| Welcome To Online Sellers United |
OSU was launched in March of 2009, when it became increasingly clear that eBay's policies have made eBay an extremely difficult venue to conduct business at for some time now, leaving both buyers and sellers clamoring for something better.
As eBay has declined in importance, many other e-commerce venues have surfaced, with several performing well, and a few flourishing. OSU's goal is assist sellers, buyers, and anyone else interested in learning about, and finding the very best e-commerce sites available today, together with providing tools and discussion areas of interest to buyers and sellers alike.
OSU's goal is to help, to educate, and to provide a platform for the exchange of information between both e-commerce veterans, and new-to-the scene folks. We anticipate a fun, informative, fast-paced, and problem-free environment where all facets of e-commerce are discussed, reviewed and debated. OSU offers site navigation tools, and open and tightly moderated discussion forums that are free of flaming, warring, and other non-productive antics.
Our topics and areas include public and personal e-commerce, current events, security, and ratings and reviews. If you have a question, think we've missed an area of importance that should be covered, or any other comment, just let us know and we'll try to accommodate you.
Take your time, look around, and then consider joining us at OSU, the newest online e-commerce discussion community! If you have any news, information, or updates you want to share please contact us.
Be sure to submit a link to your online store, or e-commerce site on our Site Links, so others can browse your store or site!
Everybody is welcome here at OSU. You don't need to be a seller to join or benefit from this site |
| News Of Interest |
Jul 01 2011 06:19 pm by elgato | Comments (1)
If you’re anything like me, chances are you have a love/hate relationship with PayPal. Despite the fact that it seems like in recent years my own experiences with it have actually improved, many vendors are looking for alternative ways to handle payment processing as PayPal as a singular solution just isn’t cutting it. This brings us to this article in which I will show you two great alternatives to PayPal.
Amazon Payments
The first option on my list is Amazon Payments. By far not my first choice, I do think that it can provide a fairly smooth experience for any online merchants with services that are already on the Amazon marketplace. Best of all, there is a strong level of trust for both the merchant and with the customer. The customer has complete trust in the Amazon brand, while the merchant is feeling good about the provided fraud protection offered as well.
Available for both real and digital items, you may not find this to be a good match for selling varied services though. In situations where digital services are not related to a clear product, you might do well to examine an alternative service. As luck would have it, I happen to have one in mind.
Google Checkout
Using basically the same pay structure as PayPal offers, it’s agreed by most that I have talked to over the years that Google Checkout is better for big ticket purchases. (Basically, because it lacks PayPal’s limitations). In addition to that, some people making purchases simply like the idea of a trusted alternative to PayPal. Their own reasons may vary from person to person, but the value is clear.
The downside to using Google Checkout, however, is the lack of customer support when things go wrong. As most of us already know, this is a big problem with many Google products. And Google Checkout is not any different.
Rethinking PayPal?
...
Mar 30 2011 11:10 am by osunited | Comments (0)
Google Chooses Kansas City For ULTRA-FAST Internet
By David Goldman
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The year-long wait is over: Google announced Wednesday that it has chosen to deploy its ultra-fast broadband network in Kansas City, Kansas.
Google will provide broadband Internet access to the city with speeds of about 1 gigabit per second. That's around 100 times faster than what most Americans have available to them today. Google said that the network's speed would be fast enough to download a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes.
The decision follows Google's March 2010 announcement that it would build and test-drive a new, high-speed fiber-optic network in a U.S. community. Nearly 1,100 cities applied, with some going to great lengths to try to influence Google's choice. Topeka, Kansas, even renamed the city "Google" for a day, which Google later poked fun at in an April Fools gag.
In a blog post, the search giant thanked all the various communities for their interest, but said it chose Kansas City after "a careful review." Google said that it was looking for a city where it could "build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations."
Kansas City has a relatively small population of about 150,000, which may have...
Read The Rest From: CNN  
Mar 27 2011 08:28 pm by Sorcha | Comments (0)
March 27, 2011
Ecommerce EKG: Helping Merchants Track Technical Issues
By: David and Ina Steiner
Sun Mar 27 2011 21:12:14
Each week, we receive dozens of emails from users reporting technical issues with companies in the ecommerce industry. Most users are frustrated because there are no timely system announcements posted on the sites, and they are left wondering if they are the only person having the issue, or if the problem is more widespread.
In keeping with our philosophy of reducing friction in the flow of relevant information to online merchants, we are launching a new feature on AuctionBytes - one that we hope you will utilize and visit on a regular basis - it's called Ecommerce EKG.
If you encounter an issue, glitch or snafu while using a marketplace, shopping cart, inventory management software or other ecommerce-related website, visit EcommerceEKG.com and search to see if others are experiencing the same issue. If so, indicate that you're also having this problem, and feel free to leave a comment. If not, create a report describing the issue you have encountered.
Once a report has been approved by our moderators, it will be posted to the main page of Ecommerce EKG where other users will be able to verify the issue via a voting booth. When a number of users have confirmed that they are also experiencing the issue, an email notification will be sent to the administrator of the site with the reported issue.
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl
Mar 25 2011 11:25 am by ScienceFare | Comments (0)
IRS Casts A Wide Net With New 1099-K Reporting Rules
By Kenneth Corbin
As online sellers prepare for the next federal tax cycle, they can look forward to much closer scrutiny of their transactional information.
That's because a sweeping new reporting mandate will take effect for the 2011 tax year, requiring payment-services providers to submit month-by-month transaction totals for individual merchants to the IRS through the new 1099-K form.
And while the new rules squarely target credit card companies, they are drawn broadly enough to extend the reporting requirements to a host of online payment-services providers, such as Google Checkout.
"We are affected and we will be notifying merchants in the near future," Google spokesman Nathan Tyler told AuctionBytes.
Google and PayPal have already updated their terms of service to reflect the new reporting requirement. Amazon, which did not respond to requests for comment for this story, has yet to update its user agreement for its Payments service, but it will likely be affected by the new rules, as well.
The final rules, published in the Federal Register in August, apply to any "payment settlement entity," which could be either a payment card provider (including gift cards and other value-stored cards) or a "third-party settlement organization," defined as "the central organization that has the contractual obligation to make payment to participating payees of third-party network transactions."
"The purpose for that of course is to capture all this income that online (sellers) are getting" and not reporting, explained Joseph Henchman, tax counsel at the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington research group.
Under the new reporting requirements, payment-services providers will have to report the monthly gross transaction total for each merchant in the calendar year. And the IRS means "gross" literally: the amount to be reported is the tally of all applicable payment transactions, and does not account for credits, discounts, fees or other adjustments that would affect net revenue. For the monthly reporting, payment-services providers are directed to calculate revenues according to the transaction date, rather than the settlement date.
The new rules won't apply to all sellers. The IRS set a... ...
Mar 21 2011 02:46 pm by ScienceFare | Comments (0)
eBay Sellers Confused Over New Global DSR Standards
By: Ina Steiner
eBay sellers are seeing new messaging about their performance standards and minimum DSR ratings, and some are unaware that this was part of the announcements eBay made last week that affect only international sales. One seller asked me, "Have you noticed that starting in may the level of low DSRs to be a TRS if you have more than 400 transactions goes from 0.5% to 0.6%?"
The messaging was part of the performance standards for international sales, not U.S. domestic sales. The changes are explained on this page, and a chart of required DSRs is found here. eBay states, "Nothing is changing with US performance standards. Your US performance standing will continue to be evaluated on your transactions with US buyers only."
Here's what sellers are now seeing when they are logged in to eBay:
"Preview of your global seller performance"
Starting in May 2011, we're going to evaluate your global seller performance separately from your domestic activity. When you sell to buyers outside of your home country, you'll need to meet global standards based on the detailed seller ratings you receive from all of your buyers.
Here's a summary of the new global standards, and how you're trending:
 ...
Mar 21 2011 02:37 pm by ScienceFare | Comments (0)
Any member who operates an online venue for buying and selling (auction site, webstore), is entitled to a free banner at the top of the OSU page on the right side. This offer applies if you have your own site, not a store at eBay, or Bonanza, etc.
Free banners are offered as an aid to helping sites. As you know, the more places a site is linked to on the web, the more often the site appears in the search engines... this is a good thing.
So, if you're eligible, and want a banner here, contact me via email or PM. 
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