posted on September 24, 2000 10:08:03 PM new
Every so often I reread this review that the Auction Non-Watch people wrote on 7/27/00. Every time I do, I seriously wonder what good drugs are out there that I don't have access to... Just for nostalgia's sake, I want to post just one paragraph. Anyone familiar with the drug(s) that could make someone write this?
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Every year about this time, it seems e-tailer Amazon.com takes a seat in Wall Street's doghouse, as it finds itself accused of spending money faster than it can make it. (Comment- ACCUSED? Here's a company that lost 634 MILLION dollars in the 6 months prior to this review, I would say CONVICTED, not ACCUSED...) And with this week's mixed earnings report (Comment- MIXED? The only thing mixed about it was that it lost a penny less than the geniuses on Wall St. expected, GEE...), you can bet it will face yet another round of ridicule from bankers and investors. However, there's no denying that Amazon.com's continued investment in its auctions and zShops channels has paid off, (Comment- I'm denying it, chiefly because it AIN'T TRUE...) making it more competitive than ever in its battle for online auction supremacy over eBay and Yahoo Auctions.
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Umm Hmm, it's paid off so well that just over 1% of listings are actually being bid on, and the site is now nearly impossible to navigate... Competitive, unh huh... Investment, umm hmm... Online Auction SUPREMACY? Oh Kay <choke>... Let me go grab a doob and see if I can understand how anyone could possibly have come to those patently absurd conclusions... Be back later...
[ edited by tentwentytwo on Sep 24, 2000 10:08 PM ]
posted on September 25, 2000 08:41:04 PM newtentwentytwo, it sounds like you're on a crusade.
Here's how I see it. Amazon's listing numbers have grown enormously. Now, unless the people who continue to list auction at Amazon are imbeciles, either the bid percentage figure is wrong, or it is economical to list inventory on Amazon and only turn over 1% of inventory per whatever the sampling period is. Either way, by getting the listing numbers so high Amazon has dramatically increased the product selection at their site. This is a victory for them as this will attract more customers.
As for the investment and competition, look at the features Amazon before eBay: Session keys so you don't have to endlessly retype your password. Images on search pages, available for every auction, not just those who pay the premium "gallery" fee. Image hosting. A payment system so small sellers could accept credit cards. Fixed price selling, which eBay is now picking up by way of half.com. Customized seller storefronts. Take-It prices. People had to implement these things and these people had to be paid. Computer systems had to be purchased and so on. That is investment in auctions and zshops.
I don't know anything about Amazon's financial situation, but I buy regularly from Amazon's site and I see the improvements. It would be a shame if Amazon does go bankrupt, because I haven't found a shopping site that I like more.
posted on September 26, 2000 04:30:07 AM new
-------Amazon's listing numbers have grown enormously. Now, unless the people who continue to list auction at Amazon are imbeciles, either the bid percentage figure is wrong, or it is economical to list inventory on Amazon and only turn over 1% of inventory per whatever the sampling period is. Either way, by getting the listing numbers so high Amazon has dramatically increased the product selection at their site. This is a victory for them as this will attract more customers. ---------
Well, here are some of the numbers from last month that Auction watch posted themselves. My numbers (obtained by sorting major categories by highest number of bids, and even including the many bids on items that haven't met reserves, and probably won't be sold) and Jupiter's numbers are considerably worse than that, but the numbers (even IF Auction Watch's were correct) are pathetic. They are also easily verifiable.
"Perhaps this explains some of Amazon.com Auctions' bidding woes. The best performing categories during our review were Electronics and Photography (approximately 1,400 auctions from a total of 28,024 had bids) and Toys & Games (approximately 1,550 auctions from a total of 25,780 had bids). Other breakdowns were as follows: Books, 450 of 32,000 had bids; Movies & Video, 975 of 32,000; and Music, 725 of 39,000."
The BEST category (if those numbers are correct) had 7% of items bid on. The WORST
(Books, forcryingoutloud, Amazon,com is a BOOKSELLER, what's the excuse for that???) had much less than 2%.
Here are the one-month numbers that the NextCard Survey just posted AFTER the above numbers. They are EXTREMELY alarming, and this survey is one of the most respected on the Web. That takes care of attracting new customers. They are actually LOSING customers at a record pace. It is actually almost unheard-of for a company like Amazon to lose 92% of traffic in one month.
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NextCard Releases August eCommerce Index
5 Biggest Losers
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1 AMAZON.COM AUCTIONS -92%
2 HEALTHCENTRALRX.COM -86%
3 BIGSTAR.COM -49%
4 ESSENTIAL.COM -47%
5 PRICELINE.COM HOTEL -46%
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It is not economical to list all these items on Amazon (time/effort/ and return figure into "economical", nor are most of the sellers at Amazon Auctions imbeciles, nor can they or the auction site survive on a venue where they can't sell more than 1% of what they list.
posted on September 26, 2000 05:51:41 AM new
harkabeeparolyn- I'm just curious, those numbers are no news to you, considering that you have responded to them on other threads- in one of which you posted a number of Amazon going from "0" listings to "750,000" listings in a "little over a year and a half"... Do you have a problem with these well-researched, well-documented numbers themselves (which could be easily verified by an auction search)? And yes, I'm on a crusade... Amazon is 95% smoke and mirrors, and has been since Day One. Unfortunately, smoke and mirrors work, as evidenced by the fact that Amazon has been able to sell literally BILLIONS of dollars of their junk bonds, bonds which they are in danger of defaulting on, and bonds which they pay 9 figures worth of interest on every year. I don't like smoke and mirrors. At all.
posted on September 26, 2000 12:46:53 PM new
About the bid numbers, can you really trust them as an indication of sales? If people are buying items using Take-It prices, the bid numbers aren't going to show this activity. Also, the search results are obviously truncated. When I see a round number like 32,000, I figure it has to be a search cutoff to avoid generating a list of the whole auction site. So the bid percentage is only accurate if the 32,000 search results returned are a random sample of all the auctions that weren't part of the results. Since Amazon is sorting the results, the likelihood of the results being random is nil.
About the NextCard data, those are numbers from one credit card. Amazon and NextCard issued a cobranded card earlier this year, which probably spiked NextCard usage at Amazon for a while and then things settled back down. It means nothing with regard to the use of other credit cards or other payment methods!
There is still the question yuo left unanswered: Why are hundreds of thousands of items still being listed at Amazon if the stuff isn't selling? Only an imbecile would keep listing if Amazon's site is as hopeless as you say. My conclusion is that the stuff IS selling, and the people complainging here are a noisy minority.
posted on September 26, 2000 01:17:15 PM new
I'll gladly answer all of your questions in order...
***
About the bid numbers, can you really trust them as an indication of sales? If people are buying items using Take-It prices, the bid numbers aren't going to show this activity. Also, the search results are obviously truncated. When I see a round number like 32,000, I figure it has to be a search cutoff to avoid generating a list of the whole auction site. So the bid percentage is only accurate if the 32,000 search results returned are a random sample of all the auctions that weren't part of the results. Since Amazon is sorting the results, the likelihood of the results being random is nil.***
The results don't have to be random. at any juncture, you can go into a full category, list all the items, sort by bids high-to-low. Maybe Auction Watch's numbers are truncated, but Jupiter's aren't... I am going to do that right now for books, and the results will follow immediately.
As of the time I'm posting this, there are 7190 items listed in "Modern First Editions,"
a category which Amazon features with much greater exposure than others, and a category that you would think would be a popular one there. 137 currently have bids. If you reasonably assume that the ones out of those 137 for which the bids aren't close to the reserves aren't going to be sold, but maybe a like percentage of the remaining 7000+ will be bid on later, make it 200 out of these that actually will be sold. 200/7190is 2 1/2%+ a little, keeping in mind that at least Amazon makes an effort to feature this category, while others even within books (which should be Amazon's best-selling category) will not/do not have anywhere NEAR either that exposure, or those many bids. That is pathetic. And those numbers are consistently DECLINING, and have been for a while.
***About the NextCard data, those are numbers from one credit card. Amazon and NextCard issued a cobranded card earlier this year, which probably spiked NextCard usage at Amazon for a while and then things settled back down. It means nothing with regard to the use of other credit cards or other payment methods!***
It actually means quite a great deal regarding the use of other credit cards and other payment methods. NextCard has mathematically and correctly determined that their "population" of cardholder of 400,000 (as they say in math) is a more-than-adequate random sample of the whole Web population buying from Amazon by examining Web demographics, etc. That's why the survey is so highly-respected. This is how all statistical sampling is done. Studies like this are never done on entire mathematical populations, they are done by "rational sampling." If the sampling criterion (a) is (are) correct, you will get a true indication of what is going on, within a +/- statistical error range, which I think in NextCard's case is 5%.It is an EXCELLENT indication of what's going on at Amazon, probably the best available on the Web.
***There is still the question yuo left unanswered: Why are hundreds of thousands of items still being listed at Amazon if the stuff isn't selling? Only an imbecile would keep listing if Amazon's site is as hopeless as you say. My conclusion is that the stuff IS selling, and the people complainging here are a noisy minority.***
There is no question to answer actually. Some of the people still listing are unquestionably imbeciles- the vast majority are sellers who have had success before on Amazon, many have been with and have supported Amazon auctions from the outset, and they are hoping against hope that the fools that run the company will "see the light" before they give up the ship entirely.
There are many, many reasons to keep on listing FOR A WHILE that would not qualify the lister as an "imbecile." Now, speaking of things imbecilic, how about Amazon's management? Maybe you should look at their financials, which you said you weren't familiar with. In the previous reporting 6-month period, you have a company that has lost 634 MILLION dollars, has never been profitable, and nobody (even Jeff Bozos) has the temerity to say they ever WILL be. They are no longer this "dynamic startup" that needs to spend billions to establish their position, advertising, brand name, or otherwise. They HAVE established their position, and not only do they continue to leak money like a sieve, but it's actually getting WORSE. A good indication of what Amazon's true financial position is viewed as is the fact that ALL the major bond rating services including Moody's rate Amazon's bonds risky JUNK. Amazon, as I said, is vending smoke and mirrors.
[ edited by tentwentytwo on Sep 26, 2000 02:32 PM ]
posted on September 26, 2000 09:00:00 PM new
The pro and con arguments or selling experiences of others are really unimportant unless they are selling the same items you are selling and at the same prices and with the same presentation.
What matters is whether what you list will sell. If it does, continue to list. If it doesn't, stop listing. It's really very simple.
posted on September 26, 2000 09:29:04 PM new
None of these are pros and cons about what others may or may not be selling. They are descriptions of a site that has made it nearly impossible for most people to sell enough to make it close to worthwhile to sell anything. Of course if you are successful, you continue. However, your chances of becoming successful when 1% of items are actually being sold are slim. That's the point. A seller who may not know that is missing an important part of what's going on. They may think it's their unique experience if their items aren't selling well when they used to. They may think it's something they're doing. Armed with the knowledge that the vast majority of sellers are doing as bad or worse, they can make an educated judgement on what they want to do, which they couldn't without that knowledge.
posted on September 26, 2000 10:41:35 PM new
In my experience on eBay in the last couple of years, how the VAST majority of other sellers are doing has been proven to be rather irrelevant. There are 2-3 other sellers in my category whose auctions I watch. I can take a break from listing and when I start up again, I know with a surprising amount of accuracy how well I am likely do with my listings that week, simply by looking to see how well those 2-3 particular sellers (who all ship internationally like I do and who sell similar items) are currently doing.
When those same sellers were listing auctions at Amazon, I didn't bother listing if they weren't doing well. I did maintain a steady listing of over 200 items on zShops from October to July, but of course, there was no way I could know with certainty how my competition was doing there.
posted on September 27, 2000 12:03:27 AM new
Definitely makes sense to me, and you're lucky (and probably skillful) to have criteria to look at like that. People selling what I sell (books, many medium-high end Modern First Editions) could probably not judge their chances of success on either eBay or Amazon like that, and would be well
advised to look at how similar items in their category are selling, by doing what I just did above, sorting by bids, and quantifying results. There's a big difference in knowing that you aren't the only one in a ship taking on water, as you said, and making a decision not to waste time or money traveling on that ship. If I (hypothetically) were to be doing poorly, and then after a search of the category in which I was selling, I found that similar stuff was selling well, I would want to rethink what I'M doing. Like I said, though, if I looked in that same category, and saw that most everything was doing poorly, and there were lots of items listed, I could reasonably conclude that it's the site, its traffic, its format, etc. that's why knowing what's going on is vital. Sure, if you're successful at Amazon despite what's going on, you don't really care, and vis-a-vis your items, why should you?
posted on September 27, 2000 01:29:11 PM new
I have to agree with stockticker, all these numbers are irrelevant. If you're making money great. If not, take a walk. Personally, I'm walking. Maybe the changing of the tabs helped kill the sales, maybe not.
But my eBay sales have been great and with the fourth quarter around the corner, I don't have time for Amazon's amateur hour.
posted on September 27, 2000 03:58:33 PM new
Put me in. 6 test auctions of very high quality goods, 5 bids. No one ever contacted me. Even more than 1 bid, 2 bids and nada.
I believe that is how I spell failure. With amazon anyway.
Gotta agree with the others, til something happens, eBay at least has lookers.
, nor are most of the sellers at Amazon Auctions imbeciles, nor can they or the auction site survive on a venue where they can't sell more than 1% of what they list.