posted on January 26, 2005 12:48:32 PM new
Wow. Down from 224,000 stores to 127,000! The customers are speaking.
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Is it true that the only difference between a yard sale and a trash pickup is how close to the road the stuff is placed?
posted on January 26, 2005 12:53:31 PM new
Road - other than saying that they either are not against cutting off their nose despite their face or finally admitting that they are in the wrong market what is it that they are saying?
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on January 26, 2005 12:59:22 PM new
Fenix, I really don't want to try to defend the negative feelings I have about Ebay these days. I admit that, if their customer service were better, I might feel more positive about the whole organization.
My experience, having taught customer service, is that Ebay will eventually crash and burn if they continue to show such disregard for their customers. If not now, later on. And right now I'm cheering on any auction site that wants to compete with Ebay.
I've noticed that you predictably jump in when people are being critical of Ebay. I'm pretty sure you're not on their payroll, but what gives with the passionate leaping to their defense? Just wondering.
___________________________________
Is it true that the only difference between a yard sale and a trash pickup is how close to the road the stuff is placed?
posted on January 26, 2005 01:10:07 PM new
Not to be an ebay cheerleader or anything but there never were 200,000 ebay stores. The first discussion of dropping store counts (1/13) said there were 131,000 or thereabouts. Someone has the numbers WAYYYYYYYYYYY wrong!! I am sorry but a no listing WEEK just isn't going to work! NO way can full-time sellers afford a week to make a statement! They should have settled for a day.
**********************************
"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "...holy sh@#...what a ride!"
posted on January 26, 2005 01:20:31 PM new
From the OP website
>>PS: Sorry for lack of updates guys. I'm a platinum PowerSeller myself, and it's kind of hard to keep up all these stuffs with everything going on. I'll do my best. Thanks.<<
Did I read that right? This guy is trying to incite a riot but he is still making sure he keeps his product listed so he can maintain his Platinum seller status?
Sounds to me like he is trying to talk his competition into taking a vacation. Smart move on his part, but what are the rest of you thinking if you listen to him???
He probaly has a cruise planned for those dates, lol.
posted on January 26, 2005 01:37:40 PM new
I have a cruise planned but I will be returning on the 18th - I am listing as usual once I get my landlegs and certainly not taking a whole week off after being "off" for 3 weeks!
**********************************
"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "...holy sh@#...what a ride!"
posted on January 26, 2005 01:38:13 PM new
A one week boycott will do absolutely nothing. Again, as I have said before, imagine if black riders in Alabama in the 1950's only stayed off the bus for a week. It would have been a slow week, and they would have been at the back of the bus the next week. If you are going to boycott something, you have to do it all the way, or not at all. I will not be participating in this boycott because the end result will not change any policy.
posted on January 26, 2005 02:09:34 PM new
The way I see it, I can put my store on Main Street where all the traffic is or I can put it on some dark ally several streets over. The ally will be a lot cheaper, but I will not get the same exposure, the same class of customers or any of the perks.
I want to be on Main Street or in the largest, busiest mall in town. Of course it will cost more, so I will have to plan around that. I will have to adjust my prices and expenses to be able to afford my rent.
This is just like a B&M store. You move out, someone else will move in. You close your doors for a week, you lose a weeks income. I have also learned that if you take a break, it takes a while to get your sales back up. The longer the break the longer it takes.
Be kind. Everyone is fighting their own secret battles.
...Author Unknown
posted on January 26, 2005 03:07:34 PM new
Hi Twinsoft, its been awhile since I've seen you posting
So how is business on OSCommerce?
Is there much traffic to it?
Is there a way to drive traffic to it?
The guy who started that site nolistingday.com, yeah I read and he said he was a platinum seller. I almost want to write him, if its possible, and ask if I can see his ebay store.
He says stop listing between Feb 18 through whatever.. he'll probably still have listings up during that time, if he truley is a Platinum powerseller..
posted on January 26, 2005 03:23:54 PM new
While I agree that a boycott is silly & won't be effective (all yer competitors will NOT participate-LOL), I think there are some measures that EVERYBODY can take to express in a very real monetary sense our DISPLEASURE:
1) NO MORE 10-day listings -- ever!
2) RARE to NO use of feeBay's GALLERY!
3) REDUCE by 50% regular listings & use them ONLY as burma-shave signs to funnel yer buyers into yer STORES!
After 3-6 mos of EVERYBODY doing 1,2.3, I think feeBay may re-think this stinking load of bush!
"For too long, too many people dependent on Social Security have been cruelly frightened by individuals seeking political gain through demagoguery and outright falsehood, and this must stop.The future of Social Security is much too important to be used as a political football." ~ Ronald Reagan
posted on January 26, 2005 03:32:14 PM new
I think that you are correct tomwiii.
1) NO MORE 10-day listings -- ever!
>>>I only did that on a very few high end items, out the door that goes!
2) RARE to NO use of feeBay's GALLERY!
>>>On common stuff I can do that but... over half of what I sell is very unique and I must do what the competition does to stay in the game. If they stop using gallery then I can. (I have tested this out during the "good" times and found this out.)
3) REDUCE by 50% regular listings & use them ONLY as burma-shave signs to funnel yer buyers into yer STORES!
>>>I started doing that the moment I opened an ebay store now to try and figure out how to get them over to my other non-ebay store. Some of the buyers are so brainwashed with the "Ebay guarantee" that they think that the same thing sold elsewhere is junk! Go figure!!
posted on January 26, 2005 03:58:58 PM new
::I've noticed that you predictably jump in when people are being critical of Ebay. I'm pretty sure you're not on their payroll, but what gives with the passionate leaping to their defense? Just wondering.::
Roady.. I had the pleasure of once spending 8 years working under a truly BRILLIANT business and marketing mind. Although I was the head of a division and he was the head of marketing for the parent corporation we both answered to the worlds biggest asz (seriously - known thruout the industry we worked in as such). This was the kind of guy that you spent five minutes in an office with and began wondering who you could line up to support a Justifiable Homicide defense. Every time I had to deal with this jerk my "boss" would remind me that we ran a business and that although it was great to be passionate about your work, you should never let passion get in the way of work, especially not passionate hatred. Take a step back, take yourself and your ego out of the equation and look at the facts. Does it make sense? Is it a sound business decision? What is the ultimate goal and will it take you closer or farther away? And since the corporation consisted of multiple divisions with occasional interactions, did what seemed like a bad move for us result in something positive for the corporation as a whole?
They were important lessons.
Ebay does dipsh*t stuff. They have an innately bad sense of timing when it comes to upgrades and changes and I think they borrowed their beta team from Microsoft but their business decisions are basically sound and if you are going to move away from the "swap meet" mentality that everyone complains that their advertising encourages it's not going to happen with a simple "Please go away".
Yes, there are going to be people that lose out when there are price increases but lets be real here... self employment is not a right and success in business is not guaranteed. If an increase to 8% closing cost on a 3 cent listing is the difference between profit and loss then you (not you personally - anonymous seller "you" should be thanking ebay for making obvious to you what should have been obvious long ago... you are doing something wrong.
If you are closing your store on general principle, great but I don't think that it's going to make the creditors happy. Prices go up. That is the reality of business. You gotta learn to swim with the sharks. If you are going to let every little change send you over the edge as so many have gone (Please explain closing a store 5 weeks before the price change) then you might not be cut out for the game yet.
I don't support everything ebay does but I'm also not going to walk away from a good thing just because it is just a little less good. There are not as many M&M's in a pack as there used to be but I still enjoy the pack.
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
[ edited by fenix03 on Jan 26, 2005 04:01 PM ]
posted on January 26, 2005 04:33:49 PM new
ltray- lol!...Mine too! (Except when I was little, I thought the brown ones had more chocolate...).
tom- I agree with you. While I'd like to close my store, on principal....I think I can make it work. I USED to have B&M, the heating bills alone up here can kill you.
No 10 day auctions, didn't really do them anyway.
I will cut back on using Gallery on auctions when I can.
And I will be more diligent referring customers to my store.
posted on January 26, 2005 04:50:17 PM new
Fenix, thanks very much for the calm and reasonable explanation. Your mentor must also have taught you not to get defensive, as you well might have with my question. I appreciate the information.
___________________________________
Is it true that the only difference between a yard sale and a trash pickup is how close to the road the stuff is placed?
posted on January 26, 2005 04:59:49 PM new
I am always striving to reduce costs, as should everyone. A few months ago I found a new vendor for bubble envelopes. It is 2.5 cents cheaper per envelope, but since I use about 1000 a month, that's $25. Another thing to keep the FVF down is to try to direct as much traffic to your store outside of ebay. I took a look through my invoice, and I do get a lot of business outside of ebay. That is a 50% discount off the FVF, which adds up too.
Gave up 10 day auctions when they went from 10 to 20 cents, have not done a single one since. I used to love them too, and remember when they went from free to 10 cents, and still used them occasionally. I also do not do gallery at all, never have really.
posted on January 26, 2005 05:29:22 PM new
Hi, NTS. LTNS
OSCommerce is the best store solution, though there is a bit of a learning curve. It's open source and there's a large community supporting it. I'm kind of playing around with it now.
Those folks who depend on their daily eBay to pay the bills probably can't even take a day off listing. But if sellers bend over and take it every time there's a fee increase, eBay will keep raising prices.
posted on January 26, 2005 05:34:21 PM new
the gallery feature is what I use and what bites me.
I don't have a store and have never planned on having a store. I just wanted to get rid of my 2cnd household of stuff that we had.
But I've always used the gallery feature when I sell and I always shop the gallery feature when I buy.
I seldom click on items that are not showing the picture...and sometimes I click on the picture/auction if it looks interesting enough and I wasn't even shopping for that particular item.
posted on January 26, 2005 06:54:35 PM new
Thanks, Glassgrl. I'm not familiar with Photoshop Elements. In Photoshop, the Pen Tool is on the toolbar. Check there, or your Help file (under "Pen".
(Scroll down and click on the "Pen Tool" tutorial.)
One more thing I wanted to add: I've seen the meteoric rise of eBay. But it could fall just as fast. Just this week the company lost 20% of its value. Who knows if we can depend on eBay a year from now? Why keep all your eggs in one basket? It's in your own interest to develop alternatives to the eBay marketplace. Even if it's just as a backup venue.
. Free eBay User Tools | www.oldveterans.com | My Store
posted on January 26, 2005 07:08:14 PM new
The additional fee for 10 dy listings is what really irritates me. The ability to have two weekends of exposure for certain items is really helpful. My future use of 10 day auctions will be severely curtailed.
Twinsoft...Welcome back!!!
A $75.00 solid state device will always blow first to protect a 25 cent fuse ~ Murphy's Law
posted on January 26, 2005 07:27:50 PM new
I think the general consensus here is for each of us to do something that will deliver a message to eBay that enough is enough. Thinking back I remember the lower fees,The free Paypal ("We make our money on the float"), getting signup payments back from Paypal and getting a $50 tryout bonus from AuctionWatch to use their services. That was the old startup internet. Today we have big monopolistic companies running things. This summer Paypal goes to 2.9%. At least they announced that a year ahead of time. I don't depend on eBay to make a living and will continue my general boycott for another couple months. Paypal FVF increase, No free listing day, Store and other increases--The bleeding of those who made them successful continues. My new business plan will gradually phase out eBay. I see that many of you are already going in that direction.
posted on January 26, 2005 08:37:14 PM new
I have been reading various postings and discussions about the Ebay price increase and it's implications, since the announcement was made. The information and points of view have been helpful in formulating my next steps.
As many, I think that Ebay is being greedy, and this has as much to do with keeping Wall Street happy and to keep their earnings at a solid clip, no matter how unrealistic that may be for the long run. I think they need ever more money to pay the guys with the large foreheads that are planning each new unneeded service they want to sell us, and to finance every new expansion that will make them the undisputed kings of online retail.
As many have already stated the 10 day auction fee and the new cost for Gallery photos has become prohibitive. Although, it has been very convenient, I have also decided to nix taking payment via PayPal. Now buyers are going to have to start learning to lick stamps again or use Western Union on their dime. Also, as many might remember before Gallery photo's were invented as a service, folks would insert :"L@@K" or "Pics" in the title, to get people to view the photos associated with an auction. As cheesy as that is, I will probably start doing some of that again, because when I peruse, that used to work with me and get me to click on items I wouldn't always be inclined to give a closer look. Since I haven't opened an Ebay store yet, I can see the writing is on the wall, as overall it's much cheaper to sell items via stores than by an auction. It's my hunch (excuse me if this has been mentioned before) that Ebay is trying to push more and more people to the Stores format, because it's easier to manage and monitor each item, and cut down on cheaters and fee avoiders.
Also, I think, just like in politics a real letter to the President of Ebay, does more than a thousand emails that can be deleted with a single key stroke. I took the time to write one, outlining my complaints about the new price structure, etc. As a Powerseller for many years, I happen to sell a lot of different items,some that only reach a 9.99 selling price. Naturally, I can't make it without selling items of higher value, but at this point, even a ten dollar item for which I have paid 1 dollar, is hardly worth the effort, after Ebay,Vendio, and PayPal have taken their cut.
I haven't made any idle threats to quit Ebay or stop selling, but I have taken the last few weeks to think about the future. I can absorb the latest increases if I can cut corners and pad shipping costs a little, but what about the long run? It's too bad Ebay has become a monolith, and there isn't a viable alternative. There comes a point where certain collectible items, even if where there is solid sustained interest at auction at modest values (lets say between 5-30 bucks)won't be worth selling if the cost of doing business becomes such that one can do better working at Walmart. At that point, I simply stop selling those sort of items or return to more traditional venues. Again, I can see the value of an Ebay store for such items.
I have heard some say that this price increase will flush out of the market some of these idiots that are selling things for a penny or 99 cents. While that may be true, I think it will also have the unintended consquence of more cheating and fee avoidance. Take for example, the Value Added Taxes in effect in many countries throughout Europe (usually 19-20% on top of everything) You can't escape it when buying stuff in a legitimate store, but folks cheat like crazy in the service industry and other ways. Who among us hasn't had a foreign buyer ask that we don't fill out a customs form to the actual value of the item purchased so he doesn't have to pay an additional 20% just to receive his item ? My point is this, when people find that fees and taxes have become unreasonable, people find ways to avoid and circumvent whether legal or illegal.
65-70%+ of my items sell at auction the first time around, higher if you add in reauctions where I have usually lowered the opening bid. To my mind, this is because I investigate and try to only sell items that have a record of being good sellers, and try to flog as little stuff as possible that is in low demand. However, with these new fees, I am going to monitor my auctions even more closely,and take less risks financially in buying speculative items for resale, and therefore in theory start less auctions based on a wing and a prayer.
I like to sell items at auction without reserve and low opening bids, psychologically I believe this is the best way to get early action and get as many bidders involved as possible. Let's say I have an item that sells almost universally at auction for between 40-50 dollars, and I list it at $9.99. Lo and behold, for whatever reason, the usual buyers or bidders are on vacation, and with a day or hours left, the bid remains low. Now, I realize I often get huge jumps near the end of an auction, but I am going to be less willing to wait for bidders and more likely to shut certain auctions down, if the marketplace isn't being fair. I would simply try again another time, than absorb the new higher fees for an item that sold way below it's usual value. Naturally, one can expect inquiries/complaints about an ended auction,often also offers. Also, I have had luck in the past simply stating in my ad body that I will shut an auction down, if X amount hasn't been reached by a certain time, thus avoiding a Reserve fee and being honest and upfront with potential bidders. Hopefully prodding them to bid early. After all, I consider all the items still mine, until the auction is officially over. I don't know about you,but I often receive inquiries that are both overt and subtle offers to buy items before an auction is over. Usually, if a specific offer is made,it is usually low, and almost always you would do better letting an auction ride, but as fees go up....
It will be interesting how Ebay does after the new fees are implemented. My hope is that their earnings go down, as perhaps then they will take a different tact to raise money in the future. I certainly agree with sentiments that Sellers need to actively look for other potential venues and spend time figuring out what to do if you had to part with Ebay tomorrow,it only makes sense.
posted on January 27, 2005 01:29:14 PM new
Ebayvet, would you mind telling us where you got those cheaper envelopes?
___________________________________
Is it true that the only difference between a yard sale and a trash pickup is how close to the road the stuff is placed?
posted on January 27, 2005 01:48:24 PM new
Sure, I switched to quill.com - If you buy in bulk (1250 or more) you get free shipping, and the per envelope price is cheaper than my previous source. One problem I've run into believe it or not is inconsistant size for #0 envelope, and when they are a little too small, it really affects me as I need all the space I can get out of a size 0 - Quill is also really good for closeouts, last year or maybe even a little longer ago now I purchased a lot of a closeout oversized for 10 cents each shipped, those have been great for me. At the time I worried they might be too big, but have worked out great for me and at a good price too.
posted on January 27, 2005 05:20:11 PM new
ebayvet, I was wondering if Quill was your source. I remember a while back when the sale on bubble envelopes got all of us excited. I'd tipped folks off here about the sale, which was wonderful. I haven't heard of another Quill sale like that--and I sure can't use 1250 envelopes at one time! But thanks for letting us all know.
___________________________________
Is it true that the only difference between a yard sale and a trash pickup is how close to the road the stuff is placed?
posted on January 27, 2005 05:33:26 PM new
Roadsmith, if that was you who sent me there, THANK YOU! I purchased 5000 of those oversized envelopes, they have saved me a lot of money. I purchased what I figured was a 3 year supply of that size, and I was about right as I am a little more than halfway through my stock. That is one of the reasons why I love this message board, advice and tips like that have saved me a lot of $$$ over the years!
and certainly not taking a whole week off after being "off" for 3 weeks!
