I had an interesting conversation with some colleagues this week, one of whom I thought was quite internet savvy. He is a regular eBay user, yet he claims to have no knowledge of a bidding method known as “snipering” an auction.

In a few short days, eBay will be testing a new policy on its guinea pigs Australian user base. From May 17, sellers will be required to offer PayPal as a payment method on all auctions. From July 1, PayPal will be the only available payment option (apart from the old pickup / cash trade). eBay hopes to attract new users to the site with their new “safer” policy. However, most comments so far suggest that it will push many (current) users away, as fees increase through the use of both (eBay owned) services.

Let’s face it, eBay is going to crap anyway, so we may as well discuss a few of my favourite eBay buying and selling techniques.

Buying Tip, Snipering and the uneven proxy amount: Well this isn’t really a tip. It’s more like an instruction. If you are new to eBay, you will (should) get used to snipering by the end of the first auction you bid on, unless of course you are an idiot and have bid too much for something that no one else wants. If not, you will notice that in the final seconds of the auction someone outbids you and you lose. That is a sniper, welcome to eBay. It is the only real way to bid and win on eBay.

Some people don’t even realise how eBay’s “proxy bidding” system works, so they will never understand sniper bids. But if you have your head around proxy bids, then you must sniper. Just like a regular proxy, work out the maximum you are prepared to pay for an item, let’s say it’s $40. For heaven sake, don’t put the $40 bid in at the start of the auction. To sniper correctly, you have to enter your $40 with only seconds to go.

But let’s say you did, and now the item is at $12 with 5 minutes to go, you’re laughing to yourself going “Gee, look at this Mary, I’m winning this thing for $12 and it’s worth $70 in the shops!” Don’t worry, if there is even one (1) other person that wants it, you’re not going to win. Even with your $40 proxy.

The item has 2 minutes to go, some idiot on dial-up puts in his “sniper” bid a few minutes out and the bidding hits $31. You’re still winning and it looks like he hit his $30 limit. Your proxy has auto-incremented your bid to $1 more than his maximum bid. 5 seconds to go, you can’t believe your eyes! F5, F5, F5. Bidding for this item has ended, you were outbid. PISS! How did that happen? WTF? It sold for $40.11? Someone beat you by 11c? Let me tell you why.

They are smarter than you. Their spend limit was $40 too, but their “smart” proxy was set at $40.11. So they win because they bid more, but only 11c more. Even though the regular minimum bid increment is $1, they have pipped you at the post for 11c. Always use an uneven proxy amount, I usually use $1.21 or something over my maximum. This is an awesome snipering technique and one that you must employ to win more on eBay.

There is another reason the odd amount can win, and it’s what I refer to as a “rounder”. I am a rounder myself, but you can’t be if you want to WIN on eBay. If an item is worth about $80-$100 and the shipping is $15. You can be guaranteed that someone will have a proxy at $85 (making the full payment round off to a neat 100 sheet). $85.11 and you could win here too.

Buying Tip, Buy Now Elimination: Sellers often start their auctions at 99c, generally because the exorbitant eBay fees. It’s ok to throw a bid on here, I like putting a very low bid on something just so it ends up in “My eBay” so I can keep an eye on it, because I generally forget if it’s just in my watch list. But its even MORE important to put a first bid on, especially if the seller has a starting price a lot lower than their “Buy Now” price. Say an item that is worth $400-$500 is listed with a starting bid of $200 and a Buy Now of $500. Put in the $200 bid immediately, get rid of that $500 price tag out of everyone else’s mind. Don’t remind them it is worth that much money, don’t let anyone else know. Oh and if someone lists something for $0.99c and $2000 Buy Now, just put the $1 in to piss them off. The “Buy Now” option disappears as soon as a bid is placed. Sucker you just wasted 10c. Note: 10c is accurate at time of writing, by the time you finish reading this post, eBay have probably upped their Buy Now fees.

Selling Tip, Go Long, Start Low use a Shill Bidder:

Go long. I always like to use the longest auction option which is 10 days. Due to proxy bidding, a 10 day listing is basically a week long advertisement for the auction that is going to happen in 9 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes. Yes that’s right, everyone knows the auction doesn’t really “happen” until the last minute. Research your market before you list. Have a look at who else is selling etc. If someone has a similar item to you with great bids and 6 days left, it might be right to put in a 5 day auction and get all those bidders to hop on yours first. Don’t let the dummy set a precedent with that auction, pushing it through the roof and then the other bidders pay too little for yours. If there are early bids, make sure the dopey one gets on your auction too. Sometimes, in this case, it is better to put it up for 7 days. Maybe pick up the dummy who misses out (because of snipers) and then thinks he has to pay way too much for yours just so he doesn’t miss out again.

Start low, the 99c auction saves you listing fees. It also looks good in the search listings when you scroll past an item that has 49 bids on it. Lots of bids attracts lots of attention, it also gives suckers that winning feeling. It also might create a bit of “bid rage” where people get suckered in to paying too much to retain that “winning feeling”.

“But its too risky to list my $1,000 stainless steel fridge for $1 starting price, what if I don’t get the money I want?”

Don’t be a fool, you never go in to battle (read “99c listing”) without a shill bidder. OMG Paul, what is a shill? A shill under eBay policy is illegal. Don’t read passed here if you have any morals. A shill is a friend of yours who bumps up the price for you. A shill makes you more money, a shill makes eBay LOTS more money, so I think they probably turn a blind eye to it. Oh but if you see evidence of shill bidding, please inform eBay.

Use your shill to push the crap out of stupid people’s early proxies. Use your shill to set your own “reserve”. Use your shill to push “rounders” to their proxy. Use your shill to win your auction if you think you are going to get crushed. Just email the under-bidder after the auction and sell it to them on the side.

Anyway, I could go on all night about eBay buying and selling techniques, but I have an item finishing in 30 minutes and I have to get my shill bidder suited up for action.

Note: Paul Cherry does not condone the use of “shill bidders” or any other method or means that violates eBay policy and local laws. This post should be read for its comedic value and used for educational purposes only.

Everything sold in a retail environment includes a “mark up”, the term is used to describe the difference between the cost of producing the product and the “juice” the retailer charges for the product.

Mark up often varies from store to store, but why? One assumes it is simply because businesses want to make more money. However, price variation occurs due to other factors such as distance, local area marketing, supply and demand etc.

Purchasing a computer in regional parts of Australia is likely to cost you more than in the city. However, purchasing fresh fruit is most likely priced the opposite. These price fluctuations are due to variables such as adding the cost of distribution and general supply and demand.

When it comes to purchasing “electrons” or something in the digital world, you might ask; “Why do prices at one domain name registrar have mark up more than 20 times that of another?”.

Well, in the digital world it comes down to things like marketing spend (recovering the cost to acquire you as a customer), customer service (helping you costs money, they want that money back), technology (some registrars software is substantially better than others, it probably cost them more to produce). Even with all that considered, you will quickly realise that the highest priced registrars probably just want the PROFIT.

The Australian domain name registrars mark up the price of com.au domain names anywhere from $5.40 to an amazing $117.45!

According to AusRegistry, Australia’s official wholesale domain name provider, there are currently 25 .auDA accredited registrars.

The Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA) charges a fee of $4.95 with every com.au registration. The wholesaler, AusRegistry charges $17.60 per com.au domain, making the wholesale rate of a com.au domain name $22.55.

These prices vary for the different .au products, as per below:

Below is a table of the auDA accredited registrars and the current retail prices. As you can see, Intaserve.com is currently the cheapest com.au registrar in Australia. This list is produced in alphabetical order, is representative of the minimum 2 year registration term and includes GST. NameScout Corporation is incorporated in Barbados and does not charge GST.

I’ve seen these billboards and bus shelter ads popping up all over Brisbane. It is for some “secret launch party” that Christian Bowman is running. I can’t see it being so “secret” if he is running advertisements all over town. I smell bollocks Christian, what is going on?

Michelle Lozanovki, one of the female contestants of the 2008 Australian Biggest Loser TV show, is apparently allergic to money. In an amazing feat of stupidity, this fat apprentice hairdresser from Sydney, NSW tonight turned down the chance to leave the house for $50k.

Here is how it went down. Michelle won the weekly challenge of being the “biggest loser” by losing the most weight in week 6 of the 12 week competition. Her prize is $50,000. The catch? Leave the Biggest Loser House and give up her place in the competition.

Leaving with the $50k also means the overall prize of the game show becomes $150,000 (the money is removed from the $200k final prize).

Her Mum comes on the show, let’s call her Mrs Stupid Lozanovki. Mrs Stupid tells her obese daughter that “her place is in the house” and that her dead grand parents would want to see her in the house. I can only assume that Mrs Stupid is filthy rich.

Michelle from Biggest Loser speaks to her original USA trainer Bob Harper and he says “take the money”. Wow, even an American is smarter than “fats Lozanovki”.

Somehow, Michelle could not see that she could leave the house in week 6, spend $500 a day on the best personal trainer for 7 days per week for the next 6 weeks ($21,000), buy the best food for about $100 a day ($4,200) and fit out an unbelievable home gym for about $10,000 and still have how much? About $15,000 of the $50,000 to spend on her new wardrobe. And that’s 6 weeks, the absolute maximum amount of time she could possibly have left in the house. If she gets voted out in 2 weeks time, she’s effectively paid $25,000 a week for “weight loss training”.

Maybe, just maybe it may have been a sensible decision if ..

• There was less than 4 people left, giving her a greater than 1/4 chance of winning the whole $200,000 (ie, 4 x $50,000) . Even then, it is still ridiculous. Tell me 1 person you know who would pay $50 for the chance to win $200, when the odds are not even really an “out of a hat” 1 in 8 chance.
• If the voting was based on viewer participation and not by the colluding bunch of fat bastards “playing the game”, or;
• She gets out of the place and gets an endorsement deal worth > $50k because someone else agrees that “health is more important than money” and decides to pay her a ridiculous sum of money to represent it.

I honestly can not wait to see her get kicked out now. If anything, this has made me want to watch the show even more.

Michelle Lozanovki, Biggest Loser or Biggestest Loser?

I want to do a few posts about the importance of analysing your server logs / website statistics, but in the mean time let me tell you a bit about the referrer data I’ve been seeing lately.

Firstly, how cool (or scary) is it to see people searching for your name? Granted that I am certainly not the only Paul Cherry in Australia, but I’ve seen several searches for “paul cherry” coming in on my logs. Am I the Paul Cherry that user was looking for?

Last night I posted some ads for staff we need at Boomerang, and “Paul Cherry, Business Development Manager, Boomerang.com.au” is on the bottom of the advertisements on Seek. Since then I have seen a few visitors coming in from Google who have searched for “paul cherry boomerang”. Those ones are definitely looking for me, but why? Maybe they just want to know if I’m a cool guy to work with? Of course I am! Just ask all the people that have worked for me that haven’t been fired. Or maybe they were looking for my direct email address to get a leg up? If that’s what you’ve visited for, here’s a hot tip: the Seek email comes directly to me anyway.

Here’s some more data I’ve been seeing:

A few hits here and there for how to cook steak and herbs to use with roast lamb, the traffic came in from terms including:

• cooking roast eye fillet steak
• roast lamb with bitter herbs
• how to cook eye fillet steak
• cooking roast lamb
• how to cook steak
• roast lamb herbs
• roast lamb

My post about ABN cancellation has attracted a few other affected Aussie’s who are searching for more information:

• abn cancellation
• cancellation of abn
• abn cancellation letter

And with my history of building high quality poker tables and providing my poker table plans on the internet, I am now seeing some traffic for:

• how to build a poker table
• cherry table plans
• making a poker table
• how to make a poker table

Of course, this is just the referrer data, there is so much more to learn from this than just what traffic you got. You can use this data to optimise for the traffic you want to get! Stay tuned for future search engine optimisation posts and I’ll teach you how analysing the web statistics you’ve got will help you get the statistics you want.
At the moment I am using a free web statistics tracker available from http://www.statcounter.com. It’s worth noting that the StatCounter website has a prestigious PR10! Clearly from all of the backlinks from people using the system and posts like this saying how good they are!

Update: I just checked the statcounter website, they’ve lost their PR10! OMG! It’s now only a PR9, buy hopefully getting another inbound link from the all-powerful Paul Cherry Blog (currently PR0) will push them back up!

I really loved the version of Downfall dubbed with the poker / collusion theme. I think this one is just as good.

Tonight on ACA they reported about all of the “stars” at Aussie Millions. They spoke to Aussie comedian Stephen Curry and Hollywood actress, turned poker pro Jennifer Tilly. Phil Laak was sitting right next to her the whole time, but they never introduced him or asked a single question. So according to A Current Affair, the only stars of poker are Hollywood celebrities, surely they could have mentioned a few of the best in that “sporting” field. They did touch on Joe Hachem for about 5 seconds, but the reporting always seems like they don’t really know what they are talking about and/or throw in too many puns. “This guy certainly knows when to hold’em and when to fold’em”.

Anyway, for my update. Apart from the fact that they ran a story about the Aussie Millions the night after I mentioned it in an email about the Phil Ivey identification mistake, they also apologised! At the end of the episode they said sorry for the error mis-identifying poker play Phil Ivey as James Blake. I win!

Tonight on A Current Affair they reported about all of the famous tennis stars you can see in Melbourne during the Australian Open events. Usually at this time of year, I would be knocking about Crown Casino in Melbourne for the Aussie Millions (Australia’s biggest poker tournament). I am not going this year, but for the past 3 or 4 years I have seen many of those tennis stars in the Crown hotel complex.

Anyhow, on tonight’s show of ACA, they reported spotting “big hitter James Blake” in Melbourne. They showed footage of their crew interviewing “Blake” outside Crown as he stepped into a limo. They must have asked him “What are you doing?” as he replied “Oh I’m just going off to play some golf, I might play some poker in the car”.

Unbeknown to the ACA reporter, they were in fact speaking to professional poker player Phil Ivey (pictured below in the shot of mine from Aussie Millions 2006). Phil loves two things, poker and golf. I am not sure if James Blake likes golf or poker, but it seemed to make sense enough for ACA to air it.

I can just imagine the Nine ACA researchers or reporters typing “black male tennis star” in to Google, to which they are presented with the first result which talks about James Blake. “Yeah that looks like him” they must have said to themselves. Or maybe they thought, “How many rich black people can there be in Melbourne? It has to be him”.

According to Wikipedia, Phil Ivey has over $8 million of recorded poker tournament winnings, a few million more than his stunt double James Blake, who has won over $5 million playing tennis.

I shot ACA an email to tell them they confused the two, it would be interesting to see if they say anything about it.

Phil Ivey has often been referred to as “the Tiger Woods of poker”, maybe James Black has been called that in the tennis world at some stage too? I am surprised ACA didn’t say they caught up with Tiger Woods.

So the Blu-ray / HD DVD war has been raging for well over a year now. A format war very much like the VHS / BETA conflict of the 80s. I had been hanging back waiting until one of the formats got crushed. However, the fight was taking far too long to decide a victor. I couldn’t bare to have this 1080p HD projector sitting here burning up watching only high definition television content any longer.

So I jumped in head first, Paul Cherry has signed exclusively to Blu-ray.

On January 3, our local computer store Umart re-opened after the Christmas break and I purchased a Blu-ray drive for my PC media center. News spread like wildfire! Within hours of my decision, news had hit over at Warner Bros. Entertainment and by the next day (January 4) Warner announced their switch to support Blu-ray exclusively too.

Warner’s sister company, New Line Cinema followed soon after with a release on January 5, stating their exclusive support for Blu-ray.

Back in August 2007, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation announced their exclusivity with HD DVD. However, after hearing the news that Paul Cherry had bought a Blu-ray player and would be recommending high definition media on Blu-ray disc to all of his friends, Paramount pulled an ace out of their sleeve.

It seems that Paramount have a sinking ship clause in their contract with HD-DVD that would allow them to change teams in the event of Warner Bros backing Blu-ray Paul Cherry purchasing Blu-ray.

With Paul Chery and Warner Bros. now on the Blu team, alongside Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,  Blu-ray will command about 70 per cent of all production output. If Paramount play their aces, Blu-ray will have a barnacles grip on Hollywood film content.

Given the money Microsoft and Toshiba have behind the HD-DVD technology, if it survives at all it looks likely to end up in desktop PCs and laptops as the popular choice for personal data storage.

So if you are planning a format war, or any type of multi-billion dollar consumer electronics decision, do the right thing and contact Paul Cherry first. It only takes one man to get behind your technology and the entire world comes crushing down on your competitors.

Many advertisers don’t realise (or care) that they are stealing from their affiliates. I am not talking about programs that shave valid sales, I simply referring to sites that have any kind of links or cross promotion that isn’t commissionable to their affiliates.

I have a few examples:

Case 1: Finance Products

At work we send a fair bit of traffic to credit card campaigns. Let’s say the bank pays affiliates for each credit card application, but has the traffic delivered directly to their main banking portal. My traffic suddenly clicks on a promotional advertisement for a personal loan and my traffic and commission has been stolen!

Solution: Create custom landing pages for the commissionable product only.

However, a few of the campaigns have successfully created custom landing pages but continue to steal traffic and money from me. How? They have links and phone numbers plastered all over the page for “call now”, “print an application form” or “go to your local branch” etc.

Solution: Get rid of those links! That really is the only answer, creating a special phone number, email address and applications forms with affiliate tracking is far beyond the capabilities of these programs so the only real solution is to remove them.

Imagine if you were a sales person working on commission in a television retail shop? Which way would you direct customers if the boss told you that only certain products in the store would pay commission? <THINK OF ANSWER HERE> That’s right! Of course you would!

Now, what if you worked with a customer, you provided all the information they needed in order to purchase a new TV, but then they spot one of the “other” products and pick up up one of those non-commissionable credit cards television sets? Would you be disappointed? Would you be angry? How long would it take you to go next door to another banks affiliate program television retailer who paid you commission on all TVs?

Maybe you could ask your boss to pay differently, maybe on a salary? After all, the bank boss doesn’t care what televisions get sold, he makes money on all products. As long as you convert those leads to sales, he’s happy! Maybe the banks should be paying me differently?

In this example, the St. George bank commits both sins. Traffic is delivered to their main banking portal and can go walk-about into other areas such as personal loans. They also have “call now” and “other ways to apply” buttons that are larger than the “Apply Now” commissionable buttons.

Case 2: Homewares Retailer

This one really is offensive. If you are an affiliate sending traffic to this program, close your eyes. The home couture affiliate program running in ClixGalore is a shocker! They have two very bad thieving mechanisms running directly in front of affiliates. Sure these guys are not the only ones doing stuff this, but it is just very easy to point out since they have it on their homepage and category sub-index pages!

1. eBay store - Home Couture auction some of their products (new) on eBay. If I send traffic to buy a new set of steak knives and then the visitor hops on over to eBay and Home Couture just happen to be selling those steak knives brand new and at any discounted price on eBay, who here is going to get the commission? It’s definitely not me!

2. Google Ads - OMG! Why am I sending my traffic to your program to hopefully make a sale and some commission when all you are doing is turning my traffic into CPC revenue for yourself? I don’t get a cut of that! Let me see how this works. I sent my traffic to Home Couture, they send my traffic on to one of their own competitors (faith in their own product?) and then help themselves (and Google) to a bit of revenue and I miss out completely. I think I am better off putting the Google ads on my own site. Sinner!

Solution: Whilst Home Couture does seem to offer an alternate landing page (for affiliate traffic) that does not have the eBay advertising on it, a simple click on the logo and you are back at the real homepage and off to bid on those steak knives. Home Couture, get rid of it! Maybe you make your pages smarter and put an “if” statement around the offending elements. IF (traffic = from_affiliates) THEN (dont_steal = true).

Case 3: Adult Product Programs

Most adult retail product websites use (read “rely on”) affiliate traffic. Many soon realise that the traffic doesn’t convert as well as they suspected so they start looking for other ways to cross promote to visitors. Linking off to DVD sister sites, dating sites, or straight up adult content sites. Some of those programs are in-house, but not commissionable and some even resend affiliate traffic directly to other programs! Many do this right under the nose of their affiliates; others do it behind closed doors. Sure this might not be considered “stealing” as direct as the other examples, but some sites will capture “leads” via newsletter signups, free trials etc and then remarket that traffic in the background (to their own site again, or to other programs as mentioned).

Solution: If you are going to steal from us, just do it behind closed doors. We can’t stand to see you rip us off blindly. Just remember that if you do rip off your affiliates, there are thousands of other adult programs who would love to get our traffic!

Affiliates: Take a good look at every site you are sending traffic to. If you think you could be bleeding sales like this, do something about it! Contact the advertiser, express your concern. If they don’t see the problem, or refuse to fix it for you, send your traffic somewhere else!