posted on June 26, 2000 10:42:31 PM new
Todays counts A = actual count E = extrapolated count. Categories are in same order as Amazon has them -
Antiques 65763 E
Books 206432 E
Cars 3250 A
Clothes 11135 A
Coins & Stamps 21451 A
Collectibles 212856 E
Comics 58832 E
Computers 16721 A
Electronics 23359 A
Family 9395 A
Food 4186 A
Home & Garden 24673 A
Jewelry 44225 E
Movies 65900 E
Music 33735 E
Sports 30159 A
Toys 26983 A
Travel 926 A
Other Goods 13346 A
Total 873327
copyright 2000 The Auction Guild all rights reserved
-Rosalinda
posted on June 28, 2000 12:46:15 AM new
Yep. pretty sad. Amazon could have been a driving force in the online Auction game, but they sure blew it.
The big question is will they ever figure out what they need to do to make a serious impact on this market?
Beleieve it or not, with all the traffic they have, they could still do it, but it would require a complete restructuring of what lies underneath the "Auction" tab on their site.
If they were to start from scratch, and rebuild the site with better functionality and major policy changes, they could still make it. Their biggest mistake was thinking that a bunch of Executive Types with fancy degrees and statistics in hand, could create an auction site to rival Ebay.
They need to recruit well seasoned auction users, both sellers and buyers, and let them get creative.
posted on June 28, 2000 07:53:24 AM new
Rosalinda, thanks again for keeping up with the stats, declining as they are, for amazon.
The way I see it is this; they don't deserve my business anymore and have made it crystal clear that I am not good enough, I don't sell enough to deserve their precious time.
WRONG!
They turned their collective backs to us when we asked why. They did nothing to help sellers who tried their best to make a go of it there. In my mind, they don't deserve me. Rival anybody? No. How could they? They don't have a clue!
posted on July 2, 2000 07:03:21 PM new
I have been doing a little research of my own regarding the number of auctions on Amazon and the number of actual bids. I had begun to notice a sharp decline in bids on books I was selling in just the past few months. In just one category of Romance books (yes, laugh if you must, but I have sold quite a few, thank you very much!) the Category-Contemporary there were 16,499 books up for sale!I counted the number of bids in that category,600 bids-that's it.
This weekend I went to E-Bay and Yahoo and looked up books that just a few months ago were going for quite high prices and guess what? Either no one was buying or they were selling for rock bottom prices.
I think the Auction craze has almost run it's course. When I saw the book-Auction's For Dummies at the local Crown Books,I saw the writing on the wall. Over saturation is what has happened in my opinion, at least with what I have been selling. I think the excitement of bidding, etc. may have worn off for many buyers.
Carole Beringer
posted on July 3, 2000 04:25:57 AM new
Just a thought.....2174 listings in Beads (other) which is everything but glass. Should have been named general. Anyways. 2174 listed and less than 50 bids. hmmmmm. However it's been like that for months and I'm still doing well. With numbers like that it does makes me wonder.
Many of Yahoo Auction's sellers have been using the "buy price" feature (like Amazon's "take it now" price), which ends the auction immediately upon someone bidding the buy price for an item, so you NEVER SEE the bidding on it when looking at the listings.
Some Yahoo sellers make the buy price a few dollars more than the opening bid, and those will remain on the open listings pages as long as the buy price isn't met. Others list with IDENTICAL opening bids and buy prices, so the "first bid wins", and the auction closes immediately with the first bid.
It's being used A LOT by Yahoo bidders, so it's probably being used frequently by Amazon bidders, too. That could be why some sellers are doing well IN SPITE OF the "apparent" lack of bidding on Amazon and Yahoo.
Ebay's another matter. Since they DON'T have a "buy now" feature and their closed auctions are available on their search engine, you can see just how much bidding is actually going on---and it doesn't look good.
I think you're right, that the "excitement of bidding" HAS worn off for a lot of buyers, especially for COMMON items (one reason the "buy now" philosophy is doing so well---people want INSTANT gratification, and will pay a little more to KNOW they won't be outbid and DON'T HAVE TO WAIT a week to find out if they got the item). It DEFIES the PURPOSE of the auction format, making the auction listing more of a STORE site (as in fixed price), but you have to give the customer what he wants if you want to make the sale.
Only the rare/hard-to-find/most desirable items or the listings with give-away opening bids are generating "bidding wars" now.
And many, many FORMER auction BUYERS are antiques/collectibles dealers whose businesses soured so badly they closed their brick-and-mortar operations and now SELL ONLINE. All these people aren't bidding anymore because ALL THEIR TIME is spent photographing, listing, writing emails, packing, and shipping their OWN sales. That, plus the SIZE of the auctions now has made BUYING online a FULL-TIME chore. I can remember the time when I could go through ALL of ebay's new antiques listings every day, so I knew everything on their ENTIRE AUCTION I was interested in at all times. Hard to believe, isn't it?????
posted on July 4, 2000 10:35:18 PM new
Here are some more interesting numbers. I modified my search plan and came up with the actual number of bids in every category. There is at least one bid on each item -
Antiques 458
Books 498
Cars 52
Clothes 318
Coins & Stamps 689
Collectibles 481
Comics 783
Computers 878
Electronics 1146
Family 150
Food 74
Home & Garden 395
Jewelry 529
Movies 876
Music 639
Sports 690
Toys 1519
Travel 27
Other Goods 519
-Rosalinda
TAGnotes - daily email synopsis about the Online Auction Industry
http://www.egroups.com/group/TheAuctionGuildnotes
posted on July 17, 2000 11:09:20 PM new
As a previous long time booster of Amazon's, I must say I'm feeling deep disappointment in their performance with auctions. They started off on the wrong foot and never recovered.
I had high hopes. Obviously, this has become a wasteland. I can't imagine why anybody would use them with this sort of ongoing context.
I started out asking all my favorite sellers to move over there when Amazon first opened the auctions operation. Then I took a good look - I was astounded at the ripoff image of those Charter Sellers. IT was more than sad, it outraged me. I wondered how many Ebay users at Amazon would feel the same. Within just a few months, it seemed as if the area died a death by strangulation.
They never GOT what the format was about, it seemed. They threw their traffic to the wolves. This is the worst possible thing to do to a customer base used to high service and trusting Amazon. I still trust Amazon as a seller. I don't think much of them as an auction site. I don't shop there in the auctions section.
I guess they're admitting defeat with the $40 hike for Z-shops and more or less free ride with auctions. (Why not? It can't cost much, they're doing so little business.) They're just going out of the business. Auctions are a sort of sideline publicity thing now, I suppose.
The only bright side I canthink of is that this might teach them they can indeed fail at something important. It makes me sad though.
How can that be when Amazons auctions were created by fancy tall titles and degrees.(sarcastically speaking)
Read this link at # 5. Can you believe they still think people like this will make auctions and zshops successful? Nobody is impressed.
Their biggest problem is that Amazon Auctions and Zshops were created and managed by very inexperienced staff. Inexperienced in actually being real auction users, knowing what the people want, or identifying with the people at all. These folks with fancy paper and titles know nothing about being out in the battlefield. Sorry, you lose Amazon
It's sad, but you were right in saying they just threw their auctions to the wolves, meaning their traffic.
JMHO
[ edited by trichards001 on Jul 17, 2000 11:26 PM ]
posted on July 19, 2000 06:02:19 PM new
I'm wondering how y'all are judging success. According to rnrgroup's numbers, Amazon has gone from 0 to around 750,000-1,000,000 auctions in 15 months or so. This is comparable to eBay's growth back when eBay was the only auction site around. Amazon did it with eBay and Yahoo competiting with them.
As a buyer I'm finding out-of-print media that I'm interested in and I can buy in the comfortable and familiar Amazon.com environment. I'm enjoying the hell out of the site. The payment system, the cross-links, the take-it prices, it's all good. If Amazon's goal is to create a good experience for buyers, I think they are doing a wonderful job.
