Anyway I am getting overexcited.  Here is formulas for calculating eBay final value and listing fees

Listing fee

=IF(D3<0.99, 0.1, IF(D3<4.99,0.15,IF(D3<14.99,0.25,IF(D3<29.99,0.5,
IF(D3<99.99,1.30)))))/E3

Where D3 is the eBay starting or fixed price and E3 is the sell through rate. 

Final Value fee

=IF(D3<29.99, D3*0.075, IF(D3<599.99, 2.24+(D3-29.99)
*0.045,2.24+25.65+ (D3-599.99)*0.019))

Where again D3 is the eBay final price, be it auction or fixed price

Wigix is a new marketplace which aims to work like a stock market matching buyers and sellers.  As a seller you state a price you are willing to sell at and this is displayed to buyers who are looking for that item, and vise versa. 

The site works on an inventory basis which will give good structure to the listings, something which eBay lacks.  The inventory based nature of the site allows a market price to be assigned to a product, which I think is a very nice feature.  Where as on eBay you have to guess what a product is worth based on limited information, this site sticks its neck out.  However, it was not clear how the price was calculated, a rolling average perhaps.

There are no listing fees on Wigix, but i am surprised to report that it has both buyer and seller final value fees.  I find the seller side very surprising!!

I am usually super sceptical about marketplace competitors to eBay, but this one looks like it has been well constructed unlike say, Bideasi.  The problem they will have is one of momentum, as this marketplaces require huge numbers of users to give the returns required by their VC investors. Also eBay has had over 10 years to get their model right, dealing with issues such payments, fraud and building a community.  Wigix will have to catch up very quickly to be able to compete, I can only hope they have a large budget

I am somewhat less impressed with fididel.  The USP for this site is to allow buyers and seller to haggle in real time.  This is supposidly ‘fun’.  Sounds like a real pain for both buyers and sellers for me, and not something out of which a viable marketplace could be built. 

Alongside my new online baby shop, I have launched a networks for parents called Hello Baby Network. The site is run using ning.com, a service which allows people to build their own social networks. 

The idea is to provide a build a social network around the shop allowing customer to meet people with similar interests i.e. other parents.

So if you are a parent or expecting sometime soon, or perhaps all your friends of got kids and you want to see what all the fuss is about, please join up, it is free.

• Changes to feedback.  In the future sellers will not be able to leave negative feedback for buyers
• End of level playing field.  eBay is going to start giving volume sellers fee discounts.

To sweeten this pill, eBay has reduced listing fee (although raised the final value fee). 

Like the last so called strike, I think that this is all a storm in a tea cup.  A microscopic number of sellers will take part and it will have a negligable effect.  In my opinion if they are unhappy, instead of whinging sellers should quietly look for other sales channels, such as launching their own website and amazon.  Many eBay sellers are too eBay centric.

My response to changes

I am broadly in favour of the feedback change.  The feedback system in the past has been a blunt tool, with sellers either scoring above 98% or not trading.  Few buyers would leave negatives for fear of being ‘negged’ in return.  In my opinion a buyer has done their bit when they have paid, so I would make the additional change of allowing negative feedback from sellers in the situation of non payment.

As for the end of the level playing field, eBay has set the entry level for qualifying for a discount fairly low, and so it should help most business sellers.  Discounts for volumes are common in almost every other line of business, and so people should not find this so surprising.  As the change changes are linked to detailed sellers ratings these changes should incentivise good performance and lead to a better customer experience.

eBay does not make it obvious how to change these rules and I suspect that most sellers probably just leave the setting as default, where eBay selects the items which are shown in the box. Rules can be changed in the marketing Tools section of My eBay. I have just changed the rule to show items from the same shop category, although items can also be shown according to other rules such as a keyword search. 

What I found really annoying about setting these rules is that eBay give absolutely no indication of how effective any change will be.  The limited traffic stats available to eBay sellers only show page views and not where the traffic has come from. This means that any change in cross promotional rules is a stab in the dark.  I think that it is eBay’s interest to provide better statistics as better informed sellers (should) means more successful sellers.

A friend of mine told me that 99% of requests for new functionality for microsoft products is actually already available, people just don’t know where to look.  I have been trying for ages to set up emails which would send and not recieve, and finally worked out how to do it!

• Set up an emails address in the usual way
• In outlook tools > options > Send/receive, create a send/receive group for your new email account which only sends email
• When you want to send and not recieve emails, select this account only from the send/receive drop down box on the outlook mail menu

Estimated time saving:  15 minutes per day x 20 working days = approx 0.5 days month

Features:

• Two column design.  Although I think the proponents of three column listing and shop designs such as Frooition do an excellent job for a very reasonable price, three column designs are a bit busy for my liking.
• Clear branding.  Too many eBay listings ignore the opportunities which a free text HTML description field gives to build a brand and drive traffic to a website through search.
• Large images.  Images are 600 x 500 pixels, large enough to give buyers a good look at the product.  An image gallery make it easy to toggle between images
• Shop categories.  Hard coded unfortunately, but the idea is to allow browers to navigate between listings.  In the future we hope to have a more sophisticated gallery.
• Shop search.  again, to allow users to find other products for sale
• Contact details.  From a personal point of view, I find contact details reassuring.  It is also an opportunity to display the URL of my (as yet unlaunched) website to customers
• Payment and postage information.  The idea here is to give as much information as possible to customers, encouraging sales and reducing non payers.

Mr Hacker, Ha, Ha, very funny, please don’t do it again. 

Thanks to Sam from Arena Flowers for letting me know