posted on February 1, 2001 06:15:30 AM new
I certainly agree that traffic at Yahoo auctions doesn't justify a listing fee. I'm curious as to why if this is such a poor financial decision for Yahoo that they haven't discontinued their listing fee policy
or at least lowered it drastically to make it more appealing to sellers. Are they:
1. Unable to admit their wrong?
2. Unable to objectively see the impact
this drop in traffic is having on their
bottom line? (I doubt it)
3. OR is it possible that this is not
having the negative impact on their
bottom line that we thought it would have.
After all, they are collecting listing
fees from the remaining sellers and
that's more than they were doing before.
4. OR do they have some other grand plan that
they haven't unfolded yet that this
initial step is a prelude to?
posted on February 1, 2001 07:08:54 AM new
1) I am convinced they don't know they are wrong - yet. Their stock analysist is the same one behind PriceLine, Petsmart and Amazon. At $.50 a stock he was still telling people Buy and Hold - that it is a good deal. He is behind the decision of Yahoo to charge for their auctions.
2) They expected a drop in listings. I believe they are watching the drop and thinking at any moment it will catch and hold.
3) What is on there has been since January 9th - the last free day or has been listed with funny money. I have not heard of anyone using real money! So they can't have made much if any.
posted on February 1, 2001 08:33:01 AM new
They are corporate "managers". They do not use the same concepts as normal people do. When they make a decision, even such a mistake as this one, they stick to it. They do not like to admit they were wrong. It is not in the 'corporate mind set' to do so. They anticipated a bottoming out of the drop, and are still sticking to that. Even though, it is already below those levels, they are now clinging to the thought they will rebound from the drop. They have revised their thinking to follow what they now 'anticipate', to 'another goal'. To another possible, though not probable, gain somewhere. If that doesn't materialize, they will set a new 'corporate goal'. Thay are not looking at reality. Such is the 'corporate mind set'. That's why you see such turnover at the heads of all corporations. It's a revolving door of incapable, disfunctional, corporate mind sets of certain individuals.
posted on February 1, 2001 10:23:01 AM new
CharlieOne, you said "That's why you see such turnover at the heads of all corporations. It's a revolving door of incapable, disfunctional, corporate mind sets of certain individuals."
Sounds like you've worked at the SAME COMPANIES I have!!! Do we know each other???
posted on February 1, 2001 10:40:56 AM new
Hi Granne,
That may very well be. I used to be in management of one of this countries biggest industrial manufacturers. I got first hand experience of which I speak, when in that position. I tried to institute working 'with' the hourly employees, when that was not a popular concept. Got called 'on the carpet' for trying that. I was, I guess, ahead of my time. Now they do exactly that, and call it the 'team concept'. Many management, upper level, have never been at the floor level. Hence, all of the problems they don't know how to address. I'm a firm believer in working your way up from the bottom. It gives you a more varied perspective.
Charlie
typo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[ edited by CharlieOne on Feb 1, 2001 10:42 AM ]
posted on February 1, 2001 12:41:30 PM new
I have developed a new tack as to why Yahoo has made no signs of flexibility intheir policy. This new thinking is based on on the same reasoning principle as if it is cold dry, white and falling from the sky, it must be snow.
Why would anyone deliberately take a thriving, vital entity and choke the life out of it?
At first I likened it to killing the goosed that layed the golden egg, but that is not the answer.
There is a method to this madness, we just cannot see it yet. But I think that in future we are all gonna be smacking ourselves in the head when the truth finally comes out.
Take a good look at what is going on around the whole internet auction industry.
What you will see are millions of pieces of a big puzzle. None of it makes any sense in this form. When you try putting some of the pieces together, you tell yourself that it doesn't look right. That is because it isn't right. There is an answer to this so simple that we all are missing it.
Manipulation. We are being manipulated.
I cannot believe that Yahoo and other aspects of this industry are run by idiots that do not see what they are doing. I believe they do see. I also believe that they know what they are doing. I hope that there are some serious investigations into this industry. I think some people should do serious jail time.
Is there anyone out there that can say the actions they have seen Yahoo taking recently are reasonable? Rational?
The only place I see actually patting Yahoo on the back, is Wall street. That makes me even more suspicious. AS we have seen many times in the past, there are never any underhanded dealings that go on on Wall street, right?
I don't have the answer yet, but it is there somewhere, these are not stupid people, they have to know what they are doing.
posted on February 1, 2001 01:41:53 PM new
Yahoo thinks they're better off with the listing fee than without. After things shake out, if they can ultimately maintain an auction with half a million items, and let's say a 30% success rate, $0.50 average listing fee, and average 7 day listing period then they get
500,000 x 30% x $0.50 x 52weeks = $4 million
On top of this include the ad revenue and fees for extras. Any way you dice it though, auctions is not a big part of Yahoo's revenues.
There was a New York Times article that revealed that most of Ebay's auction volume was from a small percentage of sellers (I think that was 20,000 sellers). If that's true for Yahoo, and if their best sellers stay (and you would think Yahoo consulted with them first) then the overall level of activity on Yahoo might not change that much. At least that's the gameplan, and whether that works out for them is another matter.
That said, they really should tweak the listing fee to include at least one free relisting. Having no free relistings is just too tough especially since the listing fees aren't THAT low. I agree with people who've said that final value fees might have been a better choice. Even better IMO would be FVF half of Ebay's plus smaller listing fees, since they still had to clear out the less active items (not "junk". If their auctions gained traction then they could raise rates.
posted on February 1, 2001 04:44:31 PM new
I Honestly think the fees yahoo put in place are to replace lost income from advertizeing.
I think they see the drop in auction listings and activity at this time.
What I think they didnt see was that eve though there listings doubled on there auctions They never followed there auctions to see the low percentage of selling going on.
I sincerily think they assumed since listing was moveing up up up that sellers had to be makeing very good dollars.
I mean after all if you read message boards like this and listened to sellers talk here about the hours they have in buying listing Selling packing that they had to be selling very well 500 to 1000 a week or month at least to invest the hours they talked about.
after all if you were a corparate type and seen people telling of 10 to 15 hour per day buying cleaning fixing items to take pictures of and list hundereds of these auctions on yahoo for auction weekly would you assume these people were doing all this for one or two sales of $3 to $30 per week in bids and sales if even that much some weeks.
posted on February 1, 2001 11:09:08 PM new
I think that Yahoo really thinks what they did will make things better. I also think that they are still holding out hope that once the listings level out and people see increased sales that the sellers will come running back and start listing.
Another scenario is they want to attract corporate entities that list thousands of close out items and they think that when the junk is gone it will make their auction site more attractive.
As it stands right now they are likely to lose 75-80% of their remaining listings in the next 7 days. I hope they have a plan B in the works.
posted on February 2, 2001 01:23:51 AM new
If anyone would know how well Yahoo auctions were doing it would be Yahoo. They would know everything (dollar amount sold by who, within what categories, overall success rates and by categories, etc) and they would know it in real-time.
Of course, knowing how well their auctions are doing and understanding the business of running an internet auction are two different things. So far, they haven't been very Ebay-like. Ebay definitely deals with sellers differently.
Well, maybe those folks at Yahoo Auctions know what they're doing. We, they, everyone won't know until some time has passed.
posted on February 2, 2001 01:38:35 AM new
Well, I already know
I am overwhelmed trying to keep with the merchandise selling "elsewhere" (at a site that I HATE going back to, but one where listing fees actually lead to real bids and sales). These bids are on the merchandise that wasn't up to the "quality" that Yahoo deemed worthy of their site.
In retrospect, I owe YAHOO a big THANK YOU!! I am now actually selling the stuff that sat on Yahoo for months without bids.
But, of course, it's not the lack of bidders .... its the merchandise that is at fault ::snicker::
posted on February 2, 2001 09:26:42 AM new
dman3 >
What I think they didnt see was that eve though there listings doubled on there auctions They never followed there auctions to see the low percentage of selling going on.
I think Yahoo!Auctions was very much aware of the minimal traffic and the minimal sell-through rate. They were very much aware that their auction site was largely a few pageviewers, fewer bidders and even fewer buyers wasteland.
The "evidence" of that is their decision to exclude auctions that did not receive a single bid in closed auctions. eBay includes them in their database.
. If their auctions gained traction then they could raise rates.
