posted on October 10, 2001 07:40:03 AMMarieI do not understand this move (or half.com in general) much at all. EBay wants to be the big gun in books, video and music? Why? No one makes money at in these fields, the markups are minimal and the competition is cutthroat. BarnesAndNoble.com has never made a dime. CDNow.com has never made a dime. Amazon.com has never made a dime. Reel.com is long gone. Etc etc etc.
I wonder about that also. Maybe eBay feels if they get the lion's share of the market they will make money. Yes, the sellers will be working their butt off for nothing, but that isn't eBay's concern... but it will be.
posted on October 10, 2001 07:52:02 AM
eBay is different than BarnesandNoble, Amazon, Borders and all the others that physically stock and sell books, music, and videos. eBay carries no inventory, so what's their overhead? All they are is a facilitator, a middleman. They take a cut of each transaction without any of the physical labor and cost of carrying inventory. They couldn't care less what an item sells for as long as massive volumes are moving and they take their cut of each. The lower the prices, the more products that are sold. eBay wins regardless. I don't know how the physical retailers can compete with eBay for too long as eBay has the better business model.
posted on October 10, 2001 08:28:16 AM
Maybe it just means that if you sell on half.com now, you will soon have to have an ebay store instead, and pay the fees. I expect that will just do away with a lot of the half.com listings.
I DO pay a monthly fee for listing on Amazon, but that's OK to me because they bring me the sales. Half.com doesn't, and I list the same books in both places!
The news reports seem to be saying this is an extension of BIN sales, which makes little sense to me, since BIN is still a part of the viable auction model. How viable have the stores been? Can you even find items in stores via ebay Search yet?
Also, from all I've heard, the zhops on Amazon don't sell much, what works on Amazon is linking our items to their high-profile, high-content database and their name brand. I don't think ebay has a reputation yet for being an online store. I don't see how the half.com inventory will promote that reputation.
posted on October 10, 2001 08:35:41 AM
I've got 36 books up on half.com - have sold all of 2 since I started listing there.
I've got almost 170 trading cards up on half.com - I am moving those fairly well, but have the exact same cards up in my Ebay storefront and have had very few sales (actually 1 person in two separate orders is it).
If the Ebay storefront & half.com merge in some fashion (which my best guess would be dumping the half.com inventory into storefronts and use their pricing model), I will pull the half.com listings because their already there. 8) I'll probably shift the books over the Amazon and see if they have better luck over there...
Even though its been an Ebay company, I think of it as a non-Ebay venue since it was outside of the traditional Ebay format... This will just increase the size of Ebay in my selling pie - and diversification hasn't helped much - no action anywhere else. 8(
posted on October 10, 2001 08:48:31 AM
It seems pretty reasonable to think that half will become ebay stores, fixed listing, etc. I don't have one, and don't know how feedback works, but if they are getting rid of the model where you can have NO contact with your buyer, then I am in favor of it. Half.com is absolutely horrible when it comes to that. I have something that was returned, and I have NO way of contacting my buyer still. He submitted a trouble report, I responded with shipping info, and now I can not contact him. How awful. I also really hate the feedback system on half.com, where the seller can not respond, and it is really difficult to find who the buyer even is! I've gotten some sub-par feedback because I ship via media mail, which is what I am SUPPOSED to do, yet they complain that it takes 7-10 days to get to them. I would not want that type of feedback mixed with my auction feedback (which is a really high number) so if I do continue in the new environment, I definitely will be getting a different ID to sell on ebay for fixed priced items.
posted on October 10, 2001 08:48:50 AM
Ebay reminds me of a restaurant that was here a few years ago. They served really good food like you would usually find in a fancy high class restaurant but in a dinner atmosphere and they moved a huge number of dinners quickly through their little place in a blue collar area.
The prices were moderate for the quality and the expenses were so low they were doing real well financially.
However the owner was not happy in the niche wanting a big fancy place that could charge the higher prices so he built an expensive place in the ritzy suburb and went in head to head with all the other high end places that were already there.
He was broke and closed in a year.
Why when they have something that is working well can people not resist screwing it up trying to fix what is not broken?
posted on October 10, 2001 09:16:00 AM
I'm just speculating here, but I think Ebay is struggling to find ways to meet its growth figure estimates and perhaps by fulling bringing half.com under their umbrella, they think they will... ??
eBay obviously doesn't understand that combining the two sites will further commoditize the items we sell.
As of now eBay and Half.com peacefully coexist. The buyers are a bit different for each format. This is not to say that they don't co-mingle, as they do. However, I have found it is still possible to market the same products at different price points on the two websites. Combining the two formats will combine the buyers and further errode selling prices. Not good for us high volume sellers. All of us that sell in large volume on eBay work on thin margins. Our niche is volume oriented and there is not much fat that can be trimmed. The assumption that us entrepreneuerial sellers will be willing to further become superstores with this new format is a stretch. We are prudent business people and do not do business on the "if come. We operate will our own money on sound business plans. The days of making money "later or "in the future" are gone and we will not be willing to gamble with our businesses by offering products in volume below cost. That is what Amazon, Egghead, uBid and the other failing online ventures are for.
