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TAGnotes Thur 1 Jun 2000 Vol 2 Number 84 Issue 166
 

From: The Auction Guild <tagn-@theauctionguild.com>
Date: Fri Jun 2, 2000 2:04am
Subject: TAGnotes Thur 1 Jun 2000 Vol 2 Number 84 Issue 166

The Auction Guild Notes for Thursday 1 June 2000
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Don't forget TAG is ending the eBay WATCH feature survey
on 4 June. If you want to participate NOW is the time.
http://www.auctionguild.com/consumersurvey.html;
$sessionid$H115ZBIAABNXDWGIHUVXBMWYZA4S1PX0
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eBay is doing regularly scheduled maintenance and will be unavailable
on Fri 2 Jun between 01:00 PT and 05:00 PT. This will cause search
to fall further behind. Today it was reported on the chat boards
that new listings are not showing up in search 24 hours after being
listed. Descriptive search is also behind and should be current as
of about 19:24 PT, Wed 31 May though the results will be date
stamped as of 11:00 PT, Thurs 1 Jun.

eBay's free listing day for Billpoint users was a mixed success.
The number of auctions offering Billpoint increased to 534,028,
but there were several hours during the day where sellers could
not list, because the site was so slow. There are 1.54 million
PayPal enabled auctions on eBay.

eBay continues their banner ads, but the efforts of eBay users have
at least influenced eBay to modify their use of these banners. The
banners are no longer directed towards specific search, but will
appear on the site at random. eBay assures users that the
doubleclick cookies will not have an effect on the appearance of
these ads, and that they will be generated randomly.

eBays new listings page will launch sometime in the next week. The
preview page is not exactly the same as the actual page, but can be
viewed at http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/listingsjump.html
If you have comments about the page, go to the Soapbox board at
http://remarq.ebay.com/ebay/threads.asp?g=discuss%2Eebay%
2Ethe%2Esoap%2Dbox&nav=LAST

eBay has posted research on what they see as the effectiveness of
optional listing features, Gallery, Bold, and Featured Category.
They unfortunately don't post all the criteria they used for their
results, and used what TAG considers flawed criteria, so it is
impossible to tell what their results really show. Here are the
claimed results:They looked at 600,000 listings with starting bids
between $25 and $50.
1. Category Featured items sold for $92 more than items without
any features.
2. Bold items sold for $24 more than items that did not use bold
or other features.
3. Gallery items sold for $3 more than non-Gallery items without
other features.
They looked at over 13 million listed items to see if these features
helped items sell.
1. Category Featured items are 58% more likely to sell when
compared to items without features.
2. Bold items are 27% more likely to sell when compared to
items without features.
3. Gallery items are 8% more likely to sell when compared to
items without features.

The percentage of items that sell was derived from a sample of
13,197,746 items listed during the first quarter of 2000. They only
included features that were used on more than 8,000 items. They
then compared the percent of items sold with features to the items
without features. To determine the value of each feature, they looked
within the first sample to select 631,504 items with starting prices
between $25 and $50. They only used this price range because they
didn't want to bias the numbers with sellers who list expensive items
at extremely low starting prices. Even though they limited by price,
there could still be a selection bias in the numbers if sellers only
select features for items that are inherently more valuable. They
make the assumption that most sellers who follow this tactic do so by
listing items with a starting price of $0.01 to $10, so picked the
$25-$50 price range, TAG thinks this logic is also flawed.
There is no mention of reserve or no reserve criteria. Once they
selected the items, they looked at the final price for each one that
sold. They compared the final price of items with no features
against the final price of items with either category featured,
bold or gallery. None of this research included Dutch Auctions.
TAG feels these results might be seriously flawed as they do not
compare like items which would be of roughly equal value. Since
starting prices are based on too many variables TAG feels that
using that as the primary criteria is basing research on a very
shaky foundation as there is no consistency.

The NY Times has an article on Shilling on eBay. You might
need to log in to the site to read it –
http://www.nytimes.com/library/
tech/00/06/biztech/articles/02ebay.html

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml
Listings, approx 4.8 mil current
* * * * *
Yahoo Auctions Post your views about changes or glitches at
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thesellerzone
Keep track of What's New at Yahoo Auctions
http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/promo/whatsnew.html
To see the base information and latest offers use
this link – http://www.auctionguild.com/generic.html;
$sessionid$JNIBZCYAAAAGJWGIHUVUTIWYZA4S1PX0?pid=5
Approx 1.94 million auctions currently running
http://auctions.yahoo.com/
* * * * *
Amazon Auctions
To see the base information and latest offers
use this link http://www.auctionguild.com/generic.html;
$sessionid$JNIBZCYAAAAGJWGIHUVUTIWYZA4S1PX0?pid=5

Listings based on a combination of actual counts in 14 of 19
categories and extrapolated counts in 5 of 19 categories as of
27 May 920,664
* * * * *
Internet Auction Secrets is ceasing publication. They are continuing
their website with sales of OAI related books, resources and links.
They are also offering OAI discussion through eGroups. The
demise of this very informative newsletter was precipitated by
the original web host blocking site access and not performing
updates.   IAS is participating in investigation of the web host
causing these problems. IAS will send refunds for unfulfilled
subscription issues. This last Issue has Top Ten Tips, an article
by Heidi LeVell from Andale on pricing, a review of Auction
Tamer software and the Auction Perfect Management Tool site.
http://www.NetAuctionSecrets.com
* * * * *
OAUA keep current on the Banner ad issues and other issues
important to OAI users. JOIN the OAUA today.
http://www.oaua.com
* * * * *
If you would like an Auction House or Service Provider added to
this list, please email us at tagn-@t...
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