Giving up on ebay after 5 years as a pro seller

toffe

i've been making a living on ebay for five years but now i've made the decision to close the virtual doors on my ebay shop for ever due to rising costs and falling sales.

at the peak i was making profits of £1,200 per week upwards now its as low as 10% of that 90% less so i must be paying 90% less in fees right?

not so, i'm the monthly amount i pay ebay has only dropped by 45% so i'm paying more to sell less.

ebay has become too expensive for me to operate a business on, i pay ebay more each month than i pay for my mortgage, more than a bricks and mortar shop would cost including rates and insurances and for what? £120-£200 per week...ebay make more money from my sales than i do....

so i'm moving on to my own website and adwords...i'm experienced in adwords and can run my own ad's and i feel it's better to pay for actual views (clicks) of my site and products than paying merely to be on ebay....somewhere.....no telling where...at least i can ensure i'm on page one with adwords unlike ebay.

i was just wondering if any other sellers have had similar experiences of ebay over the last few years, i know several sellers that have moved off ebay, big and small.

i feel ebay is becomming less and less viable as a stand alone business platform due to visability issues (if theres 2000 sellers selling the same thing they cant all be on page one in best match even if they all pay for featured first) and rising costs to sell mean ebay is no longer vaule for money as it can be more expensive than having your own website or even your own bricks and mortar store.

so with falling sales and rocketing costs to sell just what are ebay's unique selling points?

terra_ferma

toffe wrote: »

i've been making a living on ebay for five years but now i've made the decision to close the virtual doors on my ebay shop for ever due to rising costs and falling sales.

at the peak i was making profits of £1,200 per week upwards now its as low as 10% of that 90% less so i must be paying 90% less in fees right?

not so, i'm the monthly amount i pay ebay has only dropped by 45% so i'm paying more to sell less.

ebay has become too expensive for me to operate a business on, i pay ebay more each month than i pay for my mortgage, more than a bricks and mortar shop would cost including rates and insurances and for what? £120-£200 per week...ebay make more money from my sales than i do....

so i'm moving on to my own website and adwords...i'm experienced in adwords and can run my own ad's and i feel it's better to pay for actual views (clicks) of my site and products than paying merely to be on ebay....somewhere.....no telling where...at least i can ensure i'm on page one with adwords unlike ebay.

i was just wondering if any other sellers have had similar experiences of ebay over the last few years, i know several sellers that have moved off ebay, big and small.

i feel ebay is becomming less and less viable as a stand alone business platform due to visability issues (if theres 2000 sellers selling the same thing they cant all be on page one in best match even if they all pay for featured first) and rising costs to sell mean ebay is no longer vaule for money as it can be more expensive than having your own website or even your own bricks and mortar store.

so with falling sales and rocketing costs to sell just what are ebay's unique selling points?

Well done for raising this issue in a fairly calm and objective way, as we often get people ranting and raving against ebay, but rarely start a proper debate.


I was going to tell you that ebay works well for me because of the nearly 0% overheads, and low costs compared to other venues.....
I'm interested in what you say about ebay being more expensive than a B&M shop, this is the first time I hear that, and it's definitely not the case for me.

It sounds like perhaps you sell very expensive items with very low mark up. Maybe ebay is not the right place for selling such items, as they charge fees on the whole price not just the profit element. Or perhaps they are also very expensive to post and PayPal charges hit you hard?

You sound like someone who knows what s/he's talking about, so I'd be interested to know what are your calculations if you would care to share them with us


Other reasons are:
You have instant access to a worldwide market, can trade in foreign currencies at reasonable costs (compared to other systems).
I'm often told that PayPal is cheaper than having a merchant account to take cards.
If you understand how ebay works, and give buyers what they want, you can get very good feedback and stars, thus straight away having a competitive advantage over many competitors.
Hardly any start up costs, except stock to build up your listings.

I won't list the many disadvantages, I could only repeat what has been said many many times....

PS I like your signature... I should apply that to my posts...

macfly

Having owned a real shop for a decade in the past, I would also be interested in how you work out ebay is more expensive.

toffe

in response to the questions about bricks and mortar premises i have priced several retail and industrial units in locations that would work for me and i can get it at around £100 p/w including rates insurance is £250 for the year then just have utilities on top of that.


i am paying £300 a month now to ebay with only 20 listings when i was selling on a bigger scale i was paying £600 - £700 per month in ebay fees alone then there is paypal fees so that is far more expensive than B&M but i suppose rents vary depending on where u are in country i'm up nort i'd imagine down south rents would be alot higher.

regarding what i sell i have nothing over £30 for sale and items as cheap as £3 with mark ups from 30% to 400%

RFW

Turnover is down pretty much everywhere and I agree that getting to the sales levels of a couple of years ago is costing more, but then that's the case for a lot of businesses, from sales to taxi drivers.

I'm experimenting with lots of ways of selling right now but couldn't see the expense of a bricks and mortar shop as a viable proposition. With rent, rates, insurance, utilities, the expenses there soon tot up, that's before we talk about advertising, signage, staff and losses due to theft, plus whatever else comes along.

Obviously it depends where you are (I'm 'up north' too) and what you do as to how well this would go. Before investing I'd make sure that it wasn't your business as a whole affected by the economy and not just changes to Ebay. I know talking to people in similar trade to me who have little or no online presence that trade over the last couple of months has been the worst in living memory.

theonlywayisup

I have a 'real' shop, warehouse and Ebay (amongst others) web stores. Ebay is by far the 'cheapest' method of selling for me.

I am not denying it is harder than it has been, even harder than last year. But IMHO a seller needs to be flexible, forward thinking and show they can always adapt. I am not suggesting you are not these things.

Sometimes it is easy to carry on thinking sales are slow, times are hard, but in reality, there is always a way to improve. When margins cannot be cut any lower, you find new ways. When suppliers become more expensive, you find ways to beat them down or source items/suppliers not yet on Ebay.

I do sympathise, but I think these austere times are times when the likes of Woolworths bow to the greater likes of John Lewis. It isn't rocket science, but it takes risk, guts, hard work and determination. Even then, it doesn't always work so you have to try something else!

Good luck with your new website.

macfly

If you are talking about a unit on an industrial estate, if you retail from there you will pay more. If your stock is from £3 to £30, you would need a better trading location than that. Hence much pricier.

soolin

I rent a small part of a jointly owned premises and am seriously thinking of giving it up as I make more on ebay than I do out in the real world. In fact I am at the stage of barely making a profit at all in real life as my extra costs are so high including petrol costs. My problem is unique in that my items have a small market and most of that overseas, so for me ebay remains the only really viable place to sell.

I think it must all depend on the type of market you are after.

toffe

soolin wrote: »

I rent a small part of a jointly owned premises and am seriously thinking of giving it up as I make more on ebay than I do out in the real world. In fact I am at the stage of barely making a profit at all in real life as my extra costs are so high including petrol costs. My problem is unique in that my items have a small market and most of that overseas, so for me ebay remains the only really viable place to sell.

I think it must all depend on the type of market you are after.

well i'm not going the bricks and mortar route i'm moving my business to my own website using google adwords (something i have experience of already) but my point was if you can have your own website with more clicks per pound invested than ebay and your own bricks and mortar shop for less per month than you pay in ebay and paypal fees, which i have confirmed i can do, i'm sure i'm not the exception, just what unique, valuable, selling points do ebay retain today to justify their ever increasing costs to sell on their site given the general decrese in buyers and impossibility of fair distribution of visibility on the best match system...

other than overseas sales, which account for less than 5% of my sales...i see none.....

Hammyman

toffe wrote: »

in response to the questions about bricks and mortar premises i have priced several retail and industrial units in locations that would work for me and i can get it at around £100 p/w including rates insurance is £250 for the year then just have utilities on top of that.

Sorry but I call rubbish on that if you're after retail. The only worthwhile premises are on main drags. Unless you're selling something extremely desirable and unique or at a really ridiculously low price, people won't be interested in travelling to an industrial estate.

I live in East Yorks in a small market town. I can rent a shop in my town for £40 a week. It is directly off the high street and 50 yards down that street. However I cannot put an A board up on the high street to say I'm there and its too far down that street to be visible from the high street as you drive past. Shops that start up in there barely manage to survive 6 months because despite advertising, people don't know they're there. The same sized shop on the high street is £200 per week plus rates etc. The only shops that've closed on the high street have been charity ones.

toffe

Hammyman wrote: »

Sorry but I call rubbish on that if you're after retail. The only worthwhile premises are on main drags. Unless you're selling something extremely desirable and unique or at a really ridiculously low price, people won't be interested in travelling to an industrial estate.

I live in East Yorks in a small market town. I can rent a shop in my town for £40 a week. It is directly off the high street and 50 yards down that street. However I cannot put an A board up on the high street to say I'm there and its too far down that street to be visible from the high street as you drive past. Shops that start up in there barely manage to survive 6 months because despite advertising, people don't know they're there. The same sized shop on the high street is £200 per week plus rates etc. The only shops that've closed on the high street have been charity ones.

i can assure you that for the product i'm retailing the retail premises were in a prime location, admitedly "out of town" (just) but ideal for my retail offering.

notably no one has yet pointed out any viable unique selling points that ebay retains today which only serves to affirm my decision to call it a day and move on from ebay......so long ebay, onwards and upwards i go.........