As if that other vampire-riffic phenomenon couldn’t get any bigger, we were peeping the Terapeak Hot DVDs section this morning and noticed a TV series atop the list…

For those keeping score, your crazy-colored vampire eyes don’t deceive you: that’s HBO’s True Blood laying a whuppin’ on the former undead champs.

But unlike Twilight, which has more than its share of detractors, we’ve heard almost exclusively good things about the HBO series. Now in its second season, the show stars Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin as Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress, and chronicles the mystifying events of a small town in Louisiana.

Below is a 90-day total sales trend for “True Blood,” produced by Terapeak’s All Sites package:

We’re not actually sure what’s produced such a spike — the DVDs were released several months ago, and the show’s second season only just began — but then we also haven’t had a chance to really bite into the television series… (hah!)

Maybe if there weren’t so many freakin’ Twilight books to finish?

The Terapeak team just got a bit more international!

We’re very excited today to announce a brand new partnership with 500RPM, a Japanese service provider for Japan-based eBay sellers. Known predominately for translation and eBay assistance solutions, 500RPM will soon provide a locally-translated Terapeak tool, along with a dedicated, Japan-based support team.

As you’re well aware by now, we place a lot of importance on global brand representation, and we constantly stress the value of branching out into international markets. Now, with the introduction of “Terapeak Japan,” Terapeak is available locally in six countries: USA, Canada, France, Germany, China and Japan!

Below, James from Terapeak China (middle) welcomes Yoshiji (left) and Kazuma from Terapeak Japan:

Of course, this exciting news complements a very international year for Terapeak: in June, we hosted our first international conference here in beautiful Victoria, and in July, founders Anthony and Andrew Sukow spoke at the G8 Young Business Summit in Stresa, Italy.

Again, we’re happy and proud to welcome the 500RPM folks to the Terapeak team, and we look forward to bringing you news from Terapeak Japan!

Check it out: our friends and partners at Terapeak Germany (Auktionsanalyse!) sent some photos from this year’s Afterbuy+Friends BBQ in Krefeld, Germany!

For those who don’t know, the AfterBuy BBQ is an annual event that sees eBay.de users gather to learn more about the platform and its third-party offerings. This year’s event hosted over 800 participants and 35 exhibitors… and naturally, look who’s set up right next to the eBay.de booth!

Keeners!

If there’s one upside to summer ending (it feels dirty even saying that), it’s what kicks off tonight: a new NFL season!

In what’s become a tradition over the past several years, the defending champion Steelers will host the Tennessee Titans in a special Thursday game — and there’s little love lost between these two teams. Last year, Tennessee had the NFL’s best regular season record, and during a December win over Pittsburgh they let their distaste for Steel-town be known. Of course, that turned out to be Pittsburgh’s final loss, as they crushed Tennessee in January en route to their sixth Super Bowl win.

But how do the teams stack up on eBay? Well, that’s where the Terapeak NFL Index comes in:

Now, pitting almost any team against Pittsburgh is unfair — they’re one of the most decorated franchises in pro sports, and have long been among the NFL’s top merchandise-sellers. So it should come as no surprise that only the Dallas Cowboys have made more eBay revenue  over the past 30 days, or that Pittsburgh has sold more than twice as many items (17,717) as the next-best-selling AFC team (Miami, with 7,665).

But give the Titans some credit: their average price on eBay ($91.76) is higher than all other 31 NFL teams. (Though only the lowly Bengals have sold fewer items amongst AFC teams.)

Following Dallas and Pittsburgh to round out the Total Sales top 10: Chicago, Minnesota, Green Bay, NY Giants, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and Cleveland… Not a lot of south on that list, hey?

Just like last year, we’ll be blogging about the index as the season marches on, but save the link for yourself if you’re selling anything sports-related. Also of interest: the Terapeak NHL index… hockey’s just around the corner, too!

Like Miley before her, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is getting in on the eBay action.

Until September 18th, dinner with the once-VP-candidate is up for grabs via auction, with bidding set to begin at a generous $25,000. As of this blog post, the auction has only been up for a few hours, and so no bids have been submitted (or if they have, they haven’t passed Palin’s screening process), but we hope interest soars: all proceeds benefit Ride 2 Recovery, a charity aimed at helping wounded soldiers.

Now this is obviously a swell gesture on Palin’s part, but we can’t help but wonder: What about the Terapeak Election index? If this auction takes off, can you even imagine what it’ll do to Palin’s “Average Price” metric? Poor Joe Biden’s had enough trouble competing with eBay wunderkind Obama… Next thing you know, John McCain will be selling his old baseball cards!

But seriously, like we said, we wish Palin all the best. Just as we let Miley off the hook when she didn’t respond to our Tweet, we’re willing to forget Palin’s apparent nearsightnedness…

And in 30 days, the Terapeak Election index will rise again!

(Though, yes, its current relevance remains to be seen.)

A week ago today, Apple released its new operating system, Mac OS X v10.6 — better known worldwide as “Snow Leopard”. Announced to the public and released to developers in early June, “Snow Leopard” has been getting shout-outs in advertising for new Macs (including those sold on eBay) for a few months now, but only upon its official release has the buzz really taken off.

Consider, for instance, that in the 30 days prior to August 28th (release day), Terapeak shows 1,807 eBay listings that used the keywords “Snow” and “Leopard”. The sell-through rate of those listings? 29.28%. In the 5 days following release, there were 635 listings… and the sell-through shot to 59.37%.

Of course that’s not the hugest sample size, and it deals with “Snow Leopard” as keywords directly… so consider instead the keywords “New” and “Macbook”. In the 30 days preceding August 28th, Terapeak All Sites shows 16,025 listings for “New Macbook”, with a sell-through rate of 36.04%. But in the 5 days after Snow Leopard’s launch, the sell-through on those same laptops rocketed to 48.87%.

We don’t really talk about sell-through on the blog as much as we’d like to, considering it’s one of our fave statistics, but often that’s because inventory rises alongside demand, and sell-through doesn’t always fluctuate much. In this case, however, demand for new Macs is at an all-time high, even at a time (”back-to-school”) when most suppliers are as well-stocked as they’ll be all year… and Snow Leopard has helped contribute to that big-time.

So, are we saying you should go out and start selling Macbooks? Well, no, that’s not exactly the easiest market to break into. But do have a look at sell-through when you can, and take note when you see it trending up specifically.

From 1961 until her death in 2004, Julia Child was a celebrated American chef who brought French cuisine to the masses. In 2002, then-unknown Julie Powell created a blog titled The Julie/Julia Project, which detailed her attempts at all 524 recipes from Child’s  Mastering the Art of French Cooking collection.

And in 2009, Nora Ephron made a movie about the two.

Titled Julie & Julia, the film, which stars Meryl Streep as Child and Amy Adams as Powell, opened #2 at the box office, earned a glowing review from The New Yorker, and has so far grossed more than $70 million worldwide.

It’s also sold a lot of cookbooks.

Really, this is one of those merchandising fall-outs that should have been predicted a mile away — and surely hundreds of savvy book-sellers out there are congratulating themselves on stocking Child’s best-seller. Of course, many of these crystal-gazers do their business on eBay, and the following results speak for themselves. Just check out these 30-day All Sites trends for “Julia Child” — first Total Sales, then Average Price:

The latter graph, in our opinion, is the far more remarkable one: it tells us there’s extreme demand for Child’s books, which her publishers can’t reissue fast enough.

As for Child’s effect on “bigger picture” eBay sales, you can see in the graph below that total sales for “cookbook” in general have enjoyed a marginal increase over the past 30 days (probably less marginal that it seems, considering that’s a trend based on on nearly 75,000 listings):

Going forward, it’ll be interesting to see if cookbook sales continue to climb, and whether demand for Child’s recipes peters out as more books become available. (The upcoming holidays add even a further wrinkle.)

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some Beef Bourguignon to go whip up!

Juuust a reminder that Terapeak’s monthly newsletter will be shipping out next Tuesday, so if you haven’t already you can sign up below. The newsletter generally features updates from in and around the Terapeak world, but also news of going-on around eBay and ecommerce in general.

We hope you check it out!

Can you believe it’s been 12 years since J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was published? And nearly a decade since the release of the first movie adaptation? Enough jokes have been made about the maturation of now-grown stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, and with two films still left  in the pipes, they’re sure to keep coming for at least the next couple years.

But what of this trend that compares eBay sales between July’s most recent film, Half-Blood Prince, and 2007’s Order of the Phoenix? Below is a two-year Terapeak trend for total sales in the Harry Potter Collectibles category:

Even if the text is a bit hard to read (we’re working on fixing this), you can see pretty clearly the two major sales points for the series: release date and the holidays. And while the disparity between the holidays (the two middle peaks) can be attributed to Order of the Phoenix’s DVD release, the difference between the two films’ theater releases is more than 2:1!

It should be noted that July 2007 also saw the release of  Rowling’s final Potter book… but the decline in sales of related collectibles is still quite shocking. Is it a case of fans simply losing interest in the series? Is it possible that the series lost its luster when the books stopped coming out? Heck, we’re even wondering if it’s some kind of Twilight effect!

The next Potter film is slated for release in November 2010, with the final installment coming July 2011. Before then, however, comes Half Blood Prince’s DVD release… which will no doubt make for another interesting comparison!

Some big news coming out of eBay this morning: today, August 17th, eBay unleashes its first stable of Selling Manager Applications… and guess who’s leading the charge!

Some quick background for those who need it: eBay Selling Manager Applications is a new platform initiated by eBay wherein users can subscribe to and access applications directly on the eBay site, via their My eBay page. Billing will be facilitated by eBay itself, while each application performs exactly as if it were hosted by its parent site. Below is a (blurry) shot of Terapeak working its magic under the Applications tab of a My eBay page:

The SMApps project has long been in the works, and Terapeak was thrilled to be selected last year as one of the first participants for this new platform. As you know, we’re extremely passionate about helping sellers with their eBay research, and landing directly on the eBay platform will open our application to many additional sellers.

For those of you who subscribe via the Terapeak.com site, rest assured that nothing will change with regards to your subscription or the way customer service and billing are handled. All that’s different is that Terapeak continues to grow, and with each step taken we’ll be better able to serve you!

Big high fives to the Terapeak team!