JWPC
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posted on October 13, 2002 10:48:41 PM new
Blairwitch The few times I tried to link back to my auction site on Yahoo, I had my auctions cancelled for TOS....much worse than eBay.
I use an eBay store for $9.95 a month, and get great sales through it - and I promote it on all of my eBay auctions.
At least when you get an auction cancelled on eBay you get an actual explanation, AND your auction fee returned....not so on Yahoo...
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JWPC
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posted on October 13, 2002 10:57:45 PM new
replaymedia Your experiment parallels some I did a year or so ago, and then again this week with a couple of items...since I use "Fixed Price" on eBay, I sold 2 or more of the 2 items listed, and they are still sitting on Yahoo with no bids...
Yahoo isn't "cheap" if you have to wait forever, and post and repost to sell anything....... plus the cost of one's time to just mess with Yahoo auctions...
We have found that unless we feature an auction on Yahoo, which runs the price up immediately, then it doesn't get any lookers, and doesn't sell - so bottom line for us is, it is cheaper to sell on eBay.....and takes a shorter time, and less work.
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tooltimes
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posted on October 13, 2002 11:18:34 PM new
There is very little traffic at Yahoo Auctions. The page hits are way down from a year ago.
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blairwitch
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posted on October 14, 2002 01:28:30 PM new
I truly wish that Yahoo will give the free auction listings with a 7% FVF and an ebay 3 final NPBs and you're gone setup a try before pulling the plug on their auction. Even if they only sell a few thousand items a day they will at least get 7% FVFs. The old free auction setup let the common items sit till they found a buyer like the Used Goods & Half venues do. Make a starting bid of at least $1 so Yahoo gets a minimum of 7 cents on every transaction. There will be millions of items soon and those 7% FVFs add up quick. Auction sellers will then have a choice of no listing fee and a 75 cent minimum start bid with a 15% FVF at Half or a no listing fee with a $1 minimum start bid and a 7% FVF at Yahoo. I'm betting the sellers will easily pick Yahoo over Half.
The problem again would be the mass of low-demand items from sites like bidville. They would list all their items at $1.00 and wait for a sucker to come along. The higher FVF only would not work either because they would list items at high prices taking up space. To keep the junk away you need some kind of insertion fee, or monthly membership fee. I think they are doing the right thing at this time. Wait for ebay to keep raising their fees. They will have to if they want to make the earning projections.
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tooltimes
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posted on October 14, 2002 01:40:54 PM new
In the old Yahoo setup with no fees we all learned how to ignore the junk listings. It seems like such a small price to pay in order to bring back the heydays/glory days of Yahoo Auction. Instead Yahoo may very well pull the plug. There will be much less junk with a $1 start bid. Is it that bad of a thing to endure some items that will sit for a long time? That's the whole idea of no listing fees in the first place. Now sellers can list those 300 old books that rarely sell because the listing fees do eat them alive. Now Yahoo can have a huge and diverse selection of goods that is worth looking at for stuff a buyer may need. Yahoo's current 250,000 items is far too small to attract any shoppers.
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tooltimes
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posted on October 15, 2002 12:42:10 PM new
Another net news story about Yahoo's plans.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961944.html
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blairwitch
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posted on October 15, 2002 02:46:20 PM new
Thanks for the article Tooltimes. There has been a bit of news lately about retailers not enjoying ebays high fees. The amount of money yahoo is making on fee services is incredible. They will never go back to free auctions.
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tooltimes
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posted on October 15, 2002 04:11:33 PM new
The article hardly mentions the Yahoo Auctions. The money Yahoo makes on fee services is mostly from Yahoo units like their dating service. Of all the Yahoo units I'm certain that the auctions make the very least and they are probably next of the elimination list at Yahoo.
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stonecold613
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posted on October 15, 2002 08:28:32 PM new
Bids,
What are you talking about? You must be taking some good drugs. One of the earlier posts was projecting the revenue that Yahoo was getting from Auctions. It had many flaws with one of the big one was the fees recognized from all of the listings that get featured. This is a difficult area to judge as you can pay your way to the top "so to speak." In most areas you will find many pages of featured items. To get a basic feature, it costs 10 cents per listing per day. But from there, you can pay more to get your listing higher on the list. This amount can go as high as seller wishes to go. Then the top twenty payors have their listings rotated at the top of the page and the rest follow in before the basic listings. Depending upon the item, it potentially could bring in millions. Only Yahoo knows how much, buy you can bet it is quite a good chunk of change. Take a look at ebay. Do you think they make their big money on basic listings? Take a look at their featured items and remember it costs $99 to main page feature and $19 to catagory feature. This is a major part of their income. Yahoo knows this and utilizes it and you can bet this plays into their future plans as well. And as far as no listing fees like you preach. No way. Why would they take a step backwards and threaten the increased revenues that they now enjoy. It just don't make business sense.
[ edited by stonecold613 on Oct 15, 2002 08:29 PM ]
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zzyzx000
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posted on October 15, 2002 08:48:42 PM new
I've had about 650 listings on Yahoo Warehouse for the year they were in business. It seems like i never sold anything, but actually I sold nearly 90 items.
That's not bad when you consider that the only items I put there were items that had multiple listings on Half.com and/or Amazon for under $2.00.
I listed mine for several times that. So i guess you could say all my sales were from unsavy buyers because they could have got it cheaper elsewhere.
And yet, my prices on yahoo were the lowest on the site when i listed them... always underlisted all the competition.
What I noticed then was that Yahoo Warehouse had no chance long term because the prices were way too high. If they had wanted to compete they would have needed to show a seller who was listing items, what the same items were listed for on half.com and Amazon.
But heck, after a whole year they never even put a vacation button in the package. Everytime I left town I "went on vacation" on halfDot and Amazon but on Yahoo I had to occasionally decline sales because I could not ship in time.
As usual, Yahoo disappointsd and fails. Yet as a portal site they have plenty going for them. All I can say to sellers is don't expect anything from them at all... because that's all you will get....nothing.
I wasn't even pissed like i should be that they didn't give me enough time to transfer my listings to halfDot. I have until midnight until they will probably disappear, so....back to work I go.... only 400 more left to do.
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tooltimes
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posted on October 15, 2002 11:13:02 PM new
First off I think featuring on Yahoo is retarded. There are hardly any listings as it is.  I only use the search engine on Yahoo and I bet a lot of others only use it too. I have bought a total of maybe 8 items in my three years on Yahoo because most items are overpriced or there was not a decent selection. When the auction listings were free I sold over 1,000 items but since fees I've sold only 300 or so because I can not afford $25 to list 500 common items every 10 or 14 days. RIP Yahoo Auctions.
I successfully predicted the closing of Yahoo Used Goods and I'm now predicting the closing of Yahoo Auctions.
I heard your sentiments end-of-the-alphabet poster guy and totally agree. I sold a total of 40 books on Used Goods out of 800 listed. My listings were by far the lowest priced on Used Goods for similar items yet they were at least twice as much as the similar Half listings so most of the buyers were very unsaavy ( just like the auction buyers ). Yahoo never really promoted their Half clone and even misnamed it to Used Goods. RIP Used Goods Fiasco
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blairwitch
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posted on October 16, 2002 11:48:31 AM new
And as far as no listing fees like you preach. No way. Why would they take a step backwards and threaten the increased revenues that they now enjoy. It just don't make business sense.
I agree Stonecold. Yahoo went from making no revenue on auctions, to making a revenue. This is Semels overall plan. I emailed customer care, and they they told me there is no plan to eliminate the US auctions.
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tooltimes
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posted on October 16, 2002 12:00:08 PM new
I wish I had a dollar for everytime I've heard a big cheese tell a white lie.
The only hope Yahoo Auctions have is to drop the small listing fee and raise the FVF a lot higher. By dropping the small listing fees the site will get a lot more listings and again become attractive to both sellers and buyers. In the old days at Yahoo thousands and maybe tens of thousands of auctions sold every day. Yahoo never earned a cent on these auctions because it was free and even lost money because of related auction costs. By having free listings again Yahoo can easily reurn to the same situation thay had before where thousands or tens of thousands of auctions closed every day but Yahoo will earn a very handsome 7% or 8% FVF on each and every sale. Those FVF's, plus featuring and other worthless extras, will generate Yahoo a huge amount of revenue as compared to the tiny trickle they now generate.
It's extremely simple but probably beyond the grasp of the weak Yahoo Auctions management team.
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blairwitch
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posted on October 16, 2002 12:30:21 PM new
tooltimes before yahoo even thinks of shutting down the US auctions, Canada and others will be the 1st to go. I believe the current plan is wait for ebay to screw up, and they will. I remember when ebay refused to back down from checkout, yahoo announced their lower fees, and next day ebay backed down on checkout due to seller threats. Ebay is due for another fee hike. 
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tooltimes
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posted on October 16, 2002 01:42:45 PM new
I pray that ebay will really jack up their fees so some of the sellers will leave. There are 8 million listings and prices for sold items are down to a near no-profit condition. If half of the listed items would disappear via a steep fee increase the remaining sellers might actually make money on what they sell on eBay. The increased profits on sold items would easily more than offset the fee increases.
So some sellers actually want ebay fee increases.
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blairwitch
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posted on October 16, 2002 02:16:56 PM new
I agree tooltimes. There is way too much merchandise cluttered on the site. 2 sites with the same amount of listings would do more than one site with all the listings.
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tooltimes
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posted on October 16, 2002 04:14:15 PM new
It's not really about clutter, it's about intense competition brought on by an over abundance of sellers/goods in relation to the amount of bidders. If the are 20 sellers selling identicle item "X" items and there are usually at least a few sellers that are willing at accept a very low price for their item "X", then those other sellers have just wasted their listings fees because they chose not to give their item "X" away because there were on 2 or 3 bidders actually looking to buy an item "X" anyway.
The supply/demand equation is way out of whack in favor of buyers. Only by reducing the supply can prices ever increase.
Blues playing red slug?
[ edited by tooltimes on Oct 16, 2002 04:17 PM ]
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robertsmithson
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posted on October 16, 2002 07:32:28 PM new
Last 4+ hours of the Yahoo Warehouse/Used Goods. Bon Voyage.
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blairwitch
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posted on October 17, 2002 08:58:14 AM new
Should be interesting to see if Bidville's numbers jump any.
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replaymedia
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posted on October 17, 2002 09:39:04 AM new
Blairwitch- I honestly doubt 99% of buyers have ever even HEARD of bidville.
It's really just a figment of the imagination of overly-hopeful sellers.
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toolhound
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posted on October 17, 2002 11:15:01 AM new
"That's the end of my business there. I had been selling one or two items every day.I've got 18,000 items listed. That'd be around $1800 a month in Yahoo Store listing fees."
One or two items a day with 18,000 listings!! For the last 5 months I have kept 150 auctions running with buy now prices and sell 3 to 5 a day. Might be a good time for you to dump that inventory or lower prices.
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