Every year during the eBay Developer’s Conference (San Jose, June 16-18, if you’re interested in coming along) eBay awards the Star Developer award in a few categories:

• DSR Rockstar (improving customer service & buyer experience)
• Most Innovative
• Early Adopter
• Service to the Developer Community
• NEW: Rapid Evolution (boosting seller efficiency in a dynamic marketplace)

eBay relies on external nominations to select the award winners, so if you’re using an application for eBay that is based off of the eBay API platform and you love it, send in a nomination (shameless plug: Terapeak is eligible for nomination).

All you have to do is send a nomination to developer-relations@ebay.com before May 15, 2009. Include in your email your name and contact info, the nominees name and contact, the category of award (from the list of 5 above) and a brief explanation as to why you think the application is award-worthy! Toss “eBay DevCon Star Dev Award” in the subject line so your note gets to the right people.

If, by any chance, you’d want to nominate Terapeak, we’d be stoked, and promise not to cry, babble, forget the words, or recite a boring acceptance speech for hours upon hours.

For more information on the Developer Program at eBay, visit http://developer.ebay.com/

I’d like to thank the nomination committee… my family…

We love our Terapeak users, and we think that sometimes the easiest way to talk about our own success as a business is to talk about the success of our subscribers. Of course, just like any business, we gain people and we lose people. Just the other day, while reviewing our cancellation feedback, we noted that even the subscribers we lose tend to leave us with fond words.

It’s not you, Terapeak, they seem to be saying — it’s us.

Here are a few of the latest entries we’ve received from those who’ve filled out our cancellation survey:

• Not doing any buying or selling on ebay at the moment, so being cancelling for a while, but you do provide great service
• I am doing a lot with the data I gather from you and am very grateful for the ability to just sign up for a month or two when I need to do research. Will be back again, I am sure. Thanks for making it so straightforward to quit and rejoin.
• I don’t have any complaints with terapeak. I’m just going a different direction in getting a business started and i don’t need to have services that terapeak offers.
• I like the dynamic data you provide- good job.
• Thank you

So, while we know this is kind of an odd way to address our business, we just want to say thanks to all those who have tried Terapeak and are still members, as well as those who have left and may one day return. We’ll always be here for you.

What’s that old saying? It’s always better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all…

Press Release out Today!

For immediate release

March 16, 2009

Victoria, BC, Canada

Terapeak, an eBay Certified Provider, today announced the release of several new features for its eBay Marketplace Research tool. The new features promise to improve upon Terapeak’s already-popular web-based research tool, found at www.terapeak.com. For the past five years, online sellers have trusted Terapeak’s reporting tools to provide them with metrics needed to make decisions around pricing, seasonality, and listing of goods on and off the eBay platform.

Terapeak is integrating eBay’s Fixed Price 30-day listing format into search results, and will now report on every specific item as it sells. This transactional information allows sellers to access detailed sales information about their products and competitors. As well, International sellers will be able to review sales across six sites (US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Australia) with one fast report. Terapeak is also introducing Value Track, a time-saving tool that allows subscribers to enter a list of their favorite search terms. Terapeak will provide a weekly reporting page each time the user logs in. Finally, thanks to server technology innovations, the speed of searches has improved to less than a second’s wait per report.

Building on subscribers’ feedback and developments on the eBay platform, Terapeak carefully maintains its relevancy to users. Terapeak CEO, Fred Speckeen, explains the growth of the product: “We’re extremely lucky, because we do everything — from support to coding — in house. This means that a comment from a subscriber can literally become a new feature within days, and it means that the dialogue between our users and our team is frequent and interactive. In a rapidly evolving field such as ecommerce, and especially eBay, keeping close to the needs of your customers and the changes within the industry is imperative.”

Terapeak will be rolling out more improvements and features in the coming months. Watch for simple solutions to arbitrage goods internationally, new search filters, and more site improvements!

As we wade through the aftermath of Barack Obama’s historic victory in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, take a look at this still-shot taken from Terapeak’s election index today:

Tells a bit of the story, doesn’t it?

One of our favorite events here at the Terapeak office is eBay Live! It’s a unique opportunity for us to gather feedback from our current users, introduce new users to the concept of market research, and spend a few days with a great crowd of energetic and successful sellers.

After three days of speaking with the general public, I came away with a few observations:

1. Any economic downturn that the US may be experiencing is not affecting the profits of sellers who sell internationally. I spoke with a lot of people who said that they are netting even more than last year after opening up to international buyers and/or arbitraging goods on the international eBay platforms.
2. Lots of people know who we are, (Terapeak!) and use research to build their business. Numerous people simply stopped by the booth to let us know how much they use their Terapeak subscription. We all love to hear that!
3. debate of Buyer support vs. Seller support rages on. Sure, eBay is focusing on the buyer experience heavily right now (as mentioned in the keynote speech), but they are building help for the sellers as well – look at project Echo – a new feature in development for launch 2009 that will allow outside applications to be included within the eBay platform. The impetus of this is to help sellers, and it’s a project we’ve been very active in from the start, since our tools are seller tools!
4. Feedback is still an issue. Not a lot of sellers seemed thrilled at the new format, but are looking optimistically to eBay to make more improvements.
5. Chris Issak? Still very cool. And Sara and I were excited to see that he still has the same drummer he had on his TV show. Jugglers? Still not cool. Funny banter though, I will give them that J.

If you were at Live! this year, it was great to see you there, and I hope you had as much fun as the Terapeak team did. If you weren’t, we’ll see you in Florida in 2010.

Were you at eBay Live! ? There’s room in the comments below for your observations.

denise

Participants at the eBay Developers Conference in Chicago today got a sneak peek at an exciting new eBay initiative that Terapeak has been involved with, called Project Echo. Since we are always looking for new and innovative ways to bring research to the market, Terapeak has been an active participant in this project from the start. Project Echo was spearheaded by eBay so that developers can easily create on-eBay applications, using a new set of developer APIs.

This new accessibility for developers is similar to Facebook opening its platform for applications. The difference here is that eBay applications will focus on improving sales and service within the eBay community. The integration of Terapeak was straightforward, thanks to eBay’s dev friendly focus and Terapeak’s versatility. The entire project was completed within a very short timeframe.

The Terapeak project not only includes access to Terapeak research, but an integrated inventory tool, which allows sellers to evaluate their inventory and receive fresh pricing data as the market evolves. Set to launch in early 2009, eBayers will be able to access Terapeak and other services directly within the eBay platform!

Check out the TechCrunch mention!

You can find us at BOOTH 529 at this year’s eBay Live! in Chicago. The team attending is really looking forward to another great eBay event and meeting up with all of the fabulous Terapeak users out there.

Please stop in and say hello if you’re at the event next week! We’ll be updating live from the event, which for some of us starts Monday at the eBay Developer’s Conference.

See you in Chicago!

Terapeak participated in eBay day in Hong Kong. It was a fun event with a lot of energy in the air. The eBay community in Hong Kong is thriving and we were happy to participate.

 You can find terapeak in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese at http://terapeak.ebay.com.hk/ . We are excited to support the Hong Kong and Chinese markets in their CBT activities.

Terapeak free research for every eBay user!

Terapeak is a happy participant in this years eBay live. We enjoy the opportunity to meet with our customers and hear what they have to say about our services and tell us what they want. Terapeak will be at booth 532 which is on the middle left side of the Boston Convention center. Please come and visit us and I am sure you will have a great time.