By Cliff Ennico
www.creators.com
eBay has always meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but it has traditionally been viewed as two separate entities:
it is a Fortune 500 corporation based in San Jose, California that provides an e-commerce platform for people buying and selling goods online; and
it is a community of millions of buyers and sellers worldwide who sell goods on the eBay platform (what eBay calls its "community" but which I like to refer to as "eBay Nation").
eBay Nation has not been a happy place the past couple of years. Between fierce competition from other e-commerce platforms (primarily
Amazon.com
), tough new rules that eBay handed down in 2008 to weed out sellers that weren't committed to behaving in a businesslike fashion on the site, the shutting down of such popular eBay seller support programs as "eBay University" and the annual "eBay Live!" trade show, yearly fee increases, and a general perceived tilting of the platform in favor of buyers over sellers, a lot of people have been concerned that eBay "the corporation" has been exalted at the expense of eBay "the community".
But fear not; I bring glad tidings of great joy. eBay Nation is slowly but surely getting back on its feet again. In the true spirit of entrepreneurship, an intrepid number of eBay sellers and employees of eBay's "Community" section are reviving and in some cases re-creating the community spirit that always set eBay apart from its competition.
Some cases in point:
eBay on Location
. While eBay University is sadly no more, eBay has launched "eBay on Location", a series of one-day events designed to help eBay sellers improve their performance, network with other sellers in their area, and build "real" businesses on the site. Programs are held every two to three months, usually on a Saturday in a major U.S. city, and feature nationally recognized small business expert speakers such as John Jantsch, the author of "Duct Tape Marketing", and Rieva Lesonsky, former editor of Entrepreneur magazine and founder of GrowBiz Media (
www.growbizmedia.com
). For more information and a schedule of upcoming "eBay on Location" events, see
www.ebayonlocationevents.com
.
eBay Radio
. If Internet radio has a future at all, it is to serve as a media outlet for special-interest communities such as eBay sellers. For the past seven years, eBay has hosted its own radio call-in show featuring Jim "Uncle Griff" Griffith, a veteran eBay employee (
www.unclegriff.com
). To subscribe to eBay Radio's RSS feed and listen to the twice-weekly shows, see
http://groups.ebay.com/forum/Ebay-Radio-Broadcasts/Welcome/1278?&
. To ask Uncle Griff a question on the show, call (888) 708 6226, Tuesday's from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific Coast time, and Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Coast time.
eBay Town Hall Events
. Throughout the year, eBay hosts 90-minute audio Town Hall events, broadcast over the Internet via eBay Radio, where eBay sellers can submit (via email or phone) your comments, suggestions and questions directly to a panel of eBay Marketplace leaders. For more information and a schedule of upcoming Town Halls, see
http://pages.ebay.com/townhall
.
eBay Radio Party
. For those eBay sellers who miss the camaraderie of the "eBay Live!" trade show, eBay Radio hosts an annual two-day "Radio Party" in Las Vegas, featuring eBay and small business experts from around the country and the same "Mardi Gras meets Woodstock" atmosphere that happens whenever hundreds of eBay sellers gather in one place. This year's event will be held June 23 and 24 at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel. To register, see
http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e2ta0mlneb71ae6d
or send an e-mail to
ebetsy@swbell.net
. Full disclosure: I will be speaking on "Tax and Legal Answers for a Business on eBay" at this event.
A New Social Media Marketing Tool for eBay Sellers
. More and more eBay sellers are creating Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, and Twitter tweets, and are looking for ways to promote their eBay auctions and fixed-price listings with social media. A new service at
www.fflap.com
, recently certified by eBay, enables eBay sellers to select relevant items to inform their social networks about, add a personalized message, schedule messages and then track and graphically report the success of the listing message through bidding to sale. With tracking and reporting, users can adjust their fflap strategy to maximize results for a specific trading style.
Fflap, which is available both on the web and the iPhone, has been developed for anyone who sells using eBay. A basic free service allows access to a set of tools and gives registered members a chance to use the service for free, for life. For an additional subscription fee starting at $2.50 for the "premier version" and $3.00 for the "professional version", eBay sellers gain access to tracking, reporting, scheduling, greater daily fflap allowances, early releases, tools and premium support.
Cliff Ennico
(
crennico@gmail.com
) is a syndicated columnist, author and former host of the PBS television series "Money Hunt." This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our Web page at
www.creators.com
.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CLIFFORD R. ENNICO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
. Permission Granted for use on Dr.Laura.com.
