Thursday, July 20. 2006Good News: eBay bows to consumer pressure
In my last blog entry I ranted about the perceived downfall of eBay. I have good news for all of you: As a reader pointed out, eBay reacted to my blog and is now changing their strategy. Quoting a Yahoo News article:
SAN FRANCISCO - It has been clear to investors for some time that eBay Inc. has been losing the luster that turned the online auctioneer into an e-commerce bellwether. Now, CEO Meg Whitman is finally acknowledging things have been off kilter and is hoping to set things right by raising fees on the online stores that had been diverting traffic from eBay's auctions. "We are trying to get back to the essence of eBay," Whitman said Wednesday during an interview. Who's to say bloggers have no power? 
Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry
No Trackbacks
Comments
Display comments as
(Linear | Threaded)
Ebay is losing it. I have been a seller since 1997 . They pushed me into opening a store. Didn't they realize what they were doing. Our sales went from 100 a week to 6. I just dumped all 400 store items into a auction which made Ebay a quick $400.00 . Thats the plan. They will go back to work with the store sellers. In the mean time I am praying that Google doe's something.
Meg, it's time to quit. I'm sure you have enough of Ebay and the idiots like us who believed in you. For anyone who reads this its time to bail out of Ebay stock or play it short.
buy tramadol what is tramadol tramadol side effects [url=http://tramadol4.forumup.pl/]buy tramadol[/url] [url=http://tramadol5.forumup.pl/]what is tramadol[/url] * [url=http://tramadol6.forumup.pl/]tramadol side effects[/url]
Too little, too late. Once the "hate-factor" sits in - there is almost no going back.
Ha ! The new strategy is extremely unpopular. So unpopular that the stock is diving. So Ebay gets to buy back more stock cheaper. Brilliant. In the short term. In the long term - disastrous.
Meg Whitman changed eBay's course as a result of reading your blog?!? What a fucking self-important moron you are.
No kidding. Its almost as bad as anonymously posting a blog comment that reveals a total lack of understanding irony.
Hah watch eBay die now. Claim credit for that!
I'm closing my 2 stores by August 20 and will replace eBay with Oztion, aussiebids and promotion for my own website via my physical store.
Rob,
I too have moved my selling needs to another auction website. In preference to oztion etc, I have been making use of www.swapace.com . They are free and offer features that other auction sites haven't even thought of! Give them a go, see what you think.
I'll keep it in mind but so far I've only gotten cranking on Oztion. Sold 14, Won 18. Very nice, already saved on fees.
Join Oztion! Give me referrer credits by joining via here: www.oztion.com.au/?r=34000 or just look up the site.
I like Swapace cos of an offer management system they have.
i.e. say you want a mobile phone. you are bidding on 6 phones but obviosuly only want to win one auction. The moment one of your auction wins, it automatically cancels the other offers (unless of course you want them too) Also great becasue it allows you to negotiate, swap, barter etc. I love it!
Consumer pressure?
Who pays eBay fees? Sellers who list on eBay pay eBay fees and are eBay's "consumers". And we are leaving en masse. Take a look at the Australian eBay Discussion Boards. Better sell your shares now while you can still get SOMETHING for them!
You have to be kidding. You think this is a good thing for ebay - twit - and to get up and publicly take credit for it - again twit.
Ebay will collapse - stores are closing right left and centre. twit twit twit
I take credit for deploying a stylistic means called "humour" in my blog. nudge nudge
And yeah, I'm happy to see eBay emphasize private auctions again. Online stores don't belong there.
So you want it like it was 10 years ago?
That would be great. Low listing fees, no illegal copies from Asia, no cheap rip-offs from China, not that many non-paying bidders, a customer support that aswered the questions asked, ... eBay can't turn around. Investors force them to make a lot of money. It is all about their money. Not about sales....
Hello people,
I just don't have anything to say, buy viagra, not that it matters [url=http://viagra.forumup.dk/]buy viagra[/url] Best regards, Henry
@raylene: surely you are american? if someone dosn't get obvious irony/sarcasm, chances are high it's an american.
Ah sheesh, don't start up with nationalistic bullshit.
People are closing stores left and right. eBay wanted the fee increase to drive store owners to "core listings" or normal auction listings but instead they are leaving eBay completely. closing stores and pulling thousands of listings. take a look at the eBay store discussion boards. by the way, store listings make up 1/3 of the listings on eBay.
Well the point Markey was making is that he doesn't like all the stores. It seems like increases to the price would discourage individuals as much perhaps more then the stores though?
If you have such influence at eBay, I implore you to suggest that eBay's CEO hole, Meg Whitman, step down and that Bill "Just one more scoop" Cobb also step down. Either that, or have Pierre send them both nice little messages.
everyone who is threatening to leave ebay is so freaking stupid and you know it or your just really ignorant. Leaving ebay will hurt you a lot more than it will hurt ebay and I bet you that 95% of you will come back crying. The fact of the matter is the other auctions suck balls and ebay basically has a monopoly in their area. Threatening ebay is not going to do anything so stop crying like little pussies and deal with it. The profits are still at ebay and thats what matters when selling, if you can't make profits then you shouldn't be selling because you obviously don't know crap about business.
i think this depends on the category you are selling in. Not all the categories are the same. If a category has 20 pages of featured plus items, a seller has to pay a lot more to list an item. If eBay has two categories for the same item, it confuses buyers as well. So sellers are more or less forced to list and feature in two categories. Have you tried to be a professional seller in the art category. try it and you will think twice about what you write...
EBay is doing what they always did. Raising prices and making their platform more and more unusable.
In the art category, they already have over 10000 items up for auction. Now they tell the sellers to list even more. Most buyers have given up searching through this mess. More is not the solution for buyers.... Peter
There comes a tipping point and this is it.
Ebay just gave the other Aussie sites the biggest boost ever. I buy and sell and I will be listing on 2 alternative sites. Sure I will still use eBay but I will no longer have a store, will do everything possible to minimise my fees (including adding handling), and I just won't list a lot of items at all on eBay. For multiple items I will have parallel listings on the different sites. eBay will lose revenue from me and other sites will have more items for sale. I will buy from the other sites wherever possible. Other sellers are doing the same, and some are just leaving entirely. One seller with 88000 feedback just packed up their shop and now sells only via their website. For them eBay was already relatively expensive but now eBay shareholders will no longer have the benefits of their fees. Other sellers are following these sorts of ideas so even if they stay on eBay their presence will be smaller and they will improve their other options and exit strategy. eBay will lose heaps of revenue.
If you truly believe that this is a good thing for eBay, i do hope you put your money where your mouth is and purchased lots of stock.
The idiot management at ebay has managed, with one stroke of the sword, to bring ebay AND their careers down. No small feat. Watch the stock market and weep.
Alright!
Maybe next they'll get rid of all the Sellers running auctions, INCLUDING power sellers, that BLATANTLY sell BOOTLEG movies, music, apparel, ad in finitum. I doubt it, though...too much ill gotten revenue for Meg and Bill to ignore.
We welcome everybody to visit the ArtByUs.com Art Marketplace. In the past three days, we have seen a lot of sign-ups on our site. Every time eBay makes a change, our registrations and sales go up. I think these changes are good for everybody. Ebay looses business, and our customers win. eBay, just continue like this. We appreciate your business....
Ever since eBay went public they have been running a stock, not a business. Everything they do is designed to pump the stock. Short term greedy motivations will end up ruining the business as they drive more and more sellers away and afterall, the sellers are the marketplace. eBay is just a venue. Nothing more than a glorified BBS. Some servers running some software is all eBay is. The sellers do all the work and have all the product. eBaY can no longer grow the marketplace and so they take a larger and larger slice of the pie with their fee increases. This should tell investors the stock price is way overpriced. The stock price is based on a huge growth rate and the mere fact that they have to raise fees to grow revenues tells you the days of growth have ended. With this latest fee increase they may have taken too large a slice of the pie. The question is this: How much is just a venue worth ? How much is software running on some servers worth? I dont think it is worth anywhere near the fees they collect.
eBay lies in their public statements about 'confirmed registered users' and in their SEC filings. They say they have '203 million confirmed registered users'. The first question is what is a user? The intent is for you to believe it represents an individual. In her keynote speech Meg Whitman referred to the 203 million users as people and said if eBay was a country it would be the 5th largest population. Clearly intending investors to believe that 203 million users means 203 million individuals. The fact is it only means 203 million userids. Many, if not most, eBay users have multiple userids. Therefore, the 203 million users could well mean only 20 million individuals. Or 50 million individuals. It definitely does not mean 203 million individuals. Definitely misleading information put out by eBay to fool investors as to how many individuals use eBay!Isn't this a violation of SEC rules regardling 'false and misleading' information? It certainly is misleading.
P.S. 'confirmed registered user' only means the user registered with a valid email address and he/she received the confirmation email and clicked the confirmation link. Again, a misleading term. Confirmed user makes one think there is some process to confirm the legitmacy of a user. NOT!
Given that each registered user must have a unique email address, it seems unlikely that the average individual using ebay went to the trouble to create 10-50 different email accounts just for the pleasure of having multiple ebay accounts.
I have 2 ids as do almost all sellers who are active on the forums. Many people also have selling ids and buying ids to avoid a bad buying experience impacting on their selling feedback. So for some that means 1 buying, 1 selling, 1 posting id.
I am now listing my store items via Singapore Ebay it costs NOTHING to list and No final value fees either only thing is they sell in Singapore Dollars. I sell to overseas buyers anyway.
Great love this. All my competition, especially those stores that come in and try to undercut the rest of us at rediculous prices are going. I'm staying - more profit and sales for me. YES!
I once read that if you want to make it, do the opposite to everyone else. So I'm staying.
kicking out your most experienced sellers with the biggest stock inventories, and making enemies of them. Thats a total gift to any aspiring competion Overnight making 2/3 of all listings invsible to buyers, will turn buyers away
suicidal busines tactics. sellers ran stores because buyer buy more from them..Stores are the way to establish a reputation and trust..fly by night auction listers inspire little trust..No trust> no future..Ebay has just sounded its death, bell never to be trusted again..going completly against its marketing strategy it used to push stores earlier in the year |
Amarok LinksCalendarQuicksearchCategoriesSyndicate This BlogBlog AdministrationWe Listen To... Powered by
|
