In a letter to those websites that are registered to New York state businesses participating in the Overstock.com affiliate program Geoff Atkinson Vice President announced the hopefully "temporary" discontinuation. Cited in the letter is the recently enacted NYS tax law regarding internet businesses.

Earlier this month, Amazon.com filed suit challenging the new law. "We are challenging the constitutionality of the recently enacted legislation in New York," Amazon spokeswoman Patricia Smith said.

In essence, the NYS tax law recently enacted seems to imply that any company that has a representative doing business in NYS is required to collect sales tax on any item sold to a NYS resident. In this case the State of New York is saying that if you sign up for Overstock's (or any other internet company's) affiliate program, you then become a representative of that company and in turn that company must then collect sales tax on all internet sales shipped to NYS residents. 

This law could have significant impact on affiliate programs world wide and drastically reduce income for large affiliate websites. As states try to find ways to generate income for their general funds, they will continue to search out ways to circumvent the federal statute which exempts interstate internet transactions from sales taxes.

Though the email to NYS affiliates was received today, there has been no official posting on the Overstock.com website or blog. ...<< MORE >>

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While most members have been contemplating the changes in policies eBay announced in late January, the vast majority apparently were not prepared for the additional changes announced yesterday by Brian Burke, eBay's Director, Global Feedback Policy.

The additional details posted yesterday regarding the amount of time that a buyer is required to wait before leaving negative feedback will only benefit the approximatley 200,000 eBay PowerSellers. (The number of PowerSellers is only an estimate as eBay does not publicly release detailed user numbers)

Here is a portion of the announcement posted on eBay's Announcement Board:

In January we mentioned that we'd block buyers from leaving negative or neutral Feedback for 3 days for sellers "with a track record." Since January, we've made the decision to increase the wait period to 7 days and define "track record" as active PowerSellers who have been on eBay for at least 12 months.

We studied the factors that increased risk to buyers the most and found there are three: a) a seller's Positive Feedback percentage and DSRs, b) the volume of a seller's Feedback – both in total and on an ongoing basis and c) length of time a seller has been on site.

We selected PowerSellers who have been on eBay at least 12 months in order to minimize risk to buyers, because:

All three factors prove important to predicting the risk to buyers – removing any one of them would increase risk to a level we are not currently comfortable with at this time.

We will watch all aspects of the new Feedback system very carefully, studying how the marketplace responds and we will make changes as we see appropriate.

This policy allows buyers to leave negative or neutral feedback 3 days after a purchase from Non-PowerSellers and 7 days after a purchase from an eBay PowerSeller.(Remember eBay says a neutral is not a neutral at all. In fact a neutral is weighed as 2/3 of a Negative) In addition, this rule only benefits those PowerSellers who have been PowerSellers for 12 or more months.

An email we received says "In our 7+ years selling experience on ...

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Now that the speculation is over concerning the demise of eBayLive 2009, the question arises what or who will take it's place?<< MORE >>

eBay has already announced the demise of LiveAuctions by the end of this year, and despite repeated comments that there is no intention of doing away with the auction format, why would eBay believe we would trust them? Recently eBayInk provided us with video clips of an interview between John Donahoe and Pierre Omidyar in which Pierre says the level playing field he envisioned when he created eBay, is really not what he meant. Whatever happened to sticking to your guns and standing up for what you said? ...<< MORE >>

 During the first week of April, eBay produced a video for company employees. Portions of the video were placed on ebayInk today. The portions of the video posted on ebayInk are snipets of CEO John Donahoe talking with Pierre Omidyar founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of eBay.

It would appear from the snipets and more importantly the crowd shots in the videos that this was done to show corporate solidarity for the changes eBay has been implementing over the past several months, with more coming.



In the overall scheme of things, I wonder why the world "needs" eBay? I would think that eBay in reality needs the world.

I also wonder why we have to interpret the core values. That action leaves way too much open to conjecture and is extremely subjective.

Let us know what you think! Parts 2 and 3 coming soon!

        

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Many members of the site are promoting the sale through emails, newspaper ads, and blogs. After   ...<< MORE >>

ebay & Beyond: Basics to Business is pleased to announce that through an agreement with PESA/ECMTA, we will be streaming the Best Practice Conference Call entitled List Building live on our internet radio program at www.internetauctionnewsradio.com Tuesday April 15th at 5:00 PM ET (2:00 PM PT).

Information on this conference call can be found on the PESA/ECMTA website. This call is open to anyone, but limited to the first 200 callers. If you can not call in and listen, you can listen live to our stream on your computer by going to www.internetauctionnewsradio.com and click on the LISTEN button in the center of the page.

Remember to listen to our live weekly internet radio program ebay & Beyond: Basics to Business every Saturday 10 AM to Noon ET.

        

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Another contest give-away! Just what you need,,right? Well actually this one might just change your life. Not that I want to over-dramatize the importance of our contest, however this one just might be one of the most important events you attend. 

ebay & Beyond: Basics to Business along with TradingAssistantJournal.com are offering one lucky person to try out their writing skills and at the same time have a chance to attend one of the most important E-commerce Summits of the year. In conjunction with PESA/ECMTA we are conducting our How E-commerce Feeds My Family essay contest. Now this is ...

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