posted on April 25, 2002 07:16:51 AM new
Has anyone heard anything rumor or otherwise if maybe Yahoo would do a FLD for around Mother's Day? I'd like to be ready.
[ edited by fkbsar on Apr 25, 2002 07:39 AM ]
posted on April 25, 2002 08:20:08 AM new
I'm just guessing, but I'm thinking the last bunch of layoffs signals a change in the thinking of Yahoo's auction strategy.
I'm starting to doubt there will be any more FLD's. Several articles I've read state very clearly that Yahoo's auction listings have not grown since the implementation of the FLDs.
Sure, the listings double when FLD hits, but in "normal" times, their listings average around 350,000 and hasn't shown much growth in the past three months.
I know in my own case, I have usually around 100 auctions running at any normal time on Yahoo. When FLD happens, I list everything I have- around 3000 titles. When FLD ends, I go back to the usual 100 or so. It doesn't make any long term difference for them.
posted on April 25, 2002 10:41:27 AM new
I was reading the message boards at yahoo and many users want the fee structure back like it was from the start. I dont think yahoo should have any more FLD's in the near future because it allows too much low quality items on the site. With their low fees and liberal policies they have done their part and its up to the sellers to do theirs. So many sellers on eBay whine all the time, but until they get the balls to move nothing wont happen. Its hard for yahoo to employ alot of auction workers when the listings remain at 350,000. I volunteer on the user to user help boards so I do my part.
posted on April 25, 2002 03:52:22 PM new
Amen to blairwitch. I agree. Keep the fee structure the way it is now. There is a big difference between having 350,000 quality items up for sale and having 1,000,000 junk auctions. To see proof, look at bidville. That is where the junk auctions went when Yahoo began listing fees. Now for the normal seller, the fees are basically nothing anyway at Yahoo. If an item doesn't sell, you can relist it 5 more times for the same price as one listing at the big site. And when I am buying there, I don't have to sift through thousands of junk sports cards and recipes.
posted on April 25, 2002 06:53:31 PM new
caffeitalia I remember when the site was free and you are right 90% was recipes, common cards, ads, and overpriced items. The sellers like me who stayed have built a nice customer base and now we pay much lower fees, and pocket more money. Sellers on ebay should list items on yahoo and let their customer base know, but for some reason they wont so I dont pity them anymore. Now ebay is banning certain discussions from their message boards, but on yahoo you can speak your mind as usual. ebay keeps dishing out new rules and the users are too afraid to do anything. I am eBay free and it feels great!!
Oh and I think yahoo should have a FLD each quarter. I have many new bidders on yahoo and they are paying fast.
posted on April 25, 2002 08:51:59 PM new
Blairwitch,
I agree, but no more than that. They worked hard to get rid of the junk auctions and don't want to see them come back. Let's keep them at bidville.
posted on April 26, 2002 08:30:43 AM new
I don't want anyone to misunderstand my previous post- I like the current fee structure too.
The reason I don't list thousands of auctions all the time isn't because I'm too cheap to pay the nickel fee, it's because I run a retail store and have to have something on the shelves!
What Yahoo needs is more bidders. Get the bidders and the sellers will come. Fiddling with fees isn't the problem. Getting more sellers won't help much, either in the long term if nobody is buying. What they need is BUYERS. Sellers are easy to get if you have the buyers.
I just don't have any good suggestions or ideas toward that end...
posted on April 26, 2002 08:37:52 AM new
I think having quarterly FLDs make sense. Yahoo has to make them somewhat random or sellers will anticipate when they are coming and not list many items shortly before any regularly scheduled FLD causing a near-empty auction site.
posted on April 26, 2002 09:37:45 AM new
replaymedia I understand your post. What I did and have others doing is list at ebay and advertise your yahoo auctions. I sell on yahoo myself, and I list items for 2 other people on commission. We have build up a very good business on yahoo, and the money we save on fees add up real quick. I think yahoo has done alot to bring bidders to the site, but sellers also need to work at it. In my opinion FLD's weaken the site by allowing the low quality items from bidville back.
Bidsbids I dont think yahoo should have any FLD's anytime soon from looking at the latest counts from TAG:
Antiques & Art 29824 (-3520)
Automotive 3210 (-1012)
Books & Comics 14639 (-3925)
Clothing & Accessories 23693 (-627)
Coins, Paper Money & Stamps 40249 (+865)
Collectibles 21766 (-10601)
Computers 6439 (-587)
Electronics & Cameras 3057 (-1475)
Home & Garden 16152 (-978)
Jewelry & Watches 50054 (+2792)
Movies & TV 10732 (-304)
Music 9153 (-953)
Sports & Outdoors 5571 (-622)
Sports Cards & Memorabilia 49908 (-14,414)
Toys, Games & Hobbies 35128 (-4279)
Video Games 2555 (-277)
Other 6930 (-771)
Total auctions on April 19, 2002: 329,060 (-40,688)
As of 24Mar02 Yahoo Auctions had 369,748 listings on their site
TAG is trying to say because of yahoo's new marketing preferences the auctions are dropping. I got a email from yahoo and went in and changed mine and it took a few minutes. I guarantee if tomorrow was a FLD they would list the items again.
posted on April 26, 2002 11:29:05 AM new
Blairwitch said "because of yahoo's new marketing preferences the auctions are dropping"
I don't know if there's any truth to that or not, but you would think with all the bad press this decision has caused Yahoo that they would have reversed the decision or something.
I see one site or another mentioning this new marketing scheme several times a day anymore. That's gotta hurt their credibility in a big way.
Just how much money CAN they make by selling your pesronal info? I don't see how this could be worth it for them.
posted on April 26, 2002 01:10:13 PM new
I think Yahoo did what everyone else is doing. AOL with it's almost 30 million users is the master of the spam selling addresses. There was an article that said AOL received something like $8.54 every month from advertisers for every AOL account.
I think the top 10 web sites do it too. IWIN & IWON will get you a ton of spam and more popups than you could imagine. Yahoo may have 179 million registered but the vast majority of those are locked email accounts due to inactivity.
The big sites are desperate for ad revenue to help the bottom line. eBay and Half even have popups now.
The politicans have got to come up with a method of stopping the spam emails. It should be a priority.
posted on April 26, 2002 01:47:23 PM new
yahoo needs to eliminate the free services and dump the ads. They should dump the free email addys with spam and make it a subscription service. The groups are loaded with ads, and they should be subscription as well. Everything on yahoo should be by subscription but the search engine. Bidsbids you are right many of the yahoo email addys are used by people when a site asks for an email address to sign up. If people #*!@ and moan about the marketing preferences then let them pay for the service. I think all spam should be eliminated.
posted on April 28, 2002 01:32:34 AM new
blairwitch
>>"until they get the balls to move nothing won't happen."<<
I'm sure you mean "nothing will happen" and that's correct. If sellers don't start listing quality items, buyers will not come to the site.
I'm not willing to just move all of my inventory from Ebay where it sells to Yahoo where it sits. That would be stupid. I keep a few nice items on Yahoo and the rest where I know they will sell.
>>"I remember when the site was free and you are right 90% was recipes, common cards, ads, and overpriced items."<<
You might also remember though that before the fees people were getting bids. I personally sold 20 times as many items before the fees and sold them for better prices. Go figure eh....
Listing fees did nothing to improve the site. Yahoo found that out the hard way. Why do you think they lowered the listing fees. To bring sellers back into the fold.. If Yahoo had listend to the membership in the first place and went with a pay for performance fee structure (FVFs), most of the good sellers would have stayed around.
[ edited by outoftheblue on Apr 28, 2002 01:40 AM ]
posted on April 28, 2002 01:53:20 AM new
>"They should dump the free email addys with spam and make it a subscription service."<
Why would anyone pay yahoo for email when there is a bunch of free email services out there. I like it the way it is thank you very much. Microsoft's Hotmail service would gladly pick up all of Yahoo's outcasts if they dumped their free email accounts..
posted on April 29, 2002 09:38:12 AM new
In 2000, I had completely left eBay and sold for a year solid on Yahoo, and boy did we sell, high quality items, and did more business than we ever had on eBay, BUT when the fees came in the sellers and then buyers left, and we couldn’t give product away.
We did what anyone business person would do, and went back to eBay, where we have regain our Power Seller status.
When eBay brought in the “Buy It Now Feature,” and the “eBay Stores,” that has really brought in a GREAT deal more sales for us.
Off and on since 2000, I have tested Yahoo to no avail, still found buying so slow and so slow, that posting wasn’t worth my time.
It doesn’t matter how low fees are, if items don’t sell. AND, the fact is, before fees, there may have been 10 zillion recipes, which I never knew, because I never looked, as this doesn’t effect me, BUT there were 10 zillion sales also, and THAT is the difference.
IF Yahoo would go to “FREE” listing, and a FVF, when the item sold, that to me would be the best of decisions.
I am again testing Yahoo. I seem to have found that only if I “FEATURE,” an item, will it sell well, or at the pace that will get it to sell on the first listing, which is what I expect, as that is what occurs with our listings on eBay. Because it seems, normally, one has to post and repost the same item on Yahoo to get a sale, then soon that negates the lower listing fees as it cost more than the first fee, and it takes time (AND TIME IS MONEY). Having to “Feature” an item to obtain sales at a normal rate, also makes Yahoo cost a great deal more than their service is worth. We have sales on line which require 4 people to handle writing, posting, packing, etc. I have more than myself to consider, and if Yahoo can’t consistently produce, I can’t waste the time trying AGAIN to help them grow.
I stayed on Yahoo for a year, helped them grow, and my thanks was they changed everything, destroyed the business we had built, committed virtual suicide, what is to prevent that from occurring again? Yahoo doesn’t seem stable enough, or committed enough, or to understand auctions well enough to risk putting all of ones eggs into the Yahoo Basket.
Why should sellers waste time posting on Yahoo if the buyers aren’t present? You are telling the eBay people to “come back” and help Yahoo grow, why? Why post on Yahoo if one is doing well on eBay? Because that will help Yahoo grow, and it will save them money in the long run? That is a long range, small possibility – not a good selling point. Yahoo has to do something to entice the good sellers back, and Free Days won’t get it……I think FVF fee structure would. Who cares if there are endless recipes, or such, if the sales are also good? No one makes anyone go through recipes when they are looking for a lamp, or a necklace, I see no correlation between 10 zillion recipes and sales in jewelry. In my year on Yahoo, as I said, I never encountered a recipe or such. Personally, I think that is a “Straw Man,” issue.
[ edited by JWPC on Apr 29, 2002 09:46 AM ]
posted on April 29, 2002 11:15:33 PM new
Well said!
I've also found that the listing fees don't eliminate the junk. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be content to waste their time and money paying listing fees on hundreds of $1 - $3 items.
[ edited by outoftheblue on Apr 29, 2002 11:23 PM ]
posted on April 30, 2002 05:22:26 AM new
Exactly! The difference between free or a charge doesn't seem to stop the junk at all - after all, just look at all the pages of junk listed on ebay!
I think "getting rid of junk" is a whole separate issue, the boards are full of people complaining about this problem on any site, it is something of a issue, but I actually think that it might be CAUSED by more expensive listings. To bring profits up closer to what they were, sellers are now pushing things like $2.50 worth of (new) shabby country candles (just an example) instead of the real primitives or vintage items they used to sell.
I really like the plan of the FVF only, then you could afford to take a chance on better pieces, and it would draw some traffic from ebay, where the listing fees are getting out of control. It's much cheaper now to have your own website, or to do the shows and flea markets, or even to run ads in the paper! But we really liked the auctions...
The FVF could be higher than currently, no problem with that, and all around I think it's much more fair - they profit when you profit (though I guess that might be what they're afraid of!).
[ edited by fishfry on Apr 30, 2002 05:24 AM ]
posted on April 30, 2002 07:14:25 AM new
outoftheblue said - "I've also found that the listing fees don't eliminate the junk. There's a lot of people out there who seem to be content to waste their time and money paying listing fees on hundreds of $1 - $3 items. "
There's a big difference between inexpensive items and junk. I sell comic books on Yahoo- mostly from $1-$3. As far as my time goes, I can list 3000 comics in around 20 minutes. I'm fully databased & automated. There is no waste of time involved.
One person's JUNK is anothers BUSINESS. As far as my own buying habits go, I personally think all that old crap people call Antiques is junk. Old furniture & knick-knacks? Ewww! But that's MY opinion. You have every right to sell your antiques there.
As far as the listing fees go, see my earlier post about that.
What is Junk?
Junk is multiple listings of the same item
Junk is I'M LEAVING EBAY SECRETS CDs
Junk is LEARN MY WHOLESALE SUPLLIERS
Junk is anything with LQQK in the title
Junk is anything with a reserve price.
Well, maybe not the last one, but it irritates me.
If anything, Yahoo is (was?) working out to be a good niche market for inexpensive items. Sort of like a "Discount eBay." I can't afford to list run-of-the-mill comics on eBay. I list them hundreds at a time on Yahoo without blinking. And they DO SELL there, with fewer deadbeats.
On the last FLD, I listed 3000 items, sold 600+ and when all the payments had stopped coming in, I had 5 count 'em FIVE comics left unpaid for.
Again, I like Yahoo the way it is NOW. Unfortunately, I smell change in the air again. Probably not for the better, either.
Yahoo wants to push Yahoo Stores, at $.10 per item per month listing fee. I like their stores, and I'd like to have one, but I have over 20,000 items in stock on my website, www.replaymedia.com (shameless plug!). No way am I going to pay $2000 a month for a Yahoo store. Maybe THAT'S what they need to revise!
posted on April 30, 2002 07:47:28 AM new
In the category I sold in on Yahoo, I also found that featuring was necessary.
Even when it was free to list. I was always a bit envious of those that said Yahoo was FREE. It really was never FREE for me.
However, I sold more than 75% 1st time around and more importantly MADE A PROFIT!!!
At first, when the FEE came into play and many seller's left, I did really well. I found that I could FEATURE my items at less per day. I was able to FEATURE for about $.25 per day and be place on the 1st page. It worked like a charm.
Then, some very large merchant sellers appeared, were given the status of PREMIUM SELLER from the moment they started listing on Yahoo with absolute NO PRIOR RATING and with the links to their auctions on the beginning category pages and the FEATURED spots they also were given the "newbies" that DID began to show up seemed to just automatically go to those seller's auctions.
My views dropped off more than 50% and my bids just vanished. I tried every trick I could think of and just couldn't get anything going again.
I know the quality of what I sold and I know it was better than what the big "wallmart" type seller's were offerring (I bought a couple of items to compare). They kept getting bids, I kept getting none. Their FB was glowing and I kept thinking to myself, "If I could just get one of the newbies to buy one of my items and compare the quality to the big dogs, I'd have a customer for life!!!" Unfortunately I could not get them to buy.
I thought about it a lot and decided the buyers currently on Yahoo must prefer JUNK or perhaps it is just the CHEAP PRICE that sort of stuff goes for they prefer.
I can't purchase my items for less than $25 so I sure can't sell them for that and that seems to be the price the buyers in my old category are willing to pay!
So, I had to leave Yahoo and leave the selling to the dealers that can sell their items for $25. If you can't give the buyers the price they want to pay, then your just wasting your time and money. I can't give them what they want. I can't sell a $75.00 item for $25.
posted on April 30, 2002 08:34:37 AM new
If a simple nickel listing fee for an item started at $9.99 or less is such an obstacle to certain sellers then those sellers may belong on the dead sites like Carnaby or Bidville.
There is a lot of junk on ebay. Know why? Because a huge percentage of sellers there recoup all of the eBay fees ( at least ) by overcharging the buyer a buck or so for shipping fees. A buyer pays $2.50 shipping for a tiny item that arrives in an 11 cent bubble mailer with a 76 cent meter sticker on it. That extra profit can easily pay all eBay fees on several $9.50 items. If a few items don't sell, it comes out of the extra shipping profits pool. The par for electronics items on eBay is $8-$10 s/h and the item usually comes with a $3.90-$5.40 free Priority Mail box and a dime's worth of bubble wrap. The listing fee is only a very, very minor inconvience to many sellers on eBay because those costs are passed on several fold to the buyer.
Now, very inexpensive and very common items are a whole new ballgame. Even a nickel listing fee is prohibitive. If those sellers try the overcharging shipping game they get few bids are few repeat bids because the other sellers are charging a reasonable fee.
There, I fell better now. Back to my computer surfing ....
posted on April 30, 2002 10:24:33 AM new"If a simple nickel listing fee for an item started at $9.99 or less is such an obstacle to certain sellers then those sellers may belong on the dead sites like Carnaby or Bidville"
Everyone keeps talking about "just a nickel" listing fees on Yahoo. I have yet to pay just a nickel!!!
My items usually started at $59-$79. The listing fee was only $.75. That didn't bother me at all.
To even get viewed, however, I found it necessary to feature. I usually bid $.50 for 10 days at launch and then on the last 3 days I'd bump it up to get on the top page and that usually cost me around $5 more. So, for me, it was averaging around $10.00 to list an item.
My final values recongnized and total items sold, did not merrit that fee.
Yahoo may be a great "nitch" site for certain types of items. That's great. It seems to me the Yahoo buyers want items in the under $50 range. If I could find some in that range with the quality I insist on, I would offer them. Unfortunately my items have to be in the $50-$100 range for me to make a profit. Currently that is not possible on Yahoo.
posted on April 30, 2002 11:39:50 AM new
What Yahoo needs is to be able to provide what the potential bidders come searching for, at least sometimes!
They need a mix of everything, different specialties, different seller locations - but right now they aren't getting very many pieces over $9.99. The sell-though on the nickel listings might be lots better, but with low bidding activity, Yahoo's going to need a phenomenal number of them to survive. Unless they're counting on very hopeful sellers with a very low turnover rate, to try to make it on the listing fees, I think that's probably hopeless. After all, look at what it costs ebay!
How about the proverbial nickel for all listings, and just maintain a higher FVF for a greater dollar value? They would bring in more in commissons, for not a notably (if any) greater cost per auction. And I don't think it would change anything for the worse for the currently happy sellers?
[ edited by fishfry on Apr 30, 2002 12:58 PM ]
posted on April 30, 2002 11:47:06 AM new
I wouldn't use the featuring option on Yahoo as there are only 350,000 total items listed on the whole darn site. I would not list any item starting at over $30 as the buyers of these items tend to search the world over for the best deal.
Yahoo is best used by sellers/buyers for items priced between $2 and $30. Bidville is best used for items from 2 cents to $10 ( except HapnStance's glassware that he gets for almost nothing at real auction sites in box lots ).
If you sell expensive items ( $30 and up ) then Yahoo may be a waste of time.
posted on April 30, 2002 11:53:16 AM new
And replaymedia, you're right - sometimes those things listed as antiques can be very disgusting, especially after a sale when they've been rained on
But we like to look at almost everything but diet pills (because thinking of dieting is no fun!) as long as there aren't whole long strings of the same thing over and over and over... and that's where more sellers would help, to spread them around a little.
posted on April 30, 2002 11:53:36 AM new
replaymedia
I'm not saying that all $1 - $3 items are junk. There are several sellers though who are listing in the cateogories I sell in that start all of their items for $1. They pay featured auction fees on almost every item and at least 1/3 sell for one dollar. If you are listing nearly 1000 items per month, paying listing fees and featuring, and selling 300+ for $1 (600+ for less than $4.00), how can you make any money?
What makes matters worse, in these categories, you now have to practically have to give away items that used to sell for $30 and up, that is if you want them to sell.
posted on April 30, 2002 12:54:41 PM new
I guess Yahoo must happy enough with the market for $30.00 and under items. It does seem a waste of time and money to list more expensive pieces on Yahoo right now - but they'll have to find a way to make the higher end pieces work too, if they ever want to compete with ebay. Otherwise they'll be a niche site themselves (and a sort of an odd one, too!)
It's strange, really - because Yahoo Japan (auctions) is a great site, the bidding of ebay with the features of Yahoo. They started charging a listing fee, then dumped it and went back to free listings when the auction numbers started to drop. A friend of ours in Tokyo who lists a lot says no one has the power of Yahoo in Japan, but they caved in, to "save" the Japan auctions. Yet they don't seem to care very much what happens to the auctions here, and a Yahoo Store is not a viable option for everyone selling one-of-a-kind pieces. Yahoo suggests the stores for sellers of multiple similar items, but most of those sellers also prefer the auctions, so I wish they would do something with the auctions, instead of talking "Yahoo Shopping" all the time!
posted on April 30, 2002 02:45:05 PM new
eBay is having alot of problems with sellers ending their auctions early when the items are not bringing in bids. If yahoo were to eliminate listing fees sites like bidville would close up shop quick because all they have is listings from yahoo before the fees. If they do eliminate insertion fees many of the sellers will leave. Some did leave when the fees were lowered the last time.
posted on April 30, 2002 03:06:50 PM new
It's ironic that eBay gave up on their eBay-Japan site because Yahoo was way ahead of them in that market yet Yahoo seems to have given up on their own home market because they are way behind eBay in that home market.
I wouldn't mind the complete elimination of Yahoo listing fees with a few conditions attached. One would be a mandatory FVF of at least 25 cents plus a FVF setup similar to eBays. That would rid the site of many 5 cent sportscards and recipes auctions.
Does friggin' Yahoo even consider any other possible fee revenue scenarios?
posted on April 30, 2002 03:37:53 PM new
What is Junk?
Junk is multiple listings of the same item
Junk is I'M LEAVING EBAY SECRETS CDs
Junk is LEARN MY WHOLESALE SUPLLIERS
Junk is anything with LQQK in the title
Junk is anything with a reserve price.
Junk is any sports cards with a value under $2.00
posted on April 30, 2002 04:29:14 PM new
I've found some great deals on auctions that had the goofy "l@@k" crap in the title. Four years ago on eBay that goofy title stuff was common and I suppose a few oldtimers have held on that questionable practice of using goofy characters in the title. I wish the oldimer sellers would see how stupid the characters look. I think some of the good deals I got was partially due to the fact many bidders avoided the item after seeing the dumb auction title.
The new Dutch Auction fees on eBay have made the mutiple auctions of the same exact item more and more common. I don't mind multiple item auctions as long as the total number does not exceed 10 auctions. That is even favorable many times for buyers as the items can be bid on any time to reduce the wait. I recently bought a digital postal scale and it was fun trying to get it for the lowest price as the same seller had 2 or 3 of the same exact scales going every day for 3 or 4 consecutive days. The same thing with a digital camera a few months ago.
The rest of the list is junk though.
