Source: New York Daily News - Nancy Dillon

LOS ANGELES - A chance to spend eternity on top of Marilyn Monroe is up for bid on eBay.

Beverly Hills widow Elsie Poncher is auctioning off her husband's crypt, which is directly above the American icon's final resting place at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery.

Bidding hovered at an eye-popping $4.6 million Monday with slightly more than two hours to go.

"Here is a once in a lifetime and into eternity opportunity to spend your eternal days directly above Marilyn Monroe," the eBay auction description states.

Richard Poncher was buried face down - looking at the blond bombshell - when he died 23 years ago at age 81, the posting reveals.

His widow, now 80, said she now plans to move him to a nearby plot and sell the valuable vault so she can pay off a $1.6 million mortgage on her Beverly Hills home.

"I can't be more honest than that," she told The Los Angeles Times. "I want to leave it free and clear for my kids."

Bidding started at $500,000 on Aug. 14 and hit $4.5 million three days later.

Monroe died of a drug overdose ruled a "probable suicide" at the age of 36 in 1962. The star of "Some Like it Hot" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" was named the sexiest woman of the 20th century by both Playboy and People magazines.

Source: buzztracker.com

General Motors has become one of the first automakers to use eBay as an avenue for new vehicle sales, but the Detroit automaker has seen a mixed bag of results during the program’s first few days. GM’s eBay experiment — which includes 225 California dealers — launched August 11th and will run through September 8th.

According to Automotive News, GM dealers have listed 16,228 vehicles on eBay since August 11th, but have only recorded 45 sales. However, the program has actually generate quite a few more sales than that as many shoppers are viewing the vehicles online before buying them in person.

“I’ve sold some vehicles to people that saw the vehicles on eBay, but they didn’t buy them on eBay. They called, came in and bought them,” Mark Borjan, a Buick-Pontiac-GMC dealer, toldAutomotive News.

GM’s ‘Buy It Now’ option has also proven to be an early flop. So far no customers have opted for the Buy It Now feature, with high prices a likely culprit. According to Edmunds, GM’s Buy It Now prices average about 2 percent above the average market price.

However, GM’s eBay site is drawing interest, with 630,000 visits in the first week. The results were particularly good for GM’s California efforts, with eBay price searches up 10 percent there. GM’s market share in California is 13 percent, compared to its national share of 19.6 percent. Unfortunately for GM, the Pontiac G8 was the most searched nameplate in California, a model that is set to ride off into the sunset after the 2009 model year.

Source: The Associated Press

ATLANTA — UPS Inc. said Monday it has launched a technology that allows sellers to import their eBay order information, export it and automatically update orders.

UPS said the WorldShip will eliminate the need for manual order information entry.

Sellers can also process international shipments using UPS Paperless Invoice, an international shipping option accessed within WorldShip. This option allows sellers to submit commercial invoices electronically.

Shares of United Parcel Service fell 87 cents to $52.66 in morning trading.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Source: PC World - Juan Carlos Perez

EBay's ambitious project to remake its Selling Manager set of e-commerce tools into an open platform and repository of third-party applications reached another milestone on Monday when it was opened to the marketplace's sellers.

Merchants can now sign up for a free subscription to the new Selling Manager and give external applications that interest them a test run, since all fee-based applications have free trial periods, Dinesh Lathi, eBay vice president of Seller Experience, said in a blog post.

"From sourcing product to shipping your items, Selling Manager Applications are designed to make your business easier to run," Lathi said.

Selling Manager has been around for years, amassing a user base of about 700,000 merchants, but it only featured applications built by eBay.

In parallel, eBay has had a program for external developers since 2000 that has been joined by about 87,000 developers who have created about 13,000 applications.

Then in June of last year, eBay announced its intention to turn Selling Manager into an application repository and platform open to external developers.

After a months-long closed pilot, eBay opened the new Selling Manager to all developers in April of this year and promised it would make it available to merchants at some point this summer.

With the new Selling Manager, eBay hopes to boost developer participation in the eBay platform, while helping merchants more easily discover and access useful applications.

When I first saw JV Auction Profits I first thought ‘what the heck’ I have never seen anything like this before? Just where does John Thornhill get his ideas from?

Click Here

Now I have sold on eBay before, not in great quantities by all means but enough to get the attention from others sellers. The emails I received to ask me to JV with them I just ignored as it was eBay, but John has stumbled on a technique or a way rather to harness the power of gaining that extra profit from eBay without the fee’s and the eBay rules to which we all know change like the weather.

Now I cannot for legal reasons list all the techniques John uses to create in income stream worthy of a 9 to 5 in the blog post but I can let you know he earned over $35000 alone by doing a few minutes work per week, coordinating with other sellers from eBay and generating friendships and leads throughout the world.

It’s not rocket science however guys simply take eBay at face value and never think of the inner potential and how it can skyrocket their business. John will show you how to harness the full power of eBay and make you money you never thought possible from your business.

Now I know I asked the same questions you are thinking ‘I don’t sell eBooks and I know John does. My business is X’ This makes no difference at all in anyway. The fact is if you are a newbie, small seller, large big time seller, Powerseller, non Powerseller the differences mean nothing. Everyone who is anyone that sells on eBay has the potential to utilise this information that John is providing to maximum effect to put in simple:

You DON’T need a product.

You DON’T have to have experience with this system

You DON’T need any money to set this up

John will show you how to do it using real life examples

You don’t have to write an eBook. This is NOT about writing eBooks it’s about you and your business and how to can make the best of it.

Now this is not a get rich quick scheme in ten seconds like a lot of guys put their names too. It is simply a legitimate way to boost your business and take some more money to the bank.:)

Click Here

This is PERFECT for any eBay seller what ever you sell.


See How I earned over $34000 Using eBay as a Method of Communication

Ebay has spawned some wild stories of rags-to-riches wealth. Some of those tales are true, but instant Ebay millionaires are far outweighed by the legions of Ebayers who make a decent living doing something they enjoy. (And isn’t that good enough?) Still, so many of us can’t help but look at these top power sellers and wonder what they know that we don’t. What’s the secret to their success?

Some foundations of success aren’t secret at all; it still takes good old fashioned hard work and customer service to become a top seller on Ebay. That being the case, there are still a few tips and tricks that separate casual hobbyists from serious Ebay merchants.

#1. Keyword Managers.
Keywords are all the rage these days. Web pages with plenty of relevant words will show up on web searches. Likewise, auctions with relevant, highly searched terms will show up in Ebay searches. How do you know which terms buyers are searching for? There are subscription programs such as Keyword Pro and Ebay Pulse that generate lists of the most frequently searched terms in any given category. Add some of these terms to your own listings to increase views. (Just be sure that the words are relevant to the actual item. Nobody likes a keyword spammer, least of all Ebay.)

#2. Typo Searches.
It’s a sad truth that there are some poor spellers on the Internet. When they become online merchants, they lose business because their misspelled items never turn up in Ebay searches. Luckily, Fatfingers.Com is a free web site that lets you search for common misspellings on Ebay. For example, I searched for the term “scarf”. I was then sent to Ebay’s web site, where a search was run for “sacrf”, “sxarf”, and several other typos of “scarf”. It’s amazing how many items you can find at low prices just because they were listed with incorrect spelling. Many sellers capitalize on these misspelled items, buying them low and selling them high. Let this be a lesson to prospective Ebay merchants: proofread your listings. Twice.

#3. Data Analyzers.
Offline businesses use data analysis before making their decisions, so why shouldn’t you? Imagine knowing which items are selling like hot cakes and which ones aren’t really taking off. You could minimize your risk by avoiding slow sellers and snapping up soon-to-be-hot items at a discount. There are software packages that actually analyze Ebay’s data to see what’s really selling and what’s not. Hot Item Finder (www.hotitemfinder.com) is one such program. Experts agree that they can save many hours of research each week by using data analyzers. There is also a program called Auction Yen which runs analysis for Want It Now listings. It pays to know what customers really want, so these programs come highly recommended.

#4. Selling Managers.
It’s vitally important to keep track of your inventory and auction listings. Ebay offers a selling manager for a low monthly cost. This online tool helps sellers track and customize their listings, print shipping labels, and more. Sellers tout this one as another great time saver.

It’s no secret that you can make a lot of money on Ebay. With these tips from the top Ebay sellers, you’ll be smiling all the way to the bank.

NEWS ALERT: How eBay creates millionaires

Source : businessweek.com By Karen E. Klein

Changes at eBay, especially its new ratings feedback policy, have many longtime sellers angry. Some are even leaving for upstart sites like Shopify

When Julie Rodarte and her husband started selling on eBay (EBAY) six years ago, they stored their meager inventory in the family garage. As sales grew, and Rodarte carved out a niche in party and wedding favors, the operation expanded and she created JDR Supply. Now, the Bakersfield, Calif., company leases a 2,000-square-foot warehouse and has three employees. Rodarte, a mother of two with a third child due any day, says her 2008 sales revenue has averaged $23,000 a month, providing her with profits to invest in operations and a salary of about $25,000 annually.

"It's not a lot, but combined with the salary from my husband's job it allows us to do fun things like take vacations, while I'm working from home to be with my kids," Rodarte says.

Although the company sells fancy favors to customers all over the world and holds eBay's "power seller" designation, Rodarte's success didn't seem to matter last month when eBay restricted her account based on a new ratings feedback policy that has angered and alienated small sellers on the site. She found herself still able to purchase items through eBay but not able to sell—effectively shutting down her business with little recourse. "I've always done a good job with customer service and my overall feedback rating had always been 98% and above," Rodarte says, echoing complaints by many eBay entrepreneurs.

eBay's Backbone They say the new ratings policies, which were announced in January 2008 but didn't fully take effect until May 2008, are unfairly aimed at driving away the small sellers who have been the company's backbone since its founding in 1995 as an online auction site. At Web sites like "eBay Exodus" and "ihateebay," disgruntled eBay entrepreneurs complain about management policies, swap horror stories, and post manifestos about the "psychological tactics employed by the powers that be" at the corporation based in San Jose.

In a nutshell, eBay wants its sellers to keep a 4.3 or above (out of 5-star) composite average on several metrics on which customers leave feedback. The most controversial is the shipping and handling feedback. A 4 in this metric means "reasonable," but if a seller starts getting mostly 4s, eventually that will pull her overall rating down below 4.3. If a buyer rates the shipping charges as "neutral" (3) or "unreasonable" (2)—even if that perception is mistaken—the seller's ratings will plummet and her account can be suspended. Sellers do have 30 days to increase their rating while they're suspended, but if they're not selling, it's obviously tough to get better feedback.

EBay did not respond to requests for comment submitted last week at its Web site and via voicemail. But it has long championed its small business owners at entrepreneurial conferences and training sessions for sellers. In 2006 former eBay CEO Meg Whitman gave a speech at the eBay Developers Conference, saying 1.3 million people made their living selling full-time on eBay. This year the company co-sponsored the 2008 National Small Business Summit held in Washington.

And not all of its power sellers are unhappy with the new feedback policies. Dallas entrepreneur Ann Wood says her eBay store, Willow-Wear, is on target to break sales records this month. "The end of September and the beginning of October have been amazing—particularly jewelry sales," Wood says. Since buyers are increasingly asking about the weight of her gold jewelry, she speculates that some customers may be buying gold for its perceived investment value.

Boosting Buyer Confidence Regardless of what is driving interest, Wood says, she's thrilled with her progress and thinks the feedback changes that are being criticized by many are helping to boost buyer confidence.

"They definitely set the bar high and I'm finding a surprising increase and vitality at eBay that you aren't seeing out there in the economy as a whole," Wood says, though she admits that achieving the stringent feedback ratings is tough—particularly in the area of shipping and handling, which seems to be the most controversial new rule.

"Sometimes the buyers understand shipping costs and sometimes they don't. [Keeping feedback ratings high] kind of depends on who happens to be your buyers in the 30-day period they're measuring and how they're rating you," Wood says.

This is the rub, Rodarte says: "I can't lower my shipping costs or else I'd be giving my products away." But if buyers think shipping costs are too high, or just don't like paying for shipping, they may give a seller lower marks—something that can tank feedback scores. Some eBay entrepreneurs complain that the new rules lend an unfair preference to the larger sellers who can afford to offer free shipping by folding shipping costs into their pricing structure— an arrangement that also boosts eBay's commissions.

The most frustrating thing for small sellers is the lack of communication from corporate headquarters when there's a problem, they say. E-mail questions are met with canned responses and the telephone system is an exhausting maze of automated messages. When Rodarte finally got through to a live person to ask about her suspension, she says, the individual was not able to answer her questions and advised her to send an e-mail.

No Recourse "They don't allow you to argue a suspension," says Darlene Voosen, of Mesa, Ariz. "Their decisions are unilateral and binding." She says her eBay account has been repeatedly suspended, despite her 10 years selling on eBay and more than 1,000 positive feedback comments. Although she can't find any policies she has broken, she suspects her account has been targeted simply because her last name is the same as her brother's, Tom Voosen, whose eBay stores have been repeatedly shut down over the past several years.

Tom Voosen says he has operated an eBay specialty store selling large-size shoes and Halloween costumes out of his Phoenix home for seven years. He and his wife, who is disabled, have grossed about $25,000 a month in recent years, he says. "We're both in our 60s and this is our main source of income. It gave us a reason to get up in the morning and something to feel good about," Voosen says.

His store has been closed multiple times, he says, though his feedback ratings were high and he did not have customer complaints. When he tried to find out why, he was often stymied. "Satisfaction? Zero. They don't even have a toll-free number, and you can never talk to anybody except bottom-line desk help. You can never get to speak to any management people. Any e-mails that you get are boilerplate auto-responders," Voosen says.

Eventually, Voosen learned that he had been termed a "security risk" to eBay and its subsidiary, PayPal, because cash flow issues with the store had caused his personal credit score to deteriorate. His latest store shutdown, occurring just weeks before Halloween, left him with hundreds of costumes in inventory and 210 unhappy customers who had placed orders. Once a seller is locked out of an account, he can no longer access orders or shipping information, Voosen says, so he can't even contact his customers to apologize.

From eBay to Shopify Former eBay entrepreneurs with similar stories are helping to increase business at a new online shopping site, Shopify, established in 2006 by Tobi Luetke, who used to sell snowboards on eBay from his home in Ottawa. "A lot of people, especially lately with eBay raising its rates and becoming more protective of its marketplace, have switched to us outright or graduated from eBay to a more traditional shopping cart system," Luetke says.

His frustration at eBay stemmed both from paying commissions and from the obstacles to building the community of clients he felt was necessary for his snowboard business to grow. "We weren't able to build a brand because we couldn't market effectively to existing customers and we couldn't link our auctions to our home pages and so on," Luetke says.

Shopify, which has about 3,000 active sellers, hopes to continue to lure unhappy eBay sellers, some of whom still sell on eBay but put flyers in their shipments that point customers to their Shopify Web sites or to new e-commerce sites they're setting up independently. "EBay is a great sales generator but it misses the component of a long-term plan," Luetke says.

Rodarte plans to open an independent store as well. Meanwhile, she's established a new eBay store, JDR_Favors, where she says she has managed to redirect 85% of her existing customers in the three weeks since her earlier shop was closed. This time, she says, she will be scrupulous about educating buyers on eBay's feedback system. "When we send thank you e-mails for orders, we're notifying buyers about how important it is to leave five stars," she says. "I'm also watching my ratings more closely and telling customers if they have questions about shipping charges to please e-mail me and I'll talk to them." She's also directing buyers to the Web site of the U.S. Postal Service, where they can view shipping costs and be sure they're not paying extra.

"As of yesterday, we're just about back to where we were on terms of hitting sales targets and my rating is 100% again," Rodarte says. "It's all about educating buyers."

** EBay(R) Millionaire Reveals The Step-By-Step Roadmap To Auction Riches.
45-Year Old EBay(R) Powerseller Since 1997 Laids Out A Complete Step-By-Step Roadmap On How He Has Made Over $8.7 Million On EBay(R) Over The Last 10 Years. Brand New 2009 Edition.**

By Aron Hsiao, About.com Guide to eBay

eBay's seller updates for September 2009 have been announced and once again a number of important changes are scheduled to occur. This time eBay appears to want to pacify smaller sellers while continuing to move toward a post-auction, more standard e-tailing model.

The biggest change is the new Top-Rated Seller program, available to all sellers who maintain 100 transactions/$3000 revenue over the previous year and whose DSR scores include no more than 0.5 percent (0.5%) 1-star or 2-star ratings across all four measures. Top-Rated Sellers earn a 20 percent (20%) fee discount, a prominent badge, and enhanced search placement.

The shift in DSR handling will continue across the board. The minimum 4.3 star DSR score for all sellers will no longer apply. Instead, beginning in October sellers must stay below a maximum 3-4 percent (3.0-4.0%) 1-star or 2-star ratings, depending on the measure. By April 2010 this will be reduced to a maximum 1-2 percent (1.0-2.0%) of 1-star or 2-star ratings.

Listing upgrades will also undergo an overhaul, with Featured Plus, Border, Highlight, Gift services, ProPack and Homepage Featured all disappearing by October. In their place will be Featured First, which enhances search placement but is available only to Top-Rated Sellers.

Other interesting changes include new tools to evaluate best match placement, more transparency for best match, a streamlined unpaid item process, and a new requirement that Buy It Now prices be at least 10 percent (10%) above the minimum starting bid on auction format listings.

** EBay(R) Millionaire Reveals The Step-By-Step Roadmap To Auction Riches.
45-Year Old EBay(R) Powerseller Since 1997 Laids Out A Complete Step-By-Step Roadmap On How He Has Made Over $8.7 Million On EBay(R) Over The Last 10 Years. Brand New 2009 Edition.**

Source : nytimes.com

EBay Inc., the Silicon Valley company that is practically synonymous with online auctions, is now a diversified Internet technology giant with $7.67 billion in sales in 2007.

In addition to the popular e-commerce portals eBay.com and Shopping.com, eBay owns PayPal, an online payment service; Skype, an Internet calling service; StubHub, a ticketing exchange, and several classified advertising sites around the world, including Kijiji.com.

The company was founded in September 1995, by Pierre Omidyar, a French-born programmer who was then an engineer at General Magic, a mobile communications company. According to company lore, Mr. Omidyar was inspired to create an online service for direct, person-to-person sales transactions by his wife’s interest in collecting Pez candy dispensers. The first item sold on Mr. Omidyar’s prototype site, called AuctionWeb, was a broken laser pointer, for $14.83. Mr. Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to reiterate that the item was broken, but the buyer said he did not care: he was a collector of broken laser pointers.

By the middle of 2007, the site was the host of nearly 200,000 auctions a month – many featuring pop-culture collectibles such as Beanie Babies. In early 1998, Mr. Omidyar hired an experienced manager, Meg Whitman, a former Disney executive, to lead the company, and it went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in September of that year. Central to the company’s growth and continued success is a feedback system, devised by Mr. Omidyar, in which buyers and sellers can rate each other’s trustworthiness.

While the ensuing decade was generally good to eBay and its shareholders, the company often found itself a target for various constituencies whose businesses depend on the eBay ecosystem. Both large and small sellers have reacted angrily over the years to fee increases, in some cases organizing boycotts of the service. Users have also complained about eBay’s customer service and the company’s reluctance to arbitrate disputes between buyers and sellers.

Many luxury-goods makers also accused eBay of being too lax about the sale of knock-offs on its site. Tiffany’s, for example, has alleged that 70 percent of the Tiffany jewelry for sale on eBay is counterfeit. In 2004 it sued eBay in federal court for aiding in violations of its trademark. That case is pending.

More recently the company has had to navigate a number of strategic challenges. The overall growth of its core auctions business has slowed; Amazon.com has begun to attract independent sellers, a mainstay of eBay’s business; and Google has invaded PayPal’s territory by starting its own payment system, called Checkout.

In January 2008, Ms. Whitman announced her intention to retire, citing a prior promise to stay only 10 years. John Donahoe, president of eBay’s marketplaces division and a former Bain consultant, became the chief executive of eBay Inc.

Mr. Donahoe’s primary challenges are reigniting growth in the core auction business, justifying the pricy 2005 acquisition of Skype, and getting auction-weary users to return to eBay.com and its mix of auctions and fixed-price sales. — Brad Stone

NEWS ALERT: How eBay creates millionaires