Ebay set to stop Private Sellers?

RFW

patman99 wrote: »

At the end of the day, Ebay know that for every 'whinging pleb' that desserts them for their rivals, there will be 2 'unsuspecting mugs' waiting to join in the selling frenzy.

or alternatively for every Argos seller they can afford to lose a few thousand other sellers.

Ebay is evolving all the time, some good, some bad, they are still a pretty young business, especially with the position they hold. They can't look back on what other retailers/sites have done, they remain a unique website with a massive user base of both buyers and sellers. For all the disgruntles on here (you give it away with terms such as "fleebay"!) and former users who have been repeatedly banned from the site, there are plenty of happy little buyers and sellers still there and as you say more springing up every day.

soolin

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

What ebay always seem to forget, is that by banning thousands of users and iritating away just as many, their customer base is shrinking, and all the free/bulk listings in the world aren't going to achieve anything if theres nobody there to buy.

You've been saying that for about as long as I've been a BG on here, maybe one day you may be proved right. However at the moment it appears to be going on very nicely indeed.

Maybe some people need to check their selling model to avoid constant suspensions and problems. It really isn't rocket science to stick to their terms and conditions and make a profit.

There are still too many people though trying to sell absolute rubbish and boasting about how clever they are that they can break all the rules and still get away with it.

Whilst ebay works for me I will be happy to use it, if I ever get to the point that I can't abide by the rules and make a profit I'll stop.

Brooker_Dave

soolin wrote: »

You've been saying that for about as long as I've been a BG on here, maybe one day you may be proved right. However at the moment it appears to be going on very nicely indeed.

“Recent data points also indicate that the marketplace business may be slowing once again. While we believe these concerns are largely priced in at current levels, we would like to see signs of more sustainable marketplace growth and evidence that recent eBay changes are accelerating Marketplace growth.”

"Since the company's report, share of eBay have fallen from $26.29 to $19.26, representing a loss of 26.74% in the past 72 days."

"President, CEO & Director of eBay Inc. (EBAY) John J Donahoe sells 16,667 shares of EBAY on 06/30/2010 at an average price of $19.75 a share"

Ebay share price today $19.35, ebay share price Jan 2005 $60.

While you are clearly a fan of ebay's mission to rid itself of customers, looks like not everyone else is...

RFW

soolin wrote: »

You've been saying that for about as long as I've been a BG on here, maybe one day you may be proved right. However at the moment it appears to be going on very nicely indeed.

Maybe some people need to check their selling model to avoid constant suspensions and problems. It really isn't rocket science to stick to their terms and conditions and make a profit.

There are still too many people though trying to sell absolute rubbish and boasting about how clever they are that they can break all the rules and still get away with it.

Whilst ebay works for me I will be happy to use it, if I ever get to the point that I can't abide by the rules and make a profit I'll stop.

It seems to be the case that if you're happy with Ebay and how it works for your business you are considered to be doing something wrong.
For newer sellers its easy to miss a couple of things that you can get warnings for (keyword spamming is one that springs to mind) but if you've been doing it a while I can't see any reason why anyone should run into problems through no fault of their own.

As for the state of Ebay in the share market, you could pretty much pick any company and show how bad they are doing using one statistic or another. For example, Ebay's 4th quarter of 2009 net revenue of was $2.37billion up 16% on the previous year. Their drop in share value was more likely due to the inflated price the market opened with back in 1998 (Ebay had targetted $18 and the price started at over $50)

piratefairy

At the end of the day, they are a business and why wouldnt' they make whatever changes they feel they need to in order to make their business more successful? As sellers we may not agree with them, but they really do have the monopoly on the marketplace, as what other site could we go to which offers the same service on such a great scale.
I see very little point in complaining about it, ebay wouldn't listen if we complained to them.

Brooker_Dave

piratefairy wrote: »

At the end of the day, they are a business and why wouldnt' they make whatever changes they feel they need to in order to make their business more successful? As sellers we may not agree with them, but they really do have the monopoly on the marketplace, as what other site could we go to which offers the same service on such a great scale.
I see very little point in complaining about it, ebay wouldn't listen if we complained to them.

All good businesses listen to their customers and react accordingly.

But as you say Ebay does not listen to it's customers.

That's one reason why each day there are less of them.

piratefairy

Perhaps, but they are unlikely to change anything to suit us little folk when they have larger scale businesses signing up (argos etc)..
As a disgruntled seller, I suppose the choices are to play by their rules, or go play somewhere else..

patman99

Their only main rival is eBid. In 10 years, they have attracted nearly 1 million small sellers. Their only advantage over Ebay is their tie-in with google that places all new BIN & 10-day auctions on to Google shop within 30 minutes of them being on eBid.

I have accounts on both, and find that I can sell 25 items on Ebay for every 1 on eBid. If you go the eBid route, then you really have to push your listings to potential customers via as many methods as you can find.

I spent 4 hours dodging the drizzle selling at a carboot this morning and made very little return for my efforts. If I had listed all the stuff I actually sold on Ebay, I might have made £15 as oppossed to the £28.50 I made, and I wouldn't have had to fork-out for a pitch-fee, or stand in the wet.

I would however, have had to source packaging material & physically take the item to the Post Office.

piratefairy

Thats a good point - I went and car=booted the other week, and only made about £40 the whole morning, which was a little frustrating. That said, some oft the things I sold were old toys / games my little sis has grown out of, and others were the clothes which hadn't sold after a listing on ebay. All of which would oltherwise have been dumped or charity shopped - likely to be binned when they got there (discovered recently just how much of their donations some of the CS's chuck out without ever putting them on sale!) The remainder went to chairty once I had done.

Not sure what else I could / would have done with it as it wasn't worth listing anywhere..

soolin

patman99 wrote: »

Their only main rival is eBid. In 10 years, they have attracted nearly 1 million small sellers. Their only advantage over Ebay is their tie-in with google that places all new BIN & 10-day auctions on to Google shop within 30 minutes of them being on eBid.

I have accounts on both, and find that I can sell 25 items on Ebay for every 1 on eBid. If you go the eBid route, then you really have to push your listings to potential customers via as many methods as you can find.

I spent 4 hours dodging the drizzle selling at a carboot this morning and made very little return for my efforts. If I had listed all the stuff I actually sold on Ebay, I might have made £15 as oppossed to the £28.50 I made, and I wouldn't have had to fork-out for a pitch-fee, or stand in the wet.

I would however, have had to source packaging material & physically take the item to the Post Office.

You're better at ebid than me, my figures are about 1 sale to every 5,000 on ebay and i've never actually covered the cost of my seller lifetime subscription so am technically still making a loss.

I did try Gumtree, got no responses, local ads, sold a couple of things and did my first car boot for years a couple of weeks back. I only took large and bulky things I couldn't list on ebay, and the small things that were just too silly to bother with and came away with about £60.