What’s Hot This Week On Trade Me

Amongst the week’s hot offerings on Trade Me: a classic collectible featuring the Caped Crusader’s legendary Batmobile that’s already attracted 261 pageviews and 59 bids. Details on the car are sketchy, but - good old Trade Me community to the rescue - a more-informed passerby notes that this Corgi Batmobile “is the 1976 whizzwheel version and is [...]

Christmas Misery or Marketing Ploy?

The reindeer were barely back in their stables, enjoying a well-deserved munch of frosted hay, when the first listings for “unwanted gift” began appearing on Trade Me. Two days after Christmas, the count – at least of those items actually labelled as unwanted gifts — currently stands at 766. Tip of the iceberg?
Probably. But, at the risk [...]

Hold All Tickets, We Have A Winner!

And it’s just gone noon on Christmas Day (Merry Christmas everybody!!), with the auction listings total at 722,198. Closest estimate was Mogla with 714,085.
Congratulations, Mogla! And thanks to everyone else for entering. Cheers!

The Christmas Cruise

You may have noticed that Trade Me first hit the magical million listings mark — 1,000,000 auctions concurrently listed — back in October this year. Because Trade Me’s auction base is largely rebirthed every week (old auctions expiring every second, new listings being created at the same frantic pace), that glorious total fluctuated a little [...]

Really, Really 24-7

The most surprising change on Trade Me over the last two years — captured but not especially highlighted in Chapter Ten of both the first and second editions of the book on which this blog is based – is just how round-the-clock Trade Me trawling has become.
In 2005, weekday visits were at their lowest between 3am and [...]

A Pago Update

Late last year the ASB Bank launched Pago, a mobile and online payment service. If you’re not familiar with the offering, a quick introduction: “Pago allows customers to make digital cash payments to friends and families online or via their mobile phone. They can also shop online without a credit card.” For the full sales [...]

In Our Latest Newsletter

The latest issue of our email newsletter README has just hit the virtual newsstands. Content includes:
Should You Offer Pay Now?
Fascinating facts and figures on “Trade Me’s most important release of 2007″
Christmas in e-otearoa
What Kiwis want for Christmas, according to research from Nielsen//Netratings.
If you’d like to see a free copy of this month’s newsletter, just send [...]

David Beckham: Corncobs, DNA and Domain Names

We Kiwis are supposedly blasé about celebrities, pretty much leaving them alone as they wander the highways and byways of New Zealand. Tall poppy syndrome, respect for privacy — or sadly ill-informed and unaware of the famous folk in our midst? The reasons don’t really matter.
But when it comes to real superstars, any feigned Kiwi indifference [...]

Trade Me Job Lots

If you’re a heavy duty advertiser of job vacancies — typically a recruitment agency, government department or the HR arm of a large company — then you’ve long been able to enjoy volume discounts when advertising on Trade Me Jobs.
For others recruiting on a regular but low-volume basis, though, your options have been rather more [...]

Amazon Offers “Bill Me Later”

The world’s leading online retailer Amazon.com announced yesterday (story via RetailWire) that the company was taking a stake in the Bill Me Later payment service and that it would make the payment option available to consumers on its website.
As the name implies, the Bill Me Later service enables customers to make online purchases now and pay for them at [...]