Use Market Research to Craft an Unbeatable Auction!
This workshop will be held on Friday, July 7th from 11:00 PT to 12:00 PT. Sara Taheri, Dave Frey, and Morgan Brooks, marketing team from eBay Certified Provider Terapeak, will use this workshop to illustrate how market research can be used to build outstanding auctions. They will run through the process of building an auction and show how market research can be used to make the right choices.

Workshops are hosted in discussion threads on the Workshops Board. To get to the Workshops Board:

• Go to www.ebay.com
• Click on Community at the top of the page
• Click on "Workshops" in the "Events" section
• This will bring you to the threaded Workshops Board.

To view archived workshops or to learn more about future workshop events, please check our Workshops Calendar.

Want timely reminders about workshops? We recommend two ways to make sure you never miss an important workshop:

• Sign up for the Workshops Information Group! By joining this group, you will receive an email notification reminding you about upcoming eBay Workshops. (To sign up for the Workshops Information Group, please click here.)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed for the Workshop board. When a new workshop becomes active, your RSS reader will be updated. (You can also subscribe to just the specific topic thread that interests you.) To subscribe, click on the RSS button ( ) at the bottom of the Workshop board or thread. Copy and paste the feed URL into your reader to subscribe. For more information on RSS, please read our RSS Help page.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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If you list items manually through an eBay seller tool (e.g. Sell Your Item form, Turbo Lister) or the eBay API, the updated Item Specifics will be available in the next few weeks. If you utilize a 3rd party listing service (e.g., Andale, Marketworks, etc.), please contact them to verify that they will update their Item Specifics in the Cell Phones category.

For general information about Item Specifics and how to use them, please visit the Item Specifics overview page. If you have any comments or feedback about these changes, please send them to portable_electronics@ebay.com and they will be considered for future enhancements.

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In addition to stepping up enforcement against egregious violations, we have made some clarifications to our Excessive Shipping & Handling policy. The changes outline the types of charges sellers may pass on to the buyer in the form of shipping and handling. They also provide guidelines that sellers can use to make sure their listings are in compliance with the policy. Simply stated, sellers can feel confident they are in compliance by charging actual shipping fees plus actual costs for packaging materials.

As Bill mentioned, our Community has told us – and our research confirms -- excessive shipping prices drive buyers from our site. This hurts the entire marketplace. These unfair charges also un-level the playing field, allowing some sellers to hide their costs in the shipping charges to manipulate their priority in search. In the coming months, we will be proactively looking for listings that are in violation of our policy, and we'll be following up on member reports. Please know that it will take some time to clean up the marketplace, but your help and cooperation, we can regain buyer trust and re-level the playing field for the vast majority of honest sellers.

Thank you to those of you who have been reporting examples of excessive shipping that you see on our site. It is only through working together that we will make an impact on this issue.

If you would like to read further about this policy, please visit the Excessive Shipping Charges Policy page.

Sincerely,

Sarah Brubacher
Global Trust & Safety Policy Team

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Member-created Product Descriptions are based on wiki technology, which allows members to collaboratively contribute content. For instance, if you're knowledgeable about the iPod Shuffle mentioned in the first paragraph, use this feature to provide information that other Community members can use to learn about the Shuffle.

To get started, click the "Create a product description" link when you're on a Product Detail Page. If another member has already added a description for that product and you would like to add to it or edit it, click the "Edit" button below that information. You will also be able to view any revisions made by other members for each product.

These links will initially only be available on Product Detail Pages within our consumer electronics, media, and golf categories. To find them, search for a specific product in one of these categories – most items that can be listed with Pre-Filled Item Information will have a Product Detail Page. Member-Created Product Information will only be viewable on the Product Detail Page itself.

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• JP O'Brien, CEO SageFire, Inc., is the current eBay Radio Developer Showcase of the month. He'll be joined by Greg Isaacs, Director of the eBay Developers Program.
• Christophe Gillet, Product Manager of the brand new eBay FAQ feature for sellers' listings.
• Jennifer Ibarra, Associate Manager, Cause-Related Programs and Meredith Landis Marketing Associate, GlobalGiving.
• Dan Burkhart, Marketing Manager, with details and tips for the recently launched eBay Blogs.
• Chad Wehrmaker, Marketing Manager, with news about the recent release of the eBay Wiki.

And as always we'll have "The News" with Lee Mirabal, as well as the most important feature on eBay Radio: your calls! Call in during the show at 877-474-3302 (USA) or 001-858-678-8958 (Internationally) to talk with Griff and his guests or to ask a question and share your voice with the rest of the eBay Community. Remember, one lucky caller per week, selected at random, will receive an autographed copy of Griff's book, "The Official eBay Bible".

If you can't catch the live show, you can always subscribe to the , or access any past broadcast from the eBay Radio Archives. To subscribe to the podcast all you need is an  reader (a portable MP3 player is optional). Visit www.wsradio.com/ebayradio for more information about subscribing to the podcasts and to listen to eBay Radio on your computer.

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Here is how it works:

Shop to Win
Enter into the daily sweepstakes by registering on our promotion page and then purchasing an item from an eBay Store seller between June 26 and June 30. You’ll be eligible regardless of whether you use Buy It Now, or win an auction-style listing that ends during the promotion. Every day, 10 lucky winners will be randomly selected to win a $100 eBay Gift Certificate.

Play to Win
You also can play our daily instant-win game. Simply pick the "Lucky Red Door" on the promotion page - every day 100 members will instantly win an eBay Gift Certificate.

Go to http://www.ebay.com/reddoors to register now! For complete details about the rules, please click here.

Shop eBay Stores to discover more of what you love!

Sincerely,

Artemisa Saucedo
eBay Stores Marketing

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If you can't catch the live show, you can always subscribe to the , or access any past broadcast from the eBay Radio Archives. To subscribe to the podcast all you need is an reader (a portable MP3 player is optional). Visit www.wsradio.com/ebayradio for more information about subscribing to the podcasts and to listen to eBay Radio on your computer.

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Using the New Turbo Lister
This workshop will be held on Monday, June 26th from 13:00 PT to 14:00 PT. Get the help you need upgrading to the newest Turbo Lister and see how this free seller tool can make listing items in bulk even faster and easier. Download the latest version of Turbo Lister at ebay.com/turbo_lister.

Starting Price – Fish with the Right Hook
This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 27th from 10:00 PT to 11:00 PT. In this workshop, Jen Cano, Education Specialist from Certified Solution Provider HammerTap, will discuss research strategies for finding that optimal starting price. During the workshop, we'll compare starting prices to a fishing hook. If your hook is too big for the fish, you'll come away empty handed. Likewise, if your hook is too small, you'll end up giving away the bait. Just as in fishing, your hook needs to be the right size. Join us for tips on choosing a starting price that's sure to hook buyers.

Using the New Sell Your Item Form
This workshop will be held on Wednesday, June 28th from 15:00 PT to 16:00 PT. New and experienced sellers will want to join us for this workshop to discuss in the new Sell Your Item (SYI) form. With fewer pages and more customized features, the new form helps to make selling on eBay faster and easier. You can learn more about these new features here.

Using ChannelAdvisor For Your Charity Listings!
This workshop will be held on Thursday, June 29h from 13:00 PT to 14:00 PT. eBay Giving Works is the dedicated program for charity listings on eBay where sellers can list items to support nonprofit organizations. Up until now, sellers could list eBay Giving Works items only through the Sell-Your-Item form or Turbo Lister. Now sellers can also use Channel Advisor to create charity listings! Join us for this workshop to learn how to take advantage of this new functionality and use the power of cause marketing to help your listings stand out.

Workshops are hosted in discussion threads on the Workshops Board. To get to the Workshops Board:

• Go to www.ebay.com
• Click on Community at the top of the page
• Click on "Workshops" in the "Events" section
• This will bring you to the threaded Workshops Board.

To view archived workshops or to learn more about future workshop events, please check our Workshops Calendar.

Want timely reminders about workshops? We recommend two ways to make sure you never miss an important workshop:

• Sign up for the Workshops Information Group! By joining this group, you will receive an email notification reminding you about upcoming eBay Workshops. (To sign up for the Workshops Information Group, please click here.)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed for the Workshop board. When a new workshop becomes active, your RSS reader will be updated. (You can also subscribe to just the specific topic thread that interests you.) To subscribe, click on the RSS button ( ) at the bottom of the Workshop board or thread. Copy and paste the feed URL into your reader to subscribe. For more information on RSS, please read our RSS Help page.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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First, at the request of our sellers, the U.S. Postal Service has introduced their new co-branded Priority Mail® shoebox size for the eBay Community. This box (and others) are available for free to registered eBay members at http://ebaysupplies.usps.com/.

Second, eBay and the USPS realize that busy sellers need to be able to stock enough shipping supplies, so the co-branded box site no longer limits you to one box order per day. Now you can order as many boxes as you need to send all your eBay shipments!

Sincerely,

Leigh Goldstein
Director, Shipping

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From this section you can access your:

• Item Promotions. These include your cross-promotion selections and Favorite Seller Top Picks.
• Logos & Branding. Here you can add or change any personal logos or messaging that appear in your End of Auction or invoice emails, or while your buyers go through checkout.
• Stores Marketing. If you're an eBay Stores seller, you can customize your listing frame, create a promotional flyer or set up RSS to drive more traffic to your store.

You'll find Marketing Tools under the "Seller" section in the left-hand navigation of My eBay.

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So what exactly is a wiki?
We've been working on ways to help members contribute useful information and knowledge to the Community. A wiki is the perfect format to do just that. Basically, the eBay Wiki will allow members to quickly and easily create articles about a variety of eBay topics. Once created, these articles can be found by other members through a simple search.

But here's what makes the wiki so interesting. Not only can other members of the Community read these articles, but they can also add to and modify existing content. Articles are not owned by any one individual – they belong to the entire Community. By design, a wiki is collaborative - you can work with other members to provide the best material possible. Over time, the information in the eBay Wiki articles will be refined and eventually become a reflection of the collective wisdom and shared experiences of the entire Community.

This simple but powerful tool will help everyone to benefit from the shared knowledge of those who know eBay best – our buyers and sellers!

You can find the eBay Wiki at www.ebaywiki.com. Plus I'll be hosting a workshop about the eBay Wiki in early July – stay tuned for more information as we get close to the workshop date.

Sincerely,

Joe McCaffery
eBay Product Management

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Please read the details about this week's software update on the eBay Picture Services and Picture Manager discussion board, as well as detailed instructions for downloading and installing the new ActiveX control.

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What do I do with a blog?
With eBay blogs, you can create your own personalized publication featuring your own writing and links to photos. Use your blog to talk about just about anything, from tips and tricks for other eBay members, to a rundown of your recent vacation, to your love of precious stones. And if you’re a seller, keeping a blog is a great way to interact with potential buyers and to talk about your products.

Plus you can personalize your blog appearance with a variety of templates, or use HTML and style sheets to create your very own look.

You can access and search eBay Blogs at blogs.ebay.com. Once created, your personal blog will be found at blogs.ebay.com/[yourMemberID]. Start your blog now!

For more information about eBay Blogs, please see our information page and FAQs on the eBay Blogs discussion board. We're also hosting a workshop about Blogs today, June 19th, from 3-4pm PT. Click here to join us.

Sincerely,

Michael Bierman
eBay Product Management

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eBay Blogs – An Introduction to Blogs & Blogging on eBay!
This workshop will be held on Monday, June 19th from 15:00 PT to 16:00 PT. Just launched on eBay, members will now be able to create and manage an eBay Blog! Blogs are an exciting and easy new way for you to interact and showcase your personality, opinions and knowledge. eBay Staff will be on hand to discuss blogs, to help you get started, and answer your questions.

Prepare Now for Holiday Season Sales
This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 20th from 11:00 PT to 12:00 PT. For buyers, summer shopping is just beginning. But for sellers, it's time to stock your Store for the upcoming holiday shopping season! Beginning with back-to-school shopping, and continuing through Halloween and the gift-giving season, buyers are headed your way. The planning, inventory purchases and stocking of your eBay store should be happening now! Join Lisa Suttora, Founder and CEO of What Do I Sell.com™, an eBay Certified Service provider, to find out what you need to do to be ready for your buyers during the biggest shopping season of the year.

Tax Benefits for the Family eBay Business
This workshop will be held on Wednesday, June 21st from 10:00 PT to 11:00 PT. An eBay family business can be a great way to build a family legacy. Learn how to turn the tax laws to your favor by bringing family members into your business and teach your kids valuable business skills at the same time.

Global Law Enforcement Operations: How Does eBay/PayPal FIT Work with Law Enforcement Agencies?
This workshop will be held on Thursday, June 22nd from 11:00 PT to 12:00 PT. Did you know eBay helped break up a notorious Romanian Internet crime ring? Or that eBay/PayPal's Fraud Investigation Team (FIT) works with local, state, federal and international law enforcement agencies to help make eBay a safer online platform for you? This follow up workshop will again touch upon the roles and responsibilities of eBay/PayPal's worldwide Fraud Investigation Team. Join Carolyn Patterson, Senior Director of Global Law Enforcement Operations, and members of her management team for a closer look into the infrastructure of eBay's Fraud Investigation Team and highlights from their successful investigations.

Shipping Cross Border II
This workshop will be held on Friday, June 23rd from 11:00 PT to 12:00 PT. Please join Certified Solution Provider ClearPath, a Pitney Bowes service, for a discussion on what is required to sell and ship your items internationally. Topics will include how to expand your target customer base easily and successfully, how duty is calculated, and how your selection of shipping methods affects buyers. The cross-border service options available to sellers and the advantages and disadvantages of each will also be covered.

Sourcing Products at Trade Shows III
This workshop will be held on Friday, June 23rd from 14:00 PT to 15:00 PT. In part III of the Sourcing Products at Trade Shows series, Rebecca Shapiro, Artist & Creative Director of Pig and Panda, will discuss how to organize yourself when your orders start arriving, how best to automate your business so you can continue to source great product lines, and how to keep track of your accounts and manage inventory. She'll also provide tips on how to negotiate contracts and work with attorneys as you grow your business. Check out Part I and Part II for previous discussions.

Workshops are hosted in discussion threads on the Workshops Board. To get to the Workshops Board:

• Go to www.ebay.com
• Click on Community at the top of the page
• Click on "Workshops" in the "Events" section
• This will bring you to the threaded Workshops Board.

To view archived workshops or to learn more about future workshop events, please check our Workshops Calendar.

Want timely reminders about workshops? We recommend two ways to make sure you never miss an important workshop:

• Sign up for the Workshops Information Group! By joining this group, you will receive an email notification reminding you about upcoming eBay Workshops. (To sign up for the Workshops Information Group, please click here.)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed for the Workshop board. When a new workshop becomes active, your RSS reader will be updated. (You can also subscribe to just the specific topic thread that interests you.) To subscribe, click on the RSS button ( ) at the bottom of the Workshop board or thread. Copy and paste the feed URL into your reader to subscribe. For more information on RSS, please read our RSS Help page.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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The Community Hall of Fame Award was first established in 2002 at our first eBay Live! event. It celebrates and honors members of our Community who demonstrate a strong commitment to the eBay Community and practice eBay's Community Values.

This week at eBay Live! in Las Vegas, we added five new members to the eBay Community Hall of Fame. They are:

• my*only*princess
• bone*diva
• purpleferret999
• b.wind
• dave-r

I encourage everyone to visit our Community Hall of Fame page to read more about these outstanding members and their special contributions to the eBay Community.

Sincerely,

Rachel Makool
Senior Director, Community Development

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Win More Items with eBay Alerts
eBay Alerts are designed to make it easy to stay on top of - and win! - the auction listings you're interested in. We're improving our current text messaging options, and adding the ability for you to use instant messaging and actual cell phone calls to receive alerts and bid on items. I've provided more detail about each option below:

• Text Messaging (also known as SMS) - With SMS alerts, you'll be able to receive "Outbid" and "Item Ending Soon" alerts for any item you choose, and you can even re-bid on an item by replying to the SMS. One thing to note: these are considered to be "premium SMS messages" by cell phone carriers, so a $0.25 charge will be applied to your cell phone bill.

• Instant Message Alerts - Similar to SMS, you can receive free "Outbid" and "Item Ending Soon" alerts for any of your items if you're using AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, or MSN Messenger.

• Phone Call Alerts - Through a pilot program with our partner Unwired Buyer, you can receive a phone call in the last 3 minutes of a listing. From there you can check your status, or even place a bid, up until the listing has ended. Just like with the IM alerts, these calls are free (although check your cell phone plan to see if your carrier will charge for incoming calls).

Receiving Alerts
Signing up for these alerts is easy. Over the next few weeks, we'll be adding links for all three methods on item pages across the site, so simply choose any or all you’d like to receive for a particular item. The text messaging option will be available in mid-June, IM alerts will follow a few weeks later, and phone alerts will be here in mid-July.

For more information about eBay Wireless, and to learn about these new features, please see our information page.

Sincerely,

Eric Shoup
eBay Product Management

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Build your brand and express yourself with eBay Blogs
Many people are already familiar with blogs and how they work, but some of you may not be. Blogs are a way to create your own webpage where you can publish information, share your pictures, and link to your other favorite blogs. Around the internet, many people use blogs to express their points of view, share news with their families, and update their clientele with the latest business news.

eBay Blogs are a natural fit for eBay Community, and we're excited to see how you will use them in creative new ways to promote your eBay business and share your passion about eBay. (Visit www.blogs.ebay.com to learn more.)

Collaborate with the eBay Wiki
Around the internet, wiki technology offers a way for people to collaborate with others to create helpful content and share their expertise. Now the eBay Wiki brings this collaborative technology to the eBay marketplace.

eBay members are experts on all kinds of eBay-related subjects – it's one of the things that make eBay such a rich, vibrant environment to buy and sell. We hope you'll contribute your own expertise in this new forum. (Visit www.ebaywiki.com to learn more.)

Community at eBay Live! and every day…
It's a treat to be here at eBay Live! and see thousands of buyers and sellers learning and networking face-to-face. What's truly special, though, is that this sense of connection happens for many eBay members online everyday.

You, our buyers and sellers, have always found ways to connect with each other. Every day, whether it is on the Answer Center, Discussion boards, through eBay Groups, or on our Chat board, millions of members around the world connect with each other. You share tips and advice, you help each other figure out solutions to new problems, you share your passion for what you buy and sell, and you voice your concerns.

eBay has always provided a home for you to express yourself and connect with others, and we'll continue to look for new ways, like eBay Blogs and the eBay Wiki, to facilitate this activity for you. But the bottom line is that your interaction with each other is what makes eBay more than just a good place to buy and sell – it's what makes it a real marketplace, where people connect in a personal way every day. (www.ebay.com/community)

Sincerely,

Rachel Makool
Senior Director, Community Development

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We've picked 14 categories -- like Cars & Trucks, Real Estate, and Lost In Space -- to be a part of this test, which you can check out here. They're spread out across a broad range of categories, which will help us measure the how Skype works best on the eBay marketplace.

How to add Skype
When you use the Sell Your Item form to list in one of these categories, you'll be able to choose to add either a Chat or Voice button (or both) to your listings. Buyers just need to click on the buttons, register for Skype (if they haven't already done so), and then send their message. It's fast, it's easy, and it's free.

To learn more about adding Skype to your listings, click here.

Sincerely,

Henry Gomez,
General Manager, Skype North America

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We owe a lot of thanks to the many sellers and buyers who have helped us "kick the tires" over the last few weeks. We've heard from many of you about what works well and what has needed some improvement. We've already released several rounds of enhancements, with more on the way in coming weeks. Here's a summary of some of the highlights we’ve been working on:

For sellers:

• eBay Express sales tracking in My eBay. You've asked for this and we listened. Now it’s here! You can see which listings sold on eBay Express within My eBay.
• Self-hosted gallery. Sellers can now use a self-hosted Gallery photo without needing to specify the URL.
• New Search API. We've introduced a new Search API based on our new search engine, redesigned from the ground up to more easily allow developers and affiliates to drive traffic to eBay Express.
• Same seller merchandising. Buyers can now "See more items from this seller" on View Item pages within eBay Express. This will make it easier to shop for more items that qualify for eBay Express from the same seller.

For buyers:

• "Continue shopping" from shopping cart. We've improved the "Continue Shopping" button to make it more convenient and intuitive. Now it takes you back to the category where you were last shopping.
• Related Searches. We'll be adding links for "Related Searches" (similar to what we have on eBay.com) to direct users to merchandise that similar shoppers have purchased.
• Spell Check. We'll help you find what you are shopping for when there is a typo in your search term.
• Save for Later. Not only will the shopping cart hold your items for a longer period (in case you are interrupted while shopping), you will also have the ability to save items in your cart for up to 90 days.
• Cart Reminder Email. We'll send buyers who've left items in their cart a new reminder email to encourage them to complete the sale.
• Search by Item Number. You can now search for an item on eBay Express using the item ID number. Just type the item number in the search box on any page of eBay Express.

Finally, as Bill mentioned at the keynote, and as we committed to you earlier, we're launching a major integrated eBay Express marketing campaign for the back-to-school selling season. The centerpiece of the campaign will be TV commercials that build on the strength of our highly successful "it" campaign. Stay tuned for more details on the General Announcements Board.

So we'll keep working hard on more enhancements to eBay Express over the summer, and I encourage YOU to keep telling us what you think! The Comments on eBay Express survey is available on the eBay Express homepage, and we're actively monitoring the eBay Express discussion board.

Sincerely,

Lara Bridges
Director, eBay Express

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