What's Most Popular on eBay, as Voted by Users

We're on Facebook! The vast, unstoppable social networking site has a new resident, WatchCount.com. We're not taking up much space there – just a Fan Page where our visitors can join up to stay connected with our small community.
We plan to post site updates and tips there (just as with our Twitter feed) and if we gain enough momentum, break out the discussion forum to make it easier for fans and visitors to interact.
Please take a moment to Fan us over at Facebook – thanks very much!
(Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.)

We were tickled to learn (and hear) how during yesterday's edition of eBay Radio, hosts Jim "Griff" Griffith and Lee Mirabal had a good time discovering the benefits of WatchCount.com, live on their show. ...You can hear the archived episode yourself in segment #3 here at eBroadcast Studios.

A new feature just added to WatchCount.com: automatic, live translation of our web pages into 50+ languages. We're employing one of Google's translation tools on our site; when it detects that a visitor arrives with a browser/computer set to a non-English language, a toolbar will appear, presenting the option for immediate page translation before the visitor's eyes.
Translation occurs without any page re-loads and should be automatic for the user as she moves around the site. Alternatively, anyone can select a target language at the bottom of any WatchCount.com page to trigger the translation manually.
We hope this feature will help our non-English visitors benefit from the various search functions at WatchCount.com – notably, identifying top-voted eBay items, especially on the variety of international eBay country-sites that WatchCount.com supports.
Naturally, because this translation service is automated, it can be expected to be rather "rough". Nevertheless, we hope that even such a "quick and dirty" mechanical translation will prove to be helpful enough to some visitors that they can continue to enjoy the benefits of our site.

We've just launched a new and small-but-handy feature here at WatchCount.com that makes it easier to discover popular eBay items using our website. Now you can use WatchCount.com from the comfort of your browser's search box/bar! As a browser search provider, we're now capable of being added to the list of search engines – right alongside Google, for example – in the built-in search facilities of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and perhaps other browsers as well.
Adding us to your providers list is often a matter of just 2-3 clicks, and it won't disturb your default search provider. Instead, you'll have us as a useful option alongside your other specialized search engines like mapping providers, translation services, and shopping services. Some screenshots and more information can be found on our Browser Search Provider page.
Thanks for using WatchCount.com!

We're excited to finally offer a much-requested feature: the ability to bookmark your search results into a Permalink for easy, direct access anytime. This makes it simple to run your favorite searches, and see the latest/current results, without having to retype into the Keywords search box. Instead, you'd simply click the bookmarked link that you had once dragged onto your desktop or into your browser's Favorites/Bookmarks menu or toolbar after your initial search.
You'll find the new Permalink located at the bottom of each search results set on WatchCount.com's Basic Search page (homepage).

We've just released v1.1.2 of our free eBay WordPress plugin. The main change in this upgrade is the squashing of a bug that was causing plugin problems for bloggers using PHP under IIS. Most people use PHP under Linux and thus wouldn't be affected. A few other peripheral tweaks and cosmetic improvements were also made, as is often the case with most upgrades.
As always, the full rundown on our plugin is available on our main WCCWPPI information page. If you're currently using the WCCWPPI, you can of course continue with any of the previously released versions, however an easy 1-click upgrade process also awaits you from within your blog's admin pages if you'd like to avail yourself of this new version's improvements – all without losing any of your current settings.
This upgrade is also confirmed compatible with the latest WordPress version (v2.9.2), released a couple days ago by the good folks at WordPress. While you're upgrading our plugin, maybe you'd like to get yourself to the latest WordPress version as well.
Thanks for using (or your interest in) the WatchCount.com WordPress Plugin!

We're excited to finally launch our new IE Accelerator, making it a piece of cake to call up Most Popular eBay items at WatchCount.com directly from whatever website you might happen to be visiting. Simply by selecting text snippets anywhere on the web – such as if you're reading an interesting blog post about collectible cookware, or diamond rings, or... – with just a couple clicks you can pull up search results on WatchCount.com to see top-voted Most Watched eBay items in real-time.
You'll need to have the latest version of Internet Explorer (free, of course) to use this handy feature (also free). It downloads and installs in less than 3 seconds here on our IE Accelerator page. (Also on that page are links to Microsoft.com with more information and videos about their IE Accelerators.)

We've just published WatchCount.com Newsletter Issue #007 (January 2010). You'll soon be able to find it in the newsletter archive, but why not sign up for your own privately delivered copy?

We've just released v1.1.1 of our free eBay WordPress plugin. The main feature added to this upgrade was in response to a couple of our users who wanted to include a WP Theme-formatted text label above the plugin when displayed as a sidebar widget (just like other items in the sidebar). This is now possible, simply by entering your text in the new 'Sidebar Widget Label' field on the Admin/Settings page.
As always, the full rundown on our plugin is available on our main WCCWPPI information page. If you're currently using the WCCWPPI, you can of course continue with either of the previous versions, however a 1-click upgrade process also awaits you from within your blog's admin pages if you'd like to avail yourself of this additional functionality – all without losing any of your current settings.
Thanks for using (or your interest in) the WatchCount.com WordPress Plugin!

WordPress released a milestone upgrade late last week, prompting millions of blog owners to begin upgrading their existing WordPress installations to the new version 2.9.
Over the weekend we completed testing of the WatchCount.com WordPress Plugin and confirmed that it is, as expected, completely compatible with this new WP version as-is (no plugin upgrade required).

We had a great time chatting with the good folks on the RRB Radio show this evening. Beth and Melinda kindly invited us aboard this week to discuss our new free eBay WordPress plugin which sellers can use to easily showcase their items within their WP blogs.
In recent weeks, RRB (The River, The Ranch, and The Bay) has had such eBay celebrity guests as Janelle Elms of OSI Rock Stars and Diane Kennedy, CPA, so we're honored to have been invited back into the limelight during one of their holiday season show segments.
All of RRB's current and previous shows are archived for free download at RRBradio.com.
--Jake

We've just released v1.1.0 of our free eBay WordPress plugin. A major feature was just added: a blogger can now opt to display items from a specific eBay seller, instead of just Most Popular/Watched eBay items from across the marketplace. This feature is geared for eBay sellers who also blog and would welcome a tool to help them market their products outside of eBay.
As always, the full scoop is available on our main WCCWPPI information page. If you're currently using the WCCWPPI, you can of course continue with v1.0.0, however a 1-click upgrade process also awaits you from within your blog's admin pages if you'd like to avail yourself of this additional functionality – all without losing any of your current settings.
Thanks for using (or your interest in) the WatchCount.com WordPress Plugin!
--Jake

As you may know, eBay suffered a serious outage today affecting much of its entire site, making millions of listings inaccessible to searchers, be they shoppers or sellers themselves. This affected our website, as it did many other 3rd-party providers, knocking out most of our services. If you visited WatchCount.com today you ought to have seen our alert message on the home page summarizing the state of affairs. Numerous eBay forum posts discussed this unusual and rare system failure, and eBay was certainly working hard and fast to bring the situation to resolution.
At this point (Sun-22-Nov-2009 ~1:00am PST) it seems search functionality across most of eBay has returned to status quo, although there are scattered reports of "aftershocks" affecting things. Our services seem to now be functioning properly as a result, and we'll continue to monitor things throughout the weekend to make sure all is up to snuff.
Thanks for your patience during all of this. If you have any questions, feel free to post on our Global Conversations page, or email us directly via the 'Contact Us' link appearing in the footer of every WCC page.
--Jake

After months of development, we're excited to finally announce the launch of the new WatchCount.com WordPress Plugin for eBay! This free plugin (we abbreviate it WCCWPPI) allows bloggers to display Most Popular eBay items and auctions directly on their blogs. Just like here on WatchCount.com, such items are voted on by both eBay shoppers and sellers via their "Watch This Item" clicks and ranked accordingly in real-time, reflecting an actual, cumulative interest by registered eBay users. The plugin displays these items in a WordPress blog's sidebar or directly within posts. Search keywords are blogger-specified during configuration, or automatically "on-the-fly" via post tags and anchor tags.
Niche bloggers might like to showcase interesting, relevant products to their readership, and eBay sellers may enjoy the feature to include any specific eBay item right within their blog post simply by embedding the item number as they type – such as if they're announcing a new auction they've just listed on eBay. Moreover, ePN account holders can generate affiliate commissions from using the WCCWPPI.
Check out the main WCCWPPI information page for the full scoop, download link, and comment/support 'mini-forum'.

eBay Daily Deals (eDD) on eBay.co.uk and eBay.de are now featuring 2 time-limited, deeply discounted deals each day instead of just 1. We've updated our eDD page to showcase these additional items that always sell with free shipping/delivery at fixed-price. eBay makes special arrangements with top sellers to offer these popular bargains, and they tend to sell out quickly.

The eBay Developers Program (which runs the API platform upon which WatchCount.com is built) was kind enough to profile WatchCount.com alongside other successful 3rd-party providers in the eBay developers landscape. You can read their write-up here.

We've just restored the classic WatchCount.com header graphic on our site. Why? The new logo, while fresher and a little more "Web 2.0", came with enough lukewarm and "ho-hum" comments that we felt the older logo was really where we should be for the time being. It has a simple look, just like our site, and sports the radiating yellow glow that makes it look that much more alive than its transient successor graphic.
Sorry if we're confusing anyone, but things ought to be relatively stable in this respect going forward. (Who remembers New/Classic Coke?)

We've just published WatchCount.com Newsletter Issue #006 (September 2009). You'll soon be able to find it in the newsletter archive, but why not sign up for your own privately delivered copy?

We've just added a new search feature that can help you find misspelled eBay items on the top English-based eBay sites. This functionality has a page unto itself here on our site, although it's quite a simple utility to use. Admittedly, it's not directly on par with the prevailing themes of WatchCount.com, however we feel many of our regular visitors may find it a useful service in their eBay shopping activities.
Our misspelling search functionality is powered by one of our partners, FatFingers.com. They were actually the ones who first innovated eBay misspelled items searching, creating it, then bringing it into public use years ago (leading to some copycat sites springing up afterwards).
Wondering why you might want to find misspelled eBay items? The answer's quickly summarized right on our misspelled items search page.
Enjoy.

Following some occasional (but polite) criticism, and a fair dose of procrastination, we've finally taken the time to revamp the WatchCount.com header graphic, as should be evident at the top of this page. We hope you'll agree that it appears a little cleaner and more tangible than its predecessor.
Have we finally graduated from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0? Maybe, maybe not; but we think we're now sporting at least a Web 1.5 look.
Want to share your opinion? (We'd love to hear what you think!) Whether positive or constructive, please take a moment to post a comment here on our Global Conversations thread.
Thanks again for using WatchCount.com!
--Jake

Being quite large, the eBay platform goes through various changes on a regular basis as it copes with an ever-changing internet landscape. A recent update unfortunately impinged on our ability to access Watch Count figures via our eBay data feed, and as a result, the WatchCount.com Widget won't always be able to display the Watch Count of your items.
Although we're exploring possible workarounds, for the time being and going forward, the Widget will revert to its level of functionality before the March 2009 update. This means that it probably won't appear on Store Inventory items and single-quantity Fixed-Price items (and thus will remain hidden). Also, it'll be subject to eBay's internal "popularity threshold", and as a result will remain hidden in your auction-style listing until the first bid comes in, or after your multiple-quantity Fixed-Price listing receives its first sale.
We apologize for this inconvenience, but we do our best within the scope of eBay's permissive boundaries.
It still probably won't hurt to add the Widget to your listings, however. Even though it'll initially remain hidden (and up until your optionally specified minimum threshold), once it passes the eBay-defined crossover point, it'll appear, boasting to the world how many watchers that item has accumulated.
The world's full of change, and in the scheme of things this is just a small piece that affected us... Note that other features on our site, such as our Most Watched/Popular search capabilities, continue to remain as functional as before. Also, the Dynamic Watch Link ("Watch This Item" button) that's coupled with the Widget will also continue working in full force.
Thanks again for using WatchCount.com!
--Jake

Auction Wally and Phaedra Stockstill of The Selling Circus invited us to speak with them today on their weekly podcast about WatchCount.com and what it can offer to both eBay buyers and sellers. We had a fun time chatting about eBay item popularity, selling experiences and strategies, the WatchCount.com Widget, and we fielded some questions from the live chat room as well.
You can learn more about, or listen to, this latest episode — or review earlier editions of the Selling Circus.
--Jake

Each day, eBay showcases a small collection of specially arranged, heavily discounted items for sale on several of its sites. The eBay Daily Deal always offers merchandise with free shipping/postage, in Fixed-Price format, from hand-picked top eBay sellers. Because of the depth of the markdown, quantities are very limited, and the items often sellout within hours of going live.
We're pleased to be able to now feature the live eBay Daily Deal(s) for your country on this page of our site. In line with the theme of WatchCount.com, we'll also show you how many watchers the items have accrued (as well as how close the items are to selling out).
Thanks again for using WatchCount.com as part of your eBay shopping activities!
--Jake

We're happy to now offer a new, much-requested feature on WatchCount.com: Item Lookup (ILU) shows you a collection of eBay listing details to assist with your specific-item research endeavors.
ILU shows a number of standard specs (such as title, seller, current price, etc.), but also some data that may be harder to find on eBay's View Item page, such as item quantity sold/available, category ID, or exact end time. Moreover, we'll often be able to include the current Watch Count in ILU search results as well. (However some such details, like how many watchers or viewers the item has accrued, may be unavailble to us, persuant to privacy thresholds in place by either eBay or the individual seller.)
To access Item Lookup simply go to our main search page and paste the eBay item number into the Keywords box and click the "Show Me..." button.
--Jake

We've just published WatchCount.com Newsletter Issue #005 (July 2009). You'll soon be able to find it in the newsletter archive, but why not sign up for your own privately delivered copy?

We've been doing a little housecleaning on WatchCount.com of late. You might notice a less congested menu bar that now sports drop-down menus. Moreover, if you visit us with Safari or Chrome browsers, things more generally ought to look a little tighter and cleaner across the site as well.
On the functionality side of things, for our Basic Search you can now detect item types by eyeing the relevant label: "Past Sales" refers to Fixed-Price (BIN) items, while "Bids" of course refers to Auction Format listings. (No label? It must be a Classified Ad listing.) Of course, simply clicking on the item title or photo will give you the full scoop.
One last thing... Have you ever run a search on WatchCount.com and wished for a quick way to eye the listings alongside similar results on eBay? Now you can! For keyword-based searches you'll now see a link at the bottom of the search results that says "See your search results on eBay instead"; a simple click will take you to eBay in a new window, showing you real-time results based on the keywords you'd already entered at WatchCount.com.
Thanks for using WatchCount.com!
--Jake

We sat down with Amanda of eBay Partner Network and chatted about eBay and affiliate marketing, touching upon a variety of topics ranging from (in)efficient use of screen real estate, to site stickiness, to personal growth, and even pizza! Have a look on the ePN blog.

Skip McGrath, esteemed eBay author, teacher, and long-time PowerSeller had some good things to say about us in his recent newsletter.
Never heard of Skip? If you're selling on eBay professionally, you'll certainly find at least some of his many guides, articles, and books on eBay selling helpful — written from the perspective of someone who's actually toiled in the trenches himself. (You may want to start with his compelling and insightful checklist, 77 Tips and Tools for Selling on The New eBay, which manages to cover a lot of terrain all on 1 page.)
Update: Skip had some more great things to say about us in his current newsletter!
--Jake

We're both honored and humbled (and psyched!) to have received the distinguished 2009 eBay Star Developer Award, presented to us today at the 8th annual eBay & PayPal Developers Conference, hosted this year at the eBay Campus in San Jose, CA. Granted in the category 'Service to the Developer Community', the Award recognizes our active presence and dedicated community participation in eBay's Developer forums over the past year.

eBay solicits nominations for the award from the developer community itself, stating, "Developers and their applications are eligible to be nominated if they build apps using the eBay API platform and if they have represented the very best of the eBay developer community over the past year in one of our nomination categories".
You can read the full press release here.

We're happy to admit that we finally joined the 21st century and opened a Twitter account. Follow us! We'll keep you posted on interesting, funny, or odd eBay finds that turn up — that many others are watching for good reason. We may also slip in some occasional site news and other happenings... Rest assured that, like our newsletter, our tweets ought to be infrequent; so please take a moment to jump aboard and follow us! (Thanks for your support.)
--Jake

Marlene Gavens, aka The Savvy Seller, spoke with us today on her podcast, Tips From the Top, to talk about WatchCount.com and what it can offer eBay sellers.

Marlene is an eBay Certified Education Specialist — one of only 32 on the planet — and teaches, coaches, and consults with eBay sellers of all skill levels and sizes. We were happy to have been offered this opportunity to speak with her and her audience, live on Talkshoe (you can click here to listen or download the show).
--Jake

We've just published WatchCount.com Newsletter Issue #004 (June 2009). You'll soon be able to find it in the newsletter archive, but why not sign up for your own privately delivered copy?

We've just completed the addition of a small, new feature to our Advanced Search page. Search results there will now display the item type, such as Auction Format or Fixed-Price. With this extra information at hand, you can better assess the value of the items you're finding.

Best of the Web, the world's oldest web directory, has approved our application to be included in their index (which we're very grateful for). According to BotW, "To rank among the Best of the Web, a site must adhere to the strict criteria of editors who ensure that it contains substantive unique content, navigates in a user-friendly manner, contains no broken links or pictures, is up and running 24/7, and conforms to universally accepted web standards." Fantastic!
--Jake

We've just finished making some minor graphical adjustments to the Dynamic Watch This Item Link (DWTIL) that is coupled with the WatchCount.com Widget. We cleaned up some of the visual "rough edges" for a cleaner, bolder feel. The intention of the Dynamic Watch Link is to increase the chances that shoppers will add your item to their Watch Lists, getting them even closer to it as eBay promotes the item to them via email. Hopefully the tighter look we gave it will entice more clicks. This change immediately went into effect for all current and future Widgets in eBay listings.
If you'd like to use the former DWTIL graphic, or provide your own (or remove it all together), a super-easy tweak in the HTML is all that's necessary. Just drop us a line and we'd be happy to lend you a hand, or take care of it for you. We also may be able to design a custom Dynamic Watch Link image to suit your particular needs (for free).
Thanks for using the WatchCount.com Widget (and Dynamic Watch Link) in your eBay listings!
--Jake

Do you know PowerSellingMom? She is none other than Danna Crawford, long-time eBay advocate, seller, and self-proclaimed "eBay cheerleader". Selling on eBay since 1997, she's simultaneously worn many hats: eBay... PowerSeller, Education Specialist, Giving Works activist, Trading Assistant, and Groups Leader. She's also an eBook author/publisher and prolific Reviews & Guides reviewer. Most impressive is that she received the prestigious 2008 eBay Hall of Fame Award. Nice!
Danna kindly invited us to sit down with her on her Blog Talk Radio talk show to chat about the WatchCount.com Widget and what it can do for eBay sellers. Tune in live on 24-Apr-2009 @ 8:00pm EDT, or download the show to your iPod (or grab it from iTunes) to listen at your convenience.

Update: We had a fantastic show this evening, maxing out our allotted 1-hour time slot. We of course spoke at length about the WatchCount.com Widget, but we also touched upon social networking, some eBay history, and a few alternative business models employed by eBay sellers.

Please keep a lookout for a short but important email arriving from us soon. You'll need to click on the enclosed activation link to confirm and maintain your subscription to the WatchCount.com Newsletter, otherwise we'll lose you (which we'd prefer not to do).
Why? We're upgrading to a new email service provider, and they need to be certain that everyone getting our newsletter is a genuine subscriber. A simple click on the confirmation link is all that's needed to stay on board. (Abstaining from clicking the link is all that's needed to drop your subscription.)
Thanks for keeping an eye out for that email and taking a few seconds to confirm your subscription — you'll only need to do this once.
We look forward to keeping you in the loop on WatchCount.com news!
(Can't find your confirmation email? Not yet signed up for the WatchCount.com Newsletter? Please subscribe here.)
--Jake

We've just published WatchCount.com Newsletter Issue #003 (March 2009). You'll soon be able to find it in the newsletter archive, but why not sign up for your own privately delivered copy?

As you may have noticed, this past weekend we spiced up WatchCount.com with some social features to enable easy and simple interaction between visitors. The features are casual (and free) and are provided and powered by new Google technology. Under the umbrella term "Google Friend Connect" (GFC), you can now:

• Post and read comments on our Comment Wall to share your experiences with others who use our site. (Share quick tips, ask questions, and see what other items people are turning up in their searches.)
• Optionally make your profile/avatar available to curious members, online friends in your network, and others.

Best of all, it only takes a few seconds to join WatchCount.com since you'll login with an account that you already have: Google, AIM, Yahoo!, or OpenID. (You'll be logging in on their secure website, not ours, so we never get your login credentials; nor will you be added to any mailing lists.) No need to create, note and remember yet another login/password pair!
As GFC grows in popularity you'll see it on more and more websites — and your login, profile, and friend network will travel along with you. Since Google only recently rolled it out to the public, there may be a few quirks or bugs, depending on your browser. (Will you please take a moment to let us know?)
Give it a try, then post your thoughts on the Comment Wall. At-a-glance comments and site updates are also currently viewable in the footer of our homepage to make it easier to see — and respond to — the latest site chatter.
--Jake

The WatchCount.com Widget enhancements detailed in our earlier announcement are now live. (We'll be updating our documentation here on the site in the coming weeks.)

We've been working hard lately on some "under the hood" improvements to the WatchCount.com Widget. These changes will make the Widget more robust and transcend several of the limitations endured by the current Widget. Here are the main enhancements we'll be rolling out shortly:

• The Widget will work for all listing types (Fixed Price, Stores/Shops, Classified Ad, etc.) instead of just being primarily for Auction Format listings.
• The current Watch Count will show itself immediately upon the launch of the listing (or whenever you append the Widget to the listing), instead of hiding until the first bid or similar "popularity threshold". Depending on your item and current Watch Count, this may even help incite that first bid. (You can of course still opt to hide the Widget for low Watch Counts with a simple HTML tweak.) Quick tip: Don't forget — you can add yourself as a watcher of your own listing, too!
• When registered eBay users click a Watch Link anywhere on your listing page to add the item to their watch lists, the Watch Count in the Widget will now update immediately. (You can see this effect right now, here in a live eBay listing.)

We'll be deploying these changes on 07-Mar-2009 for all current and future Widgets. This will happen automatically without any required HTML code changes or other effort on your part — so put away your credit card, sit back, and just allow these quiet updates to kick-in then.
If you happen to find these enhancements particularly appealing, we'd be happy to enable them for your eBay seller ID in advance of the public rollout. Please contact us for more information on that.
Thanks for using the WatchCount.com Widget!

We've just published WatchCount.com Newsletter Issue #002 (February 2009). You'll soon be able to find it in the newsletter archive, but why not sign up to get our low-volume mailing conveniently sent directly to your inbox?

We're in the process of adding more international eBay country-sites to WatchCount.com. We'd heard from a number of visitors seeking to be able to search eBay France, so eBay.fr been added to our site. A few others requested support for eBay Ireland, so that's in queue to go live here within the next week or so. Stay tuned for Spain and Italy to follow as well.
Again, we'd like to apologize that the base language of WatchCount.com will still remain in English for the foreseeable future (sorry). Of course, search results (listing title and currency) for whichever eBay country-site you have selected will be natural, live, and localized for the proper country.
If you're an eBay shopper of one of these newly supported countries, you now have access to Watch Count data and popular item rankings to help you comparison shop and better frame your buying activities. Sellers like to use our Advanced Search features to do quick market research and can now (or very soon) access live eBay data for these additional countries. Moreover, the WatchCount.com Widget will also work for item listings sourced from, or displayed on, these additional eBay country-sites.
If you have any questions about this — or anything else on our site — please don't hesitate to reach out to us.
Thanks for using WatchCount.com!
--Jake

We've finished with some tweaking of the typefaces within the WatchCount.com Widget. In addition to the Widget now having a cleaner feel to it, many of the characters in the informational message ("eBay users are watching...") are less likely to bleed into each other, making things appear that much crisper. These changes took effect immediately for all current/live and future Widgets.
One possible concern a few sellers might have is if they customize the Widget's informational message with a long sentence — since the character spacing is wider than before, it's possible the last word of the message may get dropped if the Watch Count grows large enough.
You can always use Widget Demo Mode to test your Widget with different Watch Counts and other customizations before dropping the HTML code into your listing(s). Of course, feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have; our door is always open.
--Jake

We've just published WatchCount.com Newsletter Issue #001 (January 2009). You can read it online, but be sure to sign up to get our low-volume mailing conveniently sent directly to your inbox.

We've just finished migrating WatchCount.com to a newer/better/bigger/faster/pricier server to keep up with increasing demand. If you're one of our regular visitors, you ought to notice a tangible increase in site speed (yay!) as well as more search results when searching from our home page. (You can continue to display up to 100 search results using our Advanced Search page.)

When you run searches on WatchCount.com, some of the search results will be Fixed-Price eBay listings where bidding doesn't take place. Instead of showing a Bid Count for those items, we're now showing the Sale Count — how many previous sales have been completed for that particular item. You can eyeball this figure alongside the Watch Count and other data we show to help gauge item popularity. (This feature is only available when you run keyword or category searches, not "all-across-eBay" searches.)
As always, please let us know of features you're eager to see appear on WatchCount.com, and we'll do our best to comply.
Again, thanks for using WatchCount.com!
--Jake

We're currently experiencing a problem with the WatchCount.com Widget: the Widget is absent from eBay listing pages, only appearing as a broken image placeholder. We're working diligently with our web host to resolve the issue and apologize for the inconvenience. (The Dynamic Watch This Item Link component continues to function properly.)
Update 1: We've implemented a temporary workaround on the issue while the full problem gets corrected: the Widget should now be graciously hidden instead of (not) appearing as a broken image placeholder. Stay tuned for more information and complete resolution...
Update 2: Problem resolved. All Widgets should now display as usual in listings where they'd normally appear. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused, and thank you for your patience.
--Jake

We've just launched the WatchCount.com Newsletter — a low volume mailing list that'll make it easier for us to keep you up-to-date on WatchCount.com happenings: site enhancements, new features, secret tips, and other WCC news. Signing up is easy: just click here, enter your email address, click a button, and you're golden. We promise not to spam you or otherwise disrespect your privacy. (You can read more about such matters in our just-revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.)
Welcome aboard!
--Jake

The prestigious Auction Software Review just added us to their directory of 3rd-party eBay software applications. If you Google "eBay software" or "auction software" you ought to see them listed on page 1 of the search results — if not the #1 spot, as I'm seeing right now.
Naturally, with that kind of distinction we're happy to have been offered a pair of product listings on their site.
--Jake

If you Google "web awards", you'll likely see www.WorldWideWebAwards.net there on page 1 as one of the top/long-standing website evaluation and award entities. We're pleased to have been awarded their Silver Award, for December 2008, in recognition of "clean and organized design, user friendliness, quality content, and informative information for your visitors". (Thanks for noticing!) WatchCount.com was put through the wringer on several dozen scoring points, landing us on top with a Silver Award. (Hmmm, maybe we would have grabbed the Gold Award had we some fancy Flash animations.)

We're pleased to announce a new partnership between WatchCount.com and eCommerce Merchants Trade Association. Working closely with PeSA, the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance, eCommerce Merchants provides best practices guidance, technology & infrastructure advice and sourcing & supplies solutions to online merchants around the world who use the internet to sell or promote products and services, both on eBay and off. As a new sponsoring partner, we're happy to be able to offer our services to their members. You can read the full press release here.

We're honored to have been selected as the Cool Site of the Day today, by the site with that very same name. They've been featuring cool sites daily since mid-1994, with an avid, worldwide audience. So, of all the nominations that clutter their inbox daily, we're flattered to have stood out amidst the plethora of submissions.

If you like WatchCount.com, please take a quick moment to click on over to CSotD and rate us (hopefully highly). After today you won't be able to vote, but you'll see us in the Cool Site of the Day Still Cool Archive.
Thanks for visiting WatchCount.com (and thanks for your vote!).
--Jake

This week we expanded our support for some additional international eBay sites. Just added: India, Singapore, Belgium (Nederlands and Français), and Germany. As usual, select your preferred country from the menu bar pick-list, or via one of the shortcuts found elsewhere on the site. These added countries also allow more sellers abroad to use our Widget in their eBay listings, and our Advanced Search page is affected accordingly as well.
We regret that it'll be a while before we upgrade WatchCount.com with language packs such that the entire site renders in your local language. (Sorry.) In the meantime, however, rest assured that our search results are genuine, direct from the corresponding international eBay site.
More eBay country-sites will be added in due time. If you'd like support for your eBay country-site to be added sooner rather than later, please do drop us an email and we'll see what we can do.
One more improvement we just implemented along the way: the site will remember which country you selected on your previous/return visit and will thus make it that much quicker to get the search results you came to us for. (Sorry that it took us a little while to get that together. I know several of our regular visitors will feel relieved to have this small-but-helpful feature in place.)
Thanks for visiting WatchCount.com!
--Jake

We've posted our Terms of Service (‹‹ click to read) that all visitors agree to abide by when using our site and services.

We've taken some of the most requested new features for our site and collected them together on our new Advanced Search page.
This year we'd gotten a number of requests to allow deep searches, and you can now do just that: you can see the most watched items in a specific eBay category, such as Musical Instruments > Guitar > Electric > Gibson. As usual, you can combine such searches with keywords, and you'll see Watch Counts for all such search results, as you've come to expect here on WatchCount.com.
The most requested new feature was more search results, so we've added that within Advanced Search as well. You can now pull up the 40, 60, or even 100 most watched/popular items for your specified category or keyword query. Sweet.
Moreover, you can also search multiple categories at once, and even exclude categories, such as if you wanted to see the most popular Harry Potter items outside of the Books category.
If you're an eBay seller or service provider and occasionally come across an eBay category number in your notes but forget what it is, you can quicly look it up on our Advanced Search page by dropping it into the Included Categories box.
Are we as good as, or even better than, the Most Watched section of eBay's Pulse page? Maybe, maybe not, depending on your criteria. But either way, we hope you'll find these new features helpful, whether you're shopping on eBay or doing market research.
As always, our door is open if you have any questions, discover any bugs, or have any comments to share.
--Jake

We've just made a small textual (and coloring) change to the WatchCount.com Widget: We've revised the default informational text from "eBayers" to "eBay users". (Not everyone knows what an eBayer is!) This went into effect for all current/live and new Widgets.
As always, if you like you can modify the informational text to say almost anything. Simply follow our customization instructions. If that's too much HTML to swallow at one sitting, feel free to shoot us an email and we can whip up the customized HTML snippit for you.
--Jake

At long last... I'm excited that we've just added a new feature to our site. Until now, to see most watched/popular eBay items you needed to specify a keyword phrase or category on our search page.
No longer.
Simply by omitting any keywords phrase and category selection, you can now see the most watched items across an entire eBay site! The results are nearly identical to eBay Pulse, so you can get Watch Count data easily for those top-level Pulse items you've been curious about, and the few runners-up that don't quite make the cut onto Pulse but are still heavily watched.
This feature works for each of the eBay international sites we currently support. Note that eBay considers its US Motors site distinctly separate from the main eBay.com site, so most-watched for eBay.com won't take into consideration any super-popular cars and trucks. (By contrast, other eBay countries' vehicle items are included within their respective sites, so you'll often see some at the top of that country's most watched list in our search results.) If you want to see the most popular eBay Motors (US) items, just select the "Motors" category while in the eBay US mode of our site.
--Jake

We just finished adding another free tool to WatchCount.com: the Dynamic Watch This Item Link. I know it'll save a bunch of sellers a bunch of time.
As you may know, encouraging shoppers to add your item to their Watch Lists can bring them that much closer to the item: they're reminded of the item in their My eBay page; eBay emails them just before the listing ends; if the item is relisted, eBay sends another email. (There's even some speculation, and perhaps evidence, that a higher Watch Count can improve your item's placement in Best Match search results.) Can't hurt, right?
If you're seeing under 20 watchers on your item but getting no bids, you've probably learned the hard lesson that "watchers doesn't equal buyers" — at least in that under-two-dozen range. Once you break past 20-30 watchers it becomes much more likely that you'll be getting at least that first bid, probably more. Can getting more watchers lead to more bids? Maybe.
To encourage watchers, as a seller you may already be manually adding Watch Links to your listings. You know how cumbersome it is to have to revise the listing immediately after posting, else your custom Watch Link with flashy graphic or in-your-face font size won't actually do any good.
That's where our Dynamic Watch This Item Link comes in... It's a standard 1-shot URL you drop into any or all of your listings instead of a manually built Watch Link, and you don't need to revise the listing to complete the link. Pretty cool, eh? It dynamically detects your item and eBay country-site and forwards your visitor through a properly-built Watch Link when they click the link.
Additionally, you can customize the Dynamic WTI Link. For your purposes it's really just an HTML anchor tag that you'd flank around any text or image of your choosing (behind it is some clever software we wrote to do the magic :) .
If you're using our free Widget, you'll see the Link comes alongside it by default, adding a miniature "double-punch" to your marketing efforts for that listing.
--Jake

We'll soon be changing the standard WatchCount.com Widget skin from its current look to a new skin. This change will go into effect automatically on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 9:00 am PDT (eBay Time) and will affect all current/live Widgets in place on eBay pages, as well as new Widgets going forward. Exception: if you've customized your Widget to designate a certain skin, you'll continue to display your specified choice — the Widgets in your listings won't change their appearance when the general cutover happens.
If you're like most sellers who use our Widget, you won't need to make any adjustments anywhere or worry about anything; just sit back and enjoy a sleeker look. :-)

old default skin: "glass"
new default skin: "silver"

I think this new skin has a cleaner, brighter feel to it that hopefully will be embraced more easily by both sellers and buyers. Of course if you'd prefer the old skin, or any of our other ones, please check out our selection of skins and apply your choice in your own Widget. You can even get in contact with us if you're interested in getting a custom skin.
--Jake

We've just added a new skin, "silver", to our array of skins. If you're already customizing your WatchCount.com Widget, you can start using it right away as an alternative to the default skin. (If you haven't customized your Widget, it's easy. Instructions are here.)
--Jake

I'm really excited about a new add-on widget to our site that enables eBay sellers to display their item's Watch Count within the body of the listing(s). It's pretty cool: you just slap a simple piece of our HTML code (no Javascript, no Flash, no hassle) into your listing and when the page is viewed, the item's current Watch Count is shown (with some minor caveats).



While some sellers prefer to keep their items' Watch Counts hidden or below the radar, we know that other sellers feel that the display of a potent Watch Count value can possibly entice shopper interest and activity. Our Widget enables that figure to be exhibited publicly.
A Watch Count can be a measure of item popularity, not unlike user voting/flagging systems at social media sites (Digg.com, for example). A brief comparison of 3 eBay item popularity metrics is on our Widget FAQ.
There are customization options for the WatchCount.com Widget, such as the ability to have the Widget automatically hide itself for low Watch Counts, or additional skins to use.
It's all laid out, including the short HTML snippit to grab to implement the Widget, here.
--Jake

We're happy to announce that we've added 2 more countries to our growing list of supported international eBay sites. Visitors interested in researching popular items in eBay Canada (English) and eBay Australia can now do so here on our site.
--Jake

At long last we've finally upgraded the software behind WatchCount.com to handle international eBay sites. Now that that's taken care of we can begin to roll out international support country-by-country. This means that visitors can see the most popular eBay items (and their Watch Counts) at eBay sites 'round the planet — not just on eBay US.
Our first international eBay site is eBay UK. (Currently, most of our non-US visitors come from the UK, so we tackled that one first.) You can now see what items are ranked as most popular by eBay users on eBay.co.uk . Cool.
Keep an eye on the site/country selector pick-list for availability of more international eBay sites to come. And if you have a preferred eBay site you'd like to see included sooner rather than later, please let us know and we'll see what we can do.
And as always, if you come across any bugs, please give us a holler. Thanks!
--Jake

We think we've got all the kinks worked out of WatchCount.com for now, so it's time to pull out of beta mode and consider ourselves fully live. (Jeez, did you realize that Google's Gmail is still in beta?!)
There could still be a bug or two hidden in the corner, so if anything seems out of place, please do let us know.
Of course, there are several more features we'll be adding in the coming months, so stay tuned.
--Jake

We've just finished adding and testing a new feature on WatchCount.com : You can now search within the top-level eBay US Motors categories! Would you like to see the most watched car or truck on eBay? The most popular motorcycle? Now you can. And of course you can search with much greater detail by using the Keywords field as well, as usual.
You'll find these new eBay Motors categories (well, new for us) nestled within the category list on the WatchCount.com home page. What we've noticed is that these highly watched items accumulate many more watchers than most other eBay categories (check it out here); people seem to get pretty pumped up about buying vehicles on eBay! (Who would've thought?!)
--Jake

We're happy to report that a few days ago the good folks at eBay just gave us the nod by deeming WatchCount.com an 'eBay Compatible Application' after we passed their compatibility testing requirements. Our web application is now officially certified for use with the eBay Platform, and we've earned the right to display the eBay Compatible Application logo on our site. Yay!
--Jake

Ok, here we are on the new WatchCount.com official blog [edit: now converted to this News page]. Sweet.
I'm Jake, your host, and here's what WatchCount.com, just launched in beta this week, does:
At our site, you select (keywords and/or a general category) what you want to see on eBay and we'll show you the most popular items on eBay for your query at that very moment. Popularity is determined ultimately by eBay, but the items' Watch Counts are the primary factor — how many eBay users have clicked "Watch This Item" for that auction listing. We also show you the actual Watch Counts themselves, a metric currently unavailable on eBay. (Yes, it's all free.)
Whether you're an eBay buyer or seller, there are a number of reasons why the Watch Count / popularity information may prove helpful — see our FAQ for some examples.
We hope you enjoy the helpfulness and utility of our site.
--Jake