Equitable Payment Processor Seeks Disaffected eBay-ers

Introducing Mpayy to Professional Online Auction Sellers

If you read this blog, you know that its author is an open advocate of mass adoption of Mpayy. Mpayy's Mobile Merchant product was uniquely tailored to suit the needs of professional eBay sellers that sought fair pricing and efficient payments. As such, I've been trying to find forums where I can reach these sellers.

In the last week, I've been banned from eBay forums, turned down from a Mary Kay Yahoo group, and been slapped around by Google's Quality Score mechanism. I ran into an old colleague on the 'El' who still works at Zacks Investment Research and indicated their traffic metrics showed some interest in my earlier work. So, there's a link to keep me top of mind.

In trying to tap into the "Power Sellers" Community, I've seen some interesting trends...

eBay is Broken/Paypal Sucks?

(Full Disclosure, you're author has made about a half dozen eBay purchases in his life and been very pleased every time.)

Seeking Alpha is a very cool investment research website that I've seen publish a number of interesting stories these year. A "long-time eBay seller" writes there several ways in which Meg Whitman's successor, John Donahoe, implemented new policies. Further, I have seen numerous links to the "Paypal Sucks" website where a litany of complaints are aired.

The backlash seems to be fairly intense, as sellers unite:

"There has been a lot of noise going around about an eBay Boycott Feb. 18th - 25th. Sellers that survived the all the other eBay fee increases will remember that there was a boycott every time.

I will be supporting the ebay boycott again because we need to show them all the angry sellers out there. Maybe if it weren’t for the past boycotts, ebay forum posts, blogs, and anti-ebay sites ebay would be raising fees every year instead of every couple.

This boycott will give sellers one week off ebay in which I encourage them to take the time to try out all the alternative auction sites available or start there own ecommerce store. Things are only going to get worse on ebay so this would be a good time to seek alternatives.

Lets keep a close eye on the auction site count and make their listings drop during the boycott."

Rally at the Church

I also saw a rally to deliver information from top executives organized in Oklahoma in a Yahoo eBay group that rejected all my posts.

Asbury United Methodist Church
MAP - http://unkiejoe.com
1320 SW 38th St
Oklahoma City, OK 73119

Search Engine Works Against Me

I have to tell you, though, that as I tried to bid on the term "eBay" at Google, I became acquainted with "Quality Scoring", which is pricing power in action if I've ever seen.

In about the 6 hours we were on eBay, Google served the term 184,942, and we got 61 clicks for $19.80. I spoke with Google Customer Service reps twice over LivePerson's IM Customer Support which is my preferred method of service. I changed my creative to try and reach a sufficient Click Through Rate. I'm quickly down to only a few clicks on Google a day for what I'm willing to pay for a click. Google will only let me have the term eBay if I pay $10. Google's dynamic scoring system was working against me, so I will let it have its softening ad market and find under-valued searches elsewhere.

Pounding the Pavement

I had a thought tonight about who should be at the top of my lead list, and I'm going to meet some people. Mpayy truly runs its network for its Members, and can't wait to stoke an energetic community.

From $1.40/User to the Moon!!!

"Alright, what the heck is he talking about now...?"

Mashable took a look at the quarterly SEC filing of SNAP Interactive, which operates the "Are You Interested" and "Meet New People" facebook application that boast 5.2 million and 335,000 members respectively. From this, and the company's market capitalization, they back out $1.40/user based on the following insights:

"As deals become more common in the Facebook application space, the question becomes how much is a user worth? As a publicly traded company, SNAP is sporting a market value of around $10 million. At its current pace, the company looks to pull in $1.5-$2 million in revenue this year, meaning its price-to-sales ratio is 5:1. If you assume a 5x price-to-sales ratio, that would mean each one of SNAP’s users is actually worth around $1.40 (each user pulls in $0.28/yr, if the company is valued at 5x sales, you arrive a $1.40 per user valuation)."
Interestingly, neither applications, nor Frengo, which we'll discuss in a moment, show up on Comscore's ranking of widget adoption.

Facebook Application	Engaged Widget Viewers (000)	Penetration of Total U.S. Facebook Audience
Total Facebook.com Visitors	33,660	100.0%
Total Facebook Applications	20,649	61.3%
Top Friends (Slide)	6,230	18.5%
Movies (Flixster)	5,199	15.4%
SuperPoke!(Slide)	3,626	10.8%
Compare People	3,503	10.4%
iLike	3,449	10.2%
Super Wall (RockYou!)	3,237	9.6%
Likeness (RockYou!)	2,693	8.0%
Quizzes	2,583	7.7%
FunWall (Slide)	2,107	6.3%
Graffiti	1,647	4.9%

Second Wave of Facebook Apps

Venture Beat reported on Frengo yesterday as part of the "Second Wave" of Facebook applications centered around companies actually attempting to make money. Frengo has 3.2 million users and gets 12-15 million daily page views. The application is a social dating site and allows users to get new hits directly to their mobile phone as well with the option of charging $5.95 to their cell phone bill to receive more recommendations and new friends. Certainly, the web's modus operandi is to first gather users and then to attempt to monetize them, and the widget trend is no exception to this. Companies like Adonomics are also attempting to put out metrics of usage as well as attempt to quantify the cash value of each of the applications.

Mpayy Secure Payments Widget on its Way

Mpayy's secure payments widget is on its way as has been discussed here. The widget will work with any of the Personal accounts that enable free Person-to-Person money transfers or its Mobile Merchant Accounts that empower direct salespeople from eBay to Mary Kay to Avon ladies with a secure electronic payments system directly from their mobile phones. Mpayy's widget is still in testing, but will be syndicated across facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, iGoogle, and others as seen here.



Mpayy continues to look for charities, political campaigns, and non-profits for whom we will process donations for free. Talks continue, but interested parties can feel free to contact me directly.

GOOG Acquisition of DCLK Approved

The Federal Trade Commission approved Google's acquisition of Doubleclick this morning the Associated Press reports. The $3.1 billion deal will substantially enhance Google's position within the online advertising space as Doublick serves a substantial portion of online advertising and the combination will make Google the #1 company in that space.

The decision comes over opposition lodged from a number of organizations including Microsoft, AT&T, Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups.

The FTC acted one day after an announcement between Microsoft and and Viacom that could total $500 million over the coming 5 years in which Microsoft will sell Viacom's remnant ad space on properties including MTV, Comedy Central, CBS and others. Microsoft will guarantee Viacom revenues by buying online ad space from Viacom, as well as licensng the company's content for use across the MSN sites.

Viacom's decision to go with a Google competitor is not terribly surprising in light of the company's on-going $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit lodged against Google over YouTube's display of copyrighted material, including the Daily Show, Colbert Report and others. Specifically, Viacom argued that Google was instructing its advertisers to optimize their content to appear on search results pages leading to the pages where Viacom's copyright videos can actually be viewed.

The agreement also provides some rationalization to Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive, which owns Avenue A/Razorfish and Atlas. Avenue A is web marketing consultancy that recently helped AT&T with its re-branding. Atlas is a software company that is used to serve and track advertising on partner and affiliate sites. Viacom's properties and advertising provide Microsoft with a use for these large new assets.

This is just one of many arenas in which it will continue to be interesting to watch Google and Microsoft face-off.

On the Future of Mobile Web

The New York Times reports today that Google's Android seeks to "turn cellphones into the principal portal to a mobile Web." The story goes on to explain that it is unclear whether or not this will be a boon or a threat to Nokia's business, which has seen its "market share, 28 percent five years ago" drop to "barely 10 percent".

Nokia is moving forward with its mobile web efforts through sealing content deals with Universal Music Group as reported by the Wall Street Journal (Subscription required). Nokia has Apple and the iPhone clearly in its sites through these efforts, and hopes that the Universal deal will improve its Ovi (Finnish for "door") web surfing service by providing users with simple one-touch access to videos and music through the mobile web. The Wall Street Journal notes that Nokia's estimates are that the "total market for Internet services to reach €100 billion ($147 billion) by 2010"

Verizon Wireless' recent announcement that it will make its network open to any device adds further texture to the evolving mobile web situation.


The company plans to meet with device and software makers this summer to review its new open service according to the New York Times.

The Times notes:

"Consumers are already able to add software and make purchases online with many cellphones, but often the carriers do not make this easy, preferring instead to highlight their own offerings on phone screens.

The carriers have also been at odds with Silicon Valley companies like Google that want people to be able to use phones in much the same way that they can use any PC for access to the Internet. "

Open Access at Mpayy

These shifting trends in the wireless market only serve to benefit Mpayy and its mobile payment options. The best estimates are that up to 70% of cell phones sold in the US have mobile web usage enabled, even if the users do not take advantage of the service. As the device makers and networks work to make these services more usable and friendly, Mpayy will be there enabling ALL users on ALL networks with wireless web enabled cell phones to make purchases through their mobile phones. More to come...

Ever Wonder How to Get your Site Visible?

Curiously, as Mpayy has begun to prepare for its launch and begun to contact companies for everything from financing to promotional partnerships, and potential clients, the search engines began displaying an unknown virus as the natural search results for the term Mpayy. Perhaps we should have been flattered, and we were.

However, there was much excitement in the Mpayy offices as we finally got the top spot from Google search results "Under Construction"/"Coming Soon" page that are companies only option for really getting any public face before they launch without throwing advertising dollars completely down the toilet.

The page now has a spinning globe as part of the Mpayy logo. The homepage can be found at http://www.mpayy.com.

In order to get our site crawled by Google's bots, we took two steps.

First, we used Google Analytics which is a free tool from 0-1,000,000 monthly impressions. The reporting interface is phenomenal, and it integrates very well with any online advertising you do as well as tracking links from all over the Net.

Second, Google's Webmaster tools provide the ability to generate a Verification Meta tag that will tell the bots to come look for you. Within two days we went from not showing up at all to #1.

God bless Google and its user friendly technologies.