posted on July 30, 2001 04:26:39 PM
Are the July auction counts down because of the season, economy, people leaving the business.... or...
are both buyers and sellers moving to other pastures and now just dropping into eBay
here's the site
http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND
posted on July 30, 2001 04:30:29 PM
I am finding that my buyers south of The Equator are now kicking in, as it is winter there. This is not my trading name.
posted on July 30, 2001 04:38:25 PM
It's the annual summer slump. I for one am leaving for vacation at the end of this week and wont be back until August 21st. I will not be bidding and I stopped listing items for sale. I simply will not be around to deal with NPBs or any of the stuff that occurs after an auction ends.
I've already picked up some really neat stuff to sell but it will have to wait.
posted on July 30, 2001 05:24:37 PM
actually july sales have been very good. the last five days have been a bit slower but had good sales all month. http://www.Dman-N-Company.com
Email [email protected]
posted on July 30, 2001 06:21:20 PM
The counts are still higher than last year. Ebay listings rise and fall with the stock market so this isn't soley an ebay problem. I am sure many marginal sellers with little profit or poor sales dropped out, and some of the listing volume was replaced by larger companies that ebay is recruiting.
posted on July 30, 2001 06:49:50 PM
I don't know how free listing day could link in to lower listing at this time all the free listing ended after 10 days.
I can tell you my sales went up at the time of the free listing and I never dropped my listing count back down because I kept getting bids but many sellers more then likely stopped listing for vactions. http://www.Dman-N-Company.com
Email [email protected]
posted on July 30, 2001 09:18:13 PM"The counts are still higher than last year."
Last year at this time, eBay didn't have double-category listings yet, did they? TAG estimates double-category listing inflates the total eBay Auction count number by about 6%, but I don't remember when eBay started offering that feature. Does anyone remember?
posted on July 30, 2001 10:12:24 PM
Does TAG know for sure that ebay counts
a listing with two categories as a
double listing? It's possible ebay
does, but it is assumed right now.
Also, 6% double listings only accounts for about 300,000 listings, what about the additional 700,000 listings?
posted on July 30, 2001 11:48:52 PM
We are running about 20% more auctions than last year, our gross is almost 50% less to the dollar than last year. We are actually.
posted on July 31, 2001 03:45:57 AM
Sales are very slow for us too. While I could use the money now, I am going to have to hold off for a bit in listing some things - just not getting bids, so all I am doing is paying eBay fees.
I sell collectibles and unique items, but for those of you still having good sales - are you selling in this category also?
posted on July 31, 2001 06:54:55 AM
I sell collectibles as well and I've had a good summer. My sell-through has been higher than previous summers and my NPB rate has been lower. The prices I've been getting have been comparable to what the items have been getting at other times of the year. I think it's just a matter of selling the collectibles that have a strong enough demand to sustain you through the summer. It's the opposite strategy of those that are "sitting on the nice stuff" 'til the autumn - I'm holding off on the less in-demand items 'til the fall. Although I am stashing away some really nice gift items for the Christmas season.
I also sell antiques & collectibles, and my July sales have been very good. Had I listed more, they could have been much better. My sell through rate was 86% for July, with a total of over $2,500 in sales. Trust me, there are still plenty of buyers on eBay in July & August. This is my fourth summer on eBay, and I've never had a slump.
posted on July 31, 2001 07:48:42 AM
thepriest - I think all you have to do is take a look at the auctions on the other sites (closed auctions when possible) and see that in general there's not a lot of bidding going on there. I think some other auction sites are having some success attracting the bidders that ebay seems intent on driving off - ie, Nazi collectors and the "adult" stuff, resulting in some successful "niche" auction sites. Bargain&Haggle seeems to be having some success, which of course isn't an auction at all. I give them credit for coming up with a different approach than the many ebay wannabees out there, but I'd rather have potential buyers run my prices up rather than have them haggle my prices down - I had enough of that when I did flea markets.
posted on July 31, 2001 07:53:08 AM
What are you comparing them to? Counts have been steadily growing since the FLD stuff cleared, counts are higher now than they were in April/May and are higher than last year at this time. So my question is where do you see the decline? Am I missing something?
posted on July 31, 2001 08:02:39 AM
I have been buying items almost daily this summer. I buy mostly antiques, collectibles, glass, china, jewelry, etc. and I have noticed that the items I am interested are going for much higher bids than they did the past few summers. Many of these items are getting higher bids than they did in the winter months when I was selling.
Lots of the items I am interested in have the bids driven up by several newbies that get into a bidding war. I am happy to see this trend continuing on ebay as it shows that there is a future for many sellers.
As long as the new bidders keep joining I think things in some markets, especially collectibles, will do just fine. There is no shortage of items for me to buy.
As far as migrating to other sites? So far it has been a waste of time for me. I haven't been able to find any interesting items and just so-so offerings sometimes at higher prices than ebay.
posted on July 31, 2001 08:05:17 AM
Right on doninpa I can’t see where the listings are down either.
Reviewing the Medved annual graphs it appears that listings were cruising along at about 4.5 mil until mid August last year when they began a healthy increase (multiple listing effect?) that ended at slightly over 6mil before the Christmas doldrums. This year the listings bounced around between 5.5 and 5.9 mil until FLD when they went through the roof and affected the first couple weeks of this month. Looks things are about back to normal for this time of year.
posted on July 31, 2001 08:47:47 AM
doninpa & ragmop - I guess you're right - they do seem to be up.
Re: other site migration... we started listing (collectibles/antiques) on bargainandhaggle just before July 4th. As an experiment - I've been surprised... we've had some nice sales and fine prices
posted on July 31, 2001 08:59:19 AM
Actually July has been very good for me.
June on the other hand has been the worst month ever. I have beeen doing this for 3 years, and still cant figure it out..YOU NEVER KNOW...
posted on July 31, 2001 09:06:18 AM
It is taking a lot more this year to boost counts: there's BIN with faster turnover, double listings, and large companies being recruited. Eliminate all that and counts would be well under 4 million. If you notice the chart does not go straight up anymore, that means lots of sellers are droppng out or listing less and are being replaced with the above causes. In the end it just means Ebay has to work harder to keep the counts up.
posted on July 31, 2001 09:27:17 AM
How does BIN increase listing counts? It would seem to depend on how the calculations are done, whether sellers sell more because of it, etc. I can see ways in which it could also result in lower listing counts, depending.
Just wondering how BIN works with respect to these reported listing numbers.
posted on July 31, 2001 10:57:16 AM
If you take my January sales as an example, using BIN, as soon as the item sold I relisted. I was turning three months of inventory over in one month.
After January I went mostly to a fixed amount of monthly listings which would not increase the count; however on a couple items I kept the BIN relists going thereby pushing the count up.
Limited inventoried sellers have no effect on overall figures whether they sell it faster or slower.
I don't see any causes for an overall decline in listings because of BIN. Can you give me some ideas why the count would because of BIN?
posted on July 31, 2001 11:02:32 AMBIN effect: eBay states 35% use BIN. I'll assume a 30% sell through rate. How does all this affect Medved data? Like this...
Case 1: If you list a 7 day auction, no BIN. Medved will report a listing of "1" on each of the 7 days.
Case 2: If you list a 7 day auction in 2 categories, no BIN. Medved will report a listing of "2" each of the 7 days.
Case 3: If you list a 7 day auction with BIN and it sells the INSTANT it's listed, it's likely medved won't report anything (i.e. count will be "0" for each of the 7 days -- the item will NEVER appear in the listing since it sold before the first eBay "update/index cycle" was completed).
Case 4: If you list a 7 day auction with BIN and it sells at the end of the 1st day, then medved will report "1" on day 1, and "0" for the next 6 days.
SO..., if you're looking at the "moving average" (what most do, akin to "drawing a line" through the "ups & downs" to find the "average" number of listings), then you could see the following:
ACTUAL AUCTIONS FOR THE WEEK: 1
Case 1: moving average: 1 (accurate)
Case 2: moving average: 2 (100% OVERSTATED)
Case 3: moving average: 0 (100% UNDERSTATED)
Case 4: moving average: 0.14 (86% UNDERSTATED)
Hope these simple examples point out how BIN & multiple categories affect listing counts on sites like medved. There are other things that affect what medved counts look like -- the ratio of 3- to 5- to 7- to 10-day auctions, for example.
Using estimates of 35% BIN and 30% sell-through on those, then only 10% of the TOTAL auction count is affected at all by BIN. In the "worst case" (all 30% selling "instantly", then auctions would be no more than 10% higher than what medved reports. The real number is certainly something less than 10%.
If you assume that 5-10% use multiple categories (the 6% quoted seems reasonable), then those competing factors basically "cancel" each other out and the medved counts are actually "roughly" accurate....
posted on July 31, 2001 11:11:25 AM
well, I don't really know the exact calculation mechanism for the "number of listing" reports, but if the reporting mechanism counts number of open (non-closed) listings, with a BIN as soon as it sells it is closed, and presumably drops off the listing count at that point?
If the monthly report, say, takes the daily number of listings and divides by the number of days in the month, a non-BIN item would count for the full length of the auction before dropping off, but a BIN item would drop off immediately?
So it would seem that limited inventory sellers, like myself, who use BIN would cause lower number of listings reported.
Sellers with "infinite inventory" (well, multiple identical items) would seem to have no effect, since, in general, it would seem that as soon as one sells, they relist, keeping a constant number. In fact, to the extent that they have some days they prefer to have auctions end, and/or are caught by surprise, you could argue they won't relist immediately, also causing the number of listings to decrease accordingly.
I don't see why, in your example, the use of BIN, in and of itself, increases the reported number of items listed (again, assuming it uses "number of open auctions" as the criteria). You could have the same number of auctions going without the use of BIN.
ebaypowerseller: yes, that's along the lines of what I was thinking - BIN will cause MEDVED data to be LOWER, not higher.
[ edited by captainkirk on Jul 31, 2001 11:14 AM ]
posted on July 31, 2001 12:20:13 PM
I see, although I had believed the count took new listings only into consideration, not a day to day how many new and old remain listed, and even that would not take into account a dutch auction that had a realistic quantity that would sell. Anyone know for sure how they compute those numbers?
posted on July 31, 2001 12:24:40 PM
For what it is worth, from the medved home page in the link above:
"We monitor EBay's pages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 1.5 hour intervals for their auction counts.
Data collection was started Wednesday, September 1, 1999.. EBay also has weekly data going back to its IPO - thanks to Doug Fowler from Silicon Investor EBay thread.
The counts are calculated by totaling all the numbers on the EBay Category Overview page"
The page that is referenced shows the total open listings, not new listings. I agree that if it somehow counts new listings, the effect of BIN could be different.
posted on July 31, 2001 12:32:29 PM
Summertime
And the living is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich
And your mama's good lookin'
So hush little baby now
don't you cry
, then auctions would be no more than 10% higher than what medved reports. The real number is certainly something less than 10%.