Spanked by eBay (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Spanked by eBay

[Mounds]

Welcome to the club, Steve. I've had my share of spankings from them, the latest debacle starting today! eBay is overrated garbage.
As for something constructive... why not host a private auction on this website?

-Tim

[flipside]

I bid $100

[ssandra]

How about selling an autographed copy of your book with an added bonus for fee of a 1 hour consultation?

Or your left shoe lace, with an added bonus of 1 hour free consultation?



Plenty of windows if you know where to look

[AjaTrinidad]

Why try to sell it on Ebay?

[MidasGirl]

Yeah it's complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Ebay is full of ****. But yeah, welcome to dealing with wtf-bay. I'm pretty sure if I go search I'll find such a thing being offered by someone else.

[dan1529]

I hadn't thought of Ebay as a bunch of stodgy oldsters who don't have their game on, but it appears that's exactly what they are.

No wonder the stock's done absolutely nothing for nearly 10 years.

_____________________________
Visit me at Casual Kitchen!
Cook More. Think More. Spend Less.

[stewartM]

Business opportunity?

[Savage]

One interesting thing to mention: Logically I was thinking that it would be a good idea to mention the auction in my newsletter. I figured that if the inspiration for that came, it would have occurred today or yesterday, so I could give people a few days' notice. But each time I thought about it, there was no inspiration behind that idea to speak of, so I never did it.

Another thing is that I still managed a small gain from this experiment. I got a little more web traffic from it, and it also stimulated some interesting discussion. And it may spark new ideas down the road.

It may have also helped at least one other person get started with a new income stream (the other guy who listed his consulting service on eBay after reading about it on my blog).

This experiment didn't cost me any money directly either, and I only had to invest a small amount of time to get it going.

So maybe it wasn't much of a gain overall, but at least it wasn't a serious loss either.

[James81]

I think you should start Stebay.

[Angela]

Pavlibay? Pavlinab?

[stewartM]

lets think slightly bigger James

development bay (crap name i know) a market place for personal development consulting services!

Steve's just proved that there's a market there, the question is how much, is the $1000 for an hour a figure that can be sustained, does the rarity of the product drive the price or is it something else, is the $1000 sustainable?

[freddy]

So will the high bidder get the consultation? Or is the deal off because of ebay. Why not try again and offer the same deal to see if you get through the radar they have set up?

[Savage]

I'm not going to try to sneak a listing through some other way. They were clear in communicating to me they don't want such services listed. I prefer to do business with those who'd welcome it, not where I have to play games.

Something better will come along. No worries.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by freddy

So will the high bidder get the consultation? Or is the deal off because of ebay. Why not try again and offer the same deal to see if you get through the radar they have set up?

Since they nuked the auction listing, I don't know who the high bidder was. But the auction didn't finish, so I can't tell who the ultimate final bidder would have been anyway. I'm not going to force it. I'll just wait for the next inspirational wave to hit.

[Zach M]

I wonder if gamegavel.com would welcome the windfall, you know, if you sell an autographed copy of Dweep or something.

Video Game Auctions | New Used Video Games | GameGavel.com

[Brad Paul]

Steve,

Don’t allow EBay to dictate the outcome of this experiment. Why not continue the auction right on the forum. Here are some suggestions.

- Begin bidding with the last highest bit - $1,000.

- Extend the action through the 7/31.

- Include some rules for submitting a bid.

- Require the highest bidder to pay for it before the consultation takes place.

I realize that this method would require an honor system, but given the nature of the prize, it just might work. And it would add another dimension to the experiment.

***

I don’t know enough about auctions to know if this is even feasible, but I just had to share this inspired idea.

[danas]

Originally Posted by Brad Paul

Steve,

Don’t allow EBay to dictate the outcome of this experiment. Why not continue the auction right on the forum. Here are some suggestions.

- Begin bidding with the last highest bit - $1,000.

- Extend the action through the 7/31.

- Include some rules for submitting a bid.

- Require the highest bidder pay for it as a donation through PayPal before the consultation takes place.

I realize that this method would require an honor system, but given the nature of the prize, it just might work. And it would add another dimension to the experiment.

***

I don’t know enough about auctions to know if this would work, but I just had to share this inspired idea.

Good idea!

[Marth]

PayPal as of a few years ago is owned and operated by Ebay, and now Ebay has a taken a stance against many virtual goods, ebooks, and intangible good sales through their site.

This is for the reason of seller disputes should a payment reversal happen. Say a credit card, verified paypal account is reversed to the buyer even though they did get the virtual goods, this type of scam paypal/ebay can almost never help the buyer reclaim the payment.

I wish now Paypal would lower transaction fees because of their stricter stance but we are still paying near 5% in Paypal transfer fees.

[Andrew Brunelle]

Damn, and I was the high bidder, but I wasn't willing to spend more than $1000 on this. In fact, I was secretly hoping someone would outbid me because I don't know if I would have put the consultation to as good use as someone who is more aligned with actually gaining clarity about issues in their life. I was just playing the eBay game. I had forgotten how much fun that was. Thanks, Steve, for inspiring me to start looking at eBay again and possibly selling/buying things there. Too bad you didn't get to see this auction through due to draconian eBay policy.

Either way, now your mystery high bidder is revealed, although it was only by about $10 or so. I'm sure it would have went for higher, at least $1500 or so, and I wasn't willing to go that high. I knew I was not going to win, but I had a great time bidding on it.

[Xamuel]

Too bad, I was really looking forward to seeing what kind of final bids you got.

Any entrepreneurs out there looking for an idea to pursue... it looks like a certain special type of auction could use a new company to facilitate it

[Lionman]

Could of had it as an auction for a copy of your book which also happens to come with a free phone consultation bonus, rather than the other way around.

[JeffTaylor]

Steve,

As a web developer, I've run into this before. The problem for eBay is that this type of transaction is frowned upon by the merchant accounts that are responsible for credit card processing. This is what is known as a 3rd party payment. In this case, eBay would be reselling your service to a another party. If that party is unhappy, they could ultimately come back and issue a charge back to eBay.

The good news is, my company is actually in the process of developing a service that might fit your needs. It's called "Average Is Over", or AIO.

This service, which is in private beta at the moment, does just what you're looking for. It connects thought leaders and visionaries with those that are looking for personalized content via auction-priced consultations.

Check out AIO: Average Is Over for more details. We'd love to have your input and involvement.

Best,
Jeff

[Savage]

Originally Posted by JeffTaylor

Steve,

As a web developer, I've run into this before. The problem for eBay is that this type of transaction is frowned upon by the merchant accounts that are responsible for credit card processing. This is what is known as a 3rd party payment. In this case, eBay would be reselling your service to a another party. If that party is unhappy, they could ultimately come back and issue a charge back to eBay.

The good news is, my company is actually in the process of developing a service that might fit your needs. It's called "Average Is Over", or AIO.

This service, which is in private beta at the moment, does just what you're looking for. It connects thought leaders and visionaries with those that are looking for personalized content via auction-priced consultations.

Check out AIO: Average Is Over for more details. We'd love to have your input and involvement.

Best,
Jeff

@Jeff: Is this service available to be used for a public auction yet?

[Weena]

Weird. I've heard people buy psychic reading from eBay. I'm not a huge fan of eBay anyway, there must be some other fun ways to retry this experiment and too bad for eBay that won't get a pig part of the cake.

[impaul99]

Steve, I have connections with a company that does LIVE auctions online. By live I mean you can create an online listing for a period of time, such as 1 week or 2 weeks or a month or whatever you want and then on the final day you actually have people bid LIVE against each other.

This site normally tailors to real auctioneers selling items in a real auction, but I know the owner and we could experiment if you'd like.

Imagine this... your readers from here go to a link, load up a live bidding app (web based), and with the click of a button they can bid up the price they're willing to pay.

On your side you can adjust the bid increments, accept incoming bids and close the bid after giving people a "last chance" or "fair warning" etc.

You can just sell one item, or potentially a whole list of items such as multiple consultations or autographed copies of your book, whatever.

If you're interested hit me up on email, it might be a fun experiment.

[Antarananda]

The auction might have been flagged / reported to eBay (possibly by multiple people), and so they had no option but to yank it. Surely you're aware, Steve, that you have "enemies" who dislike your attitude and your success...

BTW, Steve, would you ever do a Joe Vitale style "ride with me in my Rolls Royce and pick my brains for $7000" experiment? (obviously not the exact same idea, but something along those lines?) Was the eBay auction idea to test the waters with a less extravagant consultation?

[webbie]

Antarananda is correct. I made my living on ebay from 1999-2002 (a very good living) and I was told by an insider to the company that very few listings ever get yanked even for policy violations unless someone (usually a competitor) complains or flags it as a violation.

[JeffTaylor]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

@Jeff: Is this service available to be used for a public auction yet?

@Steve: We're not doing public auctions yet but I'll talk to the development team. I'm curious, would you prefer an eBay style auction or a place where anyone could submit an offer at any time. For example, rather than having an auction for a specific allotment of time, someone could say "I'd pay x for an hour phone call". You could then accept/deny the offers as they came through.

Jeff

[st33med]

I have to say this...

Did you enjoy your spanking by eBay?