An Older, Wiser EBay, Growing Patiently

Cobb announced new policies to help sellers, including a crackdown on what he called "excessive shipping fees," such as merchants selling headphones for 99 cents and charging $49 for shipping. He also introduced a revamped cellphone alert service that will let buyers get automated updates on their eBay bids and raise them by cellphone.

Cobb said eBay also is placing big bets on alternative buying formats, such as the new "eBay Express" site, which debuted seven weeks ago, geared to shoppers seeking new goods. It lets people buy items from varying merchants and pay for them in a single transaction. EBay will heavily advertise eBay Express starting this fall, Cobb said, airing 30 TV commercials carrying the tag line "Get it new. Buy it now on eBay Express." Some sellers, however, seemed skeptical.

"I am participating in eBay Express but have not had a single sale from it yet," said Cindy Sorley, a needlework dealer from Layton, Utah, who closed her bricks-and-mortar store two years ago to sell full time on eBay.

The rumblings of discontent among eBay sellers did not seem as intense this year as last year, when eBay sharply hiked its selling fees. Still, there was an undercurrent of unease here about how much support eBay will offer sellers as the auctioneer moves into new businesses.

"EBay sellers are getting squeezed on two sides today, from steadily increasing competition and from the higher fees eBay has imposed," said McGrath, who has been selling on eBay since 1999. "What's helped is that eBay has also been increasing its number of buyers -- to 72 million in the U.S. If eBay can keep growing that user base, it will sustain sellers, but if the growth were to stall, a lot of sellers would be in trouble."

No wonder eBay has moved aggressively into buying ads for key words and phrases at Google and other search engines to direct search-engine shoppers to eBay's marketplace. EBay dramatically boosted the number of keywords for which it purchases ads on search engines over the past year, Cobb said, up 20-fold to more than 15 million words and phrases.

Taking a page out of the book of its rival Google, eBay even previewed here a new advertising program of its own called AdContext that resembles Google's AdSense network. EBay's program will let owners of other sites put software snippets on their pages to automatically display listings from eBay related to the content of those pages. If visitors click through and buy something, the site owner will collect a fee from eBay. Unlike Google's ad network, which is open to any site, participation in eBay's will require approval by eBay.

What struck me most about eBay's convention this year is how smartly and intensely the company is trying to improve online shopping by integrating new forms of advertising, payments and communication. EBay may not be growing as fast as it was, but it is growing shrewdly -- and in ways that are likely to have a major impact on the future of e-commerce.

Leslie Walker welcomes e-mail athttp://leslie@lesliewalker.com.