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.

One Week Out

One week from today, Mpayy officially opens its doors to the public, and the new standard in payments begin. One of the original purposes of this blog is to give a behind the scenes view of operating at the startup phase of a new technology company. Today, we will open the kimono a little bit, and provide some of the exciting ways Mpayy will establish relationships with YOU, our soon to be members.

• (Up to) $25,000 Bracket Challenge - In discussions about our target demographic, Mpayy expects our Members to be 18-45, skewing toward tech savvy, who use their phones to access Sports, Weather, Stock and Video Game content, primarily. Participants in Fantasy Sports are of unique interest because of the frequency with which they plug in to check their statistics. Certainly, our product is particularly useful for any of the 80 million Americans rolling balances on their credit cards, because interest begins burning at the moment of purchase for those card-holders. However, our expectation is that our Members will skew toward higher incomes.



• The Widgetization of Mpayy - Last December, I discussed here the New York Times new "MyTimes" page that allows users to include their own content on their page. The most unique one I like a lot is having the movies pre-filtered to my preferred local theaters. However, in one week, Mpayy will bring a truly integrated, secure payment widget to facebook, Yahoo, iGoogle, NetVibes, Vista, Mac OS X, etc. Mpayy expects this will be incredibly useful for i) charity associations accepting contributions through their facebook pages - Darfur Now for instance; ii) individual pledges for fundraising; iii) and just paying your friends. Further, given the number of businesses focusing on facebook, our payment widget will open the door to unrestrained commerce, and facebook has clear potential to compete with eBay, especially in light of the number of users and frequency of use by each. Lots of merchandise can move through this venue.
  
  



• Marketing, PR & Sales - We met with a PR firm recently to discuss potential engagement. It's an interesting conundrum. Any impassioned marketer will tell you that it doesn't matter how much better your mousetrap is if no one knows who you are. We'll pursue a strategy that attempts to get coverage within publications of a number of constituencies from tech geeks to payment wonks and everywhere in between. We'll pursue a mix of search engine and display marketing, and lean heavily on word of mouth campaigns, promotions, and a few launch parties, the first of which is here in Chicago on January 30th.

It's an exciting time, and it's starting to heat up.

Get ready for the new payments standard. INSIST on Mpayy!