gHacks technology news » ebay

Gmail Increases Email Security With Phishing Protection

Martin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:37:08 +0000

Phishing is still one of the biggest security threats that users face on the Internet. It basically means that criminals are sending emails to users that make them believe they are coming from an email sender that they can trust. Most phishing emails pose as emails from financial organizations like PayPal or banks and ask the user to enter user data which will then be “phished” and used to remove money from the user’s account. There are other forms of phishing including the very popular account phishing where attackers try to take over accounts on sites like eBay or games like World of Warcraft.

A new widget has been recently added to Gmail labs that increases email security by offering phishing protection for the two services PayPal and eBay. Emails send by these two services are authenticated by the widget and an authentication icon is displayed in the Gmail interface so that the user can see at first glance that the emails are coming from the original source.

The main advantage of this added layer of phishing protection is that emails that claim to be from either PayPal or eBay but are not will now be deleted before they reach the user’s email account meaning that they will not appear in the spam folder either. Google is hoping to add additional services in the future to increase the reach of the additional email security layer.

Users can add the new phishing protection by logging into their Gmail account, clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner, switching to the Labs tab and enabling the Authentication icon for verified senders widget.

Tags: ebay, Email, email security, gmail, gmail security, paypal, phishing protection

Auction Giant eBay Make Changes to Fee Structure

Melanie — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:55:44 +0000

eBay, struggling to compete with the likes of Amazon.com recently announced a new fee structure in hopes to attract new sellers. Many sellers who have previously left eBay have complained that the fees were too high and when something doesn’t sell, it costs more to list on eBay than the money it brings in.

According to a newsletter sent by eBay to its members, eBay will allow sellers to list their first five items each month without having to pay a listing fee. In the past, eBay has offered large discounts to bulk sellers on eBay leaving the burden of cost on the shoulders of those who list only a few items at a time. Former users have said, “because of this, what used to feel like an online garage sale where some treasures can be found has turned into just another online store.”

With the new fee structure, eBay hopes to turn around sales on the site. The change allows sellers to list items without paying a listing fee for the first five items listed a month. This is aimed at bringing in new sellers and bringing back many of the sellers who have left eBay because of rate increases. In lieu of the listing fees for the first five items, eBay charges a flat 8.75% commission known on eBay as the final value fee. Those familiar with selling on eBay are probably aware of the final value fee as it is charged on all sales. Because of the flat rate final value fee offered with the first five items sold each month, sellers could end up paying more in fees by using the “first five items listed are free deal” than the traditional fee structure. When a seller surpasses the first five items listed per month, they will be subject to the insertion fees, but will benefit from the tiered final value fee system.

The reaction of the eBay community is mixed with many sellers stating that the final value fee system that goes along with the free insertion fees is “a hidden way to get more money” and “more punishment for the little guy.” Following the announcement on June 16th, eBay’s stock fell 1% closing at $17.23 per share. eBay stock hit its lowest point since 2001 earlier this year, closing at $10.43 per share on March 6th. The fee change has left many to wonder, will the free listings bring eBay out of its slump or will the change in the final value fee structure drive the auction giant further into the ground?

Tags: amazon, auctions, ebay, ebay auctions, ebay fees, Online Services

eBay Business: Export My eBay Data

Martin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:48:19 +0000

Users worldwide use the auction platform eBay to buy and sell items. Several statistics are provided by eBay in the My eBay area of the website where data is available for the past 60 days. Data past that period cannot be retrieved on the eBay website at all which can be problematic for businesses and individuals who want to process the data. This can be useful to keep track of a business or simply to keep records for statistical or tax purposes.

My eBay exporter is a portable software program for eBay businesses and individuals who want to save their eBay auction data locally. The software supports 16 ebay stores including those located in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom and Canada. The user needs to supply the eBay username, password and store for the application to be able to retrieve the data from eBay. Data can be exported as a csv or Microsoft Excel file. Information saved from the buying list are won and lost auctions as well as auctions the user is watching or bidding on. The selling list contains sold and unsold auctions, current active auctions and scheduled auctions.

It should be noted that this application is also only capable of retrieving up to 60 days of data which would mean that a user would need to run the software every 60 days to retrieve continuous data. The exported files would also have to be joined later on as there does not seem to be a way to do that automatically.

Tags: ebay, ebay business, ebay export, portable software, windows software

Ebay Auction Monitor

Martin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:47:37 +0000

The eBay auction platform is still the most popular online auction system despite its decline from a friendly neighborhood auction site to a site driven by commercial auctions. If users think online auctions they tend to think eBay.

Auctions can be monitored on the eBay website easily with the disadvantage that changes are only reported to the user per email sporadically or after logging into the ebay site. Software programs that monitor eBay auctions offer the advantage that the information are available in realtime on the computer desktop without having to access the eBay website.

This gives a user more control over auctions and the bidding process. JBidWatcher was recently mentioned in Joe’s post about winning more eBay auctions. The program is available for multiple operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac. Windows users can download a portable version or an installer.

The eBay software can be linked to an eBay account. This is not necessary for users who only want to monitor eBay auctions but becomes important for the sniping module. Sniping refers to late bidding on eBay auctions which computers can do way better and more precisely than humans.

Auctions can be added by adding their auction number in the program. Another, comfortable, option is to perform searches on the selected eBay site which will add items to the eBay item list automatically. A search for Google Phone or iPhone will for example add auctions of that kind to the items list.

Items can then be sorted by time, price, time left, seller or name. Hovering the mouse over an item will display an auction image of one is existing. The eBay monitor provides access to RSS feeds which come in handy in certain situations to check eBay auctions from smartphones or other mobile devices or to process the items further.

The settings of the software program are quite extensive and include options to enter eBay username and password, to switch to a locale eBay website, set the sniping time in seconds or to specify the web browser that should be used to open the items on eBay. The only thing that seems to be missing is a statistic function that can be used to monitor item prices over time.

Tags: auctions, ebay, ebay auction, ebay monitor, ebay program, ebay software, jbidwatcher, monitor ebay, online auction

Win more eBay auctions

Joe — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:08:25 +0000

Pretty much everyone uses eBay, but it is often frustrating when you’re suddenly outbid on a rare or unique item. There are a number of strategies one can use to maximise the amount of auctions won.

Sniping is a practice that has been used for years and years. Originally this was a manual process, where users made a bid in the closing seconds of an auction. This naturally could prove risky, as internet connections can fail and bids can’t go through. Automated services also exist which are often more reliable but can prove insecure and often charge a small fee. A few years back, I used Hammersnipe which offers free sniping and I didn’t have a bad experience, although neither I or gHacks are providing a recommendation as I suggest doing a lot of research in any sniping service before you use them. This is seen as controversial, though.

One of my favourite tactics is to bid completely random amounts. Instead of 14.00GBP, I bid 14.01GBP. This is because that way, if someone had bid 14.00GBP, my bid would be counted as the maximum bid instead of theirs, event though it is only a penny higher. As many eBayers use this tactic, it may help to use more random numbers than 0.01GBP, such as 0.44GBP.

Incremental bidding, where you bid up 1GBP or a similar amount every time you’re outbid is pretty useless. You’re much better off making your maximum bid the most you’re willing to pay; eBay will automatically outbid anyone who makes a smaller bid. eBay will only outbid them by the minimum increment, so you won’t end up out of pocket

On another note, it is really worth using eBay’s best offer system. I have used this to purchase cheap mass produced foreign electronics sold in massive quantities on eBay. I managed to save 0.50GBP through making an offer on a piece of hardware which had a buy it now price of 10GBP. Not much, but a difference nonetheless.

Whilst I have given this advice with sterling, one can obviously do the same in any currency.

Tags: Advice, bid, ebay, eBay.com, online auctions, win auctions

Used Hard Drives Still Haven For Identify Theft

Martin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:02:17 +0000

Sellers are currently offering 3807 used hard drives on eBay.com alone. Add 5303 used desktop PCs, 975 Apple Desktops and thousands of other used devices like digital cameras or mobile phones that might contain data that has not been properly deleted by its previous owner. According to Techradar 66% of the used hard drives were not properly erased and contained personal data from the previous owner. It’s hard to pinpoint the validity of the number because the article fails to mention the amount of hard drives that have been tested.

The figure means that 66 used hard drives out of 100 sold would contain data data about the previous owner. Half of that number would still mean that every third used hard drive sold would contain personal data. The figures seem to grow worth instead of better with every passing year. Researchers seem to concentrate on hard drives but digital cameras or mobile phones might reveal the same amount of information including personal pictures, documents, contacts and even credit card or bank account information.

How can users protect themselves and their data? The easiest way would be to stop selling used hardware that contained data at one point. That solution is not always practicable though.

The user should make sure to make the data on the storage device unrecoverable. One of the best tools for that purpose is Eraser which can be used to clear the free disk space so that the files “underneath” cannot be recovered with file recovery software anymore.

Any tips that you might want to add? Let me know.

Tags: data theft, ebay, hard-drives, identify, identity theft, most recently used, used hard drives

Time To Look For A Skype Alternative

Martin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:34:19 +0000

The voice over IP client Skype never got off the radar of privacy activists. There were always rumors about backdoors in the voice communication software and that several organizations were able to record calls made by Skype users although Skype claimed otherwise.

Skype messages were in the focus of privacy groups since first news about text filtering messages in China became known to the public. Back then Skype released an official statement that the text filter applied by the Chinese Skype partner Tom Online would not affect security and encryption mechanisms of Skype, that people’s privacy would not be compromised and calls, chats and other forms of communication on Skype would continue to be encrypted and secure.

Researchers and privacy activists of the University of Toronto discovered files on unprotected Chinese computers that contained filtered Skype messages that were recorded in China.

The filtering system uses a blacklist that contains words that will not be shown in Skype conversations. If a blacklisted word is send over Skype the word will be filtered and the conversation recorded including personal information about the users taking part in the chat.

Some of the words that cause the filtering and recording are Tibet, Taiwan Independence and Voice of America. There is no way of telling if and how Skype is working with authorities in other countries but who would want to risk that?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has Skype replacements on their priority list with links to multiple voip clients that can be downloaded freely.

The complete report from the researchers can be downloaded at the Infowar Monitor website. The major findings list:

The full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have
communicated with TOM-Skype users, are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and
if present, the resulting data are uploaded and stored on servers in China.
These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are
stored on insecure publicly-accessible web servers together with the encryption key required to
decrypt the data.
The captured messages contain specifc keywords relating to sensitive political topics such
as Taiwan independence, the Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Communist Party
of China.
Our analysis suggests that the surveillance is not solely keyword-driven. Many of the
captured messages contain words that are too common for extensive logging, suggesting
that there may be criteria, such as specifc usernames, that determine whether messages are
captured by the system.

Tags: china, china surveilance, ebay, skype, skype backdoor, skype china, skype tom, tom online, voice over ip, voip

The Brits Surely Know How To Spread Confidential Data

Martin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:56:26 +0000

Living in the United Kingdom surely has its bright sides, you got the IT Crowd, Cider and James Bond. On the downside British government officials have been known for their lax data privacy behavior. More than one incident came to light where data of millions of British citizens landed in the wrong hands.

James Bond on the other hand would be ashamed of the most recent incident. A 28-year old delivery men thought that he made the bargain of his life by purchasing a Nikon Coolpix camera for roughly $30 on eBay.

Imagine his surprised look when he found out that the camera was filled to the brim with top secret information from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. According to Techcrunch the camera was filled with information about “al-Qaeda cells, names, images of suspected terrorists and weapons, fingerprint information, and log-in details for the Secret Service’s computer network, containing a “Top Secret” marking”.

This incident leads to two conclusions: Even if politicians claim that there will be no data privacy leaks they can and will happen. The second is that it will happen again. One only wonders how many hard drives and other storage devices have been sold with sensitive information on them.

Tags: data privacy, data protection, ebay, james bond, mi6, united kingdom

Skype Backdoor Speculations

Martin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:51:29 +0000

The well respected German website Heise Online has fueled speculations about a backdoor that is implemented in the Voice over IP software Skype. According to Heise the Austrian interior minister revealed at a conference with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception of IP based services that they were able to listen to Skype conversations which was confirmed to Heise by several attendees of the conference.

Heise was not able to get a statement from eBay about the allegations other than they would not comment on media speculations. The Austrian broadcaster ORF (German article) published an article last week that already contained the allegations that the Austrian police was able to listen to Skype conversations. The possibility to listen to Skype conversations was not trivial but doable.

Tags: backdoor, ebay, skype, skype backdoor, voip

Protect PayPal Accounts With VeriSign Identity Protection Devices

Martin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:37:13 +0000

I had a rather unpleasant experience with PayPal lately where someone transferred all the money from my account. PayPal was not very forthcoming and I do not know until today how this was possible. One of the first things that I did after this experience was to order a PayPal Security Key. I was contacted by VeriSign, the creators of those security keys, just a few days later and they send me a key as well.

The VeriSign Identity Protection device can be used to add another layer of security to the login process. The PayPal Security Key mentions only eBay and PayPal and I’m not sure if it works with the other websites and services that the VeriSign Identity Protection key works with.

The key is a little device that displays a six digit security code when a button is pressed. That code is active for 30 seconds after which it disappears again. The device has to be activated on the website that you want to use it for by entering the serial number of the device and two six digit codes.

Once a device has been linked to an account it has to be used to log into the account by pressing the button and entering the six digit code after the password on that website or by entering the login credentials normally and the six digit code on the next page where it is requested before the user can proceed.

The real benefit of this key is obviously that an attacker who is getting hold of your login credentials cannot login into the account if he does not have access to the active six digit code.

PayPal seems to heavily subsidize the key. If you order the security key at PayPal you receive a blueish-gray device for roughly 5€ while the VeriSign key is delivered in dark red for the price of $30. As I said I’m not sure if the PayPal key works with other services as well.

The VeriSign website offers two additional devices. One is the so called VIP Security Card (for $48), a credit-card sized device that seems to offer the same functionality and the SanDisk U3 TrustedSignins
which works with SanDisk U3 devices but does not seem to come with additional charges.

This is definitely a step into the right direction and I strongly suggest to everyone using eBay and PayPal regularly to get one of those security devices to add another layer of protection to their account.

Tags: aol, ebay, paypal, paypal security key, VeriSign, verisign identity protect

Gmail And Yahoo Mail Users Now Protected Against eBay And PayPal Phishing Mails

Martin — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:53:32 +0000

The award for the longest title ever could go to this one. But it’s good news actually. Both Email services are “supporting email authentication standards including DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to verify senders and help identify forged messages” for a few years now but could not eliminate all phishing emails because of companies signing their mails only partly. The filter was therefor not perfect which still meant that users were seeing phishing emails in their inboxes and spam folders.

PayPal and eBay finally made the decision to sign all emails originating from their servers including the international versions which means that it is possible to eliminate PayPal and eBay phishing emails before they even reach the inbox or spam folder. The system was tested for a few weeks silently and only a few users did notice according to the official Gmail blog.

Now any email that claims to come from “paypal.com” or “ebay.com” (and their international versions) is authenticated by Gmail and — here comes the important part — rejected if it fails to verify as actually coming from PayPal or eBay. That’s right: you won’t even see the phishing message in your spam folder. Gmail just won’t accept it at all. Conversely, if you get an message in Gmail where the “From” says “@paypal.com” or “@ebay.com,” then you’ll know it actually came from PayPal or eBay. It’s email the way it should be.

Sounds like a dream come true and could pose an end to phishing if more companies, and mail providers, would jump on the bandwagon of signed emails. Companies that come to my mind first are financial companies and other online stores. I still would not blindly trust any email from PayPal or eBay that would arrive in my inbox but it definitely is a step in the right direction. The best way to handle it is to visit the websites manually and perform the eBay or PayPal login there.

Tags: dkim, domainkeys, ebay, Email, gmail, paypal, yahoo mail

Find Misspelled eBay Auction

Martin — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:35:15 +0000

One way to save big at eBay is to find auctions that come with misspelled titles and descriptions. Someone selling a Playtation 3 will probably most likely earn less than someone who is selling a Playstation 3. A bonus would be if the user failed to place the auction in the correct category which is normally a 100% guarantee that the item will sell for less than it is worth.

Auction Bloopers is a website that is offering a search for misspelled auctions at various eBay marketplaces including eBay.com, eBay.co.uk and eBay.de. The basic search requires just a search term that is entered correctly in the search box. The script will then compute misspellings of that search term and send the user to the eBay plattform that is displaying the search results for the misspellings.

Entering Playstation for instance searches for roughly 40 misspelled terms including laystation, paystation and plystation. That search alone found 302 auctions at eBay.com using on of the misspelled terms. A word filter can be used to exclude search terms from the results. Only the title of an auction is searched by default but it is not problematic to extend the search and include the description. This can be done on the eBay website directly.

The Auction Blooper’s website is displaying the most recent and most popular searches on their website as well in case you cannot think of anything that you might want to find.

Tags: auction bloopers, auctions, ebay, search engine

eBay Auction Inquisitor

Martin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:25:29 +0000

If you purchase and sell items regularly on eBay you surely had your share of auctions that did not go as well as intended. Most of the times it’s just items that are send with delay or money transfers that go wrong. Sometimes however you run into fraudulent content which can be easily recognized by experienced eBay users while beginners will have a hard time collecting the facts that lead to a conclusion.

The eBay Auction Inquisitor analyses auctions for the user. The user has to provide an auction id which is visible on every item page on eBay and the program will analyse the auction and the seller in 25 tests. This includes seller sale history, seller feedback, Return Policy, Payment and Feedback Tests.

A list with all tests is generated and presented to the user with a final analysis that displays passed, unclear and failed tests. What I really like about the software is that it is easy to use. The only user input that is required is the item id. The report is well structured and adds some well placed advise, for example it gives the advise to compare the previous sold items with the item currently on auction to make sure the seller did not sell inexpensive items and switched suddenly to cheap expensive ones.

Experienced sellers probably do not need the Auction Inquisitor but it is definitely a nice addition to new sellers, especially when it comes to buying expensive items on eBay. The tool is available for Windows and Mac OSX

Auction Inquisitor [via Pro Reviewer]

Tags: auction inquisitor, ebay, eBay tools, software, Windows

Huge Music Collection for sale on eBay

Martin — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:32:36 +0000

I’m sometimes astonished as to what people sell at eBay. I always thought those video game collections that filled rooms where impressive but this music collection must be one of the largest sales ever on eBay. A collector is apparently selling his entire music collection on eBay which consists of more than 3 million records and 300000 CDs currently stored in a 16,000 square foot climate controlled warehouse.

The initial price for the music collection is three million Dollars with no reserve price. That’s a great bargain if you believe the estimates that the music collection is worth more than fifty million Dollars. The auction will run another two days and the buyer will even get $10 back from eBay if he applies, is not that nice..

A website was created to answer frequently asked questions like why it is for sale, what people can expect, what home they would need to store all those records and CDs. It’s interesting that the collection would be shipped world wide, wonder how much one had to pay for the shipping costs alone.

I would be really tempted to buy the collection if I had the money to do so. It would probably take ages but I guess it would be possible to make a huge fortune by selling the records and CDs separately instead.

Tags: cd, ebay, music, record

eBay overhauls feedback system

Martin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:23:47 +0000

The online auction website eBay plans to overhaul their feedback system later this year by removing the ability for sellers to leave feedback after an auction completes. This means that only buyers will be able to leave feedback about the transaction after it completes. Some might say that this gives the buyer an unfair advantage over an seller while others would say that the move makes perfect sense.

I’m not using eBay that often anymore since all that professional sellers turned it from a private to private auction site to one where professional sellers dominate. It never made that much sense to leave feedback for buyers anyway in my opinion and it was used by sellers to put pressure on the buyers. I more than once did not leave negative feedback because I knew that the seller would do the same not caring about the justification for the feedback.

Feedbacks are a way of finding out if a seller is honest and delivers the goods after payment. If an auction goes wrong or an dispute comes up sellers (and buyers) still have the option to contact eBay directly to sort things out.

Good move, bad move ? What’s your take on the change ?

Tags: auction, ebay

Online Paypal Fee Calculator

Martin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:09:22 +0000

I sometimes send and receive money with PayPal because it is very convenient to do that. I do have hard times figuring out the fees that I have to pay when sending someone money using PayPal because the fees depend on the amount of money that you transfer monthly. This is not a problem if the seller pays the PayPal fees but some sellers do not and then I have to calculate what I have to add to the sum that the seller is receiving.

The best way for all users would be if PayPal would display those fees before you make the transaction so that you can check them before sending the money. They do not display them however and a service like the PayPal Fee Calculator comes in handy to determine the fees that you have to pay.

You select the country and currency where the payment is coming from and send to, the monthly sales volume and some optional settings like 2.5% conversion fee, Credit Card fees or eChecks. A user can then calculate the fees if he would receive money or if he would send money to another user.

Once a fee is calculated you can take a look at the fee breakdown to see how the fee has been calculated. A currency converter is as well on the website to help you out with that as well.

via Donation Coder Forum

Tags: ebay, paypal, paypal fee

How to defeat Phishing

Martin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 23:16:15 +0000

Kurt mentioned in Daniel’s PayPal phishing article how he dealt with phishing and that got me thinking about the easiest way to defeat phishing for certain accounts. The answer is virtual mail accounts. I always thought about virtual mail accounts as a way to stop spam and find out which website or service sells your email but it can also be used to defeat phishing.

Virtual mail accounts can be created in many online mail accounts including Gmail and Yahoo Mail. If you wanted to create such a virtual mail account in Gmail you would simply change the email address at the site where you are registered at to youraddress+added@gmail.com. To give you an example, you could use the email ghacks+paypalcom@gmail.com as your main email in PayPal.

You would then set a filter in Gmail to filter all messages send to this email. Now, whenever an email from PayPal arrives that was not send to this virtual email address you can be sure that it is a phishing email. To be effective you need to hide this email from everyone, even the people who send or receive money. This is done by using a second email for this purpose that is not your default email in PayPal.

This system works fine if the service accepts email addresses with plus signs. Most websites need only one virtual email address, your bank for instance, eBay and every other website where the email is not visible to contacts.

Tags: ebay, Email, gmail, paypal, phishing, yahoo

Ebay Sniper Software

Martin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:33:26 +0000

Ebay Sniper tools give users the edge over those who do not use them. It takes just a fraction of a second to bid on an item using eBay Sniper softwares while it usually takes between 5-10 seconds if you bid on an item manually. These tools are usually configured to make a bid just a second or two before the auction ends making it impossible for manual bidders to place another bid before the auction ends.

Ebay Sniper tools have another use that makes them superior. It is possible to group items and configure the sniper tool the way that it bids to win one (or more) of the items in that group. So, if the price that you want to pay for an item was not enough to win the auction in the first attempt it might succeed by bidding on another item in that group.

The best free eBay Sniper software that I know is called Biet-O-Matic and can be downloaded from Sourceforge. It supports item groups, remote control over email, user accounts, unlimited items, adding items by article number or browsing and support of different languages.

Read More:

Ebay Sniper Homepage

Tags: auction, bid software, ebay, ebay sniper, sniper software

eBay Lastminute Auctions

Martin — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:54:02 +0000

I think it has become incredible hard to find bargains these days on eBay and I reduced the time I spend on eBay a lot over the last two years. Actually, I’m only visiting eBay when I know what I’m looking for and can’t find it at a local retailer or online shop. The Lastminute Auction service might make me spend more time again on eBay though. It lists auctions that are running out in an hour or less and have a maximum price of $1. Various categories like computer, business and books make it easy to navigate the website and find what you are looking for. It is also nice to just look around and see if you can find something interesting.

All main categories are divided into subcategories once you click on them. Auctions that are listed display all relevant information like name of the item, price, time left and shipping and handling fee. A click brings you right to eBay where you can make a bid on it. Localized versions for eBay Germany, Spain, Britain, Italy and Australia exist as well. You should however remember that Lastminute Auction are not updating the prices once they discovered an item. It could very well be that the current price is way above the one that is still shown on the Lastminute Auctions website.

Tags: ebay, ebay bargains, lastminute auctions

Money Makers: Auction Ads

Martin — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:30:35 +0000

This is the third part in my Money Maker series. The first part dealt with the CPM ad network Tribalfusion, the second took a look at text link advertising. This time it is a relative new service called Auction Ads created by the famous Shoemoney (that is the guy that is posing with checks from Adsense and Azoogle Ads on his website. (his biggest Adsense check was over 132000 Dollars in August 2005 and his biggest Azoogle Ads 500000) Well, Shoemoney knows the business quite well and came up with an incredible idea.

We all know that eBay has an affiliate program that rewards you if you drive traffic to their site that either signs up with eBay or purchases articles. The more articles they buy the higher your provision. Shoemoney decided to create a community of webmasters that would all use one “connection” to eBay to get the highest possible payouts. This means that all sales from all webmasters count towards the payout rate. Take a look at the examples below to see what I mean.

If you work on your own and get 5 users to sign up for eBay and use the system actively you earn $60. If you would use Auction Ads you could earn up to $22 per sign up because the sign ups from all other webmasters that use Auction Ads may get everyone in a tier level that has higher payouts.

The same effect holds true if referred users buy items on eBay. If your referred users buy items for $500 in total you get 50% of the earnings that eBay made from the sales. The combined force at Auction Ads could very well earn up to 65% of that amount.

That was the theory behind Auction Ads. The basic principle should also be clear. You display ads on your website that show auctions that are currently running at eBay. If a user clicks on the link he gets redirected to eBay where he could purchase the item or bid on it. If he buys it, either immediately or after the auction runs out, you get a share of the revenue that eBay made from the auction.

You are free to display auctions with keywords that you think would fit nicely into your theme. If you have a site about music you could create keywords for bands, albums, collections or merchandise and see how this would work out. It is possible to exclude items as well. Let us say you only want to sell hdtv TVs. If you perform the search for hdtv TVs you will soon see that there are lots of cables appearing which would also be shown on your website. If you use the keyword “hdtv -cable” you would only display hdtv links and none with cables for hdtv TVs.

You can choose between several ad forms which are mostly known from Adsense. Rectangles, banners, leaderboard and skyscrapers are all there and can be used. Takes a little bit of experimenting before you know which one works best for your website. It is also possible to change the appearance of the ads. I would suggest not to blend them because you do not get paid for clicks but only for purchases from those users. Does not make much sense to blend the ads perfectly and get lots of click throughs but no revenue at all because the users did not want to go there.

You can run Auction Ads and Adsense on the same pages which is another good feature. I think Auction Ads work best with blogs and websites that deal with products that one can buy on eBay.

Are you already using Auction Ads ? How is it working out for you ?

Tags: auction ads, ebay, ebay affiliates, making money, shoemoney

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