Shoestring Theory

Learn more about this project I mentioned Scratch earlier today. Here’s my first project: a simple eBay Final Value Fee calculator. You can use your keyboard’s number pad or the calculator to enter a sale price of an eBay item. Choose a Final Value Fee option and see the current FVF for an item versus […]

Got a couple of glitch reports. I seem to only be getting about 70 percent of the messages sent from or through eBay properly forwarded to my email account lately. This includes questions and messages from buyers. I’ve got a report from one other seller that his messages also aren’t coming through correctly. This isn’t […]

KCTV5: If it ain’t sensational, it ain’t news. Kansas City police and the FBI raided multiple Kansas City locations to bust up a multi-million dollar stolen property ring Monday, according to KCTV5 in Kansas City. The story was surprisingly solid for a KC television story, right up until the reporter, Shaun Broyls, felt the need […]

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! See the epic battle of carrot versus stick! One time only! You’ll pay for the entire seat, but only need the edge! (Bat and Carrot from OCAL) Okay, eventually we’re going to finish slogging through all the changes. Today we’ll tackle the new PowerSeller reward system. There are basically two components to […]

Editor’s note: For Sale will be a regular feature highlighting what the auction traffic is like on eBay in relation to particular events. Every Super Tuesday, pundits and politicians stick their heads out of their holes to predict whether we’ll have four more years of partisan bickering or….four more years of partisan bickering. Always a […]

I was just working on the next bit of analysis of eBay’s changes and ran across something odd. Under the banner of “Safer Payments,” PayPal may begin holding payments for some items until one of several criteria are met. I’ll deal with this in-depth in another post, but I want to highlight one of the […]

Reader Andrew over at the AuctionBytes blog sent them an awesome calculator to show the difference between the old and new fee structure on eBay. It’s set up to do individual items and the monthly impact provided you know your average item cost and sell through rate. I (and I imagine many others) built a […]

Fewer of these floating around the site? With all the coverage the new fee and feedback structures have gotten, one item that has been overlooked are the changes to PowerSeller requirements. Starting July, a score of 4.5 or more on all DSRs (based on the last 12 months) will be required for membership in the […]

A mysterious supplier who can beat my prices on every item I carry, but is always out of stock. A routine email for me to receive: “Hi, I usually buy this product at five percent of what you are selling it for, but my supplier is currently out of stock (shocking! –ed). Would you be […]

One of the many positive feedback I’ve collected. eBay seems to be being a bit two-faced with their introduction to the feedback changes. The introduction to their changes reads: The eBay Feedback system was designed to provide a simple, honest, accurate record of member experiences. An honest record of member experiences. Not seller experiences, not […]