A parting shot - a seller's 'up yours' to eBay

StaffsSW

Time to go against the grain on this thread - the more sellers that leave ebay, the better it is for the sellers that remain.... like me.

eBay are on a real push to get buyers, something that Tazbar and ebid do not seem to grasp. If loads of sellers jump ship, the ones that stick it out will have far less competition.

jtb2412

Agree with you partially steve, but what about all the people like me that both sell AND buy on Ebay - surely the amount of people buying will decrease too?

Jimbobby_2

I've been wondering about that effect too Steve.

Principles are great to have and we all have them about ebay right now but principles don't pay the mortgage.

It's gone from being manic for us on ebay down to practically nothing due to non business sellers competing with us, maybe it will turn round now if there's a big exodus.

It only needs Google or similar to launch a decent site to compete with ebay, throw their billions behind it and they'll win a huge share I'm sure. The problem with the alternatives like Tazbar and Ebid is they just don't have billions to spend or millions to lose so they'll never get the traffic IMO.

steviebabes

I think the whole point of the changes to ebay policy is to clean up their act. Scammers are a big problem and put off buyers from using ebay, this in turn hurts the good sellers. I agree with their philosophy but not with the way they are doing it. I have tried the alternatives, ebid and Tazbay but with little success so I am now spending more on my google adwords campaign to promote my website and this seems to be paying dividends.

Jimbobby_2

steviebabes wrote: »

I think the whole point of the changes to ebay policy is to clean up their act. Scammers are a big problem and put off buyers from using ebay, this in turn hurts the good sellers. I agree with their philosophy but not with the way they are doing it. I have tried the alternatives, ebid and Tazbay but with little success so I am now spending more on my google adwords campaign to promote my website and this seems to be paying dividends.

Are the adwords bringing in much, I was just considering those, Yahoo have a deal at the moment too so maybe will spend £100 or so with each and see what happens!

StaffsSW

Jimbobby wrote: »

Are the adwords bringing in much, I was just considering those, Yahoo have a deal at the moment too so maybe will spend £100 or so with each and see what happens!

Adwords can be very effective in promoting websites or even specific products, but if you thought that SEO was a dark science, adwords is something else.

Someone once said to me that adwords is the best way to promote traffic, and also the best way to lose a lot of money on overpaid clicks.

Research your keywords VERY well if you go down the adwords route!

steviebabes

TBH £100 is a lot I spend less than half of this with google per month with very good results. It has taken nearly a year to tweak the keywords and avoid clickthroughs but it can be done. It takes a lot of reading to understand what is happening. I get a lot of impressions on ebay if there are only a few results for the products I sell.

snax

stevew8975 wrote: »

Time to go against the grain on this thread - the more sellers that leave ebay, the better it is for the sellers that remain.... like me.

eBay are on a real push to get buyers, something that Tazbar and ebid do not seem to grasp. If loads of sellers jump ship, the ones that stick it out will have far less competition.

Going by my experience on Amazons marketplace .... less sellers of a particular product = higher prices [opposite is also true]
Higher prices = less sales*/buyers

*unless item is particularly sought after [ie - Wii @ Xmas]

If ebay are on a 'real push' to get buyers, it may only serve to maintain traffic levels to their site as higher prices from fewer sellers will discourage bids/BIN clicks.

Just my thoughts.

I only use ebay for items:
hard to find
retailer out of stock
retail product offered at cheaper price than retailer [including delivery]

I have yet to sell anything on ebay [probably won't ... just looks to take too long to set up an auction to be worthwhile ... also appears than seller costs are too high for the casual seller]

Someone on here posted once that all the fuss and excitement of ebay had come and gone ... people were already looking for the next thrill [networking sites? - bebo, facebook etc] the main reason for ebay remaining in the public focus was the lack of a serious competitor/alternative.
Other auction sites cannot command the levels of traffic/visitors that generate bids/sales and the other internet biggies [Yahoo, Amazon, MSN? etc] appear to be happy to avoid the hassle/cost of running a venture to seriously compete with the ebay business model.[even a superficial look at the operation suggests that it may be about as close to ''generating income via an online business utopia'' as is possible .....
match sellers with buyer [supply and demand]
get the interested parties to bear all the cost intensive elements of the transaction [purchasing/storage of item,listing, packaging, shipping, etc] and charge as you see fit for everything else.

The only viable alternative is for another outfit to aquire/takeover ebay ... Amazon at the moment is the only 1 that would be able to possibly manage the integration required.
At the moment the general view is that until Amazon can generate longterm meaningful profits there is not enough scope in it's share price to allow it to 'swallow' a company the size of ebay.

ramble over

martinsgiftstogo

danmanchester wrote: »

My offer of the £18,000 bank of bucharest cheque still stands....

My offer of a chocolate hat still stands too - I could even throw in a packet of peanuts.

BTW - I have a few items to run on eBay and I'll be leaving too - I sell more stuff on other sites anyway

ormus

well done class-it.

ebay really have lost the plot here. ebay needs to look after the sellers. the sellers are their customers.

the end buyers are the sellers customers! the free market will sort that one out.