eBid Marketing Challenge!!

[*artsbanquet*]

£2000 budget per month?

Hire someone to write and send out press releases to all the relevant media?

Or sponsorship as suggested below.

A dedicated Ebid phone help line? (Not just for powersellers!)

""Someone also mentioned an RSS feed - not sure what it is, but it sounded good! Perhaps some of the money could be given to an eBidder who is able to set this up (jimbo springs to mind""

I agree with the need for a techie-expert to maybe add some features to the site - clearer help pages, discount features and so on...

[*artsbanquet*]

Just re-read Gazza's post. It's a one-off £2000, not £2000 per month! Wishful thinking....

They've also already taken on a PR firm to help. That's fantastic news.

[HelenAndGraham]

We've been discussing this 'challenge' over at Pheebay forums:

http://pheebay.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2816&start=60

and as you can see Gothicina twisted my arm a little to come here and post about RSS feeds.

First I had better say 'hello' and explain that I am a Seller+ here at eBid and operate a store although I've only recently set it up. I'm also on record over at Pheebay for congratulating eBid for some remarkable improvements of late and the excellent value they offer with the Seller+ package. So I'm definately keen to see this challenge taken up and a good result.

So back to the RSS thingy. I will walk it through slowly to try and explain what feeds are and what they can do plus offer some examples. I firmly believe investing in this area would be an excellent use of the available marketing money.

RSS is generally accepted to stand for Really Simply Syndication.

Syndication effectively means sharing. So the technology is all about sharing data. This data can be anything. The most common use you will see for RSS is constantly updated news headlines on websites. Take a look at http://www.tesco.net

Now there is nobody at Tesco constantly updating the BBC news on their home page by watching BBC News 24. They are using RSS which means that the BBC part of the Tesco home page is constantly kept up to date and requires no attention at all fro Tescos. Clever eh?

Now imagine that, instead of the BBC making the data available for their news headlines, eBid were making the data available about items for sale. Anyone with a website can display these items to encourage people to visit eBid. The latest eBid news could be published this way too.

Time for an example. Unfortunately I have to use eBay for this, but take a moment to look at this site I've only recently built (not quite finished but...). Ideally you can have that site open in another window while I talk you through what you are seeing in this window.....

http://www.firstdaycover.org.uk

So, you should be seeing a display of first day cover auctions with a little news content right at the bottom.

Now these sales are real live eBay listings. As an affiliate of eBay I can earn a share of their earnings on any sales I generate and accounts that get opened. As a domain name and hosting are so cheap now, a website like this is a useful little income generator (I have about 30 similar sites so far each targeting different product niches). But let me explain how this works....

You can click on the links down the left or across the top to switch to live listings according to that keyword. Alternatively you can type any search term you like in to the search box and see what is currently available on eBay in the product categories being covered for your choice of keyword. Try it, you wont break it.

So, what is happening? As you type a keyword or click a link my website is instantly formatting the correct URL (the web address that goes in the top of your Explorer or Firefox browser) and, behind the scenes, uses that URL to pull in all the information needed from eBay via an RSS feed. My website then formats the information and displays it to you. All of this takes place between you clicking the search button or link and seeing the results.

But then it gets a little bit cleverer. Do a search for anything you like. Make sure there are some relevant results as the site will produced default returns if it finds no eBay listings matching your input. Once you see the results on the screen look up to the top right and you see a little orange graphic with RSS on the left side of it. If you point your mouse at it you will see that the RSS feed that we created when you did your search is now available for you to copy and do whatever you like with. You could place it on a website, add it to your blog, display the results in your social webpages or simply place it on your Google or Yahoo! home page. It will always be updated and return live results to you. This is what syndication means - sharing.

So, someone running a football website can have live football auctions displayed. A retro fashion website could have suitable clothes auctions displayed etc. etc. etc.

To show you what an RSS feed basically looks like most modern browsers will now display a basic feed. Click on that little graphic, or if you have the orange RSS logo lit up on your browser toolbar, you can click that too.

If your browser is up to the job you should now see what the basic RSS feed we got from eBay looks like. All my site did was format it for display.

Feel free to play about with it as much as you like because I find that is the best way to get to grips with new things online.

If First day covers are a little boring for you then take a look at http://www.PDQmotors.com and play around there. This site is aimed at the US and displays cars listed in eBay motors.

So I hope by now I've given you at least a very basic understanding of what RSS is and how it can be used to market eBid data much wider afield on the internet.

Imagine if you can websites like the two examples displaying live eBid auctions instead or eBay.

Imagine eBidders displaying their eBid auctions on their Blogs (e.g. Google blogger which is FREE to use.)

Imagine sites like Pheebay, PSU and the myriad of other auction forums and sites displaying live, up to the minute news about eBid.

Imagine people displaying eBid auctions at MySpace or Squidoo etc.

Reaching out to the internet via RSS - to the places where potential new eBid buyers and sellers are currently surfing, is something that has to be considered in my opinion. If eBid doesn't go and find them the vast majority will never find eBid themselves because they wont search for it.

So what costs are involved? Obviously the guys upstairs will have to talk to their techie people and see what the cost is to set it up. If they get told a silly figure then they should shop around. In my opinion they can get some change from the 2K under discussion.

Once the site is RSS enabled then they need to badger us, the sellers, to use the facility. Get the feeds in to blogs, our forum signatures, news sites, Google & Yahoo home pages. If they put together a proper affiliate scheme with people like me then we will definately build complete websites to promote eBid at no cost other than the affiliate commissions (payment by results).

I will pop back in regularly over the next few days to answer any questions anyone has. Apologies to those who found this rather simplistic, but I think it is important to try and explain this technology in language that most will understand. I'm not interested in trying to look clever by using big long words LOL

I hope I've done enough to make a case for RSS but being a mod on Pheebay means I'm used to taking abuse - so feel free to slap me down if you think I deserve it!!

Finally, thanks for the opportunity to post and I apologise for the length.

Graham

NB - A side note for the gents upstairs about the Clixgalore affiliate scheme. I'm afraid most serious marketers wont touch Clixgalore with stick a mile long. So ideally, if RSS feeds were to become available, an in house affiliate scheme is needed or, failing that, a half decent alternative to Clixgalore.

[ToyCrazyUK]

HelenandGraham - thanks for that explanation. RSS is a must then - how long does it take to set up - we need it NOW!!

[Gothicina]

You certainly make a good case, you a lawer in RL Graham?

What I like about it is that it can work for all eBidder's in all countries, & the benefits continue after the original outlay.

Although no doubt the nay sayers will still complain about need for member participation.

[HannaHolly]

I'm not at all technical, but I used to use RSS feed on a web site site I ran so that there were always 'up to date and relevant posts on my forums'. It was really easy to subscribe to relevant RSS feeds ( such as BBC entertainment news) because they provided exactly the feed ( and the instructions) i needed to get the messages to appear. I still think that carefully identified sponsorship might bring a better return. However perhaps there's room for both?

[*artsbanquet*]

I could add an RSS feed to my Squidoo page if EBid had one.

Also - I know that Ciao allows members to have their E*ay listings up - is that an RSS feed as well?

Thanks for the explanation HelenAndGraham!

[Gothicina]

I could add an RSS feed to my Squidoo page if EBid had one.

Also - I know that Ciao allows members to have their E*ay listings up - is that an RSS feed as well?

Thanks for the explanation HelenAndGraham!

I don't know if the Ciao one is an RSS feed, I asked them about allowing eBid listings a few months back, but they didn't respond to my question.

[nykmedia]

Ask Gazza about the RSS feeds, as there's an ebid one on www.coupleofminutes.com. You can download free RSS coding (I use topic specific RSS on some of my sites) or you can subscribe to media sourced codes, like HannaHolly said, such as BBC news. But I don't understand how it's going to advertise & promote eBid unless the news is being read by the general public, as opposed to just your own website visitors. Wouldn't it be seen by the exact same number of people already visiting whichever sites used it? Can someone please explain, as I feel as though I am missing the point? (Sorry if this is a really stupid question.)

[nykmedia]

In response to Gazza's comment, "... we'll be toning down our online advertising for a month and the £2000 we save we are offering this for our users to spend for marketing eBid. It'll be interesting to see if we can get a better return on this money than Google and Yahoo can give us. How it is spent is up to the eBidders who take up the challenge"

I'll take up the challenge, so that's one, so far.