posted on March 8, 2001 06:27:21 PM
A year ago I would not have given a moments thought to spending $200 because I would have considered it a small risk. But a year ago I sold almost $10k that month. This month I am
probably going to sell $1k and am looking to other activities to make most of my income.
I feel very unsure what direction anything is going. I just have no confidence at all what eBay may do from day to day. They may do something tomorrow with no notice at all that will make it impossible for me to sell anymore. There is no way to run a business without predictable dependable services. There is no way to have a contract or agreement with these online services so that you have a dependable relationship and can make plans. This is an aspect of online business that I never foresaw - complete unpredictableness. You are at the mercy of PayPal and eBay. If some inexperienced kid
decides you are in violation of his interpretation of the rules he can shut down your whole business in a couple keystrokes and you have very little recourse. This is a side of conventional business that will have to find some way into cyberspace.
posted on March 8, 2001 07:42:35 PM
If you sign up. go for the fvf per auction plan, not the $200 up front plan. That way you're covered if things don't work out.
Of course, you may have to move all of your images, etc with very little to no notice.
At least under the current circumstances we were given two weeks to pack our bags and find new homes.
As I was just sharing with a thread on the Yahoo board, you can't compare eBay and Yahoo; in doing so you are comparing apples and oranges. Yahoo and eBay were never alike and certainly aren't now.
As an eBay Power Seller I went to Yahoo last year (when they were free) and Yahoo seemingly had a friendly attitude, and we made a killing. Then almost over night, they became mean, nasty, almost insane - they chose to charge listing fees instead of FVF, and for Yahoo that was a killer - because Yahoo was never like eBay and most of the time the seller had to relist 2 or 3 times. It was immediately non-cost effective for the seller, and we told Yahoo, but they knew better. Now, we see what has happened to Yahoo.
It was much easier for the Yahoo sellers to take a hike than eBay sellers, particularly now. Yahoo sellers had the opportunity to go or return to eBay - with Yahoo now dead, eBay sellers have no alternative at all. This analogy can easily be true for AW system, since there are many other such systems available and therefore the user of the AW management systems does have a choice and doesn’t have to pay fees or abide by rules they feel unjust- so AW is definitely at risk.
If you go through and read many of the threads on Yahoo over the last two months, you will see the enthusiasm early on about some of the new auction sites, such as BidVille, BidBay, etc. etc., but now you see little said; there were some sales, many, many hits, but these newer sites couldn't produce, and I would imagine the full time Yahoo seller has gone to eBay.....where else can they go except back to a 9 to 5 job?
So what is the alternative for the eBay seller - none and without an alternative, most will not give up what they have at eBay even for a short time to make an impact on eBay - money means more to the seller than what any feel are too high prices, unfair changes, etc. etc.
Till someone can actually challenge eBay in so far as a listing site (and Yahoo was close till they committed suicide), most eBay sellers will just put up with whatever eBay chooses to dish out.
The complaints, threatened boycotts, plans for a co-op, etc., that are seen on this board actually only represent a drop in the bucket of the amount of sellers on eBay. Most sellers are naïve, and have no idea that the AW board exists, or that someone here or there is planning a boycott, a co-op or such.
I’ve been at eBay since 1996, and heard all the boycott threats, etc. etc., and I’ve never seen any come to fruition. Without the media to promote or publish info on a exodus from eBay, most users will never know, and therefore most will never participate, therefore, eBay is safe to do as they please.
posted on March 9, 2001 08:45:32 AM
I'm not sure why you put ebay in the same breath as Yahoo as the next site to be going gone. Ebay has 80% of the market and has a profitable business model. Their success has been proven difficult, if not nearly impossible to beat. The rent is higher on ebay because they deliver better results. Yahoo never figured that out before implementing fees. You would think AW woud have learned from Yahoo's mistake that you need to deliver results. What does AW image hosting offer that can't be obtained eleswhere for less?
I'm expecting lots of fallout but AW probably has deeper pockets than many of these other places and a larger audience currently.
posted on March 9, 2001 09:20:20 AM
The only seller effort I believe had significant effect was the MAM.
I understood it to encourage sellers to continue on eBay, if that venue was important to them, and to also explore diversification.
Many sellers took some portion of their listings to venues other than eBay and also used fixed price locations, started web sites etc.
A lot of sellers ended up at YAHOO as a secondary site. For whatever reasons combined to bring it about, YAHOO had rapid growth in the number of listings, total sales and promotion by sellers.
Growth at YAHOO got attention, which brought more growth, which encouraged some sellers and the potential emerged for a strong "number two" site.
Then YAHOO changed and most sellers no longer feel it has the once promised potential.
I, and apparently a large number of other sellers, would like an additional strong site to use in combination with our eBay listing but none has yet emerged.
The marketplace will change. I just try to do what little I can to encourage changes that make the small independent seller less than completely dependent on one venue.
posted on March 9, 2001 09:34:00 AM
JWPC
HERE HERE! I agree 100%
If you can't figure out how to survive on Ebay with a small fee hike then your business wasn't stable to start.
If $.10 or $.25 more per item cut's your margin that much you should give up.
Adapt with Ebay as it changes find a niche or two and work it.
But stop complaining, If your business model for selling was weak then you fall by the wayside like so many other internet seller both large and small.
JB
posted on March 9, 2001 09:53:30 AM
I'm a small seller, and selling online is 95% of my yearly income at least. Not having a large reserve of resources I do not have the luxury of "dabbling" with other auction sites. I've tried a few others without much success. Bottom line is I need bidders to stay in business and I stay where I find those bidders.
posted on March 9, 2001 10:49:35 AM
jwpc, And as I just stated in the Yahoo thread: You just proved my point. And I'm not trying to slam you or ebay sellers, but you just illustrated exactly what I'm talking about.
posted on March 9, 2001 12:16:07 PM
gravid, I read an article about a 29 year old kid that went from a $2Mil portfolio on the west coast down to selling door hinges at a hardware store in the midwest. She was a "dot bomb" consultant. A beamer to boot, lived in a virtual dream world and was finding it extremely difficult to transition to the real world doing real work. The .com world is not the "real world" but it is what the real world is opting for. The new breed of business men and women are taking commerce in this direction because of the short term money to be made. Unfortunately, many get caught up in a fantasy world that their company will never fold. Dream on! Fickleness in business is at an all time high. This platform is about as unstable as the electrons that carry the data. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy buying and selling over eBay. I would never get real serious about it for the reasons you give. I'll stick with a real job.
I think you're forgetting the process that created ebay.
It's not just the raise in fees. It's that nagging feeling of the next raise or new fee.
I think it's having a large psychological effect on the collective psyche of sellers, especially if you're not a corporate type.
I know I started out as small as you can get on ebay and my business flourished to where I now run 2000+ listings at all times on a few sites.
I have employees, pay taxes, and have all sorts of support fees. My thoughts about my business are not the same as when I started.
Instead of looking happily to the future I worry about my business surviving and not because of competition, but because of the platforms that I have to workwith like Ebay, AW, Amazon, and others.
That's why we need a co-op. It's real clear if you think about it??
posted on March 9, 2001 03:32:50 PM
"If $.10 or $.25 more per item cut's your margin that much you should give up."
Electronic dealers (such as Best Buy) operate on a 5% margin. Grocery Stores operate on a 1% margin. Most major companies have an under 20% margin. So giving up is not always the best approach. To a small time seller with tiny margins, I'd recomend cutting costs first, and buying in volume secondly to get a better cost per unit.
posted on March 9, 2001 03:39:32 PM
Cutting costs should always be done, but not so that you can send it to ePAY or AW. It should be so that you can improve your company and your life!
posted on March 9, 2001 05:47:32 PM
feijoadabrhotmail
What you say is extremely accurate in my opinion. AW will go the same way as Yahoo auctions ( only faster ). Banner ads are no longer paying the bills because they are not as productive as proposed to be and the dot.com's now have to try and get the revenue from their users in order to stay alive. A 1% fee on top of eBay's high charges is not going to be accepted. Volume sellers like me and you would gladly pay the annual $200.00 fee when we appreciate the services, if we could be given any kind of assurance that AW would come close to lasting that long. But the odds are highly against that when you look at what has happened to much larger dot.coms like Yahoo auctions. AW would have a much better chance of getting this revenue if they did it for instance on a 3 month basis becuse sellers would be more willing to gamble on them lasting for the shorter period of time. They are being deluged with emails and phone calls about this and a large exodus would be exspected. As for me I only use their service of listing auctions at the times I want and can therefore not have to be at a computer to get an auction launched on eBay at the times I want. I will now be looking and/or awaiting someone else to provide that service.
posted on March 9, 2001 06:54:22 PM
On another thread the headline reads something like eBay drops 13%. The heat is on in the kitchen and all of us who are sellers had better get insulated fast. I have developed a killer website and am now using eBay more as cheap advertising to draw people to my site than anything else. My very good friend had placed all his listings with AW and suddenly had the rug pulled out from under him with the "gotcha" restructure in membership arrangements proposed by the AW management. He is now corresponding directly with a separate board set up to handle disgruntled AW members that allows posts without censorship. From what I can tell, there is no serious objection to a service that performs as advertised (ie: no synch errors on Sunday night) and is competitive in the marketplace. But let's face it folks - a listing service and image hosting is nothing out of the ordinary. To that, I really question why anyone should be subjected to a situation that smacks of extortion. Granted, we are all free agents and can choose which service we use. But that strong sucking sound you hear is the vacuum cleaner of survival running at full speed at AW and the nozzle is pointed directly at our pocketbooks. This is very disconcerting to one newbie who is considering using the service but finding all this negative info from actual users. Do you all really visualize a "titanic.com" situation here????
