posted on January 5, 2001 10:31:21 PM new
This whole Yahoo! thing is alot like what we just went through with Paypal. Here is how I believe this will play out:
Some will make the move to other auction sites just to be dissapointed by the low/non-existent traffic and poor sell-through rates. Some will go back to Ebay until Ebay makes up more crazy rules. What will that leave us? Answer: Yahoo!
Yahoo! doesn't care if you leave now because you'll be back! And this is how I believe that Yahoo! will eventually have everyone over a barrel. What they are doing looks absurd now, but down the road...
posted on January 5, 2001 10:47:12 PM new
I hope I am wrong. But unless everyone moves to another site as a group, then I don't think there will be many choices out there. Just my 2 cents (or if yahoo has their way, 20 cents)
posted on January 5, 2001 10:51:37 PM new
Consider this. At least one brokerage firm is forecasting that Yahoo!Auctions will see the number of auctions decline from 3.0 million to 1.5 million in the coming weeks. That's a loss of 1.5 million.
Lycos, et.al., might well have 500,000 listings (anyone know for sure?), and if they get all 1.5 million from Yahoo!Auctions they will then have 2.0 million.
That makes it eBay #1; Lycos, et.al. #2, and Yahoo!Auctions #3.
If anything, the playing field will be opening up. Even some of the smaller free sites will now have the opportunity to make some respectable showings.
posted on January 5, 2001 11:01:28 PM new
I for one am tired of game playing auction sites. I went through it with eGREED and then with Golds (we will have new equipent "next week" - for three solid months) and now YaGREED.
I have a commercial pilots licence and enough hours to fly for an airline. My application goes in to five airlines next week (right now they are screaming for pilots) so it may very well be adios to the internet auction game.
I will be giving other auction sites a try in the mean time. I much prefer the flexibility of having an auction business- and I have always done well with the radios and the art pottery. I just get tired of sites pulling this trash and then having to find another auction home as soon as I get established
posted on January 5, 2001 11:45:24 PM new
there is no site that will be free forever. The sites that are free now will one day charge fees, or they will become extinct. It's not fair to expect a free ride forever.
Therefore, we have to choose which sites WE want to support. I think musicman makes a good point. I don't really know how this whole thing will turn out. I can tell you that I'm frustrated with this whole thing at Yahoo- with the listing order more so than the fees- but I can tell you that the next time Ebay has a series of major outages I will probably be even madder at Ebay than I am now at Yahoo, and will probably post some items on Yahoo in protest of Ebay.
THERE IS NO PERFECT SITE!!!!
OR maybe I will finally get a "real" job, which I've been talking about for weeks now. I don't know.
posted on January 6, 2001 03:32:16 AM new
Yahoo has cost me $100. - $200. a month in the last year I have been listing there. I am NOT complaining about "free" because Yahoo has not been free for me. I am complaining about FAIR. Yahoo PROMISED that auctions would ALWAYS be free AND the traffic on Yahoo does NOT warrant listing fees. Reserve fees are why I left eGREED in the first place- they are EXTREMELY unfair and unethical especially when the site claims they are "just a venue". I can not afford to pay $5.00 per item and have to relist it 3-4 times before it sells ($2.25 listing fee, .75 reserve fee, $2.00 feature fee. My items will not sell without a reserve and without being featured) $20.00 in listing fees when I was only going to make $20.00 on the item does NOT cut it.
There may not be a perfect site, but Yahoo was doing okay the way it was. eGREED was just fine (except for the site outages) before they announced the extortion (reserve) fee last year. Not many people would be leaving YaGREED if it was a FVF unstead of a listing fee.
If YaGREED hadn't cancelled my rock auction, I could have retired (it was at $100,000,304. when they cancelled it) and I wouldn't have to worry about finding another auction home It's YaGREED's fault I couldn't sell my "retirement piece" and retire from the internet auction business.
