• Welcome from Brian McGregor 
• Inspirational Quote of the Day
• News and Views
• International Buying on eBay
• Small Words - Big Meaning
• Thanks again for the feedback
• A Gift from Me to You
• Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently available
• Finally
• My Products Catalogue
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Hello and welcome.

You know how you can form an impression of a person just from seeing their photo?

Well, Meg Whitman's photo has appeared in the press quite a bit lately.

Who is Meg Whitman?

If you didn't know, Meg Whitman is the Chief Executive Officer of eBay. Or CEO in business book parlance.

From her picture I had expected her to be quite a dour, serious person who wouldn't be the first to tell a joke in the pub.

Well, I've just heard her being interviewed.

What an impressive and personable individual!

If you want to put a voice to a picture, you can hear her being interviewed by the Motley Fool magazine here.

See what you think.

Good luck in all your eBay buying and eBay selling.

Speak to you again soon.

Brian
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1. My eBay Voting Booth - The Results

Thanks to everyone who stopped by at my home page and placed a vote in my recent poll about eBay services.

Well, the results are in!

As a reminder, this was the question upon which I asked for your view:

"Do you think eBay does enough to protect its members from auction fraud?"

After the seven days of polling, the "noes" had it by 632 to 203.

Put another way, it appears that 3 out of 4 members are unhappy about eBay in their endeavours on fraud prevention.

If you read my newsletter regularly, you will know this doesn't come as any surprise! In my opinion, eBay could do much more member education and add measures to prevent fraud on their site.


2. There is Hope

You know that new initiatives which take place on eBay.com can sometimes be implemented on other eBay country sites. Well, here is some really excellent news from Bill Cobb - President of eBay North America.

In summary, Mr Cobb announced a slight reduction in the recently introduced fee rises for eBay Store owners. They also plan to reduce the use of automated emails in eBay customer services, and replace these with real emails typed by real people! Plus, they will provide Store owners with telephone support. Hurrah!

Maybe this really is eBay listening to its customers i.e. you and I.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could pick up the phone and speak to someone in eBay Customer Services? Well it sounds like at least they're moving along the right lines - which is great news.

If you want to read Bill Cobb's full statement, you'll find it here.


3. eBay and Alibaba Square Up

First of all, no, this is nothing to do with the forty thieves!

Regular readers may recall that I mentioned one of eBay's main targets for growth is China. Well, eBay might not find that market as easy to dominate as some others.

Alibaba is the largest e-commerce company based in China, and their online auction subsidiary is called Taobao. Alibaba also has a payment processing tool, know as Alipay, which provides a very safe trading market.

With Alipay, buyers deposit money into a specified bank account. And sellers receive payment when the buyer verifies the deal has concluded. Alibaba has partnered with four major Chinese banks to guarantee the security of the system.

More importantly, Alibaba promises to refund any losses incurred by buyers and sellers using the system. In effect this is escrow as it was meant to be.

And we're not talking about something that might be coming. This is already here. Taobao auctions have 30 million members, and 70% of all transactions use Alipay.

Given the highly secure online auction payment environment offered to Taobao members, eBay have had to respond. In October they launched Escrow, a new payments system for their Chinese based members.

However, eBay China will have to go some to catch up to Taobao. Currently eBay only has 10 million Chinese members.

What I hope is that some of the investment eBay is making in order that the auction experience in China is more secure, will be transferred to the west!


4) That's What I Call a Corn Flake!

It didn't fetch as much as the "Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich " or a supposedly-haunted walking cane, but a giant corn flake has been sold on eBay.

The piece of cereal which measured two inches by three, fetched $156.

The owner of the corn flake, Mr John White, said he would give half of the amount paid to tsunami relief.

5) Twin Peaks of Publicity!

Angel Brammer, a 27 year old Glaswegian, made £422 on her eBay auction recently.

The item for sale was somewhat unusual. It was the legally-displayable portion of her 42GG breasts.

The winning bidder was online casino the Golden Palace, and they will have their name displayed via a temporary tattoo for fifteen days.

Both parties, by that I mean Angel and the Golden Palace, are said to be pleased with the arrangement.

Whatever next!

There's no doubt that if you're bidding and buying on eBay, you have much greater choice of items if you look on eBay.com.

eBay.com has about 10 million items on sale at any point in time. Quite a choice!

However, if you don't live in the USA, there are some obstacles in buying from USA based sellers. These include how to pay safely, customs and taxation issues and of course the physical shipping.

A new company has launched a service for eBayers which is called Borderfree. This would appear to resolve all the problems of buying from USA based eBay sellers.

What is particularly interesting about Borderfree is that there is the potential to use the service even when the seller has indicated they will only ship to the USA, and not internationally.

If you're interested in bidding on items based in the USA, but you're based outside of the USA, it might be worth taking a look at the Borderfree service.

You can read all about it here.

With more and more people joining eBay every day, this list of abbreviations could be useful. It contains terms which you may come across in auctions, in auction communications with buyers and sellers and in auction forums:

ADDY: E-mail address

AKA: Also known as

ATM: At the moment

BTW: By the way

DOA: Dead on arrival (the item you bought doesn't work when taken out of the package)

EBOOK: Although represented as a physical book image, an eBook is in digital form and is downloaded onto the users PC for viewing and/printing

FAQ: A list of Frequently Asked Questions and answers

FB: Feedback

FTP: Method for transferring files over the Internet

FVF: Final value fee - the sales commission charged by eBay

Gently Used: Item that has been used but shows little wear

HTML: The language used to create Web pages; Hypertext Mark-up Language

HTTP: The method used to transport

HTML on the Web; Hypertext Transfer Protocol

IE: Internet Explorer

ISP: Internet Service Provider. A company that gives you access to the Internet

jpg: Pronounced J-Peg. Preferred file format for pictures on eBay and QXL

Link: A photo or text on a Web page that, if clicked upon, takes you to another
place on the Internet; also known as hyperlink

LOL: Laughing out loud

LTD: Limited edition

Mint: In perfect condition (a subjective term)

MIB: Mint in box

MIMB: Mint in mint box

MIMP: Mint in mint package

MIP: Mint in package

MNB: Mint, no box

MOC: Mint on card

MOMC: Mint on mint card

MONMC: Mint on near mint card

MWBT: Mint with both tags

MWMT: Mint with mint tags

NARU: Not a registered user (suspended user)

NBW: Never been worn

NC: No cover

NIB: New in Box

NM: Near mint

NR: No Reserve price on auction - highest bid wins

NO RESERVE: See NR

NRFB: Never removed from box

OEM: Original equipment manufacturer

OOP: Out of print

S/O: Sold out

Sig: Signature

Spam: Unwanted or unrequested e-mail

TIA: Thanks in advance

URL: Uniform Resource Locator. The address that identifies a Web site

VHTF: Very hard to find

WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get

I'm sure there are many more, but these should get your abbreviation dictionary started.

You may remember, I recently launched my new product - Keyword Pro.

In the last newsletter I published a testimonial I received from a Keyword Pro customer. I just wanted to let you know we've received more complimentary testimonials this week.

It's great to hear Keyword Pro is being so well received.

I've been known to mention it before, but the auction title is without doubt the most critical part of your auction. And it will pay you to have a good presence of keywords in your title. And this is precisely where Keyword Pro comes.

You can read more about Keyword Pro here.

If you're serious about your eBay selling business, Keyword Pro is definitely for you. I look forward to welcoming you to the Keyword Pro family.

If you're looking to develop other channels of internet income, you may be interested in the Keyword Pro affiliate scheme. You'll find full details here.

Nothing surprises me when it comes to internet auctions. Amuse yourself with some of these beauties.

This first one has been sent in by Phillip...

I've heard about using your head. But this is ridiculous!

Interested in owning a genuine slice of David Beckham's life?

And I suppose this could also give you a slice of David Beckham....

Don't know if it works, but I just loved the title of this auction...

If you're looking for inspiration for February 14th, this might be for you...

Disclaimer - I have no association with any of the sellers of the above items.