needs to reflect the changing field of ecommerce and better serve an expanding readership as much interested in Facebook as Feedback. One of the problems of the old design was that stories you were commenting on rapidly disappeared from the home page, sometimes within a matter of hours. Now we’ll not only be able to present content in logical sections on Tamebay’s home page, but we’ll be able to keep the news you’re most interested in on the home page for longer.

We still have some parts of the site to work on, there are a few pages that need re-working and there are bound to be a few creases that need a quick run with the iron to get the wrinkles out. If you spot anything amiss or if something looks weird in the browser you’re using please let us know and we’ll try and sort it out sharpish.

Many thanks to everyone who made our new site possible, the techie guys at wearejh.com and vidahost.com, our advertisers without whom the site wouldn’t be possible, everyone who gave advice and input on the new design and of course to you our readers for supporting us over the past six years.

It’s rather like Doctor Who. We mention this because Sue wouldn’t forgive us if we didn’t. Everything must regenerate. Welcome to Tamebay Mark III.

Chris Dawson & Dan Wilson

As far as we know everything is working but if you do spot anything not quite right please do let us know. Comments are turned back on and our next stage will be to get the new design completed and implemented.

photo credit:
xJason.Rogersx

As part of the planned upgrades for Tamebay we’re going to be moving servers over the next few days. We’ve got a shiny new server all ready to go with Vidahost. Traffic on Tamebay has been higher than ever recently and the new server is going to give us tons of bandwidth (we’ve been running out lately) as well as a more robust server which can handle more concurrent Tamebay readers all logged on at the same time.

Things might go a bit wobbly while some bits like DNS updates take place, so if anything strange happens please bear with us. We’re not going to turn comments off for the moment, but there’s a slight risk we might lose a few during the server move and if so our humblest apologies.

We’ll also will hold off posting too much until we’re settled in our new home and then we’ll be back to business as normal.

Edited to add:We’ve now turned comments off until the move is complete. See you in our new home

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.

To snag a copy you’ll have to sign up to The Wholesale Forums, but it’s free and as a bonus you’ll get access to a whole load of insider knowledge on the best and most reliable wholesale suppliers around. Then just add a comment to the thread on The Wholesale Forums telling them why you’d like a copy and which part of your business you’d like to simply. Free membership and maybe if you’re lucky a free copy of TameBay’s guide – can’t be bad!

If you’ve already got a copy of the guide then it’s still worth signing up to The Wholesale Forums as a great source of supplier information, and look out in January for the updated and expanded 2012 edition of the guide.

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.

Yes, that’s right, we popped by the British Library in London on Monday to deposit a copy of the 2011 Tamebay Tools and Services Guide in to the national collection. Mostly because we could.

We’ll be starting work on the 2012 edition shortly. So keep ‘em peeled for more details.

Over the years both Sue and I have used numerous tools to simplify the running our our eBay businesses to save time, money and simply to make eBay’s processes manageable. We’ve also spoken to hundreds of friends and colleagues and collected together every current eBay tool in one volume.

It’s always been a source of frustration that some of the best tools aren’t publicised well enough. I still remember when long time TameBay reader Northumbrian suggested we take a look at Packing Partner and since then I’ve used the tool daily to produce my ecommerce invoices.

Now we’ve collected every eBay tool and service we know together in one guide along with over 35 product reviews. Many of the tools in this guide are little known apps which can make a huge contribution to the way you run your eBay business. Others are better known, but you may not have had time to fully investigate the products and services they offer. Whether it is a utility to make printing your labels and invoices automatic, or a fully fledged multi-channel ecommerce management platform you’ll find what you’re looking for in the guide.

We’d like to thank all of the companies who have supported us in creating this guide, the many people who support us with content for the site, Dan Wilson for the original suggestion that we should launch TameBay and most importantly of all, you and all our many other thousands of readers who visit TameBay, comment on TameBay and who have made the site what it is today.

The book is available both in print editions and in eBook version and the TameBay eBay Tools and Services Guide 2011 is available immediately for free download from TameBay. You can also buy the print version from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Press Release

It’s the 7 Link Challenge, a bit of fun from Problogger today, to highlight some old posts.

Sue

• Your first post: Try Gallery Plus for half price was my first on TameBay, though not my first blog post by a very long way.
• A post you enjoyed writing the most: Outlets, outlawed : what I’d do with eBay, part 1 (generally, the rantier the post, the more I’ve enjoyed writing it).
• A post which had a great discussion: Dear eBay, may I please get on with selling now.
• A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written: Dan’s post Home Truths for eBay Sellers.
• Your most helpful post: hardly for me to say, but I was pretty pleased with Using voucher codes to bring shoppers to your website.
• A post with a title that you are proud of: it would be a bad pun one: Court talks scents in trademark case or maybe Watch theft whine of The Times.
• A post that you wish more people had read: It’s time to stop disputing unpaid items (specifically, I wish some people from eBay had read it).

Chris

• Your first post: eBay University – Exeter
• A post you enjoyed writing the most: Without a doubt it’s the post that Sue forbade me to write and Sue is still amazing.
• A post which had a great discussion: There’s nothing like a bit of PayPal bashing to get people interested (and eBay/PayPal eventually lost this fight).
• A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written: Scot Wingo‘s same store sales posts always have lots of fun data to play with: I’d like that.
• Your most helpful post: Actually a series of three – Best Match Secrets Part 1: Getting found, Part 2: How products are sorted and Part 3: 5 Top Tips for Best Match
• A post with a title that you are proud of: Tazbar an eBay alternative is long since dead and buried, but I wish I’d used the text of the post itself as the title and the video is superb (For those that don’t know eBay had a “Whatever it is you can get it on eBay” campaign running at the time
• A post that you wish more people had read: How I increased my P&P DSR by 2 points Figuring out how to play the game and work with the changes eBay throw at us is a pain, but it’s the only way to survive

Image credit: photo credit: Urban Woodswalker

photo credit: Duchamp

Some time over the last few days, my PowerSeller badge vanished. I’ve had it for exactly a decade, although I must admit for the last few months, it’s been a statistical anomoly based on high sales early last year: I haven’t deserved it because I stopped selling on my own account more than six months ago. Because – bear with me, chums; the confessional is coming – I’ve done something I swore I’d never do again. I’ve got a job.

This post is going to be a little more personal than what I normally write on TameBay. If you’re not interested, here’s the summary: nothing much is changing, some stuff’s changing a bit. We’ll still have eBay news, but we’ll have more general ecommerce stuff too. Move along, nothing to see here.

Okay. Now we’ve got rid of those people… I’ve got a job. It happened by accident (not the first job I’ve got by accident, not to mention the job I got for a bet). The friend of a friend of a guy I know on Twitter phoned me up and asked if I would like to spend one day a week writing blog posts for him. And even though I knew nothing at all about the industry he’s working in (it’s nothing to do with marketplaces), I said yes. I think there are times in life when you just need to run round saying “yes” to everything, to see where it takes you.

Where it took me was somewhere that rapidly expanded to two days a week – will you write guest content for other people for us, and yes, some of it is actually in print. Seeing my words in print, even with someone else’s name on them, gives me more joy than I can ever really express. And then, will you do a third day, looking after random bits of marketing and Twitter… When you get to three days, it just slides into a full-time job because no one else ever remembers which are the days you’re not supposed to be working for them, and so you start getting included in business development discussions and recruitment, and you get business cards with “Marketing Manager” on them, and all sorts of weird things that you swore you’d never do again.
Because you were never going to work *for* anyone again.

As Mrs Connery famously said, never say never again. It’s actually quite fun, and to skip from “full-time at home” to “full-time in the office” was easier than I’d ever have imagined, especially when I work for someone who thinks it’s entirely reasonable to say “I can’t write in here today, I’m taking my laptop to the park”.

I knew the day would come when my PS badge would disappear. I remember how much I wanted to win it, those first few fun months selling on eBay in 2000: how I’d felt getting it was some form of validation… How I’ve worn it ever since, at first proudly and then increasingly as a badge of solidarity with people who were being dumped on from a great height. Now it’s gone. I’d expected to feel sad, but largely, I feel nothing. I’ve moved on.

I don’t intend to turn into one of those ex-eBay PSs who hang around eBay forums and talk about how great the escape is. I quit selling because better things came along, more exciting challenges, bigger rewards. It’s a positive thing for me, and I’m not going to let it turn into a negative thing for anyone else.

So where does this leave TameBay? Obviously, I’m not in a position to write about the intricate nitty gritty of how site changes affect sellers. I’ll leave that to Chris (who, let’s be honest, is better at that stuff than just about anyone any of us know). I’m still going to be writing about eBay the company because with ten years of watching them, I think I can bring perspective to what they’re doing. But I’m hoping to use my new experiences to write about things that will be useful beyond just eBay. At the moment, I’m thinking about email marketing, and social media marketing, and Google Analytics, and how partnerships with your competition can increase the size of the cake for everyone, and whole rafts of thoughts about websites and what to do with them… And, of course, about life beyond eBay and where you can go if you’ve had enough of selling.

We say frequently around here that sellers should be looking beyond eBay for their businesses. I hope I’m going to be able to bring some useful thoughts about the ecommerce world outside eBay to TameBay. If not, well, I’m sure you’ll let me know.