EBay share price plunged 2.88% today to close at $28.64, 84 cents lower.

While the day started with a fun report regarding Nicole Kidman's recent wedding to Urban memorabilia showing up on eBay Australia, the rest of the news was more of the same.

EBay UK officially announced yesterday that they will launch Skype buttons this week while concerns over eBay's ability to profit from blogs were raised.

This last is especially relevant as MeCommerce, a new contextual advertising platform, was recently launched with a much better offer for bloggers - splitting the profits (above cost) with the bloggers right down the middle.  EBay's latest launch of its own contextual ads for affiliates program only offers a cut of the fee eBay charges its merchants.  Not only that, but bloggers have been spoiled by other affiliate programs such as Google Adsense and Amazon.

In order to succeed eBay will need to not only make its program competitive with others already out there, but also deal with concerns over inventories, as Sarah Gilbert pointed out.

eBay after the bell 7-05-06: More of the same originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 16:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a Financial Times article yesterday on eBay's desire to "cash in" on blogs, a competitor in that space laid down the ultimate fighting words: "eBay can't do this because they don't have the inventory." This being letting bloggers list products on their own sites, receiving half of the fees if the product sells.

The competitor, MeCommerce, is selling mainstream stuff -- books, music and t-shirts -- through third-party distributors, so in a way, co-founder Yobie Benjamin is right. eBay doesn't have deep inventory in, say, the copy of Penelope and the Pirates that I might recommend on my own blog.

Claims that eBay "doesn't have inventory" are made to stir up interest, to inspire a second look. And I'm not buying the razzle and dazzle. I am interested in these "cash in on blogging" plans, but it seems all murky, hopeful, and "open source" (which in this case seems to be eBay speak for "we'll let someone else make a decision here"). UK managing director Doug McCallum says "Our approach would be to develop new tools that we can turn over to bloggers, so they can define the natural shape of the marketplace on their own." While it may be "how eBay originally developed," it doesn't give investors much to go on.

eBay 'doesn't have the inventory' to profit from blogs? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.