posted on February 21, 2001 09:02:38 PM new
From the article >
The fees were also meant to improve the auctions by discouraging people from listing items that no one would be interested in bidding on, said Fitzgerald. The number of bids per item listed has risen fourfold, and the likelihood that an item will be sold on Yahoo Auctions has risen more than fivefold, he said.
I'm having some problems with the math.
Let's see. There were once 2,400,000 listings at Yahoo!Auctions drawing "X" bids, so now we're told that there's four times more bidding which would be "4X" bids on fewer "Y" listings.
So my math looks like this.
Y(4X) = 2,400,000(X)
Y = 2,400,000(X)/(4X) = 600,000
600,000 listings?
Strange. Most reports place Yahoo!AuctionsLITE listings at approximately 240,000.
Its late. Did I make a mistake in the rough calculations?
fixed a sentence.
[ edited by dimview on Feb 21, 2001 09:04 PM ]
posted on February 21, 2001 10:41:54 PM new
DimView,
Your can't really derive an estimate of the number of items using either bids per item or success rate.
The stated improvement to bids per item seems too high but the success rate being 5 times higher than before is about right. See, I was right about that, wasn't I?
posted on February 21, 2001 11:00:12 PM new
Hi Dimview.
Yes I believ there is an error in your calculations.
The quote attributes 4x the bids, PER ITEM LISTED. With 90% of the listings gone, you would first have to divide the 2,400,00 by 10
and come up with 240,000 x (4x).
That is assuming there were 10 bids per 100 listings on Jan. 9, then 2,400,000/100= 24,000 bids. fourfold per item at 240,000 listings would be (240,000/100)x4= 9600 bids.
So while the actual numbers may not be known, I translate that message to "claim" that while the auction listings have dropped by 90%, the actual bids have only dropped by 60%.
How this attempted SPIN is helping Yahoo, I have no idea, because #1 they are not backing up these claims with solid numbers, #2 The amount of bids or sell through have no relation to listing fees increasing revenue for yahoo as they would only be concerned by the number of listings.
While on the subject, can anyone explain why Yahoo cited the fees as a revenue producing method to Wall Street, and a site improvement tool to the sellers?
Frankly , no matter which lie you believe, I don't see either plan as working.
[ edited by jimhhow on Feb 21, 2001 11:04 PM ]
posted on February 22, 2001 06:11:49 AM new
john10101,
Thanks for the pointer to the fool.com article >
This is not to say Yahoo! will be closing its auction site anytime soon. Despite the 90% plunge, it probably is still number two in the U.S., and it can certainly exist alongside the others in eBay's shadow. And some things have improved on the site recently: While the fees caused a lot of sellers to pack up and head elsewhere, they also helped eliminate many listings that weren't really auctions, such as advertisements that could be listed over and over at no cost. Industry observer John Wong notes that Yahoo!'s success rate -- the percentage of listed items that sell -- has risen from 5%-6% before the fees to the 22%-25% range.
Fool.com finally gets the picture. Collapse. Yahoo!Auctions has reinvented itself as Yahoo!AuctionsLITE.
it probably is still number two in the U.S.,
Bzzzzzt. Wrong answer. That distinction goes to Bidville, which right now has more than 354,000 listings.
And some things have improved on the site recently: While the fees caused a lot of sellers to pack up and head elsewhere,
Yup. Any one or more of the alternative auction sites. And, if you're going to pay fees, eBay since they have something that Yahoo!AuctionsLITE doesn't. Traffic.
they also helped eliminate many listings that weren't really auctions, such as advertisements that could be listed over and over at no cost.
Since these "sellers" would naturally move to one of the alternative auction sites, I'm wondering why they're not having any significant problems with them.
Industry observer John Wong notes that Yahoo!'s success rate -- the percentage of listed items that sell -- has risen from 5%-6% before the fees to the 22%-25% range.
Yahoo!AuctionsLITE has 240,000 listings. It seems doubtful that 60,000 of them are closing with bids.
jimhhow,
I'll take another look at the "numbers" today if time permits.
what else?
[ edited by dimview on Feb 22, 2001 06:13 AM ]
posted on February 22, 2001 07:25:47 AM new
DimView,
Unfortunately, only some sellers know about Bidville. In the auction scene they're NoWheresville.
Didn't we just get done learning a lesson with Yahoo about trying to determine the true size of an auction by relying on just the item count? Aren't you making the same mistake by comparing the number of items on free Bidville to now non-free Yahoo?
I don't see why a 22-25% overall success rate is so difficult to believe. If Yahoo's shed 90% of their non-active items that naturally increases their success rate. Anyway, if that was the success rate it isn't THAT high, but it is an improvement.
posted on February 22, 2001 07:40:22 AM new
john10101 >
I don't see why a 22-25% overall success rate is so difficult to believe. If Yahoo's shed 90% of their non-active items that naturally increases their success rate. Anyway, if that was the success rate it isn't THAT high, but it is an improvement.
Because given a normal distribution of live auctions there would be similar numbers of listings on which to bid from one day to the next, yet you click on closed auctions and find only a handful of items that had bids. In category after category.
