AuctionBytes TV - Internet television for eBay users and online sellers

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <HTML> <HEAD> <title>AuctionBytes TV Internet Television Video - AuctionBytes News in Review</title> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <meta NAME="Author" CONTENT="Ranson's Scripts"> <meta NAME="description" CONTENT="BidVille reorganizes; Auction payment service BidPay closes; cMarket gets $10 mil VC; uBid goes public; Propertyroom sells more than $1 mil in November; Overstock auctions tests new checkout system; Results of SG Cowen and AC Nielsen eBay surveys; New programming on AB-TV; Info about "Turn eBay Data into Dollars; eBay serves breakfast in bed to 100 sellers."> <meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="accept, achieved, adding, agreement, album, announced, antifraud, appreciation, aprons, articles, auction, auctionbytes, auctionbytesdot, auctionbytesin, auctions, average, back, beatles, bidpay, bidville, blog, board, book, breaka, breakfast, breakfastbed, brought, buyers, canaan, cards, channel, checkout, choice, closed, cmgi, collectible, collecting, commonly, community, company, competition, complaining, concerned, conducting, conversion, cover, cowen, credit, data, datas, debut, december, demand, disney, dollar, dollars, doors, ebay, education, emails, employees, episode, fall, features, financing, find, forms, franchise, fraud, free, gary, generally, generated, group, growth, home, hundred, improving, inadequate, included, including, increases, individuals, information, introduced, issue, lack, launching, lighter, listings, local, made, major, markings, mcgrawhill, merchant, merger, million, month, months, morning, morningside, neilsen, news, newspapers, nonprofit, november, october, office, onemillion, online, orders, overstock, paper, partners, past, payment, paypal, percent, petters, poor, post, powerseller, powersellers, president, prices, program, programs, publicity, publicly, published, publishing, rates, readers, recipients, referred, remain, reorganization, resigned, respondents, results, revamped, sales, security, seller, sellers, selling, september, served, service, services, shareholders, shorts, showed, sideebay, site, sixteenhundred, slippers, slowing, sohmers, spokesperson, story, strong, stuff, support, survey, system, takes, testing, thirdparty, token, traded, tray, trips, turn, ubid, upcoming, venturesonline, walt, wanted, wearing, website, week, white, worked, "> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="FFFFFF"> <CENTER><H2>BidVille reorganizes; Auction payment service BidPay closes; cMarket gets $10 mil VC; uBid goes public; Propertyroom sells more than $1 mil in November; Overstock auctions tests new checkout system; Results of SG Cowen and AC Nielsen eBay surveys; New programming on AB-TV; Info about "Turn eBay Data into Dollars; eBay serves breakfast in bed to 100 sellers.</H2></CENTER> <BR><BR> Auction site Bidville went through a major reorganization in September, after its president resigned. A spokesperson said the company went from 12 employees down to 3 employees, but said they have been adding more features and have revamped the site over the past 4 months. Bidville has also introduced two anti-fraud programs. <BR><BR> First Data's BidPay closed its service on December 31st. Online buyers and sellers had already been complaining about a lack of choice in online payment services. AuctionBytes is conducting a survey of readers to find out what forms of payment sellers accept in their eBay listings. The results will be published in an upcoming issue of AuctionBytes-Update. <BR><BR> In News Shorts:<BR>cMarket, an auction service for the non-profit community, closed a $10 million dollar financing agreement with Canaan Partners and Morningside Ventures.<BR>Online auction site uBid. announced it has become a publicly traded company on the OTC board after a merger... CMGI and Petters Group will remain as shareholders. <BR>PropertyRoom.com achieved third-party sales of more than one-million dollars in the month of November, three months after launching its new merchant seller program. <BR>And Overstock Auctions is testing a checkout system that allows sellers to accept credit cards at low rates. <BR><BR> We'll be back after the break. <BR><BR> A survey of eBay Powersellers by SG Cowen & Company last fall indicates that the eBay franchise is strong, and Average Selling Prices and Conversion Rates are generally improving, but growth is slowing. PowerSellers said they were concerned with eBay fee increases; fraud; competition; PayPal or payment security; inadequate demand from buyers; and poor PowerSeller support from eBay. <BR>An October 2005 AC Neilsen survey of sixteen-hundred eBay sellers showed 84 percent worked out of their home and respond to 150 emails a week, not including actual orders. Respondents made an average of 4.3 trips a week to the post office, and 8 percent go seven or more times a week. <BR><BR> AuctionBytes-dot TV announced the debut of a new program, "Collecting Stuff with Gary Sohmers." Each episode gives the story behind a different collectible. The first episode takes a look at a 1960's Beatles album cover, commonly referred to as the "Butcher" cover, and the second episode looks at Walt Disney markings. You can find the new program on the Education channel of AuctionBytes-dot TV. <BR><BR> In other AuctionBytes news, you can find information about my new book out from McGraw-Hill on the website, "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" dot com. AuctionBytes is also publishing a Blog at blog-dot- auctionbytes- dot-com. <BR><BR> And on the Lighter side <BR><BR> eBay served breakfast-in-bed to one hundred PowerSellers in December as a token of appreciation. The breakfast tray was brought to recipients' doors by individuals wearing white eBay aprons. The tray included slippers and the morning paper, although some sellers may have wanted something else served to them on a tray. <BR><BR> The appreciation program generated free publicity for eBay, with local newspapers publishing articles about the program. </BODY> </HTML>