posted on October 18, 2000 04:34:42 AM new
Yesterday while billing auctions and leaving feedback, we noticed on one of our auctions a link for Half.com that Ebay had put there without our permission. It read something like " If this item is not collectible, you may be able to find it at Half.com"
We only found it on two of our sales. I was wondering if anyone else saw it? Was it just a fluke? Is Ebay experimenting?
Hopefully they realized it is a BAAAAAAAD idea. I am not going to pay listing fees to advertise Half.com.
I do sell mainly antiquarian books, so not too many of my buyers would be siphoned off. But I don't like the idea that people are distracted by links on my items suggesting that perhaps they could find the same thing somewhere else.
posted on October 18, 2000 05:49:24 AM new
Unless half.com wants to link faganbooks auctions with a comment like "you may find something more desirable at faganbooks" the idea of putting an ad on your auction page is not an option in my mind.
posted on October 18, 2000 06:47:56 AM new
Actually, it's not an ad for Half.com -
it's a link for the seller to "relist"
an item that didn't sell on Half.com.
It says:
"Is this a non-collectible item? Try the convenience of selling on Half.com, eBay's different way to buy and sell. "
(then a hyperlink to list on half.com)
As far as I can tell, this "option to sell
on Half.com" information only appears on
auctions that didn't sell, and only in
certain categories, like books, music, and
videos ...
If you like to see an auction with this notice, here's one of my closed auctions:
posted on October 18, 2000 07:01:56 AM new
There's an inordinate amount of ebay spam for half.com.
Using the half.com model for ebay's (eventual) fixed price sales is terrible for sellers. Customers at half.com are not your customers - they belong to half.com.
posted on October 18, 2000 07:27:04 AM newdana71: They primarily mean mass-market books. And it's completely optional to list at half.com.
Half.com seems like a good place to "park" stock that doesn't sell after repeated attempts on eBay - it's better than tossing the books in the trash, certainly.
posted on October 21, 2000 06:49:29 PM new
Thanks Glenda, I get the picture now.! I had never gone to half-com so I learned another lesson after visiting there a;nd your kind note.
Goingslow
posted on October 21, 2000 07:50:09 PM new
half.com is a rip off for sellers. I put stuff on Yahoo. It's free and I can post a book for one month at a time. If takes three months or longer to sell, I am not out 15% and having to wait for half to pay out. Granted it's not a big book venue, but so what?
posted on October 24, 2000 11:08:31 AM new
Thrinworks:
I agree. I don't like half.com model at all ... and yes, if this is 'ebaY's idea of what a fixed price model should be, they appear to have something up their sleeve. What?
they want to change folks are from a product sellers to a wholesale suppliers for their discount store.
What does this portend for ebaY proper?
Mark Schwartz, who is doing the auctiva showcase thing said that ebaY's goal is to commodize sellers. Having seen half.com, I now agree with him.
If you're familiar with that term, you know that the goal of commodization is to strip value from one part of the marketing chain and increase the value of the part of the chain that they control. This is because the market is considered a zero-sum game.
An example of what happens when commoditization exists is that there is about 2 cents of wheat at farmer prices in a $1.09 loaf of bread.
Sellers on eBay can have links to their own pages, can have mepages and can develop long-term relationships directly with buyers.
This becomes impossible under the half.com model. The only reference to a seller is their "user id" which doesn't even link to an email. The seller could stuff the package with links and other promotional materia but NO, half.com prohibits that too!
The only legitimate reason is because they don't want sellers on half.com ... they just want you to subsidize their business by holding the inventory and fulfilling the shipping. At half.com you're nothing but a warehouse and a cheap source of labor for product fulfillment.
Even Amazon has to buy at least a portion of their inventory and has to pay minimum wage from their profits for people to pack and ship their goods.
My advice is if you are interested in fixed price sales of items such as books, do Yahoo! or, if the ISBN order/approach is of interest, check out a dot.com site called nextag.
Half.com just comes across to me as a sucker deal for sellers. It also suggests to me that ebaY's overall attitude toward sellers is to play them for suckers. There are many alternatives and the half.com model. while it no doubt appeals greatly to the ebaY mindset, promotion or even use of the half.com site is not in the long-term interests of online auction sellers, IMO.
Bottomline, if sellers deny the half.com site listings buyers will also abandon that site and ebaY will have to change their model.
Pat
BTW: I did the nextag thing ... a co-branded site ... for a local community site I host (www.paulding.com) but I won't provide a link directly to my co-branded site to avoid a hint of spam. You'd want your own anyway
