How exactly do ebid actually make any money?

DaveAshton

Just wondering how ebid get any profits, long term?

No listing fees, no FVFs if you're a seller plus... assuming every single member (all 750,000 or so :cool:) subscribed to Seller+ and paid their £75 (or £50, if you sign up during the DFS sale-esque promotion period) they'd get at most 37 and a half million quid... and that's it, not a penny more for infinite listings for every seller.

Now, assuming every seller listed 100 items (some will list less, many would list more), that's 75 million items they need to host, all of which can have up to 5 photos (375M images).

How are they going to pay for the required server upgrades and new software when they need it, not to mention the "little things" like wages for their staff, when they've got no regular revenue streams?

Can't help thinking that, despite them being in business for over 10 years, they've not really thought their business model through.

soolin

Actually there are very few seller plus sign ups, I was really surprised when I saw how few paid up members they actually had. Most people list as casual members at no charge.

I think their money comes from the banner ads, especially the big one they often carry that refers people across to ebay. They have also carried banner ads for decidely dogy outfits, and i think that sort of outfit tends to pay quite well as otherwise people won't take their advert.

StaffsSW

Don't forget the affiliate programme they have for recruiting even more sellers - only 50p a time, and I'm lifting about 15 or 20 a day from them for that. I am genuinely stunned at how many people are signing up to ebid as sellers, but I just don't see anything in the way of attracting buyers.

toffe

Ebid are not making alot of money, i recently took a look at their accounts for 2007 and 2008 and they show an annual of profit for the two years of £30,000 and £42,000 respectively.

With such little profits it's no wonder we havent seen any major advertising campaigns from them to help push the site forward.

powertron

When I joined ebid to sell items, I was charged a 'card checking' fee.

£2 or something, haven't managed to sell a sausage so they've already profited from me.

RFW

toffe wrote: »

Ebid are not making alot of money, i recently took a look at their accounts for 2007 and 2008 and they show an annual of profit for the two years of £30,000 and £42,000 respectively.

There are probably a high percentage of Ebay sellers who show profits higher than that.
Ebid is a small fry site and the only people with any ambition for it are the disgruntled Ebay sellers who pass through every now and then.

soolin

RFW wrote: »

There are probably a high percentage of Ebay sellers who show profits higher than that.
Ebid is a small fry site and the only people with any ambition for it are the disgruntled Ebay sellers who pass through every now and then.

Ah yes, the playground brigade who use baby terms to describe ebay like 'feebay' , oh how I laugh (not). I know i always say it but i cannot understand why ebid doesn't use some of its miniscule profit (I knew it was low but not that bad!) to police negative comments about it a little better. The idea, even on some of the threads we get here that ebid is where you go when you get banned from ebay is surely not good publicity. Time and time again we get the ' I got banned on ebay for being a bad seller so I'm off to ebid' and you begin to wonder if all us ebid wannabe sellers are tarred with the same brush and thta's why we can't sell.

powertron wrote: »

When I joined ebid to sell items, I was charged a 'card checking' fee. .

The card fee does raise a lot of negative discussions from people in a similar position to you. Get charged the moment you sign up to a 'free' site and then never sell anything. I'm even worse, took out a full seller + lifetime subscription and haven't even sold enough in total (that includes item price) to touch my outgoings, and I've given it 6 years so far. I didn't even pay full whack for my sub either, I got it heavily discounted. Then add to that the fact you have to drop the prices low to even get a single page view and it suddenly makes ebay look like a cheap place to sell

toffe

i think ebid could be a good place to sell if they could attract more buyers, as stated by soolin the majority of people using ebid seem to be sellers banned from ebay, there are too many sellers and enough buyers, that is the simple explanation of why ebid is not making more money.

I don't think i would be quick to belittle what ebid have achieved, over 1million auctions is good and operating with any profit rather than a loss is better than most other auction sites have ever managed, we have seen a few come and go, even amazon decided it was not worth their time and effort to try and compete with ebay so ebid have done well and i give them credit for that.

What i don't understand is why they have not sought venture capitalist investment to advertise the site nationally to buyers and fill that missing part of the jigsaw, seems like the obvious thing to do to me.

cyberbob

toffe wrote: »

I don't think i would be quick to belittle what ebid have achieved, .

But they haven't really achieved anything. The site and customer base is no bigger than it was 10 years ago. The reason Amazon and google left the auction market was they realised they couldn't compete and make money. All ebid have done is not realise this yet even though there figures as you pointed out are so bad.

Not knowing when you haven't got a viable business isn't much of an achievement. I'm afraid poor lack of business sense isn't a plus point and the reason no venture capitalist isn't involved is they probably realise there isn't any money in ebids business model.

RFW

cyberbob wrote: »

But they haven't really achieved anything. The site and customer base is no bigger than it was 10 years ago. The reason Amazon and google left the auction market was they realised they couldn't compete and make money. All ebid have done is not realise this yet even though there figures as you pointed out are so bad.

Not knowing when you haven't got a viable business isn't much of an achievement. I'm afraid poor lack of business sense isn't a plus point and the reason no venture capitalist isn't involved is they probably realise there isn't any money in ebids business model.

I don't really know what it takes to run Ebid, but a business with little effort that makes a £30-£40k p/a profit isn't a disaster, it just isn't a competitor to Ebay.

Ebid and Ebay in the UK more or less started at the same time, they aren't ever going to be a like for like rival to Ebay and it doesn't look like they want to be.

My guess would be that the Ebid management are sitting on it, happily letting it tick over and waiting for someone to make them an offer.

toffe

cyberbob wrote: »

But they haven't really achieved anything. The site and customer base is no bigger than it was 10 years ago. The reason Amazon and google left the auction market was they realised they couldn't compete and make money. All ebid have done is not realise this yet even though there figures as you pointed out are so bad.

Not knowing when you haven't got a viable business isn't much of an achievement. I'm afraid poor lack of business sense isn't a plus point and the reason no venture capitalist isn't involved is they probably realise there isn't any money in ebids business model.

I'd have to disagree with that bob, don't forget the figures on the annual accounts are after salary, so the guys who own it (i think there is two of them) are making a living and posting a profit for the company each year and to be fair the profit, althought small compared to ebay, is going in the right direction.

Maybe the owners are happy with this, maybe they plan to sit it out for a few more years and grow slowly (they are growing and the profits are going in the ight direction)then maybe they will cash out to a large investor who can push the site forward.

Ebid could compete with ebay but it would take major investment, i'd be suprised if there wasn't a change of ownership at ebid within the next 3 to 5 years, then maybe, just maybe, we will see something happen there.

I wouldn't write them off just yet.