posted on January 11, 2001 08:51:17 PM new
I've heard nothing but to be truthful whining about the Yahoo fees.
And I've done my whining too ,BUT.
I do understand fully why the FVF won't work for them or us...I gather from all this that Yahoo wants to get rid of the spam listings that we all see, 50 listings in a row all of the same darn thing, and it goes on for pages after pages, making it impossible to see anything but this stuff.To give an example I have an alert for vintage costume jewelry, and more times than I can count I have gotten an e mail with stuff that has nothing to do with costume jewelry, hence the spammers at it again.
So we all do realize why FVF won't work to rid us of this problem.
But again listing fees aren't the answer with traffic, and slowness of sales on Yahoo.
I really think if we could go with a listing fee,more reasonable, starting at a lower price for those that put the .10 cards etc up, and have several, several relists, more than just 2 , I think we ALL could live with that and could start seeing sales.
I truly believe these junk listings will disappear, with the listing fees. Who can afford to list 50 of the same item at 59.99 for 10 days and expect to make money...NOT.
We all worked hard to get sales and fb and things going on Yahoo, and it makes no sense to not fight a bit to save what we have built up.
So who has any better ideas on what we could do to save this mess.
Joan
posted on January 11, 2001 09:07:21 PM new
Yahoo traffic and sales does not warrant ANY listing fee- not even "just a penny" and there is NO WAY, NO HOW I will EVER pay a reserve fee - that was not called for at all.
You really think Yahoo will change the fees just because we don't like them??? They already told us to **** off - they made it clear that they don't care- so why should we???
Trying to reason with them is like trying to reason with a spoiled two year old brat that always gets their way. I will take my $200. in feature fees I was paying every month and my $200. items to a site where they are wanted. I will also boycott Yahoo advertisers and I will be snail mailing the advertisers telling them that I will never do business with them as long as they adertise on Yahoo. Yahoo "attacked" my dimes so I will "attack" their dollars. Listing fees on my items would be the same as eGREED- and eGREED has the traffic to support the fees- doesn't take much intelligence to figure out where the money is best spent if you are willing to pay it.
posted on January 11, 2001 09:18:03 PM new
I find that YAHOO isn't dead yet!
I had cancelled every one of my approx 500 auctions when I learned about the rate increase. I answered the call by my fellow YAHOOers to cancel to see if it would make a difference.
It did not make a bit of difference - they had made up their minds.
I carefully read all of the YAHOO CHAT transcripts and found myself agreeing with some of the logic.
There are absolutely too many SPAM items in YAHOO for the older and more unusual items to ever surface.
Therefore, on the 8th & 9th of January, I risked carpal in my wrist and relisted every auction to run 10 days x 2 relists. I'm so glad I did - In the past couple of days I've had some neat Buy-It sales & several nice bids.
My plan is to move my lowest end auctions somewhere else (free - or where I already pay like Amazon for 5,000 auctions/zshops); combine several low end auction items into one higher end auction (folks are more likely to pay for auctions that end at higher amounts); and selectively choose auctions that I think will do well on YAHOO.
Each auction house has a different personality - there are items that do well on Ebay, some on Amazon (books primarily), some on YAHOO, and maybe some on Bidbay or Auxpal.
With experience, I am learning which items do well on which auction house.
I believe YAHOO will be a contender in the auction business for a long time.
posted on January 11, 2001 09:44:46 PM new
[royrogers] I pretty much agree and I'm not too concerned about the new fees. My slower moving items will be moved to Lycos and the remainder will be listed on Yahoo. But I'm waiting for the bulk of free listings to expire on Yahoo before I pay to list.
posted on January 11, 2001 09:58:40 PM new
When will ppl understand that these fees have NOTHING to do with spam listings and everything to do with their shortfall with revenues. As ad revenues fall along with their share price.. they are desperately looking to charge anything and everything. Look for them to charge fees on emails services mail.yahoo.com and financial services quote.yahoo.com. As I said many times before, Yahoo is adverting for new sellers via radio commericals. No, they are not adverting to attract new buyers, they are strictly adverting to attract new sellers. Bottom line is they need more revenue so they can waste billions of more dollars buying up useless sites like geocities.
posted on January 11, 2001 10:04:43 PM new
[Spreland]
This makes sense - I have money in my wallet, and I am considering waiting until the end of the "free" business is over to even start spending a lot of that.
By the time I get down to "my" money, the site should be "Spam" free.
Personally, I don't care for the inexpensive "features" catagory clogging up the beginning pages of antiques catagories. Folks are "featuring" recent statue imports in the antiques areas, and if potential bidders see several pages of these imports, they are not as likely to stay around for the real things, even if they are closing by time.
I e-mailed YAHOO that I am trying to sort my favorite areas that I buy in, and I am unable to sort only by closing time - features with extended closing times come in before those items with immediate closing times. Am I the only one having this problem?
I have not made a purchase on YAHOO since I have been unable to sort by picture and earliest closing time...I'm going thru withdrawal...
posted on January 11, 2001 11:29:27 PM new
well, now that the listings are back in time-ending order I do feel like I can live with the listing fees. In fact I'm ecstatic that they have done it this way!! It is actually LESS EXPENSIVE for me to spend the money for the listing fee than it was for me to feature my items, and featuring every item won't be such a necessity now that the listings are de-scrambled. So I'm pretty thrilled actually!!
I was encouraged by reading your posts, royrogers. I cancelled all my auctions right before they announced that the listings would be back in time-ending sequence. I got such a giggle out of your post because I would have done exactly as you did- relist all my items on Yahoo- but as it turns out I had already parked them on Ebay. But I'm pretty happy because I just won two big boxlots of goodies for re-sale and I'm thinking about 25% of it is Yahoo-able. Like you, I am learning what to list where.
Spreland- I was happy to read your post too.
I am glad that there will still be some sane, sensible sellers left on Yahoo.
anyway, JustJoan, maybe we got a bit off topic. I have given some thought to the whole "spam" thing and I don't think there is really an easy answer. Policing the site is something Yahoo is obviously not ready to take on. Understandably. Ebay doesn't even do such a great job of policing their site. NW seems to have its limitations and although I think it helped, it wasn't the be-all end-all spam eliminator as they had maybe thought it would be. I am not exactly sure that the fees will accomplish what they hoped, but all I can say is that I am happy one way or the other now that the listing order is restored. Truthfully "spam" as Yahoo defines it was the least of my worries, and on a scale of things I could care less about it.
[ edited by CAgrrl on Jan 11, 2001 11:31 PM ]
posted on January 12, 2001 06:24:15 AM new
I don't see that fees will cut down on the "Spam," except perhaps some of the minor Spam. Ebay has tons of Spam, that sellers are willing to pay to post - I can't see that Yahoo will/could be any different.
Actually, in the categories we post in, I have never encountered Spam.
NOW, I didn't notice, but with fees, has Yahoo kept it's little rule about posting only one item in a given category?
posted on January 12, 2001 08:00:40 AM new
Like JWPC, I've never encountered spam in the categories (sub categories of Collectibles) that I list in. Other than listing order, my main annoyance has been sellers who choose to list several of the same item separately in the same catogory instead of in a single auction with multiple quantities.
posted on January 12, 2001 08:51:55 AM new
I personally think that SPAM is something we have to deal with on auctions not unlike "junk" mail we toss out everyday from our mail. But ruining an auction site we have worked hard to make grow by charging listing fees just to stop spam is not the way either. Perhaps all the good guys should start inundating the spammers with daily "questions" regarding their "stuff". Maybe they would get tired of questions and go away. This might not be doable but something it out there that will work short of listing fees.
posted on January 12, 2001 09:37:22 AM new
Also, I think these fees have NOTHING to do with site improvement. That's just a smoke screen for pumping up the credibility of their plunging stock on the market by increasing their profit margin. YooHoo, in my opinion, is not engaged in any holy cause to clean-up junk (so-called) listings, anymore than eBay.
posted on January 12, 2001 10:17:16 AM new
The most SPAM I ever received is when bidding on Beanies. Since I don't bid there any more, I seem to rarely receive SPAM.
posted on January 12, 2001 10:25:59 AM new
HI CAgrrl - I liked your upbeat post. Just let us know if you actually sell anything, OK? I would list if I had reason to think anything would sell. I mean without relisting time and time again.
posted on January 12, 2001 05:30:41 PM new
keziak- !! I will be sure to let you know, although I'm not selling as many books these days. I unfortunately think that most books are not going to be as viable to sell on Yahoo. (Hope I'm wrong about this!)
I still read everything I can get my hands on, and I sell almost all those books afterwards, but I am not really as concerned with making a profit on the books I buy for my own enjoyment. I have really cut back on buying books for re-sale. I have become a LOT more picky and now am only buying children's books (still extremely yahoo-able in my opinion) and stuff that I know I can list on amazon's marketplace.
On the bright side, Yahoo booksellers still don't have to worry about those pesky half.com banner ads!!! That is a big plus in my opinion!
posted on January 13, 2001 06:24:09 AM new
CAgrrl - children's books?? Yet another category that I haven't been able to crack. There are just so many of them...I can't tell what would sell, so I avoid them.
I'm bullish on books and think that with diversification between ebay, half.com, Marketplace and [maybe] Yahoo, bookselling has a bright future. Maybe that's because I can buy low and not flip out as much as some people about ebay fees.
I just listed an exercise tape on Yahoo as a test. This is a for-sure sale item, so I'd like to see if buyers still exist on this site. If so, I'll get a sale and not have to pay FVF. If not, it will sell on ebay.
