Shoestring Theory

Wired’s got an interesting piece up on the nature of business models that rely on a “Free” product. Think things like flickr, YouTube, Jonathan Coulton, Facebook, etc, though the opportunities range far beyond that. It’s not groundbreaking, but strikes me as more of an introduction to an in-depth conversation. Which is convenient, as Chris Anderson (the author of the piece and editor of Wired) has a book titled FREE coming out next year.

I remember getting into an argument with my dad several years ago about the nature of the Internet and free content. He insisted that all that free stuff would go away and eventually everything online would be a pay service of one form or another. Dad wasn’t exactly wrong, he just didn’t realize who would be paying (often not the consumer) or that the price might not always be money.

I love comments sections (and great examples of why you should think before you write one). From the comments on this story:

Posted by: ihsanalshorafa
Dear Editors,

Please be advised that this article is substantially plagiarizing an article published in The Economist news publication. Such behavior is not becoming of a magazine as original as yours. The article published in The Economist can be found at

The Economist

It was published in November 2007

And the reply:

Posted by: sklassen
You do realize Chris Anderson also wrote that Economist article?

I don’t know what the legalities of plagiarizing yourself are.

Tags:   business · e-biz · e-commerce · free · gimmegimmegimmeNo Comments.

Photo from bunchofpants on flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license.

I got my eyes checked today after not having seen an optometrist for four or five years. I had the full battery of tests run, including the one where the doc dilates your eyes to stare into your brain. It pretty much forced me to take the afternoon off work as looking at my monitor made my eyes go cross-eyed and my head throb.

On the way home, I spotted a chiropractic shop I had never noticed before, “The Chiropractic Experience.” It made me wonder if any other medical-type professions would ever use a name like that. I can’t imagine booking an appointment at “The Ophthalmologic Experience” to get my eyes checked.

Come, Experience Orthodontistry!

Honey, “The Proctology Experience” called and said they had an opening.

Okay, we’ll quit there.

Tags:   business names · eyes · offtopic · vacation1 Comment

More stats from PowerSellers Unite.

Put a fork in it, for it is done. Statistics are again from PowerSellers Unite. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime.

Total listings increased 203,254 over the same time yesterday, or a 1.49 percent increase. No commentary today, I think the numbers in this series of posts have pretty much spoken for themselves.

Tags:   boycott · changes · eBayNo Comments.

More stats from PowerSellers Unite.

Barring any shocking (or even interesting) news about this year’s eBay boycott, this should be the next to last post dealing with the numbers. As always, statistics are from PowerSellers Unite. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime.

Total listings increased 39,472 over the same time yesterday, or a 0.29 percent increase. Listings have pretty much stabilized and are in line with how the month started. On some forums, I’ve seen calls to extend the boycott to really stick it to eBay, but being as how very little seems to have been stuck anywhere, well, you get the picture. Technically the boycott runs through the 25th, so I’ll check these one more time tomorrow.

Thanks for the charts PowerSellers Unite!

Tags:   boycott · changes · eBayNo Comments.

Let’s cover some background before we get to the funny auction. There were a ton of news stories this week about Paul Mawhinney putting his legendary music collection up for sale on eBay for three million dollars.

From the Pittsburg Business Times:

After 46 years of collecting and 36 years of running Record-Rama, Mr. Mawhinney’s collection includes more than 200,000 vinyl 45s, 300,000 compact discs and a total of more than 2 million recordings.

Unfortunately for Mawhinney, there are now multiple reports that the winning bidder was fraudulent. Mawhinney sounds like a hell of a character and you’ll be doing yourself a favor be reading the PBT profile of him.

That brings us to this copycat auction, I spotted last night.

Screen capture of eBay item number 170196495975.

Screen capture of eBay item number 170196495975.

Check out the seller’s feedback in the pic to the right. Yep, “shanky100kml” has a -1 feedback rating and a one million dollar auction up. The auction has no pictures and only one line of text: “10 milk crates of single 12 inch records back in the day. Records are in mint condition. Records are original.”

Feel like dropping a cool million for that?

Tags:   eBay · fraud · funny auction · Mawhinney · music · weirdNo Comments.

More stats from PowerSellers Unite.

eBay listings increased again today, putting them equal to (or even slightly above) where they were earlier this month. Statistics are again from PowerSellers Unite. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime.

Total listings increased 204,069 over the same time yesterday, or a 1.52 percent increase. In the chart at the bottom of this post, you can see the trend for the month of February up through today. There was a big spike on the 20 cent list day, followed by a plunge one week later, as one would expect. With only a day left, it seems unlikely that the boycott is having much of an effect.

Wired ran a piece on the boycott yesterday. I can’t help but suggest you read through some of the comments on the article to see the paranoia and vitriol eBay elicits.

Thanks for the charts PowerSellers Unite!

Tags:   boycott · changes · eBay · vitriolNo Comments.

Mobuzz ran a bit on Thursday dealing with the eBay changes and the Scientology brouhaha. You can find a widescreen, higher quality vid at mobuzz.tv.

Tags:   eBay · mobuzz.tv · scientology1 Comment

More stats from PowerSellers Unite.

eBay listings increased today for the first time since the boycott started. As a commenter mentioned yesterday, the big drop was likely caused by the list fee sale from the previous day. Statistics are again from PowerSellers Unite. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime.

Total listings increased 576,413 over the same time yesterday, or a 4.37 percent increase. Total listings are just over 13 million. Last year, eBay averaged about 15 million listings a day, according to a report in Barron’s. Having 12.6 million to 14.6 million daily listings this week seems to fit within that as a yearly average.

Thanks for the charts PowerSellers Unite!

Tags:   boycott · changes · eBayNo Comments.

More stats from PowerSellers Unite.

As we enter the fourth day of the boycott, we saw the biggest drop yet in auction traffic on eBay. Statistics are again from PowerSellers Unite. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime.

Also, PowerSellers Unite now has some handy graphs on the site traffic page to see how traffic changed throughout the day (just hit the above link to see them). Today’s graph is attached at the bottom of this post.

Total listings dropped 1,259,314, or a 10 percent decline from yesterday. eBay’s numbers naturally fluctuate, sometimes by large amounts, but I’m thinking there might actually be some effect from the boycott going on here. I had honestly expected to see numbers start to increase today. I was wrong.

Thanks for the charts PowerSellers Unite!

Tags:   boycott · changes · eBay2 Comments

Hey, isn’t this supposed to be more stuff about Scientology? What’s up with the comic books? Read on to solve the mystery dear reader, read on. (Screen capture of this auction).

I posted yesterday about the Church of Scientology using the VeRO program to directly end auctions. Primarily, they’ve been accused of ending auctions for e-meters, a ritual device used by the CoS (I’m just going to avoid any in-depth discussion of CoS ritual here – there are plenty of online sources if you really want to know). If you haven’t read the previous post, you probably should to get the background on all of this.

Anyway, so I was curious about whether anyone had recently listed any e-meters for sale. Right now, there are 15 auctions live featuring the word “e-meter” (notice I didn’t say there are 15 e-meters for sale, an important distinction we’ll get to in a moment). There are 10 listings that have ended:

• One protest listing about the e-meter reports.
• Two actual e-meters (one vintage).
• Five books on Scientology.
• And one Ghostbuster Proton Pack and P.K.E-Meter (which has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I love Ghostbusters and am really psyched that a new GB game is coming out).

The two e-meters that sold ended before the auctions mentioned on realitybasedcommunity.net were listed. RBC reported that two e-meter auctions were removed by the CoS last week. The fact that two sold doesn’t disprove RBC’s assertion. If the auctions ran their course before the CoS noticed them, it’s entirely plausible that one or two could slip through.

So that’s what has happened. What’s happening now, you ask? Returning to those 15 live auctions:

[Click to read more →]

Tags:   comics · CoS · e-meters · eBay · scientology · weirdNo Comments.