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eBay sellers know more than anyone the kind of rough year eBay has been having, and third-quarter financials released on Wednesday revealed slow growth in eBay's Marketplaces business. eBay auctions fell 7% globally in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, while fixed-price listings (which make up 79% of total sales) grew 15%.

eBay Marketplaces as a whole grew GMV only 7% FX-neutral and grew revenue only 5% FX-neutral.

CEO John Donahoe blamed the disappointing performance on the Cyber attack and Google's SEO algorithm change in May. It's interesting to note he did not mention the technical outages that have plagued the site.

eBay did however reveal that users were having problems resetting their passwords. Five months after requiring users to reset their passwords following the data breach, Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said on Wednesday eBay was "making adjustments to the login process and increasing customer service to address the pain points."

What else is eBay's management team doing to address the challenges? My takeaway after listening to the post-earnings conference call is that first, they're spending money on marketing - the new global brand campaign is the biggest it has run since '08 or '09, Donahoe said. You can watch eBay's new TV ad and leave a comment on this EcomerceBytes Blog post.

And secondly, eBay is working on a solution to put listings in a "form and format that offer more sustainability" - but it will take time. "It's not going to pop back up in the next one, two or three quarters. It'll come up a little bit at a time as we index more and more of that inventory back in."

It was interesting to hear the eBay CEO share his frustration with analysts over the "volatility" of SEO. He seemed oblivious to fact his own sellers have expressed the same frustration over eBay's changing search engine algorithms, aka "Cassini."

One factor that might have an effect on eBay auction listings is the new Live Auctions that are back on eBay thanks to a deal with Invaluable - however, it's not clear if they will help or hinder regular auction listings from eBay's online sellers.

It will be interesting to compare eBay's Q3 results with those of Amazon, which is set to release its third-quarter performance this week. Interestingly the company announced last week it would be hiring 80,000 seasonal workers to help it get holiday orders out the door.

Amazon sellers should pay attention to two recent developments. First, the company is tightening up shipping policies for third-party sellers. No one can offer 1-day shipping unless they're using FBA, and only sellers with Order Defect Rates of less than 0.5% can offer 2-day shipping. Those changes take effect in the U.S. on November 13, 2014.

Secondly, Amazon is opening its holiday deals program to more sellers and is expanding that inclusion internationally. One seller invited into the program explained that what generally takes him up to three weeks to sell can be sold in a matter of hours using Amazon's Lightning Deal during the holidays.

But what do you do if you aren't already in the program and don't receive an invitation? Amazon provided me with an answer to that question - click on this EcommerceBytes Newsflash story to learn how to submit your deal for Amazon's consideration.

We've been covering developments at Bonanza, which introduced a new store platform last month. Now you can play with a demo Webstore. It's an interesting model both in terms of how the store-hosting integrates with the Bonanza marketplace and in terms of its pricing.

In today's lineup, we've got a story from tax guru and small-business expert Barbara Weltman on hiring seasonal help for the holiday shopping season and what you need to know about the tax implications; a piece from Greg Holden on eBay's Business Policies feature that is designed to make sellers more efficient; and an intriguing column from Michele Alice on paper dresses from the 1960s. As always, we wrap up with letters to the editor.

Thanks for reading.

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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