What has happened to Ebay ?

hubb

Sales have absolutely tanked for me. Unbelievable. I just can't sell anything anymore. This recession is terrible. My business and private sales have just tanked.

Anyone else noticing this depressing trend ?

Strapped

No, I have to say I've had a cracking year, although things are a little quiet the last couple of weeks.

Oliver14

Mine are on the up also. Had to change my lines a bit but it worked.

hubb

I have various collectible items that would have been snapped up in the past. Dr Who, film memorabilia, cds, 70's annuals etc. I have 100% good feedback.

porto_bello

I remember Guinness giving away cheap miniature plastic violins in pubs one year and them turning up on eBay and selling for £80 a piece - pure lunacy! Now they're probably in landfill sites!

Buyer behaviour is never consistent for long, is often unpredictable and sometimes irrational. I guess the real money is in being able to detect where consumer interest is going, rather than where it's been.

martindow

I find that there are ups and downs. Some items stop selling for a while then recover others have sudden temporary booms. I used to try to analyse what was going on but have never been able to explain it.

I think you need to be selling a range of things and not have all of your eggs in one basket.

RFW

We've certainly been doing a lot of chopping and changing as we see what sells and what doesn't right now, that's on and off Ebay. There certainly seem to be big changes in people's buying habits and a scramble by sellers for the ones who are spending. We do lots more marketing than we used to to get half the custom.

Obviously_the_best

I've been so busy I haven't been on here very much, so no, I haven't noticed the trend

PHARR

Why don't you try a new look? a fresh design and such?

sillygoose

I think for many things retail has hit back a bit, ebay used to win on total price by offering sensible shipping costs whilst most online retailers had quite high 'cover all' charges. My feeling is that with Ebay and Paypals greed in charges there has been a tendency with sellers (understandably) to shift some of the cost onto shipping taking away the Ebay edge.

One thing Ebay is still good for is the specialist items you can't get elsewhere. Here is an example I bought recently.

I have just been on holiday to Corfu and wanted to have internet access using my small netbook and 3G dongle. To do this on my UK SIM card would cost a fortune. There is a guy on Ebay in Greece that supplies Greece Vodaphone Internet SIM cards and activation codes.

He supplied me with an activated Greek SIM card by post, and an activation code by email (he buys scratchcards for these in the Voda shop or he can get them from his online Voda account). When I got to Corfu I just put the SIM in my dongle, and it takes you to the Vodaphone site, put the code in and bingo. 10 days, 10Gb internet access on an excellent network. He ask that the SIM be returned and supplies an SAE with the SIM, was happy to pop it in the post before leaving. His service was excellent and he was happy to check coverage on the local websites before I purchased. Presume his business model allows for those that don't return the SIM's. To get these SIM's you have to go and find a store and register, this was a lot less hassle.

Now this business is quite clever, he is only shipping small SIM's and emailing or SMSing codes. If someone wants to have further access he can sell you just another access code, I bought a further code whilst I was away as it was so good. Now with the growth in ipads and 3G tablets, netbooks etc there must be growing demand and this could work say supplying PAYG SIM's with a decent data allowance to perhaps the USA or from Portugal to the UK etc

My point is you can't get this sort of imaginative and unique service anywhere else but Ebay and I think this is where Ebay could thrive.

soolin

hubb wrote: »

I have various collectible items that would have been snapped up in the past. Dr Who, film memorabilia, cds, 70's annuals etc. I have 100% good feedback.

Unfortunately you are in a dead market, I know because I was in that market a year or so back- just after I bought a whole lot of vintage annuals . This sort of stuff can barely be given away anymore, I ended up putting framed Star Wars film cells out at a car boot for 50p a piece just to recoup some of my outlay. At an auction last week there was a crate of old annuals , all fairly good condition and they went unsold at £3, at one time dealers would have beeb fighting to get those and they may well have fetched £30-£40 for the crate.

Never stick to long in the same market, when it starts to dry up- move on. I've changed direction all over the place as one market closes and another opens.