posted on July 10, 2007 09:31:16 AM new
G'day all,
As a new Google AdSense publisher (i.e. I run Google ads on my websites and earn money for it), I've been happy to see the many, many ways in which Google makes it easy for me to see the effect my business is having.
It is completely and totally unlike eBay's approach.
Google gets it. Google understands that when I make money, they make money. They give me lots of reports and metrics, lots of options, lots of great advice that isn't just urging me to buy another useless listing feature. (Yeah, I'm sure I'd do SO MUCH BETTER on eBay if I just spent another 50 cents on Subtitle for every listing!)
You know how you used to see those ads on TV -- maybe they're still there -- "ANYONE CAN QUALIFY FOR A BRAND-NEW COMPUTER" and when you examine their offering, you find that you'd end up paying about 3x the actual retail value of the machine? Those ads are targeted to low-income undereducated people. eBay reminds me of those ads.
I started a new seller ID a couple of months ago to liquidate some household goods. Didn't want to mix it in with the jewelry. My husband asked me how it was doing. I said, "I really don't know. I haven't taken the time to do the spreadsheet. I'm busy with other stuff." How hard would it be for eBay to provide routine metrics for every seller, for FREE? Forget My eBay, it's useless, that's not what it does.
eBay, how about it? How about providing some easy to use and powerful tools that let each seller know -- at a glance -- how she's doing and how a change in this or that might affect her business?
Could you stop buying up companies that have nothing to do with your core business and actually pay attention to US for 10 minutes? Please?
posted on July 10, 2007 10:14:45 AM new
Someone will probably bring up the features called Sales Report and Sales Report Plus.
As usual, eBay has taken a good idea and eBayified it. eBayification is taking something that might be useful, offering it for free but planning to charge for it in the future, making it difficult to use and being so terrified that someone might actually glean some valuable data from it that you make them sign a non-disclosure agreement. (Take a look at the Sales Report Agreement. You'll be astounded.)
If you subscribe to Sales Report (Plus) today, your first report will be "ready" at the end of the first week of next month.
Hokay, today's July 10th, so I need to wait until August 7th to find out how I'm doing. So much for being agile and being able to make changes to respond to slowdowns in bidding and traffic.
My Sales Reports will be generated and hosted offsite and I will be emailed (!) when they are available. I cannot input any data (like, oh, cost of inventory!) so the Sales Report cannot compute profit and loss, only some not-very-useful stuff like what my sales were by category.
Hello! Anybody home? Has anyone ever told eBay that, say, August and September are two very different selling months and that August results aren't going to tell me diddly about what I should do in September?
Look guys, sellers like the one discussed on another thread go belly-up because they don't have tracking at their fingertips. It is way too easy to max out your credit cards on eBay fees while having a vague impression that sales are improving enough to make payments on those cards...when they're not.
Even a child can see that it is better to retain established sellers, thus boosting the stability of the marketplace, than have to recruit new sellers all the time. When you have a substantial seller population always in the learning curve, bidder dissatisfaction grows.
Why doesn't eBay get any of this?
The blind stupidity at eBay enrages me. In case you hadn't noticed.
posted on July 10, 2007 11:17:04 AM new
they think they don't need us 'cuz they have the big corporate sellers with their deep pockets. You know they have to keep them happy
posted on July 10, 2007 11:26:09 AM new
Right on Fluff, Ebay is never thinking about how to make selling better / more profitable and in turn making their "venue" better /more profitable. They are too hung up on making sure no one gets anything that Ebay has not taken a percentage of. They are so fearful of losing a few cents that most of their "improvements" are hindrances to decent, honest sellers.
posted on July 10, 2007 11:33:45 AM new
I'm not all that sure that eBay doesn't "get" it. EBay makes money whether I do or not. My learning to list smarter may drive down the money I spend with them. EBay reminds me of a few information hoarders I used to work with. They made it very hard to access information, they wanted to control what information was given out and the format it was given in. They felt that made them indispensable.
Figuring out sell-through rates, true cost of sales, store vs core is a real hassle if you want to do it on a timely basis.
posted on July 10, 2007 11:42:21 AM newFiguring out sell-through rates, true cost of sales, store vs core is a real hassle if you want to do it on a timely basis
But it's not a hassle for them, J. They have computers, they have money and clearly they have programmers who don't have enough to do.
eBay itself does everything possible to create fear and distrust of new sellers and boots the old established ones when they run into a spot of trouble.
Look guys: There is a WHOLE INDUSTRY -- the auction services business -- that has flourished precisely because eBay provides inadequate seller support. It is the entire raison d'etre for Vendio itself.
I say, enough. You shouldn't have to pay anyone to schedule auctions, to provide a friendly listing interface or to generate useful reports.
posted on July 10, 2007 04:12:30 PM new
I think it is obvious that eBay is NEVER going to GET IT.
I have not done anything with google adwords, but I love google check-out and have had about 30 people send me money with that method.
I still hope and pray that one day GOOGLE will challenge ebay on the auction front. They have the views, it seems it is a better run company, and ebay needs to be taken down many, many notches.
posted on July 16, 2007 02:49:02 AM new
Ebay knows that every time a seller drops out there is another one out there to take their place. This has changed the whole face of ebay and not for the better - I don't think they get that either.
I do use the Sales Reports but to be honest I hardly even look at them until I get ready to do my taxes. Even then I have to depend on Vendio for a full recap of what I sold. Ebay's reports do nothing to help me with my sells approach
posted on July 16, 2007 07:52:04 AM new
Just found that my BIN (non store) items have higher sell-through than auction items - very hard to calculate since listing format is a non-downloadble field!
posted on July 17, 2007 02:59:39 AM new
Obviously, this is why eBay is so leery of allowing Google Checkout payments, or etc. etc. up to and including temporarily cancelling a bunch of eBay's own AdWords ads.
If Google were to open Google Auctions, with GCO payment, a clean and simple interface, plenty of metrics (as you have mentioned) and plenty of traffic - it would be the "category killer" of auctions.
I personally would enjoy it if a potential "Google Auctions" offered a feature that let me trade FVF for AdWords - in other words, an optional checkbox that would let me choose to list that particular auction across AdWords network, and if it sold that way, the FVF would be (somewhat) higher than normal, with the host of the ad getting the extra cut of FVF. I think for most items, though, there would be enough traffic with Google & Froogle searches to not need AdWords help.
Yahoo ID: grantje
