电子商务（e-commerce)与网上生意／贸易(Internet Business)

cheechon

AB: What are the biggest challenges for eBay sellers right now?

RS: There are a number of challenges, I'm not sure I can rank them. The fees are only a subset of what the problem is. It's the fees in conjunction with less visibility at Stores. They don't have to go back to, in my view, full Stores in Search. But they raised fees to what close to Core is, and they reduced the visibility of Store items, so it's a double-whammy.

For the Store sellers, the biggest issue is fees in relationship to less visibility. I don't have any problem with eBay raising fees, I think they were low, I don't know they needed to go as high as they did.

But if they gave them some benefit from the extra fees, I think there would be a lot less pain and a lot less discontent.

So that's one, the other thing is right now what's happening is, the Market for Lemons. It was a Nobel Prize winning article, and it talked about, I'm not even sure I can explain.....

AB: I think someone at BuySafe has talked about this online, it sounds really familiar.

RS: What it basically says is what's happened in the marketplace is that you've got a seller who has more information than the buyer has about the product, so he has an advantage. And eBay relies on feedback to be the guiding - it's supposed to guide you to who's the best sellers. The almighty feedback.

I think Meg said that on average one out of every 1,000 items is a negative, so that's 99%, well that means on average, every seller on eBay is 99%. Then where do you make the differentiation? If everybody is 99%, then do you go for 99.5%, is that good?

The feedback system doesn't do the work, and you have the seller who has more information and put up information about - like these guys who put up DVD copies and say they are new. The buyer gets it, and if it works, the buyer generally says, well it worked. If it doesn't work is when they complain.

So you have all the stuff out there - sellers doing the wrong things, there's no control over them at all. Trust & Safety - I don't know what they do.

Other than the fact that they shut us down for having an R-Rated movie up. At one point early on they shut down 5,000 of my auctions because I had an R-rated movie that was listed. So I said, tell me what the guidelines are, and they said if you can't sit in a room with your 13-year-old daughter, and watch this movie, you shouldn't put it up on eBay. And I just went ballistic.

AB: Is it a rule that you can't list R-Rated movies?

RS: No, it was actually "Old School" unrated. So I said, well give me a definition of what I can list, and they said, we don't do that. We don't tell you what you can do, because we're just a venue, because if we told you, then we wouldn't be a venue. But we'll just sporadically take stuff down.

AB: So you're saying the biggest challenges are fees in conjunction with less visibility in Stores, and the idea that sellers have no way to differentiate themselves because feedback isn't doing the job it's supposed to do, and basically bad sellers can appear to be the equivalent of a good seller? There's just no way to differentiate yourself, and Trust & Safety is not really - you don't know what they're doing. Are they ineffective, would you say?

RS: They are ineffective and they try these initiatives where they went after the media sellers for putting up CDs that had cussing in it. Well, we're using their database. And we kept on telling them, you're coming down on us, it's your database. And they said, No, that's not our responsibility, it's your responsibility. And so they close auctions, they wreak havoc on you, and that's what they do, and that's what they do to the good sellers.

AB: It's an interesting idea what you said about sellers being able to differentiate themselves. What's the answer?

RS: I really do think there is. If it sounds like regulation - and I hate that word. But there has to be a third-party or some entity that is outside of eBay that registers sellers.

This is just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth. I believe eBay is flat not because the market is maturing, but they're flat because they haven't taken care of this issue.

I don't particularly care for that approach - registering sellers, but they do that on Overstock where they have the preferred sellers program, there should be some way to differentiate someone who is not registered and someone who is.

AB: Should eBay have discounts for high-volume sellers?

RS: I believe eBay should have some form of discount that allows sellers to grow. They don't believe that because they don't really want sellers to get big. And that's just again my opinion.

Because when sellers get big, they start asking for things. And again, it's just opinion, but I think that's another reason why they let me go. They kind of appease PESA. None of these big sellers on eBay are big sellers. In the rest of the world, we're small.

I wish eBay would realize that most people don't want to leave this place. They would really like to make it work here. I read on one of the boards the other day, a lady's husband had just died, and this was all she had.

When they created Stores, it worked and people were happy. I spent too much on Core. So people have this knowledge that Core doesn't work for a great number of products. Out of 40,000, I had 7,000 titles that i thought I could sell in Core.

I wouldn't even touch CDs in Core, it's too broad. Stores provided the long tail. Someone could find something in stores 2-3 months later when they were looking for it, it was there.

eBay wants velocity. They don't want a warehouse. They want velocity. And I don't think they can have it.

cheechon

AB: We talked about the high-volume sellers, do you see a divide between the high-volume sellers and the low-volume sellers?

RS: I was a low-volume seller, I grew to become a high-volume seller. When you become a high-volume seller, you should be treated as a high volume seller. You should not be treated the same way as someone who's just starting. But at every level, everybody at that level should be treated the same way.

AB: Let me go to something you said in your article on Associated Content. You said, "eBay is a ship without a rudder." What did you mean, and what makes you think that? And how long has eBay been without a rudder?

RS: I believe that they have been struggling to find the next generation of eBay for probably about a year. I think that the first reason I said "a ship without a rudder" is when the Half.com thing came up. What they try to do is use economics to mold seller behavior. They basically told Half.com sellers they were going to be gone because they wanted all the books and everything on to eBay, and they couldn't move the booksellers. So they had to capitulate and keep Half.com open. In the meantime, it just ruined the media market on eBay.

That was the first straw. Then the next one was when they build up eBay Stores like the greatest thing since sliced bread, and said we're going to give you Stores in Search. And after giving everybody these great sales, they pulled it. That to me says that they don't know what they're doing. It just doesn't seem like they know what they're doing. They're trying things and they're not working, and what it does is, it just upsets the whole marketplace. And so that's why they're a ship without a rudder.

And here's another example, they're doing sponsored search. What do you want to be? Do you want to be a shopping portal, or a shopping destination? Make up your mind.

They're saying, well we need monetize our null searches, right? We have millions of null searches every single day, we need to monetize that. That's fine. But tell your customers, your sellers, that you're becoming a portal, so they can go and buy keywords from Yahoo and move on to their website and not pay you to list product on there. Because if you're going - there's a chicken and egg thing. If sellers believe there's not enough activity, there's going to be a lot of null searches, so that's another example.

AB: Meg Whitman has been captain of the ship for a long time. These changes you're talking about have been fairly recent. Is Meg still paying attention to eBay the marketplace? Is somebody else,...?

RS: Again, it's opinion, so take it for what it's worth. I think what's happened is that Meg has traveled the world to grow, she's become the investors'... It seemed earlier on, she had an opinion that eBay didn't make decisions based on stock price. Every decision they've made recently is reactionary in my view, because their stock price sucks. And so now they're in this quarter mentality, and that's causing them to make decisions,... For me to say these things, and be a guy who failed, it's kind of - take it for what it's worth. But that's just my opinion is that that's what's happening.

And if they could convey what their plan is to their sellers, they could do it in a way that's - there's no competition, so what are you worried about? You've got no competition, so why not convey to your sellers what your plan is? Do you have a plan?

AB: Let's go back for a second to Stores in Search, because you said Stores in Search actually led to sales, phenomenal sales, I think you said.

RS: Yes.

AB: If that's the case, then why did they pull it?

RS: Well, you'll get another opinion from me. What I think happened is, they realized that core would go away. It would be drastically reduced. Because the reason Stores was so successful is because people found a less expensive way to sell their product. If core was less expensive, then they wouldn't have left core. So what happened is that when Stores started to sell, word gets around, and people stopped listing auctions.

AB: But here's the question, does it matter to the buyer if they buy on core or buy on Store, and if they're buying, what difference does it make to eBay if they still get a commission?

RS: Because they make their money on the listing fees. They don't make their money on final value fees. I mean they do, but 5 percent on,...

AB: They make their money on listing fees on core?

RS: Now they're making their money on listing fees on Stores. Once the listings started to fall, they realized their model - a majority of revenue comes from listing fees - started to fail.

AB: So what you're saying is that it was about eBay's revenue, not about the buying experience? Or did it hurt the buying experience?

RS: Well again, I believe that it was revenue, rather than buying experience, but I'm sure they got enough buyers to complain that they could legitimately say it was buyer complaints. That's just my view. I mean, I don't think they were completely disingenuous. I think they actually had people complaining.

But people were finding product. If there's some way to get the data that GMV did not decrease during that period but the revenue from listing fees dropped drastically, there you would have your answer.

And instead of trying to figure out a way to make it work, they just did this automatic, we're just going to try and get rid of a lot of product on Stores. We're going to raise the fees so you have to remove product. We're going to force you to remove product, or it's going to cost you a lot of money.

It's all punitive, it's kind of like a daddy saying to kids, you're not going to get dinner. And so, I think all those things combined have caused this distrust and everything else that's going on.

AB: I think people are going to be really curious about GlacierBayDVD, so I wonder,...what's your situation?

RS: A couple of people picked up on my article and started questioning my motivations. I discussed this with my dad, and I just want to speak out. I don't know if anybody wants to hear it, but I want to speak out. This stuff bothers me, I really care about this marketplace. So he said, well just do it.

As far as what I'm doing now, I'm actually excited about it, I've never done this speaking out kind of thing, I kind of like speaking out. So I'm going to write, and I'm going blog.

AB: Yes, when I saw that, I was wondering if you were thinking about writing a book.

RS: Well I am, actually, I've already got it outlined, but I wanted to see first of all is if there's any kind of market for it at all, and if people really cared.

I believe that they did, but until I actually put it out there, I don't know that they care. I mean, I went out of business.

Bear Stearns put in their thing, an eBay pioneer, (on the invite for the conference call for Friday), and I kind of laughed , but it's true, I was a pioneer.

And I think that's probably why I had a little bit more credibility out there. So that's kind of what I'm doing, so I'm open, I know eBay won't hire me.

cheechon

简介：

Glacier bay DVD在2006年二月为止，是eBay第二多Feedback(200,000++)的Powerseller。曾经一个月的业绩达到USD480,000，一年有5百万美金。

以上是Glacier Bay DVD的创办人, Randy Smythe讲述他在eBay的创业到倒闭的心路历程。

特地在这里跟大家分享

YenBen

原帖由 cheechon 于 21-11-2004 12:43 PM 发表

我想haryewkun兄是一名在职受薪的IT界(programmer/designer)人士吧。haryewkun兄说的没错，网上店铺确实有偏僻地区。可是这个＂偏僻地区＂由于没有地理的界限，跟现实中的＂偏僻地区＂是不同的。网络中的＂偏僻 ...

我好佩服你哦。。。。不过我有一点疑问，希望你能为我解答。。之前，你说你用少许资金开网站，我不明白的是你用什么transaction method??因为，看了你的帖，要做online bank merchant是需要很多资金的。。我也有兴趣开网站，不过面对transaction method..因为，我的target 是local de...谢谢帮我解答。。。

mutant

各位大大好...我18岁...对E-COMMERCE有兴趣..我现在可以讲是略知一二而已..各位大大建议我看什么书补补呢??我想学学大家..赚钱..呵呵..

yaofong

原帖由 haryewkun 于 19-11-2004 11:56 AM 发表
楼主应该没有真正设立过网上店铺吧。。。居然认为网上店铺没有偏僻地区？一个新开设的网站，要让世界知道自己的存在是十分困难的！除非你投资广告在 Google 或者入口网站身上，那不就跟传统生意一样了啊。要不然， ...

原来购物程式上万的啊？
我刚写完了一个。。。。

cheechon

不知不觉，这个帖子也已经2年半了。
从当初一个简单的兼职，本地市场做起。。。到现在刚成立的美国公司，全球市场。。。
幕然回首。。。
才发觉，原来已经走了这么远。

算算下，短短的几年里面， 我们出口到北美的加拿大，美国，颇多犁搁；南美的巴西，智丽；欧洲的20多个国家；中东；东欧；北欧；南亚；东南亚；奥洲，新西兰；远东地区如南韩，中国，日本；亚洲；苏联等国家， 一共41个国家。
几乎除了非洲，南北极和冰岛之外，所有的大陆我们都有客户。

再看回我的帖子，一时都不懂如何再写下去。
因为这些年来所经历的实在是太多太多了。。。
很多人是想象不到的。

这里大部分的人，都是希望赚些零用钱或当成一门小生意来看待。
跟我现在所经历的已经是两回事。

路还很漫长。。。

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
YenBen， 刚开始如果没有资金和做本地市场的话，可以在成交后要求顾客把钱存入你的银行户口（最好是公司户口）或者可以用Kiriman Wang Pos Express，Mobile Money 或 Pospay的服务。

便宜有便宜的做法，最重要的是踏实。
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
mutant，
先学好你的英文。ecommerce很多资讯都是英文的。

yaofong

原帖由 cheechon 于 7-12-2006 10:23 PM 发表
不知不觉，这个帖子也已经2年半了。
从当初一个简单的兼职，本地市场做起。。。到现在刚成立的美国公司，全球市场。。。
幕然回首。。。
才发觉，原来已经走了这么远。

算算下，短短的几年里面， 我们出口到 ...

cheechon大哥，其实我很想知道你们是出口什么的？
我和朋友最近也开始了一个，自己写的网站。。。
但commerce方面我们并不专。。

司马义

cheechon 老兄，你的citymall.com.my的生意好吗？
我也想在本地市场打滚，希望有少许成绩，多多指教

cheechon

原帖由 yaofong 于 7-12-2006 11:56 PM 发表
cheechon大哥，其实我很想知道你们是出口什么的？
我和朋友最近也开始了一个，自己写的网站。。。
但commerce方面我们并不专。。

对不起，不打算公开。

cheechon 老兄，你的citymall.com.my的生意好吗？
我也想在本地市场打滚，希望有少许成绩，多多指教

基本上，暂时还没什么进展。
我正在测试第二个阶段。

最近很多人很喜欢做本地市场，我在这里稍微分析一下本地网络市场vs国际市场。

本地市场的优势：
1. 运输方便，尤其是大件的物品几乎是没什么可能可以做国际市场。产品可以自由在境内流动和没有任何税务。
2. 交易方便快捷，可以面交（是面对面交易，但对商家不利），而且一般可以不需要通过其它的媒介，比较便宜。
3. 比较容易确认对方(买／卖家）的身份，比如说电话／地址等，交易比较安全。

本地市场的劣势:
1. 市场小，人口少，所以竞争会更激烈。
2. 假期及时间将影响销量。比如说，周末和公共假期的销量几乎等于零。外国市场由于每个国家的假期和时间不同，所以很多时候的销量都可以很好。
3. 本地的买家有很多劣根性，比如喜欢讨价还价，欺骗／不诚实（收到却说没有收到之类的），有些甚至野蛮和没有礼貌。

国际市场的优势：
1. 人口多，市场大，购买力强。
2. 货币兑换率于我们有利。


to be continue...

其实讲到尾，最重要还是本地市场小。购买力弱。

cheechon大哥, 谢谢你的解答

yaofong

cheechon，不知道poslaju的运作如何。。比如价钱如何算等等

cheechon

Poslaju通常都是隔天就到，即使东马也只是1-2天。收费也只不过是RM4.73。我从去年中到现在，送了几百个，也没有遗失过。。。

BlueJay

cheechon 大大,依你看大专教育Agent服务的网站行得通吗?
我是与一位在大马留学的外国朋友合作的,目前还在计划当中.我们想提供大马的留学资讯给有意来这里求学的外国人,并且提供一些服务,如代办签证,线上支援,报名服务等等....

yaofong

原帖由 cheechon 于 12-12-2006 10:44 PM 发表
Poslaju通常都是隔天就到，即使东马也只是1-2天。收费也只不过是RM4.73。我从去年中到现在，送了几百个，也没有遗失过。。。

要开什么户口的吗？
用Poslaju Tariff For Document吗？

[ 本帖最后由 yaofong 于 13-12-2006 12:46 AM 编辑 ]

cheechon

我可能打算在一月中搞一個兩天的電子商務的workshop

主要範圍包括﹕
1. 如何尋找和評估產品
2。如何在網站上載產品
3。如何宣傳產品及網站
4。如何收費﹐包裝及運輸
5。如何處理網上欺詐及提供售後服務
6。如何寫html及產品簡介
7。電子商務所需要注意的國際法律等

8。ebay Powerseller的tips

地點在PJ﹐一天在hotel﹐一天在computer training centre(週末).

提供﹕
茶點和午餐
課程資料
citymall的網上商店

收費是RM1000一個人﹐大家有興趣嗎?

忍者王

什么是direct ad...?我朋友说是个可以把你的网站放些广告，然后会有些收入。

这个怎么没了下文? Chee Chon 兄,我对您的電子商務workshop 有诀队的兴趣.您在Google Penang 的网址可否告知.我对電子商務在研究阶段,与您有着同样的观点,您解决了小弟很多技术上的问题,我对Marketing 方面投入比较多的时间研究.

坦白说,当看完 Chee Chon 兄所写的,小弟的确有相逢恨晚的感觉.您认为我们可以从何处开始扯上关系呢 .

cheechon

不好意识，我刚从中港澳回来。所以还没有来得及回复。
我们的Workshop将会如期进行。
如果你有任何疑问，可以一次过问我。
我可以一次过回答你。

还有一个好消息就是，我们跟DHL合作，
所有加入我们Workshop的电子商务商家，将会得到DHL的超便宜价钱。
如何便宜？比如说0.5kg到美国，只需RM35 (nett)。够便宜吧！

[ 本帖最后由 cheechon 于 1-3-2007 05:45 PM 编辑 ]

naturalsky

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昨天才发现这个贴子, 太高兴了,真的获益良多,太感激cheechon兄无私的分享!