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Hampshire/UK, 10/03/04
Guerilla marketing with faked ebay auctions to improve a web sites popularity? Example of Focus Computer Ltd.
On September, 20th, the Traffic Statistics News Robot found a press release from Stephe Kirkby's Focus Computer Ltd about the auction of the PR6 web site www.a1-cheap-laptops.com starting on September 23rd on Ebay.
Stephen Kirkby's site registered by Focus Computer Ltd. has got a good google ranking for the popular keyphrase "cheap laptops", but only some hundred visitors daily. The ebay aucton started as promised on 23rd with an initial requested offer of 10.000 British Pound (about 18.000 USD), in the article description there were given some more details about the sites statistical parameters.
Stephe Kirkby's 10 day auction ended today and went on in a way, that's not good for building trust to his potential customers, but who knows, maybe popularity is more important. Shortly after the auction was started, an initial bid was made, some hours later another user placed a bid 500 pounds higher and then the same user almost doubled his bid to 20.000 Bristish Pound (about 36.000 USD).
Today, just before the auction ended, there was made a bid of 20.100 Pound by a user named cannabisheaven.co.uk and that bid won. There also exist a domain named cannabisheaven.co.uk, and that domain is registered by Focus Computer Ltd, just as the domain a1-cheap-laptops.com, what was for sale in the auction - so in total Stephe Kirkby's Focus Computer Ltd. bought his own website in the auction.
What's the sense in running such an auction? Of course, one can try, if somebody really bids an overpriced amount on some unproved statistics, it's just trying to cheat people, but can a seller expect somebody to be stupid enough? Probably not.
But to increase linkage and popularity, it might work, if it's well done, the auction might be covered by classic media, in web news like on Traffic Statistics News and gets direct traffic from Ebay. If Ebay then has done a special offer that seller's don't have to pay a fee, the marketing effect is even for free. Drawback is, that Ebay will not honor bids of seller alias users on it's own items, but as relaxed as Ebay is to punish users for fraud, we wouldn't even expect to have Stephen Kirkby's ID stevekirkby to be banned from Ebay. Could by a working Guerilla marketing tactic based on that Ebay does not punish fraudulent users.
We were disappeared by the auction, because due to insider trade it was not possible to get a market price for a PR 6 ecommerce site.
Link provided: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=46689&item=3840
Added by: Traffic Statistics Webmaster
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