Top 3 Takeaways from eBay Live

July 12, 2008

1) The new feedback system is here to stay

In the keynote Address, John Donahoe was quick to address the recent controversial changes to the marketplace. "Change is hard, but essential."

The rationale?

Attract more buyers, so sellers - and eBay - succeed
Create a healthy vibrant "people’s" community

The new feedback system is meant to "do right by people who do the right thing" and reward behaviors that give buyers what they want.

And eBay says the new system is working. Average DSRs are higher across the board:

	4.6 and higher	4.8 and higher
January 2008	60%	15%
June 2008	67%	33%

Sellers who make buyers happy as reflected by high DSRs get more visibility in search and higher Powerseller discounts.

2) eBay pays more attention to marketing

There was an increased emphasis on marketing at eBay Live. Besides eBay store marketing and tools classes, renowned Internet marketers Seth Godin, Jay Berkowitz, and Andy Sernovitz also contributed.

Looks like they’ve finally caught on to what we’ve been teaching our clients for years: Actively promoting and marketing your eBay business is the ONLY way to grow and achieve real online success.

3) eBay is becoming a contained system

eBay’s introduced a number of new policies that are making it pretty much impossible to promote your off-eBay website.

Let’s take a look at eBay’s latest no-nos:

No linking off eBay: Linking from any eBay page (including your About Me page or eBay blog) to an off-eBay page is no longer allowed.

You CAN still link to a web page with more information about an item you’re selling on eBay, however, that page can’t have any navigation links on it - period (even if the navigation links to another information page).

Meanwhile, eBay is displaying Yahoo PPC ads at the bottom of the search results page - driving traffic away from YOUR listings and off the eBay site (while offering eBay a new revenue stream). Those sponsored links directly contradict eBay’s own rules!

When questioned by one of our Advanced eBay Mentors, eBay said only that they were testing the ads, and would be looking into ways for eBay sellers to purchase this type of advertising on their site.
No giving out your email address.
Starting in September, emails between buyers and sellers will rerouted through eBay’s system and given an anonymous email address. The only exceptions are those related to actual transactions.

And as part of this new email system, you’ll no longer be able to include your email address in your listings.

According to eBay, "anonymous email addresses are becoming an industry standard that adds an additional level of safety."

This makes some sense for buyer to seller communications sent through the eBay system. But not allowing sellers to provide a contact email address in their listings seems to be more about making sure all emails are confined to the eBay marketplace.