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="eBay expects Drop-off stores and Trading Assistants to account for $200 million in gross sales in 2005, eBid officially launches US site, What is Google Base, LiveDeal secures $4.85 million in funding, eBay and Overstock new TV ad campaigns, Amazon opens up sales data to users, Andale suffers week-long site outage, eBay user finds love on auction site."> <meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="ability, access, acquisition, addressed, affected, airing, allowing, amazon, amazons, andale, anna, annas, announced, assistants, attract, attracted, attributed, auction, auctions, average, bargain, base, began, belgium, believed, bellsamazon, blog, books, brad, brit, buyers, called, campaign, canada, capital, caused, celebrating, charged, checkout, christmas, classifieds, collector, comic, comicbook, commercial, company, content, continue, corporation, corrupted, couple, customer, customers, data, database, dating, decisions, deliver, designed, director, discontinue, dollar, dollars, downplayed, draper, dropoff, dropspot, dvds, ebay, ebays, ebid, ehrenfeld, eightmonth, engaged, english, estate, europe, examine, executive, expects, features, firm, florida, formation, found, founded, franchise, free, funding, gold, google, googlebase, gross, happy, includedandale, individual, informed, investors, invitations, issues, items, jingle, joint, keeping, lasting, launch, launched, lifetime, lighter, lister, lists, livedeal, logged, love, magazines, make, marketplace, maximum, median, membership, merchandise, miami, milestone, million, minimum, model, month, motors, music, newspapers, november, october, offering, official, officially, online, opened, original, outage, overstock, owners, participated, payment, picked, pilot, porteus, price, pricing, problem, problems, program, programs, purchased, range, reporting, reports, research, returns, richards, rose, rumored, rumors, sabine, sales, salesdata, secured, seller, sellers, service, singing, site, software, sold, speculation, spring, store, stores, strong, submit, surfaced, surpassed, switch, switches, testing, things, thirdparty, torstar, trading, trends, tune, users, vendor, venture, videos, view, watchers, wedding, week, whatis, wide, wolf, word, working, year, years, "> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="FFFFFF"> <CENTER><H2>eBay expects Drop-off stores and Trading Assistants to account for $200 million in gross sales in 2005, eBid officially launches US site, What is Google Base, LiveDeal secures $4.85 million in funding, eBay and Overstock new TV ad campaigns, Amazon opens up sales data to users, Andale suffers week-long site outage, eBay user finds love on auction site.</H2></CENTER> <BR><BR> eBay's Director of Marketplace Programs - Brad Porteus - said he expects to see $200 million dollars in gross merchandise sales this year through eBay drop-off stores and Trading Assistants.  QuikDrop, an eBay drop-off store franchise, said its eBay sales surpassed $5.1 million dollars for the month of October. It attributed the milestone to strong sales in real estate and eBay Motors. Drop-off stores continue to spring up inn Europe. BAS has opened an eBay drop-off store in Belgium called DropSpot. <BR><BR> UK auction site eBid has officially launched its U.S. site. An eight-month pilot program had attracted over 10,000 U.S. buyers and sellers. eBid is offering new customers a Lifetime Gold Membership (a $79.99 -dollar value) for a dollar-20. <BR><BR> eBay watchers have been keeping an eye on Google, which is rumored to be  working on an online auction service and an online payment service. Late last month, new rumors surfaced about "Google Base," believed to be an online classifieds site. Google downplayed speculation about GoogleBase on its official blog, saying it is testing a new way for content owners to submit content to Google.   <BR><BR> LiveDeal, an online classifieds site founded by a former eBay executive, has secured $4.85 million dollars in funding. Torstar Corporation led the round, and venture capital firm Draper Richards and individual investors also participated. LiveDeal also announced the formation of a joint venture with Torstar to deliver a free online classifieds site in Canada later this year. <BR><BR> eBay launched new ads on October 20. The campaign is designed to attract buyers by celebrating the wide range of things you can buy on eBay. Ads will be run on TV and in magazines, and you can view the ads online at WhatIs [hyphen] it.com. <BR><BR> Overstock's new Christmas commercial began airing November 5. The  ad features Overstock model Sabine Ehrenfeld singing about Overstock to the tune of Jingle Bells. <BR><BR> Amazon is allowing users access to over 3 years of sales-data for books, music, videos, and DVDs sold by third-party sellers on Amazon's Marketplace. Sellers can use the data to make more informed acquisition and sales decisions. The program returns the average, minimum, maximum, and median price for items so users can examine pricing trends. Amazon Auction data is not included. <BR><BR> Andale had a site outage lasting for over a week that affected sellers ability to launch auctions to eBay. The problem, which began October 28, was caused by a bug in vendor software. The company announced on November 7 it would discontinue the use of the original database, which had become corrupted, and would switch to a new database on November 9.  Until the company switches to the new database, customers may have certain problems with Andale Lister and Andale Checkout, as well as issues with customer lists and Research and Reports data. The company said all these issues would be addressed when it switches to the new database. <BR><BR> And on the Lighter Side: English newspapers are reporting that comic-book collector Ian Rose logged on to eBay looking for a bargain... and found love instead. The 21-year-old Brit is now engaged to eBay seller Anna Wolf, 36, from Miami, Florida. Ian had purchased some of Anna's ex-husband's comic books, and now the happy couple have picked out wedding invitations on eBay. No word on whether eBay charged a fee for the dating service. </BODY> </HTML>