Frooition release a Christmas special graphics pack for eBay sellers. Perfect to get buyers in the festive shopping mood!

Our 2008 graphics pack is suitable for every Frooition client. Whether your design is light, dark, minimalist or funky, our highly talented designers will choose the best suited graphics and install it all for you within 48 hours of payment. We’ll also revert the graphics back to normal for you whenever you’re ready.

For live examples, and to read more details simply visit: http://www.frooition.com/pages/christmas.html!

eBay has been a victim of phishing emails since the conception of the idea I bet! With hundreds of new users flooding to eBay all the time, phishing emails have become a common occurrence. In my personal inbox I get at least 3 or 4 eBay phishing emails a day, which are getting ever more convincing.

eBay have worked hard to beat the ‘phishers’ by trying to educate its members. They even have a tutorial on how to spot a spoof emails and the eBay toolbar is a must for eBay users.

Symantec have been following the scam of Trojan.Bayrob - Buying a Fake Jeep

In order to attract potential victims the scammers first list cars for sale on various auction sites. These auctions are not scams per se, but they are “legit” auctions that are used solely to attract potential victims—whoever asks a question or bids on these auctions becomes a potential victim. Once these auctions have expired the scammers get to work emailing each potential victim. These emails explain that the winner of the original auction was unable to pay, so the car has been re-listed on the auction.

Once the email is opened the trojan is silently dropped and executed on the victims computer. The scammers do not pursue the victim until the trojan has confirmed a proper installation on the machine and is working properly. Once the location of the victim is confirmed, and they are too far away from the vehicle to visit, a second email is sent.

Not only does the Trojan show a fake auction, it is also able to show fake feedback for the alleged seller too. When viewed from the infected machine the feedback page for the auction user

The infected machine then mirrors the entire auction process from start to finish to complete the fake sale.

With ever growing sophisticated criminals behind such scams, users and business owners need to be extra vigilant. Always use the eBay portal to conduct your eBay trading.

Some eBay sellers do use legitimate third party checkouts for their eBay business. This should be mentioned on the listing or at eBay checkout if they want the buyer to have confidence. You can also ask eBay or do your own research before you pay. You should only checkout if the seller is using an approved third party eBay tool as listed in the Solutions Directory. You will usually see a small logo at the bottom of the listing if a seller is using such a tool.

This week (12th to the 16th November) is Get Safe Online Week 2007 and Get Safe Online is sponsored by the government to offer independent, expert advice on how you can stay safe and secure when using the internet.

With online fraud and identity theft are on the rise, it is imperative that internet shoppers protect themselves from their PC upwards.

1. Use a firewall.

A firewall is a first line defence against hackers and virus attacks. It acts as a barrier between the public network and yourselves. Windows does have its own firewall (I would only recommend Windows XP and Vista, as the older versions of windows are now obsolete in security terms) Firewalls are not sufficient on their own to guarantee security, and should be regarded as only a part of your security considerations.

2. Install Anti Virus Software.

McAfee is a popular choice in the UK as it comes installed on most new computers. The subscriptions to commercial antivirus software can cost between £30 and £60 annually, depending on the level of service you require.

Anti virus software kept up to date will scan your computer and emails on a regular basis protecting and eliminating, spy ware, spam, viruses and identity theft.

Trend Micro offer a free ‘House call’ scan of your PC for viruses and the like as well as their paid for service.

3. Stop Spyware

Spyware are those annoying pop ups and sneaky downloads to your computer to track your activity. Spyware is used from tracking your activity from an advertising capacity (adware) to logging your key strokes to find out security information. Spyware is an internet pandemic, and you should scan for Spyware every time you switch on your computer, or if your computer seems a little slow. As Spyware can continuously transmit data on your activities, it can take up your processor usage and bandwidth.

Spyware doctor is a popular tool from PC Tools and costs £29.95. They do have an anti virus version also for around £39.95. Please note these are rough prices and are the price for 1 year only.

4. Stop Spam and Phishing Emails

Email delivery is a popular source of virus infection. Spam is usually from someone you do not know or with a title that is trying to sell you something. Phishing emails try to convince readers that they are a genuine site to gather your security details. There are many types of phishing emails, but as a rule, don’t open any suspicious mail. Making sure you have an email scanner with your mail box or anti-virus software is a must.

Remember, no one asks for a password or personal details in an email if they are from a reputable company as it is not secure.

5. Get the latest Window and software updates.

You need to keep your operating system up to date and healthy. Hackers like to continually find loop holes and bugs in popular software to exploit. Regular updates (which can be automated) are essential to protecting yourself from known problems. Software providers face a continuous battle against hackers and criminals so its best to subscribe to their updates and check their websites for any security issues.

6. Make regular backups

Protect from a data disaster by backing up your files and programs on a regular basis. If you have hardware failure or your hard drive is attacked by a virus you will have to re-install everything. Depending on the severity of the virus your data could be hard to retrieve.

7. Secure your wireless network

Wi-Fi networks need to be secured by to stop users free loading on your internet connection and also hackers can ‘listen in’ to any transmitted data. Most Wi-fi networks come with encryption and a special code to limit the user. Ask your network provider if your Wi-Fi connection is secure and just for you.

8. Browse the internet safely.

Use either Firefox or Internet Explorer to browse the internet if you are using a PC. Mac users have Opera as their regular browser. Be sensible on the internet. If you are searching and browsing for ‘cracked’ and free software or music downloads you will be subject to viruses and other nasties. The sites are usually not reputable, kept up to date or have an ounce of care about the security of its users.
You need to make sure any internet shopping you do the websites checkout is secured and they have an appropriate privacy policy (they won’t sell on your details) You can check by looking for the padlock icon at the bottom of your browser and https:// as the address prefix as soon as you come to go through the checkout process. If you have any doubts in the security of a checkout then do not proceed. If the checkout asks for any information that is not essential to process your order, be wary. There are plenty of secure shopping sites and marketplaces out their like eBay.

This article was written with the help of ‘Get Safe Online’ in support of the ‘Get Safe Online Awareness Week’ if you need more detailed information you can visit their website.

Unfortunately, there is not an easy way to do this but it can be done.

Here is an outline of the steps that you will need to take to get the images from your account:

1. Go to the Tools > Images view.
2. Expand the view to 500 items.
3. click on the “Select” column header to select all 500 images.
4. click on the “View URLs” button
5. Here, you will see two boxes, one that says image URLs and one that says HTML. You will want to copy everything out of the HTML box.
6. Paste the HTML box contents into notepad (TextPad is another text editor that is usually not a default. You may need to download this from the internet, it is free.) 7. Simply repeat and keep adding the rest of the images Textpad, you can only pull 500 at a time.
8. Save the file in HTML format ( with .html as the file extension) Also, choose another name for the file when you save.
9. Open the file with Internet Explorer.
10. After the images load up, in internet explorer, you can go to Page > Save.
11. choose another name for the save.
12. When this is completed, all the images will then be saved to your computer into a folder.

You have 500mb of image hosting with your channeladvisor account and you can upload these on bulk using an FTP client. One is shall discuss today is ‘Smart FTP‘

Your can download Smart FTP Here

When you first log into this application you need to enter the channeladvisor FTP address:

Then your user name with your login prefix (found in settings>image hosting) and your normal account password, the press ‘enter’:

Under the new tab that will pop up you will have a blank bar. You will need to place a / in this bar ( the yellow folder will appear once you press enter):

You can now drag an image into the right hand pane and you will see your image pop in as a file. You can only upload files and not folders.

Make sure you images are re-sized to 400-600px wide and the size you want them. Now go to tool>images in channel management and click ‘bulk upload files using ftp’ and this will start your FTP scan. Your scan might be set to ever hour by default anyway.

As a support consultant we advise our customers use the Cname function with their ChannelAdvisor store to improve search engine optimisation. This is an example of a Cnamed Channeladvisor store : Bling Bling Online. As you can see by clicking on the categories how the URLs seem to be coming from the domain name and not a ChannelAdvisor storefront URL. The domain name registrar (who you brought your domain name from) governs the process of the DNS changes and as I come across the different hosts I will post a simple guide on how to cname using that host. My first guide is going to be about 123-reg.co.uk. I always recommend this company as they will also host your emails for around £10 a year (at the time of going to press) so you can have a fully cnamed store and professional emails.

1) First log into your control panel:

Scroll down the page and ‘Manage your domain’ Select your domain from the dropdown list and click ‘Modify Domain’

*Please note: On this list if you are trying to Cname a .com or .net you will need to ‘Manage Domain Locking’ on this list before you ‘Manage DNS’

2) Click on ‘Manage DNS’

Your need to change your www record to Type: Cname and replace the numbers with stores.channeladvisor.com. Please do not change the @ record. This control your emails!

Your DNS record should look like this:

3) Click ‘Update DNS’ and the changes shall replicate within 72 hours. Please note this will only work if you have NOT changes the nameserver information of the domain ( I.E you brought a hosting package with a company like webfusion.co.uk and they control your emails)

As always if you have any doubt please hit contact support.

Liz Kidson - Frooition Support

The buzz word of 2006 was web 2.0. ‘Oh its so Web 2.0′ you might hear at conferences and seminars. My take on web 2.0 is building a community for your buyers based on the product type on offer. Your customers are moving to on-line sales but they need your advice. Truthful, simple advice without the hard sell. First magazines, gossip columns and newspapers caught onto the blog wave, but now product sellers are paving the way to help the customer make the right purchase.

Adverts may be boring and invasive at times but Blogs are not, take ‘Innocent smoothies‘ they have a web log that provides an interesting insight to their origins, ethics and the people in the company. A blog like this takes of the lid off a large company letting the consumer take a look inside. This is what corporate blogging is all about.

For instance Bluefly.com a fashion designer and retailer launched their blog http://flypaper.bluefly.com to raise awareness and keep customer informed of new styles and movements in the fashion industry.

Top free blog providers out there include Blogger.com, Typepad and Wordpress. Wordpress is also one of the most popular open source blogging software, with a new release at the end of January and a unique ‘Multi-Blogger’ system dubbed ‘Wordpress Mu’ so you can provide your employees with a blog of their own linked to your main domain.

As a new ‘blogger’ I would suggest a free hosted blog before you integrate a blog into your main domain. A ‘news’ blog needs to be updated with new content everyday, but a corporate blog only needs feeding 3-4 times a week. If you don’t update your blog your customers interest will wane and the point of the blog will eventually be lost.

We hope to see you in the blogging revolution!

Liz Kidson - Frooition Support

FROOITION SHOWS AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR “ROUTE MAP” TO EBAY MOTORS SALES SUCCESSeBay and online marketplace specialists Frooition and Yahoo are jointly sponsoring an Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) conference in London entitled “Engage for Autos”. The event is being held at the Royal Commonwealth Society, London WC2 on November 30th 2006 and is aimed at auto manufacturers, retailers and specialist creative agencies and plans to show them how to exploit the latest Internet marketing opportunities and increase their sales.

At this essential half day event there will be the latest IAB Brand Engagement research, insight into consumer behaviour and empowerment, as well as some great case studies illustrating how the automotive sector has successfully embraced online to increase sales, engage their consumers and build their brands.

Auto advertisers are some of the biggest spenders in online, accounting for 13.8% of the whole market for the first half of 2006. Frooition aims to show them a new and potentially much more cost effective way of acquiring new customers online. With over three million potential customers visiting eBayMotors.co.uk every month – and with a car selling every other minute, by bringing their automotive business to Frooition (and where the traffic is!)…. they could significantly increase their online auto sales… whilst reducing their cost per acquisition.

The event is being chaired by Keiron Matthews, head of marketing, Internet Advertising Bureau, and speakers comprise leading industry experts. These include Jonathan Williams and Jason Biffin, head of marketing and the commercial director of E-Commerce/Trade Media Group (publishers of Autotrader.co.uk); Paul Hood, head of online, Emap Automotive; Chris Hawken, marketing manager, Audi UK and Paul Fitzpatrick, digital marketing manager of Vauxhall.

More information at: www.iabuk.net/en/1/iabconference2006engageforautos.mxs.

About Frooition: Frooition are the UK’s eBay and online marketplace experts. Working with leading online marketplaces: eBay, eBay Motors, eBay Express, Amazon and with established strategic partnerships with ChannelAdvisor and PayPal, Frooition utilise long-standing eBay expertise and world-leading technologies and services to advise and partner its’ retail and manufacturing customers to exploit the new online marketplace opportunities.

The founders behind Frooition originally developed their expertise graduating as eBay Titanium Power Sellers before transforming the business with ecommerce, IT, designers and graphics professionals to become an online marketplace services organisation who have worked with hundreds of customers to exploit the eBay phenomenon and online marketplace opportunities.

Headquartered in Stourbridge, UK and incorporated in 2004, Frooition advises more than 270 customers with year on year growth of 100%. Frooition’s customers include Butlins and Hitchens Retail. Leading eBay Power Sellers include iSold it (US No.1 seller) and Retrowarez (UK Top 10 seller). For more information, visit http://www.frooition.com.

Press information from: Paul Craig, Frooition. Tel: +44 (0) 8703 505152. Email: paul@frooition.com. Or: John Bradshaw, JBPR. Tel: +44 (0) 1483 755095. Email: jbpr@btinternet.com.

If you use the Sell-your-item form on ebay.co.uk (sell.ebay.co.uk/sell) and are an approved Express seller then there should be a checkbox which will filter the categories to show only those which are eligible for Express. Make sure you chose to ‘Browse for categories’ from the initial page.

In this article I just fist want to mention what the differences between these three entities are. A lot of my clients get confused between these three formats, which causes misinterpretation of what functionality is available to them.

Firstly, an eBay shop:

This is part of the eBay marketplace where all of your listings on eBay can be collectively viewed. You can make this look very much like a website (like the guys from creativebay.co.uk) but it is definitely NOT a website. You have 2 ‘marketplaces’ under the eBay umbrella. Core Listings which get a larger proportion of traffic and seemingly cheaper ’shop’ listings which do not form part of the eBay main search and depend very much on core listings to bring in traffic. Within an eBay store you have custom pages, categories and promotional boxes. With a shop on the eBay marketplace, search engine optimisation is done for you by eBay and your have instant traffic.

A Website:

A website can be custom built to any specification and purpose, as long as your budget allows. Websites need optimisation and maintenance usually by your design company to insure the security and smooth running of the site. As long as you are willing to pay for it (Some full e-commerce websites have been fabled to cost around £7000) a website can be built to perform any task and tick any box. Currently toast making websites are not available; you will always have to do that yourself. Get a toaster.

A Storefront;

Storefronts are commonly part of a bigger picture, but have certain limitations with functionality with regards to a custom built website which is built solely for your purpose. Two ’storefronts’ that spring to mind belong as extra functionality to a complete e-commerce solution. Channeladvisor and Marketworks are both auction and shopping feed inventory based order management systems which have the added benefit of a storefront to showcase your product.

Functionality will always differ greatly. For example, Channeladvisor provides a matrix inventory (product with dropdowns) whereas a Marketworks storefront does not. A storefront is part of a complete solution that you can market and treat as a website, but you will need to check with your provider if the particular storefront will give you the functionality you need.

Examples,

A Marketworks Storefront http://www.findingking.com

A Channeladvisor Storefront http://www.bling-bling-online.co.uk

These guys also have matching eBay dealings:

Marketworks: http://stores.ebay.com/FindingKing

Channeladvisor: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Bling-Bling-Online

Whatever you choose to sell your product please check testimonials of the stability of the sites and services and make sure you can attract a suitable amount of traffic. If you pay £7000 for a kick ass fully functional website but you have no buyer traffic…..well don’t make the mistake many have already!