TheStreet.com: At eBay, Capitalizing on the Catbird Seat
"But in a survey conducted in summer 1999, Lucking-Reiley found that 54% of eBay's auctions resulted in a sale, compared with 38% for Amazon and just 16% for Yahoo!.
"...Most Yahoo! auctions have high reserve prices, he found, with the sellers apparently waiting for some sucker to come along and pay it."
posted on September 9, 2000 12:37:30 PM new
"...Most Yahoo! auctions have high reserve prices, he found, with the sellers apparently waiting for some sucker to come along and pay it."
In defense of Yahoo! sellers, the lack of bidders REQUIRES that, UNLESS they want to sell all their inventory at $1.00 IF THEY ARE LUCKY. It is not so much waiting for a sucker as waiting for a bidder ANY bidder to come along and place a bid!
I also noted the author said eBay has about a 54% sell rate. eBay claims MOST ITEMS SELL THE FIRST TIME AROUND. You find that on the information page about fees.
posted on September 9, 2000 03:22:18 PM new
ebays claims dont hold true out of the last 50 listing all but 6 listed twice out of the whole group only three sold on the frist time 0 sold on the second try I never list there 3x in a row far below the 54% they are claiming.
would never use a reserve on yahoo or ebay I use buy price offer free shipping deals where I have sold over 200 Items on yahoo in 11 months, many second and third time buyer and would never call my buyers suckers. (would or do you call yours that).
have listed over 350 Items on yahoo in 11 months sold over 200 much better then 16% some times item will relist a bit before a buyer who really is looking for my item but it sells.
most sellers selling on yahoo with $1 start bid will get many bids near all will end from 30x to 100x there starting bid.
posted on September 9, 2000 07:09:41 PM new
I wish there were good numbers on results like closing ratios. Even then it would vary greatly between sellers within a category, from category to category, by price and almost endless other variables.
I sometimes check "going, going, gone". It usually runs an hour or two behind and you can see a broad segment of offerings or focus on a category. Even with that I only see a small fraction of the approx. 700,000 items closing daily. Criscross that with completed auctions search for a particular item and some trends start to emerge.
Then there is the question of profit. My profit per item, when compared to last year, for similar or identical items is falling.
My best guess is, on average, a lower percentage of listings sell,their average price is lower and the profit is less.
That trend also seems to be what is said in quarterly reports but after the spin doctors get through with the numbers, who the H... knows what is actually happening.
I sell more, make less per transaction and never have all the money I want. Maybe just as well considering how I've behaved when I did have too much money.
posted on September 9, 2000 07:29:08 PM new
I must be doing something right.... I've got a roughly 90% sell rate on first-time listings.
I am very careful about what I sell, and how much I start it at.
My profit margin is about the same, but only because I am more careful about listings than I was a year ago (i.e., I pass up more stuff at garage sales and thrift shops).
Also, after 2 years of selling on eBay, I have a much broader knowledge of what sells and what does not.
"My possessions are causing me suspicion." - Neil Finn
posted on September 9, 2000 07:33:23 PM new
Has anyone considered that the auction format of selling is losing popularity, regardless of competing auction sites?
eBay is nothing like it was a couple of years ago. People are getting tired of bidding. They would rather just buy what they want without waiting and without paying too much. Most everyone waits til the last day to bid, they don't want to pay too much.
Why do you think "1st Bid Wins" works so well on Yahoo? Zshops sales are pretty good also. No bidding invlolved.
A fixed price site that individuals can sell on is what someone should be developing. Even eBay has started this with their half.com site.
A site that works like half.com would be great. The site collects payments and forwards them to the seller. No more deadbeats to worry about. The site offers a guarantee to the buyer. No fraud to worry about. I'm wondering if this is where eBay is heading eventually.
posted on September 9, 2000 09:57:59 PM new
I dont think the format is loseing popularity . but I do beleave it reached its popularity about 1998 and is leveling off to bussiness as usual now.
it has leveled off to a point that ebay knows it could lose even more of its lead or edge.
it has leveled off to where ebay being a big company need to incress sales but in the process has forgot that many sellers are a business and need incress too and they needs to give allow away for this to happen or some one like yahoo with free listings no FVF makeing each seller responable for there own profit and advertizeing will win out fast. yahoo is about a lot of freedom and for many who spend a few thounsand listing and paying FVF fees they could pour that in to yahoo sales and win big .
posted on September 9, 2000 10:47:15 PM new
auctions work well for one-of-a-kind gizmos and whachamacallits. They don't make as much sense for new sweatshirts and commonly available books.
What do you think the effect of buy prices would have on eBay, were they to implement them?
(aside. tonight, sold 2 items on eBay, 4 on yahoo, 3 on half - diversify is good advice!)
posted on September 10, 2000 08:16:57 AM new
I think that "Buy Now"/"One Bid Wins" for the auctions would be a superb idea -- as then people would wanna search & browse the ,erchandise offerings more frequently, particularly assiduous collectors.
However, the fantastic thing about auctions is that you can SCHEDULE when your sales end, which for some teenie microbusinesses is a very very important consideration, as time is limited due to other RL commitments.
posted on September 10, 2000 09:47:22 AM new
Amazon has a "take it" feature in which the seller lists a price that any buyer can pay to end the "auction". That's the only way my stuff over there has sold.
I've wondered about that for ebay. it seems easy to integrate into the existing auction structure. It would cap bidding and maybe sometimes a seller would wonder "would I have gotten more?" but surely on the vast majority of sales it would speed things up and get the product into the buyer's hands more quickly.
posted on September 10, 2000 06:27:08 PM new
Even without an official buy price in the software, you can get around it. I almost always put in my auction "if you bid $x, I will close the auction and it's yours."
You can not compare ebay and yahoo, it's like comparing apples and orangatangs (not an error). on ebay where sellers pay for their listings, listings are usually taken seriously. On Yahoo where it's free, there are thousands of scam listings, where the item is being sold at list price in the hope that some sucker will actually pay it. Then there are spam listings where sellers list the same item over and over with slightly different titles. The best Yahoo can do to ocntrol this is limit them to 1000 auctions a month. There are plenty of things I list on Yahoo that I dont on ebay because after the listing and closing fees there is little profit.
posted on September 10, 2000 06:55:51 PM new
yisg00d: but what if you only have ONE item, and what if several people don't understand, all place bids AFTER the winning bid, which say, happened at 2 a.m., and you don't learn the status of your auction until 9 a.m.
Aren'tcha setting yeRself uP for some sore losers?
posted on September 11, 2000 07:47:33 AM new
Most of the items I sell are things that I can always get. Once in a while I do sell the last one but still have bidders who didnt understand. (This happened just yesterday). I send them an email like the following:
There appears to be some confusion. I stated as the first sentence in the auction, "bid $x and the auction is closed and the item is yours." Another bidder reached that amount first and therefore that bidder has won.
Here I have to change things depending on circumstances:
Since you were willing to pay that amount, I will offer you this item at the same price ($y less than your bid). Because I had to offer the one I had in stock to the other bidder, it will take me a few days to get another one OR I can substitute this item: . Let me know if you are interested and we can proceed. If you are not interested, let me know that as well. No non-paying-bidder or bad feedback will be posted.
The worst that has happened is someone saying "no thanks." Often they are quite happy to get something for less than their bid. I have no negs on ebay and only one on yahoo over a year old from a deadbeat, so I believe it works.
